Chapter V…

Chapter V

Edith Beale had now been married for more than a year to Sir Mosley Menteith, and the whole of their life together had been to her a painful period of gradual disillusion--and all the more painful because she was totally unprepared even for the possibility of any troubles of the kind which had beset her. Parental opinion and prejudice, ignorance, education, and custom had combined to deceive her with regard to the transient nature of her own feeling for her lover; and it was also inevitable that she should lend herself enthusiastically to the deception; for who would not believe, if they could, that a state so ecstatic is enduring? Even people who do know better are apt to persuade themselves that an exception will be made in their favour, and this being so, it naturally follows that a girl like Edith, all faith and fondness, is foredoomed by every circumstance of her life and virtue of her nature, to make the fatal mistake. But, as Evadne told her, passion stands midway between love and hate, and is an introduction to either; and there is no doubt that, if Menteith had been the kind of repentant erring sinner she imagined him, her first wild desire would have cooled down into the lasting joy of tranquil love. Menteith, however, was not at all that kind of man, and, consequently, from the first the marriage had been a miserable example of the result of uniting the spiritual or better part of human nature with the essentially animal or most degraded side of it. In that position there was just one hope of happiness left for Edith, and that was in her children. If such a woman so situated can be happy anywhere it will be in her nursery. But Edith's child, which arrived pretty promptly, only proved to be another whip to scourge her. Although of an unmistakable type, he was apparently healthy when he was born, but had rapidly degenerated, and Edith herself was a wreck.

They had been out to Malta for a short time, but had come home, Menteith being invalided, and were now at a bracing sea-side place, trying what the air would do for them all.

It was Edith's habit to send the child out with his nurse directly after breakfast, and having done so as usual one morning, she remained alone with her husband in the breakfast room, which looked out upon the sands. She had her hands idly folded on her lap, and was watching Menteith as she might have watched a stranger about whom she was curious. He sat at some distance from her reading a paper, and there was no perceptible change in him; but she had changed very much for the worse. Why was she not recovering her strength? Why had it pleased Heaven to afflict her? That was what she was thinking, but at the same time she blamed herself for repining, and, in order to banish the thought, she rose, and, going over to her husband, laid her hand gently on his shoulder, courting a caress. He had been lavish enough of caresses at first, but all that was over now, and he finished the paragraph he was reading before he noticed Edith at all. Then he glanced at her, but his eyes were cold and critical.

"You certainly are not looking well," he observed, evidently meaning not attractive, as if he were injured by the fact. He got up when he had spoken, so that in the act of rising he dislodged her hand from his shoulder. Then he yawned and lounged over to the window, which was wide open, the weather being warm; and stood there with his legs apart, and his hands in his pockets, looking out.

One little loving caress or kindly word would have changed the whole direction of Edith's thoughts; but, wanting that, she stood where he had left her for some moments, lost in pained reflection; and then she followed him listlessly, seated herself in a low easy-chair, and looked out also.

There were crowds of people on the sands, and her dull eyes wandered from group to group, then up to the sky, and down again to the sea and shore. The sun shone radiantly; sparkles of light from the rippling wavelets responded to his ardent caress. The sea-sweet air fanned her face. But neither light, nor air, nor sound availed to move her pleasurably.

"Is this to be my life?" she thought.

The tide was coming in over the sands. Some children with their shoes and stockings off were playing close to the water's edge. They had made a castle, and were standing on the top of it, all crowded together, waiting for a big wave to come and surround them; and when at last it came, it carried half their fortress away with it, and they all hopped off into the water, and splashed up through it helter-skelter, with shouts of laughter, to the dry land.

"I should have enjoyed that once," thought Edith.

A party of grown-up people cantered past upon donkeys, driven by boys with big sticks. The women were clinging to the pommels of their saddles, and shrieking as they bumped along, while the men shouted, and beat and kicked the donkeys with all their might.

"Horrid, common, cruel people!" thought Edith. "How dreadful it would be to have to know them!"

A girl came riding past alone on a hired horse. She wore a rusty black skirt over her petticoats. It was gathered in by a drawing string at the waist, and made her look ludicrously bunchy. Her stirrup was too short; and she clung desperately with both hands to whip and reins and saddle, only venturing to guide her horse now and then-in a timid, half apologetic sort of way, as if she were afraid he would resent it. She must have felt far from comfortable, but probably the dream of her life had been to ride, and now that she was riding she admired herself extremely.

Edith involuntarily drew a mental picture of the contrast she herself presented on horseback. "But that girl is well and happy," she objected, to her own disadvantage.

She became aware at this moment of another girl who was passing on foot. She was one of those good-looking girls of the middle class who throng to fashionable watering-places in the season--young women with senses rampant, and minds undisciplined, impelled by natural instinct to find a mate, and practising every little art of dress and manner which they imagine will help them to that end by making them attractive. Their object is always evident in their eyes, which rove from man to man pathetically, pleadingly, anxiously, mischievously, according to their temperaments, but always with the same inquiry: "Will it be you?"

This girl had made herself by tight-lacing into a notable specimen of the peg-top figure, bulgy at the bust and shoulders, and tapering off at the waist. She had also squeezed her feet into boots that were much too small for them, and fluffed her hair out till her head seemed preposterously large--by which means she had achieved the appearance known to her set as "stylish."

When Edith first saw her she was walking along very quickly with a dissatisfied look on her face; but as she approached the window she glanced up, and, seeing Menteith, her countenance cleared; and she slackened her speed, seeming suddenly to become uncertain of the direction she wished to take. First, she half stopped, and appeared to be thinking; then she hastily put her hand in her pocket, and looked back the way she had come, as if she had lost something; then shrugged her shoulders to signify that it didn't much matter, and with a far-away look in her eyes walked slowly into the sea; this was in order that she might spring nimbly out again with a fine pretence of confusion at her affected fit of absent-mindedness.

Menteith watched these manoeuvres attentively, patiently awaiting the inevitable moment when she would look at him again. So far, she had pretended to ignore him, but he understood her tactics, and as he observed them, he twisted first one end and then the other of his little light moustache, with a self-complacency not to be concealed. He had been feeling bored all the morning, but now his interest in life revived. He had only the one interest in life, and when the girl on the beach had done all she could to excite it, she glanced at him again, and saw by the look with which he responded that she had succeeded. Then she sat down on the sand, placing herself so that she could meet his eyes every time she looked up, and taking a letter out of her pocket she began to read it, varying the expression of her countenance the while, to show that she derived great pleasure from the perusal. This was to pique Menteith into supposing that he had a rival.

The girl had not troubled herself about Edith's presence, but the latter had also been watching her wiles--dully enough, however, until all at once a thought occurred to her, a hateful thought.

It was the emotional rather than the intellectual side of her nature which had been developed by early associations. She had been accustomed to feel more than to think, and now, when all food for elevating emotions had been withdrawn from her daily life, others, mostly of a distressing kind, took possession of her mind. She had gone through all the phases of acute misery to which a girl so trained and with such a husband is liable. She had been weakened into dependence by excess of sympathy, and now was being demoralised for want of any. Menteith had hung upon her words at first, had been responsive to her every glance; but latterly he had become indifferent to both; and she knew it, without, however, comprehending the why and wherefore of the change, or of the growing sense of something wanting which was fast becoming her own normal condition. She was still fighting hard to preserve the spiritual fervour which had been the predominant characteristic of her girlhood; but, at this period of their intercourse, she knew better than to attempt to re-arouse in him that semblance of spirituality which had deluded her in their early passion-period. But she had from the first cultivated a passive attitude toward him, and that even when the natural instinct of her womanhood impelled her to war with him. In any case, however, instinct is not safeguard enough for creatures living under purely artificial conditions; they must have knowledge; and Edith had been robbed of all means of self-defence by the teaching which insisted that her only duty as a wife consisted in silent submission to her husband's will. Her intellectual life, such as it was, had stopped short from the time of her intimate association with Menteith; and her spiritual nature had been starved in close contact with him; only her senses had been nourished, and these were now being rendered morbidly active by disease. The shadow of an awful form of insanity already darkened her days. The mental torture was extreme; but she fought for her reason with the fearful malady valiantly; and all the time presented outwardly only the same dull apathy, giving no sign and speaking no word which could betray the fury of the rage within.

This last thought took her unawares as usual, and followed an accustomed course. She had entertained it for a moment, turning it over in her mind with interest before she realized its nature. When she did so, however, her soul sickened. "What am I coming to?" she mentally ejaculated, recovering herself with an effort; which resulted also in a sudden resolution.

"I want to go home," she said. Her voice was very husky.

Menteith, startled from the absorbing occupation of ogling the girl on the beach, looked at her sharply. Had she noticed what he was up to, and was she jealous by any chance, as these confounded unreasonable women are apt to be? No, he concluded, after carefully scrutinizing her face and attitude; there was not a trace of that kind of thing, and she evidently only meant what she had said. "And, by Jove!" he thought, "it's an excellent idea, for she's looking anything but nice at present. Marriage is certainly a lottery! A fellow chooses a girl for her health and beauty, and gives her everything she can want in the world, and in less than a year she's a wreck?" The injury done to himself, implied in this last reflection, caused a certain amount of irritation, which betrayed itself in the politely "nagging" tone of his reply:

"What precisely do you mean by 'home'?" he asked.

"I mean Morningquest," she answered.

"Ah!" he ejaculated. "That was what I inferred."

"I hope I have not said anything to annoy you?" she exclaimed.

"Oh, dear, no!" he assured her. "I know your sex too well to be annoyed by any of its caprices. But still," he added, "a wife does not usually make her 'home' with her parents."

"But we have no settled home," she remonstrated.

"Do you mean that for a reproach, because my want of means at present obliges me to keep my houses shut up?" he asked.

"No," she answered with a gleam of spirit, "and you know I do not."

There was a pause after this. It pleased him to make her ask for his permission to go to her mother, in so many words. He perceived that she found it difficult to do so, and there was satisfaction in the respect and fear which he thought were betokened by her hesitation. The sense of power and possession flattered his self-esteem and enlivened him.

"Do you object?" she ventured at last.

"To what, dear?" he asked, without interrupting an exchange of amorous glances which was just then going on between himself and the girl on the beach.

"To my going home?"

"Oh, no!" he exclaimed, smiling. "Only to that way of putting it. By the way," he added pleasantly, taking up a pair of opera glasses that were lying on a table beside him, and adjusting the sight, "shall I accompany you?"

Edith had taken it for granted that he would, as they had never yet been separated since their marriage; and the question, striking as it did another note of change, surprised and hurt her. But as it was evident that he would not have asked it had he wished to go, she answered quietly: "Oh, no! Why should you trouble yourself?"

"It would be no trouble, I assure you," he answered, confirming her first impression that he did not wish to go.

"Oh, no!" she repeated. "I could not think of taking you away from here--if the air is doing you good."

"Ah, well," he answered, catching at the excuse, "I suppose I ought to forego the pleasure, for I am just beginning at last to feel some benefit from the change, and I should probably lose the little good it has done me if I go away now. Morningquest is relaxing. However, I shall join you as soon as I can, you know!" This was said with a plausible affectation of being impelled by a sense of duty to act contrary to his inclination, which did not, however, impose upon Edith; and the thought that the wish to be with her now was not imperative although she was ill became another haunting torment during the short remaining time they were together; but, happily for herself, she never perceived that he did not care to accompany her principally because she was ill.

She left that afternoon with her servants and child, and he saw to the preparations for their departure with cheerful alacrity. She was depressed, and he told her she must keep up her spirits for--everybody's--sake! and set her a good example by keeping his own up manfully. He saw her off at the station, and stood smiling and bowing, with his hat in his hand, until she was out of sight; and then he turned on his heel and went with a jaunty air to look for the girl on the beach.

Up to the last moment, Edith would have been thankful for any excuse to change her mind and stay; but when she found herself alone, and the journey had fairly begun, she experienced a sudden sense of relief.

She had not realized the fact; but latterly her husband's presence had oppressed her.

Chapter VI

The Beales had not seen their daughter and grandson for some months, and the appearance of both was a shock to them. They said not a word to each other at first, but neither of them could help looking at Edith furtively from time to time on the evening of her arrival. When the bishop came up to the drawing room after dinner and had settled himself in his accustomed easy-chair, Edith had crept to his side, and, slipping her hand through his arm, sat leaning her head against his shoulder, and staring straight before her, neither speaking nor listening except when directly addressed. Her father, between whom and herself there had always been a great deal of sympathy, was inexpressively touched by this silent appeal to his love; and letting the paper lie on his lap, he sat silent also, and serious, feeling, without in any way knowing, that all was not well.

Mrs. Beale was also depressed, although she assured herself again and again that such deep devotion between father and daughter was an elevating and beautiful sight, which it was a privilege to witness; and tried to persuade herself that they were all extremely happy in the tranquil joy of this peaceful evening spent alone together, with the world shut out.

"That child is not right," the Bishop said, when Edith had gone to bed. "Have you noticed her face? I don't like the look of it at all; not at all."

"Isn't that rather unkind, dear?" Mrs. Beale replied. "I always recovered in time."

"You never were as ill as the poor child evidently is," he answered; and retired to his library, much disturbed.

But Mrs. Beale determined not to worry herself, and managed to dismiss the subject from her mind until next day, when she was sitting alone with her daughter in the morning room up stairs. They were both working, but the conversation flagged, and Mrs. Beale, from wondering why Edith was so uncommunicative, found herself involuntarily repeating the bishop's observation: "That child is not right," and the question: "What is the matter with your face, dearest?" slipped from her unawares.

"I don't know, mother," Edith answered shortly.

She had never before in her life spoken to her mother in that tone, and the latter was surprised and hurt for a moment; but then persuaded herself that some irritability was only natural if the child were out of health, and at once made proper allowances.

Edith got up when she had spoken, and left the room.

She was occupying one of the state departments of the palace then, but on the way to it she had to pass the room which had been hers as a girl. The door was open, and she went in. Nothing was changed there; but the moment she entered she felt that there was a direful difference in herself. The sad, benignant Christ, with tender, sympathetic eyes, looked down upon her from the picture on the wall; but she returned the glance indifferently at first, and then, remembering the rapture with which she had been wont to kneel at his feet, she looked again. The recollection of the once dear delight tantalized her now, however, because it did not renew it; and, turning from the picture impatiently, she went to the window, and there sank on to the seat from whence she had looked out at the moonlight and the shadows on the night of the day on which it had been arranged that she should winter with her mother at Malta. And here again she endeavoured to recall the glow of sensation which had thrilled her then; but only the lifeless ashes of that fire remained, and they were burnt out past all hope of rekindling them. Even the remembrance of what her feelings had been eluded her, and she could think of nothing but after experiences--experiences of her married life, and those precisely which it was not wise to recall. They were not exactly thoughts, however, that occupied her, but emotions, to which, looking out on the sunlit garden with rounded eyes and pupils dilated to the uttermost, she had unconsciously lent herself for some time, as on other occasions, before she realized what she was doing. Suddenly, however, she came to her senses, and fled in affright to the morning room, where she threw herself down on her knees beside her mother impetuously, and buried her face in her lap.

"Take care, dear child!" Mrs. Beale exclaimed. "You will hurt yourself."

"Mother! Mother!" Edith cried. "I have such terrible, terrible thoughts! I cannot control them. I cannot keep them away. The torment of my mind is awful. I could kill myself."

Mrs. Beale turned pale. "Pray, dearest!" she ejaculated.

"I do, I do, mother," Edith wailed; "but they mingle with my prayers. God is a demon, isn't he?"

Mrs. Beale threw her arms round her daughter, and almost shook her in her consternation. "Edith, darling, do you know what you are saying?" she demanded.

Edith looked into her face in a bewildered way. "No, mother, what was it?" she answered.

Then all outward sign of Mrs. Beale's agitation subsided. Some shocks stun, and some strengthen and steady us. The piteous appeal in Edith's eyes, the puzzle and the pain of her face as she made an effort to recall her words and understand them, had the latter effect upon her mother.

"I am afraid you are very weak, dear child," the poor lady bravely responded. "Weakness makes people unhealthy-minded. You must see the doctor, and have a tonic."

"The doctor again!" Edith groaned. "It has been nothing but the doctor and 'tonics' ever since I have been married."

"What does he say is the matter exactly?" Mrs. Beale asked.

"All his endeavour seems to be not to say what is the matter exactly," Edith replied.

Mrs. Beale reflected, caressing her daughter the while, and under the soothing influence of her loving touch, Edith's countenance began to relax.

"When is Mosley coming?" her mother said at last.

Edith's face contracted again, and she rose to her feet. "I don't know, mother," she answered coldly.

The chime rang out at this moment, and she frowned as she listened to it.

"I wish those bells could be stopped!" she exclaimed, "They deafen me."

Mrs. Beale had also risen from her chair, smiling mechanically, but with pain and perplexity at her heart. "I am sure it is the journey," she said. "It has quite upset you. Your nerves are all jarred. You must really lie down for a little--see, dearest, here on the couch; and keep quite quiet." She arranged the cushions.

"Come, dear," she urged, "like a good child, and I will cover you up."

Edith had been accustomed to this kind of gentle compulsion all her life, and as she yielded to it now she began to feel more like herself. "I knew I should be better with you, mother," she said sighing; and then she reached up her arm, and drew her mother's face down to hers. "Kiss me, mother, and tell me you forgive me for being impatient."

"Dear child, you are not impatient," her mother answered, adding to herself, as she returned to her seat; "I hope it is only impatience!"

Edith had turned her face to the wall, and soon appeared to be asleep. Then her mother went down to the library. The bishop rose from his writing table when she entered. It was a habit of his to be polite to his wife.

"I think you were right last night about Edith," she said. "She is not as she should be. Write to Dr. Galbraith. Ask him to come here to-morrow. Ask him to dine and stay the night, as if it were only an ordinary visit--not to alarm her, you know. But tell him why we want him to come. I am nervous about her."

Mrs. Beale's face quivered, and she burst into tears as she spoke.

"Oh, my dear! I am sure there is no need to agitate yourself," the bishop exclaimed. "Now do--now don't, really! See! I will write at once."

He sat down, and began, "My dear George," and then looked up at his wife to see if she were not already relieved.

Mrs. Beale could not speak, but she stroked his head once or twice in acknowledgment of his great kindness. Then more tears came because he was so very kind; and finally she was obliged to go to her own room to recover herself.

As the day wore on, however, she became reassured. Edith seemed much refreshed by her sleep, and, in the afternoon when the three ladies came from the castle to call upon her, bringing Angelica with them, she quite roused up.

"What, Angelica a grown up young lady in a long dress!" she exclaimed. "But where is Diavolo?"

"We had a slight difference of opinion this morning," Angelica answered stiffly.

"Dear me! that is a new thing!" Mrs. Beale commented.

"No, it is not," Angelica contradicted, bridling visibly. "Only, when we were younger we used to--settle our differences--at once, and have done with them. But now that I am in long dresses Diavolo won't do that, so we have to sulk like married people."

"But, my dear child, I don't see why you should quarrel at all," Mrs. Beale remonstrated.

"You would if you were with us, I expect," Angelica answered, and then she turned her attention to Edith, but not by a sign did she betray, the slightest consciousness of the latter's disfigurement--unless making herself unusually agreeable was a symptom of commiseration; and in this she succeeded so thoroughly that when the others rose to go Edith did not feel inclined to part with her.

"Won't you stay with me here a few days?" she entreated.

Angelica reflected. "It would do him good, I should think," she said at last.

"I should think it would!" Edith agreed, laughing.

"Did I speak?" said Angelica.

"Yes," Edith answered. "You informed me that you are going to stay here in order to punish Diavolo by depriving him of your society for a time."

"I am sure I did not say all that!" Angelica exclaimed.

"Well, not exactly, perhaps," Edith confessed; "but you led me to infer it."

"Well, I will stay," Angelica decided. "Aunt Fulda, I'm going to stay here for a few days with Edith," she answered.

"Very well, dear," her aunt meekly rejoined. "Are you going to stay now?"

"Yes. Tell Elizabeth to bring me some wearing apparel."

As they drove back to Morne, Lady Claudia scolded Lady Fulda for so weakly allowing Angelica to have her own way in everything.

"I thought you would agree with me that the sweet womanly influence at the palace would do her good," Lady Fulda answered, in an injured tone.

"'Sweet womanly' nonsense!" said Lady Claude. "She will twist them all round her little finger, and turn the whole place upside down before she leaves, or I am much mistaken."

"Well, dear, If you would only make Angelica do what you wish while you are here to influence her I should be thankful," Lady Fulda rejoined with gentle dignity.

Lady Claudia said no more.

Things went merrily at the palace for the rest of the day. Mrs. Orton Beg called, and Mr. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe, between whom and Angelica there was always an excellent understanding; and she entertained him now with observations and anecdotes which so amused Edith that, as Mrs. Beale said to the bishop afterward: "The dear, naughty child quite took her out of herself."

Angelica had never been in the same house with a baby before, and she was all interest. Whatever defects of character the new women may eventually acquire, lack of maternal affection will not be one of them.

"Have you seen the baby?" she asked Elizabeth, when the latter was brushing her hair for dinner. He had not been visible during the afternoon, but Angelica had thought of him incessantly.

"Yes, Miss," Elizabeth answered.

"Is he a pretty baby?" Angelica wanted to know.

Elizabeth pursed up her lips with an air of reserve.

"You don't think so?" Angelica said--she had seen the maid's face in the mirror before her. "What is he like?"

"He's exactly like the bishop, Miss."

Angelica broke into a broad smile at herself in the glass. "What! a little old man baby!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, Miss--with a cold in his head," the maid said seriously.

When she was dressed, Angelica went to make his acquaintance. On the way she discovered her particular friend, the bishop, going furtively in the same direction, and slipped her hand through his arm.

"We'll go together," she said confidentially, taking it for granted that his errand was the same as her own.

The nurse was undressing the child when they entered, and Edith sat watching her. She was already dressed for the evening, and looked worse in an elaborate toilet than she had done in her morning dress. A stranger would have found it hard to believe that only the year before she had been radiantly healthy and beautiful. The puzzled, pathetic expression again in her eyes as she watched the child. She had no smile for him, and uttered no baby words to him--nor had he a smile for her. He was old, old already, and exhausted with suffering, and as his gaze wandered from one to the other it was easy to believe that he was asking each dumbly why had he ever been born?

"Is that Edith's baby?" Angelica exclaimed in her astonishment and horror under her breath, slipping her hand from the bishop's arm.

She had seen enough in one momentary glance, and she fled from the room. The bishop followed her. Mrs. Beale was there when they entered, standing behind her daughter's chair, but she did not look at her husband, nor he at her. For the first time in their married life, poor souls, they were afraid to meet each other's eyes.

Chapter VII

Next day, in the afternoon, Mrs. Beale being otherwise engaged, Edith proposed that she and Angelica should go for a drive together. Edith was feeling better, and Angelica had recovered her equanimity. She suggested that they should drive toward Fountain Towers. Edith had not been on that road since her marriage, and when they passed the place where she and her mother had seen the young French girl lying insensible on the pathway with her baby beside her she was reminded of the incident, and described it to Angelica, adding: "I have so often longed to know what became of her."

"I can tell you," said Angelica. "I know her quite well by sight. She is living with Nurse Griffiths, in Honeysuckle Cottage, on Dr. Galbraith's estate. Nurse Griffiths told us he brought her there one day in his carriage very ill, and she has been there ever since. He always gets angry and snaps at you if he's bothered about anybody who's ill or unfortunate, and Diavolo and I met him that day coming away from the cottage, and he spoke to us so shortly we were sure there was something bad the matter, so we went to see what it was, and Nurse Griffiths said she was French. I've not been there since, but I expect it's the same girl. Shall we stop and see? We pass the end of the lane where the cottage is."

Edith agreed eagerly. She said it would be a relief to her mind to know that the girl was well cared for and happy.

"Oh, everybody is well cared for and happy on Dr. Galbraith's estate," said Angelica. "His tenants worship him. And they would rather be abused by him than complimented by anybody else."

The cottage, covered with the honeysuckle from which it took its name, stood in a large old-fashioned garden, at the edge of a fir plantation, which sheltered it from the northeast wind at the back, and filled the air about it with balsamic fragrance.

Edith and Angelica left the carriage at the end of the lane and walked up.

"What a lovely spot!" Edith exclaimed. "On a still bright day like this it makes one realize what the Saints meant by 'holy calm,' I think I should like to live in such a place, and never hear another echo from the outside world."

"I suppose you would just like to add dear Mosley to the establishment," Angelica suggested.

Edith's heart contracted. She had not thought of her husband, and now when she did it was with a pang, because she could not include him in her idea of Eden.

The French girl was standing at the door of the cottage with a child in her arms.

"Is Nurse Griffiths in?" Angelica asked.

Edith looked at the child. It should have been running about by that time, but it was small and rickety, with bones that bent beneath its weight, slight as it was. Edith had looked at it first with some interest, but its unhealthy appearance repelled her. She managed, however, to speak to the girl about it kindly.

"What is your baby's name?" she asked.

"Mosley Menteith," was the answer.

For a moment it seemed to Edith as if all the world were blotted out, and then again the hum of bees, the chirrup of birds, the fall of a fir-cone, the call of the cock-pheasant in the wood sounded obtrusively, making the girl's voice as she continued speaking appear far off and indistinct.

"I called him after his father, then, didn't I?" she was saying to the baby in good English, but with a French accent. "And he's to grow up, and be a big strong fellow and beat his father, isn't he, for he's a bad, bad man!"

Nurse Griffiths hearing voices in the porch came out.

"Hush, Louise," she said to the girl. "You've no call to talk in that way now. You must excuse her," she added to the ladies. "She's had a bad bringing up."

"I can't--believe you," Edith faltered. "Tell me--exactly."

"Well, it was in this way," the girl rejoined, speaking in the prosaic tone in which her countrywomen are accustomed to discuss matters that inspire ours with too much disgust to be mentioned. "Menteith came after me, and my sister wanted money, so she made me believe that he couldn't marry me because there was a law, to prevent it. She said he loved me, and if I loved him well enough, it would be a noble thing to disregard the law, and he gave her seventy-five pounds for that. I found her letter to Menteith about it, and I've got it here," tapping the bosom of her gown. "He took me abroad when he wanted to get rid of me, and left me in Paris with five pounds in my pocket; but it was enough to bring me back. I was sick when I landed at Dover, and they sent me to the workhouse; and when I got well again I told them I had friends in Morningquest, and they gave me a little help to get there; but I had to tramp most of the way, and I was weak--I couldn't have got as far as I did if I hadn't wanted to kill them both."

"Now, hush!" said Nurse Griffiths. "The Lord saved you from such a sin."

"The Lord!" said the girl derisively. "If the Lord had been inclined to help me, he wouldn't have waited till I came to murder. It wasn't the Lord saved me."

"She will say that, and I can't cure her," Nurse Griffiths declared. "But I'm afraid you're feeling the heat, ma'am, and you are not very strong," she added, addressing Edith, who was clinging to the porch for support, looking strangely haggard. "Won't you come in and sit down a bit?"

"No, thank you, it is nothing," Edith answered steadily, recovering herself.

"Will you come and sit down with me on that seat?" she said to Louise, indicating a rustic bench under an old pear tree at the end of the garden. "I want to talk to you."

Nurse Griffiths and Angelica remained in the porch.

"Who is that lady, Miss?" the nurse asked when Edith was out of hearing.

"Lady Menteith," Angelica answered.

The woman threw up her hands. "O Lord! have mercy upon her--and upon us! What a cruel, cruel shame! She's showing her the letter. Eh! it's enough to kill her. You generally know all the mischief that's going, Miss! Why did you bring her here?"

"I wish I had known this, then," said Angelica, whose heart was thumping painfully. "If any harm comes of it, I shall always think it was my fault."

"Well, there's no call to do that if you didn't know," the woman answered. "I see she was a great lady myself, but I never thought it was her. Eh! but it's the dirty men makes the misery."

On the way back, Edith stopped the carriage at the telegraph office, and despatched a message to her husband to come to her, "Come at once."

They only arrived in time to dress hurriedly for dinner, and when they went down to the drawing room they found Dr. Galbraith there with the bishop and Mrs. Beale.

"Where have you two been the whole afternoon?" the latter asked.

"We had tea in the library at Fountain Towers," Angelica answered easily, "and obtained some useful knowledge from your books."

Dr. Galbraith looked hard at her: "I wonder what devilment you've been up to now?" he thought.

But Angelica's manner was as unconcerned as possible. Edith's was not, however. Her face was flushed, her eyes unnaturally glittering, and she became excited about trifles, and talked loudly at table; and in the drawing room after dinner she could not keep still. Mrs. Beale asked Angelica to play, and Angelica tried something soothing at first, but Edith complained impatiently that those things always made her melancholy. Then Angelica played some bars of patriotic music, stirring in the extreme, but Edith stopped her again.

"That wearies my brain," she said, and began to pace about the room, up and down, up and down. Her mother watched her anxiously. Angelica closed the piano. Dr. Galbraith and the bishop came in from the dining room, and then Edith declared that driving in the open air had made her so sleepy she must go to bed.

Angelica noticed that Dr. Galbraith scrutinized her face sharply as he shook hands with her.

"God bless you, my dear child," the bishop said when she kissed him, and his lips moved afterward for some seconds as if he were in prayer. Her mother followed her out of the room; and then silence settled on the three who were left. The bishop was obviously uneasy. Dr. Galbraith's good-looking plainness was softened by a serious expression which added much to the attractiveness of his strong kind face. Angelica shivered, and was about to break the spell of silence boldly in her energetic way, when suddenly, and apparently overhead, a heavy bell tolled once.

It was only the cathedral clock striking the hour, but it sounded portentously through the solemn stillness of the night, and with quickened attention they all looked up and listened.

Slowly the big bell boomed forth ten strokes. Then came a pause; and then the chime rolled through the room, a deafening volume of sound, in long reverberations, from amidst which the constant message disentangled itself as it were, but distinctly, although to each listener with a different effect:

It awoke Dr. Galbraith from a train of painful reflections; it reassured the bishop; and it made Angelica fret for Diavolo remorsefully.

Chapter VIII

Angelica must have fallen asleep the moment she got into bed that night, and just as instantly she began to dream. She had never hitherto felt a throb of passion. She had given the best love of her life to her brother, and had made no personal application of anything she had heard, or seen, or read of lovers, so that the possibility of ever having one of her own had never cost her a serious thought. But the excitement of that day and the occupations had so wrought upon her imagination that when she slept she dreamt, and in her dream she saw a semblance, the semblance of a man, a changing semblance, the features of which she could not discern, although she tried with frenzied effort, because she knew that when she saw him fully face to face he would be hers. They were not in this world, nor in the next. They were not eyen in the universe. They were simply each the centre of a great light which formed a sphere about them, and separated them from one another; and heaven and hell, and earth and sky, and night and day, and life and death were, all added to the glory of those spheres of light. And she knew how; but there is no word of human speech to express it. She lay on light, she stood on light, she sat on light, she swam in light; and wallowed, and walked, and ran, and leaped, and soared, rolling along in her own sphere until the monotony made her giddy; and all her endeavour was to reach her lover, not for himself so much as because she knew that if their two lights could be added in equal parts to each other and mingled into one, their combined effulgence would make a pathway to heaven. But try as she would she could not attain her object, and finally she became so exhausted by the struggle that she was obliged to desist. The moment she did so, however, the other sphere tamed of its own accord, and rolled up to her. "Dear me!" said Angelica. "How easily things are done when the right time comes!" The semblance now took shape, and kissed her. "How nice!" thought Angelica, returning the kiss. "This is love. Love is life. I am his. He is mine. Most of all, he is mine!" "No, we can't allow that!" said a chorus of men from the earth. "You're beginning to know too much. You'll want to be paid for your labour next just as well as we are, and that is unwomanly!" But Angelica only laughed and kissed her lover. "Talk does no good," she said; "this is the one thing the great man-boy-booby understands at present!" So she kissed him again, and every time she kissed him, he changed. He was Samson, Abraham, Lot, Antony, Caesar, Pan, Achilles, Hercules, Jove; he was Lancelot and Arthur, Percival, Galahad and Gawaine. He was Henry VIII., Richelieu, Robespierre, Luther, and several Popes. He was David the Psalmist, beloved of the man-god of the Hebrews. He was golden-haired Absalom, and St. Paul in his unregenerate days. But he never was Solomon. She saw hundreds of women dividing Solomon among them, and cherishing the little bits in the Woman's Sphere of their day, and they offered her a portion, but she refused to take it. She said she would have the whole of him or none at all, and they were horribly shocked. They said: "Fie! you are no true woman! A woman is satisfied with very little, and silently submits." But Angelica answered: "Rubbish! What do you know of womanhood and truth? you talk like a bishop!" And the clergy were dreadfully offended at this. They said she was all wrong. They said it mildly. They shouted it rudely. They whispered it persuasively, and then they blustered. "We are right, and you are wrong!" they maintained. "Well, I have only your word for that," said Angelica, which provoked them again. "We speak in the name of the Lord!" they answered.

"Oh, anybody could do that," said Angelica, "but it wouldn't prove that they have the Lord's permission to use his name." Then they reminded her that the true spirit of God had been bestowed upon them for transmission, and she answered: "Yes, but it was taken from you again for your sins, and confided to us; and wherever a virtuous woman is, there is the spirit of God, and the will of God, and there only!" Then they drew off a little and consulted, and when they spoke again they had lowered their tone considerably. "But you will allow, I suppose, that we have done some good in the world?" they said collectively. "Oh, yes," she answered, "you have done your duty here and there to the best of your ability, but your ability was considerably impaired by vice. However, you have brought the world up out of the dark ages of physical force at our instigation, and helped to prepare it for us; now step down gracefully, take your pensions and perquisites, and hold your tongues. Men are the muscle, the hard working material of the nation; women are the soul and spirit, the directing intelligence." They were about to reply, but before they could do so, a stentorian voice proclaimed:

"HOME IS THE WOMAN'S SPHERE!"

"Who are you?" said Angelica coolly. "I am the Pope of Rome," he answered, strutting up to her with dignity. "And what do you know about the Woman's Sphere?" she said laughing. "I am informed of God!" he declared. But she answered that she had much later information, and slammed the doors of the Sphere in his face. Then she peeped through the keyhole, and saw that the pope was in consultation with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and two popular cardinals. They were very quiet at first, but presently they began to quarrel. "Don't make such a noise," she shrieked through the keyhole: "go away and be good, will you? We're very busy in here, and you disturb us. We're revising the moral laws." The shock of this intelligence electrified them, and while they stared at each other helplessly, not knowing what to do, she armed herself with the vulgar vernacular, which was the best weapon, she understood, to level at cant. "Lord," she said to herself, "how Diavolo would enjoy this! I wish he was here!" She found the work of the Sphere very heavy, and she tried to remember the name of some saint, but for the life of her she couldn't think of any, so she called upon Ouida and Rhoda Broughton. Then she peeped through the keyhole again, and finding that the pope was listening, she squirted water into his ear. The other Ecclesiastical Commissioners remained in the background, looking anxious. "We're attending to man the iniquitous now," she called to them kindly to relieve their minds. "He's been too much for you, it seems, but we'll soon settle him." "You're a nasty-minded woman," said the pope. "Always abusive, old candles and vestments," Angelica retorted. "Candles and vestments--in excess" said the Archbishop of York hurriedly. "Where?" And he went off to see about them. "To the pure all things are pure," a powerful voice proclaimed at that moment. "Ah, that is St. Paul!" said Angelica, surprised and delighted, and then she shook hands with him. "The sacred duties of wife and mother," one of the cardinals began to pipe--"There you are meddling again," Angelica interrupted him rudely; "will you go away, and let us mind our own business?" "This is all your fault," the pope said to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop defended himself courteously, but another quarrel seemed inevitable nevertheless. Before it could come off, however, it suddenly appeared that if it were anything it was UNWOMANLY! About that they were quite in accord; and having made the discovery they went their several ways, shaking their several heads impressively. "Now I shall have time to consider the state of the Sphere," said Angelica. "Just wait till I can come and teach you your duty," she called to the women there. "I am not Esther, most decidedly! But I am Judith. I am Jael. I am Vashti. I am Godiva. I am all the heroic women of all the ages rolled into one, not for the shedding of blood, but for the saving of suffering." They did not understand her a bit, however, they were so dazed, and they all looked askance at her. "I see," she said; "I shall have to save you in spite of yourselves." But when she had looked a little longer, and seen men, women, and children crowding like loathsome maggots together, she was disheartened. "All this filth will breed a pestilence," she said, "and I shouldn't be surprised if that pestilence were ME!" But just at that moment the light went out, someone uttered a cry, and Angelica awoke. The room was flooded with moonlight. "I am awake now," she said to herself, "and that was a real cry. It was 'murder!' I think"--and she rose intrepidly to rush to the rescue. She was going off at once, just as she was, in her nightdress; but the house was so still at the moment that she thought she might be mistaken. She was determined to go and see for herself, however, in order to make sure; and having pinned up her hair, she put on her shoes and stockings and a dressing gown, and opened the door, her heart beating wildly all the time. It was a sickening sensation. But as she listened she became aware of voices speaking naturally, and people moving to and fro, which somewhat reassured her. She left the room, however, and ran down the corridor.

At the farther end a bright shaft of light streamed across it from a half-open door, and she heard Edith speaking wildly.

"My poor child! my poor child," Mrs. Beale answered with tears in her voice. "Do try and calm yourself. Won't you tell us this story that is troubling you now? You will feel better if you tell us."

"No, no," Edith answered quickly. "I will not tell you until he comes, any of you. But when he comes!" There was a pause, then she asked feebly: "Doctor, what is the matter with my head?" But before he could answer, she broke out into a stream of horrid imprecations.

Angelica put her hands to her ears, and flew back past her own room to the top of the stairs. There she encountered the bishop. He was trembling. He was at a loss. Nothing he had ever studied either in theology or metaphysics had in the slightest degree prepared him for the state of things in society which he was now being forced to consider.

"My dear child!" he exclaimed, "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I'm frightened! I'm frightened!" Angelica cried, thumping him hard on the chest with both fists. "Let us go away and hide ourselves!" She seized his hand impetuously, and dragged him downstairs after her sideways, a mode of descent which was more rapid than either safe or graceful for a little fat bishop in evening dress.

"Come, come, come to the library with me, and talk about God and good angels, and that kind of thing," she cried.

"But this is the middle of the night," the bishop objected.

"Well, and is there any time like the present?" Angelica exclaimed. "Come at once--come and say nice soothing things from the psalms."

As she spoke, she dragged him across the hall and into the library from whence he had just issued, and then slammed the door. The bishop reproved her for this, and wanted her to go to bed, but she refused. "Go to bed, and lie awake in the dark with horrid words about, how can you expect it?" she demanded. "I shall not go to bed unless you come and sit beside me all night long."

Poor Angelica! impetuous, imperious, but in that she was her father's daughter, not saved by her wonderful intelligence from being fantastical. There must inevitably have been an element of broad farce in the veriest tragedy into which she might have been brought at that time, an element which was rendered all the more conspicuous by her own inability to perceive at the moment that she was behaving ridiculously, and making others ridiculous. But the bishop himself was not conscious of any absurdity or loss of dignity. It was only the inconvenience that he felt just then. For he was fresh from a painful interview with Dr. Galbraith, and every nerve was jarring in response to the horror that had come upon him. His heart was wrung, and his conscience did not acquit him. He did recognize now, however, that Angelica was in no fit state of mind to be left alone, and sitting down beside a little table on which stood his constant companion and friend for many years, a large quarto copy of the Bible, he folded his hands upon it, seeming to pray, while he waited patiently until she should have calmed herself.

Her indignation had driven her to seek a more popular form of relief than the bishop had chosen. As she paced up and down the room in evident agitation, every now and then stopping short to wring her hands when terrible thoughts came crowding, she became in her own mind exceedingly abusive.

She revised and enlarged her reply to that cardinal who had piped to her earlier in the night about the sacred duties of wife and mother. "What do you know about 'the Sacred Duties of Wife and Mother'?" she jeered, increasing her pace as her passion waxed. "Wait until you're a wife and mother yourself, and then perhaps you'll be able to give an opinion; and, meanwhile, attend to your own 'Sacred Duties.' You will come poking your nose into the Sphere where it's not wanted"--she shook her fist at him--"with your theories." She exclaimed: "You meddling priest! What you're afraid of is that there won't be slaves enough in the world to make money for you; or poor enough to bear witness to your Christian charity! You needn't be afraid, though. So long as we have you there'll be poverty in plenty!" Here she became conscious of the attitude of her companion. The bishop blotted out the cardinal. His wrinkled hands, meekly folded; his white head bowed; his benign face expressive of intense mental suffering heroically borne, impressed her. "Resignation? No, not resignation exactly," her thoughts ran on. "To be resigned is to acquiesce. Resistance? Yes. To resist--but not to resist with rage. Be firm, but be gentle." She sat down at last in an easy-chair and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling. In a few minutes she was fast asleep. When she awoke the room was empty, but outside she heard receding footsteps, and springing up with characteristic impetuosity she followed after "to see for herself."

The shutters were still closed in the library, and the lamps were burning; but it was broad daylight in the hall, and a heavy squall of rain was beating against the windows with mournful effect. Angelica saw a manservant standing beside some baggage as she passed, and wondered who had arrived.

At the foot of the stairs she overtook Dr. Galbraith, and caught his arm.

"Is Edith better?" she exclaimed.

Dr. Galbraith looked down at her, clasped both her hands in one of his as they rested on his arm, and led her upstairs. Before they reached the top, his firm, cool touch had steadied her nerves, and calmed her.

"This is your room, I think," he said, stopping when they reached it.

Angelica took the hint, and went in, but she did not shut the door. "You might have told me, you pig, and then perhaps I should have been satisfied," she reflected, standing just inside her room, holding her head very high, and straining her ears to listen. She heard Dr. Galbraith go to the end of the corridor, and then, as the sound of his footsteps ceased, she knew that he must have gone into Edith's room. The house was oppressively still. "I suppose I am to be tortured with suspense because I am young," she thought, and then she followed Dr. Galbraith.

The shutters were still closed in Edith's room, and the gas was burning. Nobody had thought of letting the daylight in. The door was open, and a screen was drawn across it, but Angelica could see past the screen. She saw Edith first. She was lying on her bed, still dressed, and sensible now, but exhausted. Her yellow hair, all in disorder, fell over the pillow to one side, and on the same side her mother sat facing her, rocking herself to and fro, and holding Edith's hand, which she patted from time to time in a helpless, piteous sort of way.

Edith was lying on her back, with her face turned toward Angelica. There were deep lines of suffering marked upon it, and her eyes glittered feverishly, but otherwise she was gray and ghastly, and old. It was the horrible look of age that impressed Angelica. There were three gentlemen present, the bishop, Dr. Galbraith, and Sir Mosley Menteith.

Edith was looking at her father. "That is why I sent for you all," she was saying feebly--"to tell you, you who reprersent the arrangement of society which has made it possible for me and my child to be sacrificed in this way. I have nothing more to say to any of you--except"--she sat up in bed suddenly, and addressed her husband in scathing tones--"except to you. And what I want to say to you is--Go! go! Father! turn him out of the house. Don't let me ever see that dreadful man again!"

She fell back on her pillow, white and still, and shut her eyes.

"My darling, you will kill yourself!" her mother exclaimed.

Dr. Galbraith stepped to the side of the bed hurriedly, and bent over her. The bishop stood at the foot, holding on to the rail with both hands, his whole face quivering with suppressed emotion. Menteith gave them a vindictive glance, and then stole quietly away. Angelica had made her escape, and was standing at the head of the stairs, wringing her hands. She was trembling with rage and excitement. "I am Jael--I am Judith--No! I am Cassandra," she was saying to herself. "I must speak!"

"I wish to God I hadn't answered that telegram so promptly--coming to be made an exhibition of by a sick woman in her tantrums," Menteith reflected as he walked down the corridor. "I'm surprised at Edith. But it is so like a woman; you never can count upon them." Here he caught sight of Angelica, and quite started with interest. "That's a deuced fine girl," he thought, and followed her to the library instinctively.

A servant had just opened the shutters. Angelica went to one of the windows and, throwing it up to the top, inhaled a deep breath of the fresh morning air. The rain had stopped. The servant put out the lamps and withdrew, after standing aside for a moment respectfully to allow Sir Mosley Menteith to enter. The latter glanced round the room, but Angelica was hidden by the curtain in the deep embrasure of the window. Menteith bit his nails and stood still for some time. Then the bishop came, followed by Dr. Galbraith, and walked straight up to him. It was a bad moment for Sir Mosley Menteith. He tried to inspect his father-in-law coolly, but his hand was somewhat tremulous as he raised it to twist the ends of his little light moustache.

"My daughter wishes you to leave the house," the bishop said sternly; "and--eh--I may say that I--that we--eh--her father and mother, also wish you to go--eh--now, at once."

Angelica sprang from her hiding place. "And take that," she cried, "for a present, you father of a speckled toad!" And seizing the heavy quarto Bible from the table, she flung it with all her might full in his face. It happened to hit him on the bridge of his nose, which it broke.

Chapter IX

Later in the day Lord Dawne, who had ridden in, saw Dr. Galbraith's carriage waiting before Mrs. Orton Beg's little house in the Close. He reined in his horse, which was fidgety, and at the same moment Dr. Galbraith came out.

"Nothing wrong here, I hope?" Lord Dawne inquired.

"No," was the curt response, "it is that poor child at the palace. I have been up with her all night."

"What is the matter now?" Lord Dawne inquired.

"Now--it is her brain," the doctor answered; then stepped into his carriage and was driven away.

Lord Dawne dismounted and met Mrs. Orton Beg, who was coming out with her bonnet on.

"No hope, I suppose!" he said in a tone of deep commiseration.

"Oh, it is worse than death!" she answered. "I am going there now. Dr. Galbraith says I shall be of use."

The bishop and Angelica spent some time in the library together that morning. The bishop had sent for Angelica to talk to her, and she had come to talk to the bishop; and, being quicker of speech than he, she had taken the initiative.

"Did you ever feel like a horse with a bearing rein, champing his bit?" she began the moment she burst into the room.

"No, I never did," said the bishop severely.

"Ah! then I can never make you understand how I feel now!" she said, throwing herself on to a chair opposite to him, sideways, so that she could clasp the back. "You look very unsympathetic," she remarked.

"It seems to me," the bishop began with increased severity, "that you have no respect for anybody."

"No, I have not," she answered decidedly--"at least not for bishops and doctors who let Menteith miscreants loose in society to marry whom they please."

The bishop winced.

"I am sorry to have to reprove you seriously," he recommenced, shaking his head. "But I feel that I should not be doing my duty if I neglected to point out to you the extremely reprehensible nature of your conduct, first in causing grievous distress of mind to Edith, in consequence of which partly she is now lying dangerously ill upstairs--"

Angelica stopped him by suddenly assuming a dignified position on her chair. She looked hard at him, and as she did so great tears came into her eyes, and ran down her cheeks. "If I have done Edith any injury," she exclaimed, "I shall never forgive myself."

"Well, well," said the bishop kindly--

"But do you think I was so much to blame?" Angelica demanded, interrupting him. "I only did what you and Mrs. Beale and everybody else did--took it for granted that she had married a decent man. But go on," said Angelica, throwing herself back in her chair, and folding her arms. "What else have I done?"

"You have grievously injured a fellow-creature."

"Oh,'fellow' if you like, and 'creature' too," said Angelica; "but the injury I did him was a piece of luck for which I expect to be congratulated."

"You took the sacred word of God," the bishop began--

"Because of the weight of it," Angelica interrupted again, "figuratively, too, it was most appropriate. I call it poetical justice, whichever way you look at it, and"--she burst into a sudden squall of rage--"if you nag me any more I'll throw Bibles about until there isn't a whole one in the house!"

The bishop looked at her steadily. "I shall say no more," he observed very gently; "but I beg of you to reflect." Then he opened the quarto Bible and began to read to himself. Angelica remained sitting opposite to him, looking moodily at the floor; but now and then they stole furtive glances at each other, and every time the bishop looked at Angelica he shook his head.

"Things have gone wrong in the Sphere," slipped from Angelica at last.

"'The Sphere'?" said the bishop looking up. "What Sphere?"

"The Woman's Sphere!" Angelica answered solemnly, and then she told him her dream. It took her exactly an hour to relate it with such comments and elucidations as she deemed necessary, and the bishop heard her out. When she finished he was somewhat exhausted; but he said that he thought it a very remarkable dream.

"If you had been able to manage the Sphere, you see," Angelica concluded, "and to regulate the extent of it, you would have been able to make it a proper place for us to live in by this time."

"My dear child, you are talking nonsense!" the bishop exclaimed.

"Well, it may sound so to you at present," Angelica answered temperately; "but there is a small idea in my mind which won't be nonsense when it grows up." She was silent for a little after that, and then she ejaculated: "I shouldn't be surprised if that pestilence were Me!"

"Eh?" said the bishop.

"Did I speak?" said Angelica.

"Yes."

"Ah, then, that is because I am tired out. I shall go to bed. Don't, for the life of you, let anybody disturb me."

She got up and left the room, yawning desperately; and very soon afterward her aunts came to take her back to Morne; but the bishop obeyed her last injunction implicitly, and they were obliged to return without her.

The news that Edith had returned to the palace, bringing her little son for the first time, was soon known in the neighbourhood. The arrival of the boy was one of those events of life, originally destined to be a great joy, which soften the heart and make it tender. And very soon carriages came rolling up with ladies leaning forward in them all in a flutter of sympathy and interest, eager to offer their congratulations to the young mother, and to be introduced to the child. And meanwhile Mrs. Beale sat beside her daughter's bed, patting her slender white hand from time to time as it lay upon the coverlet, with that little gesture which had struck Angelica as being so piteous. Edith had not spoken for hours; but suddenly she exclaimed: "Evadne was right!"

Mrs. Beale rocked herself to and fro, and the tears gathered in her eyes and slowly trickled down her cheeks, "Edith, darling," she said at last with a great effort, "do you blame me?"

"Oh, no, mother! oh, no!" Edith cried, pressing her hand, and looking at her with a last flash of loving recognition. "The same thing may happen now to any mother--to any daughter--and will happen so long as we refuse to know and resist." A spasm of pain contracted her face. She pressed her mother's hand again gently, and closed her eyes.

Presently she laughed. "I am quite, quite mad!" she said. "Do you know what I have been doing? I've been murdering him! I've been creeping, creeping, with bare feet, to surprise him in his sleep; and I had a tiny knife--very sharp--and I felt for the artery"--she touched her neck--"and then stabbed quickly! and he awoke, and knew he must die--and cowered! and it was all a pleasure to me. Oh, yes! I am quite, quite mad!"

She did not notice the coming and going of people now, or anything that was done in her room that day. Only once when she heard a servant outside the door whisper: "For her ladyship," she asked what it was, and a silver salver was brought to her covered with visiting cards. She looked at one or two. "Kind messages," she said, "great names! and I am a great lady too, I suppose! I made a splendid match. And now I have a lovely little boy--the one thing wanting to complete my happiness. What numbers of girls must envy me! Ah! they don't know! But tell them--tell them that I'm quite, quite mad!"

Mrs. Beale was at last persuaded to go and rest, and Mrs. Orton Beg replaced her.

"I am glad you have come," said Edith. "I want to show you my lovely little son. Naturally I want to show him to everyone!" and she laughed.

Late in the evening, when the room was lighted up, Edith noticed her father and mother and Dr. Galbraith. Angelica was there too, but in the background.

"Oh-h!" Edith exclaimed with a sudden shriek, starting up in bed--"I want to kill--I want to kill him. I want to kill that monstrous child!"

Dr. Galbraith was in time to prevent her springing out of bed.

"I know I am mad," she moaned in a broken voice. "I am quite, quite mad! I never hurt a creature in my life--never thought an evil thought of anyone; why must I suffer so? Father, my head." Again she started up. "Can't you--can't you save me?" she shrieked. "Father, my head! my head!"

Angelica stole away to her own room, put on her things, and walked back to Morne alone.

Chapter X

Angelica had been baptized into the world of anguish. She had assisted at horrid mysteries of life and death, and the experience was likely to be warping.

She had fled from the palace, first, because she could not bear the place any longer, and secondly, because she felt imperatively that she must see Diavolo. He had been in bed and asleep for some time when she went to his room that night, and awoke him by flashing a light in his face. He was startled at first, but when he saw who it was, he remembered their last quarrel and the base way she had deserted him by going to stay at the palace, and he thought it due to his wounded heart to snap at her.

"What do you mean by disturbing me so late at night?" he drawled plaintively; "bringing in such a beastly lot of fresh air with you too. You make me shiver."

"Don't be a fool, Diavolo," Angelica answered. "You know you're delighted to see me. How nice you look with your hair all tousled! I wish my hair was fair like yours. Oh! I have such a lot to tell you."

"Get on then," he said, lying back on his broad white pillows resignedly; "or go away, and keep your confidences till to-morrow. If you would be so good as to kindly consult my inclinations, that is what I should ask," he added politely.

Angelica curled herself up on the end of his bed, and leant against the foot-rail. The room was large and lofty, and the only light in it was that of the candle which she still held in her hand. She had a walking jacket on over an evening dress, and a hat, but this she took off and threw on the floor.

"I've run away," she said. "I walked home all alone."

"What, up all that long dark hill!" he exclaimed, with interest, but without incredulity. The Heavenly Twins never lied to each other.

"Yes," she answered impressively, "and I cut across the pine woods, and the big black shadows fluttered about me like butterfly bogies, and I wasn't afraid. I threw my arms about, and ran, and jumped, and breathed! Oh!" she exclaimed, "after holding your breath for twenty-four hours, in a house full of gaslight and groans, you learn what it is to be able to breathe freely out under the stars in the blessed dark. And there was a little crescent moon above the trees," she added.

Diavolo had opened his great gray eyes, and looked out over her head through the wall opposite, watching her with enthusiasm as she "cut across the pine woods." "And how did you get in?" he asked.

"At the back," she answered. They looked into each other's intelligent faces, and grinned. "Everybody is in bed," she added, "and I'm half inclined to return to the palace, and come back to-morrow in the carriage properly."

"I shouldn't do that," said Diavolo, feeling that such a proceeding would be an inartistic anticlimax. "And it's to-morrow now, I should think." He raised himself on his elbow, and peered at the clock on the mantelpiece.

Angelica held up the candle. "It's two," she said. "What do you do when you first wake up in the morning?"

"Turn round and go to sleep again," Diavolo grunted.

"I always look at the clock," said Angelica. "But I want to tell you. You know after you said I was a cyclone in petticoats?"

Diavolo nodded. "So you are," he remarked.

"Well, I am, then," Angelica retorted. "Have it so, only don't interrupt me. I can't think why I cared," she added upon reflection; "it seems so little now, and such a long way off."

"Is it as far from the point as you are?" Diavolo courteously inquired.

"Ah, I'm coming to that!" she resumed, and then she graphically recounted her late painful experiences, including the bishop's charge to Sir Mosley Menteith, and poor Edith's last piteous appeal to heaven and earth for the relief which she was not to receive.

"And did she die?" Diavolo asked in an awestruck whisper.

Being less sturdy and more sensitive than Angelica, he was quite shaken by the bare recital of such suffering.

"Not while I was there," Angelica answered. "I heard her as I came out. She was calling on God then."

They were both silent for some moments after this, Angelica fixed her eyes on the candle, and Diavolo looked up to the unanswering heaven, full of the vague wonderment which asks Why? Why? Why?

"There is no law, you see," Angelica, resumed, "either to protect us or avenge us. That is because men made the law for themselves, and that is why women are fighting for the right to make laws too."

"I'll help them!" Diavolo exclaimed.

"Will you?" said Angelica. "That's right! Shake hands!"

Having solemnly ratified the compact, Angelica boldly asserted that all the manly men were helping women now, including Uncle Dawne and Dr. Galbraith.

Then she thought she would go to bed. Of course she had flung the door wide open when she entered, and left it so, and happening to glance toward it now, it seemed to her that there was a horrible peculiar kind of pitchy black darkness streaming in.

"O Diavolo!" she exclaimed, "I'm frightened! I daren't go alone!"

"You frightened!" he jeered, "after dancing home alone in tip dark, through the pine woods too!"

"There were only birds, beasts, and bogies there--pleasant creatures," she said. "But here, behind those rows and rows of closed doors, there will be ghosts of tortured women, and I shall hear them shriek!"

Her terror communicated itself to Diavolo's quick imagination, and he glanced toward the door apprehensively. Then he deliberately arose, put on his dressing gown and slippers, and lit a candle, by which time his face was steadily set. "Come," he said. "I'll see you safely to your room."

"Diavolo, you're a real gentleman!" Angelica protested, "for I know you're in as big a fright as I am."

Diavolo drew himself up and led the way.

Their rooms were far apart, it having been deemed advisable to separate them when they first came to the castle, at which time there had been a curious delusion that distance would do this. The first part of their progress that night was nervous work, but they had not gone far before the new aspect which familiar things took on by the light of their candles arrested their attention.

"The light makes great-grandpapa wink," said Angelica looking up at a portrait. "And Venus has put on a cloak."

"She's wrapt in shadow," said Diavolo poetically.

They were talking quite unconcernedly by this time, and in, their usual somewhat loud tone of voice, fear of discovery not being one of their characteristics. They were bound to have awakened any light sleeper, but it so happened that they passed no occupied rooms but their Uncle Dawne's. He, however, being up, heard them, and opened his door on them suddenly. They both jumped.

"What are you two doing?" he said; "and why are you here at all, Angelica?"

"I didn't think it delicate to stay at the palace any longer under the circumstances," she answered glibly.

Lord Dawne was struck by the extreme propriety of this reply, "And may I ask when you returned?" he said.

"Yesterday," she answered, "and I've had nothing to eat since."

"Oh!" he observed. "And you've not had time to remove your walking jacket either?" He looked hard at her. "I should like very much to know how you got in," he said, shaking his head.

The Heavenly Twins looked at him affably.

"Well," he concluded, knowing better than to question them--"I suppose you know where to find food, if that is your object!"

They both grinned.

"Come along, Uncle Dawne, and we'll show you!" Angelica burst out sociably.

"Yes, do!" Diavolo entreated. "Come and revel!"

The Heavenly Twins never worked on any regular plan; their ideas always came to them as they went on.

Lord Dawne felt that this was really claiming a kinship with him, and a picture which presented itself to his mind's eye, of himself foraging for food in his father's castle with the Heavenly Twins in the small hours of the night, appealed to him. It was an opportunity not to be lost.

"Very well," he said, putting his hands in the pockets of the short velvet jacket he was wearing, and preparing to follow. The twins led the way, holding their candles aloft, and descending the stairs in step. But exactly what the mysteries were into which they initiated their uncle that night nobody knows. Only they were all very late for breakfast next morning, and when Lord Dawne saw his sisters, he listened in silence to such explanations of Angelica's reappearance at the castle as they were able to offer.

Angelica herself forgot she was not at home, and came down to breakfast yawning unconcernedly. The exclamation of surprise with which she was greeted took her aback at first. She had intended to send a carriage, early in the morning, for her maid Elizabeth, and to walk in herself with her hat on when it returned, as if she had come in it; but as she only remembered this intention when Lady Fulda exclaimed "Why, Angelica, how did you come?" she was obliged to have recourse to the simple truth, and after answering blandly: "I walked, auntie," she left the matter there for others to elucidate at their leisure if they chose to make inquiries.

But the accustomed trouble with the Heavenly Twins seemed insignificant at this time compared with other perplexities which were pending at the castle. The old duke had been very queer lately. He had "been dreaming and seeing things," as Diavolo explained to Angelica.

"Storms and what dreams, ye holy gods, what dreams!"

Father Ricardo said they were miraculous temptations of the devil, the implication being that the poor old duke's soul was more specially worth wrangling for than those of less exalted sinners. The one dear wish of Father Ricardo's life was to be mixed up in something miraculous. He was too humble to expect anything to be revealed to himself personally, but he had great hopes of the saintly Lady Fulda; and certainly, if concessions are to be wrung from the Infinite to the Finite by perfect holiness of life and mind, she should have obtained some. She had become deeply read in that kind of lore under Father Ricardo's direction, and had meditated so much about occurrences of the kind that it would; not have surprised her if she had met "Our Lady" anywhere, bright light, blue cloak, supernatural beauty, indefinite draperies, lilies, sacred heart, and all. She had, in fact, thought too much about it, and was becoming somewhat hysterical, which raised Father Ricardo's hopes, for he was not a scientific man, and knew nothing of the natural history of the human being and of hysteria; and, besides, by dint of long watching, fasting, and otherwise outraging what he believed to have been created in the image of God, viz., his own poor body, and also by the feverish fervour with which he entreated Heaven to vouchsafe them a revelation at Morne for the benefit of Holy Church, he was worn to a shadow, and had become somewhat hysterical himself. The twins had discovered him on his knees before the altar in the chapel at night, and had been much interested in the "vain repetitions" and other audible ejaculations which he was offering up with many contortions of his attenuated form.

"Isn't he enjoying himself?" Diavolo whispered.

"He must be in training to wrestle with the devil when they meet," Angelica surmised.

But all this was having a bad effect upon the old duke. In private, he and Lady Fulda and the priest talked of nothing but apparitions and supernatural occurrences generally. Lord Dawne had obtained a hint of what was going on from some chance observations of the Heavenly Twins, but until the day after Angelica's return from the palace neither his father nor sister had spoken to him on the subject.

That morning, however, he happened to go into the chapel to see how the colours were lasting in some decorative work which he had done there himself years before, and there he found his father standing in the aisle to the right of the altar near the door of the sacristy, gazing up fixedly at a particular panel in the dark oakwork which covered that portion of the wall.

"Anything wrong, father?" he said, going up to him.

"Dawne," the old duke replied in an undertone, touching his son's arm with the point of the forefinger of his left hand, and pointing up to the panel with the stick he held in his right: "Dawne, if it were not for what that panel conceals--" he ended by folding his hands on the top of his stick, looking down at the pavement, and shaking his head. "I saw it in a dream first," he resumed, looking up at the panel. "But now it appears during every service. It comes out. It stretches its baby hands to me. It sobs, it sighs, it begs, it prays; and sometimes it smiles, and then there are dimples about its innocent mouth."

Some disturbance of the atmosphere caused Lord Dawne to look round at this moment, although he had heard nothing, and he was startled to find his sister Fulda standing behind him, looking as awestruck as the duke.

"We must tear down that panel!" the old man exclaimed, becoming excited. "We must exorcise, and purify, and cleanse the house. It is that--that"--shaking his stick at the panel--"which hinders the Event! Bury it deep! bury it deep! give it the holy rites, and then!" His voice dropped. He muttered something inaudible, and walked feebly down the aisle.

Lady Fulda followed him out of the chapel, but presently she returned. Her brother was still standing as she had left him, looking now at the pavement and now at the panel, and deep in thought. His grave face lighted with tenderness as he turned to meet her. She was very pale.

"I am afraid all this is too much for you, Fulda," he said seriously.

"No. This is nothing," she answered. "Nothing--no human excitement ever disturbs me. But, Dawne, I have seen it myself!"

"It! What, Fulda?"

"The Child--just as he describes it. It appears there"--looking up at the panel--"and stretches out its little hands to me smiling, but when I move to take it, it is gone!"

"My dear Fulda," Lord Dawne replied, with a shiver which he attributed to the chill of the chapel, "people who live in such an atmosphere as you do are liable to see things!"

"It would ease my mind," she said, clasping her hands on his shoulder, and laying her cheek upon them: "it would ease my mind if that panel were removed. There is something behind it."

"It must be solid masonry then," he answered, smiling; and, stepping up to the panel, he tapped it hard with his knuckles; but, contrary to his expectations, the sound it emitted was somewhat hollow. Then he examined it carefully, and discovered that it was not fitted into grooves as the other panels were, but was held in its place by four screws, the heads of which had been carefully concealed by putty, stained and varnished to the color of the oak. "I will see about this at once," he said.

The message from the palace that morning, sent by Mrs. Orton Beg, had been: "Edith still lingers," and Lord Dawne had intended to go there to see the bishop (in times of sickness and sorrow he was everywhere welcome); but now he went with the further intention of finding Dr. Galbraith. In this he was successful, and they had a long talk about the state of affairs at the castle, and it was finally arranged that Dr. Galbraith should dine there that evening and remain for the night.

"That panel must be removed," he said, "and it should be done with great ceremony. The best time would be midnight. But leave all that to Father Ricardo, and only insist upon one thing, and that is the presence of the Heavenly Twins."

"Are you meditating a coup de theâtre?"

"No, not at all," Dr. Galbraith replied. "Only I am quite sure that if there is any exorcism to be done, the Heavenly Twins will accomplish it better than any priest."

Lord Dawne, however, remained somewhat uncertain about the wisdom of this recommendation, but as Dr. Galbraith had always managed his father's foibles and other difficult matters at the castle with admirable tact and delicacy he gave in.

The twins themselves soon perceived that there was something in the air. During the day several strange priests arrived, all looking more or less important; but they did not dine with the duke. The demeanour of the latter was portentously solemn; Diavolo tried to take him out of himself, but was reproved for his levity; and Father Ricardo and Lady Fulda went about with exalted expressions of countenance, and looking greatly in need of food and rest. Even in the early part of the evening nobody talked much, and as the hours dragged on slowly toward midnight, the silence in the castle became oppressive. The servants stole about on tiptoe, and in pairs, being nervous about going into the big empty rooms, and down the long shadowy corridors alone. There was, besides, a general inclination to glance about furtively, as the hush of anxious expectancy settled upon everybody. The twins felt it themselves, but they were everywhere all the same, and if any particular preparations had been made, it would have been at the risk of their discovering them. The night was sultry and very dark. Dr. Galbraith and Lord Dawne stood together, stirring their coffee, at an open window in the great drawing room.

"It is curiously still," said Lord Dawne, looking out. "It reminds me of the legend of Nature waiting breathless for the happy release of an imprisoned soul. I wonder how that poor child Edith is!"

"I would give--I would give anything that anybody could name," Dr. Galbraith said slowly, "to be quite sure that she would pass into peace to-night."

"Ah, poor girl! poor innocent girl!" Lord Dawne ejaculated; and then he said, as if speaking to himself: "How long, O Lord, how long? We are so powerless; we accomplish so little; the great sum of suffering never seems lessened, do what we will!"

They were silent for some time after that, each occupied with painful thoughts, and then Dr. Galbraith spoke with an effort to change the direction of them.

"A storm to-night would be most opportune," he said.

"But things of that kind never do happen opportunely," Lord Dawne rejoined. Just as he spoke, however, a brilliant flash of lightning lit up vividly the precipitous side of the hill and the whole valley beneath them for a moment.

"Let us hope it is a happy omen," said Dr. Galbraith.

Toward midnight, the various members of the household who were privileged to be present at the coming ceremony began to assemble in the chapel; but the very first to arrive found that the Heavenly Twins were before them, and had secured the best seats for seeing and hearing. The chapel was dim and even dark at the corners and at the farther end, there being no light except from the candles which were burning upon the altar. Four priests were kneeling before it at the rails, and a fifth came out of the sacristy presently, and passed in. It was Father Ricardo, and as he made the genuflection, it was seen that his face was irradiated by profound emotion. He remained on his knees before the altar for some moments, then he arose, and at the same instant the chapel glowed in every colour of the prism. It was merely the play of the lightning through the stained glass windows, but the unexpected effect, combined with the electricity in the atmosphere and the tension of expectancy, wrought upon the nerves of all present.

The Heavenly Twins snuggled up close to each other. Lady Fulda's lips began to move rapidly in fervent prayer. Angelica noticed this, and as she watched her aunt, her own lips began to move in imitation, either involuntarily or in order to see if she could work them as fast.

But now the attention of all present became riveted upon the priests. Father Ricardo descended the altar steps, and two of the others followed him into the sacristy. They returned in the same order, but Father Ricardo was carrying a basin of holy water and an aspergillus, with which he proceeded to sprinkle all present, murmuring some inaudible adjuration the while. One of the strange priests held an open book, and the other carried some common carpenter's tools. During this interval the lightning flashed again, and was seen to play about the chapel in fantastic figures before the black darkness engulfed it. A long irregular roll of distant thunder succeeded, and then, after a perceptible pause, there was a sound as of hundreds of little feet pattering upon the roof. They were the advanced guard of rain drops heralding the approaching storm, and halted instantly, while the air in the chapel became perceptibly colder, and Dr. Galbraith himself began, to experience sensations which made him fear it would have been wiser if a less appropriate time had been chosen to lay the ghost.

The priest now approached the panel, upon one corner of which a ray of light from the altar fell obliquely. Father Ricardo sprinkled it liberally from where he stood on the ground, repeating some formula as he did so, and then mounted a small pair of steps which had been placed there for the purpose, and began to search for the screws. As he found them, he cut out the hard putty that concealed them with a knife which one of the priests had handed up to him for the purpose, and when he had accomplished this he exchanged the knife for a screwdriver, and endeavoured to turn the screws; but this required more strength than his ill-treatment of his poor body had left in it, and he was obliged to relinquish the task to one of the other priests. The two who had hitherto knelt at the altar now joined the group in front of the panel. All five looked unhealthy and frightened, but the one who next ascended the steps made a brave effort, and began to remove the screws. He was a muscular man, but it was hard work, requiring his full strength; and those present held their breath, and anxiously watched him straining every sinew. And meanwhile the storm gathered overhead, the lightning and thunder flashed and crashed almost simultaneously, and the rain fell in torrents.

Having removed the screws, the priest descended the steps, which he pushed on one side, and inserting the screwdriver into a crevice, prised the panel outward. It resisted for some time, then, suddenly yielding, fell forward on his head, and crashed noisily to the ground. All present started and stared. The panel had concealed an aperture, a small niche rudely made by simply removing some of the masonry. It was long and low, and there lay in it what was unmistakably the body of a young child fully dressed. The priests fell back, Lady Fulda's parted lips became set in the act of uttering a word, the duke groaned aloud, while an expression of not being able to believe their own eyes settled upon the countenances of Lord Dawne, Dr. Galbraith, and the tutor, Mr. Ellis.

After the fall of the panel there was a pause, during which the very storm seemed to wait in suspense. Nobody knew what to do next. But before they had recovered themselves, Angelica broke the silence at the top of her voice.

"You pushed me!" she angrily exclaimed.

"I did not!" Diavolo retorted.

"You did!"

"I didn't!"

Smack! And Miss Hamilton-Wells stood trembling with rage in the aisle. Then she darted toward the aperture. The priests fell back. "I believe it's all a trick," she said, reaching up and seizing the child by its petticoats. Lady Fulda uttered an exclamation: the duke stood up, Angelica tugged the figure out of the niche, looked at it, and then held it to the light.

It was a huge wax baby-doll, considerably battered, which had once been a favourite of her own. Diavolo came out of his seat, hugging himself, and bursting in eloquent silence.

Father Ricardo wiped the perspiration from his face, Lord Dawne bit his under lip, Lady Fulda gathered herself up from her knees, and stood helpless. Everybody looked foolish, including the duke, whose eyebrows contracted nervously; then suddenly that treacherous memory of his landed him back in the old days. "By Jove!" he exclaimed aloud, "I'm more like Angelica, and less of a damned fool than I thought!"

"Come, Diavolo! this is no place for us!" Angelica cried.

She seized his hand, and they both darted into the sacristy.

There was a bang, a scuffle, and then a dull thud; but the first to follow was only in time to see eight finger-tips clinging for a moment outside to the ledge of one of the narrow windows, which was open.

"They've jumped out!" "It's fourteen feet!" "Hush, listen!"

And then the congregation scattered hurriedly from the sacred precincts, leaving the candles burning on the altar, the doll lying on the pavement, the gaping niche and the fallen panel to bear witness to some of the incredible phases through which the human race passes on its way from incomprehensible nothingness to the illimitable unknown.

Chapter XI

The Heavenly Twins had disappeared for the night. Those who ran round to the outside wall of the sacristy to look for them found only a shred of Angelica's gown hanging on a shrub. Their footsteps could be followed cutting across the grass of a soppy lawn, but beyond that was a walk of hard asphalt, and there all trace of them was lost. But Lady Fulda said they must be found, and brought back; and sleepy servants were accordingly aroused and set to search the grounds, while grooms were sent off on horseback to scour the lanes. The storm was still muttering in the distance, but above Morne the sky had cleared, and the crescent moon shone out to facilitate the search. It was quite fruitless, however. From Morne to Morningquest the messengers went, passing backward and forward from the castle the whole night long. Lady Fulda never closed her eyes, and when the party assembled at breakfast next morning they were all suffering from want of sleep.

The duke, Lord Dawne, Dr. Galbraith, Mr. Ellis, Father Ricardo and the four strange priests were at table.

"What can have become of those children?" Lady Fulda was exclaiming for the hundredth time, when the door opened, and the twins themselves appeared hand in hand, smiling affably.

They looked as fresh as usual, and began to perform their morning salutations with their habitual self-possession.

"Where have you been?" the duke asked sternly.

"In bed, of course," Angelica answered--"till we got up, at least. Where else should we be?" She looked round in innocent inquiry.

"We just ran round to the garden door, you know," Diavolo explained, "and went to bed. You couldn't expect us to stay out on a dripping night like that!"

Lord Dawne afterward expressed the feeling of the whole household when he declared: "Well, it never did and it never would have occurred to me to look for them in their own rooms."

He remained behind with them in the breakfast room that morning when the others withdrew.

"I suppose we shall be sent for directly," said Angelica resignedly.

Diavolo grinned.

"I say, how did you feel last night when it was all going on?" she inquired.

"Awfully nice," he rejoined. "I had little warm shivers all over me."

"So had I," she said, "like small electric shocks; and I believed in the ghost and everything. I expect that is why that kind of supernatural business is kept up, because it makes people feel creepy and nice. You can't get the same sensation in any other way, and I dare say there are lots of people who wouldn't like to lose a whole set of sensations. I should think they're the kind of people who collect the remains of a language to save it when it begins to die out."

"I should say those were intelligent people," her uncle observed. Angelica looked at him doubtfully.

"Well, at any rate, I should like to believe in ghosts," said Diavolo.

"So should I," said Angelica, "in fun, you know; and I was thinking so last night; but then I could not help noticing what a fool Aunt Fulda was making of herself, and grandpapa looked such a precious old idiot too. They weren't enjoying it a bit, You were the only one of the family, Uncle Dawne, who believed and looked dignified."

"Who told you I believed?" he asked.

"Well, I'm not sure that you did," Angelica answered. "But at all events, your demeanour was respectful--hence the dignity, perhaps!"

"If yours were a little more respectful you would gain in dignity too, I imagine," Diavolo observed.

Angelica boxed his ears promptly, whereupon her uncle took her to task with unusual severity for him: "You are quite grown up now," he said. "You talk like a mature woman, and act like a badly brought up child of ten. You are always doing something ridiculous too. I should be ashamed to have you at my house."

Angelica looked amazed. "Well, it is your fault as much as anybody's," she burst out when she had recovered herself. "Why don't you make me something of a life? You can't expect me to go on like this forever--getting up in the morning, riding, driving, lessons, dressing, and bed. It's the life of a lapdog."

She got up, and going to one of the windows, which was open, leant out. Dawne and Diavolo followed her. As the former approached, she turned and looked him full in the face for an answer.

"You will marry eventually--" he began.

"Like poor Edith?" she suggested. Dawne compressed his lips. "That was her ideal," Angelica proceeded--"her own home and husband and family, someone to love and trust and look up to. She told me all about it at Fountain Towers under the influence of indignation and strong tea. And she was an exquisite womanly creature! No, thank you! It isn't safe to be an an exquisite womanly creature in this rotten world. The most useful kind of heart for a woman is one hard enough to crack nuts with. Nobody could wring it then."

"You would lose all finer feeling--" Lord Dawne began.

"Including the heartache itself," she supplemented.

"But what do you want?" he asked.

"An object," she answered. "Something! something! something beyond the mere getting up in the morning and going to bed at night, with an interval of exercise between. I want to do something for somebody!"

Lord Dawne raised his eyebrows slightly. He had no idea that such a notion had ever entered her head.

At this point, a servant was sent by his Grace to request the twins to be so good as to go to him in the library at once.

"It is the inevitable inquiry," Angelica said resignedly. "Come with us, uncle, do," she coaxed. "It is sure to be fun!"

Lord Dawne consented.

On the way, Diavolo remarked ambiguously: "But I don't understand yet how there came to be a ghost as well!"

The inquiry led to nothing. The Heavenly Twins had determined not to incriminate themselves, and they refused to answer a question. They stood together, drawn up in line, with their hands behind their backs; changed from one leg to the other when they were tired, and looked exceedingly bored; but they would not speak.

The duke stormed, Lady Fulda entreated, Father Ricardo prayed, even Lord Dawne begged them not to be obstinate; but it was all in vain, and their grandfather, losing all patience, ordered them out of the room at last.

As they retired, Diavolo asked Father Ricardo if he were thinking of thumbscrews.

"I feel quite sure that Angelica did not know the doll was there," Lord Dawne said when the twins had gone. "I fancy it was a trick Diavolo had played her."

Nobody mentioned the ghost again. It was felt to be a delicate subject. Lady Fulda was made to take rest and a tonic, the duke was rigidly dieted, and Father Ricardo was sent away for change of air. But the twins never ceased from troubling. As soon as the duke's temper was restored, they consulted the party collectively at afternoon tea in the oriel room on the subject of Angelica's dissatisfaction. Diavolo affected to share it, but that was only by way of being agreeable, as he inadvertently betrayed.

"I suppose I shall have to do something myself," he drawled in his lazy way.

"I should think marriage is the best profession for you!" said Angelica scornfully.

"Thank you. I will consider the question," Diavolo answered.

He was lying on the floor in his habitual attitude, with his head on the windowsill, beaming about him blandly.

"The army is the only possible profession for a gentleman in your position," the duke observed.

"Ah! that would not meet my views at present," Diavolo rejoined. "I am advised that the army is not a career for a man. It is a career for a machine--for a machine with a talent for converting other men into machines, and I haven't the talent. I suppose, if Uncle Dawne won't marry, I shall be obliged to go into the House of Lords eventually; but, in the meantime, I should like to be doing some good in the world."

"You might go into Parliament," his uncle suggested.

"Ah, no!" Diavolo answered seriously. "I should never dream of undertaking any of the actual work of the world while there are plenty of good women to do it for me. My modest idea was to be a musician, or philanthropic lecturer, or artist of some kind--something that gives pleasure, you know, and the proceeds to be devoted to the indigent."

"May I ask if you belong to the peace party?" said the duke.

"I am a peace party myself," Diavolo answered. "Anybody who has lived as long with Angelica as I have would be that--if he were not a party in pieces."

"I admire your wit!" said Angelica sarcastically.

Diavolo bestowed a grateful smile upon her.

"But everything is easy enough for a man of intellect," she went on, "whatever his position. It is our powers that are wasted."

"Vanity! vanity!" said Lady Fulda. "Why do you suppose that your abilities are superior?"

"I can prove that they are!" Angelica answered hotly. Then suddenly her spirits went up, and she began to be sociable.

For a few days after this the Heavenly Twins appeared to be very busy. They both wrote a great deal, and also practised regularly on their violins and the piano; and they made some mysterious expeditions, slipping away unattended into Morningquest. It was suspected that they had something serious on hand, but Father Ricardo being away, the spy-system was suspended, so nobody knew. One morning, however, big placards, which had been printed in London, appeared on every hoarding in Morningquest, announcing in the largest type that Miss Hamilton-Wells and Mr. Theodore Hamilton-Wells would give an entertainment in the Theatre for the benefit of certain of the city charities, which were specified. The programme opened with music, which was to be followed by a speech from Mr. Theodore Hamilton-Wells, and to conclude with a monologue, entitled "The Condemned Cell," to be delivered by Miss Hamilton-Wells, who had written it specially for the occasion. This was the news which greeted Mr. Hamilton-Wells and Lady Adeline upon their return from their voyage round the world; and, like everybody else, when they first saw the placard, which was as they drove from the station through Morningquest to the castle, they exclaimed: "Who on earth is Mr. Theodore Hamilton-Wells?"

The old duke was rather taken with the idea of the entertainment. It was something quite in the manner of his youth, and if it had not been for the inopportune arrival of his son-in-law and daughter, the Heavenly Twins would probably have carried out their programme under his distinguished patronage. Dr. Galbraith was all in favour of letting them do it, Lord Dawne was neutral; but Mr. Hamilton-Wells objected. He caused the announcement to be cancelled, and handsomely indemnified the various charities named to be recipients of the possible proceeds.

Diavolo did not much mind. He was prepared to do all that Angelica required of him, but when the necessity was removed he acknowledged that it would have been rather a bore, and afterward spoke disrespectfully of the whole project as "The Condemned Sell."

Angelica raged.

But the energy which Mr. Hamilton-Wells had collected during his travels was not yet expended. He summoned a family council at Morne to sit upon the twins, and having tried them in their absence they were sent for to be sentenced without the option of appeal. Angelica was to be presented at Court and otherwise "brought out" in proper splendour immediately; while, with a view to going into the Guards eventually, Diavolo was to be sent to Sandhurst, as soon as he had passed the necessary examinations, about which Mr. Ellis said there would be no difficulty if Diavolo chose.

Diavolo shrugged his shoulders, and said that he didn't mind.

Angelica said nothing, but her brow contracted. Diavolo's indifference was putting an end to everything. It was not that she had any actual objection to going to Court and coming out, but only to the way in which the arrangement had been made--to the coercion in fact. She was too shrewd, however, not to perceive that, in consequence of Diavolo's attitude, rebellion on her part would be both undignified and ineffectual. So she held her peace, and went to walk off her irritation in the grounds alone; and there she encountered her fast friend of many years' standing, Mr. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe, who was just riding in to lunch at the castle. When he saw her he dismounted, and Angelica snatched the whip from his hand, and clenching her teeth gave the horse a vicious slash with it, which set him off at a gallop into the woods.

Mr. Kilroy let him go, but he was silent for some seconds, and then he asked her in his peculiarly kindly way: "What is the matter, Angelica?"

"Marry me!" said Angelica, stamping her foot at him--"Marry me, and let me do as I like."

Chapter XII

Evadne spent eighteen months in Malta without going from the island for a change, but at the end of her second cold season she went to Switzerland with the Malcomsons and Sillingers, and Colonel Colquhoun went on leave at the same time alone to some place which he vaguely described as "The Continent."

When they met again, Evadne noticed a change in him, and she feared it was a change for the worse. He was out of health, out of temper, and depressed.

He had spent most of his leave at Monte Carlo, but he did not say so at first; he was waiting for her to question him. Had she done so he would have said something snappy about feminine curiosity; as she did not do so, he lost his temper, went off to the mess, and drank too much.

It is a terrible thing for a man to be brought into constant association with a woman who never does anything--in a small way--that he can carp at, or says a word he can contradict. She robs him of all his most cherished illusions; she shakes his confidence in his own infallible strength, discernment, knowledge, judgment, and superiority generally; she outrages his prejudices on the subject of what a woman ought to be, and leaves him nothing with which to compare himself to his own advantage. This is the miserable state to which Evadne was rapidly reducing poor Colonel Colquhoun--not, certainly, of malice-prepense, but with the best intentions. He did not like her opinions, therefore she ceased to express opinions in his presence. He took exception to many of her observations, and so she let the words, "I think" fall out of her vocabulary, and confined her talk to a clear narrative of occurrences, uninterrupted by comments. It was an art which she had to acquire, for she had no natural aptitude for it, her faculty of observation having hitherto served as an instrument with which she could extract lessons from life; a lens used for the purpose of collecting data on exact scientific principles as matter from which to draw conclusions; but with practice she became an adept in the art of describing the one while at the same time withholding the other, so that her conversation interested Colonel Colquhoun without, however, giving him anything to cavil at. It was like a dish exactly suited to his taste, but delicate to insipidity because his palate was hardened to pepper. When she returned from Switzerland she gave him details of her own doings which were interesting enough to take him out of himself, until one day, when, unfortunately, it occurred to him that she was making an effort to entertain him, and he determined that he would not be entertained--like a child, indeed! She might be a deuced clever woman and all that, but he wasn't going to have those feminine airs of superiority; so he snubbed her into silence, and having succeeded, he became exceedingly annoyed because she would not talk. It was opposition he wanted, not acquiescence, but she was not clever enough with all her cleverness, this straightforward nineteenth century young woman, to understand such subtleties. She had always heard that the contrariness of women was a cause of provocation, and she could never have been made to comprehend that the removal of the cause would be even more provoking than the contrariness. The great endeavour of her life had been to cultivate or acquire the qualities in which she understood that women are wanting, and when she succeeded she expected to please; but she found Colonel Colquhoun as "peculiar" on the subject as her father had been when she proved that, although of the imbecile sex, she could do arithmetic. Colonel Colquhoun waited a week to snap at her for asking him how he had spent his leave, but he was obliged at last to give up all hope of being questioned; and then he felt himself aggrieved. She certainly took no interest in him whatever, he reflected; she didn't care a rap if he went to the dogs altogether--in fact, she would probably be rather glad, because then she would be free. She would waste a world of attention and care upon any dirty little child she picked up in the street, but for him she had neither thought nor sympathy. Clearly she wanted to get rid of him; and she should get rid of him. He felt he was going to the bad; he would go to the bad; it was all her fault, and she should know it. He had treated her with every possible consideration; she had never had the slightest cause for complaint. He had even stuck up for her against his own interests with her old ass of a father--and, by Jove! while she was treating him, Colonel Colquhoun, commanding a crack corps, and one of the smartest officers in her Majesty's service, with studied indifference, she was thinking affectionately of the same dear old pompous portly papa, to whom, in fact, she had never borne the slightest ill-will, Colonel Colquhoun was sure, although he had done her the injury of allowing her to marry herself to the kind of man whom it was against her principles even to countenance.

But at this point his irritation overflowed. He could contain himself no longer.

"Do you know where I spent most of my leave?" he asked one morning at breakfast.

"No," Evadne answered innocently.

"At Monte Carlo," he said, with emphasis.

"I hope you enjoyed it. I have always heard it is a very beautiful place," she responded tranquilly.

"It's effect on my exchequer has not been beautiful," he observed grimly.

"Indeed," she answered. "Is it so expensive?"

"Gambling is, when you lose," he declared.

"Ah, yes. I forgot the tables at Monte Carlo," she remarked quite cheerfully. "I suppose you can lose a great deal there."

"You can lose all you possess."

"Well, yes--of course you could if you liked; but I am quite sure you would never do anything so stupid."

He looked at her curiously: "You don't disapprove of gambling, then?" he asked.

"I? Oh--of course, I disapprove. But then you see I have no taste for it"-- this was apologetically said to signify that she did not in the least mean to sit in judgment upon him.

"You have a fine taste for driving people to such extremities, then," he asserted.

She looked at him inquiringly.

"What I mean is this," he explained: "that if I could have been with you, I should not have gone to Monte Carlo."

Evadne kept her countenance--with some difficulty; for just as Colonel Colquhoun spoke she recollected a conversation they had had at breakfast one morning under precisely similar circumstances, that is to say, each in their accustomed place and temper, she placidly content, he politely striving to bottle up the chronic form of irritation from which he suffered at that time of the day so as to keep it nice and hot for the benefit of his officers and men; for Colonel Colquhoun in the presence of a lady was one person, but Colonel Colquhoun in his own orderly room or on parade was quite another. While in barracks he was in the habit of swearing with the same ease and as unaffectedly as he made the responses in church. He probably did it from a sense of duty, because he had been brought up in that school of colonel, and in the course of years would naturally come to consider that a volley of oaths on parade, although not laid down in the "Drill Book," was as much a part of his profession of arms as "Good Lord, deliver us!" is of the church service. At all events, he did both punctually at the right time and place, and never mixed his week-day oaths with his Sunday responses, which was creditable. In fact, he seemed to have the power of changing his frame of mind completely for the different occasions, and would be prepared in advance, as was evident from the fact that if a glove went wrong just as he was starting for church, he would send up for another pair amiably; but if a similar accident happened when he was on his way to parade, he would swear at his man till he surprised him--the man not being a soldier servant.

But what very nearly made Evadne smile was the distinct recollection she had of having asked him earnestly to join her party in Switzerland when he went on leave, and of his answering "No," he should not care about that, and suggesting that she should meet him at Monaco instead. She fancied he must have a bad memory, but of course she said nothing; what is the use of saying anything? She thought, however, that had she been under his orders, the invitation to go to Monaco would have been a command, and the present implied reproach a direct accusation.

She was most anxious that he should understand perfectly that she quite shrank from interfering with him in any way.

One night--not knowing if he were at home or not--she had occasion to go downstairs for a book she had forgotten. There was no noise in the house, and consequently when she opened the drawing room door she was startled to find that the room was brilliantly lighted, and that there was a party assembled there, consisting of three strange ladies, loud in appearance, one or two men she knew, and some she had not seen before. The majority were seated at a card-table playing, while the rest stood round looking on; and they must have reached a momentous point in the game, for Evadne had not heard a sound to warn her of their presence before she saw them.

Colonel Colquhoun was one of those looking on at the game, and one of the first to see her. He changed countenance, and came forward hastily, conscious of the strange contrast she presented to those women, flushed with wine and horrid excitement, gambling at the table, as she stood there, rooted to the spot with surprise, in her gold-embroidered, ivory-white draperies, with a half-inquiring, half-bewildered look on her sweet grave face. It was a vision of holiness breaking in upon a scene of sin, and his one thought was to get her away. There was always that saving grace of the fallen angel about him, he never depreciated what he had lost, but sometimes sighed for it sorrowfully.

"I beg your pardon for this intrusion," Evadne said, looking at him pointedly so as to ignore the rest of the party. "I did not even know that you were at home. I had forgotten a book and came for it. Will you kindly give it to me? It is called"--she hesitated. "But it does not matter," she added quickly. "I will read something else. Good-night!" and she turned, smiling, without seeming to have seen anyone but Colonel Colquhoun, and calmly swept from the room.

"St. Monica the Complacent, I should say," one of the men suggested.

"Or Vengeance smiling with murder in her mind," said another.

"No, a saint for certain," jeered one of the women.

"Why not say an angel at once?" cried another.

"I shouldn't have thought Colquhoun could keep either upon the premises," laughed the third.

"The lady you are pleased to criticise is my wife, gentlemen," said Colonel Colquhoun, lashing out at them suddenly, his face blazing with rage.

The women tried not to be abashed; the men apologised; but the game was over for that night, and the party broke up abruptly.

When they had gone, Colonel Colquhoun looked about for Evadne's book, and found it--not a difficult matter, for she had a bad habit of leaving the book she was reading open and face downward on any piece of furniture not intended to hold books, by preference a chair where somebody might sit down upon it. This one happened to be upon the piano stool. Colonel Colquhoun glanced at the title as he picked it up, and reading "A Vision of Sin," understood why she had shrunk from naming it. He appreciated her delicacy, but he feared the discernment which had shown her the necessity for it, and he determined to disarm her resentment next day by making her a proper apology at once.

He went down late to breakfast, expecting black looks at least, and was surprised to find her calm and equable as usual, and busy, keeping his breakfast hot for him.

"I wish to apologise to you for the scene you witnessed last night," he began ceremoniously.

"I think I owe you an apology for taking you unawares like that," she interrupted cheerfully, giving her best attention to a very full cup of coffee she was carefully carrying round the table to him. "But I hope you understand it was an accident."

"I quite understood," he answered sullenly. "But I want to explain that those people were also here by accident--at least I was not altogether responsible for their presence. They were a party from one of the yachts in the harbour. I met them here at the door, just as I was coming in last night, and they forced themselves in uninvited. I hope you believe that I would not willingly bring anyone to the house whom I could not introduce to you."

"Oh, I quite believe it," she answered cordially. "You are always most kind, most considerate. But I fear," she added with concern, "that my being here must inconvenience you at times. Pray, pray, do not let that be the case. I should regret it infinitely if you did."

When Evadne left Colonel Colquhoun he threw himself into a chair, and sat, chin on chest, hands in pockets, legs stretched out before him, giving way to a fit of deep disgust. He had always had a poor opinion of women, but now he began to despair of them altogether. "And this comes of letting them have their own way, and educating them," he reflected. "The first thing they do when they begin to know anything is to turn round upon us, and say we aren't good enough. And, by Jove! if we aren't, isn't it their fault? Isn't it their business to keep us right? When a fellow's had too good a time in his youth and suffered for it, what is to become of him if he can't find some innocent girl to believe in him and marry him? But there soon won't be any innocent girls. Here am I now, a most utter bad lot, and Evadne knows it, and what does she do? apologizes for appearing at an inopportune time! Now, Beston's wife would have brought the house about his ears if she'd caught him with that precious party I had here last night; and that's what a woman ought to do. She ought to care. She ought to be jealous, and cry her eyes out. She ought to go down on her knees and take some trouble to save a fellow's soul,"--it may be mentioned, by the way, that if Evadne had done so, Colonel Colquhoun would certainly have sworn at her "for meddling with things she'd no business to know anything about"; it was, however, not what he would but what she should have done that he was considering just then. "That's the proper thing to do," he concluded; "and I don't see what's to be gained by this cursed cold-blooded indifference."

Articulation ceased here because the startling theory that a vicious dissipated man is not a fallen angel easily picked up, but a frightful source of crime and disease, recurred to him, with the charitable suggestion that a repentant woman of his own class would be the proper person to reform him; ideas which settled upon his soul and silenced him, being full-fraught for him with the cruel certainty that the end of "all true womanliness" is at hand.

Chapter XIII

Colonel Colquhoun's first interest in Evadne lasted longer than might have been expected, but the pleasure of hanging about her palled on him at last, and then he fell off in his kind attentions. This did not happen, however, as soon as it would have done by many months, had their relations been other than they were. It began in the usual way. Little acts to which she had become accustomed were omitted, resumed again, and once more omitted, intermittently, then finally allowed to drop altogether. When the change had set in for certain, Evadne regretted it. The kindly feeling for each other which had come to exist between them was largely due to her appreciation of the numberless little attentions which it had pleased him to pay her at first; they had not palled upon her, and she missed them--not as a wife would have done, however, and that she knew; so that when the fact that there was to be a falling off became apparent, she found in it yet another cause for self-congratulation, and one that was great enough to remove all sting from the regret. What she was prepared to resent, however, was any renewal of the gush after it had once ceased; she required to be held, in higher estimation than a toy which could be dropped and taken up again upon occasion--and Colonel Colquhoun gave her an opportunity, and, what was worse, provoked her into saying so, to her intense mortification when she came to reflect.

There was to be a ball at the palace one night, a grand affair, given in honour of that same fat foreign prince who had stayed with her people at Fraylingay, just before she came out, and had been struck by the promise of her appearance. In the early days of their acquaintance, Colonel Colquhoun had given her some very beautiful antique ornaments of Egyptian design, and she determined to wear them on this occasion for the first time, but when she came to try them with a modern ball-dress, she found that they made the latter look detestably vulgar. She therefore determined to design a costume, or to adapt one, which should be more in keeping with the artistic beauty of her jewels; and this idea, with the help of an excellent maid, she managed to carry out to perfection--which, by the way, was the accident that led her finally to adopt a distinctive style of dress, always a dangerous experiment, but in her case, fortunately, so admirably successful, that it was never remarked upon as strange by people of taste; only as appropriate.

Colonel Colquhoun dined at mess on the night of the ball, and did not trouble himself to come back to escort her. He said he would meet her at the palace, and if he missed her in the crowd there were sure to be plenty of other men only too glad to offer her an arm. He had been most particular never to allow her to go anywhere alone at first--rather inconveniently so sometimes, but that she had endured. She was reflecting upon the change as she sat at her solitary dinner that evening, and she concluded by cheerfully assuring herself that she really was beginning to feel quite as if she were married. But, afterward, when she found herself in the drawing room it seemed big and bare, and all the more so for being brilliantly lighted; and suddenly she felt herself a very little body all alone. There was no bitterness in the feeling, however, because there was no one neglecting her whose duty it was to keep her heart up; but it threatened to grow upon her all the same, and in order to distract herself she went downstairs to choose a bouquet. She had several sent her for every occasion, and they were always arranged on a table in the hall so that she might take the one that pleased her best as she went out. There were more than usual this evening. There was one from the Grand Duke, which she put aside. There was one from Colonel Colquhoun; he always ordered them by the dozen for the different ladies of his acquaintance. She picked it up and looked at it. It was beautiful in its way, but sent at the florist's discretion, not chosen to suit her gown, and it did not suit it, so that she could not have used it in any case; yet she put it down with a sigh. The next was of yellow roses, violets, and maidenhair fern, very sweet: "With Lord Groome's compliments," she read on the card that was tied to it. "He is back then, I suppose," she thought. "Funny old man! Very sorry, but you won't do." The next was from one of the survivals, a man she loathed. She thought it an impertinence for him to have sent her flowers at all, and she threw them under the table. The rest she took up one after the other, reading the cards attached, and admiring or disapproving of the different combinations without gratitude or sentiment; she knew that self-interest prompted all of the offerings that were not merely sent just because it was the right thing to do. There was one unconventional bunch, however, that caught her eye. It was a mere handful of scarlet flowers tied loosely together with ribbons of their own colour and the same tint of green as their leaves. It was from a young subaltern in the regiment, a boy whom she had noticed first because he was the same age and somewhat resembled her brother Bertram; and had grown to like afterward for himself. His flowers were the first to arouse her to any expression of pleasure. The arrangement was new at the time, but it has since become common enough.

"He has done that for me himself," she thought. "The boy respects me; I shall wear his flowers. They are beautiful too," she added, holding them off at arm's length to admire them--"the most beautiful of them all."

Almost immediately after she returned to the drawing room Mr. Price was shown in. He was the person of all others at that moment in Malta whom she would most have liked to see could she have chosen, and her face brightened at once when he entered.

"I have been dining with your husband's regiment to-night," he explained, "and I found that he could not come back for you to take you to the ball, and that therefore you would have to go alone; and so I ventured to come myself and offer you my escort."

"Ah, how good you are," Evadne cried, feeling fully for the first time how much she had in heart been dreading the ordeal of having perhaps to enter the ball room alone.

The old gentleman surveyed her some seconds in silence.

"That's original," he said at last, with several nods, approvingly. "And that is a glorious piece of colour you have in your hand."

"Is it not?" she said, "More beautiful, I think, than all my jewels."

"Yes," he agreed. "The flowers are the finishing touch."

The ball had begun when Evadne arrived, and the first person she encountered was the Grand Duke, who begged for a dance and took her to the ball room. A dance was just over, however, when they entered; the great room was pretty clear, and the prince led her toward the further end where their hostess was sitting. There also was Colonel Colquhoun and and some other men, with Mrs. Guthrie Brimston. He had forgotten Evadne for the moment, and she was so transformed by the beautiful lines of her dress that he had looked at her hard and admiringly before he recognized her.

"Who's the lady with the Grand Duke?" Major Livingston exclaimed.

"Someone with a figure, by Jove!" said old Lord Groome.

"Loyal Egypt herself!" said Mrs. Guthrie Brimston, always apt at analogy.

"Why--it's Evadne," said Colonel Colquhoun.

"Didn't know his own wife, by Jove!" Lord Groome exclaimed.

"Well, I hope I may be pardoned at that distance," rejoined Colonel Colquhoun, confused.

"Royal Egypt is more audacious than ever," Mrs. Guthrie Brimston observed. "This is a new departure. The reign of ideas is over, I fancy, and a season of social success has begun."

Evadne danced till daylight, unconscious of the sensation she had made, and rose next morning fresh for the usual occupations of the day; but her success of the night before had so enhanced her value in Colonel Colquhoun's estimation that he was inclined to be effusive. He returned to lunch, and hung about her the whole afternoon, much to her inconvenience, because he had not been included in her arrangements for some months now, and she could not easily alter them all at once just to humour a whim of his. But wherefore the whim? A very little reflection explained it. Looks and tones, and words of her partners of the previous night, not heeded at the time, recurred to her now, and made her thoughtful. But she could not feel flattered, for it was obviously not her whom Colonel Colquhoun was worshipping, it was success; and the perception of this truth suggested a possible parallel which made her shudder. It was a terrible glimpse of what might have been, what certainly would have been, had not the dear Lord vouchsafed her the precious knowledge which had preserved her from the ultimate degradation and the insult which such an endeavour as that of a woman she had in her mind, to win back a wandering husband, would have resulted in. "I do not care," was her happy thought when she began to see less of Colonel Colquhoun; "but a wife would feel differently, and it would have been just the same had I been his wife."

He was not surprised to find her submit to his extra attentions in silence that afternoon, because that was her way, but he found her looking at him once or twice with an expression of deep thought in her eyes which provoked him at last to ask what it was all about. "I was thinking," she answered, "of that painful incident in 'La Femme de Trente-ans' where Julie so far forgot her self-respect as to try to re-awaken her husband's admiration for her by displaying her superior accomplishments at the house of that low woman Mme. de Sèricy. You remember she made quite a sensation by her singing: 'Et son mari, réveillé par le rôle qu'elle venait de jouer, voulut l'honorer d'une fantaiste, et la prit en goût, comme il eût fait d'une actrice.' I was thinking, when she became aware of what she had done, of the degradation of the position in which she had placed herself, how natural it was that she should despise herself, cursing marriage which had brought her to such a pass, and wishing herself dead."

Colonel Colquhoun became moody upon this: "My having stayed at home with you this afternoon suggests a parallel, I suppose, after your success of last night?" he inquired. "And you have been congratulating yourself all day," he proceeded, summing up judicially, "upon having escaped the degradation of being the wife de facto of a man whose admiration for you could cool--under any circumstances; and be revived again by a vulgar success in society?"

She was silent, and he got up and walked out of the house. From where she sat she saw him go, twirling his blond moustache with one hand, and viciously flipping at the flowers as he passed with the stick he carried in the other; a fine, soldier-like man in appearance certainly, and not wanting in intelligence since he could comprehend her so exactly; but, oh, how oppressive when in an admiring mood! This was her first feeling when she got rid of him; but a better frame of mind supervened, and then she suffered some mortification for having weakly allowed herself to be betrayed into speaking so plainly. Yet it proved in the long run to have been the kindest thing she could have done, for Colonel Colquhoun was enlightened at last, and they were both the better for the understanding.

But the house seemed full of him still after he had gone that day, and she therefore put on her things, and, hurrying out into the fresh air, walked quickly to the house of a friend where she knew she would find a fresh moral atmosphere also. She was soul sick and depressed. Life felt like the end of a ball, all confusion, and every carriage up but her own; torn gowns, worn countenances, spiteful remarks, ill-natures evident that were wont to be concealed, disillusion generally, and headache threatening. But, fortunately, she found a friend at home to whom she instinctively went for a moral tonic. This was a new friend, Lady Clan, the widow of a civil service official, who wintered all over the world as a rule, but had passed that year at Malta. She was a cheery old lady, masculine in appearance, but with a great, kind, womanly heart, full of sympathetic insight--and a good friend to Evadne, whom she watched with fear as well as with interest, doubting much what would come of all that was unaccustomed about the girl. The sweet grave face and half shut eyes appealed to her pathetically that afternoon in particular, as Evadne sat silently beside her, busy with a piece of work she had brought. Lady Clan thought her lips too firm; as she grew older, she feared her mouth would harden in expression if she were not happy--and the old lady inwardly prayed Heaven that she might be saved from that; prayed that little arms might come to clasp her neck, and warm little lips shower kisses upon her lips to keep them soft and smiling, lest they settled into stony coldness, and forgot the trick.

Chapter XIV

Malta was enlivened that winter by a joke which Mrs. Guthrie Brimston made without intending it.

Mrs. Malcomson had written a book. She was thirty years of age, and had been married to a military man for ten, and in that time she had seen some things which had made a painful impression upon her, and suggested ideas that were only to be got rid of by publishing them. Ideas cease to belong to an author as soon as they are made public; if they are new at all somebody else appropriates them; and if they are old, as alas! most of them must be at this period of the world's progress, the mistaken reproducer is relieved of the horrid responsibility by kindly critics promptly. Blessed is the man who never flatters himself with the delusion that he can do anything original; for, verily, he shall not be disappointed.

Mrs. Malcomson made no such vain pretension. She was quite clever enough to know her own limitations exactly. Out of everyday experiences everyday thoughts had come to her, and when she began to embody such thoughts in words she did not suppose that their everyday character would be altered by the process. She had not met any of those perfect beings who inhabit the realms of ideal prose fiction, and make no mistakes but such as are necessary to keep the story going; nor any of the terrible demons, without a redeeming characteristic, who haunt the dim confines of the same territory for purposes invariably malign; and it never occurred to her to pretend that she had. She was a simple artist, educated in the life-school of the world, and desiring above everything to be honest--a naturalist, in fact, with positive ideas of right and wrong, and incapable of the confusion of mind or laxity of conscience which denies, on the one hand, that wrong may be pleasant in the doing, or claims, on the other, with equal untruth, that because it is pleasant it must be, if not exactly right, at all events, excusable. So she endeavoured to represent things as she saw them, things real, not imaginary; and when her characters spoke they talked of the interests which were daily discussed in her presence, and expressed themselves as human beings do. She was too independent to be conventional, and it was therefore inevitable that she should bring both yelp and bray upon herself, and be much misunderstood. When asked why she had written the book, she answered candidly "For my own benefit, of course," which caused a perfect howl of disapprobation, for, if that were her object, there could be no doubt that she would attain it, as the book had been a success from the first; but as people had hastily concluded that she was setting up for a social reformer and would fail, they were naturally disgusted. They had been prepared to call the supposed attempt great presumption on her part; but when they found that she had merely her own interests in view, and had not let their moral welfare cost her a thought, they said she was not right-minded; whereupon she observed; "I don't mind having my morals attacked; but I should object to be pulled up for my grammar"--meaning that she was sure of her morals, but was half afraid that her grammar might be shaky. As is inevitable, however, under such circumstances, this obvious interpretation was rejected, and the most uncharitable construction put upon her words. It was said, among other things, that she evidently could not be moral at heart, whatever her conduct might be, because she made mention of immorality in her book. Her manner of mentioning the subject was not taken into consideration, because such sheep cannot consider; they can only criticise. The next thing they did, therefore, was to take out the incident in the book which was most likely to damage her reputation, and declare that it was autobiographical. There was one man who knew exactly when the thing had occurred, who the characters were, and all about it.

"Nunc dimittis!" said Mrs. Malcomson when she heard the story; "for the same thing has been said of the author of any book of consequence that has ever appeared." And naturally she was somewhat puffed up. But it remained for Mrs. Guthrie Brimston to cap the criticisms. Her smouldering antagonism to Mrs. Malcomson was kept alight by a strong suspicion she had that Mrs. Malcomson was wont to ridicule her; and as a matter of fact the best jokes of that winter were made by Mrs. Malcomson at the expense of Mrs. Guthrie Brimston. It was not likely, therefore, that the latter would spare Mrs. Malcomson if she ever had an opportunity of crushing her, and she watched and waited long for a chance, until at last one night, at a dinner party, she thought the auspicious moment had arrived, and hastened to take advantage of it; but, unfortunately for her, she chose a weapon she was unaccustomed to handle, and in her awkwardness she injured herself.

Mr Price was giving the dinner, and Mrs. Malcomson was not there, but the Colquhouns and Sillengers were, and other friends of hers, kindly disposed, cultivated people, who spoke well of her, and were all agreed in their praise of her work.

Mrs. Guthrie Brimston stiffened as she listened to their remarks, but held her peace for a time, with thin lips compressed, and rising ire apparent.

"I cannot class the book," said Colonel Sillenger. "It does not claim to be fact exactly, and yet it is not fiction."

"Not a novel, but a novelty," Major Guthrie Brimston put in, clasping his hands on his breast, twiddling his thumbs, and setting his head on one side, the "business" with which he usually accompanied one of his facetious sallies.

"What I admire most about Mrs. Malcomson is her courage," said Mr. Price. "She ignores no fact of life which may be usefully noticed and commented upon, but gives each in its natural order without affectation. Do you not agree with me?" he asked, turning to Mrs. Guthrie Brimston who was standing beside him.

Her nostrils flapped. "If you mean to say that you like Mrs. Malcomson's book, I do not agree with you," she answered decidedly; "I consider it improper, simply!"

There was a momentary silence, such as sometimes precedes a burst of applause at a theatre; and then there was laughter! Such an objection from such a quarter was considered too funny, and when it became known, there was quite a run upon the book; for Mrs. Guthrie Brimston's stories were familiar to the members of all the messes, naval and military, in and about the island, not to mention the club men, and the curiosity to know what she did consider an objectionable form of impropriety in narrative made Mrs. Malcomson's fortune.

From that time forward, however, Mrs. Guthrie Brimston's influence was perceptibly upon the wane. Even Colonel Colquhoun wearied of her--to Evadne's great regret. For Mrs. Guthrie Brimston's vulgarity and coarseness of mind were always balanced by her undoubted propriety of conduct, and her faults were altogether preferable to the exceeding polish and refinement which covered the absolutely corrupt life of a new acquaintance Colonel Colquhoun had made at this time, a Mrs. Drinkworthy, who would not have lingered alone with him anywhere in public, but dressed sumptuously at his expense the whole season. The different estimation in which he held the two ladies and his respect for Evadne herself was emphasised by the fact that he never brought Mrs. Drinkworthy to the Colquhoun House, nor encouraged Evadne to associate with her as he had always encouraged her to associate with Mrs. Guthrie Brimston. And there can be no doubt that the latter's influence was restraining, for, after his allegiance to her relaxed, Evadne noticed new changes for the worse in him, and regretted them all the more because she feared that a chance remark of her own had had something to do with weaning him from the Guthrie Brimstons. She had been having tea with him there one day, and on their way home Colonel Colquhoun said something to her about the Guthrie Brimstons baying been unusually amusing.

"They only seemed unusually talkative to me," she answered; "but I always come away from their house depressed, and with a very low estimate of human nature generally. I feel that their mockery is essentially 'the fume of little minds'; and when they are particularly facetious at other people's expense, I leave them with the pleasing certainty that our own peculiarities will be put under the microscope as soon as we are out of earshot, a species of inquisition from which no human being can escape with dignity."

Colonel Colquhoun reflected upon this. His horror of being made to appear ridiculous may have hitherto blinded him to the possibility of such a thing--there is no knowing; but, at all events, it was from that time forward that he began to go less to the Guthrie Brimstons.

He was just at the age, however, when the manners of certain men begin to deteriorate, especially in domestic life. Their capacity for pleasure has been lessened by abuse, and they have to excite it with stimulants. They become less careful in their appearance, are not particular in their choice of words before the ladies of their own families, nor nice in their manners at table. If not already married, they look about for something young and docile on which to inflict their ill-humours, and expect to have their maladies of mind and body tenderly cared for in return for such ecstatic joy as young wives find in the sober certainties of board and lodging. Should they be married already, however, Heaven be good to their wives, for they will have no comfort upon earth!

But doubtless in the good time coming, all estimable wives will subscribe to keep up asylums to which their husbands can be quietly removed for treatment, so soon after the honeymoon as their manners show signs of deterioration. When they begin to be greedy, forget to say "please," "thank you," and "I beg your pardon;" show no consideration for anyone's comfort but their own, no natural affection, and lose control of their tempers; the best thing that can be done for them, and the kindest, is to place them under proper restraint at once. They cannot be treated at home. Opposition irritates them, and humouring such dreadful propensities submissively only confirms them.

The deterioration of Colonel Colquhoun had certainly been delayed by the arrangement which in honour bound him to treat Evadne as a young lady, and not as a wife; but that it should set in eventually, was inevitable. When it did begin, however, it was less in manner, for the same reason that had delayed it, than in pursuits, and therefore Evadne's position was not affected by it, and she continued to have a kindly, affectionate feeling for him, and to pity him still without bitterness.

He began to stay out late at night, at this time, and she would hear him occasionally in the small hours of the early morning returning from a bachelor dinner party, or a big guest-night at mess, reeking, doubtless, of tobacco and stimulants. Verily, Ouida knows what she is writing about when she invariably adds "essences" to the toilet of her dissipated men. Evadne would wake with a start in the gray of the dawn sometimes, and hearing Colonel Colquhoun pass her door with unsteady step on his way to his own room, would shudder to think what his wife must have suffered. And it was not as if the sacrifice of herself would have made any difference to him either. If she could have done any good in that way she might have tried; but his habits were formed, and they were the outcome of his nature. Nothing would have changed him, and the longer she lived with him, the more reason she had to be convinced of this, and to be sure that her decision had been a right and wise one.

But Colonel Colquhoun did not agree with her. He cherished the vain delusion that, although her influence as a young lady whom he admired and respected had not availed to elevate him, her presence as a wife, whose feelings he certainly would not have felt bound to consider, and whose opinion he would not have cared a rap for, would have made all the difference.

They drifted into a discussion of this subject one hot afternoon when he happened to find Evadne idling for a wonder with a fan at an open window.

"You might have made anything you liked of me had you adopted a different course," he said. He had been carousing the night before, and was now mistaking nausea and depression for a naturally good disposition perverted by ill-treatment.

"No," she answered gently. "I do not flatter myself that I should have succeeded where Mrs. Beston and half a dozen other ladies I could name even here, in a little place like Malta, all more lovable, estimable, and stronger in womanly attributes generally than I am, have failed. Colonel Beston is always with your particular clique--and she is very unhappy."

"She makes herself miserable then," said Colonel Colquhoun, the natural man reappearing as the malaise passed off or was forgotten, "What business is it of hers where he goes or what he does so long as he is nice to her when he is at home?"

"Just reverse the position, and consider what Colonel Beston's feelings would be if she took to amusing herself as he does, and maintained that he had no business to interfere with her private pursuits; would he be satisfied so long as she was 'nice' to him at home?" Evadne asked.

Colonel Colquhoun's countenance lowered. "That is nonsense," he said. "Women are different. They must behave themselves."

Evadne smiled. "I am beginning to know that phrase," she said. "It puzzled me at first, because it is neither reason nor argument, but merely an assertion somewhat in the nature of a command, and equally applicable to either sex, if the other chose to use it. But I know that what you have just said with regard to Mrs. Beston having no occasion to make herself miserable is your true feeling on the subject, and therefore I am convinced that if I had 'adopted a different course,' it would not have been to your advantage in any way, and it would certainly have been very much to the reverse of mine. We are excellent friends as it is, because we are quite independent of each other, but had it been otherwise--I shudder to think of the hopeless misery of it."

Colquhoun was silent.

"There is no hope for me, then," he said at last, lamely. "I suppose the truth of the matter is you never cared for me at all; you just thought you would get married, and accepted me because I was the first person to propose, and your friends considered me eligible. I think you are cold-hearted, Evadne. I have watched you since you came out here, and I've never seen you fancy any man, even for a moment."

Evadne flushed angrily. It is one thing to consider ethical questions in relation to their bearing upon the future of the world at large, and another to have it suggested that you have been under observation yourself with a view to discovering if you found it possible to live up to your own ideas. It was a fact, however, that no man attracted Evadne during this period as Colonel Colquhoun himself had done. The shock of the discovery which had destroyed her passion for him had caused a revulsion of feeling great enough to subdue all further possibilities of passion for years to come, and even if she had been free to marry she would not have done so. All the energy of her nature had flashed from her heart to her brain in a moment, and every instinct of her womanhood was held in check by the superior power of intellect. Since the day of the marriage ceremony she had been a child in her pleasures, and only mature in the capacity for thought. Her senses had been stunned, and still slept heavily; but there remained to her a vivid recollection of the entrancing period which had followed their first awakening, and so she answered Colonel Colquhoun's last remark decidedly.

"You are mistaken," she said, "if you imagine that I did not care for you-- that I was merely marrying you for the sake of marrying, and would have been quite as content with anyone else whom my friends might have considered eligible. My mother was very much disappointed because I did not accept an offer I had before I saw you from a man who was certainly 'eligible' in every way--I think you said my father had told you of it? I could not care for him; but I think my passion for you was blinder and more headlong, if anything, than is usually the case in very young girls. It possessed me from the moment I saw you in church that first time. You pleased my eyes as no other man has ever done, and I was only too glad to take it for granted that your career and your character were all that they ought to have been. But of course I did not love you, for passion, you know, is only the introduction to love. It is a flame that may be blown out at any time by a difference of opinion, and mine went out the moment I learnt that your past had been objectionable. I really care more for you now than I did in the days when I was 'in love' with you. For you have been very good to me--very kind in every possible way. So much so, indeed, that I have more than once felt the keenest regret--I have wished that there was no barrier between us."

"There is no hope for me, then?" he again suggested, but with hope in his heart as he spoke.

She shook her head sadly.

"It is what might have been that I regret," she answered; "but that does not change what has been--and is."

"I suppose you consider that I have spoilt your life?" he said.

"Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "Don't think that. Don't blame yourself. I have never blamed you since I was cool enough to reflect. It is the system that is at fault, the laxity which permits anyone, however unfit, to enter upon the most sacred of all human relations. Saints should find a reward for sanctity in marriage; but the Church, with that curious want of foresight for which it is peculiar, induced the saints to put themselves away in barren celibacy so that their saintliness could not spread, while it encouraged sinners satiated with vice to transmit their misery-making propensities from generation to generation. I believe firmly that marriage, when those who marry are of such character as to make the contract holy matrimony, is a perfect state, fulfilling every law of our human nature, and making earth with all its drawbacks a heaven of happiness; but such marriages as we see contracted every day are simply a degradation of all the higher attributes which distinguish men from beasts. For there is no contract more carelessly made, more ridiculed, more lightly broken; no sacred subject that is oftener blasphemed; and nothing else in life affecting the dignity and welfare of man which is oftener attacked with vulgar ribaldry in public, or outraged in private by the secret conduct of it. No. You are not to blame, nor am I. It is not our fault that we form the junction of the old abuses and the new modes of thought. Some two people must have met as we have for the benefit of others. But it has been much better with us than it might have been--thanks to your kindness. I have been quite happy here with you--much happier than I should have been at Fraylingay, I think, all this time. You have never interfered with my pursuits or endeavoured to restrict my liberty in any way, and consequently my occupations and interests have been more varied, and my content greater than it would have been at home after my father had discovered how very widely we differ in opinion. I am grateful to you, George, and I do hope that it has been as well with you as it has been with me since I came to Malta."

"Oh, yes. I have been all right," he answered--in a quite dissatisfied tone, however. But presently that passed, and then he slid into a better frame of mind, "You are a good woman, Evadne," he said. "You have played me a--ah--very nasty trick, and I don't agree with you--and I don't believe there are a dozen men in the world at the present moment who would agree with you. But, apart from your peculiar opinions, you are about one of the nicest girls I ever knew. Everything you do is well done. You're never out of temper. You don't speak much, as a rule, but you're always ready to respond cheerfully when you're spoken to--and you don't interfere. I wish from the bottom of my soul you had never been taught to read and write, and then you would have had no views to come between us. But since you think you cannot care for me, I shall not persecute you. I gave you my word of honour that I never would, and I hope I have kept it."

"Yes--indeed. You have been goodness itself," she answered.

"I wrote and told your father how very well we get on," he continued, "and tried to persuade him to make it up with you, but the old gentleman is obstinate. He has his own notion of a wife's duty, and he sticks to it. But I did my best, because I know you feel the separation from your own family, although you never complain. He can't get over your wanting a 'Christlike' man for a husband. He says he laughs every time he thinks of it. The first time he laughed at that idea of yours I was there, and a--eh--very unpleasant laugh it was. It got my back up somehow, and made me feel ready to take your part against him. It isn't a compliment, you know, to have your father-in-law laugh outright at the notion of your ever being able to come up to your wife's idea of what a man should be. And when he came down raging about your books, it was the recollection of that laugh, I believe, that made me determine to get them for you, I asked your mother to show me your old rooms, and I just took all the books I could find; and then I thought it would be a good idea to make your new rooms look as much like the old ones as possible."

"It was a very kind thought," Evadne answered.

"I don't pretend to have been a saint; very much the contrary," Colonel Colquhoun proceeded with that assumption of humility often apparent in the repentant sinner who expects to derive both credit and importance from his past when he frankly confesses it was wicked, "but I hope I have always been a gentleman,"--with her "saint" and "gentleman" were synonymous terms,--"and what I want to say is," he continued--"I don't quite see how to put it; but you have just expressed yourself satisfied with the arrangements I have made for you so far. Well, if you really think that I have done all I can to make your life endurable, will you do something for me? I am a good deal older than you are. In all human probability you will outlive me. Will you promise me that during my lifetime you will not mix yourself up publicly--will not join societies, make speeches, or publish books, which people would know you had written, on the social subjects you are so fond of."

"Fond of!" she ejaculated.

"Well, perhaps that is not the right expression," he conceded.

"No, very far from the right expression," she answered gently. "Social subjects seem to be forcing themselves on the attention of every thoughtful and right-minded person just now, and it would be culpable cowardice to shun them while there is the shadow of a hope that some means may be devised to put right what is so very wrong. Ignoring an evil is tantamount to giving it full licence to spread. But I am thankful to say I have never known anyone who found the knowledge of evil anything but distressing--except Mrs. Guthrie Brimston, and she only delights in it so long as it is made a jest of. But they are all alike in that set she belongs to. Their ideas of propriety are bounded by their sense of pleasure. So long as you talk flippantly, they will listen and laugh; but if you talk seriously on the same subject, you make the matter disagreeable, and then they call it 'improper.'"

Colonel Colquhoun was standing with his arms folded on the parapet of the veranda looking down a vista of yellow houses at a glimpse there was of the sea, dotted with boats, hazy with heat, intensely blue, and sparkling back reflections of the glaring sun. From where Evadne sat she saw the same scene through the open balustrade over the tops of the oleanders growing in the garden below, and gradually the heat, and stillness, and beauty, stole over her, melting her mood to tenderness, and filling her mind with sadly sweet memories of the days of delight which preceded "all this." She thought of the yellow gorse on the common, recalling its peculiar fragrance; of the misty cobwebs stretched from bush to bush, and decked with dazzling drops of dew; of the healthy happy heath creatures peeping out at her shyly, here a rabbit and there a hare; of a lark that sprang up singing and was lost to sight in a moment, of a thrush that paused to reflect as she passed. She thought of the little church on the high cliffs, the bourne of her morning walks, of the long stretch of sand; and of the sea; and she felt the fresh free air of those open spaces rouse her again to a gladness in life not often known to ladies idling on languid afternoons in the sickly heat essential to the wellbeing of citron, orange, and myrtle; beloved of the mythical faun, but fatal to the best energies of the human race. And by a very natural transition, her mind leaped on to that morning in church when the sense of loneliness which comes to all young creatures that have no mate resolved itself into that silent supplication, the petition which it is a part of the joy of life in youth to present to a heaven which is willing enough to hear; and she recalled the thrill of delight that trembled through every nerve of her body when she looked up, and found her answer, when she saw and recognized what she sought in the glance which, flashing between them, was the spark that first fired the train of her blind passion for Colonel Colquhoun. She thought then that her prayer was answered at that moment; and she believed still that it had been answered so; but for a special purpose which she had not then perceived. Colonel Colquhoun was not the husband of her heart, but the rod of chastisement for her rash presumption; he had not been given to her for her own happiness, but that she might act as she had done to set an example by which she should have the double privilege of expiating a fault of her own, and at the same time securing the peace in life of others. It was in this way there hummed in her brain on that hot afternoon results of the faith which had been held by her ancestors; of the teaching which she had herself received directly; with a curious glimmering of truths that were already half apparent to her own acute faculties; an incongruous jumble all leavened by the natural instincts of a being rich in vitality, and wholesome physical force. With the recollection of the old days came back the shadow of the old sensation. The interval was forgotten for the moment. She saw before her the man whose every glance and word had thrilled her with pleasurable emotion, whom it had been a joy just to be with and see. It was the same man leaning there, fine of form and feature, with a dreamy look in his blue eyes softening the glitter which was apt to be hard and stony. If only--At that moment Colonel Colquhoun looked round at her, hesitated, although his face flushed, and then exclaimed: "Evadne, you do love me!"

"I did love you," she answered.

He sat down beside her, close to her: "Will you forget all this?" he said. "Will you forget my past; will you make me a different man? Will you? You can." He half stretched out his hand to take hers, but then drew back, a gentleman always in that he would not force her inclinations in any way. "If I do not change, we can be again as we are now, and there would be no harm done. Will you consent, Evadne, will you--my wife--will you?"

He leant forward so close that her senses were troubled--too close, for she pushed her chair back to relieve herself of the oppression, and the act irritated him. Another moment, a little more persuasion and caressing of the voice, which he could use so well to that effect, and she might have given in to the kind of fascination which she had felt in his presence from the first; but when she moved he drew back too, his countenance clouded, and her own momentary yearning to be held close, close; to be kissed till she could not think; to live the intoxicating life of the senses only, and not care, was over.

"We could never be again as we are now," she answered. "There would be no return for me. A wife cannot feel as I do. And you--you would not change. Or at least you would only change your habits; the consequences of them you will carry to your grave with you, and I doubt if you could ever change your habits once for all. You were a different man for a while when I first came out, but you soon relapsed. No. I can never regret my present attitude; but I have seen several times already how much reason I should have to regret--a different arrangement."

"You make light of love," he said. "Many a girl has died of a disappointment."

"Many a girl is a fool," she answered placidly. "And what can love offer me in exchange for the calm content of my life just now? for my perfect health? for my freedom from care?"

"A reconciliation with your family," he suggested.

She sighed, and sat silent a little, lost in thought.

"I do not live with my family now," she answered at last. "They have all their own interests, their own loves, apart from mine; would a letter or two a year from them make up after all for the risk of misery I should be running--for the terrible, helpless, hopeless, incurable misery of an unhappily married woman, if I should become one?"

He rose and returned to his old position, leaning over the veranda, looking down to the sea.

"You are cold-blooded, I think, Evadne," he reiterated.

She said nothing, but rested her head on the back of her chair and smiled. She was not cold-blooded, and he knew it as well as she did. She was only a nineteenth century woman of the higher order with senses so refined that if her moral as well as her physical being were not satisfied in love, both would revolt. They were silent some time after that, and then he turned to her once more.

"Will you promise me that one thing, Evadne?" he asked. "Promise me that during my lifetime you will never mix yourself up--never take part publicly in any question of the day. It would be too deuced ridiculous for me, you know, to have my name appearing in the papers in connection with measures of reform, and all that sort of thing."

"I promise to spare you that kind of annoyance at all events," she answered without hesitation, making the promise, not because she was infirm of purpose, but because she was indefinite; she had no impulse at the time to do anything, and no notion that she would ever feel impelled to act in opposition to this wish of his.

"Thank you," he said, and there was another little pause, which he was again the first to break.

"You would have loved me, then, if I had lived a different life," he said.

"Yes," she answered simply, "I should have loved you. No other man has made me feel for a moment what I felt for you, while I believed that you were all that a man should be who proposes to marry; and I don't think any other man ever will, You were born for me. Why, oh, why! did you not live for me?"

"I wish to God I had," he answered.

She rose impulsively, and stretched out her hands to him. Its was a movement of pain and pity, sorrow and sympathy, and he understood it.

"You meant to marry always," she said, "You treasured in your heart your ideal of a woman; why could you not have lived so that you would have been her ideal too, when at last you met?"

He took her two little outstretched hands and held them a moment in his, looking down at them, "I wish to God I had," he repeated.

"Did it never occur to you that a woman has her ideal as well as a man?" she said: "that she loves purity and truth, and loathes degradation and vice more than a man does?"

"Theoretically, yes," he answered; "but you find practically that women will marry anyone. If they were more particular, we should be more particular too."

"Ah, that is our curse," said Evadne--"yours and mine. If women had been 'more particular' in the past, you would have been a good man, and I should have been a happy wife to-day."

He raised her hands, which he was still holding, placing them palm to palm, took them in one of his, and clasped them to his chest, bringing her very close to him; and then he looked into her upturned face, considering it, with that curious set expression on his own, which always came at a crisis. Her lips were parted, her cheeks were pale, she still panted from the passion of her last utterance, and her eyes, as he looked down into them, were pained in expression and fixed. He let her hands drop, and once more returned to his old position, leaning upon the balustrade with his back to her, looking out over the sea. If it had been possible to have obtained the mastery he had dreamed of over her, mere animal mastery, the thought would have repelled him now. He might have dominated her senses, but her soul would only have been the more confirmed in its loathing of his life. He knew the strength of her convictions, knew that, so long as they were a few yards apart, she could always have ruled both herself and him; and life is lived a few yards apart. It was the best side of his nature that was under Evadne's influence and he had now some saving grace of manhood in him, which enabled him to appreciate the esteem with which she had begun to repay his consideration for her, and to admire the consistent self-respect which had brought her triumphantly out of all her difficulties, and won her a distinguished position in the place. He felt that he ought to be satisfied, and knew that he would have to be.

She remained standing as he had left her, and presently he turned to her again. "Forgive me," he said, "for provoking a discussion which has pained you needlessly. If repentance and remorse could wipe out the past, I should be worthy to claim you this minute. But I know you are right. There might have been hours of intoxication, but there would have been years of misery also--for you--as my wife. Your decision was best for both of us. It was our only chance of peace." He looked at her wistfully, and approached a step.

She met him more than halfway. She put her hands on his shoulders, and looked up at him. "But we are friends, George," she said with emotion. "I seem to have nobody now but you belonging to me, and I should be lonely indeed if--" She suddenly burst into tears.

"Yes, yes," he said huskily. "Of course we are friends; the best friends. We shall always be friends. I have never let anyone say a word against you, and I never will. I am proud to think that you are known by my name. I only wish that I could make it worthy of you--and, perhaps, some day--in the field--"

Poor fellow! The highest proof of moral worth he knew of was to be able to take a prominent part in some great butchery of his fellow-men, without exhibiting a symptom of fear.

Evadne had recovered herself, and now smiled up at him with wet eyelashes.

"Not there, I hope!" she answered. "Going to war and getting killed is not a proof of affection and respect which we modern women care about. I would rather keep you safe at home, and quarrel with you."

Colonel Colquhoun smiled. "Here is tea," he said, seeing a servant enter the room behind them. "Shall we have it out here? We shall be cooler."

"Yes, by all means," she answered.

And then they began to talk of things indifferent, but with a new and happy consciousness of an excellent understanding between them.

Chapter XV

The following day, as Colonel Colquhoun went out in the afternoon, he met Evadne coming in with Mrs. Malcomson and Mrs. Sillenger. Evadne was leaning on Mrs. Malcomson's arm. She looked haggard and pale, and the other two ladies were evidently also much distressed.

"Has anything happened?" Colquhoun asked with concern, "Are you ill, Evadne?"

"I am sick at heart," she answered bitterly.

"We have had bad news," Mrs. Malcomson said significantly.

Colonel Colquhoun stood aside, and let them pass in. Then he went on to the club, wondering very much what the news could be.

There he found Captain Belliot, Colonel Beston, and a few more of his particular friends, all discussing something in tones of righteous indignation. Mr. Price and Mr. St. John were there also. A mail had just arrived bringing the details of Edith's illness from Morningquest.

Mr. St. John turned from the group, and as he did so Colonel Colquhoun noticed that his gait was uncertain, and his face was white and distorted as if with physical pain. His impulse was to offer him a restorative and see him to his rooms, but Mr. Price anticipated the kind intention.

It was Mrs. Orton Beg who had written to Evadne, and she had brought Mrs. Sillenger and Mrs. Malcomson in to hear the letter read.

"Edith is quite, quite mad," she said, unconsciously choosing the poor girl's own expression; "and the most horrible part of it is, she knows it herself. She wants to do the most dreadful things, and all the time she feels as much horror of such deeds as we should. My aunt says her sufferings are too terrible to describe. But she was growing gradually weaker when the letter left."

"How awful!" Mrs. Sillenger ejaculated. "To think of her as we knew her, so beautiful, and so sweet and good and true in every way; and with her magnificent physique! and now not a soul that loves her, when they hear that she is 'growing gradually weaker,' would wish it otherwise."

"My aunt concludes her letter by saying: 'I am telling you the state of the case exactly,'" Evadne continued, "'because I did not agree with you when you were here. I had been, so shielded from evil myself that I could not believe in the danger to which all women in their weakness are exposed. But I agree with you now, perfectly. We must alter all this, and we can. Put me into communication with your friends--'"

"And you will join us yourself, Evadne?" Mrs. Malcomson exclaimed.

"Certainly I shall!" she answered emphatically. Then all at once something flashed through her mind.

"Heaven!" she exclaimed. "I had forgotten! I cannot--I cannot join you. I have given my word--to do nothing--so long as Colonel Colquhoun is alive."

Up to this time, Evadne in her home life had been serene and healthy minded. But now suddenly there came a change. She began to ask: Why should she trouble herself? Nobody who had a claim upon her wished her to do anything but dress well and make herself agreeable, and that was what most of the people about her were doing to the best of their ability. The Church enjoined that she should do her duty. What was her duty? Clearly to acquiesce as everybody else was doing, to refuse to know of anything that might distress her, to be pleased and to give pleasure. That was all that heaven itself had to offer her, and if she could make heaven upon earth now, with a fan and a book, and a few congenial friends, she would.

This was the first consequence of her promise to Colonel Colquhoun. It had cramped her into a narrow groove wherein to struggle would only have been to injure herself ineffectually. There comes a time when every intellectual being is forced to choose some definite pursuits. Evadne had been formed for a life of active usefulness; but now she found herself reduced to an existence of objectless contemplation, and she suffered acutely until she had recourse to St. Paul and the pulpit, from which barren fields she succeeded at last in collecting samples enough to make up a dose of the time-honoured anodyne sacred to her sex. It is a delicious opiate which gives immediate relief, but it soothes without healing and is in the long run deleterious. And this was the influence under which Evadne entered upon a new phase of life altogether. She gave up reading; and by degrees there grew upon her a perfect horror of disturbing emotions. She burnt any books she had with repulsive incidents in them. She would not have them about even, lest they should remind her. There were some pictures also in her rooms which depicted scenes of human suffering--a battle piece, a storm at sea, a caravan lost in the desert, and a prison scene; and those she had removed. She would have ended all such horrors if she could, but as that was impossible, she would not even think of them; and accordingly, she had those pictures replaced by soothing subjects--moonlit spaces, sun-bright seas, clear brown rivulets, lakes that mirrored the placid mountains, and flowers and birds and trees. She would look at nothing that was other than restful; she would read nothing that harrowed her feelings; she would listen to nothing that might move her to indignation and reawaken the futile impulse to resist; and she banished all thought or reflection that was not absolutely tranquillizing in effect or otherwise enjoyable.

But all this was extremely enervating. She had owed her force of character to her incessant intellectual activity, which had also kept her mind pure, and her body in excellent condition. Had she not found an outlet for her superfluous vitality as a girl in the cultivation of her mind, she must have become morbid and hysterical, as is the case with both sexes when they remain in the unnatural state of celibacy with mental energy unapplied. We are like running water, bright and sparkling so long as the course is clear; but divert us into unprogressive shallows, where we lie motionless, and very soon we stagnate, and every particle of life within us becomes offence. This was the fate which threatened Evadne. As her mind grew sluggish, her bodily health decreased, and the climate began to tell upon her. Malta has a pet fever of its own, of a dangerous kind, from which she had hitherto escaped, but now, quite suddenly, she went down with a bad attack, and hovered for weeks between life and death. Colonel Colquhoun made arrangements to take her home as soon as she was sufficiently strong to be moved; but just at that time a small war broke out, and his regiment was one of the first to be ordered to the front. He was able to see her off, however, with other ladies of the regiment, and he telegraphed to her friends begging them to meet her at Southampton. The hope of seeing them sustained Evadne during the voyage, but when she arrived only Mrs. Orton Beg appeared. The latter was shocked by the change in Evadne. Her hair had been cut short, her eyes were sunken, her cheeks were hollow; she was skin and bone, and the colour of death.

Mrs. Orton Beg had gone on board the steamer, and Evadne had been brought up on deck, supported by one of the ladies and her own maid.

She looked at her aunt, and then she looked beyond her. "Has my mother not come to meet me?" she asked.

Mrs. Orton Beg looked at her compassionately.

"Is she ill?" Evadne added.

"No, dear," her aunt replied.

Evadne burst into tears. It was a bitter disappointment, and she was very weak, and had suffered a great deal.

After her arrival her pompous papa continued "firm," as he called it, and as she was equally "firm" herself, he would not have her at Fraylingay. He repeated that if there were one human weakness which is more reprehensible than another, it is obstinacy, and he told Mrs. Frayling that she must choose between himself and Evadne. If she preferred the latter, she might go to see her, but she should not return to him. He meant to be master in his own house--and so on, at the top of his voice, with infinite bluster--to which it was that Mrs. Frayling submitted. She never could bear a noise.

Evadne, therefore, saw nothing of her mother or brothers or sisters, and must have been lonely, indeed, had it not been for Mrs. Orton Beg, who took charge of her and nursed her and brought her round, and remained with her until Colonel Colquhoun returned. They spent most of their time in the Western Highlands, but stayed also in London and Paris.

Colonel Colquhoun was absent a year, and made the most of every opportunity to distinguish himself. At the end of the war he was made C.B., and promoted to the rank of colonel; and, his time with his regiment having expired, he was further honoured by being immediately appointed to the command of the depôt at Morningquest. Evadne was glad to see him again. She had missed him, and had waited anxiously for his return. She had no one to care for in his absence, no one, that is to say, who was specially her charge, to be attended to and made comfortable. He had narrowed her sphere of usefulness down to that by the promise he had exacted, and in his absence she had what to her was a useless, purposeless existence, wandering about from place to place. During this period she made few notes in the "Commonplace Book," but the few all bore witness to one thing, viz., her ever increasing horror of unpleasantness in any shape or form.

END OF BOOK III.

IV. THE TENOR AND THE BOY.--AN INTERLUDE

His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles; His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate; His tears pure messengers sent from his heart, His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.

--Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Chapter I

Morningquest, with the sunset glow upon it, might have made you think of Arthur's "dim rich city"; but Morningquest had already flourished a thousand years longer than Caerlyon, and was just as many times more wicked. And it was known to be so, although not a tithe of the crimes committed in it were ever brought to light; but even of those which were known and recorded, no man could have told you the half, so great was their number. Of course, as the place was wicked, the doctors were well to the fore, combating the wages of sin gallantly; and the lawyers also, needless to say, were busy; and so, too, were the clergy in their own way, ecclesiasticism being well-worked; Christianity, however, was much neglected, so that, for the most part, the devil went unmolested in Morningquest, and had a good time.

There were seventy-five churches besides the cathedral within the city boundary, and a large sprinkling of religious sects of all denominations, which caused ferment enough to prevent stagnation; and, of course, where so many churches were the clergy swarmed, and were made the subject of the usual well-worn pleasantries. If you asked what good they were doing, you would hear that nobody knew; but you would also be assured that at all events they were, as a rule, too busy about candles and vestments and what not of that kind of thing, discussing such questions with heat enough to convince anyone that the Lord in heaven cares greatly about the use of one gaud more or less in his service, to do much harm. But, upon the whole, the attitude of the citizens toward the clergy was friendly and unexacting. If nobody heeded them much, nobody opposed them much either, so that, as in any other profession, they enjoyed the liberty of earning their livelihood in their own way. The people considered them without reverence as a part of the population merely; their services were accepted as a necessity in the regular routine of life as bread-and-butter was, and doubtless they did good in some such way, although the one was as much forgotten as the other before it was well assimilated. If the citizens mentioned their teaching at all, it was merely to repeat what they said of the clergy themselves--that it did no harm.

This was a pleasantry of which they never wearied; but sometimes they would add to it another article of their faith, "The Lord is gracious," they would declare, "and when he sends dull preachers, he mercifully sends sleep also to comfort his afflicted people." So the preachers preached, and their congregations slumbered tranquilly, and everbody was satisfied. If the clergy squabbled amongst themselves, and with their churchwardens, their fellow-citizens were rather grateful to them than otherwise for varying the monotony, so that they were encouraged to wage their internecine combats to their hearts' content; and when these lapsed and they let each other alone, it was always interesting to see how they turned upon the bishop. But nobody was disturbed, for in such a sleepy old place--and the respectable part of it was sleepy!--men habitually view the vagaries of their friends with smiling tolerance, and if they comment upon them at all, it is without bitterness.

In general history there are always events, as there are people, that take prominent places and attract attention long after similar events are buried and forgotten. They owe their vitality less to their importance, perhaps, than to some gleam of poetry, pathos, or romance which distinguishes the actors in them; and most old places have a pet tragedy amongst their traditions, but Morningquest was an exception to this rule, for, although it had its particular tragedy, it was quite a new one. From the first, however, it was easy enough to foresee that this one event of all the sorrowful things which had happened in that bad old place, having as it were every desirable requirement of time, setting, and person to invest it with a proper, permanent and most pathetic interest, was the likeliest one to be remembered.

Morningquest was a city of singers, and the citizens were proud of their cathedral choir, which was chiefly recruited from amongst themselves, there being a succession of exquisite boy-voices constantly forthcoming to awaken the slumbering echoes in the ancient pile, and the sweet old sentiments in the people's hearts. Some of the lay clerks had been choristers themselves, and amongst them was one who had been especially noted, as a boy for his birdlike treble. It seemed a thousand pities when it broke; but as he reached maturity, he found himself able to sing again, and eventually he developed a very true, if not very powerful tenor voice, and rose in time to be the leading tenor in the choir. People had flocked to hear him sing in his childhood, and as they still came, it was natural that he should continue to think himself the attraction, and also natural that he should be somewhat puffed up in consequence. He wore a moustache, he wore a ring, he put on airs, he scented his pocket-handkerchiefs, he ogled the pretty ladies in the canon's pew like an officer; but he was an orphan, and had a poor old kinswoman depending upon him, and kept her well; he was harmless, he never did anyone an ill-turn, nor said an evil thing, and he could sing; so that, taken all round, his good qualities outweighed his weaknesses, and he was duly allowed the measure of praise and respect which he earned.

But his rings, and his scents, and his affectations generally, covered a secret ambition. He wanted to be more than a tenor in the choir; he wanted to be an opera singer, and he entered into negotiations with a London impressario. He did so secretly, being fearful of discouragement, and also because he wished to surprise his friends, and when a personal interview became necessary he did not ask for the means to make the journey; he had the management of the choir funds, and there being a surplus in his hands at the moment, he made use of the money, borrowing it in perfect good faith, and honestly sure that he would be able to repay it before it was required of him. Had he succeeded, the money would have been returned at once; but, alas, he did not succeed, the money was spent, his hopes were shattered, and his honest career was at an end. "If only he had come to me, the matter might have been put right," the dean said, and he publicly reproached himself for not knowing the hearts of his people better, so that he might have entered with sympathy into their lives, and won their confidence. The tenor ought to have trusted him, but he never thought of such a thing. He was a poor crushed creature, and had abandoned hope. But he went back to Morningquest nevertheless. Indeed, where else could he go? He knew no other place, and had never a friend elsewhere in the world. So he went back mechanically, and he went to the cathedral, and there he hid himself. And there three times a day for three days he looked down from the clerestory, himself unseen, looked into the faces he knew so well, faces which had been friendly faces, eyes that had watched him kindly all his life; and, out there in the cold, he followed the services at which he had been wont to assist, taking a leading part almost so long as he could remember. And there in the grim solitude by day, and the added horror of ghostly darkness by night, he lived on thought, and suffered his agony of remorse, and the minor miseries of cold and hunger and thirst, till the need of endurance ceased to be felt. And then, amid the misty morning grayness of the fourth day he hanged himself from a ladder left by some workmen engaged in repairs, by whom his body was afterward found desecrating the sacred precincts.

These are the materials out of which Morningquest wove its pet tragedy. The event happened at the beginning of that important year which the Heavenly Twins spent with their grandfather at Morne, and doubtless they heard all about it, but, being very much occupied with a variety of absorbing interests at the time, it did not make any particular impression upon them. It was brought home to them eventually, however, when it might have been considered an old story; but it had not become so then in anybody's estimation, nor has it since because of the pity of it which lent the pathetic interest that makes a story deathless and ageless; the subtle something which influences to better moods, and from which the years as they pass do not detract, but rather pay it the tribute of an occasional addition thereto, by which its hope of immortality is greatly strengthened.

After the tenor's death, the difficulty had been who should succeed him. There was nobody immediately forthcoming, and this had put the dean and chapter in a fix, for it happened that there were services of particular importance going on in the cathedral at the time, to which strangers flocked from a distance, and it was felt that it would never do to disapppoint them of their music. So, on the morning of the great day of all, after the early service, the dean, the precentor, and the organist, having doffed their surplices, returned to the choir, and stood for some time beside the brazen lectern, discussing the subject.

While they were so engaged, a gentleman came up to the dean, and, after making a graceful apology for the intrusion, explained that he had heard of their difficulty, and begged to be allowed to sing the tenor part, and a solo, at the afternoon service.

The dean looked doubtful; the precentor, judging by the stranger's appearance and tone that he might be somebody, was inclined to be obsequious; the organist struck a neutral attitude, and stood by ready to agree to anything.

"I can sing," the applicant said modestly, answering the doubt he saw in the dean's demeanour; "although I confess that I have not been doing so lately. I think I may venture to promise, however, that I shall not, at all events, spoil the service."

"Well, sir," the dean replied, "if you can help us, you will really be putting us under a great obligation, for we are in a most awkward dilemma. What do you say, Mr. Precentor?"

"I should say, as the organist is here, if this gentleman would try his part this morning--"

"That is what I was about to suggest," the stranger interposed.

The precentor found the music, the organist retired to his instrument, the dean took a seat, and the stranger sang. When he paused, the dean arose.

"I thank you, sir," he said with effusion, "and I gratefully accept your offer."

The stranger bowed to his little audience, returned the music, and left the building.

He was a young man, tall and striking in appearance; clean shaven, with delicate features, dark dreamy gray eyes, and a tumbled mop of golden hair, innocent of parting. He was well-dressed, but his clothes hung upon him loosely, as if he had grown thinner since they were made; his face was pale too, and pinched in appearance, and his movements were languid, giving him altogether the air of a man just recovering from some serious illness. That he was a gentleman no one would have doubted for a moment, nor would they have been surprised to hear that he was a great man in the sense of being a peer or something of that kind, for there was that indefinable something in his look and bearing which people call aristocratic, and his manner was calm and assured like that of a well-bred man of the world accustomed to good society.

The people who flocked to the afternoon service that day regarded him with much curiosity, and he was certainly unlike anyone whom they had hitherto seen in the choir. A surplice had been found for him, and the dead white contrasted well with the brightness of his hair, and made the refined beauty of his face even more remarkable than it had been in his morning dress. Sitting with the lay clerks behind the choristers, he looked like the representative of another and a higher race, and even those of them whose personal attractions had hitherto been considered more than merely passable when they appeared beside him were suddenly seen to be hopelessly commonplace. But, although the interest he excited was evident enough, it was equally evident that he himself remained quite unaware of it. In his whole bearing there was not the slightest assumption. He entered with the choir, and might have been in the habit of doing so all his life, so perfectly unconscious did he seem of anything new or strange in the position. As soon as he was seated, without even glancing at the people, he had taken up his music, and continued lost in the study of it until the service opened; and then he sang his part with ease and precision, which, however, attracted less attention at the moment than his appearance. The rest of the choir, animated by his presence, exerted themselves to the utmost, but were too delighted with their own performances to think much of his before the solo began.

Then, however, they awoke. The first note he uttered was a long crescendo of such rich volume and so sweet, that the people held their breath and looked up:

This world recedes; it disappears! Heaven opens my eyes! my ears With sounds seraphic ring: Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O Grave! where is thy victory? O Death! where is thy sting?

It was as if a delicious spell had been cast upon the congregation, which held them bound until the last note of the exquisite voice, even the last reverberation of the organ accompaniment, had trembled into silence, and then there was a movement, a flutter, a great sigh of relief heaved, so to speak, as if the pleasure had been too great, and nerves and senses were glad to be released from the tension of it.

The Tenor was slightly flushed when he resumed his seat, but otherwise his face was as serenely impassive as ever.

"It is some great singer from abroad," the people whispered to each other. "He is used to every kind of success, and does not even trouble himself to see if we are pleased. He has sung doubtless to gratify some whim of his own. Such artists are capricious folk." To which the answer was: "Long may such whims continue!"

After the service, the dean hastened to thank the stranger. He shook his hand with emotion, and congratulated him upon his marvellous gift. "May I ask if you are a professional singer?" the old gentleman said.

"Not yet," was the answer; "but I wish to offer myself for the vacant post of Tenor in the choir, if you are satisfied with my attainments."

The dean stared at him. "Oh--ah--" he stammered in his surprise; and then he added something apologetically about references, and being obliged to ask a few questions.

"If you have the time to spare, I think I can satisfy you now," the stranger answered.

The dean, perceiving that he wished to speak to him alone, bowed courteously, and requested the applicant to accompany him to the deanery. The precentor, who had assisted at the interview up to this point, now watched them depart, and as he did so he pursed up his lips significantly. The stranger had sunk in his estimation from the possible rank of a Russian prince to that of a simple singer, a considerable drop; but the precentor was a musician, and he asserted that the voice was of the finest quality, and trained to perfection. He wanted to know, however, what could bring a man with a fortune like that in his throat to bury himself alive in Morningquest, and he ventured to predict that it must be something "fishy."

The stranger had a long private interview with the dean, but what transpired thereat was never made public. It was known, however, that when he left the deanery the dean himself accompanied him to the door, and there shook hands with him cordially; and it was immediately afterward announced that "Mr. Jones" was to be the new tenor.

"Mr. Jones, indeed!" said Morningquest sarcastically. "As much Jones as the bishop!" And the precentor was sure that the dean had been taken in by a clever impostor, which would not have been the case, he asserted, if the matter had been referred to him as it ought to have been. But Morningquest declared that there was no imposition about that voice, and as to antecedents, why, it was absurd to be too particular when everything else was so entirely satisfactory.

There happened to be a tiny tenement in the Close vacant when the new lay clerk began his duties as Tenor in the choir, and this he took. It was a detached house, one of a row which faced the apse on the south side of the cathedral. One step led down from the road into the little front garden, and another from that into the house, which was thus two steps below the road in front, but was level with the garden at the back. The passage ran right through the house, the garden door being opposite the front door; the kitchen was behind a little sitting room on the right as you entered, and on the left were two other rooms when the Tenor took the house, the one looking into the back garden, the other into the front; but these two rooms he immediately turned into one by having the dividing wall removed, and together they made a long, low, but comfortably proportioned apartment, with a French window at either end. The Tenor spent all his spare time when he first arrived in decorating this room, "making work for himself," as the people said; and indeed that was just what he seemed to be doing, for he worked, as a man does who feels that he ought to be occupied, but he takes no pleasure and finds no relief in any occupation. He frescoed the walls and ceiling of his room with admirable taste and skill, making it look twice the size by cunning divisions of the pattern on the walls, and by the well-devised proportions of dado and cornice.

The dean often went to watch him at his work, and sat on a packing case (the only article which the room contained at the time) by the hour together talking to him, a circumstance which, taken with the fact that other gentlemen in the neighbourhood also called upon him and lingered long on the premises, greatly exercised the inquisitive minds of the multitude, especially when it was perceived that the Tenor, instead of being elated by their condescension, accepted it as a matter of course, and continued always the same--sad, preoccupied, impassive, seldom smiling, never surprised, taking no healthy interest in anything.

When the painting was finished, furniture began to arrive, and this was another surprise for the Close, where houses were not adorned with the designs of any one period, but were filled with a heterogeneous collection of articles, generally aged and remarkably uncouth. Everything in the Tenor's long low room, on the contrary, even down to the shape of the brass coal scuttle and including the case of the grand piano, was in harmony with the colour and design of the frescoes on the walls and ceiling; the floor, which was polished, being adorned here and there with rugs which suggested dim reflections of the tint and tone above. It was a luxurious apartment, but not effeminate. The luxury was masculine luxury, refined and significant; there was no meaningless feminine fripperies about, nor was there any evidence of sensuous self-indulgence. It was the abode of a cultivated man, but of one who was essentially manly withal.

The fame of this apartment having been noised abroad, the precentor came one day to inspect it. There is no need to describe this precentor; one knows exactly what a man must be who calls things "fishy." He was an ordained clergyman, but not at all benevolent, neither was he a Christian, for he did not love his neighbour as himself, and his visit on this occasion was anything but friendly in intention. He was determined to know something more about the Tenor, he said, and he meant to question him. His theory was that the Tenor had been a public singer, but had disgraced himself, and was unable to appear again in consequence; and on this supposition he intended to proceed.

He found the Tenor with his hat in his hand on the point of leaving the house; but the precentor was not delicate about detaining him. He walked into the sitting room without waiting to be asked, pried impertinently into everything, and then sat down. The Tenor meantime had remained standing with his hat in his hand patiently waiting, and he still stood, but the precentor did not take the hint.

"You are an opera singer, I think you said," he remarked as soon as he was seated.

The Tenor looked at him inquiringly.

"Or was it concerts?" he suggested, a trifle disconcerted.

The Tenor looked gravely amused.

"It was not the music halls, of course?" the precentor persuasively insinuated.

"Well, hardly," said the Tenor, fixing his steady eyes upon the man in a way that made him wince. "I have some business to attend to in the town," he added. "Pray make yourself at home so long as it pleases you to remain;" with which he brushed his hand back over his glossy hair, put on his hat, and sauntered out, leaving his gentle guest to ruminate.

The interest which the Tenor had begun by exciting in the breasts of the quiet inhabitants of Morningquest did not diminish all at once, as might have been expected. He was only a lay clerk, to be sure, but then he was so utterly unlike any other lay clerk. He was always so carefully dressed, for one thing, and maintained so successfully that suggestion of good breeding which had been their first impression of him; was altogether so distinguished in appearance that it was a pleasure to hear strangers exclaim: "Who is that?" and to be able to surprise them with the off-hand rejoinder: "Oh, that is only our tenor."

Then he was a stranger from nobody knew where; he went by the name of "Jones," which was not believed to be his; he had a magnificent voice, and he remained in Morningquest in an obscure position, making nothing of it. True, he must have means; but what after all were the means which he appeared to possess compared with the means which he might be enjoying? And further--and this was considered the most extraordinary circumstance of all--there was his attitude in the cathedral. He followed the services devoutly; and such a thing as attention, let alone devotion, on the part of a lay clerk had never been heard of in Morningquest. There was not even a remote tradition in existence to prepare anybody's mind for such a contingency.

So that altogether the man was a mystery; a mystery, however, toward which the kindly people were well-disposed. And no wonder. For the Tenor's manners were as attractive as his appearance, and his ways were not at all mysterious when considered apart from the points already indicated, but, on the contrary, simple in the extreme: the ways of one who is kindly courteous and considerate on all occasions, paying proper respect to every man, and also rigorously exacting from each the respect that was due to himself. He would always see people who called upon him, and though it was believed that he would rather not have been disturbed, he was too much of a gentleman to show it. In fact, it was agreed that he was a gentleman before everything, and not at all like a "Jones"; and therefore, acting on some instinctive perception of the fitness of things, the citizens dropped the offensive appellation altogether and called him "the Tenor" simply, as they might have called him "the Duke."

There was at first a good deal of wonder as to where the money came from with which he furnished his little house in the Close. How did he manage to buy so many books and pictures? and how could he afford to give so much away in charity? For it was known beyond a doubt that he had on more than one occasion relieved the families of the other singers, and had relieved them, too, in a most substantial way. It was evident that he had means; but if he had means, why did he sing in the choir? This question was the Alpha and Omega of ail that concerned him.

It was asked everywhere and by everybody; but no one could answer it save the dean, who was not to be approached upon the subject. Finally, however, people grew tired of forming conjectures which were neither denied nor affirmed, and, becoming accustomed to the Tenor's presence amongst them, they ceased as a regular thing to discuss his affairs.

But this was not the case until a story had been circulated about him which was generally believed, although nobody knew from whence it emanated. He was, according to the story, the illegitimate son of an actress, and some great--in-the-sense-of-having-a-title--man, from whom he inherited his aristocratic appearance and a small income. His mother, it was said, had been an opera singer, which accounted for his voice; and shame, they declared, on the discovery of his birth, had driven him into his present retirement, and caused him to renounce the world. As this story accounted in the most satisfactory manner for all that was strange about him, it was regarded in every respect as authentic; and, after the wickedness of titled men and the frailty of acting women had been freely commented upon with much sage shaking of the head, as if only titled men were wicked and acting women frail, and Morningquest itself was a saintly city, innocent of any deed not strictly in accordance with its word, the matter was allowed to drop, and the Tenor was left to "gang his ain gait," which he would have done in any case, probably, but which he continued to do in a quiet, earnest, regular way that won him a friendly feeling from most men, and more than his share of sympathy and attention from the good women who had not self-love enough to be wounded by his indifference. Unsophisticated little maidens, just budding into womanhood, would peep after him shyly from the old-fashioned houses sometimes, and would feel in their tender little hearts a gentle pity for one who was so handsome and so unfortunate. Like the true hero of romance, he was believed by them to be supremely unhappy, and all they asked was to be allowed to comfort him; but he noticed none of them. And so the little maidens blushed at first for having thought of him at all, and then forgot him for somebody else; or, if the somebody else did not come quickly, they began to regard the Tenor with a totally different feeling--almost as if he had wronged them in some way. But the Tenor continued to "gang his ain gait," and was alike indifferent to their pity or their spite.

His little house, like most of those in the Close, had an old walled garden behind it, a large garden for the size of the house, and so sheltered that many things grew there which would not grow elsewhere in the open. The house itself was picturesque on that side, having a bright south aspect favourable to the growth of creepers, with which it was thickly covered, jasmine, clematis, honeysuckle, and roses succeeding each other in their regular order; and the garden was always full of flowers. It was here that the Tenor spent much of his time, hard at work. He had evidently a passion for flowers, and was a most successful gardener, the conservatory and orchid house, which he had had built soon after his arrival, being always lovely even in the winter. The building of these two houses was considered an extravagance, and had caused the Close to point the finger at him for a while; but when someone declared that the unfortunate Tenor had probably inherited much of his mother's recklessness, and was not therefore responsible as other people were, the suggestion was considered reasonable enough, and from that time forward the Tenor's expensive tastes were held to be separate matter for commiseration; the truth being that Morningquest could not bear to be on bad terms with the Tenor, and would have found an excuse for him had he outraged the best preserved prejudices it ever held.

It was only necessary to glance at the Tenor's books to perceive that he was a student. Many valuable works in many languages were scattered about his house, and it was a well-known fact that he spent much of his leisure in poring over these. To what end his studies might be directed no one, of course, could tell, but it was assumed that he had acquired a respectable amount of knowledge from the fact that the dean, himself a learned man, delighted not a little in his conversation. When this fact had been fully ascertained by careful observation, smouldering curiosity blazed up afresh, and surmise was once more busy with the Tenor's name. Did he write for the magazines, they wondered? It seemed likely enough, for it was notorious in Morningquest that people who did that kind of thing were not like the rest of the world; and it soon came to pass that certain articles relating to various things, such as drainage, deep sea fishery, the coinage of Greece, competitive examinations in China, and essays on other subjects likely to interest an artistic man, were confidently assumed to be his. And the shy little girls in the old-fashioned houses, who never looked at anything in the magazines but the pictures and the poetry, were wont to credit him with certain passionate lays from which they got quite new ideas of eyes and dies and sighs, and other striking rhymes to musical metres which made their little hearts throb pleasurably. But nothing more definite was known of the Tenor's labours than was known of anything else concerning him; and, fortunately for himself, there was that in his bearing which preserved him from being personally annoyed by impertinent curiosity, so that he was most probably pretty nearly the only person in the city who had no idea of the interest he himself excited.

Two years had glided by in great apparent tranquillity since the day the Tenor entered the choir; two years, during which he had trodden the path of life so uprightly, and so purely, that not even a suspicion of wrong-doing was ever breathed against him by gentle or simple, good or bad. It was a calm and passionless existence that he led, the life of an ascetic, but of a cultivated ascetic, devoted to the highest intellectual pursuits, and actuated by the belief that their value consisted, not in their market price, nor in the amount of attention called fame, which they might attract to himself, but in the pleasure they gave and in the good they did. Many a weary man whose life had been wasted in the toil of bringing himself before the world, when he had reached the summit of his ambition, might well have envied the Tenor his placid countenance and untroubled lot; some might even have perceived that there was more of poetry than of commonplace in the quiet life which glided on so evenly, soothed by the cathedral services, cheered by the chime, and guarded by the shadow of its gray protecting walls.

The Tenor's cheeks had been haggard and worn when he first settled in Morningquest, and dark circles round his eyes had betokened sleepless nights, and the ceaseless gnawing ache of a great grief. But all that had passed as the days wore on, giving place to a settled expression of peace-- peace tinged with a certain sadness, but dignified by resignation. Gradually, too, although he remained slender, he ceased to be emaciated, and his cheeks assumed a healthy hue that very well became them.

Chapter II

It was thought at first that the dean's intimacy with the new Tenor arose from a sense of duty sharpened by the feeling of self-reproach with which he had regarded his fancied neglect of the old one; but, however that might have been, it was continued from a genuine liking for the man himself. No one in Morningquest knew the Tenor half so well as the dean did, no one could have had a truer regard for him, or watched the passing of his trouble with more affectionate interest, or noted the change for the better which had been wrought by the regular occupation of those peaceful days with greater satisfaction, The dean knew the Tenor's story, so that their relations might be called confidential; but for two years no allusion had been made by either of them to the past, neither had any plans been formed for the future.

At the end of that time, however, the dean noticed signs of awakening energy in his friend. The Tenor performed his duties less mechanically. His apathy was broken by fits of restlessness. He had found the mornings long lately; he had thought the afternoons objectless; and when evening came and the lamps were lighted, he wearied of his books and music, and chafed a little for something, not change exactly; but he was conscious of a desire--and this he only felt at times--a desire for some trifling human interest which should make the life he was leading fuller. He had awakened, in fact, from his long lethargy, and found himself alone.

The Dean of Morningquest was a remarkable man. He had the fine physique, the high-breeding, and the scholarly reputation common to that order of divines who keep up the dignity of the Church without doing much for Christianity. In person he was tall, but stooped from the shoulders. He had white hair, a fine intellectual face; fresh, and with that young look in it which has been called saint-like, and is only seen on the faces of those in whom passion has not died a natural death as the vital powers decay, but has been brought into subjection, and made to do good work instead of evil. No man consorted more habitually with his equals, or seldomer entertained the notion that there were such people in the world as his inferiors. He practised his religion to the last letter of church law, and worshipped Christ the Son of God; but there is no doubt that he would have turned his exclusive back on Christ the carpenter's son, and had him prosecuted for an impostor had he presented himself with no better pedigree. He could tell the story of the Saviour's sufferings with infinite pathos because he knew who the Saviour was; but he could not have told the same story with the same power had the hero of it been merely one common man sacrificing his life for others. What affected the dean was the enormous condescension. It was the greatness of the Man, not the greatness of the deed, that appealed to him. A poor tradesman might sacrifice his life nobly also; but, then, what is the life of a tradesman comparatively speaking?

People called the dean proud and worldly wise, but this was not true of him. He may have believed that all the people of Palestine belonged to county families, and were therefore called the chosen people, but he never said so. A certain gentle humility of demeanour always distinguished him, no matter to whom he spoke; and he was without doubt a thoroughly good nineteenth century churchman, living at his own level, of course, and true to his caste, toward the weaknesses of which he exercised much charity and forbearance, while he expressed his condemnation of its sins by rigorously excluding from his family circle any member of it who had been openly convicted of disgraceful conduct, just as he excluded professional men and other common citizens when they held no official position which he was obliged to recognize, and were not connected with the landed gentry. But these were the characteristics of his position, for as a dean he was required to be the slave of precedent; as a man, however, he was known to be just and generous, and an excellent good friend to all who had any claim upon him, from the bishop who governed him down to the humblest chorister in the cathedral which he governed.

It was in the early spring when the dean first noticed what he took to be a change for the better in the Tenor's attitude toward life at large. The dean was susceptible himself to kindly changes in the season; so much so, indeed, that, contrary to all precedent, he allowed himself to be tempted out after dark one night into the Close by the balmy mildness of the weather: His mind had been running all day upon the Tenor, and, noticing as he passed his little house that the blind was up, and the sitting room window wide open, showing the lamplit interior, and the object of his thoughts pacing restlessly to and fro, he determined to go in and have a chat. The Tenor received him cordially, but his manner was somewhat absent, and for a wonder the conversation flagged.

"Are you well?" the dean asked at last. "You look somewhat fatigued, I think, and pale."

"Yes, I am well, thank you," the Tenor answered, brushing his hand back over his forehead and hair, a gesture which was habitual. "But I fancy," he added smiling, "that I am beginning to be a little"--he did not know what.

"Ah!" said the dean, looking at him with the grave, critical air of an anxious physician, and ruminating before he pronounced his diagnosis, "You have shown most extraordinary perseverance in the course of life you marked out for yourself," he finally observed; "and I trust your resolution is well recompensed by having obtained for you that peace of mind which you sought. But there is one thing I should like to be permitted to point out to you. I do not venture to advise, because, in the first place, it is always a difficult matter to decide on What would be best for another man's welfare; and, in the second"--the dean always spoke with great deliberation--"a man who has proved himself so capable of acting with prudence and determination, so competent to judge, and so firm in carrying out his convictions as you have been, might well consider advice from anyone presumptuous. And, therefore, I am merely going to observe that, lately, it has seemed to me to be a pity that your life should continue much longer to be a life of inaction. I hope, and indeed I think, that the years you have spent so well in this quiet way have been even more beneficial than you yourself imagine; that they have not only reconciled you to life, but have given you back the confidence and energy which should belong to your character and abilities, and the ambition to succeed in the world which should belong to your age. For some time past it has seemed to me that you are more restless than you used to be; and I have fancied, indeed I may say I have hoped, that you are at last beginning to long for change."

The Tenor sat silent and thoughtful for a while.

"No," he began at last, "I do not even yet long for change, as you would understand the longing. I have begun to feel a want, though I scarcely know of what--of companionship, perhaps, of some new interest; but I have no inclination for any change that would take me away from here. After the storm I passed through, this place has been for me a perfect haven of rest; and now that my peace of mind has returned to me, do you think it would be wise, by any voluntary act, to alter the present course of my life, seeing that it is so well with me as it is? When a man is content it does not seem to me that any change can be for the better; and, trifles apart, I really am content."

"God grant it may last," the dean responded earnestly. "Only I would warn you to be ready for change in case it comes to you in spite of yourself. I would warn you not to feel too secure. For I have noticed this, that, for some mysterious reason which no mortal can fathom, it appears to be the will of Heaven that when a man is able to say sincerely, 'I am happy'; when he is most confident, believing his happiness to be as firmly placed as earthly happiness can be, then is the time for him to be most watchful, for then is change most likely to be at hand. Indeed, it has seemed to me that this feeling of security, or rather of content with things as they are, is in itself an indication of coming change."

As he finished speaking the cathedral clock above them began to strike the hour. Slowly the mellow notes followed each other, filling the night with sound, and dying away in a long reverberation when the twelfth had struck. Then came silence, then the chime, voicelike, clear, and resonant:

After which all was so still that the Tenor, looking up through the open window at the moonlit cathedral, towering above him, gray, shadowy, and mysterious, felt as if the world itself had stopped, and all the life in it had been resolved into a moment of intense self-consciousness, of illimitable passionate yearning for something not to be expressed.

The next day was Saturday, and in the afternoon the Tenor had to sing.