VIII. THE TRADITION OF THE DARK PLAIN…

VIII. THE TRADITION OF THE DARK PLAIN

It is the province of little demoiselles to be naughty: it is their delight to make promises and then break them, all false and fearless--as they may do over other affairs in later life. Miss Meta Godolphin was no exception to the rule. She had gravely promised her uncle Thomas to be a good girl, and not run away to be lost in unfrequented passages; yet no sooner had the young lady arrived at Ashlydyat that morning, and been released of her out-door things by Margery, than with a joyously defiant laugh that would have rejoiced the heart of Charlotte Pain, she flew off to that forbidden spot--the unused passages. Had the little lady's motive been laid bare, it might have been found to consist simply in the enjoyment of a thing forbidden. Truth to say, Miss Meta was very prone to be disobedient to all persons, excepting one. That one was her mother. Maria had never spoken a sharp word to the child in her life, or used a sharp tone: but she had contrived to train the little one to obey, as well as to love. George, Margery, Mrs. Hastings, Miss Meta would openly disobey, and laugh in their faces while she did it: her mother, never. Meta remembered a scolding she received on the last visit she had paid to Ashlydyat, touching the remote passages--she had never found them out until then--and apparently the reminiscence of the scolding was so agreeable that she was longing to have it repeated.

"Now," said Margery, as she concluded the young lady's toilette, "you'll not go up to those old rooms and passages to-day, mind, Miss Meta!"

For answer, Miss Meta shook out her golden curls, laughed triumphantly, and started off to the passages then and there. Maria had never said to her, "You must not go near those passages;" and the commands of the rest of the world went for nothing. Margery remained in blissful ignorance of the disobedience. She supposed the child had run to her mother and the Miss Godolphins. The objection to Meta's being in the passages alone had no mysterious element in it. It proceeded solely from a regard to her personal safety. The staircase leading to the turret was unprotected; the loopholes in the turret were open, and a fall from either might cost the young lady her life. These places, the unfrequented passages at the back of the second storey, and the staircase leading to the square turret above them, were shut in by a door, which separated them from the inhabited part of the house. This door Miss Meta had learned to open; and away she went, as fancy led her.

Maria was in Miss Godolphin's room, talking to that lady and to Bessy, when a sound overhead caused them to pause.

"Where's Meta?" cried Janet, hastening from the room. "She cannot have gone upstairs again! Margery! Where's the child?"

Margery at that moment happened to be putting the finishing touches to her own toilette. She came flying without her cap out of one of the many narrow passages and windings which intersected each other on that floor. "The child went off to you, ma'am, as soon as I had put on her pinafore."

"Then, Margery, she has gone up into the turret. She never came to us."

Up to the turret hastened Janet; up to the turret followed Margery. Bessy and Maria traversed the passage leading to the turret-stairs, and stood there, looking upwards. Maria, had she been alone, could not have told which of the passages would lead her to the turret-stairs; and she could not understand why so much commotion need be made, although Meta had run up there. Strange as it may seem, Maria Godolphin, though so many years George's wife, and the presumptive mistress of Ashlydyat, had never passed beyond that separating door. Miss Godolphin had never offered to take her to the unused rooms and the turret; and Maria was of too sensitively refined a nature to ask it of her own accord.

Janet appeared, leading the rebel; Margery, behind, was scolding volubly. "Now," said Janet, when they reached the foot, "tell me, Meta, how it was that you could behave so disobediently, and go where you had been expressly told not to go?"

Meta shook back her golden curls with a laugh, sprang to Maria, and took refuge in her skirts. "Mamma did not tell me not to go," said she.

Janet looked at Maria: almost as if she would say, Can it be true that you have not done so?

"It is true," said Maria, answering the look. "I heard something about her running into the turret the last time she was here: I did not know it was of any consequence."

"She might fall through the loopholes," replied Janet. "Nothing could save her from being dashed to pieces."

Maria caught the child to her with an involuntary movement. "Meta, darling, do you hear? You must never go again."

Meta looked up fondly, serious now. Maria bent her face down on the little upturned one.

"Never again, darling; do not forget," she murmured. "Does Meta know that if harm came to her, mamma would never look up again? She would cry always."

Meta bustled out of her mamma's arms, and stood before Miss Godolphin, earnest decision on her little face. "Aunt Janet, Meta won't run away again."

And when the child voluntarily made a promise, they knew that she would keep it. Margery whirled her away, telling her in high tones of a young lady of her own age who would do something that she was bade not to do: the consequence of which act was, that the next time she went out for a walk, she was run at by a bull with brass tips on his horns.

"Is the turret really dangerous?" inquired Maria.

"It is dangerous for a random child like Meta, who ventures into every hole and corner without reference to dust or danger," was Miss Godolphin's answer. "Would you like to go up, Maria?"

"Yes, I should. I have heard George speak of the view from it."

"Mind, Maria, the stairs are narrow and winding," interposed Bessy.

Nevertheless, they went up, passing the open loopholes which might be dangerous to Meta. The first thing that Maria's eyes encountered when they had reached the top was a small bow of violet-coloured ribbon. She stooped to pick it up.

"It is a bow off Janet's evening dress," exclaimed Bessy. "Janet"--turning to her sister--"what can have brought it here?"

"I was up here last night," was the answer of Janet Godolphin, spoken with composure.

"That's just like you, Janet!" retorted Bessy. "To watch for that foolish Shadow, I suppose."

"Not to watch for it. To see it."

Bessy was afflicted with a taint of heresy. They had never been able to imbue her with the superstition pertaining to the Godolphins. Bessy had seen the Shadow more than once with her own eyes; but they were practical eyes and not imaginative, and could not be made to see anything mysterious in it. "The shadow is thrown by some tree or other," Bessy would say. And, in spite of its being pointed out to her that there was no tree, which could cast a shadow on the spot, Bessy obstinately held to her own opinion.

Maria gazed from two sides of the turret. The view from both was magnificent. The one side overlooked the charming open country; the other, Prior's Ash. On the third side rose Lady Godolphin's Folly, standing out like a white foreground to the lovely expanse of scenery behind it; the fourth side looked upon the Dark Plain.

"There's Charlotte Pain," said Bessy.

Charlotte had returned home, it appeared, since Maria met her, and changed her attire. She was pacing the terrace of the Folly in her riding-habit, a whip in hand, and some dogs surrounding her. Maria turned towards the Dark Plain, and gazed upon it.

"Is it true," she timidly asked, "that the Shadow has been there for the last night or two?"

Janet answered the question by asking another. "Who told you it was there, Maria?"

"I heard Margery say so."

"Margery?" repeated Janet. "That woman appears to know by instinct when the Shadow comes. She dreams it, I think. It is true, Maria, that it has appeared again," she continued, in a tone of unnatural composure. "I never saw it so black as it was last night."

"Do you believe that there can be anything in it--that it foretells ill?" asked Maria.

"I know that it is the tradition handed down with our house: I know that, in my own experience, the Shadow never came but it brought ill," was the reply of Miss Godolphin.

"What caused the superstition to arise in the first instance?" asked Maria.

"Has George never told you the tale?" replied Janet.

"Never. He says he does not remember it clearly enough. Will you not tell it me, Janet?"

Janet hesitated. "One of the early Godolphins brought a curse upon the house," she at length began, in a low tone. "It was that evil ancestor whose memory we would bury, were it possible; he who earned for himself the title of the Wicked Godolphin. He killed his wife by a course of gradual and long-continued ill-treatment. He wanted her out of the way that another might fill her place. He pretended to have discovered that she was not worthy: than which assertion nothing could be more false and shameless, for she was one of the best ladies ever created. She was a de Commins, daughter of the warrior Richard de Commins, and was brave as she was good. She died; and the Wicked Godolphin turned her coffin out of the house on to the Dark Plain; there"--pointing to the open space before the archway--"to remain until the day of interment. But he did not wait for that day of interment to bring home his second wife."

"Not wait!" exclaimed Maria, her eager ears drinking in the story.

"The habits in those early days will scarcely admit of allusion to them in these," continued Janet: "they savour of what is worse than barbarism--sin. The father, Richard de Commins, heard of his child's death, and hastened to Ashlydyat, arriving by moonlight. The first sounds he encountered were the revels of the celebration of the second marriage; the first sight he saw was the coffin of his daughter on the open plain, covered by a pall, two of her faithful women bending, the one at the head, the other at the foot, mourning the dead. While he halted there, kneeling in prayer, it was told to the Wicked Godolphin that de Commins had arrived. He--that Wicked Godolphin--rushed madly out, and drew his sword upon him as he knelt. De Commins was wounded, but not mortally, and he rose to defend himself. A combat ensued, de Commins having no resource but to fight, and he was killed; murdered. Weary with his journey, enfeebled by age, weakened by grief, his foot slipped, and the Wicked Godolphin, stung to fury by the few words of reproach de Commins had had time to speak, deliberately ran him through as he lay. In the moment of death, de Commins cursed the Godolphins, and prophesied that the shadow of his daughter's bier, as it appeared then, should remain as a curse upon the Godolphins' house for ever."

"But do you believe the story?" cried Maria, breathlessly.

"How much of it may be true, how much of it addition, I cannot decide," said Janet. "One fact is indisputable: that a shadow, bearing the exact resemblance of a bier, with a mourner at its head and another at its foot, does appear capriciously on that Dark Plain; and that it never yet showed itself, but some grievous ill followed for the Godolphins. It is possible that the Shadow may have partially given rise to the story."

"Janet!" cried Maria, leaning forward, her own tones hushed, "is it possible that one, in dying, can curse a whole generation, so that the curse shall take effect in the future?"

"Hush, child!" rebuked Janet. "It does not become us to inquire into these things. Controversy about them is utterly useless, worse than profitless; for there will be believers and unbelievers to the end of time. You wished me to tell you the story, Maria, and I have done so. I do no more. I do not tell you it is to be believed, or it is not to be believed. Let every one decide for himself, according as his reason, his instinct, or his judgment shall prompt him. People accuse me of being foolishly superstitious touching this Shadow and these old traditions. I can only say the superstition has been forced upon me by experience. When the Shadow appears, I cannot close my eyes to it and say, 'It is not there.' It is there: and all I do is to look at it, and speculate. When the evil, which invariably follows the appearance of the Shadow, falls, I cannot close my heart to it, and say, in the teeth of facts, 'No evil has happened.' The Shadow never appeared, Maria, but it brought ill in its wake. It is appearing again now: and I am as certain that some great ill is in store for us, as that I am talking to you at this moment. On this point I am superstitious."

"It is a long time, is it not, since the Shadow last appeared?"

"It is years. But I have not quite finished the story," resumed Janet. "The Wicked Godolphin killed Richard de Commins, and buried him that night on the Dark Plain. In his fury and passion he called his servants around him, ordered a grave to be dug, and assisted with his own hands. De Commins was put into it without the rites of burial. Tradition runs that so long as the bones remain unfound, the place will retain the appearance of a graveyard. They have been often searched for. That tragedy, no doubt, gave its name to the place--'The Dark Plain.' It cannot be denied that the place does wear much the appearance of a graveyard: especially by moonlight."

"It is only the effect of the low gorse bushes," said Bessy. "They grow in a peculiar form. I know I would have those bushes rooted up, were I master of Ashlydyat!"

"Your father had it done, Bessy, and they sprang up again," replied Janet. "You must remember it."

"It could not have been done effectually," was Bessy's answer. "Papa must have had lazy men at work, who left the roots in. I would dig it all up and make a ploughed field of it."

"Did he do any other harm--that Wicked Godolphin?" asked Maria.

"He! Other harm!" reiterated Janet, something like indignation at Maria's question mingling with surprise in her tone. "Don't you know that it was he who gambled away Ashlydyat? After that second marriage of his, he took to worse and worse courses. It was said that his second wife proved a match for him, and they lived together like two evil demons. All things considered, it was perhaps a natural sequence that they should so live," added Janet, severely. "And in the end he cut off the entail and gambled away the estate. Many years elapsed before the Godolphins could recover it."

Maria was longing to put a question. She had heard that there were other superstitious marvels attaching to Ashlydyat, but she scarcely liked to mention them to the Miss Godolphins. George never would explain anything: he always turned it off, with laughing raillery.

"You--think--that Ashlydyat will pass away from the Godolphins, Janet?"

Janet shook her head. "We have been reared in the belief," she answered. "That the estate is to pass finally away from them, the Godolphins have been taught to fear ever since that unhappy time. Each generation, as they have come into possession, have accepted it as an uncertain tenure: as a thing that might last them for their time, or might pass away from them ere their earthly sojourn was completed. The belief was; nay, the tradition was; that so long as a reigning Godolphin held by Ashlydyat, Ashlydyat would hold by him and his. My father was the first to break it."

Janet had taken up her dress, and sat down on a dusty, faded bench, the only article of furniture of any description that the square room contained. That strangely speculative look--it was scarcely an earthly one--had come into her eyes: and though she answered when spoken to, she appeared to be lost in sad, inward thought. Maria, somewhat awed with the turn the conversation had taken, with the words altogether, stood against the opposite window, her delicate hands clasped before her, her face slightly bent forward, pale and grave.

"Then, do you fear that the end for the Godolphins is at hand?"

"I seem to see that it is," replied Janet. "I have looked for it ever since my father left Ashlydyat. I might say--but that I should be laughed at more than I am for an idealist--that the strangers to whom he resigned it in his place, would have some bearing upon our fall, would in some way conduce to it. I think of these things ever," continued Janet, almost as if she would apologize for the wildness of the confession. "They seem to unfold themselves to me, to become clear and more clear: to be no longer fanciful fears darting across the brain, but realities of life."

Maria's lips slightly parted as she listened. "But the Verralls have left Ashlydyat a long while?" she presently said.

"I know they have. But they were usurpers here for the time. Better--as I believe--that my father had shut it up: better, far better, that he had never left it! He knew it also: and it preyed upon him on his death-bed."

"Oh, Janet! the ill may not come in our time!"

"It may not. I am anxious to believe it may not, in defiance of the unalterable conviction that has seated itself within me. Let it pass, Maria; talking of it will not avert it: indeed, I do not know how I came to be betrayed into speaking of it openly."

"But you have not told me about the sounds in the passages?" urged Maria, as Janet rose from her dusty seat.

"There is nothing more to tell. Peculiar sounds, as if caused by the wind, are heard. Moaning, sighing, rushing--the passages at times seem alive with them. It is said to come as a reminder to the Godolphins of a worse sound that will sometime be heard, when Ashlydyat shall be passing away from them."

"But you don't believe that?" uttered Maria.

"Child, I can scarcely tell you what I believe," was Janet's answer. "I can only pray that the one-half of what my heart prompts me to fear, may never take place in reality. That the noise does come, and without any apparent cause, is not a matter of belief, or disbelief: it is a fact, patent to all who have inhabited Ashlydyat. The Verralls can tell you so: they have had their rest broken by it."

"And it is not caused by the wind?"

Janet shook her head in dissent. "It has come on the calmest and stillest night, when there has not been a breath of air to move the leaves of the ash-trees."

Bessy turned from her pastime of watching Charlotte Pain: she had taken little part in the conversation.

"I wonder at you, Janet. You will be setting Maria against Ashlydyat. She will be frightened to come into it, should it lapse to George."

Maria looked at her with a smile. "I should have no fear with him, superstitious or otherwise. If George took me to live in the catacombs, I could be brave with him."

Ever the same blind faith; the unchanged love for her husband. Better, far better, that it should be so!

"For my part, I am content to take life and its good as I find it, and not waste my time in unprofitable dreams," was the practical remark of Bessy. "If any ill is to come, it must come; but there's no need to look out for it beforehand."

"There must be dreamers and there must be workers," answered Janet, picking her way down the winding stairs. "We were not all born into the world with minds similarly constituted, or to fulfil the same parts in life."

The day passed on. Thomas Godolphin came home in the evening to dinner, and said George had not returned. Maria wondered. It grew later. Margery went home with Meta: who thought she was very hardly used at having to go home before her mamma.

"I had rather you would stay, Maria," Thomas said to her. "I particularly wish to say a word to George to-night, on business-matters: if he finds you are here when he returns, he will come up."

George did find so--as you already know. And when he left Mrs. Charlotte Pain, her torn dress and her other attractions, he bent his steps towards Ashlydyat. But, instead of going the most direct road to it, he took his way through the thicket where he had had the encounter an hour ago with Charlotte. There was a little spice of mystery about it which excited Mr. George's curiosity. That someone had parted from her he felt convinced, in spite of her denial. And that she was in a state of excitement, of agitation, far beyond anything he had ever witnessed in Charlotte Pain, was indisputable. George's thoughts went back, naturally, to the previous night: to the figure he had seen, and whom his eyes, his conviction, had told him was Charlotte. She had positively denied it, had said she had not quitted the drawing-room: and George had found her there, apparently composed and stationary. Nevertheless, though he had then yielded to her word, he began now to suspect that his own conviction had been correct: that the dark and partially disguised figure had been no other than Charlotte herself. It is probable that, however powerful was the hold Charlotte's fascinations may have taken upon the senses of Mr. George Godolphin, his trust in her, in her truth and single-heartedness, was not of the most perfect nature. What mystery was connected with Charlotte, or whom she met in the thicket, or whether she met any one or no one, she best knew. George's curiosity was sufficiently excited upon the point to induce him to walk with a slow step and searching eyes, lest haply he might come upon some one or something which should explain the puzzle.

How runs the old proverb? "A watched-for visitor never comes." In vain George halted and listened; in vain he peered into every part of the thicket within view. Not a step was to be heard, not a creature to be seen: and he emerged from the trees ungratified. Crossing the open grass by the turnstile he turned round by the ash-trees, to the Dark Plain.

Turned and started. George Godolphin's thoughts had been on other things than the Shadow. The Shadow lay there, so pre-eminently dark, so menacing, that George positively started. Somehow--fond as he was of ignoring the superstition--George Godolphin did not like its look to-night.

Upon entering Ashlydyat, his first interview was with Thomas. They remained for a few minutes alone. Thomas had business affairs to speak of: and George--it is more than probable--made some good excuse for his day's absence. That it would be useless to deny he had been to London, he knew. Charlotte had put him on his guard. Janet and Bessy asked innumerable questions of him when he joined them, on the score of his absence; but he treated it in his usual light manner, contriving to tell them nothing. Maria did not say a word then: she left it till they should be alone.

"You will tell me, George, will you not?" she gently said, as they were walking home together.

"Tell you what, Maria?"

"Oh, George, you know what"--and her tone, as Mr. George's ears detected, bore its sound of pain. "If you were going to London when you left me; why did you deceive me by saying you were going elsewhere?"

"You goose! Do you suppose I said it to deceive you?"

There was a lightness, an untruthfulness in his words, in his whole air and manner, which struck with the utmost pain upon Maria's heart. "Why did you say it?" was all she answered.

"Maria, I'll tell you the truth," said he, becoming serious and confidential. "I wanted to run up to town on a little pressing matter of business, and I did not care that it should become known in the Bank. Had I known that I should be away for the day, of course I should have told Thomas: but I fully intended to be home in the afternoon: therefore I said nothing about it. I missed the train, or I should have been home in due time."

"You might have told me," she sighed. "I would have kept your counsel."

"So I would, had I thought you deemed it of any consequence," replied George.

Consequence! Maria walked on a few minutes in silence, her arm lying very spiritless within her husband's. "If you did not tell me," she resumed, in a low tone, "why did you tell Mrs. Pain?"

"Mrs. Pain's a donkey," was George's rejoinder. And it is probable Mr. George at that moment was thinking her one: for his tone in its vexation, was real enough. "My business was connected with Verrall, and I dropped a hint, in the hearing of Mrs. Pain, that I might probably follow him to town. At any rate, I am safe home again, Maria, so no great harm has come of my visit to London," he concluded, in a gayer tone.

"What time did you get in?" she asked.

"By the seven o'clock train."

"The seven o'clock train!" she repeated in surprise. "And have only now come up to Ashlydyat!"

"I found a good many things to do after I got home," was the rejoinder.

"Did you see Meta? Margery took her home at eight o'clock."

Mr. George Godolphin had not seen Meta. Mr. George could have answered, had it so pleased him, that before the child reached home, he had departed on his evening visit to Lady Godolphin's Folly.

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IX. THE DEAD ALIVE AGAIN

Saturday was a busy day at Prior's Ash; it was a busy day at the banking-house of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin. Country towns and country banks are always more busy on a market-day.

George Godolphin sat in the manager's room, full of business. Not much more than a week had elapsed since that visit of his to London; and it was now Thomas's turn to be away. Thomas had gone to town. His errand there was to consult one of the first surgeons of the day, on the subject of his own health. Not so much that he had hope from the visit, as that it would be a satisfaction to his family to have made it.

George Godolphin was full of business. Full of talking also. A hearty country client, one who farmed a large number of acres, and generally kept a good round sum in the Bank's coffers, was with him. What little point of business he had had occasion to see one of the partners upon, was concluded, and he and George were making merry together, enjoying a gossip as to the state of affairs in general and in particular, out of doors and in. Never a man more free from care (if appearances might be trusted) than George Godolphin! When that hearty, honest farmer went forth, he would have been willing to testify that, of carking care, George possessed none.

As he went on, George sat down and bent over some account-books. His face had changed. Lines, of what looked worse than care, grew out upon it, and he lifted his hand to his brow with a weary gesture. Another minute, and he was interrupted again. He had very little peace on a market-day.

"Lord Averil wishes to see you, sir," said one of the clerks. It was Isaac Hastings.

To any other announced name, George Godolphin's ready answer would have been, "Show him in." To that of Lord Averil he evidently hesitated, and a sudden flush dyed his face. Isaac, keen in observation as was his father, as was his sister Grace, noticed it. To him, it looked like a flush of shrinking fear.

"Did he ask for me?"

"He asked for Mr. Godolphin, sir. He says it will be the same thing if he sees you. Shall I show him in?"

"Of course," replied George. "What do you stop for?" he angrily added.

He rose from his seat; he put a chair or two in place; he turned to the table, and laid rapidly some of its papers one upon another--all in a fuss and bustle not in the least characteristic of George Godolphin. Isaac thought he must have lost his usual presence of mind. As to the reproach addressed to himself, "What do you stop for?"--it had never been the custom to show clients into the presence of the partners without first asking for permission.

Lord Averil came in. George, only in that short time, had become himself again. They chatted a minute on passing topics, and Lord Averil mentioned that he had not known, until then, that Mr. Godolphin was in London.

"He went up on Thursday," observed George. "I expect he will be back early in the week."

"I intend to be in London myself next week," said Lord Averil. "Will it be convenient for me to have those bonds of mine to-day?" he continued.

A sudden coursing on of all George's pulses; a whirling rush in his brain. "Bonds?" he mechanically answered.

"The bonds of that stock which your father bought for me years ago," explained Lord Averil. "They were deposited here for security. Don't you know it?"--looking at George's countenance, which seemed to speak only of perplexity. "Mr. Godolphin would know."

"Oh yes, yes," replied George, regaining his breath and his courage. "It is all right: I did not remember for the moment. Of course--the deposited bonds."

"I am thinking of selling out," said Lord Averil. "Indeed, I have been for some time thinking of it, but have idly put it off. If it would be quite convenient to give me the bonds, I would take them to town with me. I shall go up on Monday or Tuesday."

Now, George Godolphin, rally your wits! What are you to answer? George did rally them, in a lame manner. Confused words, which neither he nor Lord Averil precisely understood--to the effect that in Thomas Godolphin's absence, he, George, did not know exactly where to put his hand upon the securities--came forth. So Lord Averil courteously begged him not to take any trouble about it. He would leave them until another opportunity.

He shook hands cordially with George, and went out with a mental comment, "Not half the man of business that his brother is, and his father was: but wondrously like Cecil!" George watched the door close. He wiped the dewdrops which had gathered on his face; he looked round with the beseeching air of one seeking relief from some intense pain. Had Lord Averil persisted in his demand, what would have remained for him? Those are the moments in which man has been tempted to resort to the one irredeemable sin.

The door opened again, and George gave a gasp as one in agony. It was only Isaac Hastings. "Mr. Hurde wishes to know, sir, whether those bills are to go up to Glyn's to-day or Monday?"

"They had better go to-day," replied George. "Has Mr. Barnaby been in to-day?" he added, as Isaac was departing.

"Not yet."

"If he does not come soon, some one must go down to the corn market to him. He is sure to be there. That is, if he is in town to-day."

"I know he is in town," replied Isaac. "I saw him as I was coming back from dinner. He was talking to Mr. Verrall."

"To Mr. Verrall!" almost shouted George, looking up as if electrified into life. "Is he back again?"

"He is back again, sir. I think he had only then arrived. He was coming from towards the railway station."

"You are sure it was Mr. Verrall?" reiterated George.

Isaac Hastings smiled. What could make Mr. George Godolphin so eager? "I am sure it was Mr. Verrall."

George felt as if a whole ton weight of care had been lifted from him. He had been so long in the habit of flying to Mr. Verrall in his difficulties, that it seemed to him he would only have to go to him, to remedy the one hanging over him now. Mr. Verrall had generally accomplished the task as men of his profession do accomplish such tasks--by laying up an awful day of reckoning for the future. That day was not now far off for George Godolphin.

The Bank closed later on Saturdays, and George remained at his post to the end. Then he dined. Then, at the dusk-hour--nay, at the hour of darkness, he went out to Lady Godolphin's Folly. Why was it that he rarely went to the Folly now, except under the covert shades of night? Did he fear people might comment on his intimacy with Mr. Verrall, and seek a clue to its cause? Or did he fear the world's gossip on another score?

George arrived at Lady Godolphin's Folly, and was admitted to an empty room. "Mr. Verrall had returned, and had dined with Mrs. Pain, but had gone out after dinner," the servant said. He had believed Mrs. Pain to be in the drawing-room. Mrs. Pain was evidently not there, in spite of the man's searching eyes. He looked into the next room, with similar result.

"Perhaps, sir, she has stepped out on the terrace with her dogs?" observed the man.

George--ungallant as he was!--cared not where Mrs. Pain might have stepped at that present moment: his anxiety was for Mr. Verrall. "Have you any idea when your master will be in?" he inquired of the servant.

"I don't think he'll be long, sir. I heard him say he was tired, and should go to bed early. He may have gone to Ashlydyat. He told Mrs. Pain that he had met Mr. Godolphin in town yesterday, and he should call and tell Miss Godolphin that he was better in London than he felt here. I don't know, sir, though, that he meant he should call to-night."

The man left the room, and George remained alone. He drummed on the table; he tried several seats in succession; he got up and looked at his face in the glass. A haggard face then. Where was Verrall? Where was Charlotte? She might be able to tell him where Verrall had gone, and when he would be in. Altogether George was in a state of restlessness little better than torture.

He impatiently opened the glass doors, which were only closed, not fastened, and stood a few moments looking out upon the night. He gazed in all directions, but could see nothing of Charlotte; and Mr. Verrall did not appear to be coming. "I'll see," suddenly exclaimed George, starting off, "whether he is at Ashlydyat."

He did well. Action is better than inertness at these moments. Standing outside the porch at Ashlydyat, talking to a friend, was Andrew, one of their servants. When he saw George, he drew back to hold open the door for him.

"Are my sisters alone, Andrew?"

"Yes, sir."

George scarcely expected the answer, and it disappointed him. "Quite alone?" he reiterated. "Has no one called on them to-night?"

The man shook his head, wondering probably who Mr. George might be expecting to call. "They are all alone, sir. Miss Janet has one of her bad headaches."

George did not want to go in, Mr. Verrall not being there, and this last item afforded him an excuse for retreating without doing so. "Then I'll not disturb her to-night," said he. "You need not say that I came up, Andrew."

"Very well, sir."

He quitted Andrew, and turned off to the left, deep in thought, striking into a sheltered path. It was by no means the direct road back to the Folly, neither was it to Prior's Ash. In point of fact, it led to nothing but the Dark Plain and its superstition. Not a woman-servant of Ashlydyat, perhaps not one of its men, would have gone down that path at night: for at the other end it brought them out to the archway, before which the Shadow was wont to show itself.

Why did George take it? He could not have told. Had he been asked why, he might have said that one way, to a man bowed under a sharp weight of trouble, is the same as another. True. But the path led him to no part where he could wish to go; and he would have to make his way to Lady Godolphin's Folly through the gorse bushes of the Dark Plain, over the very Shadow itself. These apparently chance steps, which seem to be taken without premeditation or guidance of ours, sometimes lead to strange results.

George went along moodily, his hands in his pockets, his footfalls slow and light. But for the latter fact, he might not have had the pleasure of disturbing a certain scene that was taking place under cover of the archway.

Were they ghosts, enacting it? Scarcely. Two forms, ghostly or human, were there. One of them looked like a woman's. It was dressed in dark clothes, and a dark shawl was folded over the head, not, however, concealing the features--and they were those of Charlotte Pain. She, at any rate, was not ghostly. The other, George took to be Mr. Verrall. He was leaning against the brickwork, in apparently as hopeless a mood as George himself.

They were enjoying a quarrel. Strange that they should leave the house and come to this lonely spot in the grounds of Ashlydyat to hold it! Charlotte was evidently in one of her tempers. She paced to and fro under the archway, something like a restrained tiger, pouring forth a torrent of sharp words and reproaches, all in a suppressed tone.

"I'll tell you what it is," were the first distinct words of anger George caught. But her companion interrupted her, his tone one of sadness and humility.

"I'll tell you what it is, Charlotte----"

The start made by George Godolphin at the tones of the voice, the involuntary sound of utter astonishment that escaped him, disturbed them. Charlotte, with a cry of terror, darted one way, her companion another.

But the latter was not quick enough to elude George Godolphin. Springing forward, George caught him in his powerful grasp, really to assure himself that it was no ghost, but genuine flesh and blood. Then George turned the face to the starlight, and recognized the features of the dead-and-gone Mr. Rodolf Pain.

The return of a husband, popularly supposed to be dead and out of the way for good, may be regarded by the wife as a blessing from some special providence, or as a source of annoying embarrassment, according to the lady's own feeling on the subject. Undoubtedly, Charlotte Pain looked upon it, and most unmistakably so, in the latter light. Charlotte knew, better than the world, that Mr. Rodolf Pain was not dead; but she had believed him to be as surely out of her way as though death and some safe metropolitan cemetery had irrevocably claimed him. Whatever trifling accident might have happened to put Mr. Rodolf Pain and the British criminal law at issue, Charlotte, at any rate, had assumed it one not to be easily got over, except by the perpetual exile of the gentleman from the British shores. When the little affair had occurred, and Mr. Rodolf had saved himself and his liberty by only a hair's-breadth, choosing a foreign exile and a false name in preference to some notoriety at a certain court (a court which does not bear a pleasant sound, and rises ominous and dark and gloomy in the heart of the city), it had pleased Charlotte and those connected with her to give out that Mr. Rodolf Pain had died. In Mr. Rodolf Pain's going out of the world by death, there was certainly no disgrace, provided that he went out naturally; that is, without what may be called malice prepense on his own part. But, for Mr. Rodolf Pain to be compelled to make his exit from London society after another fashion, was quite a different affair--an affair which could never have been quite tolerated by Charlotte: not on his score, but on her own. Any superfluous consideration for him, Charlotte had never been troubled with. Before her marriage she had regarded him in the light of a nonentity; since that ceremony, as an incumbrance. Therefore, on the whole, Charlotte was tolerably pleased to get rid of him, and she played her rôle of widow to perfection. No inconvenient disclosure, as to the facts of his hasty exit, had come out to the public, for it had fortunately happened that the transaction, or transactions, which led to it, had not been done in his own name. To describe Charlotte's dismay when he returned, and she found her fond assumption of his perpetual exile to have been a false security, would take a cleverer pen than mine. No other misfortune known to earth, could have been looked upon by Charlotte as so dire a calamity. Had Prior's Ash been blown up, herself included, by some sprung mine, or swallowed down by an earthquake, it would have been little, in comparison.

It certainly was not pleasant to be startled by a faint tap at the unscreened window, while she sat under the chandelier, busy at what she so rarely attempted, some useless fancy-work. Yet that was the unceremonious manner in which her husband made his return known to her. Charlotte was expecting no visitors that night. It was the night of George Godolphin's dinner-party, at which Mr. Verrall had not appeared, having started for London instead. When the tapping came, Charlotte turned her head towards the window in surprise. No one was in the habit of entering that way, save free-and-easy George Godolphin; he would now and then do so; sometimes Mr. Verrall. But Charlotte knew of George's dinner party, and Mr. Verrall was away. She could see nothing of the intruder: the room was ablaze with light; outside, it was, comparatively speaking, dark; and the window was also partially shaded by its lace curtains. Charlotte thought she must have been mistaken, and went on unravelling her crochet mat.

The tapping came again. "Very odd!" thought Charlotte. "Come in," she called out.

No one came in. There was no response at all for a minute or two. Then there came another timid tapping.

Charlotte's dress was half covered with cotton. She rose, shook it, let the cotton and the mat (what remained of it) fall to the ground, walked to the window, and opened it.

At the first moment she could see nothing. It was bright moonlight, and she had come from the blazing light within, beside which that outer light was so cold and pure. Not for that reason could she see nothing, but because there appeared to be nothing to see. She ranged her eyes in vain over the terrace, over the still landscape beyond.

"Charlotte!"

It was the faintest possible voice, and close to her. Faint as it was though, there was that in its tone which struck on every fibre of Charlotte's frame with dismay. Gathered against the walls of the Folly, making a pretence to shelter himself beyond a brilliant cape-jessamine which was trained there, was the slight figure of a man. A mere shred of a man, with a shrinking, attenuated frame: the frame of one who has lived in some long agony, bodily or mental: and a white face that shivered as he stood.

Not more white, not more shivering than Charlotte's. Her complexion--well, you have heard of it, as one too much studied to allow vulgar changes to come upon it, in a general way. But there are moments in a lifetime when Nature asserts herself, and Art retires before her. Charlotte's face turned to the hue of the dead, and Charlotte's dismay broke forth in a low passionate wail. It was Rodolf Pain.

A moment of terrified bewilderment; a torrent of rapid words; not of sympathy, or greeting, but of anger; and Charlotte was pushing him away with her hands, she neither knew nor cared whither. It was dangerous for him to be there, she said. He must go.

"I'll go into the thicket, Charlotte," he answered, pointing to the trees on the left. "Come to me there."

He glided off as he spoke, under cover of the walls. Charlotte, feeling that she should like to decline the invitation had she dared, enveloped her head and shoulders in a black shawl, and followed him. Nothing satisfactory came of the interview--except recrimination. Charlotte was in a towering passion that he should have ventured back at all; Rodolf complained that between them all he had been made the scapegoat. In returning home, she caught sight of George Godolphin approaching the house, just as she was about to steal across the lawn. Keeping under cover of the trees, she got in by a back entrance, and sat down to her work in the drawing-room, protesting to George, when he was admitted, that she had not been out. No wonder her face looked strange in spite of its embellishments!

Her interviews with Rodolf Pain appeared to be ill chosen. On the following night she met him in the same place: he had insisted upon it, and she did not dare refuse. More recrimination, more anger; in the midst of which George Godolphin again broke upon them. Charlotte screamed aloud in her terror, and Rodolf ran away. But that Charlotte laid detaining hands upon George, the returned man might have been discovered then, and that would not have suited Charlotte.

A few more days and that climax was to arrive. The plantation appearing unsafe, Rodolf Pain proposed the archway. There they should surely be unmolested: the ghostly fears of the neighbourhood and of Ashlydyat kept every one away from the spot. And there, two or three times, had Charlotte met him, quarrelling always, when they were again intruded upon, and again by George. This time to some purpose.

George Godolphin's astonishment was excessive. In his wildest flights of fancy he had never given a thought to the suspicion that Rodolf Pain could be alive. Charlotte had not been more confidential with George than with the rest of the world. Making a merit of what could not well be avoided, she now gave him a few particulars.

For when she looked back in her flight and saw that Rodolf Pain was fairly caught, that there was no further possibility of the farce of his death being kept up to George, she deemed it well to turn back again. Better bring her managing brains to the explanation, than leave it to that simple calf, whom she had the honour of calling husband. The fact was, Rodolf Pain had never been half cunning enough, half rogue enough, for the work assigned him by Mr. Verrall. He--Mr. Verrall--had always said that Rodolf had brought the trouble upon himself, in consequence of trying to exercise a little honesty. Charlotte agreed with the opinion: and every contemptuous epithet cast by Mr. Verrall on the unfortunate exile, Charlotte had fully echoed.

George was some little time before he could understand as much as was vouchsafed him of the explanation. They stood in the shadow of the archway, Charlotte keeping her black shawl well over her head and round her face; Rodolf, his arms folded, leaning against the inner circle of the stonework.

"What, do you say? sent you abroad?" questioned George, somewhat bewildered.

"It was that wretched business of Appleby's," replied Rodolf Pain. "You must have heard of it. The world heard enough of it."

"Appleby--Appleby? Yes, I remember," remarked George. "A nice swindle it was. But what had you to do with it?"

"In point of fact, I only had to do with it at second-hand," said Rodolf Pain, his tone one of bitter meaning. "It was Verrall's affair--as everything else is. I only executed his orders."

"But surely neither you nor Verrall had anything to do with that swindling business of Appleby's?" cried George, his voice as full of amazement as the other's was of bitterness.

Charlotte interposed, her manner so eager, so flurried, as to impart the suspicion that she must have some personal interest in it. "Rodolf, hold your tongue! Where's the use of bringing up this old speculative nonsense to Mr. George Godolphin? He does not care to hear about it."

"I would bring it up to all the world if I could," was Rodolf's answer, ringing with its own sense of injury. "Verrall told me in the most solemn manner that if things ever cleared, through Appleby's death, or in any other way, so as to make it safe for me to return, that that hour he would send for me. Well: Appleby has been dead these six months; and yet he leaves me on, on, on, in the New World, without so much as a notice of it. Now, it's of no use growing fierce again, Charlotte! I'll tell Mr. George Godolphin if I please. I am not the patient slave you helped to drive abroad: the trodden worm turns at last. Do you happen to know, sir, that Appleby's dead?"

"I don't know anything about Appleby," replied George. "I remember the name, as being owned by a gentleman who was subjected to some bad treatment in the shape of swindling, by one Rustin. But what had you or Verrall to do with it?"

"Psha!" said Rodolf Pain. "Verrall was Rustin."

George Godolphin opened his eyes to their utmost width. "N--o!" he said, very slowly, certain curious ideas beginning to crowd into his mind. Certain remembrances also.

"He was.--Charlotte, I tell you it is of no use: I will speak. What does it matter, Mr. George Godolphin's knowing it? Verrall was the real principal--Rustin, in fact; I, the ostensible one. And I had to suffer."

"Did Appleby think you were Rustin?" inquired George, thoroughly bewildered.

"Appleby at one time thought I was Verrall. Oh, I assure you there were wheels within wheels at work there. Of course there had to be, to carry on such a concern as that. It is so still. Verrall, you know, could not be made the scapegoat, he takes care of that--besides, it would blow the whole thing to pieces, if any evil fell upon him. It fell upon me, and I had to suffer for it, and abroad I went. I did not grumble; it would have been of no use: had I stayed at home and braved it out, I should have been sent abroad, I suppose, at her Majesty's cost----"

Charlotte interrupted, in a terrible passion. "Have you no sense of humiliation, Rodolf Pain, that you tell these strange stories? Mr. George Godolphin, I pray you do not listen to him!"

"I am safe," replied George. "Pain can say what he pleases. It is safe with me."

"As to humiliation, that does not fall so much to my share as it does to another's, in the light I look at it. I was not the principal; I was only the scapegoat; principals rarely are made the scapegoats in that sort of business. Let it go, I say. I took the punishment without a word. But, now that the man's dead, and I can come home with safety, I want to know why I was not sent for?"

"I don't believe the man's dead," observed Charlotte.

"I am quite sure that he is dead," said Rodolf Pain. "I was told it from a sure and certain source, some one who came out there, and who used to know Appleby. He said the death was in the Times, and he knew it for a fact besides."

"Appleby? Appleby?" mused George, his thoughts going back to a long-past morning, when he had been an unseen witness to Charlotte's interview with a gentleman giving that name--who had previously accosted him in the porch at Ashlydyat, mistaking it for the residence of Mr. Verrall. "I remember his coming down here once."

"I remember it too," said Rodolf Pain, significantly, "and the passion it put Verrall into. Verrall thought his address, down here, had oozed out through my carelessness. The trouble that we had with that Appleby, first and last! It went on for years. The bother was patched up at times, but only to break out again; and to send me into exile at last."

"Does Verrall know of his death?" inquired George of Rodolf.

"There's not a doubt that he must know of it. And Charlotte says she won't ask Verrall, and won't tell him I am here! My belief is that she knows Appleby's dead."

Charlotte had resumed her walk under the archway: pacing there--as was remarked before--like a restrained tiger. She took no notice of Rodolf's last speech.

"Why not tell Verrall yourself that you are here?" was George's sensible question.

"Well--you see, Mr. George Godolphin, I'd rather not, as long as there's the least doubt as to Appleby's death. I feel none myself: but if it should turn out to be a mistake, my appearance here would do good neither to me nor to Verrall. And Verrall's a dangerous man to cross. He might kill me in his passion. It takes a good deal to put him into one, but when it does come, it's like a tornado."

"You acknowledge that there is a doubt as to Appleby's death, then!" sarcastically cried Charlotte.

"I say that it's just possible. It was not being fully certain that brought me back in this clandestine way. What I want you to do is to ask Verrall if Appleby's dead. I believe he will answer 'Yes.' 'Very well,' then you can say, 'Rodolf Pain's home again.' And if----"

"And if he says, 'No, he is not dead,' what then?" fiercely interrupted Charlotte.

"Then you can tell me privately, and I must depart the way I came. But I don't depart without being satisfied of the fact," pointedly added Mr. Pain, as if he had not entire and implicit reliance upon Charlotte's word. "My firm belief is that he is dead, and that Verrall will tell you he is dead. In that case I am a free man to-morrow."

Charlotte turned her head towards him, terrible anger in her tone, and in her face. "And how is your reappearance to be accounted for to those who look upon you as dead?"

"I don't care how," indifferently answered Rodolf. "I did not spread the report of my own death. If you did, you can contradict it."

"If I did do it, it was to save your reputation," returned Charlotte, scarcely able to speak in her passion.

"I know," said Rodolf Pain. "You feared something or other might come out about your husband, and so you thought you'd kill me off-hand. Two for yourself and one for me, Charlotte."

She did not answer.

"If my coming back is so annoying to you, we can live apart," he resumed. "You pretty well gave me a sickener before I went away. As you know."

"This must be an amusing dialogue to Mr. George Godolphin!" fumed Charlotte.

"May-be," replied Rodolf Pain, his tone sad and weary. "I have been so hardly treated between you and Verrall, Charlotte, that I don't care who knows it."

"Where are you staying?" asked George, wondering whether the shady spots about Ashlydyat sheltered him by day as well as by night.

"Not far away, sir: at a roadside inn," was the answer. "No one knew me much, about here, in the old days; but, to make assurance doubly sure, I only come out in the evening. Look here, Charlotte. If you refuse to ask Verrall, or to help me, I shall go to London, and obtain the information there. I am not quite without friends in the great city: they would receive me better than you have received me."

"I wonder you did not go there at once," said Charlotte, sharply.

"It was natural that I should go first where my wife was," returned Rodolf Pain; "even though she had not been the most affectionate of wives to me."

Charlotte was certainly not showing herself particularly affectionate then, whether she had, or had not, in the past days. Truth to say, whatever may have been her personal predilection or the opposite for the gentleman, his return had brought all her fears to the surface. His personal safety was imperilled; and, with that, disgrace loomed in ominous attendance; a disgrace which would be reflected upon Charlotte. Could she have sent Rodolf Pain flying on electric wires to the remotest region of the known or unknown globe, she would have done it then.

Leaving them to battle out their dispute alone, George Godolphin bent his steps to Lady Godolphin's Folly, walking over the very Shadow, black as jet, treading in and out amid the dwarf bushes, which, when regarded from a distance, looked so like graves. He gained the Folly, and rang.

The servant admitted him to the drawing-room. It was empty as before. "Has Mr. Verrall not come in?" asked George.

"He has come in, sir. I thought he was here. I will look for him."

George sat on alone. Presently the man returned. "My master has retired for the night, sir."

"What! Gone to bed?" cried George.

"Yes, sir."

"Did you tell him I had been here when he came in?"

"I told him you had been here, sir. In fact, I thought you were here still. I did not know you had left."

"Did Mr. Verrall tell you now that he could see me?"

"He told me to say that he had retired for the night, sir."

"Is he in bed?" questioned George.

The servant hesitated. "He spoke to me through the door, sir. He did not open it."

George caught up his hat, the very movement of his hand showing displeasure. "Tell your master that I shall be here the first thing in the morning. I want to see him."

He passed out, a conviction upon his mind--though he could scarcely tell why it should have arisen--that Mr. Verrall had not retired for the night, but that he had gone upstairs merely to avoid him. The thought angered him excessively. When he had gone some little distance beyond the terrace, he turned and looked at the upper windows of the house. There shone a light in Mr. Verrall's chamber. "Not in bed, at any rate," thought George. "He might have seen me if he would. I shall tell him----"

A touch upon George's arm. Some one had glided silently up. He turned and saw Charlotte.

"You will not betray the secret that you have learnt to-night?" she passionately whispered.

"Is it likely?" he asked.

"He is only a fool, you know, at the best," was her next complimentary remark. "But fools give more trouble sometimes than wise people."

"You may depend upon me," was George's rejoinder. "Where is he?"

"Got rid of for the night," said Charlotte, in a terrible tone. "Are you going in to see Verrall?"

"No. Verrall declines to see me. I am going home. Good night."

"Declines to see you? He is tired, I suppose. Good night, George!"

George Godolphin walked away at a sober pace, reflecting on the events of the day--of the evening. That he had been intensely surprised by the resuscitation of Rodolf Pain was indisputable; but George had too much care upon him to give it more than a passing thought, now that the surprise was over. Rodolf Pain occupied a very small space in the estimation of George Godolphin. Charlotte had just said he was a fool: probably George shared in the opinion.

But, however much he felt inclined to dismiss the gentleman from his mind, he could not so readily dismiss a certain revelation made by him. That Rustin was Verrall. Whoever "Rustin" may have been, or what had been his influence on the fortunes, good or ill, of Mr. George Godolphin, it concerns us not very closely to inquire. That George had had dealings with this "Rustin"--dealings which did not bear for him any pleasant reminiscence--and that George had never in his life got to see this Rustin, are sufficient facts for us to know. Rustin was one of those who had contrived to ease George of a good deal of superfluous money at odd times, leaving only trouble in its place. Many a time had George prayed Verrall's good offices with his friend Rustin, to hold over this bill; to renew that acceptance. Verrall had never refused, and his sympathy with George and abuse of Rustin were great, when his mediation proved--as was sometimes the case--unsuccessful. To hear that this Rustin was Verrall himself, opened out a whole field of suggestive speculation to George. Not pleasant speculation, you may be sure.

He sat himself down, in his deep thought, on that same spot where Thomas Godolphin had sat the evening of George's dinner-party; the broken bench, near the turnstile. Should he be able to weather the storm that was gathering so ominously above his head? Was that demand of Lord Averil's to-day the first rain-drop of the darkening clouds? In sanguine moments--and most moments are sanguine to men of the light temperament of George Godolphin--he felt not a doubt that he should weather it. There are some men who systematically fling care and gloom from them. They cannot look trouble steadily in the face: they glance aside from it; they do not see it if it comes: they clothe it with the rose-hues of hope: but look at it, they do not. Shallow and careless by nature, they cannot feel deep sorrow themselves, or be too cautious of any wrong they inflict on others. They may bring ruin upon the world, but they go jauntily on their way. George had gone on in his way, in an easy, gentlemanly sort of manner, denying himself no gratification, and giving little heed to the day of reckoning that might come.

But on this night his mood had changed. Affairs generally were wearing to him an aspect of gloom: of gloom so preternaturally dark and hopeless, that his spirits were weighed down by it. For one thing, this doubt of Verrall irritated him. If the man had played him false, had been holding the cards of a double game, why, what an utter fool he, George, had been! How long he sat on that lonely seat he never knew: as long as his brother had, that past night. The one had been ruminating on his forthcoming fate--death; the other was lost in the anticipation of a worse fate--disgrace and ruin. As he rose to pursue his way down the narrow and ghostly Ash-tree Walk, a low cry burst from his lips, sharp as the one that had been wrung from Thomas in his physical agony.

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X. NINE THOUSAND AND FORTY-FIVE POUNDS

A short time elapsed. Summer weather began to show itself in Prior's Ash, and all things, so far as any one saw or suspected, were going on smoothly. Not a breath of wind had yet stirred up the dangerous current; not the faintest cloud had yet come in the fair sky, to indicate that a storm might be gathering. One rumour however had gone forth, and Prior's Ash mourned sincerely and trusted it was not true--the state of health of Thomas Godolphin. He attacked with an incurable complaint, as his mother had been? Prior's Ash believed it not.

He had returned from his visit to town with all his own suspicions confirmed. But the medical men had seemed to think that the fatal result might not overtake him, yet; probably not for years. They enjoined tranquillity upon him, both of mind and body, and recommended him to leave the cares of business, so far as was practicable, to other people. Thomas smiled when he recited this piece of advice to George. "I had better retire upon my fortune," he laughed.

"Do so," cried George, impulsively. "That is"--for a disagreeable consciousness came upon him, as he spoke, that Thomas's "fortune," if looked into, might be found more easy to talk of than to realize--"you can virtually retire, by remaining quietly at Ashlydyat. Don't come down to the Bank. I can manage quite well without you."

Thomas shook his head. "So long as I am at all capable, George, I shall not give up. I believe it is my duty not to do so. If what the doctors say is correct--that I may live on in my present state, or nearly in my present state, for years--you may be an older and a wiser man by the time you are left alone. When you shall have gained grey hair, George, and a stoop in the shoulders, Prior's Ash will be thinking you a stronger and a better man than I have ever been."

George made no reply. He knew which had been the better man, himself or his brother.

Everything, I say, seemed to go on in its old routine. Thomas Godolphin came to business; not every day, but frequently. George gave his dinner-parties, and rode as much as ever with Charlotte Pain. What Charlotte had done with her husband, was her affair. He no longer disturbed the night stillness of the Dark Plain, or of Lady Godolphin's Folly; and not a suspicion of his unwelcome revival from the dead had transpired beyond George Godolphin. Charlotte casually said one day to George that Rodolf was in London. Perhaps he was.

Yes, gay as ever, in the day, was George Godolphin. If he had care, he kept it to himself, and no one saw or suspected it. George was persuadable as a child; seeing little farther than his own nose; and Mr. Verrall had contrived to lull the suspicions awakened by the words of Rodolf Pain. Mr. Verrall had not remained long at Lady Godolphin's Folly: he was soon away again, and Charlotte had it to herself, queen regnant. George had not forgotten to pay his evening visits there. There or elsewhere, he was out most evenings. And when he came in, he would go into the Bank, and remain alone in the manager's room, often for hours.

One evening--it was the greatest wonder in the world--he had not gone out. At eight o'clock he had gone into the Bank and shut himself in. An hour afterwards Maria knocked, and he admitted her.

George was at a large table; it was covered with account-books. Hard at work he appeared to be, making entries with his pen, by the light of his shaded lamp. "How busy you are, George!" she cried.

"Ay," said he, pleasantly. "Let no one call me idle again."

"But why need you do it, George? You used not to work at night."

"More work falls to my score, now Thomas does not take his full share of it," observed George.

"Does it? I fancied neither you nor Thomas had much actual work to do. I thought you left it to the clerks. Isaac laughed at me one day, a long time ago, when I said something about your keeping the bank accounts. He asked me what I thought clerks were paid for."

"Never mind Isaac. What have you come in for? To tell me you are dull?--as you did last night."

"No. But I do get to feel very dull in an evening. You are scarcely ever with me now, George."

"Business must be attended to," responded George. "You should get some visitors in."

"They would not be you," was Maria's answer, simply spoken. "I came to tell you now that papa is here. Have you time to come and see him?"

George knitted his brow. The prospect of entertaining the Reverend Mr. Hastings did not appear to have charms for him. Not that he allowed Maria to see the frown. She continued:

"Papa has been talking about the Chisholm property. The money is paid over, and he has brought it here for safety."

"Brought it to-night?" echoed George.

"Yes. He said it might be an unprofessional mode of doing business, but he supposed you would receive it," she added, laughing.

"How much is it?" cried George--all too eagerly, had Maria not been unsuspicious.

"Nine--let me see--yes, I think he said nine thousand pounds."

George Godolphin closed the books before him, more than one of which was open, locked them up, put out the lamp, and accompanied his wife to the dining-room.

"Will you let me lodge some money here to-night?" asked Mr. Hastings, as he shook hands.

"As much as you like," replied George, gaily. "We can accommodate an unlimited amount."

The Rector took out a large pocket-book, and counted down some bank-notes upon the table. "Brierly, the agent, brought it to me an hour ago," he observed, "and I had rather your Bank had charge of it than my house. Nine thousand and forty-five pounds, Mr. George."

George counted the notes after Mr. Hastings. "I wonder Brierly did not give a cheque for it," he observed. "Did he bring the money over from Binham?"

"He came over in his gig. He said it had been paid to him in money, and he brought it just as it was. I'll trouble you for a receipt, George."

George carried the money away and came back with the receipt. "It must be placed to your account, I suppose, sir?" he observed.

"Of course," answered Mr. Hastings. "You can't place it to the credit of the little Chisholms. It is the first time I was ever left trustee," he remarked, "and I hope it will be the last."

"Why so?" asked George.

"Why so? Because I like neither the trouble nor the responsibility. As soon as my co-trustee returns, the money is to be placed out on approved security: until then, you must take charge of it. It is a small sum after all, compared with what was expected."

"Very small," assented George. "Is it all that the property has realized?"

"Every shilling--except the expenses. And lawyers, and agents, and auctioneers, take care that they shall never be slight," added Mr. Hastings, his lip curling with the cynical expression that was sometimes seen on it.

"It's their trade, sir."

"Ay. What a cutting up of property it is, this forced selling of an estate, through death!" he exclaimed. "Many a time has poor Chisholm said to me, in his last illness: 'There'll be hard upon twenty thousand to divide amongst them, when it's all sold.' And there is not ten!"

"I suppose everything was sold?" said George.

"Everything. House, land, ricks as they stood, farming stock, cattle, and furniture: everything, even to the plate and the books. The will so expressed it. I suppose Chisholm thought it best."

"Where are the children, papa?" asked Maria.

"The two girls are at school, the little boy is with his grandmother. I saw the girls last week when I was at Binham."

"The boy is to be a clergyman, is he not, papa?"

The Rector answered the question in a tone of rebuke. "When he shall be of an age to choose, should he evince liking and fitness for the Church, then he is to be allowed to enter it. Not otherwise, Maria."

"How is the property left?" asked George.

"It is to be invested, and the interest devoted to the education and maintenance of the three, the boy being allowed a larger share of the interest than the girls. When the youngest, the boy, shall be of age, the principal is to be divided equally between them. Such are the terms of the will."

"What is it to be invested in?"

"The funds, I suppose. It is left to the discretion of myself and Mr. Harknar. I shall let him decide: he is more of a man of business than I am."

So they talked on. When Mr. Hastings, a short while before, had found himself left guardian and co-trustee to the children of a friend just deceased, his first impulse had been to decline the trust. Eventually he had accepted it. The other gentleman named, Mr. Harknar, had gone on business to one of the Ionian Islands, but he was now shortly expected home.

An hour the Rector sat with them, talking of the orphaned Chisholms, and of other matters. When he took his departure, George went again into the Bank, and sat down to work at his books by the light of the shaded lamp. He was certainly more attentive to business by night than by day.

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XI. THOSE BONDS AGAIN!

Once more--it was the afternoon of the day following that evening visit of All Souls' Rector to the Bank--Isaac Hastings entered the manager's room to announce a visitor to Mr. George Godolphin. Lord Averil.

George looked up: a startled expression crossing his face. It was instantly suppressed: but, not for his very life could he have helped its appearance in the first moment.

"When did he come to Prior's Ash?"

"I don't know," replied Isaac. "I told him I was not sure but you were engaged, sir. I had thought Mr. Arkwright was with you. Lord Averil asked me to come and see: he particularly wishes to see you, he says."

"I am engaged," replied George, catching at the excuse as a drowning man catching at a straw. "That is"--taking out his watch--"I have not time now to see him. Tell Lord Averil I am particularly engaged."

"Very well, sir."

Isaac went out with the message, and Lord Averil departed, merely saying that he would call again. The reappearance of Charlotte Pain's husband could not have brought more dire dismay to that lady, than did this reappearance of Lord Averil's at Prior's Ash, bring to George Godolphin.

Did he think Lord Averil would never favour Prior's Ash with his presence again? It is hard to say what foolish thing he thought. Lord Averil had been in town for the last month. Once during that time, he had written to have those deposited deeds sent up to him, about which he had spoken to Mr. George Godolphin. George had answered the letter with some well-framed excuse. But now here was Lord Averil again at Prior's Ash--and at the Bank! Doubtless once more in quest of his deeds.

George Godolphin put his hand to his weary brow. His ever-constant belief was, that he should get straight in time. In time. To his sanguine temperament, time would prove the panacea for all his ills. If he could only avert present difficulties, time would do the rest. That terrible difficulties were upon him, none knew better than he: but the worst difficulty of all would be this of Lord Averil's, should exposure come. Short as George was of ready cash--it may seem a paradox to say it of a banker, but so it was--he would have scraped together every shilling from every available corner and parted with it, to have ensured the absence of Lord Averil from Prior's Ash for an indefinite period.

He pressed his hand upon his weary brow, his brain within working tumultuously. If he must see Lord Averil--and there could be no escape--what should be his plea for the non-production of those deeds? It must be a plausible one. His thoughts were interrupted by a rap at the door.

"Come in," cried George, in a sadly hopeless tone. Was it Lord Averil again?

It was only a note. A three-cornered miniature thing fastened with a silver wafer. No business communication that. George knew the writing well.

"DEAR MR. GEORGE,

"Will you ride with me to-day at half-past three instead of four? I will tell you my reason then. Lord A. is back again.

"Yours, "C. P."

George tore the note into fragments and flung them into the paper-basket. It was ten minutes past three. Glad of any excuse to be out of business and its cares, he hastened things away in his room, and left it. There were moments when George was tempted heartily to wish himself out of it for good, safe in some unapproachable island, too remote from civilization to be visited by the world. But he did not see his way clear to get there.

Look at him as he rides through the town, Charlotte by his side, and the two grooms behind them! Look at his fine bay horse, his gentlemanly figure!--look at his laughing blue eyes, his wavy golden hair, at the gay smiles on his lips as he turns to Charlotte! Can you fancy care an inmate of that man's breast? Prior's Ash did not. They were only content to admire and to envy their handsome and most attractive banker, George Godolphin.

They rode by the Bank. It was not often--indeed it was very rarely--that they passed it in their rides. There were plenty of other ways, without choosing that one. George never would have chosen it: perhaps he had the grace to think that his frequent rides with Mrs. Charlotte Pain need not be paraded so conspicuously before the windows of his wife. Charlotte, however, had a will of her own, and sometimes she chose to exercise it.

As good luck had it, or ill luck, or no luck at all, Maria happened to be at the drawing-room window to-day. Some ladies were paying her a visit, and Meta--who was sometimes indulged, as an only child is indulged--made one in the drawing-room. She caught sight of her papa, forthwith climbed upon a chair to see him better, and leaned from the open window, clapping her hands. "Papa! papa!"

Maria sprang to hold her in. She was a child who had little sense of danger. Had George held out his arms then, and said, "Jump out to me, Meta," she would have taken the leap fearlessly. Maria caught her round the waist, and the visitors came forward to see.

Charlotte threw up a triumphant glance. One of those curiously triumphant glances that she was rather fond of giving Mrs. George Godolphin. Maria bowed gravely. An idea--a faint idea, glancing at no ill--had been growing over her lately that her husband passed more time with Charlotte Pain than was absolutely necessary. George smiled at his wife, lifted his hat to the ladies at her side, and waved a kiss to Meta.

The red blood had mantled to his cheek. At what? At Charlotte's triumphantly saucy look--which he had not failed to catch--or at his wife's grave one? Or at the sight of a gentleman who stood on the pavement, saluting them as they passed? It was the Viscount Averil. George saluted again, and rode on with a smooth brow and a face bright as day.

Considerably later; just before five, in fact, when the Bank closed, Lord Averil presented himself at it again. Had Mr. George Godolphin returned? If so, could he see him?

Mr. George had not come in. Mr. Hurde came forward and inquired if it was anything that he could do for his lordship.

Lord Averil had known Mr. Hurde a long while. He had seen him in his place there as long as he had banked with Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin. He supposed he was a confidential clerk: and, in point of fact, Mr. Hurde was so to a great extent.

"You hold some bonds of mine," said Lord Averil. "Bonds of some stock which Sir George Godolphin purchased for me. Did you know anything of it?"

"I remember the transaction quite well, my lord," replied Mr. Hurde.

"I want the bonds delivered up to me. Can I have them?"

"Certainly. Your lordship can have them whenever you please. They are in your case, in the strong-room."

"I should have liked them to-day, if possible," replied Lord Averil.

"There will be no difficulty at all, my lord. Mr. George Godolphin can deliver them to you as soon as he comes in."

"Will he be in soon, think you?"

"He is sure not to be very long, my lord. I have to see him before I leave."

"Then I think I'll wait," said Lord Averil.

He was shown into the Bank parlour, and left there. At five the clerks quitted the Bank: it was usual for them to do so. Mr. Hurde waited. In about a quarter of an hour George entered.

A few minutes given to the business for which Mr. Hurde had remained, and then he spoke. "Lord Averil is waiting to see you, sir."

"Lord Averil?" cried George, in a hasty tone. "Waiting now?"

"He is in the parlour, sir. He asked if he could have his bonds given up to him. I said I thought he could, and he replied that he would wait."

"Then you had no business to say anything of the sort," burst forth George, in so vehement a tone as to astonish the sober cashier. "It may not be convenient to lay one's hands upon the bonds at a minute's notice, Hurde," he more quietly added, as if he would soothe down or atone for his anger.

"They are in Lord Averil's box in the strong-room, sir," said the old clerk, supposing his master must have temporarily forgotten where the said bonds were placed. "Mr. Godolphin was speaking to me about those bonds the other day."

"What about them?" inquired George, striving to put the question easily.

"It was nothing particular, sir. He was only mentioning their increased value: how they had gone up in the market."

George said no more. He turned from the office and halted before the door of the parlour. Halted to collect his brains. One hand was on the handle of the door, the other on his brow. Lord Averil rose, and shook hands cordially.

"I have come to bother you again about my bonds, Mr. George. I don't care to keep that stock, and the present is a most favourable opportunity to sell."

"They'll go higher yet," observed George.

"Will they? They tell me differently in London. The opinion there is, that they will begin to fall."

"All rubbish," said George. "A canard got up on the Stock Exchange."

"Well, I have made up my mind to sell," observed Lord Averil. "I wrote to you from London to send me the shares up; but you did not seem to be in a hurry to do it. So I have come down for them."

George laughed. "Come down for nothing but the shares? But you will make some stay here?"

"No. I go up again to-morrow. I am not sure whether I shall return here for the summer or not. Some friends of mine are going over to Canada for three or four months. Perhaps I may accompany them."

George devoutly wished his lordship could be off, there and then; and that the sojourn might last years instead of months. "I wish I had the time to go there!" cried he, aloud: "I'd start to-morrow."

"Will it be troubling you to give me the bonds, Mr. George?"

George sat a few moments, his head bent as if in thought. "The bonds?" he slowly said. "Your bonds? They were sent--yes, certainly, your bonds were sent to our agents in London."

"My bonds sent to your agents in London!" repeated Lord Averil, in surprise. "What for?"

George coughed. "Some of our deposited deeds are kept there. Let me see?" he continued, again plunging into thought. "Yes--yours were amongst those that went up, I remember."

"But why not have told me this before?" asked Lord Averil. "Had you written me word, it would have saved me the journey down."

"To be sure," acquiesced George. "To tell you the truth, I never thought much about it, or where they were, until now."

"Mr. Hurde told me they were here," said Lord Averil.

"No doubt he thought so. They were here until recently."

"I shall have my journey back again, then!" cried his lordship. "Will the town bankers give them up to me on my simple demand, or must they have your authority?"

"I will write to them," responded George.

The viscount rose. Not a shade of suspicion had crossed his mind. But he could not help thinking that he should have made a better man of business than handsome George. "I wish you had told me!" he involuntarily repeated. "But I suppose," he good-naturedly added, "that my poor bonds are too insignificant to have much place in the thoughts of a man surrounded by hundreds of thousands."

George laughed. He was walking with Lord Averil to the front door. They stood together when it was reached, the street before them. Lord Averil asked after Mr. Godolphin.

"He seems a little better," replied George. "Certainly no worse."

"I am glad to hear it. Very glad indeed. You will not forget to write to town, Mr. George?"

"All right," replied George Godolphin.

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Chapter XII

"I SEE IT: BUT I CANNOT EXPLAIN IT."

The light of the setting sun streamed upon the fair hair of Cecil Godolphin. She had strolled out from the dining-room to enjoy the beauty of the late spring evening, or to indulge her own thoughts, as might be. To the confines of the grounds strayed she, as far as those surrounding Lady Godolphin's Folly; and there she sat down on a garden bench.

Not to remain long alone. She was interrupted by the very man upon whom--if the disclosure must be made--her evening thoughts had centred. He was coming up with a quick step on the road from Prior's Ash. Seeing Cecil, he turned off to accost her, his heart beating.

Beating with the slight ascent, or with the sight of Cecil? He best knew. Many a man's heart has beaten at a less lovely vision. She wore her favourite attire, white, set off with blue ribbons, and her golden hair gleamed in the sunlight. She almost exclaimed with surprise. She had been thinking of him, it is true, but as one who was miles and miles away. In spite of his stormy and not long-past rejection, Lord Averil went straight up to her and held out his hand. Did he notice that her blue eyes dropped beneath his, as she rose to answer his greeting; that the soft colour on her cheeks changed to a glowing damask?

"I fear I have surprised you," said Lord Averil.

"A little," acknowledged Cecil. "I did not know you were at Prior's Ash. Thomas will be glad to see you."

She turned to walk with him to the house, as in courtesy bound. Lord Averil offered her his arm, and Cecil condescended to put the tips of her fingers within it. Neither broke the silence; perhaps neither could break it; and they reached the large porch of Ashlydyat. Cecil spoke then.

"Are you going to make a long stay in the country?"

"A very short one. A party of friends are departing for Canada, and they wish me to make one of them. I think I shall do so."

"To Canada!" echoed Cecil. "So far away!"

Lord Averil smiled. "It sounds farther than it really is. I am an old traveller, you know."

Cecil opened the dining-room door. Thomas was alone. He had left the table, and was seated in his armchair at the window. A glad smile illumined his face when he saw Lord Averil. Lord Averil was one of the very few of whom Thomas Godolphin could make a close friend. These close friends! Not above one, or two, can we meet with in a lifetime. Acquaintances many; but friends--those to whom the heart can speak out its inmost thoughts, who may be as our own soul--how few!

Cecil left them alone. She ran off to tell Janet that Lord Averil had come, and would perhaps take tea with them, were he invited to do so. Thomas, with more hospitable ideas, was pressing dinner upon him. It could be brought back at once.

"I have dined at the Bell," replied Lord Averil. "Not any, thank you," he added, as Thomas was turning to the wine. "I have taken all I require."

"Have you come to make a long stay?" inquired Thomas--as Cecil had done.

"I shall go back to town to-morrow. Having nothing to do with myself this evening, I thought I could not spend it better than with you. I am pleased to see that you are looking yourself."

"The warm weather seems to be doing me good," was Thomas Godolphin's reply, a consciousness within him how little better he really was. "Why are you making so short a stay?"

"Well, as it turns out, my journey has been a superfluous one. Those bonds that you hold of mine brought me down," continued Lord Averil, little thinking that he was doing mischief by mentioning the subject to Mr. Godolphin. "I am going to sell out, and came down to get them."

"Why did you not write?" said Thomas. "We could have sent them to you."

"I did write, a week or ten days ago, and your brother wrote me word in answer that the bonds should be sent--or something to that effect. But they never came. Having nothing much to do, I thought I would run down for them. I also wanted to see Max. But he is away."

"I believe he is," replied Thomas. "Have you got the bonds?"

"It has proved a useless journey, I say," replied Lord Averil. "The bonds, I find, are in town, at your agents'."

Thomas Godolphin looked up with surprise. "They are not in town," he said. "What should bring them in town? Who told you that?"

"Your brother George."

"George told you the bonds were in town?" repeated Thomas, as if he could not believe his ears.

"He did indeed: not three hours ago. Why? Are they not in town?"

"Most certainly not. The bonds are in our strong-room, where they were first deposited. They have never been moved from it. What could George have been thinking of?"

"To tell you the truth, I did not fancy he appeared over-certain himself, where they were, whether here or in town," said Lord Averil. "At length he remembered that they were in town: he said they had gone up with other deeds."

"He makes a mistake," said Thomas. "He must be confounding your bonds with some that we sent up the other day of Lord Cavemore's. And yet, I wonder that he should do so! Lord Cavemore's went up for a particular purpose, and George himself took the instructions. Lord Cavemore consulted him upon the business altogether."

"Then--if my bonds are here--can I have them at once?" asked Lord Averil.

"You can have them the instant the Bank opens to-morrow morning. In fact, you might have them to-night if George should happen to be at home. I am sorry you should have had any trouble about it."

Lord Averil smiled. "Speaking frankly, I do not fancy George is so much a man of business as you are. When I first asked for the bonds, nearly a month ago, he appeared to be quite at sea about them; not to know what I meant, or to remember that you held bonds of mine."

"Did you ask for the bonds a month ago?" exclaimed Thomas.

"About that time. It was when you were in London. George at last remembered."

"Did he not give them to you?"

"No. He said---- I almost forget what he said. That he did not know where to put his hands upon them, I think, in your absence."

Thomas felt vexed. He wondered what could have possessed George to behave in so unbusiness-like a way: or how it was possible for him to have blundered so about the bonds. But he would not blame his brother to Lord Averil. "You shall have the bonds the first thing in the morning," he said. "I will drop a note to George, reminding him where they are, in case I am not at the Bank early enough for you."

Unusually well felt Thomas Godolphin that evening. He proceeded with Lord Averil to the drawing-room to his sisters; and a very pleasant hour or two they all spent together. Bessy laughed at Lord Averil a great deal about his proposed Canadian expedition, telling him she did not believe he seriously entertained it.

It was a genial night, soft, warm, and lovely, the moon bright again. The church clocks at Prior's Ash were striking ten when Lord Averil rose to leave Ashlydyat. "If you will wait two minutes for me, I will go a little way with you," said Thomas Godolphin.

He withdrew to another room, penned a line, and despatched it by a servant to the Bank. Then he rejoined Lord Averil, passed his arm within his lordship's, and went out with him.

"Is this Canada project a joke?" asked he.

"Indeed, no. I have not quite made up my mind to go. I think I shall do so. If so, I shall be away in a week from this. Why should I not go? I have no settled home, no ties."

"Should you not--I beg your pardon, Averil--be the happier for a settled home? You might form ties. I think a roving life must be the least desirable one of all."

"It is one I was never fitted for. My inclination would lead me to home, to domestic happiness. But, as you know, I put that out of my power."

"For a time. But that is over. You might marry again."

"I do not suppose I ever shall," returned Lord Averil, feeling half prompted to tell his unsuspicious friend that his own sister was the barrier to his doing so. "You have never married," he resumed, allowing the impulse to die away.

Thomas Godolphin shook his head. "The cases are different," he said. "In your wife you lost one whom you could not regret----"

"Don't call her by that name, Godolphin!" burst forth Lord Averil.

"And in Ethel I lost one who was all the world to me; who could never be replaced," Thomas went on, after a pause. "The cases are widely different."

"Ay, widely different," assented Lord Averil.

They walked on in silence, each buried in his own thoughts. At the commencement of the road, Lord Averil stopped and took Thomas Godolphin's hand in his.

"You shall not come any farther with me."

Thomas stopped also. He had not intended to go farther. "You will really start for Canada?"

"I believe I shall."

"Take my blessing with you then, Averil. We may never meet again in this world."

"What?" exclaimed Lord Averil.

"The medical men entertain hopes that my life may not be terminated so speedily: I believe that a few months will end it. I may not live to welcome you home."

It was the first intimation Lord Averil had received of Thomas Godolphin's fatal malady. Thomas explained it to him. He was overwhelmed.

"Oh, my friend! my friend! Cannot death be defied, or coaxed to spare you?" he called out in his pain. How many have vainly echoed the same cry!

A few more words, a long grasp of the lingering hands, and they parted. Thomas with a God-speed; Lord Averil with a different prayer--a God-save--upon his lips. The peer turned to Prior's Ash; Thomas Godolphin towards home.

Not by the path he had come. He had brought Lord Averil down the broad entrance to Ashlydyat: he turned to go round the path by the ash-trees in front of the Dark Plain. Possibly he had a mind to see whether the Shadow was abroad to-night.

Before he had well turned the corner of the trees, or had given more than a glance to the black Shadow--for there it was--he heard hasty footsteps behind him. Looking round, he beheld Lord Averil. Softened by the parting, by the tidings he had heard, an impulse had taken Lord Averil that he would speak of Cecil: and he turned back to do so.

"Godolphin, I---- What's that?"

The great black Shadow, stretching out there in the distance, had attracted the attention of Lord Averil. He stood with his forefinger extended, pointed towards it.

"That is what they call the Shadow of Ashlydyat," quietly replied Thomas Godolphin.

Lord Averil had never before seen it. He had heard enough of it. Attentively regarding it, he did not for some time speak.

"Do you believe in it?" he asked at length.

"Believe in it?" repeated Thomas Godolphin. "I believe that a Shadow does appear there on occasions. I cannot believe otherwise, with that ocular demonstration before me."

"And how do you account for it?" asked Lord Averil.

"I have been all my life trying to do so. And have come to the conclusion that it is not to be accounted for."

"But I have always treated the report as the most perfect folly," rejoined Lord Averil.

"Ay. No doubt. As I should do but for that"--and Thomas Godolphin nodded towards the Shadow, on which the peer's eyes were fixed with an intense gaze. "You and I are rational beings, Averil, not likely to be led away by superstitious folly; we live in an enlightened age, little tolerant of such things. And yet, here we stand, gazing with dispassionate eyes on that Shadow, in full possession of our sober judgment. It is there; we see it: and that is all we can tell about it. The Shadow of Ashlydyat is ridiculed from one end of the county to the other: spoken of--when spoken of at all--as an absurd superstition of the Godolphins. But there the Shadow is: and not all the ridicule extant can do away with the plain fact. I see it: but I cannot explain it."

"What do you do about it?"

Lord Averil asked the question in his bewilderment. A smile crossed Thomas Godolphin's lips as he answered.

"We do nothing. We can do nothing. We cannot prevent its coming; we cannot send it away when it comes; we cannot bring it if it does not come of its own accord. If I reason about it for a month, Averil, I could give you no better explanation than this."

Lord Averil drew a deep breath, as one awaking from a reverie. As Thomas Godolphin said: there was the Shadow, visible to his eyes, his senses: but of explanation as to its cause, there was none. The little episode had driven away the impulse to speak of Cecil: and, after another hand pressure, he finally turned away, and pursued his walk to Prior's Ash.

Another was also pursuing his walk to Prior's Ash; indeed, had nearly gained it; and that was Thomas Godolphin's messenger. Approaching the Bank residence, he distinguished some one standing at the entrance, and found that it was Mr. George Godolphin.

"What's this?" asked George. "A letter?"

"My master sent me down with it, sir."

George turned it about in his hand. "Does it require an answer, do you know, Andrew?"

"No, sir. My master said I need not wait."

The man departed, and George carried the note into the dining-room. Maria sat there reading, underneath the chandelier. She looked pleased to see her husband, and closed the book. George had been out all the evening. He stood opposite to Maria, and tore the note open.

"DEAR GEORGE,

"Lord Averil's bonds are in his case in the strong-room. How could you make so great a mistake as to tell him they had gone up to town? I send you word, lest he should call for them in the morning before I reach the Bank.

"Ever yours, "THOMAS GODOLPHIN."

Then the disclosure must come! With a word, that was very like a groan, George crushed the paper in his hand. Maria heard the sound.

"What is it, George?"

"Nothing. What? This? Only a note from Thomas."

He began whistling lightly, to cover his real feelings, and took up the book Maria had closed. "Is it entertaining?" asked he, turning over its pages.

"Very. It is a charming book. But that I had it to read, I should have been lying on the sofa. I have a very bad headache to-night."

"Go to bed," responded George.

"I think I must. Perhaps you will not care to come so early?"

"Never mind me. I have an hour or two's work to do in the Bank to-night."

"Oh, George!"

"My dear, it need not keep you up."

"George, I cannot think how it is that you have night-work to do!" she impulsively exclaimed, after a pause. "I am sure Thomas would not wish you to do it. I think I shall ask him."

George turned round and grasped her shoulder, quite sharply. "Maria!"

His grasp, I say, was sharp, his look and voice were imperatively stern. Maria felt frightened: she scarcely knew why. "What have I done?" she asked, timidly.

"Understand me, please, once for all. What I choose to do, does not regard my brother Thomas. I will have no tales carried to him."

"Why do you mistake me so?" she answered, when she had a little recovered her surprise. "It cannot be well for you, or pleasant for you, to have so much work to do at night, and I thought Thomas would have told you not to do it. Tales! George, you know I should never tell them of you."

"No, no; I know you would not, Maria. I have been idle of late, and am getting up my work; that's all: but it would not do to let Thomas know it. You--you don't tell Isaac that I sit up at the books?" he cried, almost in an accent of terror.

She looked up at him wonderingly, through her wet eyelashes. "Surely, no! Should I be likely to speak to Isaac of what you do? or to any one?"

George folded her in his arms, kissing the tears from her face. "Go to bed at once, darling, and sleep your headache off," he fondly whispered. "I shall be up soon; as soon as I can."

He lighted her candle and gave it to her. As Maria took it, she remembered something she wished to say to him. "When will it be convenient to you to give me some money, George?"

"What for?"

"Oh, you know. For housekeeping. The bills are getting so heavy, and the tradespeople are beginning to ask for their money. The servants want their wages, too. Would it not be better to pay regularly, as we used to do, instead of letting things run on so long?"

"Ay. I'll see about it," replied George.

George had got into the habit of giving the same answer, when asked by his wife for money. She had asked several times lately; but all the satisfaction she received was, "I'll see about it." Not a suspicion that his means were running short ever crossed her brain.

She went upstairs and retired to rest, soon falling asleep. Her head was heavy. The household went to bed; George shut himself into the Bank--according to his recent custom; and the house was soon wrapped in quiet--as a sober house should be.

Two o'clock was striking from All Souls' clock when Maria awoke. Why should she have done so?--there was no noise to startle her. All she knew--and it is all that a great many of us know--was, that she did awake.

To her astonishment, George was not in bed. Two o'clock!--and he had said that he should soon follow her! A vague feeling of alarm stole over Maria.

All sorts of improbable suggestions crowded on her imagination. Imaginations, you know, are more fantastic in the dark, still night, than in the busy day. Had he been taken ill? Had he fallen asleep at his work? Could he--could he have set the books and himself on fire? Had a crown been offered to Maria, she could not have remained tranquil a moment longer.

Slightly dressing herself, she threw on a warm dressing-gown, and stole down the stairs. Passing through the door that divided the dwelling from the Bank, she softly turned the handle of George's room, and opened it. Secure in the house being at rest, he had not locked the doors against interruption.

The tables seemed strewed with books, but George was not then occupied with them. He was sitting in a chair apart, buried, as it appeared--in thought, his hands and his head alike drooping listlessly. He started up at Maria's entrance.

"I grew alarmed, George," she said, trying to explain her appearance. "I awoke suddenly, and finding you had not come up, I grew frightened, thinking you might be ill. It is two o'clock!"

"What made you come down out of your warm bed?" reiterated George. "You'll catch your death."

"I was frightened, I say. Will you not come up now?"

"I am coming directly," replied George. "Go back at once. You'll be sure to take cold."

Maria turned to obey. Somehow the dark passages struck on her with a nervous dread. She shrank into the room again.

"I don't care to go up alone," she cried. "I have no light."

"How foolish!" he exclaimed. "I declare Meta would be braver!"

Some nervous feeling did certainly appear to be upon her, for she burst into tears. George's tone--a tone of irritation, it had been--was exchanged for one of soothing tenderness, as he bent over her. "What is the matter with you to-night, Maria? I'll light you up."

"I don't know what is the matter with me," she answered, suppressing her sobs. "I have not felt in good spirits of late. George, sometimes I think you are not well. You are a great deal changed in your manner to me. Have I--have I displeased you in any way?"

"You displeased me! No, my darling."

He spoke with impulsive fondness. Well had it been for George Godolphin had no heavier care been upon him than any little displeasure his wife could give him. The thought occurred to him with strange bitterness.

"I'll light you up, Maria," he repeated. "I shall not be long after you."

And, taking the heavy lamp from the table, he carried it to the outer passage, and held it while she went up the stairs. Then he returned to the room and to his work--whatever that work might be.

Vain work! vain, delusive, useless work! As you will soon find, Mr. George Godolphin.

Morning came. Whether gnawing care or hopeful joy may lie in the heart's inner dwelling-place, people generally meet at their breakfast-tables as usual.

George Godolphin sat at breakfast with his wife. Maria was in high spirits: her indisposition of the previous evening had passed away. She was telling George an anecdote of Meta, as she poured out the coffee, some little ruse the young lady had exercised, to come over Margery; and Maria laughed heartily as she told it. George laughed in echo: as merrily as his wife. There must have been two George Godolphins surely at that moment! The outer, presented to the world, gay, smiling, and careless; the inner, kept for his own private and especial delectation, grim, dark, and ghastly.

Breakfast was nearly over, when there was heard a clattering of little feet, the door burst open, and Miss Meta appeared in a triumphant shout of laughter. She had eluded Margery's vigilance, and eloped from the nursery. Margery speedily followed, scolding loudly, her hands stretched forth to seize the runaway. But Meta had bounded to her papa, and found a refuge.

George caught her up on his knee: his hair--the same shade once, but somewhat darker now--mixing with the light golden locks of the child, as he took from her kiss after kiss. To say that George Godolphin was passionately fond of his child would not be speaking too strongly: few fathers can love a child more ardently than George loved Meta. A pretty little lovable thing she was! Look at her on George's knee! her dainty white frock, its sleeves tied up with blue, her pretty socks and shoes, her sunny face, surrounded by its shower of curls. Margery scolded in the doorway, but Miss Meta, little heeding, was casting her inquisitive eyes on the breakfast-table, to see what there might be especially nice upon it.

"If you'd just please to punish her once for it, sir, she wouldn't do it, maybe, in future!" grumbled Margery. "Naughty girl!"

"I think I must," said George. "Shall I whip you, Meta?"

Meta shouted out a joyous little laugh in answer, turned her face round, and clung to him lovingly. She knew what his "whippings" meant.

"But if Margery says so?"

"Margery nobody," responded Meta, bustling her face round to the table again. "Mamma, may I have some of that?"

Maria hesitated. "That" was some tempting-looking breakfast-dish, very good, no doubt, for George, but very rich for Meta. George, however, drew it towards him, and cut her a little, claiming for his reward as many kisses as Meta's impatience would accord him. Margery went off in a temper.

"No wonder the child despises her bread and milk in the morning! If I had fed you upon those spiced things, Mr. George, when you were a child, I wonder whether you'd have grown into the strong man you are!"

"Into a stronger," called out George. He as much liked to give a word of teasing now and then to Margery as he had in the old days she referred to. Margery retorted with some answer, which he did not hear, and George laughed. Laughed loud and merrily, and again bent his face to Meta's.

But he could not remain all day long in that scene of peace. Oh, if we only could! those who have to go out to battle with the daily world. If there were only a means of closing the door on the woes that turn a man's hair white before its time!

George took Meta a triumphal ride round the room on his shoulder, and then, having extorted his payment, put her down by Maria. Going into the Bank to his day's work. His day's work! rather an embarrassing one, that day, Mr. George Godolphin!

Taking the keys of the strong-room from the cupboard, also certain other keys, as he had done once before within the knowledge of the reader, he proceeded to the strong-room, opened a certain safe in it, and took out the box inscribed "Lord Averil." This he also opened, and examined its contents. Mr. George Godolphin was searching for certain bonds: or, making believe to search for them. Having satisfied himself that they were not there, he returned the box to its place, made all safe again, went back, and sat down to open the morning letters. Presently he called to a clerk.

"Has Mr. Hurde come?"

"Yes, sir."

"Desire him to step here."

The old clerk came, in obedience to the summons, taking off his spectacles as he entered to rub one of their glasses, which had got misty. George leaned his elbow on the table, and, resting his chin upon his hand, looked him full in the face.

"Hurde," said he, plunging midway into his communication, which he made in a lone tone, "those bonds of Lord Averil's are missing."

The clerk paused, as if scarcely understanding. "How do you mean, sir? Missing in what way?"

"I can't find them," replied George.

"They are in Lord Averil's box in the strong-room, sir, with his other papers."

"But they are not there," replied George. "I have searched the papers through this morning. Hurde, we have had some roguery at work."

Another pause, devoted by Mr. Hurde to revolving the communication. "Roguery!" he slowly repeated. "Have you missed anything else, Mr. George?"

"No. I have not looked."

"Oh, sir, there's no fear of anything being wrong," resumed the old clerk, his good sense repudiating the notion. "Mr. Godolphin must have moved them."

"That's just what I thought until last night," said George. "The fact is, Lord Averil asked me for these bonds some little time ago, while my brother was in London. I opened the box, and, not seeing them there, came to the conclusion that Mr. Godolphin had moved them. Lord Averil said it was of no consequence then, and departed for London: and the thing slipped from my memory. When you spoke to me about it last evening, of course I felt vexed to have forgotten it, and I put off Lord Averil with the best excuse I could."

"And has Mr. Godolphin not moved them, sir?" demanded the clerk.

"It appears not. He dropped me a line last night, saying I should find the bonds in their place in the box. I suppose Lord Averil was up at Ashlydyat and mentioned it. But I can't find them in the box."

"Sir, you know you are not a very good searcher," observed Mr. Hurde, after some consideration. "Once or twice that you have searched for deeds, Mr. Godolphin has found them afterwards, overlooked by you. Shall I go carefully over the box, sir? I think they must be in it."

"I tell you, Hurde, they are not."

He spoke somewhat fractiously. Fully aware that he had occasionally overlooked deeds, in his haste or carelessness, perhaps the contrast between those times and these, gave a sting to his manner. Then, whether the deeds had been found or not, he was innocent: now----

"But, if they are not in the box, where can they be?" resumed Mr. Hurde.

"There it is," said George. "Where can they be? I say, Hurde, that some light fingers must have been at work."

Mr. Hurde considered the point in his mind. It seemed that he could not adopt the conclusion readily. "I should think not, sir. If nothing else is missing, I should say certainly not."

"They are missing, at any rate," returned George. "It will put Mr. Godolphin out terribly. I wish there had been any means of keeping it from him: but, now that Lord Averil has mentioned the bonds to him, there are none. I shall get the blame. He will think I have not kept the keys securely."

"But you have, sir, have you not?"

"For all I know I have," replied George, assuming a carelessness as to the point, of which he had not been guilty. "Allowing that I had not, for argument's sake, what dishonest person can we have about us, Hurde, who would use the advantage to his own profit?"

Mr. Hurde began calling over the list of clerks, preparatory to considering whether any one of them could be considered in the least degree doubtful. He was engaged in this mental process, when a clerk interrupted them, to say that a gentleman was asking to see Mr. George Godolphin.

George looked up sharply. The applicant, however, was not Lord Averil, and any one else would be more tolerable to him on that day than his lordship; Mr. Godolphin, perhaps, excepted. As the old clerk was withdrawing to give place to the visitor, George caught sight, through the open door, of Mr. Godolphin entering the office. An impulse to throw the disclosure off his own shoulders, prompted him to hasten after Mr. Hurde.

"Hurde," he whispered, catching his arm, "you may as well make the communication to Mr. Godolphin. He ought to know it at once, and I may be engaged some time."

So George remained shut up, and the old clerk followed Thomas Godolphin to his private room. Mr. Godolphin felt well that morning, and had come unusually early: possibly lest there should be any further blundering over Lord Averil's bonds. He looked somewhat surprised to see the old clerk approaching him with a long face and mysterious look.

"Do you want me, Hurde?"

"Mr. George has desired me to speak to you, sir, about those bonds of Lord Averil's. To make an unpleasant communication, in fact. He is engaged himself, just now. He says he can't find them."

"They are in the strong-room, in Lord Averil's case," replied Mr. Godolphin.

"He says they are not there, sir: that he can't find them."

"But they are there," returned Thomas. "They have not been moved out of the box since they were first placed in it."

He spoke quietly as he ever did, but very firmly, almost as if he were disputing the point, or had been prepared to dispute it. Mr. Hurde resumed after some deliberation: he was a deliberate man always, both in temperament and in speech.

"What Mr. George says, is this, sir: That when you were in London Lord Averil asked for his bonds. Mr. George looked for them, and found they were not in the box; and he came to the conclusion that you had moved them. The affair escaped his memory, he says, until last night, when he was asked for them again. He has been searching the box this morning, but cannot find the bonds in it."

"They must be there," observed Thomas Godolphin. "If George has not moved them, I have not. He has a knack of overlooking things."

"I said so to him, sir, just now. He----"

"Do you say he is engaged?" interrupted Thomas Godolphin.

"The secretary of the railway company is with him, sir. I suppose he has come about that loan. I think the bonds can't be anywhere but in the box, sir. I told Mr. George so."

"Let me know when he is disengaged," said Thomas Godolphin. And Mr. Hurde went out.

George Godolphin was disengaged then. Mr. Hurde saw the gentleman, whom he had called the railway company's secretary, departing. The next minute George Godolphin came out of his room.

"Have you mentioned that to my brother?" he asked of Hurde.

"I have, sir. Mr. Godolphin thinks that you must be mistaken."

George went in to his brother, shook hands, and said he was glad to see him so early. "It is a strange thing about these bonds," he continued, without giving Thomas time to speak.

"You have overlooked them," said Thomas. "Bring me the keys, and I will go and get them."

"I assure you they are not there."

"They must be there, George. Bring me the keys."

George Godolphin produced the key of the strong-room, and of the safe, and Lord Averil's box was examined by Thomas Godolphin. The bonds in question were not in it: and Thomas, had he missed himself, could scarcely have been more completely astonished.

"George, you must have moved them," were the first words he spoke.

"Not I," said George, lightly. "Where should I move them to?"

"But no one has power to get into that room, or to penetrate to the safe and the box after it, except you and myself," urged Mr. Godolphin. "Unless, indeed, you have allowed the keys to stray from your keeping."

"I have not done that," answered George. "This seems to be perfectly unaccountable."

"How came you to tell Averil last night that the bonds had gone to London?"

"Well, the fact is, I did not know what to tell him," replied George. "When I first missed the bonds, when you were in London----"

"Why did you not let me know then that they were missing?" was the interruption.

"I forgot it when you returned home."

"But you should not have allowed yourself the possibility of forgetting a thing like that," remonstrated Thomas. "Upon missing deeds of that value, or in fact of any value however slight, you should have communicated with me the very same hour. George," he added, after a pause, which George did not break: "I cannot understand how it was that you did not see the necessity of it yourself."

George Godolphin was running his hand through his hair--in an absent manner, lost in thought; in--as might be conjectured--contemplation of the past time referred to. "How was I to think anything but that you had moved the deeds?" he said.

"At all events, you should have ascertained. Why, George, were I to miss deeds that I believed to be in a given place, I could not rest a night without inquiring after them. I might assume--and there might be every probability for it--that you had moved them; but my sleep would be ruined until I ascertained the fact."

George made no reply. I wonder where he was wishing himself? Mr. Godolphin resumed.

"In this instance, I do not see how you could have come to the conclusion that I had touched the bonds. Where did you think I was likely to move them to?"

George could not tell--and said so. It was not impossible, but Thomas might have sent them to town--or have handed them back to Lord Averil, he continued to murmur, in a somewhat confused manner. Thomas looked at him: he could scarcely make him out, but supposed the loss had affected his equanimity.

"Had you regarded it dispassionately, George, I think you would have seen it in a more serious light. I should not be likely to move the bonds to a different place of keeping, without your cognizance: and as to returning them to Lord Averil, the transaction would have appeared in the books."

"I am sorry I forgot to mention it to you," said George.

"That you could have forgotten it, and continued to forget it until now, passes all belief. Has there never been a moment at any time, George, in this last month that it has recurred to your memory?"

"Well, perhaps there may have been; just a casual thought," acknowledged George. "I can't be sure."

"And yet you did not speak to me?"

"In your present state of health, I was willing to spare you unnecessary anxiety----"

"Stay, George. If you really assumed that I had moved the deeds, asking me the question could not have been productive of anxiety. If any fear, such as that the deeds were missing without my agency, only crossed your mind as a suggestion, it was your bounden duty to acquaint me with it."

"I wish I could have dealt with the matter now without acquainting you," returned George. "Did not the London doctors warn you that repose of mind was essential to you?"

"George," was the impressive answer, and Thomas had his hand upon his brother's arm as he spoke it, "so long as I pretend to transact business, to come to this Bank, and sit here, its master, so long do I desire and request to be considered equal to discharging its duties efficiently. When I can no longer do that, I will withdraw from it. Never again suffer my state of health to be a plea for keeping matters from me, however annoying or complicated they may be."

Thomas Godolphin spent half that day in looking into other strong boxes, lest perchance the missing deeds should have got into any--though he did not see how that could be. They could not be found; but, neither did any other paper of consequence, so far as could be discovered, appear to have gone. Thomas could not account for the loss in any way, or conjecture why it should have occurred, or who had taken the bonds. It was made known in the Bank that a packet of deeds was missing; but full particulars were not given.

There was no certain data to go upon, as to the time of the loss. George Godolphin stated that he had missed them a month ago; Thomas, when visiting Lord Averil's box for some purpose about four months ago, had seen the deeds there, secure. They must have disappeared between those periods. The mystery was--how? The clerks could not get to the strong-room and to the safes and cases in it, unless by some strange accident; by some most unaccountable neglect. Very great neglect it would have been, to allow them the opportunity of getting to one key; but to obtain three or four, as was necessary before those deeds could have been taken, and to obtain them undiscovered, was next door to an impossibility. The internal arrangements in the house of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin were of a stringent nature; Sir George Godolphin had been a most particular man in business. Conjecture upon conjecture was hazarded: theory after theory discussed. When Mr. Hurde found the deeds were really gone, his amazement was excessive, his trouble great. George, as soon as he could, stole away from the discussion. He had got over his part, better perhaps than he had expected: all that remained now, was to make the best of the loss--and to institute a search for the deeds.

"I can't call to mind a single one of them who would do it, or be likely to do it," remarked Mr. Hurde to his master.

"Of whom?"

"Of the clerks in the house, sir. But, one of them, it must have been."

"A stranger it could not have been," replied Thomas Godolphin. "Had a midnight plunderer got into the Bank, he would not have contented himself with one packet of deeds."

"Whoever took them, sir, took them to make money upon them. There's not a doubt of that. I wonder--I wonder----"

"What?" asked Mr. Godolphin.

"I wonder--I have often wondered, sir--whether Layton does not live above his income. If so----"

"Hurde," said Thomas Godolphin gravely, "I believe Layton to be as honest as you or I."

"Well--I have always thought him so, or I should pretty soon have spoken. But, sir, the deeds must have gone somehow, by somebody's hands: and Layton is the least _un_likely of all. I see him on a Sunday driving his new wife out in a gig. She plays the piano, too!"

How these items in the domestic economy of the clerk, Layton, could bear upon the loss of the deeds, especially the latter item, Mr. Hurde did not further explain. He was of the old school, seeing no good in gigs, still less in pianos; and he determined to look a little after Mr. Layton.

Thomas Godolphin, straightforward and honourable, imparted to Lord Averil the fact of the deeds being missing. Whether he would have revealed it to a less intimate client at this early stage of the affair, might be a matter of speculation. The house would not yet call them lost, he said to Lord Averil: it trusted, by some fortunate accident, to put its hands upon them, in some remote pigeon-hole. Lord Averil received the communication with courteous friendliness: he thought it must prove that they had only been mislaid, and he hoped they would be found. Both gentlemen hoped that sincerely. The value of the deeds was about sixteen thousand pounds: too much for either of them to lose with equanimity.

"George must have known of this when I asked him for the deeds a month ago," observed Lord Averil.

"I think not," replied Thomas Godolphin. "It was your asking for the deeds which caused him to search the box for them, and he then found they were gone."

"Perhaps you are right. But I remember thinking his manner peculiar."

"How 'peculiar'?" inquired Thomas.

"Hesitating: uncertain. He appeared, at first, not to know what I meant in asking for the deeds. Since you spoke to me of the loss, it struck me as accounting for George's manner--that he did not like to tell me of it."

"He could not have known of it then," repeated Thomas Godolphin.

As this concluding part of the conversation took place, they were coming out of the room. Isaac Hastings was passing along the passage, and heard a portion of it.

"Are they deeds of Lord Averil's that are missing?" he inquired confidentially of Mr. Hurde, later in the day.

The old clerk nodded an affirmative. "But you need not proclaim it there," he added, by way of caution, glancing sideways at the clerks.

"Do you suppose I should do so?" returned Isaac Hastings.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XIII. A RED-LETTER DAY FOR MRS. BOND

The scent of the new-mown hay was in the atmosphere around Prior's Ash. A backward spring it had been until the middle of April, and wiseacres said the crops would be late. But then the weather had suddenly burst into the warmth of summer, vegetation came on all the more rapidly for its previous tardiness, and the crops turned out to be early, instead of late.

Never a more lovely day gladdened the world than that particular day in June. Maria Godolphin, holding Miss Meta by the hand, walked along under the shady field-hedge, all glorious with its clusters of wild roses. The field was covered with hay, now being piled into cocks by the haymakers, and Meta darted ever and anon from her mother's side, to afford the valuable aid of her tiny hands. Meta would have enjoyed a roll on the hay with the most intense delight; but unfortunately Meta was in the full grandeur of visiting attire; not in simple haymaking undress. Had you asked Meta, she would have told you she had on her "best things." Things too good to be allowed to come to grief in the hay. Maria soothed the disappointment by a promise for the morrow. Meta should come in her brown holland dress with Margery, and roll about as much as she pleased. Children are easily satisfied, and Meta paced on soberly under the promise, only giving covetous glances at the hay. With all her impulsive gaiety, her laughter and defiance of Margery, she was by nature a most gentle child, easily led.

Maria was on her way to call at Lady Godolphin's Folly; and thence at Ashlydyat. Maria was not given to making morning calls: she deemed it a very unsatisfactory waste of time. Very pleasant no doubt for gossips, but a hindrance to the serious business of life. She made them now and then; just enough to save her credit, and that was all. Mrs. Pain had honoured Maria with about fifteen visits, and Maria was now going to return them all in one. No one could say Charlotte went in for ceremony; she would run in and out of people's houses, as the whim took her, every day in the week sometimes, and of Maria's amidst the rest. Of late, she had called more frequently on Maria than usual: and Maria, her conscience weighty with the obligation, at last set out to return it.

But she had not dressed for it--as some people would consider dress; Charlotte herself, for instance; Charlotte would arrive, splendid as the sun; not a colour of the rainbow came amiss to her; a green dress one day, a violet another, a crimson a third, and so on. Dresses with flounces and furbelows; jackets interlaced with gold and silver; brimless hats surmounted by upright plumes. All that Charlotte wore was good, as far as cost went: as far as taste went, opinions differed. Maria had inherited the taste of her mother: she could not have been fine had you bribed her with gold. She wore to-day a pale dress of watered silk; a beautiful Cashmere shawl of thin texture, and a white bonnet, all plain and quiet, as befitted a lady. The charming day had induced her to walk; and the faint perfume of the hay, wafting through Prior's Ash, had caused her to choose the field way. The longest way, but infinitely the pleasantest.

It took her past those tenements familiarly called the Pollard cottages: in one of which lived troublesome Mrs. Bond. All the inmates of these cottages were well known to Maria: had been known to her from childhood: the Rector of All Souls' was wont to say that he had more trouble with the Pollard cottages than with all the rest of his parish. For one thing, sickness was often prevalent in them; sometimes death; and sickness and death give trouble and anxiety to a conscientious pastor.

"Mamma, you going to see old Susan to-day?" chattered Miss Meta, as they approached the cottages.

"Not to-day, Meta. I am going straight on to Mrs. Pain's."

Meta, who was troubled with no qualms on the score of ceremony herself, perceiving one of the doors open, darted suddenly into it. Meta was rather in the habit of darting into any open door that it took her fancy so to do. Maria walked on a few steps, and then turned and waited: but the little truant did not appear to be in a hurry to come out, and she went back and followed her in.

A lady in a rusty black stuff gown covered with snuff, her cap awry and her face somewhat flushed, was seated in state before a round deal table, doing nothing; except contemplating certain articles that were on the table, with a remarkably gratified expression of countenance. The lady was Mrs. Bond: and this, as Maria was soon to hear, had been a decidedly red-letter day with her. On the table--and it was this which appeared to be fascinating the attention of Meta--was a large wicker cage containing a parrot; a small parrot with a plumage as fine as Mrs. Charlotte Pain's, an angry-looking tuft on its head, not at all unlike her hat's tuft of feathers. Mrs. Bond's attention appeared not to be so much absorbed by the parrot and cage, as by a green medicine-bottle, containing some clear-looking liquid, and a tea-cup without a handle. These latter articles were standing immediately before her.

Two or three years ago, Mrs. Bond's eldest daughter, Peggy, a damsel who had not borne the brightest of characters for steadiness, had been taken out to Australia by a family to whom she engaged herself as nurse-girl. After sundry vicissitudes in that country--which she duly chronicled home to her mother, and that lady was wont to relate in convivial moments, over tea or any other social beverage--Peggy had come to an anchor by marrying. She wrote word that her husband was an industrious young carpenter, who was making his fortune, and they were quite at ease in the world. As a proof of the latter statement, she had sent over a parrot to her mother as a keepsake, and a trifle of money; which would be safely delivered by a friend, who was going the home voyage.

The friend was faithful. He had arrived on his mission that very morning at Mrs. Bond's, delivering the parrot uninjured and in rude health--if its capacity for screaming might be taken as an indication. The money turned out to be eleven pounds: a ten-pound note, and a sovereign in gold. Peggy probably knew enough of her mother to be certain that the first outlay made would be for "something comforting," and this may have induced her to add a sovereign, in some faint hope that the note would be preserved intact. Mrs. Bond had the sense to discern Peggy's motive, and openly spoke of it to Maria. She was in an open mood. In point of fact she had gone right off to Prior's Ash and changed the sovereign, bringing home that green bottle full of--comfort. It was three parts empty now, and Mrs. Bond, in consequence, had become rather red in the face, and was slipping some of her long words.

"But you will not think of changing the note, will you?" returned Maria, in answer to what Mrs. Bond disclosed. "How useful it would be to you in the winter for clothing and fire--if you would only keep it until then!"

"So it 'ould," responded Mrs. Bond.

She dived into her pocket, and brought forth the note and a handful of silver, all lying loose, amidst a miscellaneous collection. "Don't it look pretty?" cried she.

"Very," said Maria, not certain whether she alluded to the parrot or the money, for Mrs. Bond's eyes were not remarkably direct in their glances just then. "Too pretty to spend," she added, in reference to the note. "You had better give it to papa, Mrs. Bond, and let him take care of it for you."

Mrs. Bond shook her head at this proposition. "Once the parson gets hold on any little bit of our money to keep, he ain't free to give it up again," she objected. "'Keep it for this,' says he, or 'keep it for that;' and it ends in its being laid out as he likes, not as us do."

"As you please, of course," rejoined Maria. "I only thought it a pity you should not derive some real benefit from this money. If you keep it yourself you may be induced to change it, and then it would dwindle away in trifles, and do you no good."

"That it 'ould!" acknowledged Mrs. Bond. "I've a'most a mind to let it be took care on, after all. If 'twas anybody but the Rector!"

"Shall I keep it for you?" asked Maria.

"Well now, 'ould you, ma'am?"

"Yes, I will. If you please."

Mrs. Bond detached the note from the silver and other articles which she had brought up indiscriminately from her pocket. They lay in her capacious lap, and appeared to afford food for gratification to Meta, who had come round from the parrot to look at them. A brass thimble, a damp blue-bag, some halfpence, a recipe for toothache, a piece of ginger, and the end of a tallow candle, being amongst the items.

"You'll promise to let me have it back if I asks for it?" cried she, clutching the note, and waiting for Maria's promise before she would surrender it.

"Certainly I will. Whenever you wish for it, you shall have it. Only," Maria added, smiling, "if you ask for it too soon, I shall beg you still to let me keep it. Don't you remember how badly off you were last winter? Just think what a ten-pound note would have done for you then, Mrs. Bond!"

"Lawks, ay! It would a got me through the cold beautiful."

"And I hope you will let this get you through next year's cold," returned Maria, putting the note into her purse.

"Ay, sure! But now, ain't it kind o' Peggy?"

"Yes. It is delightful to hear that she is so well settled at last."

"I've been drinking her health, and better luck still," said Mrs. Bond, taking the cork out of the bottle, and pouring out half its remaining contents. "'Ould ye just take a drain, ma'am?"

"No, thank you," replied Maria. "I don't like the smell of it."

"No!" returned Mrs. Bond, who, truth to say, but for the "drains" she had taken herself, and which had tended slightly to muddle her perceptions, would never have thought of proffering the invitation. "Not like the smell! It were tenpence the half-pint."

Maria took the child's hand. Meta gave it reluctantly: the new parrot possessed great attractions for her. "I'll come again and see it to-morrow," said she to Mrs. Bond. "I'll come with Margery. I am coming to play in the hayfield."

"Ay," returned Mrs. Bond. "Ain't it pretty! It's the best Old Tom."

She was evidently getting a little confused in her intellects. Had Maria been a strong-minded district visitor, given to reforming the evils of the parish, she might have read Mrs. Bond a lecture on sobriety, and walked off with the bottle. Mrs. Bond and such medicine-bottles had however been too long and too well acquainted with each other, to admit any hope of their effectually parting now: and the last thing Maria caught, as she glanced back, was a vision of that lady's head thrown back, the inverted tea-cup to her lips.

"The note would have been changed before the week was out!" was Maria's mental comment.

Without further adventure, she reached Lady Godolphin's Folly. Charlotte had visitors. A country squire's wife with her two daughters had come for a few days from their sober residence at a few miles' distance to the attractions of the Folly. Charlotte could make it attractive when she liked; and invitations to it were in demand--which has been previously remarked. If people did think Mrs. Pain somewhat "fast" in her manners, she was no faster than some others.

Charlotte was in one of her pleasantest moods, and Maria had rarely seen her looking so well. She wore a morning-dress of pink muslin, made simply, and confined at the waist by a band. Her hair was dressed simply also, brought rather low on her face, and rolled: even Margery could not have found fault with her looks this morning.

Or with her manner, either. She regaled Meta with strawberries; and when they were finished, caught her up in her arms and carried her out by the glass door.

"Do not keep her long, Mrs. Pain," said Maria. "I must be going."

"Where is your hurry?" asked Charlotte.

"I am going on to Ashlydyat."

Charlotte departed with Meta, and Maria continued with the ladies, Charlotte's guests. They had been talking a few minutes, when loud screams of terror from Meta alarmed their ears. Maria hastened out in the direction of the sound, her cheeks and lips alike blanched.

She came upon them--Charlotte and the child--in that secluded, lovely spot amidst the grove of trees, where Charlotte Pain--and you saw her--had held an interview with her future husband, Rodolf, on George Godolphin's wedding-day. Charlotte had now carried the child there, and set her on the mossy turf, and called her dogs around. She had done it thinking to give pleasure to the child. But Meta was of a timid nature; she was not used to dogs; and upon one of them springing on her with a bark, "all for play," as Charlotte said, her fear broke forth in terrified cries. When Maria reached them, Charlotte had caught up Meta in her arms, and was kicking the dogs off.

Meta sprang from Charlotte's arms to her mother's, with a great cry. Maria, not so strongly-framed as Charlotte, could not hold this child of between five and six at her ease, but was fain to stagger with her to a bench. Meta lay in her lap, clinging to her and sobbing convulsively.

"My darling, what is it?" whispered Maria. "What has hurt you?"

"Oh, mamma, send them away! send them away!" cried the little imploring voice.

"Would you be so kind as send the dogs away, Mrs. Pain?" asked Maria. "I think she is frightened at them."

"I know she is, foolish little thing!" answered Charlotte, going off with the dogs. Apparently she disposed of them somewhere, for she returned the next minute without them. Maria was in the same place, holding her child to her heart.

"Mrs. George Godolphin, don't you think you will have to answer sometime for the manner in which you are rearing that child?" began she, gravely.

"In what way?" returned Maria.

"You are bringing her up to be as timid as yourself."

"Am I particularly timid?"

"You! Why, you know you are. You don't ride: you wouldn't drive for the world; you are afraid of dogs."

"I could manage to ride a quiet pony," said Maria. "As to dogs, I confess that I am a little afraid of them, if they are rough."

"If a dog only barks, you call it 'rough,'" retorted Charlotte. "I should just put that child down again, and call the dogs round her, and let her battle it out with them. They would not hurt her; there's no fear of that; and it would teach her to overcome fear."

"Oh, Mrs. Pain!" Maria involuntarily strained her child closer to her, and Meta, who had heard the words, pushed her little hot face of distress nearer to its shelter. "It might throw her into such a state of terror, that she would never forget it. She would be frightened at dogs for her life. That is not the way to treat children, indeed, Mrs. Pain!"

Meta could not be coaxed down again. Maria was not strong enough to carry her to the house, so Charlotte took her up in her arms. But the child would not release her hand from her mother's, and Maria had to walk along, holding it.

"You pretty little timid goose!" cried Charlotte, kissing her. "Whatever would you do if you were to lose your mamma?"

"It would be a calamity, would it not, Meta?" said Maria, speaking half-jokingly; and Charlotte answered in the same light spirit.

"A calamity in one sense, of course. But she might get a chance then of having a little of the rust rubbed out of her. Meta, we must have some more strawberries after this."

But Meta could not be seduced to strawberries. Maria said farewell, and led her away, bending her steps to Ashlydyat. The child was frightened still. Janet gravely assured her that the dogs would not come to Ashlydyat, and Meta allowed herself to be taken possession of by Cecil, introducing the subject of Mrs. Bond's beautiful parrot and its large cage as she was going away.

"We have heard about the parrot," remarked Bessy to Maria. "Susan Satcherly hobbled up here this morning, and mentioned its arrival. Susan hopes it won't scream all night as well as all day: she hears it next door as plainly as though the parrot were present there. A ten-pound note has come also, she says. Which I am almost sorry for," added Bessy: "though I suppose Mrs. Bond would think me terribly ill-natured if she heard me say so. She will change that note to-day, and never rest until the last shilling of it has been spent."

"No, she will not," returned Maria, laughing, holding out the note in triumph. "She has given it to me to keep for her."

"Never!" exclaimed Bessy in surprise. "You must have exercised some sleight-of-hand, Maria, to get that!"

Maria laughed. "She was in an unusually tractable humour, Bessy. The fact is, a sovereign had arrived as well as the bank-note: and that she had changed."

Bessy nodded her head. She knew Mrs. Bond of old. "I understand," said she. "Was she very bad, Maria?"

"No; not then. But I can't say what she may be before the day is over. She brought a handful of silver out of her pocket."

"Now, mind, Maria--don't give her up that note, let her ask for it ever so," advised Bessy. "Keep it until winter."

"If she will allow me," replied Maria. "But she only resigned it on condition that I would return it to her if she asked for it. I promised that I would do so."

"I should not: promise or no promise," returned Bessy. "Keeping it would be for her good, you know, Maria."

Maria shook her head. She could not be strong-minded, as Bessy was, acting for people's good against their will; and she could not go from her promise. She returned the note to her purse, knowing that Mrs. Bond would have it, if she chose to demand it.

Maria was easily persuaded to remain for the day at Ashlydyat. She sat at the window in the height of enjoyment. It was enjoyment to Maria Godolphin: sitting there in perfect stillness on a calm summer's day. The lovely flowers of Ashlydyat's garden, its velvet lawns, were stretched out before her: the white walls of Lady Godolphin's Folly rose in the distance; and Maria sat in an easy-chair in luxurious idleness, her fair white hands lying in her lap. Meta was away somewhere, fascinating the household, and all was rest. Rest from exertion, rest from care. The time came when Maria looked back on that day and believed it must have been paradise.

Janet sent a note to the Bank, to desire George to come up to dinner with Thomas. When Thomas arrived, however, he was alone. George was out, therefore the note had not been given to him. They supposed he would be up in the evening, and dined without him.

But the evening passed on, and he did not come. Thomas's private opinion was that George must have remained to search for the missing deeds. Thomas could not be easy under such a misfortune--as it might in truth be called. The sum was by far too weighty to be lost with equanimity. And that was not all: there was the unpleasant uncertainty with regard to the disappearance. Thomas mentioned the matter in confidence amongst them. At least, to Maria and Janet; the other two had gone out with Meta. Janet observed that he appeared absorbed in thought, as if uneasy at something; and he readily acknowledged that he had been rendered uneasy by a circumstance which had occurred during the day: the missing of some deeds that they had believed to be in safe custody.

"What if you cannot find them, Thomas?" asked Janet.

"Then we must make good the loss."

"Is it a heavy amount?"

"Yes."

Janet looked startled. Thomas's grave manner did not tend to reassure her. She gave utterance to some half-spoken words.

"It is a heavy amount as a loss," explained Thomas. "In fact, it is a large sum in itself. It would cost us over sixteen thousand pounds to make it good."

Janet lifted her hands in dismay. "And all from the loss of a single packet of deeds?"

"Even so."

"But how can they have been lost?"

"There it is," said Thomas Godolphin. "If we could tell as much as that, it would be some satisfaction. We cannot imagine how or when they were lost. George missed them a month ago; but----"

"A month ago! Did George miss them a month ago?"

It was Maria who interrupted, eagerness in her voice and manner. It had occurred to her that the fact might account for a certain restlessness, an anxiety in George's manner, which she had not failed to remark of late. The next words of Thomas Godolphin served to dissipate the illusion.

"George looked for the deeds a month ago. Not finding them in the box, he concluded that I had moved them. Therefore we cannot be said to have known of the loss until to-day."

"George ought to have asked you," said Janet.

"Yes, he ought," acquiesced Thomas. But it was all he said.

"It is just like careless George!" exclaimed Janet. "Should the time ever come that he is sole head of the Bank, I do not know how it will get on! To whom did the deeds belong, Thomas?"

"To Lord Averil."

"You are sure you had them?" asked cautious Janet.

A half smile crossed Thomas Godolphin's lips. "Quite sure, Janet. You understand," he added, looking at them both, "we do not care that this should be spoken of. You are safe, I know, Janet; and Maria would most likely hear it from George."

Maria had been buried in a reverie. "I cannot conceive how it is possible for anything to have been lost from the strong-room," she said, lifting her head. "All about us are trustworthy. And, were they not, there would be no possibility of their getting to the safes in the strong-room."

"You are right, Maria," said Thomas. "I have thought of it until I am bewildered."

Maria seemed to be getting bewildered also. She was thinking of it in its every aspect and bearing. Many little past incidents, proving that her husband was ill at ease, had something on his mind, rushed into her memory. She had not thought much of them before: but they grew strangely vivid now. To miss deeds of this value would amply account for it.

"Thomas," said she, speaking out her thoughts, "do you not think George must have feared there was something wrong, when he missed them at first? I do."

"No. Why do you think it?"

"Because----" Maria stopped. It suddenly occurred to her that it might not be quite right to comment upon her husband's manner, what it had, or what it had not been; that he might not like her to do so, although it was only to his brother and sister. So she turned it off: speaking any indifferent words that came uppermost.

"It is curious, missing a packet of deeds of that value from its place, that he should not have feared it might be missing altogether."

"The very fact of his not asking me about it, Maria, proves that no suspicion of wrong crossed his mind," was the comment of Thomas Godolphin. "He supposed I had placed it elsewhere."

"That's just like George!" repeated Janet. "Taking things on trust, as he takes people! A child might deceive him."

"I hope we shall find them yet," said Thomas Godolphin.

"Does Lord Averil----"

What Janet might be about to inquire was never known. The words were stopped by a strange noise, an appalling noise, apparently at the very door of the room they were in. A loud, prolonged, discordant noise, unlike anything they had ever heard. Some might have compared it to the shrieks of a strong giant in his agony; some to the hoarse screams of a bird of prey. But it was unlike either: it was unlike anything earthly.

With one bound, they flew to the hall, on to which the room opened, Maria, white with terror. The servants came rushing from their apartments, and stood in consternation.

What was the noise? What had caused it? The questions were pouring forth from all. The hall was perfectly empty, except for its startled gazers; doors and windows had been closed. Thomas walked to the entrance and looked beyond, beyond the porch, but nothing was there. The space was empty; the evening was calm and still. At a distance, borne on the evening air, could be heard the merry laughter of Meta, playing with Bessy and Cecil. Thomas came in and closed the door again.

"I cannot think what it could have been!" he observed, speaking generally.

The servants were ready with answering remarks. One had thought this; one had thought that; another something else. Maria had seized upon Janet: glad, perhaps, that it was too dark for her white face to be discerned. It was the sound which had so terrified her: no association in her mind was connected with it; and it was the sound which had terrified the servants. They had never heard a sound like unto it in all their lives.

"It must have been a night-bird, shrieking as he flew over the house," observed Mr. Godolphin.

But, in truth, he so spoke only in the absence of any other possible assumption, and against his own belief. No bird of prey, known to ornithology, could have made that noise, even had it been within the hall to do it. A dozen birds of prey could not have made it. Thomas, like the rest, felt bewildered.

The servants began to move away. Nothing more than usual was to be seen in the darkened hall; nothing to be heard. As the last one disappeared, Thomas turned to the drawing-room door, and held it open for his sister and Maria.

At that very moment when they had gone in, and Thomas was following, the noise came again. Loud, prolonged, shrill, unearthly! WHAT was it? Were the rafters of the house loosening? the walls rending asunder? Were the skies opening for the crack of doom? They gathered in the hall again: master, ladies, servants; and stood there, motionless, appalled, bewildered, their faces whiter than before.

Its echoes died away in shrieks. Human cries this time, and not unfamiliar. One of the women-servants, excited beyond repression, had fallen into hysterics.

But whence had proceeded that noise? Where had been its centre? Without the house, or within the house?--in its walls, its passages, its hall?--where? Its sound had been everywhere. In short, what had caused it? what had it been?

They could not tell. It was a problem beyond human philosophy to solve. They could not tell then; they could not tell afterwards. It has been no ideal scene that I have described, as living witnesses could testify. Witnesses who can no more account for those unearthly sounds now, than they could account for them then.

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XIV. ISAAC HASTINGS TURNS TO THINKING

The revelation to Isaac Hastings, that the deeds, missing, belonged to Lord Averil, set that young gentleman thinking. Like his father, like his sister Grace, he was an exceedingly accurate observer, given to taking note of passing events. He had keen perception, a retentive memory for trifles, great powers of comparison and concentration. What with one thing and another, he had been a little puzzled lately by Mr. George Godolphin. There had been sundry odds and ends out of the common to be detected in Mr. George's manner: not patent to the generality of people, who are for the most part unobservant, but sufficiently conspicuous to Isaac Hastings. Anxiety about letters; trifles in the everyday ordering of the Bank; one little circumstance, touching a delay in paying out some money, which Isaac, and he alone, had become accidentally cognizant of; all formed food for speculation. There had been the somewhat doubtful affair of George Godolphin's secret journey to London, leaving false word with his wife that he was accompanying Captain St. Aubyn on the road to Portsmouth, which had travelled to the knowledge of Isaac through want of reticence in Charlotte Pain. More than all, making more impression upon Isaac, had been the strange, shrinking fear displayed by George, that Saturday when he had announced Lord Averil: a fear succeeded by a confusion of manner that proved his master must for the moment have lost his presence of mind. Isaac Hastings had announced the names of other gentlemen that day, and the announcement, equally with themselves, had been received with the most perfect equanimity. Isaac had often thought of that little episode since, and wondered; wondered what there could be in Lord Averil's visit to scare Mr. George Godolphin. It recurred to him now with double distinctness. The few words he had overheard, between Lord Averil and Mr. Godolphin, recurred to him--the former saying that George must have known of the loss of the deeds when he had asked for them a month ago, that he judged so by his manner, which was peculiar, hesitating, uncertain, "as though he had known of the loss then, and did not like to tell of it."

To the strange manner Isaac himself could have borne witness. Had this strangeness been caused by the knowledge of the loss of the deeds?--if so, why did not George Godolphin make a stir about them then? Only on the previous day, when Lord Averil had again made his appearance, Isaac had been further struck with George's startled hesitation, and with his refusal to see him. He had sent out word as the excuse, that he was particularly engaged. Isaac had believed at the time that George was no more engaged than he himself was. And now, this morning, when it could not be concealed any longer, came the commotion. The deeds were gone: they had disappeared in the most unaccountable manner, no one knowing how or when.

What did it all mean? Isaac Hastings asked himself the question as he pursued his business in the Bank, amidst the other clerks. He could not help asking it. A mind, constituted as was that of Isaac Hastings, thoughtful, foreseeing, penetrating, cannot help entering upon these speculations, when surrounding circumstances call them forth. Could it be that George Godolphin had fallen into secret embarrassment?--that he had abstracted the deeds himself and used them? Isaac felt his cheek flush with shame at the thought; with shame that he should allow himself to think such a thing of a Godolphin: and yet, he could not help it. No. Do as he would, he could not drive the thought away: it remained to haunt him. And, the longer it remained, the more vivid it grew.

Ought he to give a hint of this to his father? He did not know. On the one hand there was sober reason, which told him George Godolphin was not likely to be guilty of such a thing on the other, lay his fancy, whispering that it might be so. Things as strange had been enacted lately; as the public knew. Men, in an equally good position with George Godolphin, were proved to have been living upon fraud for years. Isaac was fond of newspapers, and knew all they could tell him. What if anything came wrong to this Bank? Why then, Mr. Hastings would be a ruined man. It was not only the loss of his own life's savings, that were in the hands of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin, but there was the larger sum he had placed there as trustee to the little Chisholms.

Isaac Hastings lingered in the Bank till the last that evening. All had gone, except Mr. Hurde. The latter was preparing to leave, when Isaac went up to him, leaning his arms upon the desk.

"It is a strange thing about those deeds, Mr. Hurde!" cried he, in a low tone.

Mr. Hurde nodded.

"It is troubling me amazingly," went on Isaac.

This seemed to arouse the old clerk, and he looked up, speaking curtly.

"Why should it trouble you? You didn't take them, I suppose?"

"No, I didn't," said Isaac.

"Very well, then. The loss won't fall upon you. There's no need for your troubling."

Isaac was silent. In truth, he was unable to give any reason for the "troubling," except on general grounds: he could not say that a doubt was haunting his mind as to the good faith of Mr. George Godolphin.

"It is a loss which I suppose Mr. George will have to make good, as they were in his custody," he resumed. "My sister won't like it, I fear."

The observation recalled Mr. Hurde's memory to the fact that Mrs. George Godolphin was the sister of Isaac Hastings. It afforded a sufficient excuse for the remarks in the mind of the clerk, and somewhat pacified him.

"It is to be hoped they'll be found," said he. "I don't see how they could have gone."

"Nor I," returned Isaac. "The worst is, if they have gone----"

"What?" asked Mr. Hurde, for Isaac had stopped.

"That perhaps money has been made of them."

Mr. Hurde groaned. "They have not been taken for nothing, you may be sure."

"If they have been taken," persisted Isaac.

"If they have been taken," assented Mr. Hurde. "I don't believe they have. From the sheer impossibility of anybody's getting to them, I don't believe it. And I shan't believe it, until every nook and corner between the four walls have been hunted over."

"How do you account for their disappearance, then?"

"I think they must have been moved inadvertently."

"No one could so move them except Mr. Godolphin or Mr. George," rejoined Isaac.

"Mr. Godolphin has not moved them," returned the clerk in a testy tone of reproof. "Mr. Godolphin is too accurate a man of business to move deeds inadvertently, or to move them and forget it the next moment. Mr. George may have done it. In searching for anything in the strong-room, if he has had more than one case open at once, he may have put these deeds back in their wrong place, or even brought them upstairs."

Isaac considered for a minute, and then shook his head. "I should not think it," he answered.

"Well, it is the only supposition I can come to," was the concluding remark of Mr. Hurde. "It is next to an impossibility, Mr. Godolphin excepted, that any one else can have got to the deeds."

He was drawing on his gloves as he spoke, to depart. Isaac went out with him, but their roads lay different ways. Isaac turned towards All Souls' Rectory, and walked along in deep reverie.

The Rectory hours were early, and he found them at tea: his mother, Rose, and Grace. Grace--Mrs. Akeman by her new name--was spending the evening with them with her baby. The Rector, who had gone out in the afternoon, had not yet returned.

Isaac took his tea and then strolled into the garden. Rose and the baby were making a great noise, and Grace was helping them. It disturbed Isaac in his perplexed thought, and he made a mental vow that if he was ever promoted to a home of his own with babies in it, they should be confined to some top room, out of sight and hearing.

By-and-by, when he was leaning over the gate, looking into the road, Mr. Hastings came up. Isaac told him that tea was over: but Mr. Hastings said he had taken a cup with one of his parishioners. He had apparently walked home quickly, and he lifted his hat and wiped his brow.

"Glorious weather for the haymaking, Isaac!"

"Is it?" returned Isaac abstractedly.

"Is it!" repeated Mr. Hastings. "Where are your senses, boy?"

Isaac laughed and roused himself. "I fear they were buried just then, sir. I was thinking of something that has happened at the Bank to-day. A loss has been discovered."

"A loss?" repeated Mr Hastings. "A loss of what?"

Isaac explained. He dropped his voice to a low tone, and spoke confidentially. They were leaning over the gate side by side. Mr. Hastings rather liked to take recreative moments there, exchanging a nod and a word with the passers-by. At this hour of the evening, however, the road was generally free.

"How can the deeds have gone?" exclaimed Mr. Hastings. As every one else had said.

"I don't know," replied Isaac, breaking off a spray from the hedge, and beginning to bite the thorns. "I suppose it is all right," he presently added.

"Right in what way?" asked Mr. Hastings.

"I suppose George Godolphin's all right, I mean."

The words were as an unknown tongue to Mr. Hastings. He did not fathom them. "You suppose that George Godolphin is all right!" he exclaimed. "You speak in riddles, Isaac."

"I cannot say I suspect anything wrong, sir; but the doubt has crossed me. It never would have done so, but for George Godolphin's manner."

Mr. Hastings turned his penetrating gaze on his son, "Speak out," said he. "Tell me what you mean."

Isaac did so. He related the circumstances of the loss; the confused manner he had observed in Mr. George Godolphin, on the visits of Lord Averil, and his reluctance to receive them. One little matter he suppressed: the stolen visit of George to London, and deceit to Maria, relative to it. Isaac did not see what that could have had to do with the loss of the deeds, and his good feeling told him that it was not a pleasant thing to name to his father. Mr. Hastings did not speak for a few minutes.

"Isaac, I see no reasonable grounds for your doubts," he said at length. "The Bank is too flourishing for that. Perhaps you meant only as to George?"

"I can scarcely tell whether I really meant anything," replied Isaac. "The doubts arose to me, and I thought I would mention them to you. I dare say my fancy is to blame: it does run riot sometimes."

A silence ensued. Mr. Hastings broke it. "With a keen man of business, such as Mr. Thomas Godolphin, at the head of affairs, George could not go far wrong, I should presume. I think he spends enough on his own score, mark you, Isaac; but that has nothing to do with the prosperity of the Bank."

"Of course not. Unless----"

"Unless what? Why don't you speak out?"

"Because I am not sure of my premises, sir," frankly answered Isaac. "Unless he were to have become irretrievably embarrassed, and should be using the Bank's funds for his own purposes, I believe I was about to say."

"Pretty blind moles some of you must be, in that case! Could such a thing be done without the cognizance of the house? Of Mr. Hurde and of Thomas Godolphin?"

"Well--no--I don't much think it could," hesitated Isaac, who was not at all certain upon the point. "At any rate, not to any extent. I suppose one of my old crotchets--as Grace, used to call them--has taken possession of me, rendering me absurdly fanciful. I dare say it is all right: except that the deeds are mislaid."

"I dare say it is," acquiesced the Rector. "I should be sorry to think it otherwise--for many reasons. Grace is here, is she not?"

"Grace is here, and Grace's son and heir, making enough noise for ten. I can't think why Grace----"

"What are you taking my name in vain for?" interrupted Grace's own voice. She had come up to them carrying the very son and heir that Isaac had been complaining of: a young gentleman with a bald head, just beginning to exercise his hands in dumb fights; as well as his lungs. "Papa, mamma says are you not going in to tea?"

Before the Rector could answer, or Isaac extricate his hair from the unconsciously mischievous little hands which had seized upon it by Grace's connivance, there came a gay party of equestrians round the corner of the road. Charlotte Pain, with the two young ladies, her guests; Lady Sarah and Miss Grame, who sometimes hired horses for a ride; and three or four gentlemen. Amongst the latter were George Godolphin and Lord Averil. Lord Averil had met them accidentally and joined their party. He was riding by the side of Charlotte Pain.

"I say, Grace!" hastily exclaimed Isaac, twitching away his head, "take that baby in, out of sight. Look there!"

"Take my baby in!" resentfully spoke Grace. "What for? I am not ashamed to be seen holding it. Keeping only two servants, I must turn nurse sometimes: and people know it. I am not situated as Maria is, with a dozen at her beck and call."

Isaac did not prolong the discussion. He thought if he owned an ugly baby with no hair, he should not be so fond of showing it off. Grace stood her ground, and the baby stood his, and lifted its head and its arms by way of greeting. Isaac wondered that it did not lift its voice as well.

The party exchanged bows as they rode past. George Godolphin--he was riding by the side of Sarah Anne Grame--withdrew his horse from the throng and rode up.

"How are you, Grace? How is the baby?"

"Look at him," returned Grace in answer, holding the gentleman up to him.

"Shall I take him for a ride?" asked George, laughing.

"Not if you paid me his value in gold," answered Grace bluntly.

George's gay blue eyes twinkled. "What may that value be? Your estimation of it, Grace?"

"Never mind," said Grace. "I can tell you that your Bank would not meet it. No, not if all its coffers were filled to the brim."

"I see," observed George: "he is inestimable. Do not set your heart too much upon him, Grace," he continued, his voice changing.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Maria had to lose some, equally dear."

"That is true," said Grace in softened tones. "How is Maria to-day?"

"Quite well, thank you. She went to Ashlydyat this afternoon, and I dare say has remained there. Famous weather for the hay, is it not, sir?" he added to the Rector.

"Couldn't be better," replied Mr. Hastings.

George rode off at a canter. The baby burst into a cry; perhaps that he could not go off at a canter too: and Grace, after a vain attempt to hush him, carried him into the house. The Rector remained, looking over the gate.

"Things going wrong with him!--No! He could not be so easy under it," was his mental conclusion. "It is all right, depend upon it," he added aloud to his son.

"I think it must be, sir," was the reply of Isaac Hastings.

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XV. A NIGHTMARE FOR THE RECTOR OF ALL SOULS'

The Reverend Mr. Hastings had audibly expressed a wish never again to be left in the responsible position of trustee, and the Reverend Mr. Hastings echoed it a second time as he ascended a gig which was to convey him to Binham. A vestry meeting at All Souls' had been called for that evening at seven o'clock; but something arose during the day connected with the trust, and at four Mr. Hastings set off in a gig to see Brierly, the late agent to the Chisholm property. "I'll be back by seven if I can, Smith," he observed to his clerk. "If not, the meeting must commence without me."

The way to Binham lay through shady lanes and unfrequented roads: unfrequented as compared with those where the traffic is great. It was a small place about six miles' distance from Prior's Ash, and the Rector enjoyed the drive. The day was warm and fine as the previous one had been--when you saw Maria Godolphin walking through the hayfield. Shady trees in some parts met overhead, the limes gave forth their sweet perfume, the heavy crops of grass gladdened the Rector's eye, some still uncut, some in process of being converted into hay by labourers, who looked off to salute the well-known clergyman as he drove past.

"I might have brought Rose, after all," he soliloquized. "She would have had a pleasant drive. Only she would have been half an hour getting ready."

He found Mr. Brierly at home, and their little matter of business was soon concluded. Mr. Hastings had other places to call at in the town: he had always plenty of people to see when he went to Binham, for he knew every one in it.

"I wish you would take something," said the agent.

"I can't stay," replied Mr. Hastings. "I shall find old Mrs. Chisholm at tea, and can take a cup with her, standing. That won't lose time. You have not heard from Harknar?"

"No: not directly. His brother thinks he will be home next week."

"The sooner the better. I want the affair settled, and the money placed out."

He held out his hand as he spoke. Mr. Brierly, who, in days long gone by, when they were both boys together, had been an old school-fellow of the Rector's, put his own into it. But he did not withdraw it: he appeared to be in some hesitation.

"Mr. Hastings, excuse me," he said, presently, speaking slowly, "have you kept the money, which I paid over to you, in your own possession?"

"Of course not. I took it the same night to the Bank."

"Ay. I guessed you would. Is it safe?" he added, lowering his voice.

"Safe!" echoed Mr. Hastings.

"I will tell you why I speak. Rutt the lawyer, over at your place, was here this afternoon, and in the course of conversation he dropped a hint that something was wrong at Godolphins'. It was not known yet, he said, but it would be known very soon."

Mr. Hastings paused. "Did he state his grounds for the assertion?"

"No. From what I could gather, it appeared that he spoke from some vague rumour that was going about."

"I think I can explain it," said Mr. Hastings. "A packet of deeds belonging to one of their clients has been lost--has disappeared at least in some unaccountable manner; and this, I expect, must have given rise to the rumour. But the loss of twenty such packets, all to be made good, would not shake the solvency of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin."

"That must be it, then! What simpletons people are! swallowing any absurd rumour that gets afloat; converting a molehill into a mountain! I thought it strange--for a stable old house like the Godolphins'."

"Let me recommend you, Brierly, not to mention it further. If such a report got about, it might cause a run upon the Bank. Not but that, so far as I believe, the Bank could stand any run that might be made upon it."

"I should not have mentioned it at all, except to you," returned Mr. Brierly. "And only to you, because I expected the Chisholms' money was there. Rutt is not a safe man to speak after, at the best of times. I told him I did not believe him. And I did not. Still--if anything were to happen, and I had bottled up the rumour, without giving you a hint of it, I should never cease to blame myself."

"That is the origin of it, you may be sure; the loss of those deeds," observed the Rector. "I know the clerks were questioned about it yesterday, and some of them must have got talking out of doors. Good day, Brierly."

Mr. Hastings paid the rest of his visits, and drove home. In spite of himself, he could not keep his mind from reverting--and somewhat unpleasantly--to what he had heard. He believed the Bank to be perfectly solvent; to be more than solvent. Until the previous evening, when Isaac had made that communication to him, he had been ready to answer for its flourishing condition on his own responsibility, if required. He fully believed the rumour, spoken of by Rutt the lawyer, to arise from some distorted hints of the missing deeds which had oozed out, and to have no other foundation whatever: and yet he could not keep his mind from reverting to it uneasily.

The ting-tang (it deserved no better name, and Prior's Ash gave it no other) of All Souls' Church was sending forth its last notes as the Rector drove in. Handing over the horse and gig to the waiting servant of the friend from whom it was borrowed--a gig always at the disposal of the Rector--he made his way to the vestry, and had the pleasure of presiding at a stormy meeting. There were divided parties in the parish at that time, touching a rate to be paid, or a non-rate; and opposing eloquence ran high. Personally, the Rector was not an interested party; but he had a somewhat difficult course to steer between the two, to avoid offending either. It was half-past nine when the meeting broke up.

"Any news of the missing deeds, Isaac?" he took an opportunity of asking his son.

"I think not," replied Isaac. "We have heard nothing about it to-day."

"I suppose things have gone on, then, as usual?"

"Quite so. We shall hear no more of it, I dare say, in the Bank. If the bonds can't be found, the firm will have to make them good, and there'll be an end of it."

"A very unsatisfactory ending, I should think, if I had to make them good," observed the Rector. "I don't like things disappearing, nobody knows how or why."

He said no more. He gave no hint to Isaac of the rumour that had been whispered to him, nor questioned him upon its probable foundation. It was the best proof that Mr. Hastings assigned to it no foundation. In sober reason he did not do so.

But things--- troubles, cares, annoyances--wear different aspects in the day and in the night. More than all, suspense wears a different one. An undefined dread, whatever may be its nature, can be drowned in the daily bustle of life: business, pleasure, occupation. These fill up the mind, and the bugbear is lost sight of. But at night, when the head lies upon the sleepless pillow, and there is nothing to distract the thoughts; when all around is dark and silent, then, if there is an inner, secret dread, it asserts itself in guise worse than reality.

Mr. Hastings was not an imaginative man. Quite the contrary. He was more given to dealing with things, whether pleasant or painful, in a practical manner by daylight, than to racking his brains with them at night. Therefore, the way in which the new doubt troubled him as he lay in bed that night, was something wonderful. Had he been a fanciful woman, he could not have experienced worse treatment from his imagination. It was running riot within him. Could it be that the money entrusted to him was gone?--lost? Had he put it into that Bank for safety, only to find that the Bank would never refund it again? How was he to make it good? He could not make it good, and the little Chisholms, the children of his dead friend, would be beggars! He thought not of his own money, lodged in the charge of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin; that seemed as nothing in comparison with this. Mr. Hastings had had rather an expensive family; he had given money away in his parish--a conscientious clergyman is obliged to give, more or less--and his savings, all told, did not amount to more than two thousand pounds. It was not of that, equally at stake, that he thought, but of this other and larger sum, of which he was but the steward.

Try as he would, he could not get to sleep; try as he would, he could not put these half-insane visions from him. His mind became wrought up to its very highest pitch; he could have found it in his heart to get up, make his way to the Bank, knock up George Godolphin, and demand his money back again. He registered a silent resolve that he would go there with the first glimmer of daylight. Yesterday he was a free man, a man at his ease, it may be said a prosperous man; to-morrow, should that money be beyond his reach, he would be ruined for ever; broken down under his weight of care. What if he were too late!--if he went to the Bank, and was told, "The Bank is in embarrassment, and we cannot refund!" Oh, how supinely careless had he been, to suffer a whole day to slip by since Isaac's warning! Any hour of that past day he might have withdrawn the money; might now have had it securely in the chest by his bedside. When another day dawned, it might be too late.

Torments such as these--and they were all the more intolerable from the fact of his not being used to them--haunted him throughout the night. They have haunted us: they, or similar ones. Towards morning he dropped into a heavy sleep, awaking later than his usual hour. Those dark visions had gone then; but their effect remained sufficient to keep the Rector to his resolve of drawing out the money. "I'll go the first thing after breakfast," said he, as he dressed himself.

But, when breakfast was over, and the business of the day was fairly entered upon, Mr. Hastings felt half ashamed of his resolution. The visions of the night appeared to him to be simply fantastic follies, diseased creations of the brain: should there be really no cause for his withdrawal of the money, how worse than foolish he would look!--nay, how unjustifiable would such a procedure be!

What ought he to do? He leaned over the gate while he took counsel with himself. He had put on his hat and taken his stick, and gone forth; and there he stopped, hesitating. A strange frame of mind for Mr. Hastings, who was not of a vacillating nature. Suddenly he flung the gate open and went through with a decisive step; his determination was taken. He would steer a middle course, present himself to his son-in-law, George Godolphin, and ask him frankly, as a friend and relative, whether the money was safe.

Many a one would have decided that it was a safe and proper course to pursue. Mr. Hastings deemed it to be such, and he proceeded to the Bank. The fresh air, the bright sun, the pleasant bustle of daily life, had well-nigh dissipated any remaining fears before he got there.

"Can I see Mr. George Godolphin?" he inquired.

"Mr. George is engaged at present, sir," replied the clerk to whom he had addressed himself. "He will be at liberty soon. Would you like to take a seat?"

Mr. Hastings sat down on the chair handed him, and waited; watching at his leisure the business of the Bank. Several people were there. Some were paying money in, some drawing it out. There appeared to be no hesitation, either in paying or receiving: all seemed as usual. One man brought a cheque for nine hundred and odd pounds, and it was counted out to him. "I feel sure it is all right," was the conclusion come to by Mr. Hastings.

About ten minutes, and George Godolphin came forward. "Ah! is it you?" said he, with his sunny smile. "You are here early this morning."

"I want to say just a word to you in private, Mr. George."

George led the way to his room, talking gaily. He pushed a chair towards Mr. Hastings, and took his own. Never a face more free from care than his; never an eye less troubled. He asked after Mrs. Hastings; asked after Reginald, who was daily expected home from a voyage--whether he had arrived. "Maria dreamt last night that he had returned," said he, laughing, "and told her he was never going to sea again."

Mr. Hastings remembered his dreams--if dreams they could be called. He was beginning to think that he must have had nightmare.

"Mr. George, I have come to you upon a strange errand," he began. "Will you for a few moments regard me as a confidential friend, and treat me as one?"

"I hope it is what I always do, sir," was the reply of George Godolphin.

"Ay; but I want a proof of your friendship this morning. But for my being connected with you by close ties, I should not have so come. Tell me, honestly and confidentially, as between man and man--Is that trust-money safe?"

George looked at Mr. Hastings, his countenance slightly changing. Mr. Hastings thought he was vexed.

"I do not understand you," he said.

"I have heard a rumour--I have heard, in fact, two rumours--that---- The long and the short of it is this," more rapidly continued Mr. Hastings, "I have heard that there's something doubtful arising with the Bank."

"What on earth do you mean?" exclaimed George Godolphin.

"Is there anything the matter? Or is the Bank as solvent as it ought to be?"

"I should be sorry to think it otherwise," replied George. "I don't understand you. What have you heard?"

"Just what I tell you. A friend spoke to me in private yesterday, when I was at Binham, saying that he had heard a suspicion of something being wrong with the Bank here. You will not be surprised that I thought of the nine thousand pounds I had just paid in."

"Who said it?" asked George. "I'll prosecute him if I can find out."

"I dare say you would. But I have not come here to make mischief. I stopped his repeating it, and I, you know, am safe, so there's no harm done. I have passed an uneasy night, and I have come to ask you to tell me the truth in all good faith."

"The Bank is all right," said George. "I cannot imagine how such a report could by any possibility have arisen," he continued, quitting the one point for the other. "There is no foundation for it."

George Godolphin spoke in all good faith when he said he could not tell how the report could have arisen. He really could not. Nothing had transpired at Prior's Ash to give rise to it. Possibly he deemed, in his sanguine temperament, that he spoke in equally good faith, when assuring Mr. Hastings that the Bank was all right: he may have believed that it would so continue.

"The money is safe, then?"

"Perfectly safe."

"Otherwise, you must let me have it out now. Were it to be lost, it would be ruin to me, ruin to the little Chisholms."

"But it is safe," returned George, all the more emphatically, because it would have been remarkably inconvenient, for special reasons, to refund it then to Mr. Hastings. I repeat, that he may have thought it was safe: safe in so far as that the Bank would get along somehow, and could repay it sometime. Meanwhile, the use of it was convenient--how convenient, none knew, except George.

"A packet of deeds has been mislaid; or is missing in some way," resumed George. "They belong to Lord Averil. It must be some version of that which has got abroad--if anything has got abroad."

"Ay," nodded Mr. Hastings. The opinion coincided precisely with what he had expressed to the agent.

"I know of nothing else wrong with the Bank," spoke George. "Were you to ask my brother, I am sure he would tell you that business was never more flourishing. I wish to goodness people could be compelled to concern themselves with their own affairs instead of inventing falsehoods for their friends!"

Mr. Hastings rose. "Your assurance is sufficient, Mr. George: I do not require your brother's word to confirm it. I have asked it of you in all good faith, Maria being the link between us."

"To be sure," replied George; and he shook Mr. Hastings's hand as he went out.

George remained alone, biting the end of his quill pen. To hear that any such rumour was abroad vexed and annoyed him beyond measure. He only hoped that it would not spread far. Some wiseacre must have picked up an inkling about the deeds, and converted it into a doubt upon the Bank's solvency. "I wish I could hang the fools!" muttered George.

His wish was interrupted. Some one came in and said that Mr. Barnaby desired to see him.

"Let him come in," said George.

Mr. Barnaby came in. A simple-looking man of quiet manners, a corn-dealer, who kept an account at the Bank. He had a canvas bag in his hand. George asked him to take a seat.

"I was going to pay in two thousand pounds, sir," said he, slightly lifting the bag to indicate that the money was there. "But I should like, first of all, to be assured that it's all right."

George sat and stared at him. Was Prior's Ash all going mad together? George honestly believed that nothing yet had transpired, or could have transpired, to set these doubts afloat. "Really, Mr. Barnaby, I do not understand you," he said, with some hauteur: just as he had answered Mr. Hastings.

"I called in at Rutt's, sir, as I came along, to know what had been done in that business where I was chiselled out of that load of barley, and I happened to mention that I was coming on here to pay in two thousand pounds. 'Take care that it's all right,' said Rutt. 'I heard the Bank talked about yesterday.' Is it all right, sir?"

"It is as right as the Bank of England," impulsively answered George. "Rutt shall be brought to account for this."

"Well, I thought it was odd if there was anything up. Then I may leave it with safety?"

"Yes, you may," replied George. "Have you not always found it safe hitherto?"

"That's just it: I couldn't fancy that anything wrong had come to it all of a sudden. I'll go and pay it in then, sir. It won't be for long, though. I shall be wanting it out, I expect, by the end of next week."

"Whenever you please, Mr. Barnaby," replied George.

The corn-dealer retired to leave his money, and George Godolphin sat on alone, biting his pen as before. Where could these rumours have had their rise? Harmlessly enough they might have fallen, had nothing been rotten at the core of affairs: George alone knew how awfully dangerous they might prove now, if they got wind.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XVI. MR. LAYTON "LOOKED UP."

If the mysterious loss of the deeds disturbed Thomas Godolphin, it was also disturbing, in no slight degree, the faithful old clerk, Mr. Hurde. Never, since he had entered the house of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin--so many years ago now, that he had almost lost count of them--had any similarly unsatisfactory incident occurred. Mr. Hurde thought and thought and thought it over: he turned it about in his mind, and looked at it in all its bearings. He came to the conclusion that it must be one of two things: either that George Godolphin had inadvertently misplaced it, or that it had been stolen out and out. George Godolphin said that he had not misplaced it: indeed, George did not acknowledge to any recollection of having visited at all Lord Averil's box, except when he went to make the search: and Mr. Godolphin had now looked in every box that the safe contained, and could not find it. Therefore, after much vacillating between opinions, the head clerk came to the conclusion that the deeds had been taken.

"Who could have done it?" he asked himself over and over again. Some one about them, doubtless. He believed all the clerks were safe; that is, honest; except Layton. Until this happened, he would have said Layton was safe: and it was only in the utter absence of any other quarter for suspicion that he cast a doubt upon Layton. Of the clerks, he felt least sure of Layton: but that was the utmost that could be said: he would not have doubted the man, but that he was seeking for some one to lay it on. The deeds could not have gone without hands, and Mr. Hurde, in his perplexity, could only think that Layton's hands were less unlikely hands than others'.

The previous evening he had gone home thinking of it. And there he pondered the affair over, while he digested his dry toast and his milkless tea. He was a man of spare habits: partly that his health compelled him to be so; partly from a parsimonious nature. While seated at it, composedly enjoying the ungenerous fare near the open window, who should he see go by, but the very man on whom his thoughts were fixed--Layton. This Layton was a young, good-looking man, an inveterate dandy, with curls and a moustache. That moustache, sober, clean-shaved Mr. Hurde had always looked askance upon. That Layton had been given to spend more than was wise, Prior's Ash knew well enough; but for that fact, he would not now have been a banker's clerk. His family were respectable--wealthy in a moderate way; but he had run through too much of their money and tired them out. For the last two or three years he had settled down to sobriety. Thomas Godolphin had admitted him to a clerkship in his house, and Layton had married, and appeared contented to live quietly.

Quietly for him--as compared to what he had been accustomed to; too extensively in the opinion of Mr. Hurde. Mrs. Layton had a piano, and played and sang very much, for the benefit of the passers-by; and Layton hired gigs on a Sunday and drove her out. Great food for Mr. Hurde's censure; and he was thinking of all this when Layton passed. Starting up to look after him, he almost upset his tea-table.

He, Layton, was walking arm in arm with a Mr. Jolly: a great sporting character. Mr. Hurde gave a groan of dissatisfaction. "Much good it will bring him if he gets intimate with him!"

In the darkness of the evening, when it had grown quite late and Mr. Hurde had taken his frugal supper, he went out, and bent his steps towards the residence of Layton. In his present uncertain frame of mind, touching Layton, it seemed expedient to Mr. Hurde to take a walk past his place of abode; haply he might come upon something or other to confirm his suspicions.

And he did so. At least, it appeared to Mr. Hurde that he did so. Never a shade of doubt rested upon him that night that the thief was Layton.

On the high-road, going towards Ashlydyat, there had been a good deal of building of late years. Houses and terraces had sprung up, almost as by magic, not only along the road, but branching off on either side of it. Down one of these turnings, a row of dwellings of that class called in the local phraseology "genteel," had been erected by a fanciful architect. He had certainly not displayed any great amount of judgment in building them. They contained eight rooms, had glittering white fronts and green porticos of trellis-work. White houses are very nice, and there's nothing objectionable in green porticos; but they need not abut right upon the public pathway. Walking in front of the terrace, the porticos looked like so many green watch-boxes, and the bow-windows appeared to be constructed on purpose that you should see what was inside them. In the last house of this row dwelt the clerk, Layton. He and his wife had lodgings there: the bow-windowed sitting-room, and the bedroom over it.

Mr. Hurde strolled past, in the deliberate manner that he might have done had he been out for only an evening airing, and obtained full view of the interior of the sitting-room. He obtained the pleasure of a very full view indeed. In fact, there appeared to be so much to look at, that his vision at first could only take it in confusedly.

The Laytons were entertaining a party. Two or three ladies, and two or three gentlemen. A supper-tray was at one end of the table, and at this end next the window, were two decanters of wine, some fruit and biscuits. There was a great deal of talking and laughing, and there was plenty of light. Four wax candles Mr. Hurde counted as he stood there; two on the table, two on the mantelpiece. He, the old clerk, stood there, unseen and unsuspected, and took it all in. The display of glass looked profuse, and he almost groaned aloud when he caught sight of the silver forks: silver or imitation, he did not know which, but it appeared all one to Mr. Hurde. He had never overstepped the respectable customs of his forefathers--had never advanced beyond the good old-fashioned two-pronged steel fork. They were sitting with the window open: no houses were as yet built opposite, and the road was not invaded, except by persons coming to these houses, from one hour's end to another. Mr. Hurde could stand there, and enjoy the sight at leisure. If ever a man felt conviction rush to his heart, he did then. Wine, and wax candles, and silver forks, and supper, and visitors!--who but Layton could have taken the deeds?

He stood there a little too long. Falling into a reverie, he did not notice a movement within, and suffered himself to be all but dropped upon. He could have made an excuse, it is true; for Layton was a civil fellow, and had several times asked him to go up there; but he preferred not to make it, and not to be seen. The street door opened, and Mr. Hurde had just time to dart past the portico and take shelter round the corner. From his position he was within hearing of anything that might be said.

The sporting character with whom he had seen Layton walking early in the evening, and who made one of the guests, had come forth to depart. Layton had attended him to the door; and they stood inside the portico talking. In Mr. Hurde's fluster, he did not at first catch the sense of the words: but he soon found it related to horse-racing.

"You back Cannonbar," said the sporting man. "You can't be far out then. He's a first-rate horse: will beat the whole field into next week. You were in luck to draw him."

"I have backed him," replied Layton.

"Back him again: he's a little gold mine. I'd spend a fifty-pound note on him. I really would."

Layton answered with a laugh. They shook hands and the sporting friend, who appeared to be in a hurry, set off rapidly in the direction of Prior's Ash. Mr. Layton went in again, and shut the door.

Then Mr. Hurde came out of his corner. All his suspicions were strengthened. Strengthened? nay; changed into certainties. Plate, glass, wax candles, wines, supper and friends, had been doubtful enough; but they were as trifles compared with this new danger; this betting on the turf. Had he seen Layton take Lord Averil's deeds with his own eyes, he could not have been more certain of his guilt, than he felt now.

Enjoying another quiet survey of the room, during which he had the gratification of hearing Mrs. Layton, who had now seated herself at the piano, plunge into a song, which began something about a "bird on the wing," the old clerk, grievously discomfited, retraced his steps past the terrace, picked his way over some loose land in front of another terrace in process of erection, and turned into the high-road, leading to Prior's Ash. He was going along lost in thought, when he nearly ran against a gentleman turning an angle of the road. It was Mr. Godolphin.

"Oh--I beg your pardon sir. I did not look where I was going."

"Enjoying an evening's stroll, Hurde?" said Mr. Godolphin. He had been spending an hour with Lord Averil, who, in doubt and uncertainty as to his deeds, had not departed from Prior's Ash. "It is a beautiful night: so serene and still."

"No, sir, I can't say that I am enjoying it," was Mr. Hurde's reply. "My mind was not at ease as to Layton. I could not help associating him with the loss of the deeds, and I came out, thinking I'd look about a bit. It must have been instinct sent me, for I have had my suspicions confirmed."

"Confirmed in what way?" asked Thomas Godolphin.

"That Layton has had the deeds. It could have been no other."

Thomas Godolphin listened in surprise, not to say incredulity. "How have you had them confirmed?" he inquired, after a pause.

So then the clerk enlarged upon what he had seen. "It could not all come out of his salary, Mr. Godolphin. It does not stand to reason that it could."

"As a daily extravagance, of course it could not, Hurde," was the reply. "But it may be only a chance entertainment?"

Mr. Hurde passed over the question: possibly he felt that he could not meet it. "And the betting?--risking money upon race-horses, sir?"

"Ah! I like that less," readily acknowledged Thomas Godolphin. "Many a clerk of far higher position than Layton has been ruined by it."

"And sent across the herring-pond to expiate his folly," returned Mr. Hurde, whom the mention of "backing" and other such incentive temptations was wont to exasperate in no measured degree. "I am afraid it looks pretty plain, sir."

"I don't know," said Thomas Godolphin musingly. "I cannot think Layton has become a rogue. I see nothing inconsistent--with all due deference to your opinion, Hurde--I see nothing inconsistent with his position in his entertaining a few friends occasionally. But--without any reference to our loss--if he is turning, or has turned a betting-man, it must be looked after. We will have none such in the Bank."

"No, sir; it would not do at any price," acquiesced Mr. Hurde. "Are you feeling pretty well, sir, this evening?" he inquired, as Mr. Godolphin was preparing to continue his way.

"Quite well. I have not felt so well for a long time, as I have done the last few days. Good night, Hurde."

It seemed that Mr. Hurde was fated that night to come into contact with his principals. Who should overtake him, just as he had come to the spot where the houses were numerous, but Mr. George Godolphin. George slackened his steps--he had been walking along at a striding pace--and kept by his side. He began speaking of the hay and other indifferent topics: but Mr. Hurde's mind was not attuned to such that night.

"I think I have solved the mystery, Mr. George," began he.

"What mystery?" asked George.

"The stealing of Lord Averil's bonds. I know who took them."

George turned his head sharply and looked at him. "What nonsense are you saying now, Hurde?"

"I wish it was nonsense, sir," was the reply of Mr. Hurde. "I am as sure that I know how it was those bonds went, and who took them, as that I am here."

"And whom do you accuse?" asked George, after a pause, speaking somewhat sarcastically.

"Layton."

"Layton!" shouted George, stopping in his astonishment. "What Layton?"

"What Layton, sir? Why, our clerk Layton. I ought to have had my doubts of him before; but I suppose I had dust in my eyes. There are he and his wife entertaining the world; their room crowded: a dozen people, very nearly, and she, Layton's wife, sitting down to the piano with pink bows in her hair."

"What if she is?" asked George.

"You should see the supper-table, Mr. George," continued Hurde, too much annoyed with his own view of things to answer superfluous questions. "I can't tell what they have not upon it: silver, and glass, and decanters of wine. That's not all out of his salary. And Layton is taking to betting."

"But what about the bonds?" impatiently questioned George.

"Why--are not these so many proofs that Layton must have stolen the bonds and made money of them, sir? Where else could he get the means from? I have imparted my suspicions to Mr. Godolphin, and I expect he will follow them up, and have it fully investigated."

"Then you are a fool for your pains, Hurde!" retorted George in anger. "Layton no more took--I dare say Layton no more took those bonds than you did. You'll get into trouble, if you don't mind."

"WHAT, sir?" uttered Hurde, aghast.

"That," curtly answered George, "if you 'follow up' any chimera that your brain chooses to raise, you must expect to get paid out for it. Let Layton alone. It will be time enough to look him up when suspicious circumstances arise to compromise him. The bonds are gone: but we shall not get them back again by making a stir in wrong quarters. The better plan will be to be quiet over it for a while."

He resumed his quick pace and strode along, calling back a good night to Mr. Hurde. The latter gazed after him in undisguised astonishment.

"Make no stir! let the thing go on quietly!" he articulated to himself. "Who'd say such a thing but easy George Godolphin! Not look up Layton? It's well for you, Mr. George, that you have men of business about you! He'd let himself be robbed under his very nose, and never look out to see who did it. However will things go on, if the worst happens to his brother?"

It seemed that they were all saying the same--how would things go on, if the worst happened to Thomas Godolphin?

For once in his life of service the old clerk chose to ignore the wish--the command if you will--of Mr. George Godolphin. He did not let Layton alone. Quite the contrary. No sooner did Layton enter the Bank on the following morning, than Mr. Hurde dropped upon him. He had been watching for his entrance the last ten minutes; for Mr. Layton arrived late, the result possibly of the past night's extensive scene of revelry. He had settled himself in his place behind the counter, when the chief clerk's voice arrested him.

"I want you, Mr. Layton."

Now, the fact was, Mr. Hurde, having slept upon the matter, arose perplexed by sundry doubts. The circumstances against Layton appeared by no means so conclusive to his mind as they had done the previous night. Therefore he deemed it good policy to speak to that suspected gentleman in a temperate spirit, and see whether he could fish anything out, rather than accuse him point-blank of having been the delinquent.

"This is a nasty business," began he, when Layton reached him, in answer to his call.

"What is?" asked Layton.

"What is?" repeated Mr. Hurde, believing that the loss must have affected every one connected with the establishment as it was affecting him, and doubting whether the indifferent answer was not a negative proof of guilt. "What should it be, but this loss that has been spoken of in the Bank?"

"Oh, that," returned Layton. "I dare say they will be found."

"It places us all in a very awkward position, from myself downwards," went on Hurde, who was by no means a conjuror at the task he had undertaken. "There's no knowing what, or whom, Mr. Godolphin's suspicions may be turning to."

"Rubbish!" retorted Layton. "It's not likely that Mr. Godolphin would begin to doubt any of us. There's no cause for doing so."

"I don't know that," said Mr. Hurde significantly. "I am not so sure of some of you."

Layton opened his eyes. He supposed Mr. Hurde must be alluding to some one clerk in particular; must have a reason for it; but he did not glance at himself. "Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Well--it has occurred to me that some one or two of you may be living at a rate that your salary would neither pay for nor justify. You for one."

"I?" returned Layton.

"Yes, you. Horses, and gigs, and wine, and company, and pianos! They can't be managed out of a hundred a year."

Layton was rather taken to. Not to make an unnecessary mystery over it, it may as well be mentioned that all these expenses which so troubled old Hurde, the clerk was really paying for honestly, but not out of his salary. An uncle of his wife's was allowing them an addition to their income, and this supplied the additional luxuries. He resented the insinuation.

"Whether they are managed out of it, or whether they are not, is no business of yours, Mr. Hurde," he said, after a pause. "I shall not come to you to pay for them, or to the Bank either."

"It is my business," replied the old clerk, "It is Mr. Godolphin's business, which is the same thing. Pray, how long is it since you became a betting man?"

"I am not a betting man," said Layton.

"Oh, indeed! You have not bet upon Cannonbar, I suppose? You never put into a sweepstakes in your life?--you are not in one now, are you?"

Layton could only open his mouth in astonishment. He thought nothing less than that the spirits--then in the height of fashion--must have been at work. He was really no betting man; had never been inclined that way: but latterly, to oblige some friend who bothered him over it, he had gone into a sweepstakes, and drawn the renowned horse, Cannonbar. And had followed it up by betting a pound upon him.

"You see, Mr. Layton, your pursuits are not quite so inexpensively simple as you would wish to make them appear. These things happen to have come to my knowledge, and I have thought it my duty to mention them to Mr. Godolphin."

Layton flew into a passion. Partly in soreness of feeling at finding he had been so closely looked after; partly in anger that dishonesty could be associated with him; and chiefly at hearing that he had been obnoxiously reported, to Mr. Godolphin. "Have you told him," he foamed, "that you suspect me of robbing the strong-room?"

"Some one has robbed it," was Mr. Hurde's rejoinder. "And has no doubt made money of the deeds he stole!"

"I ask if you have told Mr. Godolphin that you cast this suspicion to me?" reiterated Layton, stamping his foot.

"What if I have? Appearances, in my opinion, would warrant my casting it to you."

"Then you had better cast it to Mr. George Godolphin. There!"

But that they were completely absorbed in the dispute, their voices raised--at least, Layton's--they might have seen Mr. Godolphin close to them. In passing through the Bank from his carriage to his private room--for, in the untoward state of affairs, touching the loss, he had come betimes--he was attracted by the angry sounds, and turned towards them.

"Is anything the matter?"

They looked round, saw Mr. Godolphin, and their voices and tempers dropped to a calm. Neither appeared inclined to answer the question, and Mr. Godolphin passed on. Another minute or two, and a message came from him, commanding the presence of the chief clerk.

"Hurde," he began, "have you been speaking to Layton of what you mentioned to me last night?"

"Yes, sir, that's what it was. It put him into a passion."

"He repudiates the suspicion, I suppose?"

"Out-and-out, sir," was the answer of Mr. Hurde. "He says his wife has an income, independent of himself; and that he put into a sweepstakes lately to oblige a friend, and staked a sovereign on the horse he drew. He says it is all he ever staked in his life, and all he ever means to stake. He was saying this now, when you sent for me. I don't know what to think. He speaks honestly enough, to listen to him."

"What remark did I hear him making, relative to Mr. George Godolphin?"

"He ought to be punished for that," replied Mr. Hurde. "Better suspect Mr. George than suspect him, was what he said. I don't know what he meant, and I don't think he knew himself, sir."

"Why did he say it?"

"When men are beside themselves with passion, sir, they say anything that comes uppermost. I asked him, after you went, what he meant by it, but he would not say any more."

"I think you must be mistaken in suspecting Layton, Hurde. I thought so last night."

"Well, sir, I may be," acknowledged Hurde. "I don't feel so sure of it as I did. But then comes the old puzzle again as to who could have taken the deeds. Layton would not have been so fierce but that he found the doubt had been mentioned to you," added Mr. Hurde, returning to the subject of the clerk's anger.

"Did you tell him you had mentioned it?"

"Yes, sir, I did. It's not my way to conceal faults in a corner; and that the clerks know."

Mr. Godolphin dropped the subject, and entered upon some general business. The old clerk remained with him about ten minutes, and then was at liberty to withdraw.

"Send Layton to me," was the order as he went out. And the clerk appeared in obedience to it.

Thomas Godolphin received him kindly, his manner and words had all the repose of quiet confidence. He believed Mr. Hurde to be completely mistaken, to have erred through zeal, and he intimated as much to Mr. Layton. He might not have personally entered on the topic with him, but that Layton had heard that he had been accused to him.

Layton's heart opened to his master. He was a well-disposed man when not exasperated. He frankly volunteered to Mr. Godolphin the amount of his wife's income and its source; he stated that he was not living up to one penny more than he could afford; and he distinctly denied being a betting man, either by practice or inclination--except for the one bet of a pound, which he had made incidentally. Altogether, his explanation was perfectly satisfactory to Mr. Godolphin.

"Understand me, Mr. Layton, I did not, myself, cast the slightest doubt upon you. To do so, never occurred to me."

"I hope not, sir," was Layton's reply. "Mr. Hurde has his crotchets, and we, who are under him, must put up with them. His bark is worse than his bite: that much may be said for him."

"Yes," said Thomas Godolphin. "You might fare worse, in that respect, than you do under Mr. Hurde. What was the meaning of the words you spoke relative to Mr. George Godolphin?"

Layton felt that his face was on fire. He muttered, in his confusion, something to the effect that it was a "slip of the tongue."

"But you must be aware that such slips are quite unjustifiable. Something must have induced you to say it. What may it have been?"

"The truth is, I was in a passion when I said it," replied Layton, compelled to speak. "I am very sorry."

"You are evading my question," quietly replied Thomas Godolphin. "I ask you what could have induced you to say it? There must have been something to lead to the remark."

"I did not mean anything, I declare, sir, Mr. Hurde vexed me by casting suspicion upon me; and in the moment's anger, I retorted that he might as well cast it upon Mr. George Godolphin."

Thomas Godolphin pressed the question. In Layton's voice when he had uttered it, distorted though it was with passion, his ears had detected a strange meaning. "But why upon Mr. George Godolphin? Why more upon him than any other?--upon myself, for instance; or Mr. Hurde?"

Layton was silent. Thomas Godolphin waited, his serene countenance fixed upon, the clerk's.

"I suppose I must have had in my head a remark I heard yesterday, sir," he slowly rejoined. "Heaven knows, though, I gave no heed to it; and how I came to forget myself in my anger, I don't know. I am sure I thought nothing of it, afterwards, until Mr. Hurde spoke to me this morning."

"What was the remark?" asked Mr. Godolphin.

"Sir, it was that sporting man, Jolly, who said it. He fastened himself on me last evening in going from here, and I could not get rid of him until ten at night. We were talking about different things: the great discount houses in London and one thing or another; and he said, incidentally, that Mr. George Godolphin had a good deal of paper in the market."

Thomas Godolphin paused. "Did he assert that he knew this?"

"He pretended to assert many things, as of his own knowledge. I asked him how he knew it, and he replied a friend of his had seen it--meaning the paper. It was all he said; and how I came to repeat such a thing after him, I cannot tell. I hope you will excuse it, sir."

"I cannot help excusing it," replied Mr. Godolphin. "You said the thing, and you cannot unsay it. It was very wrong. Take care that you do not give utterance to it again."

Layton withdrew, inwardly vowing that he never would. In point of fact, he had not attached much weight to the information; and could now have bitten his tongue out for repeating it. He wondered whether they could prosecute him for slander: or whether, if it came to the ears of Mr. George, he would. Mr. Godolphin had met it with the considerate generosity ever characteristic of him; but Mr. George was different from his brother. If ever a man in this world lived up to the Divine command, "Do as ye would be done by," that man was Thomas Godolphin.

But the words, nevertheless, grated on Thomas Godolphin's ears. That George was needlessly lavish in expenditure, he knew: but not more so than his income allowed, if he chose to spend it all--unless he had secret sources of expense. A change came over Thomas Godolphin's face as the idea suggested itself to his mind. Once in the train of thought he could not stop it. Had George private channels for expenditure, of which the world knew nothing? Could he have been using the Bank's money?--could it be he who had taken Lord Averil's deeds? Like unto Isaac Hastings, the red flush of shame dyed Thomas's brow at the thought--shame for his own obtrusive imagination that could conjure up such a fancy against his brother. Thomas had never conjured it up, but for the suggestion gratuitously imparted to him by Layton.

But he could not drive it down. No; like the vision which had been gratuitously presented to the Reverend Mr. Hastings, and which he had been unable to dismiss, Thomas Godolphin could not drive it away. In a sort of panic--a panic caused by his own thoughts--he called for certain of the books to be brought to him.

Some of those wanted were in George Godolphin's room. It was Isaac Hastings who was sent in there for them.

"The books!" exclaimed George, looking at Isaac.

"Mr. Godolphin wants them, sir."

It was quite out of the usual order for these books to come under the inspection (unless at stated times) of Mr. Godolphin. The very asking for them implied a doubt on George--at least, it sounded so to that gentleman's all-conscious ears. He pointed out the books to Isaac in silence, with the end of his pen.

Isaac Hastings carried them to Mr. Godolphin, and left them with him. Mr. Godolphin turned them rapidly over and over: they appeared, so far as he could see at a cursory glance, to be all right; the balance on the credit side weighty, the available funds next door to inexhaustible, the Bank altogether flourishing. Thomas took greater shame to himself for having doubted his brother. While thus engaged, an observation suddenly struck him--that all the entries were in George's handwriting. A few minutes later, George came into the room.

"George," he exclaimed, "how industrious you have become!"

"Industrious!" repeated George, looking round for an explanation.

"All these entries are yours. Formerly you would not have done as much in a year."

George laughed. "I used to be incorrigibly idle. It was well to turn over a new leaf."

He--George--was going out of the room again, but his brother stopped him. "Stay here, George. I want you."

Mr. Godolphin pointed to a chair as he spoke, and George sat down. George, who seemed rather inclined to have the fidgets, took out his penknife and began cutting at an offending nail.

"Are you in any embarrassment, George?"

"In embarrassment? I! Oh dear, no."

Thomas paused. Dropping his voice, he resumed in a lower tone, only just removed from a whisper:

"Have you paper flying about the discount markets?"

George Godolphin's fair face grew scarlet. Was it with conscious emotion?--or with virtuous indignation? Thomas assumed it to be the latter. How could he give it an opposite meaning from the indignant words which accompanied it. A burst of indignation which Thomas stopped.

"Stay, George. There is no necessity to put yourself out. I never supposed it to be anything but false when a rumour of it reached my ear. Only tell me the truth quietly."

Possibly George would have been glad to tell the truth, and get so much of the burden off his mind. But he did not dare. He might have shrunk from the terrible confession at any time to his kind, his good, his upright brother: but things had become too bad to be told to him now. If the exposé did come, why, it must, and there would be no help for it: tell him voluntarily he could not. By some giant strokes of luck and policy, it might yet be averted: how necessary, then, to keep it from Thomas Godolphin!

"The truth is," said George, "that I don't know what you mean. To what rumour are you alluding?"

"It has been said that you have a good deal of paper in the market. The report was spoken, and it reached my ears."

"It's not true. It's all an invention," cried George vehemently. "Should I be such a fool? There are some people who live, it's my belief, by trying to work ill to others. Mr. Hastings was with me this morning. He had heard a rumour that something was wrong with the Bank."

"With the Bank! In what way?"

"Oh, of course, people must have gathered a version of the loss here, and put their own charitable constructions upon it," replied George, returning to his usual careless mode of speech. "The only thing to do is, to laugh at them."

"As you can laugh at the rumour regarding yourself and the bills?" remarked Thomas.

"As I can and do," answered easy George. Never more easy, more apparently free from care than at that moment. Thomas Godolphin, truthful himself, open as the day, not glancing to the possibility that George could be deliberately otherwise, felt all his confidence return to him. George went out, and Thomas turned to the books again.

Yes. They were all in order, all right. With those flourishing statements before him, how could he have been so foolish as to cast suspicion on George? Thomas had a pen in one hand, and the fore-finger of the other pointed to the page, when his face went white as one in mortal agony, and drops of moisture broke out upon his brow.

The same pain, which had taken him occasionally before, had come to him again. Mortal agony in verity it seemed. He dropped the pen; he lay back in his chair; he thought he must have fallen to the ground. How long he so lay he could not quite tell: not very long probably, counted by minutes; but counted by pain long enough for a lifetime. Isaac Hastings, coming in with a message, found him. Isaac stood aghast.

"I am not very well, Isaac. Give me your arm. I will go and sit for a little time in the dining-room."

"Shall I run over for Mr. Snow, sir?"

"No. I shall be better soon. In fact, I am better, or I could not talk to you. It was a sudden paroxysm."

He leaned upon Isaac Hastings, and reached the dining-room. It was empty. Isaac left him there, and proceeded, unordered, to acquaint Mr. George Godolphin. He could not find him.

"Mr. George has gone out," said a clerk. "Not two minutes ago."

"I had better tell Maria, then," thought Isaac. "He does not look fit to be left alone."

Speeding up to Maria's sitting-room, he found her there, talking to Margery. Miss Meta, in a cool brown-holland dress and a large straw hat, was dancing about in glee. She danced up to him.

"I am going to the hayfield," said she. "Will you come?"

"Don't I wish I could!" he replied, catching her up in his arms. "It is fine to be Miss Meta Godolphin! to have nothing to do all day but roll in the hay."

She struggled to get down. Margery was waiting to depart. A terrible thing if Margery should have all the rolling to herself and Meta be left behind! They went out, and he turned to his sister.

"Maria, Mr. Godolphin is in the dining-room, ill. I thought I would come and tell you. He looks too ill to be left alone."

"What is the matter with him?" she asked.

"A sudden pain," he said. "I happened to go into his room with a message, and saw him. I almost thought he was dead at first; he looked so ghastly."

Maria hastened down. Thomas, better then, but looking fearfully ill still, was leaning upon the arm of a couch. Maria went up and took his hand.

"Oh, Thomas, you look very ill! What is it?"

He gazed into her face with a serene countenance, a quiet smile. "It is only another of my warnings, Maria. I have been so much better that I am not sure but I thought they had gone for good."

Maria drew forward a chair and sat down by him. "Warnings?" she repeated.

"Of the end. You must be aware, Maria, that I am attacked with a fatal malady."

Maria was not quite unaware of it, but she had never understood that a fatal termination was inevitable. She did not know but that he might live to be an old man. "Can nothing be done for you?" she breathed.

"Nothing."

Her eyes glistened with the rising tears. "Oh, Thomas! you must not die! We could none of us bear to lose you. George could not do without you; Janet could not; I think I could not."

He gently shook his head. "We may not pick and choose, Maria--who shall be left here, and who be taken. Those go sometimes who, seemingly, can be least spared."

She could scarcely speak; afraid lest her sobs should come, for her heart was aching. "But surely it is not to be speedy?" she murmured. "You may live on a long while yet?"

"The doctors tell me I may live on for years, if I keep myself quiet. I think they are wrong."

"Oh, Thomas, then, you surely will!" she eagerly said, her cheek flushing with emotion. "Who can have tranquillity if you cannot?"

How ignorant they both were of the dark cloud looming overhead, ready even then to burst and send forth its torrent! Tranquillity! Tranquillity henceforth for Thomas Godolphin!

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