The Great House

ight,

EY J.

NT

AP

el Lambert

el Lambert-

e Lawye

meward

London

eld an

. John

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ld Th

ew T

ct and

he Yew

Peter

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ange Be

eat House a

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at the B

y Lord

lore Und

ent of the

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. Mi

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Ben

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Make Other

REAT

PTE

LAMBERT-

hitewashed from floor to ceiling, lighted by five gaunt windows, and as cold to the eye as charity to the recipient. Along each side of the chamber ran ten pallet beds. A black door broke the wall at one end, and above the door hung a crucifix. A painting of a Station of the Cross adorne

Garden, and closed by the graceful arches of the Bridge of Austerlitz. On the water boats shot to and fro. The quays were gay with the red trousers of soldiers and the coquettish caps of soubrettes,

efore her; and though she had good reason to be thankful for the safety which dependence bought, still she was only twenty, and springtime, viewed from prison windows, beckons to its cousin, youth. She saw family groups walking the quays, and father,

, but oddly accented. "Who is here? The Princess desires

window replied pleasantly.

in face and the faultless figure of a Pole, came

re walking. I s

understand that! To be alone--

ut a Pole would have tho

tongs to-night? Or the loan of a pair of red-heeled shoes, worn no more than thrice by the Princess--a

replied, with a gesture that embraced the room, the pallets, he

moiselle

e of--foo

othing! But if I descended it would not be to this dormitory I should return! Nor to the tartines! Nor to the da

e again," the girl s

ith a flirt of her short petticoats, but paused and looked back, with her hand on the door. "None the less, mark you well, Mademoiselle, from the whitewash to the ceiling of Lebrun, from the dortoir of the Jeunes Filles to the Gallery of Hercules, there are

, and a measure of stillness. Now, left alone, she dropped her feet to the floor, turned, and knelt on the sill with her brow pressed against the glass. The sun had set, mists were

Then the Princess's daughter. Now Joséphine. There are still kind people in the world--God grant that I may not forget it! But how much better to

not been easy, one who had signally failed to master fortune,

PTE

LAMBERT-

the uses of the dining-room or the nursery, may still be seen. But when the Princess Czartoriski entertained in the H?tel Lambert, under the ceiling painted by Lebrun, which had looked down on the arm-chair of Madame de Chatelet and the tabouret of Voltaire, she was, as became a

ses, or Lamartine, though beauty, melted by the woes of Poland, hung upon his lips, might have been thought by some unequal to the dead. But they were now what those had been; and the women peacocked it as of old. At any rate the effect was good, and a guest who came late, and paused a moment on the t

said, as he bent over it.

e have all seen in the Journal. Is it

houlders. "But what, Madame? A

a thing to be proud of--an old title? That which money cannot buy and the wisest wou

, with a sly glance at the lit

as you English, turning in your unending circle, one out, one in, one in, one o

forget our Reform Bill,

eaders and more helpless than before. No, my lord, if your Russell--Lord John, do you cal

t," he said, "that M. Thiers has a

o? Won

I fancy, an enthusiasm of whi

there spoke not Mr. Audley, the attaché--he had not

" he replied, "Lord A

sh, you have no enthusiasm. You have only tradi

is glance returned to the little statesman in specta

rn your eyes elsewhere. There is one here about whom I wish to consult yo

er some

a man. I dare say you w

e she not in this company

anything beyo

rame in which I see her. Is she

t with a

--an air!"

own; six months ago he died. There was enough to bury him, no more. She says, I don't know"--the Princess indicated doubt with a movement of her fan--"that she wrote to

ss, I presume?" he sa

le of her. They pitied her, spoke well of her, she had done--no matter what for them--perhaps nothing. Probably nothing. But Cécile ascended, saw her, became enamoured, enragée! Yo

incess

o I know who this is? She may be this, or that. If she were French, if she we

thoughtfully, "if I mistake not.

It is a handsome one. Fo

s you permit

at she may be seen by some Eng

I talk

ood. Learn, if you p

w," he rejoined. "W

a stout gentleman who wore whiskers trimmed à la mode du Roi,

scribing a recent visit to Cracow, that last morsel of free Poland, soon to pass into the maw of Austria. A little apart, the girl in black bent over

ou are my countrywoman. The Princess

rembled to think--was of the slightest. Early, almost from the first, she had discovered that the Princess's benevolence found vent rather in schemes for the good of many than in tenderness for one. But hitherto she had reli

ce that she was not to be allowed to await Cécile's return, that her fate h

Princess," she said. "But my ties with England are slight.

ly?" He found his task less

niless, when the young Princess befriended me and gave me a respite here. I am no part of this," with a gla

that, being English, I might advise you better than she coul

ook he

nds? You must

saw less and less of those who had known him. For the last two years I do not think that he

Roman Catho

ot paid"--her color rose painfully to her face--"I could not app

bowing. "Forgive me! Your fat

he continued reluctantly. "The china factory which had employed him since he came to Paris, failed. When

u must have some re

uncle and tell him how we were placed. I did so. No answer came. Then after my father's death I wrote again. I told my uncle that I was alone, that I was with

ty he was a tall man and portly, with one of those large faces that easily

father never spoke of him. They had quarrelled

ar from your uncle, did

ood," she said. "

t her simplicity and the picture her words drew for him of the daughter and the dying man touched him. Already his mind was made up that

he said. "M

osed that he had not caugh

you really

rprised in her turn. "Is

is a coincidence. The Princess did no

t if she knows," she said. "To h

an artist, resident i

r Aud

t something far away. His lips were more firmly set. His face was gra

u know him?

im," he said. "But I have heard of him." And again it was plain that hi

by the sleeve and shaken him. "Then you d

aid. "You see the Princess did not tell me that you were an Audley. Yes,

es

did no

no

r, and the smile of such a man had its importance, for in repose his eyes were hard. It was clear to her that he was a man of position, that he belonged of

must tell you, Miss Audley, why it surprised me

" she

ur father's name, in its place in a pedigree, has been familiar to me of late, and I could set down

ngly. "Is it possi

aps it is as well that we have that warrant for a conversation which I can see that th

d," the girl said, wincing a litt

our family? But have no fear, I will deal with the Prin

appeal in her eyes--"will you be g

me from another of the same name,

gularly composed in view of his announcement. "Beaudelays?" she repeated t

t is the name of my house, and your uncle

uncle who had ignored her appeal

morrow I quit Paris for three or four days, but when I return have no fear. You may

frankly in the face. "Thank you," she said. "I little thought

d, holding her hand a litt

is is my way." She inclined her head, and turning from him she pushed open a small door masked by a pi

s of thought or surprise. It was not until she had lighted her taper outside the dormitory door, and, passing between the rows of sleeping children, had gained her screened corner, that she found it possible to think.

the fear and the friend in need? Or was it a Cinderella's treat, which no fairy godmother would recall to her, with which no lost slipper would connect her? She could almost believe this. For no Cinderella,

en the whim of the moment to own? That would be cruel! That would be base! But if Mary had fallen in with some good people since her father's death, she had also met many callous, and

to sob. It was the youngest of the daughters of Poland. The girl rose, and going on tip-toe to the child, bent over it, kiss

hair and plaited it in two long tails for the night, she should see her new kinsman's face in the mirror. Nor strange that as she

PTE

AWYER

nt went thoughtfully up the wide staircase. He opened the door of a room on the first floor. A stout man with

Stubbs!" he said carele

. "I waited to learn if your lord

the hearth. The stout man sat forward on his chair with an air of deference. His double chin rested on the ample folds of a soft white stock secured by a

efore him. At length, "May I take it that this claim is rea

s a lawyer--"the decision is certainly final. With you

aimant migh

upon the point, and therefore capable of much. But he could only move on new

length, "Then if you were in my place," he

if he had never heard the word befo

ything happens to me before I have a child, Joh

dley, the claimant, is

estates--suc

th, my

p, Stubbs. Failing John Aud

And obstinate as the devil! He married into trade, and Mr. John never forgave it--never forgave it, my lord. Never spoke of his brother or to his brother from that time. It was before the Reform Bill," the lawyer continued with a sigh. "There were

ad a

ne, a d

come in aft

d, she would

lking to her

n the dénouement. "Ah!" he repeated, thoughtfully rubbing his plump calf. "I see, my lo

er aright, Stubbs, I should say that she was his opposite in all but

hands

is penniless and dependent, teaching English in a ki

ed the lawyer, astonishe

men go, but as likely as not

t!" muttere

u the story," Audley c

l," Stubbs exclaimed,

o question me. Anyway, the girl is there. She is dependent, friendless; attractive, and well-bred. For a moment it did occ

hat he was on delicate ground, and that the other was ra

s I am. There is hardly a poorer peer out of Ireland--you know that. Fourteenth baron without

three thousand,"

d not a penny more! If any man ought t

assented respectfully. "I've always hoped that you would

thinking it over, and I fancy that I've hit on the right line. John Audley's given me trouble

e hated her father, but it is not like Mr. John to let the young lady drift. He's crazy about t

the room. "I wish we had neve

's house, my lord.

near Bea

the lawyer agreed. "But, as it is, the rent is useful, and th

eve that he had a re

his claim," the lawyer said indulge

ther he likes it or not. Take a pen, man, and sit down. He's spoiled my breakfast many a time with his confoun

esent she is in the lady's house in a menial capacity, and is dependent on her charity. Lord Audley is informed that the young lady made application to you without result, but this report his lordship discredits. Still, he feels himself concerned; and if those to whom she

a quiet chuckle. "If that does not touch him on the raw, I'l

ddsley," he said. "We put in Mr. Mottisfont at the last election, your lordship's interest just

t is

his face serious, "that the party is not being le

go with the par

as if he were going to put the land out! An income-tax in peace time, we've taken that. And less protection for the farmer, very good--if it must be. But all this taking off of duties, this letting in of Canadian corn-

. "It seems to me," he said, "that you are t

ay take it from me the borough won't stand it, my lord, and the sooner Mr. Mottisfont has a hint the better. If he

" my lord said with a smile. The

ed Pitt and beat Bony, and brought us through the long war. It was the landed interest that kept us from revolution in the dark days after the war.

ung man laughed. "Why, to listen to you, Stubbs, one woul

rs and the farmers that Riddsley lives by and is going to stand by! And the sooner Mr. Mottisfont knows th

to speak to

alked of. Free Canadian corn was too like free French corn and free Belgian corn for Stafford w

party is satisfied," he said. "And

a word fr

it. But I fancy you're

yer retorted shrewdly. "However, if I ha

And now, good-night, Stubbs. Don't forget to send t

id his say on the borough question, lord or no lord; which

inguisher in his hand, he paused. "He's a sober hand for a young man," he thought, "a very

PTE

WARD

as she had slept for two hours past. Their companions, a French shopkeeper and her child, and an English bagman, sighed and fidgeted, as travellers had cause to sigh and fidget in days when he was lucky who covered the distance

great cause to be thankful. But the flush of relief, to which the opening prospect had given rise, was ebbing. The life before her was new, those amongst whom she must lead

maid, "At the worst, ten fingers!" Then, seeing that at last they were entering the streets of the town and that

muttered. "In England they are like that! No wonder that they trave

t. Porters dragged down, fought for, snatched up their baggage. English-speaking touts shook dirty cards in their faces. Tide-waiters bawled questions in their ears. The postilion, the conductor, all the world stretched greedy palms under their noses. Other trav

e lost her ticket and rescued it from a man's hand. At last, her baggage on board, she found herself breathless at the foot of the ladder, with three passengers imploring her to ascend, and six touts clinging to her skirts and crying for drink-money. She had barely time to make her l

proud of them. So the last minute came. The paddles were already turning, the ship was going slowly astern, when a man pushed his way through the crowd. He clutched the ladder as it was unhooked, and at some risk and much loss of dignity he was bundled on board. There was a

nd lonely she turned about and did what, had she been an older traveller, she would have done before. She sought the after-cabin. Alas, a glance from the foot of the companion was enough! Every place was taken, every

said, "no woman's allo

tested, "there's n

or sober, I've ever carried. All women below, all women below, is the order! Besides," more amicably, as he saw by a ra

e petitioned, "if I si

This is the lady I am looking for," the new-com

dark night, blest if you know where you are! I'm sure I beg the young lady's pardon. Quite rig

e spoke quietly, but to do s

to-night, and as I had to go over this week I ch

on't think you should have done t

it is a matter of some shillings--you

t pass. "But who told you," she ask

uppose, that as you are crossing,

" she p

nd that may turn the scale. Moreover," as he led the way across the deck, "the steward's boy, when he is not serving gin below, will serve tea above, and at sea tea is not to be scorned

ea and bread and butter ma

y should we not sit in the shelter of this tarpaulin? I see

ey were?" she asked shr

ark sea and the darker horizon, the captain's rough words, had brought the tears to her eyes. And then, in a moment, to be thought of, provided for, kindly entreated, to be lapped in attenti

k about her, and took the other. The light of a lantern fell on their faces and the few passengers who still tramped the windy deck could

it?" Ma

He laughed

. As he approached he took little runs, and now brought up against the rail, now clu

ne. "Well, if he had quite missed it, I'd have

ed the end of their screen. His eyes met theirs. He was past much show

n for a rough ni

hesitated, peering at them, "

said, much

O

ined. Mary stared at the stranger.

s the deck heaved under him. "But I expected to find you at the hotel, and I waited there until I near

but I am quite comfortable, thank you. It is close below,

I will go down then if you--if

you," Mary answe

'll go, then.

companion. Unfortunately what he gained in speed he lost in dignit

hear you. And it was kind of him t

l flavor of it," he said. "He's come three hundred miles t

to meet me!" she cr

h him. He's come, or rather your uncle has sent him, all the way from Stafford to meet you--and he's gone to l

s laughter b

PTE

ONDON

n a crowd, did not especially commend him. And certainly he had not shown himself equal to a difficult situation. But the effort he had made to come to her help appealed to her

ew. Your uncle m

he send him

hat he had no one else to send. Your

ld meet the boat in London," sh

e a part of the year, though he has an old place of his own up the country. He's a Staffordshire man born and bred,

ness behind them. She marked the light grow smaller and more distant, and her thoughts went back to the convent school, to her father, to the third-floor where for a time they had been together, to his care for her--feeble and inefficient, to his ill

ad probably wrought this change in her life. This was the third time only that she had seen him. Once, some days after that memorable evening, he had called at the H?tel Lambert, and her employer had sent for her. He had greeted her courteously in the Prince

. But she was so long silent that his patience wore thin. It was not for this, it was not

he said

eems so strange," she murmured, "to be leaving al

head of yo

se that I owe it to

ing, we do not know where it falls. You will soon learn--Basset will tell you, if I don't--that y

said so

oor and the jamb? And let me caution you. Your uncle will not suffer meddling on my part, still less a

out like a balloon, her scarf pennon-wise, the tarpaulin flapped like some huge bird. He had to spring to the screen, to adjust it to the new course, to secure and tuck in her cloak--and all in haste, with exclamations

she asked him to tell her s

out of the world. I don't know, indeed, how

hree or four times, and then merely to interpret. My life was spent between whitewashed walls, on bare floors. I slept in a room with twenty children, ate with forty--onion soup and thick

ghed. "Did you know that? Did you know that the Princes

very ignorant. But if I were a man,

there are crusades in England. Only I fear

cess! But tell me, p

will see a placard in the streets, 'Shall the people's bread be taxed?' Not quite so romantic as t

"there can be only

thrive; the towns claim cheap bread that they may live. Each says that the country depends upo

gin t

a sword lately forged and called 'Philanthropy,' and with that he searches for chinks in the other's armor. 'See how factories work the

swer?" she asked timidly. "Try to f

, but votes!' And the squires say that that is what the traders who have just got votes don't

that I must give it up," s

the Plough!' on one side, and 'The Big Loaf!' on the other. The first man you meet thinks the landlord a devourer of widows' houses; to the next the mill-owner is an

like a new wo

smiling as he rose, "do not forget Columbus! But

and he wondered why he had not devoted himself more singly to this; why he had allowed minutes which might have been given to intimate subjects to be wasted in a dry discussio

he tea-tray, seated beside which she reviewed what had happened, and found it all interesting; his meeting with her, his thought for her, the glimpses he had given her of things beyond the horizon of the convent school, even his diversion into politics. He was not on good terms with her

ment of them, his air of detachment, had, indeed, chilled her at times; but these were perhaps natural in one who viewed from above and from a distance the ills which it was his task to treat. How ign

as they swept past the beam. At intervals hoarse orders, a rush of feet across the deck, the more regular tramp of rare passengers, caught her attention, on

knew his tread from the many that had passed. The foots

"I thought that you might like to come on deck early. Yo

ou," she

it," he persisted. "

replied. "It is very g

ad been odd if she had not known his step! And for going on deck early, why shoul

king gaily; and now and again the captain spoke to them, and many were looking at them. She did not see Basset; he was on the deck below, standing amid the common crowd, and so he was free to look at her as he pleased. He might be said not to have seen her before, and what he saw now bewildered, nay, staggered him. Unwillingly, and to please his uncle, he had come to meet a girl of whom they knew no more than

l found on a midden!" he thought. And as the thought passed through his mind, Mary looked down. Her eyes roved for a moment over the crowded deck, where some, like Basset, returned her gaze with interest, while others sought their baggage or bawled for missing companions. He was not a man, it has been said, to stand out in

had been weakness in the father was strength in the child. Much less could he divine that the improvidence of that father had beco

olliers fringed the wharves, tall China clippers forged slowly up under a scrap of foresail, dumb barges deep laden with hay or Barclay's Entire, moved mysteriously with the tide. On all sides hoarse voices bawled orders or objurgations. Charmed with the gayety, the movement, the col

hild. Their eyes met. My lord glanced away, but he could not refrain from a smile as he pictured the poor affair the other had made of his errand. And Basset saw the smile and read its meaning, and though he was not self--assertive, though he was, indeed, backward to a fault, anger ran through his veins. To have travelled three hundred miles in order to meet this girl, to have found her h

the White Tower, darkened by the smoke and the tragedies of twenty generations, she found him awaiting them at the foot of the ladder. He w

" remarked my lord, with a

te right this mornin

Euston Grov

rain starts in a li

e crowd, shielded her from touts and tide-waiters, took the upper hand. He watched the aproned porters disappearing with the baggage in the direction of the Custo

ll do it," he said. He received t

think you'll find him useful," he said

very good of him to go." But sh

ies, barks at the name of Peel and growls at the name of Cobden, gives

you are not very kind," she said. "Please to call

d. "He should do nothing," in a

blu

PTE

AND

otions of those who journeyed for the first time on a railway at a speed four times as great as that of the swiftest High-flier that ever devoured the road are forgotten by this generation. But they were vivid. The thing was a miracle. A

r at Meudon or St. Germain, and once the Forest of Fontainebleau; on Sundays the Bois. But the smiling English meadows, the gray towers of village churches, the parks and lawns of manor-houses, the canals with their lines of painted barges, and here and there a gay packet boat--she

should see her. He anticipated the old man's surprise on finding her so remote fro

ld not forget it. He had cut a poor figure, and he resented it. He foresaw that in the future she would be dependent on him for society, and he would be a fool if he then forgot the lesson he had learned. She had a good face, but probably her up-bringing had been anything but goo

to her that his face was too thoughtful for his years, and that his figure was insignificant. The eye which had accustomed itself to Lord Audley

in possession, he was in close relations with her uncle, he knew many things which she was anxious

" he replied, his tone cold and almost ung

faint smile, "to be equally

r to leave you to judge for yourself. I have liv

colo

n the same dry tone; "you will be wise not to menti

m so

t cannot be said to be unnatu

What has happened?" sh

to the peerage, i

"Whose claim? What peerag

uestion, "You must know," he continued, "that your uncle claimed the title which Lord Audley bears, a

," she said. "I never

to veil his incredulity. "Yet if your un

I

s,

d slowly and painfully red. "Is it possible

Lord Audley never told you that? Nev

erms with my uncle, and that for that reason he w

as well, since you have to live with Mr. Audley,

But I do not understand why h

u write

, but she refrained. Why appeal to the sympathies o

he letters," Basset d

e come to write

sent your add

ality she turned to the window, and for some time s

ed across squalid streets, built in haste to meet the needs of new factories, under tall chimneys the smoke of which darkened the sky without hindrance, by vile courts, airless and almost sunless. They looked down on sallow children whose only playground was the street and whose only school-bell was the whistle that summoned them at dawn to premature toil. Haggard women sat on doorsteps with puling babes in their arms.

ful place!" s

dmitted. "One does not look for beaut

her. The sun had set and the cold evening light revealed in all their meanness the rows of naked cottages, the heaps of slag and cinders, the starveling horses that stood with hanging heads on the dreary lands. As darkness fell, fires shone out here and there, and threw into Dantesque relief the dark forms of half-naked men toiling with fury to fe

hould food be taxed? And she fancied that there was, there could be, but one answer. These toiling masses, these slaves of the hammer and th

ling the silence irksome. After all, she was in his cha

wered. "Is there anything i

d at Cradley Heath it may be rougher. More women and children are empl

so much to blame as she fancied, for that which horrified her was to him an everyday matter, one of the facts of life with whi

that a nine-miles drive will take us to the Gatehouse, and your journey

ry quiet

ere in a l

e Princess C

e it was there that

es

id that the Gatehouse will have few charm

ss's house as a governess? It was my business to take care of a number of children, to eat with them, to sleep with them, to see

so," he stammered,

Princess ordered me to descend to the salon to interpret. On on

He did not know if this had been in his mind, but in any case the result silenced him. She was either very honest or very clever. Many girls, he knew, would have slurred ov

is--good. But for the moment he steel

ngle oil lamp, looked down on a dim churchyard. Dusk was passing into night, and the wind, sweeping across the flat, whipped her skirts and chilled her blood. He

in silence. "The carriage is late," he muttered, but even as he spoke the quick tramp of a pair of horses pushed to sp

rains came in, dang 'em! Give me the days when five minutes

t us get

ire. Please yourself

aughed. "Stafford manners!" he s

ncle's carria

ing in the darkness. "

t troubled her, though she was not timid. They rode thus for a minute or two, then trundled through a narrow street, dimly l

d the road seemed to be better. The moon, newly risen, showed her a dreary upland, bare and endless, here dotted with the dark stumps of trees, there of a deeper black as if fire had swept over it and scarred

s?" she aske

the farther side, is our nearest town, but since

dreary landscape, the gaunt signpost that looked like a gibbet and might have been one, the skeleton trees that raised bare arms to heaven, the scream of a dying rabbit, all added to the depression of the moment. S

she asked, a tre

ther mile and we shall be th

that she was foolish, that nothing could happen to her, nothing that mattered. What, after all, was a cold reception, what was her uncle's frown

she was suffering, and he said no word. She came near to hating

f the lamp slipped over it, and as quickly vanished. Suddenly they shot from turf to hard road, passed through an open gateway, for an instant the lamp on her side showed a grotesque pill

PTE

OHN A

and beams with emblems, butterflies, and Stafford knots and the like, once bright with color, and still soberly rich. A five-sided bay enlarged each of the two inner corners of the room and broke the outlines. One of these bays shrined a window, four-mullioned, the other a spiral staircase. An air of comfort and stateliness pervaded the whole; here the great scutcheon over the mantel, there the smaller coat

nd, and which, more than affection and habit, bound him to John Audley. He moved restlessly in his chair, then stretched his

her or she thinks of me. It's what Peter thinks of Mary and Mary thinks of Peter that matters.

n't sa

e marines and innocent young fellows like you who think women angels. I'll be bound that she's he

d have been comely if the cheeks had not been a little pendulous. His hair was fine and white and he wore it long, and his hands were shapely and well cared for. As he said his last word he

talk like that," he said, "when I have hardly known the girl twent

desire to tease and a desire equally strong to bring the other to his way of thinking. "I'm only joking. I know you'll never let that devil have his way! You'll never leave

a thought to her in that way,"

it. And if she's fool enough all my plans, all my pains, all my rights--and once you come to your senses and help me I shall have my rights--all, all, all will go for nothing. For nothing!" He sank back in his chair.

rry," Ba

a good lad. Make up your mind

shook h

nty-four hours, man--may make all the differ

t said doggedly. He shifted uneasily in hi

-in vain Basset shook his head--"you'll see the question in another light. Ay, believe me, you will. It'll be your business the

t. The other sighed once or twice and was silent also. At lengt

roke off. "What is it, Toft?

, had entered unseen. "I came to see if

watched the man out before he went on. Then, "Perhaps I heard fro

eat distress w

ghter. When Peter married a tradesman's daughter--married a----" He did not continue.

les. But," briskly, "there's that much of good in this girl that I think she'll put a

don't begin it all again. I've told yo

fully. "If she's her mother's daughter! But very well, very well! We'll ch

ked, forcing an interest which would h

e, but I had

atehouse, and Basset wonder

th Mottisfont. D--n Mottisfont! What do I care about him? They think he isn't running straight--that he's

t is a Tory,"

enal is sure that Peel is going back to the cotton peo

s

sly enjoyment, "what Stubbs the lawyer was doing about

. "What did h

h--you know who--it was thought that he was not the right person to come

A

ey laughed maliciously as he spoke--"that, for the landed interest, the law had taken away my land, and, for politi

idn't hide y

apped his fingers in schoolboy fashion and rose to his feet. He lit a candle, taking a light from the fire with a spill. "I am going to bed now, Peter. Unless----" h

ll have nothing to do wi

ffers. "Well," he said, "good-night. We must look to bright eyes and red lips to con

ges and collars under the guidance of the learned Anstie or the ingenious Le Neve. There he had spent hours flitting from book to book and chart to chart in the pursuit, as thrilling while it lasted as any fox-chase, of some family link, the origin of this, the end of that, a thing of value only to those who sought it, but to them all-important. He could recall ma

by a neck from the ruin of the Gunpowder Plot. So he had fallen early under the spell of the elder man's pursuits, and, still young, had learned from him to live in

had his secret aspirations, at times ambition of the higher kind stirred in him, he planned plans and another life than this. But always--this was a thing inbred in him--he put forward the commonplace, as the cuttle-fish sheds ink, and hid nothing so shyly as the visions which he had done nothing to make real. On those about him he made no deep impression, though from one

sed himself and became aware that he was tired; and he rose and lit a candle. He pushed back the smouldering logs and slowly and methodically he put out the lights. He gave a last thought to John

nt to

TER

GATE

saw the broad valley of the Trent stretched before her in all the beauty of a May morning, her alarm of the past night seemed incredible. At her feet a sharp slope, clothed in gorse and shrub, fell away to meet the plain. It sank no more than a couple of hundred feet, but this was enough to enable her to fol

of autumn cling to the cold soil. But in spring, when larks soar above them and tall, lop-sided elms outline the fields, they have their

e passed through the archway now slid humbly aside and entered the park by a field gate. A wide-latticed Tudor tower, rising two stories above the arch and turreted at the four corners, formed the middle. It was buttressed on either hand by a lower building, flush with it and of about th

of woodland and stood up, gloomy and forbidding, the portal of a Doubting Castle. On bright days, with its hundred diamond panes a-glitter in the sunshine, it seemed to be the po

joy. She fancied that to live behind those ancient mullioned windows, to look out morning and evening on that spacious

as merely the archway closed and fitted with a small door and window at either end. She unlocked the farther door and passed into a paved court, in which the grass grew between the worn flags. In the stables on th

, stretched away into forest glades, bordered here by giant oaks brown in bud, there by the yellowish-green of beech trees. In the foreground lay patches of gorse, and in places an ancient thorn, riven and

r journey many a nook and sheltered dell, but nothing that could vie with this! Heedless of her thin shoes, with no more than a handkerchief on her head, she strayed on and on. By and by a

ul of it. She forgot that time was passing, almost she forgot that she had not breakfasted, and she might have been nearly a mile from t

turned with concern to meet him. "Am I very late, Mr. Basset?" she asked, her

then, "You've not be

raid my uncl

uria told me that you had gone this way, and I

uld not have been gay, who would not have lost her reserve in such

her eyes, youth fluttered in the tendrils of her hair, she was the soul of May. And what she had found of beauty in the woodland, of music in the larks' songs, of perfume i

But before the witchery of her morning face, the challenge of her laughing eyes, he awoke to the fact that he was in danger. He had to own that if he must live beside her day by day

owing what she said. Then his coolness returned, and when she a

ith Lord Audley, does not like any one to go farther in that direction than the Yew Tree Walk. You can see the Walk from here--the y

Her face was not gay now. "Does Lord

g, at which his only son quarrelled with a guest. The two fought at daybreak, and the son was killed beside the old Butterfly in the Yew Walk--you will see the spot some day. The father sent away the builders and never looked up again. He diverted much of his property, and a cousin came into the remainder and the title, but the house was never fi

at you had not told me. They say in France that if you see the dead wit

s talking for effect. "It is on

" she asked, pointing to the gray shapeless beasts, time-worn

erflies in many places in the Gatehouse. You will find them with men's faces and sometimes with a fret on

r a cry of pleasure. On three sides the dark wainscot rose eight feet from the floor; above, the walls were whitewashed to the ceiling and broken by dim portraits, on stretchers and without frames. On the fourth side where the pane

three, and Toft, who had set on the breakfast

coming down?"

he will come. You had better begin, sir. The young lady,

d I do," Ma

Basset said. He invite

seated, "You

it," she

inen--pattern of the fifteenth century--you see the folds

dependent. What would he be like? How would he receive her? And why was every one so reticent about him--so reticent that he was beginning to be something of an ogre to her? When Toft presently appeared and said that Mr. Audley was in the

w her misgiving--he was prepared to

or her everything depended upon him. Her new home, its peace, its age, its woodland surroundings, fascinated her. It promised her not only content, but happiness. But as her stay in it hung upon John Audley's will, so her plea

er, appeared to be empty. Then, "Mary, my dear," said a pleasant voice, "welcome to the

, who walked with a short tripping step, and wore the swallow-tailed coat with gilt buttons which the frock-coat had displaced. He took her hand

ent's contemplation. "But, my dear, how is this

, "I was a little a

her is offered you. Things came between your father and me--I shall never mention them again, and don't you, my dear!"--this a little hurriedly--"don't you; all that is buried now, and I

r. The servant had come in quietl

servant, "No, my dear," he continued, "I need not say that I never had them, so that I first heard of your troubles throu

g!" she cried

one drawbac

owner, and to escape from the subject. "This room," she sa

g at Tyburn, he married his daughter to an Audley, and the escheaters found the wedding chamber in his house furnished with our Butterflies. Later the Butterfly survived as our badge. You see it there!" he continued, pointing it out among the mouldings of the ceiling. "There is the Stafford Knot, the badge of the great Dukes of Buckingha

I am as proud of our Butterfly, and as prou

paused to consider. "I am afraid that we cannot allot you a drawing-room, but you must make your room upstairs as comfortable as you can. Etruria will see to that. And Peter shall

be more peaceful or more calm than in this room which no sounds of the outer world except the songs of birds, no sights save the swaying of branches disturbed; where the blazoned panes cast their azure and argent on lines of russet books, where an aged hound sprawled before the ember

, anxious to captivate Mary, he bent himself for nearly an hour to the display of his knowledge. Taking for his text one or other of the objects about him, he told her of great castles, from which England had been ruled, and through which the choicest life of the country had passed, that now were piles of sherds clothed with nettles. He told her of that woodland country on the borders of three counties,

ng a broch of

first i-writt

hat, Amor v

nspection a small bowl, bent and mis-shapen by use, and supported by two fragile butterflies. The whole was of silver so thin that to mod

strations," she cried, "I prefer t

es. Pages and knights, maids and matrons, gloves of silk and gloves of mail, wrinkled palms and babies' fingers, the men, the women, the child

rare?" she said,

once allowed it to go out of his fingers. "Very rare. I doubt if, apart fr

to you by d

he turned with the key in his hand his face was altered, and he looked at her--well, had she done anything to anger him, she would have thought he was angry. "To whom besides

as to startle her and to dash the happy mood of a few mom

PTE

TH

er three sides by Beaudelays Park and by the Great Chase, which flung its barren moors over many miles of table-land. In the course of the famous suit John Audley had added to the solitude of the h

at which led to the Great House; she discovered where the foxgloves clustered, where the meadow-sweet fringed the runlet, where the rare bog-bean warned the traveller to look to his footing. Even the Great Chase she came to know, and almost daily she walked to a point beyond the park whence she could see the distant smoke of a mining village. That was the one sign of life on the Chase; e

sight and smell had alike been outraged, she revelled in this sweet and open life. The hum of bees, the scent of pines

ited in her was feeble. The thought of comparing him with Lord Audley, with the man to whose intervention she owed this home, this peace, this content, never occurred to her. Of Audley she did think as much perhaps as was prudent, sometimes with

t. Sometimes he suggested things which would please her uncle; sometimes he warned her of things which she would do well to avoid. Once or twice he diverted to himself a spirt of John Audley's uncertain temper; and though Mary did not always det

f him. Then with admiration which he withstood more feebly as time went on, and the cloven hoof failed to appear. Later, with tenderness, which, hating

ouse was, he owned it frankly, his true sphere. She, on the other hand, had had experiences. She had sailed through unknown seas, she had led a life strange to h

to Basset to point the way, to choose her reading, to set in a proper light John Audley's vivid pictures of the past, to teach her the elements of heraldry and genealogy. She proved, however, an apt scholar, and very soon she dropped into the position of her uncle's secretary. Sometimes she copied his notes, at other times he set her on the trac

importance lay in days long gone. Then all was new to her, enthusiasm is easily caught, and Mary, eager to please her uncle, was gl

ned ceaselessly in the pursuit of a fact or a fancy. In the retrospect all became less a picture than a frame containing a past world, a fifteenth-century world of color and movement, of rooms stifled in hangings

ke of Burgundy's train barefoot and bare-legged, begging his bread from door to door--t

dark

as meche as in him was, he lete the King that he sholde not come in the Castelle of Wynsore, dredynge the sayde proph

eanstalk, too, and if his name had been John, a pretty thing might have been raised upon it. But you're divagating, my dear," he continued, sm

ce of Wal

tory which traces them to the blind King of Bohemia

geon?" Basset objected. "He says clearly that

g, used to wear such a feather, and gained that feather from the King of Bohemia, whom he slew at Crécy, and so assumed to himself that feather which is called an ostri

ng of B

ter winning his spurs by his victory over the Bohemian, took his father's insignia. He had

et exclaimed, "I bel

ecause it was their father's crest, probably derived from their mother, Philippa of Hainault? If you will look in the inventory of jewels made

en Anne of Bohemia--she died seven year

which is unlikely--or the inventory made by order of Henry IV. quotes verbatim from lists made during the lifetime of Queen Anne; if this be the case, the last deceased Queen, o

eat applause on the table. "Hurr

"Toft shall bring in hot wat

wrinkling nose. "Why don't you call her Mar

she said. "Peter it shall be--Peter

ould betray him. For by this time, from his seat at his remote table, and from the ambush of his book, he had watched her too often for his peace, and too clos

n innocent pursuits, and without one thought beyond them. But touch a certain spot, approach with steps ever so delicate a certain subject--Lord Audley and his title--and his manner changed, the very man changed, he became secretive, suspicious, menacing. Nor, however quickly she might withdraw from the danger-line, could the harm be u

ould appear ill at ease. He would avoid her eyes, and look away from her in a manner almost as unpleasant as his violence; later, in a shamefaced way, he would tell her th

n to see his face at a window, or his figure in a doorway. Within doors it was the same. He slept out, living with his wife in the kitchen wing, which had a separate entrance from the courtyard. But he was everywhere at all hours. Even hi

will give you such attendance as you require, and will share the south wing with you at night. The two bedrooms there are on a separate staircase. I sleep above the libra

almost all that was beautiful. She was simple, kindly, helpful, having the wide low brow, the placid eyes, and perfect complexion of a Quaker girl--and to add to th

stupid. Sometimes she yoked her with her father in the suspicions she entertained of him. More often, moved by the girl's meek eyes, she felt only a vague irritation. She w

. It happened that Etruria came into the room at the moment, and in the fulness of her

, Mi

has known for hundreds

ed, M

ew line. "Etruria," she

did not

me? I asked if

ontent,

sk that. Are

onfidence, Etruria yielded. "I don't think that we can any of

ary cried, taken abac

uria wa

ted. "You must tel

think of all the suffering in the world. It's natural that you sho

as scarcely more surprised

o have neither light nor air, nor songs nor sunshine, who've no milk for children nor food for mothers! Who, if they've work, work every hour of the day in dust and

rur

ere raised. "They're just tools to make money, and, like the tools, they wear out and are cast aside! For t

!" Mar

prise! For a moment this was the only effect made upon her. Then reflection did its part--and memory. She recalled that glimpse of the under-world which she had had on her journey from London. She remembered the noisome alleys, the cinder wastes, the men toiling

s had faded from her mind. They recurred now, and she did not ag

ands out of work. There are thousands, scores of thousands, still; and thousands have no food but

caused things

But most that machines lower wages,

closely at the girl who knew so muc

heeks, "think that it is selfishness, that every on

id, seeing tha

or as well as of himself, it would not be machines nor corn-taxes nor poorhouses would be s

ruria," she cried, "some one

," she said simply, "it was a

iddsley, to a service as dull as it was long, that they

. "It's at Brown Heath on the Chase. But i

eplied. "A m

s," she said. "It's the curate at Riddsley has a

you

I can,

assed beyond the common channel to refresh those whom migrations of population or changes in industry had left high

ry said. "What was the te

etter than one,'" she replied, "'because they have good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will

!" Mary cried. "Is

ia no

your preacher

fell, it was the duty of the other to help him up. And again, that the land and the mill were fellows--the town and the country--and if they worked together in love

orrow is Thursday. I shall

PTE

TH

h into new places. Some thought that they had found a panacea for the evils of the day in education, and put their faith in workmen's institutes and night schools. Others were satisfied with philanthropy, and proclaimed that infants of seven ought not to toil for their living, that coal-pits were not fit places for women, and that what paid was

ield for the mill, the farm for the coal-pit. They had followed their work into towns built haphazard, that grew presently into cities. There, short of light, of air, of water, lacking decency, lacking even votes--for the Reform Bill

ade, and bor

rmer und

me bad seasons and dear bread. Presently hundreds of thousands were living on public charity, long lists of masters were in the

re protection might mend matters. The Golden Rulers were for shorter hours. But the men who were the loudest and the most confident cried that cheap bread would mend all. The poor, they said, w

he moorland in the evening sunshine, with a light breeze stirring the bracken, and waves of shadow moving athwart the stretches of

ash-heaps. As the sides of the valley rose higher and closed in above the walkers cottages fell into lines on either side of the brook, and began to show one behind the other in rough terraces, with middens that slid from the upper to the

picked their way. "But don't be afraid, M

dust lay everywhere; the most cleanly must have despaired. Men seated, pipe in mouth, on low walls, watched the two go by--not without some rude banter; frowsy women crouching on door-steps and nursing starveling ba

"They are rare and fond of them,

women fighting before a public-house. "The chaps are none so gentle," Etruria said, falling unconsciously into a commoner way of sp

-covered, but five publics looked upon it and marked it for the centre of Brown Heath. Etruria crossed the triangle to a building a little clean

ated, when they entered, about twenty persons, mainly women, but including three or four men of the miner class. No attempt had been made to alter the character of the place, and of formality there was as little. The two had b

in the room grew, and when it closed she found that all the seats were filled, and that there were even a few men--some of them colliers fresh from the pit--standing at the back. Remembering the odd text

nimal and vegetable world, where all things lived at the cost of others; and he admitted that the struggle for life, for bread, for work, as they saw it around them, resembled that struggle. In moving terms he enlarged on the distress, on the vast numbers lately living on the rates, on the thousands living, where even the rates fell short, on Government aid. He described the fireless homes, the foodless children, the strong men hopeless. And he showed them that others were stricken, that

th not itse

tself hat

other give

followed by

heaven in he

, nay, all evils save pain and death, would be cured by the love that thought for others, that in the master preferred the servant's welfare and in

was silent; his hearers waited.

ich takes a disproportionate part from the scanty crust of the widow and from the food of the child, was in accordance with the law of love. I repeat that now; and because I have been told that I dare not say in the pulpit of Riddsley church what I say here, I shall on the first opportuni

e door, an old man in horn-rimmed glasses, who was waiting there, held out his hand. She was going to take

reak your pick, and naught gotten. Naught gotten, that'll se

young man answered, "and not do t

her rejoined, clutching his sleeve

e'd best lose no time," the girl whispered. And she drew Mary on

it was still light. "We'd best hurry,"

is down to the influence of the sermon, and her own mind went back to it. "I a

this time Mary's ear caught the sound of footsteps behind them

ia!" h

rl hurried on. But Mary saw no occasion to run away, and sh

o use,"

his hand, his long plain face was aglow with the haste he had mad

mistress,"

s Au

," Mary announced

on. I am Mr. Colet, the curate at Riddsley. Etruria and I love one another," h

away. "I have told him many times that I am a servant, the daughter of a servant, in a different class

I am as poor as it is possible to be, with as poor prospects as it is possible to have. I shall never be anything but what I am, and I shall think myself rich

d. "It is useless," she said. And then, in a tone of honest scorn, "Who ever heard," sh

on. "Does Etruria's f

young man replied, his eyes

ned it! Now, while her sympathies flew to the lover's side, her prejudices rose up against him. They echoed Etruria's words, "Who ever heard of good coming of such a mat

d at last, "it is fo

d his case, "I ask your pardon, Miss Audley, for intruding," he continued. "I am keeping you, and as I a

de him, he moved on beside them. "Conditions are better here than in many

gh," Mary answere

thousand, no church, no school, no gentry, no one of the better class. There

slopes of the hill, pale green in the peaceful evening light, began to rise on either

h places as this--and there are many of them in Staffordshire, as raw, as rough, and as new--there is work for plain men and plain women. In these swarming hiv

n knife," Etruria said coldly. "

than onions in the ri

se," she rejoined,

ain thing is to cut their bread for them. But her

paces above the road on the hillside. Mary shook hand

d. And then to Mary, "I hop

e answered. "I am sure

dred yards, and were still some way below the level of the Chase, when a cry reached them. It came out of the dusk behind them, and might have been the call of a curlew on the moor. But first one, and then the other stood. They turned, and listened, and suddenly Etruria, more anxious or sharper of eye than her mistress, uttered a cry and broke away at a ru

he clatter of sticks on one another. Then she trod on her skirt and fell. When she had got, breathless, to her feet again, the clergyman was down and the m

r fend off more than one blow, she heard more than one blow fall with a sickening thud. She came u

ward! I am Miss Audley! Do you h

retreated a step. The man she had grasped shook himself free, but did not attempt to strike her. "Oh, d--n the

dignation she advanced on him. "How dare you?" E

"whoever you be! Go to---- and mind your own brats! He'll know better

ria, on the contrary, maintained that, finding only women before them, the ruffians would have murdered them. Fortunate

Etruria shrill

her face to the men, but for the

e. It needed no more. With a volley of oaths the assailants turned tail and mad

and each carrying a gun, reached the spot. "We

ook, she could barely stand, she could not speak. She pointed to the fallen man, over whom Etruria still c

new-comer asked in

Etruria ec

groaned, moved, with an effort he raised himself on

She stepped back as if the g

rt," Colet a

he was. After watching him a moment, "He should see a doctor," said the man who had come up so opportunely. "Petch," he continued, addressing his comp

et of Riddsle

claimed. And then in the same tone of surprise,

fortunately, for if we had not been here the men would have murder

e to me," he answered gallantly. "I did not

PTE

AND T

ria, and Mary exp

id that sh

ek; more than one of the blows aimed at her lover had fallen

truria?" Mary as

girl repeated. She was trying with

the better. Take his other arm, Petch. Miss Audley, can you carry my gun?--it is

ing and fretting. The dogs were driven under the seat, and the clergyman, still muttering that he was all right, was lifted in. "Steady him, Petch," Audley said; "and

not going?"

only your maid," he answered with severity.

could still see the men's savage faces, still hear the thud of their blows

y started, "How did

, but said no word

ot with him when

e had

ou wen

urse w

prudent. If we had not come up at tha

might have been murdered!" she answere

at Riddsley, isn't he? Who's been preaching

be. But is he to be murdered for that

preach cheap bread to starving men, whether he is wise to tell them that they would

ng with authority, and she said no more. And on his side he had no wish to quarrel. He had come down to Riddsley partly to shoot,

is acquaintance with her, and he was in no mood, now he saw her, to spoil their meeting by a quarrel. He thought Colet, whose doings had been reported to him, a troublesome, pestilent fellow, and he w

Whatever your views, to express them in all companies may be honest, but is not wise. I have no doubt that a parson is tried. He sees the trou

swered. "And from my poin

e brought about our meeting at the H?tel Lambert? What but fat

her cheek and warned her to keep to the surface of thing

f in earnest. "We have met by chance once, and once again--with r

ully matter of fact. "Or if it does," with a flash of laughter, "

rate

But it was Etruria

was glad--she was certainly glad--to see him again. If he were inclined to make the most of his advantage, well, a little gallantry was quite in the picture; she was not deceived, and she w

the Chase from the park, a figure, dimly outlined, stood in

pirits sank. She felt that the meeti

orld has happened?" he asked. "I couldn't believe that you were still out. It's really

ne another. "We have had an adventure. Lord Audley was passi

by surprise and his tone was muc

s--we cannot say. "I was returning from shooting, heard cries for help, and

s man to spring up at every turn? To cross him on every occasion? To put him in the background

ar, and the sooner she is in bed the better. As Mr. Basset is here," she continued, turning to Audley, "we must not take you farther

or that silence provoked her. She had gathered from many things that Basset did not love the other; bu

his back, and while he hesitated, the other made his adieux. He said a pleasant word

ed homewards in silence. Then, "What ha

ignant, Mary

ow that you k

d," she retorted, "one does

d he could not bridle his tongue. "Oh, but murdered?" he

not deign

her opening. "I do not know

Mr. Colet? And per

but

Lord Audley

maliciously. He knew that he was misbehaving, but he could

e moment I reach the

very unwise

not discuss the matter, Mr. Basset. I am a good deal sh

hat he was sorry--th

ere," she said. "En

s tongue, and gloomy and wretched--oh, why had he not gone farther to meet them, why had he not been the one to rescue her?--he walked on beside them, cursing his unhappy temper. It

seemed endless. At last the house loomed dark above them, their steps rang hard on the flagged court. The outer door stood ajar, and entering, t

ut no Toft appeared, and Mary, resentment still hot in her, opened the door of the libra

wood fire smouldered on the hearth, the tall clock ticked in the sil

she asked, as she sto

He saw that the room was empty. "

d T

, too, I

ed, aghast at the thought--he troubled himself so li

r the time they had forgotten their quarrel--"You had better get some

sist. "Very well," she said. "

oft will know w

curving wainscot of dull wood which so many generations had rubbed, she carried with her the picture of Basset standing in thought in the midd

s, and caught the girl rising from her knees. "Oh, Miss," she s

n't marry him, y

no,

h you lo

burning. "It is because I love him, Mis

" she said, raising the candle so tha

t way, but there was no escape.

th not itse

self hath

th her hands. But Mary took a

" Etruria

she paused to snuff her candle. "So that is love," she th

PTE

YEW

Audley had not come back from Brown Heath. The servant had hinted alarm--the Chase was lonely, the

sed the court to Toft's house. Mrs. Toft was cooking something savory in a bonnet before the fire, and the contrast between her warm cheerful kitchen and the stillness of the

"I can't hurry it, Mr. Basset," she said. "You may be Sir Robert Peel himself, but meat's your master and will have its time. A k

etter go

here's

God knows!" he said. "He ought to b

into the house. "On the head?" she ruminated. "Well, 'Truria's a tidy lot of hair!

autumn coldness, swept the upland, whispering through the dying fern, and rustling in the clumps of trees by which he steered his course. He listened more t

h led through the yew-wood, and had been in its time a stately avenue trimmed to the neatness of a bowling green. Now it was little better than a tunnel, dark even at noon, and at night bristling with a hundred peri

hedge. Half-way through the wood he came to a circular clearing, some twenty yards across; and here a glimmer of light enabled him to avoid the crumbling stone Butterfly that crouched

lt in it, longing to plant his feet on something more solid than this carpet of rotting yew. At last he came to the tall, strait gate, wrought of old iron, that admitted to the pleasance.

ts of the north wing, or filled in the bald rows of unglazed windows, which made of the new portion a death-mask. In that north wing just eighty years before, in a room hung with old Cordovan leather, the fatal house-warming had been held. The duel had been fought at sunrise within a pace or two of the moss-grown Butterfly

aked, and he felt sure that he was on the right track. He scanned the dark house,

rmal garden, once set with rows of birds and beasts cut in yew. Time had turned these to monsters, huge, amorphous, menacing, amidst which rank

isgiving. He called himself a fool for his pains and anticipated with distaste a return through the yew-walk. However, the sooner he unde

d he waited. In two or three

was striving to probe the darkness, when a gleam of light shot across his eyes. He turned and saw in the main building a bright spark. It

tstep or the light. He chose the latter, the rather as while he stood with his

The moon rose clear of the roof, outlining the stately chimneys and gables and flooding with cold

tter cast back. A minute later he heard the footsteps of some one moving

. "Is that you,

d out of the darkness. He

a rule he was patient with the old m

"What is the use? What is the use? If you are willin

sset retorted. "As you certainly will on

night! On the contrary---- But th

Basset replied. "I nearly

you come through the yew

n't

ke the cap of a small bull's-eye lantern and th

home," Bas

. But long before they gained the house the elder man's strength failed, and he was glad to lean on Basset's arm. On that a sense of weakness on the on

ave stay

Audley paused and struck his stick on the ground. "I must take care of

sset replied. "When you are safe at

out for them with a lantern. "Thank God, you're sa

sharply, "when I came in?" John

ok for the master," Toft replied. "I

tory. "Well, get the brandy," he said, "and bring it to t

slippers and the spirit-tray. That done, he lingered, and Basset thought that he w

man had to go, and Audl

muttered. "He i

o you

opened. Toft came in. "I forgot t

ishly. When the man had again withdrawn, "How

take your boots

ell," he said, "he has been with me m

erests. He dogg

did

ink that you can break through all your habits, sir, and be missing for two hours at night and a man as shrewd as Toft suspect nothing, you a

d jerked some brandy into a glass. Then, "You

replied, "I would rather n

t think I should do it

at--you've foun

uld have gone to it blindfold! I was a boy then, and the name--he was telling a story of the old lord--took my fancy. I listened. In time the thing faded, but o

e been in

ron, and a lock that one out of any dozen big keys would open!" He ru

t was

ing smile. "As bare as a board. A little whit

removed th

place was as clean as a platter! Not a length

e you gained?"

Brick it up!' he said. The steward objected that there would not be room--the place was full; there were boxes everywhere, some under the stairs. The old lord tapped one of the boxes with his gold-headed cane. 'What's in these!' he asked. 'Old pape

our mind all this time?" Basset

ed and looked in his companion's face--"the part under the stairs is bricked up, and the room is as square and as flush as

may be nothing th

s trembling with excitement. "If I believed that I should go mad! But it is there! It is there! Do you think that it was for naught I heard that story? That it was for naught I remembered it, f

t you understand what you ask. To break into Audley's house like

No, fool, but my house, my wall, my deeds! my deeds! If the papers are there all's mine! All! And I

you will take my advice you will tell your story, apply to the court, an

u know that as long as he is in possession he can sit on h

to his house--sticks in my gizzard, sir. I'm sorry, but that is the way I look at it. The man's here too. I

to shrink into himself. "Where

ally in danger," he continued, "but they thought so, and Audle

ndkerchief and wiped his brow.

ou at the house, he might

"I would have killed him!" he cried. "I would have k

have nothing to do with the matter! It's too risk

h, while the other wondered for the hundredth time if he were sane. At length, "What i

s some talk in Riddsley of his com

t ab

corn-law repe

t's a pretext," he said. "And so is th

"Followed Mary

h her for that reason. Why the devil can't you? If you leave it much longer you'll be too late! T

id that I me

you sit there watching her from behind your book by the hour together, I have not my sight? Man, I'm not a fool! And I tell you that if you're not to lose her you must sp

r?" Basset asked sullenly. H

oulders. "Do you think that

lives in ano

y to have attra

for--for something mo

have bad dreams? No, he is no fool, if you are. He sees that if he marries the g

t he does thin

Only, if he once begins, he'll be no laggard in love as you are! He'll not sit puling and peeping and looking at the back of her head by the hour together! He'll be up and at her--I know what that big jowl means! And she'll be in his arms in half the time that

d no doubt at such moments that he was mad. But on this occasion he was afraid--he was

TER

R PA

oke next day. It was not less clear, because like the feminine letter of the 'forties, crossed and

ch those ideas might make upon her. Rescued from penury, lifted above anxiety about bed and board, no longer exposed to the panic-fears which in Paris had beset even her courageous nature,

limited horizon as satisfied most of the women of that day. Unlike them, she had viewed the world from more than one standpoint; through the grille of a convent school,

She had suffered, she still had twinges--for who, with her experience, could be sure tha

ose who held the secret, and whose will might make that secret sufficient to save. Love! To do to others as she would have others do to her! With every day, with every hour, with every minute to do something for others! Always to give, never to take! Above all to give hersel

aven in Hel

master were as anxious for the weal of his men, the interests of the two would be one. Equally plain it seemed that if they who grew the food aimed at feeding the greatest number, and they who ate had the

nother gave

plain that love would

y does bless him who gives but not always him who takes; even, that cheap

n torment, those countless hands stretched upward in appeal, that murmur of infinite pain, the cry of the hungry, of the widow, of men sitting by tireless hearths, of children dying in mill and mine--t

ught. Lord Audley--how strange was the chance which had again brought them together! How much she owed him, with what kindness had he seen to her comfort, how masterfully

ength and power which impresses women; and he had ease and charm, and the look of fashion which has its weight with even the most sensible of her sex.

of man and woman could rise. She had a new conception of its strength and its power to expel what was selfish or petty. She had seen it in its noblest

hould it be, happy Etruria? Who know

r of the morning, along the green rides hoary with dew and fringed with brack

the adventure had not left her, young as she was, unscathed. The springs of enthusiasm waned with her strength, and presently sh

here were shadows under her eyes, and the man's tenderness went out to her. He longed, he longed above everything to put himself right with her

It is nothing," she said. "We were all

nt to ask

of impatience. "Don't let us rake it up again. If my uncle h

er foot, and he did not see that she was in the worst possible

ounded him, she dropped them and spoke more kindly. "Don't let us make much of

don

ul to him. I am sure that if you had known that, you would have behaved differently. There!" with

o reject it, but always in vain. And gradually, slowly, it had kindled his resolution, it had fired him to action. Now, the very modesty which had long kept him silent and w

o tell your uncle about Lord Au

ed gravely, "that we were indebte

n't tru

have no doubt that in telling my uncle you meant to relieve

s a special

. "If you wish us

roughly. "I don't want

nce of mind. She rose from her seat. "And I," she said, "am not going to quarrel with

before he

d her heart beat more quickly. But the absence on her side of any feeling, except that which a sister might feel for a kind brother, this and the

e he had been useful and she had been grateful, because they were man and woman, how foolish it was! How absurd! How annoying! She foresaw from it many, many, inconveniences; a breach in their pleasant

ew her uncle, she had this weight on her mind. She strove to recall words and looks, and upon the whole she was s

thoughts back to the present, and paused a momen

empty; a second showed her Basset. She turned to retire, but too late; he stepped between her and th

I came to see my

me to say that he considers the matter at an end. He does not

r. Bass

e continued, "and I am glad to be the messenger because i

onstrated, struggling against her fate.

ing to explain it--i

it was clear that she must go through with it, she was glad that

d and moved the wood. "You

to trap her like this if he t

ess. "You would rather escape?" he said, reading her mind. "I know. But I can't let you escape. You are thinking that I have trapped you? And you are

She knew that she was going to feel p

tly, and blushed to the roots of her hair, so sudden was the avowal--"as I love you," he repeated sorrowfully, "I have read that she either hates him or loves him. His love is a fire

indeed, I don't! I am very grateful to you

es on her face. "And then, yo

om her face and left her pal

nd that I should alarm you before the time! I knew that that one word--that word alone--would set my heart upon my sleeve for all to see. And I did not want to alarm you. I did not want to hurry you. I thought then that I had t

but the color mounte

ot. Then he took a step towards her. "Tell me," he

t for an answer, "None," she said as kindly as she could. "I must tell you the truth. It is u

differently--now! Now that you know? Can

to me, kind to me, a dear friend, a brother when I had need of one. And I am grateful, Mr. Basset, honestly, really grateful to you. A

he looked, how sad his face, her eyes filled with tears. Then,

nswer. She ro

epeated, a new note in his vo

ight to ask th

nearer to her, his whole bearing changed in a moment by the sting o

she

longer the despondent lover of five minutes before, but a man demanding his rights. "H

hat if I answered your question I should humiliate myself. No one, n

side, I am to be disca

g to do that shall be worth the doing, a man with ambitions above mere trifling, mere groping in the dust of the past for facts that, when known, make no man happier, and no man better, and scarce a man wiser! Do you ever think," she continued, carried away by the remembrance of Mr. Colet's zeal, "of the sorrow and pain that are in the world? Of the vast riddles that are to be solved? Of the work that awaits the wisest and the strongest, and at which all in th

said huskily,

o no harm? Is there no good to be done? Think, Mr. Basset! I am ignorant, a woman. But I know that to-day there are great questions calling for an answer, wrongs clamoring to be righted, a p

than once shivered under her words as under a lash. For he loved her and she scourged him. He loved her, he desired her, he had put her on a pedestal, and all the time she had been viewing him with the clear

eing the grayness of his face, and that he did not raise his eyes, had a too-late perception of what she had done, of how cru

am sorry! I should not have said that! Y

e grayness left his face. "Perhaps it was best,"

"I did! But I was wr

u were not wrong.

had done, to unsay what she had said, to tell him that she was conceited, foolish, a mere girl! "I

was no knight-errant. I have never been bold until to-day--and it has not answe

open for her to go out. But when he reached the door he fumbled for the handle, fou

PTE

NCHEST

ter, he halted on a scarred and blackened waste that stretched to the horizon on every side, he would have been hard put to it to

had loved her. It was possible that in the interval he had sworn at fate, or shrieked against the curlews, or cursed the inhuman sky that mocked him with its sameness. But he did not think t

an better, doing nothing for any one! Was she right? The Bohun pedigree, at which he had worked so long? He had been proud of his knowledge of Norman descents, proud of the research which had won that knowledge, proud of his taste for following up recondite facts. Were the knowledge, the re

on with them. But the tradition had waned with their fortunes. In these days he was only a small squire, a little more regarded than the new men abou

g role. He who seldom raised his voice at Quarter Sessions or on the Grand Jury--to which his birth rather than his possessions calle

gilded her hair as she bent over the task she was even then criticizing; of afternoons when the spirit of the chase had been theirs, and the sunshine and the flowers had had no charm strong enough to draw them from

s that weighted her strictures. And yet, making all allowance for that, there was so much of truth in what she had said, so much that hit the m

erable pain. That was what she thought of him! And he had lost her! That was what she thought of him! And he had lost her! Her slend

to the Chase. A pit, near at hand, had just turned out its shift, and in the dusk tired men, swinging tins in their hands, were moving by twos and threes along the track. With his bent shoulders and weary gait he was lost among them, he walked one with them; yet here and there an older man espied the difference, recognized him, and greeted him with rough re

woman, seated in a chair. A dingy beadle and a constable, who formed the escort and looked ill at ease, stood beside the cart, and round it

it?" Bass

r, and there's none to keep her or the little uns. She've done till now, but they'll not

die than go!

!" exclaimed a younger man. "A

"No, nor Staffordshire men, nor Englishmen, nor men at all, if you let an old woman that's al

ice in the crowd struck in, and the l

ked about her shoulders, her gray hair in wisps on her cheeks, she gazed in tearless grief

ight do something. But he's been lammed. And there's the rent. The boy's ten, and he m

other. "Poor laws and pit laws we

eld the rein clung to it. "Now, Bet, have a care!" said

your bread and meat! May the devil, hoof and horn, with his scythe on his bac

woman

you! You call

ou'll be in trouble

n charge when Basset stepped forward. "Steady, a moment," he said

constable asked. "You'd

's Squire Basset of Blore. Dunno you know him

ing gesture. "You be careful, Jack! You be Jack in of

s the old woman

the curate

ssing the constable, "if you'll let her be. I'

don't come on

or six months," Basset said. "I

sfaction. While he did so, "O'd Staffordshire! O'd Staffordshire!" a man explained in the background. "Bassets of Blore--they be come from an Abbey and come to a Grange, as the saying is. Yo

it was not by stray acts such as this that he could lift himself to Mary's standard, though the battle over the new Poor Law had taught him, and many others, that charity may be the greatest of evils, what he had done seemed to bring him nearer to her. A hardship of the poor, which he might have seen with blind eyes, or vie

he Audley Arms, a long straggling house on the main street, in one part of two stories, in another of three, with a big bay window at the end. Entering the yard by the archway he ordered a gig to go to t

id, "that there's no fire upstairs. If you'd not mind our pa

sorry to avoid the company of his own thoughts. In the parlor, next door t

ame those of disappointment. About nine the landlord entered on some errand. "I suppose, sir," he sa

it? Get a clean glass

ir, I hear. And hi

hy

's been for it all through, and some talk about a potato failure. Mr. Mottisfont sees that that'll never do for Riddsley, but he do

k it is true

Squire. We're horn and corn men here, two to one of us. There's just the two small factor

Seeing Basset he removed his hat. "Pardon, Squir

ally, and had seen him often--at arm's length--in the

t. The landlord was for withdrawing, but Stubbs detained him. "No, John, with Mr. Basset

d, Mr. Stubbs," he said,

repealers talking treason at the Audley Arms i

n 'em out," he said. "They'd have the law

bbs replied. "He's a good land

a china babe. When they began to talk, so glib that no one could answer them, I was more took

it is," B

the time he only answered, "Not in our day, Mr. Basset. Peel or Repeal, there's no one has attacked the land yet bu

e, sir, what

the lawyer replied. "Good-evening, Squire. I ho

ch a little ajar when he had done so, and the voices of those who gathered there nightly, as to a club, reached Basse

law, "but you're like the rest, you Manchester cha

ncashire accent, "I'm not saying that cheap b

ght that the voice belonged to Hayward of the Leasows, a pompous old farmer, dubb

er rejoined. "That's where you mistake, sir.

the farmer pronounced. "And I ha' known it a hund

at that time were the h

rmer admitted, "I'

seventy-seven--it is fifty-six now

antly, "I don't know as they wer

"I don't think you'll find that wages are highest whe

. "It's the price of wheat fixes the lowest wages. If it's two pound of bread will keep a man fit to work--just keep

, but

his fat thigh in triumph. "We've some sense i' Riddsley yet. Here's

ant. I'll tell you the two things we do want, and why we want cheap bread; first, that your laborers after they have bought bread may have something ov

ke honest men at home! But there it is! There's the devil's hoof! It's foreign cor

at price," declared the free trade

it at forty-five. We'll be on the rate

h talk in my hous

on said. "If the farmers are broke where'll their labore

, they're protected

hem!" cried

. "And I'll tell you what one of them said to me last

. "That's the kind of thing they two Bosha

had told; no

week--it was in Wiltshire. And you are protected too, sir," he continued

er answered sulkily--and in a lowe

use you pay poor-rates so high you'd be better off paying double wages. There's only one man be

p with the cotton lords!" "There's your Reform Bill," shouted another, "we've put the beggars on horseback, and none's to ride but them now!" A third prot

ar that neither the farmer nor the laborer grows fa

ven!" cried

rates. If that's all you get by P

my house," Musters said. "I've a good

! Musters!

ve your house to-morrow, not an hour before. I'll add only one word, gentl

ich all other industries stand? Isn't it the mainstay of the best constitution in the world? An

ps nor meat! Your cotton-printers and ironfounders they're great folks now, great folks, with their brass and their votes, and so they've a mind to upset the gentry. It's the town against the country, and new money

tlemen," he said, "I'll not quarrel with you. I wish you all the protection you deserve--and I think

of that!" mutte

it from me that there's some of us, too, are as anxious to better the poo

ohn," said the Duke. "I never heard the like of

Pepper cautiously, "that

eople and the coal people, and

it that way?" queried

yward answered stubbornly, "he'd get his notice t

o beaten on the moor he's in bed I am told. He's been speaking free these last tw

y. "There's good in Colet, and maybe it'll be a

two or three, s

ish here as he's fed 'em with at Brown Heath--cheap bread and the rest of it. Rector's been to him--he

hat? Wheat is tithe and the parsons are as fond of their tithe as any ma

I'm sorry for him all the same. There

p and went out. The boots was lounging at the door of the inn. He asked the man where Mr. Co

PTE

E BEDF

Probably he had not since his college days spent an hour in intimate talk with a man so far from him in fortune and position, and so unlike him in those things which

gue had been loosened by the sacrifice he had made, and inspired by that love of his kind which takes refuge in the most unlikely shapes, he had poured forth at length his beliefs and his aspirations. And Basset, w

But the means--they are a question for you; almost any man may see them more clearly than I do. By votes, it may be, and so through the people working out their own betterment. Or by social measures, as Lord Ashley thinks, through the classes that are fitted by education to judge for all. Or by the wider spread, as

han that I am inclined to your view. But for yourself, are th

. Basset," he rejoined, "if I left my duty to others I shou

. He did not see it as he had seen it on his entrance. He discerned that, small as it was, and shab

"who are not so particular; and in the north there

servant and his wife keep it, and during some months of the year I live there. It is

k into himself. "I couldn'

. "In the meantime, who was the m

cloth--"count goodness. He is something of a Socialist, something of a Chartis

ll se

been a

n the face. "Good heaven

s not a Christian, he has ideals. He aims higher than he can shoot, while the aims of the Manchester League, thoug

e thought a good deal o

poor. I have them

ed time. You must think no worse of me

aid awkwardly. "You have offered me the shelter of your house though I am a stranger, Mr. Basset, and though you must suspect that to harbor me

l that is

persisted. "And I think that you should. I am going

s a second and more serious blow.

am not called upon to justify it. Why I think her worthy, and more than worthy to share my life, is my business. I o

ate he repented of his visit. He felt that in stepping out of the normal round he had made a mistake. He should have foreseen, he should have known that he would meet w

dley kno

t yourself thin

in comfort, gently bred, sheltered from childhood could I ask to share that? How coul

man to marry a servant, good and refined as Etruria was!

nd, I hope that you may still do something--and with your name, you can do much--for the good cause. If rumor goes for anything,

could not--reserve and shyness had him again in their grip. He muttered something about thinking it over, added a word or two of thanks--which were cut short by the fl

the whole way, sunk his ideas of caste, and carried the thing th

ken him to the barber's shop; and one which he might have known that he would repent. He ought to have foreseen that he could not

ings that he had seen as he passed from house to house, hard, sad facts, the outcome of rising numbers and falling wages, of over-production, of mouths foodles

ted no oratory, he had cast no glamour over them. But he had brought to bear upon them the light of an ideal--the Christian ide

e trough of the wave. Neither the fine fury of the generation which had adored the rights of man, nor the splendid endurance which the great war had fostered, nor the lesser ardors of the Reform era, which found its single panacea in votes, touch

voted to something above the passing whim and the day's indulgence, a life that should not be useless to those who came after him. Was it possi

t room, and he stood in his hat and coat, looking on the cold bare aspect and the unfamiliar things--he owned himself desolate. The thought of Mary, of his hopes and plans and of the end of these, returned upon h

And the old house near Wootton where he had been wont to pass part of his time? That hardly met his needs or his aspirations. Unhappy as he was, he coul

n under

od came

o with his life. Now the question was put to him and he had to answer it. He had to answer

PTE

HOUSE AT

use had no past. The ancient wing that had welcomed brides, and echoed the laughter of children and given back the sullen notes of the passing-bell did not suffice to redeem the whole. By night the house might pass; the silent bulk imposed on the eye

was not only dead.

n the flags, and elders labored to uproot the stately balustrade that looked on the lower garden. This garden, once formal, was now a tangle of vegetation, a wilderness amid whose broad walks Venuses slowly turned to Dryads, and classic urns lay in fragments, split by the frosts of some excessive winter. Only the

was Stubbs. Both had a depressed air. It would have been hard to sa

ine," he said. "The only fine thing about the place," he added

But I fear that it

aming you for it, man. You cannot make bricks wi

g rose bough, or the fragments of a broken pillar. They paused to inspect the sundial, a giant Butterfly with closed wings, a replica o

ne sole

d. "A short life

e to centre, and become a shallow bed of clay and weeds, it was now as unsightly as it had been beautiful in

Stubbs," he cried, "I have had as much of this as I can stand! A little more and I shall go back and cut my th

him, he strode back the way they had come. Stubbs

garian to take the place--iron man or cotton man, I don't care who he is, if he has got the cash I You mu

ong ago, if it were possible. But we couldn't let it in its present state--for a short term; and we

wrung; when the consequence which the title had brought failed to soften the hardships of his lot--a poor peer with a vast house. Had he tried to keep

arry where money was. But once or twice during the last few days, which they had been spending in a review of the property, my lord had shown irritation. When an old farmer had said to hi

rth wing. Stubbs unlocked it and pushed it ope

. "Open a window! Bre

d, and midway along the inner side a short passage led to a second hall--the servants' hall--the twin of this. Together they formed an H, and were probably a Jacobean copy of a Henry the Eighth buildi

led captains, had filled it with laughter and jest, and song. With a foot on the table they had toasted the young king--not stout Farmer George, not the old, mad monarch, but the gay young sovereign. To-day desolation reigned. The windows gray with dir

use!" he cried. "To think that men made merry in this room. It's a

paces, and a few pieces of furniture crouched under shrouds of dust. As they stood gazing two rats leapt from a screen of

nels in the wall. "A hunting scene?" he s

long day first, I am afraid," he said. "

distaste at the shreds of the screen. He touched them with his foot. A third rat spr

nto the principal guest-room, which was over the drawing-room. Then they went by the short passage of t

ung ladies in the inner," Audley said, smi

nd recoiled. "Take care, my lord

smell! Can't yo

ike poison--but it was of no use.

cession, only to stream back again as silently. In a dusky corner of the second room a cluster, like a huge bunch of grapes, hung to on

hing beyond

N

sine sole volo! We may not, but the bats do. Let us go d

ous readiness--the bats were his pet aversion. "I brought

was another door which led, Stubbs explained, into the servants' quarters. "This turret," he added, "is older even than the wing, and forms no part of the H. It was retained because

d and studded with iron, showed itself. Stubbs halted before it. There was a sputter. A light shone out. "Wond

d dryly. "But--when were

twelvemonth

your

N

ointed to something that lay in the

!" the lawyer crie

een there a week. Who ha

g himself, "he can have done no harm. I can prove that in five minutes, my lord--if you will kindly hold the light." He inserted

ere in a whitewashed chamber twelve feet square, clean, bare, empty. The

e, my lord, we swept it as bare as the palm of my hand. I can an

relaxed. "Yes," he said, "you could not overlook an

and scanned the floor. "All the same, somebody has been here!" he exc

cked up the bit of charred wood and examined it. "Now how

ed. "Who is i

had a key made," the agent

myself. But has he

ord," he said. "You can see that. Whoever he i

ase and inclined to find fault. He threw the light of the candle this way and that, as if he exp

e mark on the wall, effaced it. "No, m

closed and locked the door behind them, then he took the candle from his lordship and invited him t

ohn mad, and it is possible that his madness has taken this turn. But I am equally sur

has no right here. It is odd that I had some notion of this before we came.

itted. "But I don't think so, my lord. More probably, being her

No, that won't do, Stubbs. And frankly there should be closer sup

n had a bee in his bonnet, and what more likely than that he should be taken with a craze to haunt the house which he believed was his own? But the agent was too prudent to defend h

w, and a small rain was falling on the wet lawn. Nevertheless

rd asked. It seemed as if the longer he dwelt on the matter the less he liked it. "Not by that door--th

lawn and Stubbs, thankful that he

he gray weeping sky. But his lordship was more practical. "These windows look the most likely,"

should not have been left to me to discover this! Probably John Audley comes from the Gatehouse by the Yew Walk." He turned to

come uncovered, or his hat had been jerked from him by some movement caused by their appearance, they could not tell; nor how long he had stood thus, gazing at them through the bars. But they could see that his eyes never wav

t there was something uncanny and ominous in

TER

HE R

he spoke. Then, "He must be mad," he cried, "mad, to expose himself t

it is Joh

ice, "My lord! I don't thi

the lawn towards the gate. The lawyer

e been a lay figure. He shook one hand in the air, as if he would beat them off, then he turned

he staggered. "I fear, my lord, he is ill," he said. "He will n

ange aspect, his face, white against the dark yews, his stillness, his gestur

ill

, it's hi

ting for his employer's assent he tried the gate. It was locked, but in a trice he found the key on

hardly looked along the path before he uttered a cry, and hurrying forward, stooped over a bundle of clothes that la

old man's head. The sight recalled Audley to his better self. The mottled face, the staring eyes, the helple

No, I don't think he's gone," he said, "but the heart is feeble, very feeble. We must have brandy! My lord, you are the more active. Will you go to

" Audle

minute, my lord!

aid. And before the other could answer he had started for the

Not too fast, he told himself--he was a big man and he must save himself. Now he saw before him the opening into the park, and the light falling on the pale

brush the dirt from his hands and knees; and it was during that instant that his inbred fear o

There was an end of uneasiness, of anxiety, of the alarm that assailed him in the small hours, o

w--and very carefully. Another five--the sweat broke out on his brow though the day was cold. Twenty seconds, t

he was in the open park, and trotting steadily, his elbows to his sides, across the sward. The blessed light was about him, the wind swept past his ears, the cl

! The farther he went, indeed, the better he felt. By the time he saw the Gatehouse before him, he was sure that few men, exposed to that temptation, would have overcome it. For if John Audley died what a relief it would be! And he had looked very ill; he had

tween the Butterflies, and he halted on the flags of the courtyard. A woman, whose skirts were visible, but whose head and shoulders wer

Audley. Then with a woman's quickness, "You ha

am come for some b

the dining-room. "I had missed him," she cried over her shou

not carry this at any speed, and she turned to the sideboard and took a wicker flask from a drawer. With

"is the master bad? But it's no wonder when he, that doesn't quit the fire for a week together, goe

gave Lord Audley the flask. "Please don't lose a moment," she

up a sun-bonnet, discarded the umbrella, and, heedless of the rain, was coming after him as swiftly and lightly as Atalanta of the golden apple. "Gad, she's not one of the fainting sort!" he reflected; and also that if he had given way to that d--d temptation he could not have looked her in the face. "As it is," his mind ran, "what are the odds the old boy's not dead when we get there? If he is--I am safe! If he is not, I might do worse than think

ncle had been kind to her, and she longed to show him that she was grateful. And he was her one relative. She had no one else in the world. He had given her what of home he had, and ease, and a security which she had never known before. Were she t

ight of the little group kneeling about the prostrate man, that sense of tragedy, and of the inevitable,

tween the men, took the insensible head on her arm, held out her other hand fo

became aware that the man wit

She improvised a pillow and laid the head down on it. "The lower the better," she murmured. She felt the hands and began to rub one. "R

he end of the walk," he answered.

will stay with me. And bring something, p

, and he went off in the d

he had gone out without his hat and I followed him, but I coul

imbs lay more naturally. "If he were only at home!" Mary answered. "But eve

h their eyes on his face the two watched for the first gleam of consci

ed. "They could not be there and I not know it! But the w

ny thing, and Mary looked at Toft to see what he made of it. But the servan

s silent a moment, then, "All bare!" he murmured. "All bare!" He chuckled faintly, and tried to raise

wondering what was amiss. Lord Audley was within three or four paces of them--the carpet of yew leaves had deaden

Mary. "Hush, Toft!" she said.

d. He looked over his shoulder, and without c

red, his mind still far away. "But if

hand again--w

sped what was wanted, but the man's repeated gestures enlightened hi

ve me. I ask your pardon, Miss," he continued, "but I know the master so well." He cast an uneasy glance over his

uite right, Toft," she said. "I oug

ot see any

t. You are q

hood were bringing up a sheep-hurdle, and again the butler's anxiety overcame him. "D--n!" he sai

Toft. W

awyer! He must not se

y don't excite him. You will do him harm that wa

ranged that Toft and the man should carry him as far as the carriage, while Mary walked beside him; and that afterwards she and Toft should travel with him. The carriage cushions were placed on the hurdle, and the helpless man was lifted on to them. Toft and the laborer raised their burden, and slowly and heavily, with an occa

y and Stubbs following a score of paces behind. The rain had ceased, but the clouds were low and leaden, the trees dripped sadly, and the little procession across the park had a funereal look. To Mary the way seemed long, to Toft still longer. With every moment h

ll we get him up? I could carry him myself if that's all. If Toft'll take his feet, I'll do the rest. No need for

em to do tha

ithin the week. There's some as when they wool-gathers, there's no worse sign. But the master he's never all here, nor all there, and lik

they saw Mary coming towards them, the young man lef

rs," Mary continued gratefully, "we owe his life to you. Had you not found him he must have died

use he felt that his virtue in resisting a certain temptation deserved its reward. Instead he looked at Mary wit

" she answered. "Will you send D

ome here to inquire, yet I should like to know how he goes on. Will you walk a

saved her uncle's life, how could she be churlish? How could she play the prud

he said. "Unt

TER

AND

ine would never have met, seeing that the one lived in Venice and the other seldom left Paris. That in spite

es her birthday with Corydon, if Frederica sprains her ankle and the ready arm belongs to a Frederic, if Mademoiselle has a grain de beauté on t

uggestion. On three of the four occasions the odds had been against his appearance. Yet he had come. To-day in particular, as if no pain that threatened

her by fortune? Could the most prudent in such a case abstain from day dr

a! So men and wo

he would, she could not keep her mind off the appointment before her. Her eyes grew dreamy, her thoughts strayed, her color came and went. At one moment she would plunge into a thousand attentions to her uncle, at another she opened books only to close them. She looked at the clock--surely the hands were not moving! She look

y had shown her. She took out the sketch and set it against a book where the light fell upon it, and she examined it. At first with a smile--that h

before her, when the clock, striking the half--hour before noon, surprised her. Then she

and flanked on the other by a rising slope covered with brushwood, a watery sun was shining. Its rays, aided by the clearness of the air, brought out the colors of stubble and field, flood and coppice, that lay below. And men looking up

dley would meet her at a turn near the foot of the hill, where a Cross had once stood, and

rough, caped riding-coat still kept an air of fashion. He on his side saw coming to meet him, thro

port, I hope?" he cr

uch better this morning. Dr. Pepper says that it was mainly exertion acting on a weak heart. He expects him

is g

had not acted so promptly

pretty far gon

thank you." And Mary held out the hand she had hitherto

d," he said. "Very glad. Perhaps af

think that there is a

sh, but do you know, I did hope t

ss it," she an

world did he come to be there? Without a hat

she said. "What I know I gathered from a word that Mr. Audley let fall when he was rambling. He seems t

" Lord Audley asked.

stand either,"

know that we

eems to h

ed. "Does he often s

imes," she admi

n the tone of one who dismisses a subject. "Let us talk of something else--oursel

" she admitted. She wished that she had been able to control her c

almost purring as he looked at her. "Did you by a

moment," sh

u thought of

he been at the Gatehouse I

hat when he met us the other evening I thought that he was a little out of

moment. But she could not. Nor could she feel as angry as she

at we were ta

t I must be going back,"

going back

you may come as

gainst it. "I shall come as far as I like! And hang Basset too--if he makes you unhappy!" He laughed. "We'

ck of firmness in her tone. She remembered what Basset had said about

are co

call me cousin

"Beaten agai

n. I want you, if not to do, to think of doing something for me. I don't know," nervously,

me!" he said

ven--they knew no better. But I hear that because he preaches what is not to everybody's taste, but what thousands and thousands are saying, he is to lose his

ne eloque

gh at me!"

A little, too, he was wondering what it meant. It could not be that she was in love with Colet. Absurd! He

plained, "either with the rector to keep

s

uty. And--and because he did it, is he

ms a ha

an abominable inj

nce; he has generally thought out more clearly than you or I what it is right to say in the pulpit; how far it is lawful, and then again how far it is wise to deal with matters of debate. He has considered how far a pronouncement may offend some, and so may render his office less welcome to them. That is one conside

ooked at it

oclaim it. It may be too strong meat. It may be true, for instance, that corn-dealers make an unfair profit out of th

wed reluctantly

against Colet. It is enough for me

interested in him. I am sur

much of one side of this question, much of the poverty for which a cure is so

u formed any opinion

said, "I am weighing the matter at this moment. We are on the verge of a crisis on the Corn Laws, and it is my duty to consider the question carefully. I am doing so. I have hithe

ventured, "imprud

e high on the hill, with one accord they came to a stand. "However, I will think it

much when he i

with many a sheet of flood-water. "Have you ever thought, Mary, what that means?" he continued with feeling. "To be the shadow of a name! A ghost of the past! To have for h

done, you start where others end. You have no need to wait for a hearing. Doors stand open to you that others must open. Your

e me think so!

e me, t

by Jove," gazing with admiration at her glowing face, "if I had you by me to sp

she replied. "Perhaps the most worthy would be left undone. But I must go now,"

u again?" he asked,

But good-bye now! And don't

down the hill. By the time he was at the place where he had

so cold as she looks. And she spells safety. But there's no hurry--and she's inclined to be kind, o

t--I'm glad the rector acted on my hint. But there it is; when a woman meddles with politics she's game for the first

gh and his thoughts satisfactory. With Mary and safety on one side, and Lady Adela and

PTE

RN LAW

inning to be stated openly in club and market-place. The Corn Laws, the support of the country, the mainstay, as so many thought, of

k of the landed interest, the prop of agriculture, that had withstood all attacks for two generations, and maintained themselves alike against high prices and the Corn Law League--that

ho still supported him, yet did not trust him, brooded nervously over his action twenty years before, when he had first resisted and then accepted the Catholic claims. Tories and Conservatives alike, wondered what they were there to conserve, if such things were in the wind; they protested, but with growing misgiving, that the thing could not be. While those among them who had seats to save and majori

in fancy they saw the glare of furnaces fall across the peaceful fields. Already they heard the tall mill jar and quiver where the cosey homestead and the full stackyard sprawled. They saw a weakly race, slaves to the factory bell, overrun the land where the ploughman still whistled at his work and his wife suckled hea

went away from him with their fears allayed merely by the way in which he shrugged his shoulders. At the farmers' ordinary he had never been more cheerful. He gave the toast of "Horn and Corn, gentlemen! And when potatoes t

l. That was in the common course of things. It had heartened him, if anything. It was natural. It would bring the Tories into line and put an end to trimming. But this--this which confronted him one morning when he opened his Lond

" was Audley property, and the clergyman's widow was held to derogate in no way by an arrangement which differed widely from a common letting of lodgings. Mrs. Jenkinson was stout, short, and fussy, her sisters were thin, short, and precise, but all three overflowed with words as kindly as their deeds. Good

ch, and in his excitement, the lawyer forgot his man

h displeasure. "Who's re

ee

t proof. He caught the infection. "Imp

achery! It's the blackest of treachery! With a majority in the House, with the peers in his pocket, the country quiet,

n the floor, his hands in his pockets. At length, "I don't follow i

pend upon it, my lord, he has! He won't deceive me again. I know him through and through, now. He'll take with

have done one thing worse. He might ha

corn from Canada, cattle from Heaven knows where, he has let in wool. All that he has done. But even he has

. "There'll be an e

his. In Riddsley we've been ready for weeks--as you know, my lord. But a General Election? Gad! I o

I suppose Riddsley

Burton Bridg

"As long as you give them a lead, Stubbs, I

eyes. "Went over

ot as staunch as Burton Bridge. But supposing you took

he lawyer answ

two Mottisfonts

never see Westminster again," Stubb

the mantel-shelf, and smiling, "suppose I did? If th

returned two members before '32, and has returned one since--there'd be an end of it! It would snap like a rotten stick. The truth is we hold the borou

he credit into a snug place of two thousand a year, Stubbs--it would be another thing. Do

ere was comfort inside and plenty without; comfort in the great kitchen, with its floor as clean as a pink, and greened in squares with bay leaves, its dresser bright with pewter, its mantel with Toby jugs! There was wealth in the stackyard, with the poultry strutting and scratching, and more in the byres knee-deep in straw, and the big barn where they flailed the wheat! And there were men and maids more than on two farms to-day, some in the house, some in thatched cottages with a run on the common and wood for the getting. I remember, a

rner! No, don't go yet, man. I want you." He made a sign to Stubbs to sit down, and settling his shoulders more firmly against the mantel-shelf, he t

to find," he said. "Nothing, m

oes t

a cr

oundedly unp

, my lord. Re

hat he was in earnest. "Tell me this," he said. "What evidence would upset us? You

Mr. John's great-grandfather was Peter Paravicini's younger brother. The other side alleged, but could not produce, a family agreement admitting that the son was illegitimate. Such an agreement, if Peter Paravicini was a party to it, if it was p

document wou

be serious," the lawyer admitted. "But

oked it; a d--d disinheriting face I thought it! I don't mind telling you," the speaker continued, some disorder in his own looks, "that I awoke at three o'clock this

--and the small hours. I've felt like that myself. Still, if you are really unea

old

your own blood and name, and no disparagement except in fortune. After Mr. John, s

this news--" he flicked the newspaper that lay on the table--"it may be true or it may not. I

home by back ways, for he did not wish to meet Dr. Pepper or Bagenal the brewer, or even the saddler, until he had cons

bs was discouraging, but Stubbs was a fool. It was all very well for him; he drew his wages either way. But a man of the world did not cling to the credit of owning a borough for the mere name of the t

as the moment, i

PTE

R'S

morning train to return to Stafford. On his way to town, and for some days after his arrival, he had been buoyed up by plans, nebulous indeed, but sufficient. He came back low in his

ry squire, for sympathy. They were divided by too wide a gulf of breeding and prejudice to come together. Basset was not even a Radical, and his desire to improve things, and to better the world, fell ver

h opinions, then Basset felt that the thing was not for him. For six or seven days he went up and down London at odds with himself and his kind, and ever striving to solve a puzzle, the answer to which evaded him. Was the hope that he might find a mission and found a purpose on Colet's lines, was it just the desire to set the world right that seized on

the May morning on which he had taken his seat in the same train with Mary. How ill had he then appreciated her company, how little had he understood, how little had he prized his good fortu

an who entered late, and saw that he kept his eyes shut, fancied that he wa

ghts he took up a newspaper and held it before him. But not a word did he re

e had the look of a soldier, and the bronzed

rmured th

ty," the other pursued. "But I a

a Whig,

am not. I have lived so long abroad that

ity beginning to stir in him.

s. Out there, we do honestly try to rule for the good of the people; their prosperity is our interest. Here, during the few weeks I have spent

od deal of th

an, and I know a fine thing when I see them. And I

formed his mi

will. I am not thinking of

Of

I must evacuate the post, which had a certain importance--and fall back into safety. The men never dreamed of retiring. The officers were confident that we could hold out. But we were barely supplied for forty days, and in my judgment no reinforcement was possible under seventy. I made my choice, breached the place, and retired. But I tell you, sir, that the days of that retreat, with sullen faces about me, and hardly

's story had won his respect--"that Pee

was in advance of his party. He saw that the distress in the country called for measures which his followers would accept from no one else. He believed that he could carry them with him. Perhaps

is premature?" A dozen times he had heard the famine

are no roads. I have had that experience. I have seen people die of starvation by hundreds, women, children, babes, when I could do nothing because steps had not been taken in time. God forb

interesting

rhaps, to make a choice; to decide whether he shall do what is right or what is consistent. He must betray his friends, or he must betray his country. And the agony of the de

s

consistency, reputation all behind him

Sir Robert were going to do the thing himself--in

If so, he will have a hard row to hoe. He will need the help of every moderate man in the country, if he is not to be beaten. F

ot much of a party-man myself. I am

e, use it. Unfortunately, I am

. "You are not by any chance

brother? He is me

name is

have not cast my seed on stony ground. Though y

. Your brother is

gainst Peel. His lad has less and will take his place an

onsider what he would do. "All I know," the Colonel said breezily, "is that I won't do nothing. Some take to preaching, others to Bath, but neither will suit me. But I'll not drift. I kept from

g to-day," Basset said.

e, ideas which were at one with Mary Audley's burning desire to help, while they did not clash with old prejudices. If he threw himself into Peel's cause, he would indeed be seen askance by many. He would have to put himself forward after a fashion that gave him the goose-flesh when he thought of it. A landowner, he would have to go against the land. But he

t low and faced east in the valley under Weaver, was a more hopeful man than he who had entered

ep dejection. "The barber was a Tory and had given him short notice. Feeling ran high in the town, and other lodgings were not to be had. The Bishop had supported the rector's action, and

at is it to me whom he marries?" Many solitary hours spent in the s

hich had brought him from Stafford should be kept: he would want it in the morning. John Audley wrote that he had been very ill--he was still

ow this then, his eyes were opened next day, when, after walking up the hill to spare the horses--and a little because he shrank at the last from the meeting--he came in sight of the Gatehouse, and saw Mary Audley standing in the doorway. The longing that gripped him then, the emotion that unmanned hi

is face. His knees shook and a tremor ran through him. Why

ned. When they met at the door it was Mary, not he, whose color came and went, who spoke awkwardly, and

" she continued, avoiding his eyes. "My uncle has been expect

lt that she was the cause of this, and she colored painfully. But he seemed to be indifferent. He noticed a trifling

es, I have seen him in a similar attack," he said

was dragging in Mr. Stubbs more often than was necessary. Basset listened politely, remarked that it was for

coldness, his distance, the complete change in his manner all hurt her more than she could say. They brought home to her, painfull

e avoided him, she came down and waited for him in the deserted library. She had waited some minutes, moving restlessly to and fro and

The house was still, she could hear no one moving. She went out quickly, crossed the hall, looked into the dinin

that he was detected, and for an instant he scowled at her in the half-light of the narrow

re listening! Don't deny it. You have acted disgracefully,

with fear, tried

ss," he said sullenly. "You'll c

stead of telling Mr. Audley I shall tell Mr. Basset. It will

id earnestly. "I want to run straight." He raised his hand to his forehea

ied in scorn. "And

or God's sake, be warned, Miss!" he cried. "D

t pity. "That is enough. Please to see that lunch is ready."

ple folk; she liked them. But Toft had puzzled her from the first. He was so silent, so secretive, he was for e

was there, and that she could consult him. And the instant that he appeared, forgetting their quarrel and the strained relations between the

ruck her. He listened, with his back to the fire, and his eyes bent on the floor

d. "I've suspected this for some time. Bu

that--you wou

at any rate--is that your uncle is possessed by a craze. He wants me to help him in it. I cannot. I have told him so, firmly and finally, to-day. Well, I suspect that he will now turn to Toft. I

that?" she

d

n to Toft!" Her eyes w

to hide what he felt. "Still I would let him be," he repeated. "I do not think that Toft is dang

to take

t will be your

confidence, out of her uncle's confidence! His manner, his indifference, his stolidity sho

ed. "But I must tell

nd looked at his watch--"I am afraid that if you are going to

h an effort she repressed her feelings. "Yes," s

they ate, Basset talked of indifferent things, of his journey from town, of the roads, of London, of Colonel Mottisfont--an intere

with her troubles and difficulties, it might be, with her dangers. In killing his love with cruel words--and how often had sh

e distance, she felt more lonely than she had ever felt in her life. In her Paris days she had had no reason to blame herself, and all the unturned leaves of li

sat below, enclosed in and menaced by the silence of the house. Yet it was not fear that she felt so much as a sadness, a g

e failed. And at last she gave up the attempt and with her elbows on her knees and her eyes on the fire she fell to musi

PTE

THE BU

s between them being such as were common in days when servants stayed long in a place and held themselves a part of the family. The master

ess were his secret delight. And the thought that she might become a lady, that she might sit at the table at which he served had taken hold of the austere man's mind and become a passion. He was ready to do anything and to suffer

s daughter in the social scale; and he spent long hours in studying how the marriage might be brought about. He hugged th

t. He learned that the one in question, with its house and garden and three hundred a year, had fetched a thousand guineas, and from that day Toft's aim was by hook or crook to g

re sordid and more

nd guineas? He turned the matter this way and that, and sometimes he lost hope, and sometimes he pinned his faith to a plan that twenty-four hours showed to be futile. All th

ndred pounds was named; for a week he fancied that he had performed half his task. Then his master explained with a gentle smile that to know and to prove were two things, and that whereas Toft had for a time been able to do both, John Audley had n

ances. He tracked him, he played the spy, he discovered that John Audley was searching for something in the Great House. The words that the old man let fall, while half-

the door. The blow was a sharp one. He was still so far unspoiled, still so near the old Toft that he could not bear tha

e was utterly inhuman. John Audley would put him and his family to the door without mercy if that seem

grips with one who had shown himself his better both in courage and cunning. He had imbibed

; it was that which tried him. More than once he was on the point of throwing himself at her feet, of tell

oint on his fears and stung him to action. He might not know enough to face John Audley, but he thought that he knew enough t

thought of his wife and her wonder could she know. He thought of Etruria's mild eyes and her goodnes

or on the doorsteps. A passing horseman was shouting to a man at a window. Nearer the middle of the town the stir was greater. About the saddler's door

't you

at's th

the hunting interest, and the racing interest, and the gentlemanly interest, that I live by, and you too, Mr. Toft! And it was bad enough when he threw it up! But to go in again and to take our money and do the

he Whigs had tried to form a government; that they had failed, and that now Peel was to come in again, expressly to repeal

e invented it!" "Like enough!" replied another. "Like enough! There's naught they wouldn't do!" "Well, after all," suggested a third in a milder tone, "cheap bread is something." "What? If you've got n

a superior person of Manchester views, was talking pompously to a little group. "We must take in the whole field," Toft heard him say. "If you'll read Mr. Carlyle's tract on----" Toft lost the rest. The

ard. He told the maid that he came from the Gatehouse, and that he was directed to deliver a letter into his lordship's own hand, and in a moment he f

ut on his coat, was writing near the fireplace. After an interval that seemed long to Toft, who eyed h

?" he asked, after

ctfully. "I was with Mr. Audley whe

t I knew your face. Y

. The thing was not as easy as he had hoped it would be

Business?" he said. "Isn't it

if his lordship took a high tone, ordered him out, and reported the matter t

d. Then in a different tone, "Y

my

what i

n"--it was with difficulty he could control his voic

Oh!" the young man said at la

k. Yet he was getting on as

usual positio

my l

tion should

s, my

my man. If you are going to sell me a spavined horse, don

y's claim,

oreseen and feared, that had haunted him in the small hours and been as it were a death's-head at his feast, was taking sha

k not,

ed with it. "Well," he said, "what is

ley has

" raising h

ers that upset your lordship's case. I can still

ertainly worthless," he said. His voice was con

y thinks o

as not se

my lord. He has been sea

s hand, and though for a moment he had shrunk before the other's heavy jaw he was glad now tha

red pounds

ike the laugh. "Indeed? Five hundred

s worth that, or i

my man. But that's not saying you've a good case. However

, my

re they lie. I will write on the other a promise to pay ￡500 if the papers ar

resolute. He

ed a quill, held it poised a moment, then he wrote four lines and signed them with a flourish, added the date, and read them t

"In consideration of," that began the sentence, to the firm si

y lord said. "You have only to write, read me the

my l

ise. I am not going to pull down Beaudelays House to

did not say," he muttered, the paper rustling in hi

r of that, it is not a question of saying anything. I

would be the same as pulling down the fox. When he had said that the papers were in the house, that th

ay, he knew that he could not do it. In the house? Behind a wall? He saw now that that would not do. That woul

, and he lost his countenanc

d, didn't you? I wonder whether I ought to send for the constable? Or tell Mr

y lord was before him. His huge hand fell on it. He tore

how that I bargained with you. But I never meant to bargain with you, my good rascal. I knew you were a fraud. I knew it from the beginning. And now I've on

As far as his master was concerned he could face it. But his wife, his daughter? Who thought him honest, loy

d tell it for nothing. And twice Toft opened his lips to speak, and twice no words came. For at the last moment, in this strait, what there was of good

e said desperately, "I'll not speak. I'm

tairs before the other had risen from his seat. He had escaped. He was clear for the time, and safe in the road he breathed more free

TER

ORD

when he came to think over the matter he was not ill content with himself, nor with his conduct of the interview. He had dealt with the matter with pres

family tradition which had come down to him with his blood had never ceased to haunt him, and in the silence of the night he had many

s a personage, in the country a divinity still hedged him, no tradesman spoke to him save hat in hand. Then, lately, the traces which he had found in the Great House had given a shape to his fears; and within the

and restless, he rose and paced the floor. He went to and fro, to and fro, until by-and-by he came to a stand before one of the windows. He drummed with his fingers on the glass. There was one wa

ut the windows, looking sideways, commanded also a more frequented thoroughfare which crossed this street. His thoughts

d, turned, in three strides he was beside the hearth. He rang

es he had a superstitious side, and the figure which he had seen pass across the end of the road had appeare

e. He walked slowly, humming a tune and swaying his cane, and it was a very stately gentleman taking the air and acknowledging with

Miss Audley

have cared little for these things if she could have governed the blood that rose t

o well to-day, and in a panic about his medicine. Toft, who should hav

have wa

boots. "And I am presently g

ll neve

ess of hair which had strayed from its fellows. "And I shall be tired

day," he retorted. "My plans for you are quite

her ease. She made a little grimace. "No," she s

tice, who had watched the interview through th

e for Miss Audley to Mrs. Jenkinson

d now I take possession of you," he said, supremely careless what the lad heard. "You are coming

ord Au

far as the old Cross, and walk up t

ent she could not tell. She only knew that his ridiculous way of taking possession of her, t

replied, swinging his walking cane,

o hang--f

u," she said. "I confess I did not lo

as she turned with him--"it is time that some one took it in hand to arrange things for you. Five miles in a

d after all, why should she not go with him? She had been feeling fagged and tired, depressed, moreover, by her unc

nor dreary. There were still pleasant things in the world, kindness, and thought for others, and friendship and--and tea and cake! Was it wonderful that as she walked along beside my lord her spirits rose? That she felt an unaccountable relief,

he laughed, he was gay. "Don't pretend!" he sai

plied. "After five miles who w

you would have fallen by the way. You want some one t

tehouse? Indeed! You don't say so?" For every soul in Riddsley, over twelve years old, was versed in the Audley history, knew all about the suit, and could tell off the degrees of kindred as easily as they could tell the distance from the Audley Arms to the Portcullis. "Mr. Peter Audley's daughter who lived in Paris? Lady-in-waiting to a P

door ajar that she might see them pass through the hall. She was all of a twitter, she said afterwards. And poor Jane and poor Sar

oor. He pushed it open. "Mrs. Jenkinson," he said pleasantly, "this is my cousin, Miss Audley, who is good en

m. "A little cake and wine, my dear," she chirruped. "After a long walk! And then tea. To be sure, my dear! I knew your father, Mr. Peter Audley, a dear, good gentleman. You would like to wash your hands? Yes, my dear! Not that you are not--and his lords

dear, I saw it was spoons from the first. She sparkled all over, bless her innocent heart! And he, if she had been a duchess, could not have waited on her more elegant--well, elegantly, Sally, if you like, but we can't all talk like y

t would be proper," t

didn't show it. No airs or graces either--but there, an Audley has no need! Why, God bless me, I said something about the Princess and what company she must have seen, and what a change for her, and she u

ear s

the sultana and two cups of tea, and he watching every piece she put in her mouth, and she coloring up, once or twice, so that it did my heart good to see them,

call him?" Mis

as a bit of sugar in his mouth. And there came a kind of quiver over her pretty face, and she looked at her plate as much as to say it was a new thing. And I said to myself 'Philip and Mary'--out of the old

say so?"

Law, when I think what you and Jane missed through going to th

ew constraint began to separate them. The excitement of the meeting had waned, the fillip of the unwonted treat had lost its power. A depression for which she could not account beset Mary as they rolled through the dull outskirts and faced the flat mistridden pastures and the long lines of willows. On

chill fell between them. Mary's thoughts went forward to the silent house and the lonely rooms, and she chid herself f

up the horses at the old Cross. The man leapt down and was going to help

own, please!" she cried. "Please! I

"And it is nearly dark. I am going with you.

k the rug and lifted her down. For a moment he stamped about an

ht now was how she might escape to the Gatehouse. It became a refuge. Her heart, as she started to walk beside him, beat so

, and that stands in my way now. When I've wanted a thing I've generally taken it. Now I want a thing I can't take--without asking. And I feel

word. When he went

st Audley that ever was. That my wife will be no great lady, and will step into no golden shoes. The butterflies are moths, Mary, nowadays, and if I am ever to be much she will have to help me. But I will tell no lies, my dear!" He turned to her then and stopped; and perforce, though her knees trembled, she had to stand a

she had had from the beginning, that and his masterfulness swept her irresistibly towards him. She was lonely--more lonely than ever of late, and to whom was she to look? Who else h

ine, and I want you for my wife, Mary! With you I can do something, with you I believe that I can make something of my life! Without you--but there, if you s

th him. "I have not a

sk you for

ley," she said, "and I am a poor relation. Won't yo

If that be all--if th

one else," she a

here's no one else you are mine.

e protested, raising her hands to push

n his own mind he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the step.

, "and I am not going to think of him. I am t

silent, ga

!" he said. "I've a

softly. "Yes--I think--no

is a

u are not giving me time. I want to th

rms. He crushed her to him, she felt all the world turning. But before he found her lips, the crack of a

le wretch

of the slipper. When it was gone by she found her voice. "It shall be as you will," she said, and her tone thrilled him. "But I want to think. It has been

she pleaded. "Later it shall be as you wi

she turned and waved her hand, and he waved his. He stood, listening. He heard the sound of her footsteps grow fainter and fainter as s

e likes, damn him! After all, she's handsome enough to turn any man's head,

TER

UNDER

light brought Mary no repentance. Misgivings she had, as what lover has not, were the truth told. Was her love as perfect as Etruria's, as unselfish, as absorbing? She doubted. But in all honesty she hoped that it might become so;

eter Basset? He had been kind to her, and a pang did pierce her heart on his account. But he had recovered very quickly, she reflected. He had shown himself cold enough and distant enough at his last visit! And

been to travel through life an obscure teacher! She had not been woman if she had not thought of this; nor if she had failed, when she thought of it, to breathe

reakfast. "One would think a ten-mile walk was the making of you! It's put a color into your cheeks that

Mary said meekly. "I drove b

'd think he'd seen a ghost! And 'Truria, silly girl, she's all of a quiver this morning. It's 'Mother, let me do this!' and 'Mother,

news! Has Mr. Col

hty little work for them as go against the gent

Bas

's plenty of those. And some say naught but do--and that's Mr. Basset. He's took in Mr. Colet till he can find a church.

Mary said gravely. And then, "Is

"It's for you, Miss," she said. "The postman's late this morning, but cheap's a slow tr

rom the room. No one with any claim to taste used an envelope in those days, and to open a lette

er eyes grew serious as they travelled d

have--damn that carter! This troubles me the more as I shall not see you again for a time, and if this does not disappoint you too, you're a deceiver! My plans are altered by to-day's news that Peel returns to office. In any event, I had to go to Seabourne's for Ch

tel, Dover Street. Sweetheart, I

ili

ication to your uncle till I can

he told herself, than that her spirits should sink--Philip was gone. The walk with him, the talk which was to bring

ter that--was it her fancy, or was her lover's tone a little flippant, a little free, a little too easy? Did it lack that ten

he longed to be open; and in regard to one person she would be open. Basset had let her see that her treatment had cured him. At their last meeting he had been cold, almost unkind; he had left her to deal with Toft as she could. Still she ow

r, if something larger, than a farm-house. There had been a library, but Basset had taken the best books to the Gatehouse. And there were in the closed drawing-room, and in some of the bedrooms, old family portraits, bad for the most part; the best lay in marble in Blore Church. But in the parlor, which was the living-room, hung only paintings of fat oxen and prize sheep; and the garden which ran up to the walls of the house, and in summer was a flood of color, lay in these days dank and lifeless, ebbing away from bee-skips and chicken-coops. The par

ying with trifles, the last and feeblest of his blood. At another he thought of Mary, and saw her smiling through the flowering hawthorn, or bending over a book with the firelight on her hair. Or again, stung by the lash of her reproaches he tried to harden himself to do something. Should he tak

ne his forbears to the front beat but feebly. He was not equal to the hard facts of life. With what ease had A

f he raised them it was to gaze at the hamlet lying below him in the valley, the old house, the ring of buildi

by night where he had begun? In the main he was of even temper, but of late small things tried him

get up every time I come in! And don't look at me like a

ology. It was true that he did not we

nting. "I am a churlish ass! Get up when you like, and s

e let it lie, his face twitching. He took up the other, made as if he would open it, then

as s

pretended that what I am writing will not pain you. But I hope, and since o

g beyond this is fixed, and no announcement will be made until my uncle has reco

. I could not reply in substance otherwise than I did, but for the foolish cri

eve this it will add something to the happiness of my engagemen

truly

y Au

his thoughts travelled to the other, the man who had won her, the man who had got the better of him from the first, who had

sset!" he cried. And then, in a diffe

s white and that the letter shook in his hand. "The Government's out, and that's ba

o news better," C

, and some one told you that she was dead,

the clergyman

uld you

r. Basset, that we

retorted rudely. "Try i

ould be

ere, say no more. The worst is over. We've played ou

ain falls," the poo

thing. Hunger is one more g

Colet," he said. "Very rude, I am afraid! I had bad news

y. He tossed it across the table to his g

im than to Basset, and the owner of one of the two small factories in Riddsley

l upon the Corn Laws, we, who are in favor of repeal, recognize the advantage of being represented by a moderate Tory. The adherence to Sir Robert of Sir James Graham in the North and of Lord Lincoln in the Midlands

ort of the repeal of the Corn Laws, leaving you free on other points. The Audley influence has been hitherto p

t as Parliament meets on an early date, and the present member may at once apply f

asked. "What

ns a wi

peaking, "You don't think," he went on, "that it's a way into Parliament? A repealer has as much chance of getting in for Riddsley against the Audley interest as yo

e in some causes tha

hink that I shall carry John Audley with me and divide the Au

at his words and pocket his pride, rather than be responsible for famine in Ireland! Believe me, Mr. Basset," the clergyman continued earnestly, "it was no easy change of opinion. Before he came to that resolution, proud, cold man as I am told he is, many a sight and sound must have

ssi

ad to answer it. Her

d do this," he tapped the letter, "without misery--of a different kind it may be? I am not a public man, I have served no apprenticeship to it, I've not addressed

vere!" Mr. Co

pay out a private grudge, and I want to be clear that I am not doing that. And I'm not going into this simply for what I can get out of it. Ambition is a poor stayer with me, a washy chestnut. It would not carry me through, Colet. If I go into this, it will be because

w will

y myself--go up on the hill and think it out. I mu

olet. And prudent for

TER

OF THE

re. He had been more than the leader of the Tory party; he had been its re-creator. He had been more than the leader of the landed interest; he had been its pride. Men who believed that upon the welfare of that interest rested the stability of the constitution, men with historic names had walked on his right hand and on his left, had borne his train an

ears, laughing in his sleeve as he led them to the fatal edge. Those who took the former view made faint excuse for him, and perhaps still clung to him. Those who held

ss whither to turn and whom to trust. Many who had never in all their lives made up their own minds were forced to have an opinion and choose a side; and as that process is to some men as painful as a labor to a woman, the effect was to embitter things farther. How could o

ed of want, public feeling changed little. Those who had remained with him, stood with him still. Those who had banded themselves against him, held their ground. Only a handful allowed that he was honest, after a

as angry, blood was hot, many dreamt of vengeance. Meantime Manchester exulted, and Coal, Iron, Cotton toasted Pee

ht worse of him than that, and the event left him not uncertain, nor under any stress as to making up his mind, but naked, as it were, in an east wind. He felt older. He owned that his generation was passing. He numbered the friends he had left and found them few. And though he continued to assert that no man had ever

e pleased in the Cabinet, in the Commons--there were toadies and turn-coats everywhere; but Riddsley would have none of him! Riddsley would remain faithful! Stubbs steeped himself in th

t at the bottom of his mind he had ever so faint a doubt of his employer. A hint dropped here, a word there, a veiled question--he could not say which of these had g

on as a candidate in his father's place. Those whom the agent had called were few and trusty; young Mottisfont himself, the rector and Dr. Pepper, Bagenal the maltster, Hogg the saddler, Musters the landlord, the "Duke" from the

as as great a man as my lord. With young Mottisfont, who was by way of being a Bond Street dandy, solemn, taciturn, and without an opinion of h

e candidate. The rector boomed through a few phrases of app

ke it that we are all of one mind, gentlemen,

round the table. "And on the clear understanding that Mr. Mottisfont

," said Mr.

isfont's address," Stubbs continued. "There m

id the rector,

" said the malts

ame on my land, ay, up to my very door, and said things--I'll be damned if I did not think he'd

me about it. You did very well. But to business. It shall be a short

ere a

ttisfont. There's a fat-stock sale this day fortnight. Perhaps you'll dine and say a few words? I'll let you know if

e London man, sticking his glass

night so much the better. The farmers like it, and they've fou

ne thing, Mr. Stubbs," said

and some glasses. A glass of Musters' '20 port, Mr. Mottisfont, won't hurt you this cold day. And we mu

e paid to his father. The rector took his two glasses; so did young Mottisfont, who woke up

Musters said

said young Mottisfont, also pleas

." In the end a third bottle was ordered, of whi

en severely snubbed. It had been considered most indecent. But on this occasion no one was so simple as to name my lord, an

self on to him. "I'd a letter from George this morning," he said. George was his son, articled t

was in the West End? Wasting hi

see the crowd outside Sir Robert's. They'd read in a paper that all the nobs were to be see

asting their time. I told his lordship he'd do no good. When half the dukes in England have been at Peel, d--n him, it was

thundering tempe

I told him how

in and out like b

, a

After the honey! I wonder what he asked for! Whatever it was he couldn't have paid the price! I thought he knew th

an, high-nosed, with a look of breeding run to seed, came in, and closed the door behind him. Farthingale was as well known in Riddsley as the Maypole;

s. "For repeal in Riddsley?"

n long enough with Stubbs to take a liberty. "Who do you think it

thodist

in, sir," he said. "You're cold at pre

ig fool who

ore. I have it on

. "Somebody's fooled you," he said at last, but in a d

" he said. "It cost me four goes o

Well, he's throwing his money into the gutter if it's true, and

n old bird

e where Squire

said, "he may have a score to pay, too. And if

t sc

. Mr. John Audley's may

e a deal too much in your way, Farthingale!" he continued, severely, forgetting in his annoyance the four goes of brown brandy.

week later it was known for certain in Riddsley that Mr. Basset of

PTE

IS

ere a-drip, the thorn trees stood in tiny pools, the moorland lay stark under a pall of fog. In the vale the Trent was in flood, its pale waters swirling past the willow-stools, creeping over the chilled meadows, and stealing inch by inch up the waterside la

ng, and then, "Why, Etruria," she exclai

dawn. "Oh no, Miss!" sh

e! Then wh

Etruria said. "I don't know wh

ou are!" Mary replied wit

ate who had come forward to oppose the Corn Laws was no other than Mr. Basset--their Mr. Basset! More, that only the evening before he had held his first

piece of paper. But when they began to boo and shout at him, he grew as cool as cool, and the longer they shouted the braver he was, until they saw that if they let him go on he wo

s were. "Mr. Basset?" she said at

ia continued, "how misguided men can be. But oh, Miss, I'm thankful he's on the right side, and for taking the burden off the bread! I'm sure it will be returned to him, win or lose. They're farmers' friends here, and they're sayin

did not know why she disliked th

uria murmured. "Mr. Basse

Mary answered sharply. "He is quite

ria said, abashed. "I s

they were saying of Mr. Basset in the

re saying it was some grudge Mr. Basset or the Master

And she blushed suddenly and vividl

answered na?vely; "what he wishes has always bee

id, "I did not know that. But you'd better go now, E

e situation! The lover whom she had rejected and the lover whom she had taken, pitted against one

aking hand and his pale face, and of the courage that had grown firmer in the face of opposition; and she found something fine in that, something that appealed to her. And the cause he had adopted? It was the cause to which s

wondering why she felt as she did; wondering a little, too, why she had lo

had three letters from him, busy as he was; three amusing letters, full of gossip and sprinkled with anecdotes of the great world. She had opened the first in something of a tremor; but her fing

here through the chinks. But there, again, what a poor thing she was if her love must be fed with sweetmeats. How weak her trust, how poor her affection, if she could not bear a three wee

er of late. So Mary was alone. She was not nervous, but she was depressed. The cold stairs, the austere parlor with its dim portraits, the matted hall, the fireless library--all struck a chill. She remembered other times and other evenings; cosey evenings, when the glow of the wood-fire had vied with th

alone; he should go to bed betimes. So about seven o'clock she took her meal by herself, and whe

she hated to keep secret, come between them? Why should she not, even now, see him before he

an light her to the staircase. She ran up the stairs and was groping for the handle of Mr. Audley's door when the door opened abruptly and Toft stepped ou

impse of her uncle, who was on his feet

f his time in his dressing-gown. Still more surprising was Toft's conduct.

man gave way, took his hand from the door, and stood aside. She pushed the door open an

ried, his face ave

she replied. "Mary.

hly. "I am going to bed." He turned, having succeeded in girding on h

d news for you. News that has surprised me

evishly. "What news? I wish you wouldn't startle me. You ought to remember that--that excitement is bad for me. And you com

answered, smiling. "Nothing to ala

ner. "No, no, I don't want to sit down!" he said

ssed at this time, he whom she had not seen dressed for a fortnight. And why had Toft tried to keep her out? "It is only," she

the Hermit become Peter the Great! He'll soon find himself Peter the Piper, who picked a peck of pepper! Hot pepper he'll find it, d--n him

t--

about him as if he sought something. "I knew how it would be. You've no thought for me. You don't remember how weak

! It's little good it can do me. And Basset, he'd the ball at his foot, and wouldn't kick it! But I'll show you, I'll show you all!" he continued, gesticulating with a violence that distressed Mary. "Ay, and I'll show him what I am! He thinks he's safe, d--n him! He

othe him. "But I am sure, sir," she

sse

he never d

e whispered, pointing a hand at her, "but Jacob, girl! Jacob the supplanter, Jacob the changeling, Jacob the baseborn! And he thinks I lie awake of nights, hundreds of nights, for nothing! He thinks I dream of him--for nothing! He thinks I go out with the

. "For God's sake be calm! For God's sake have a care, sir! And you, Miss," he continued; "you see wha

she could not go without a word. "Dear

it. The fire had died down in him, he was no more now than a feeble, shaki

" she said. "I won't do it again.

ill clung to the post. Mary looked at him in sorrow, grieved to leave him in this state. But she had n

he was sure now that her uncle was not sane; and while she was equally sure that Toft exercised a strong influence over him, she had her misgivin

towards him, nor of her own future, that future which seemed for the moment to have lost its brightness. Doubts that the sun dismisses, fears at which daylight laughs, are Giants of Despair in the dark watches. So it was with her. Misgivings which she would not hav

y in the depths of the house a clock struck. It was three o'clock--only three o'clo

en she

gh the white dimity curtains, and some one was really at her do

come in

at the woman brought bad news. She sprang out of bed, put on a dressing-gown, and wit

autiously. "I hope not, Miss, but I ha

her face. "Impossible! Why, I saw him, I was

," Mrs. Toft answered. Her face

d. "But have you looked----" and she named plac

Master's not in the house. We're well-nigh sure of that. And the door

e off and took hold of herself. "Very well," she said. "

TER

SS

hat thought would only flurry her, and she must be cool. In little more than the five minutes that she had named she was in the hall, and found Mrs. Toft waiting for her. The door into the courty

Toft?" M

o the Yew Walk, where you found the Master before. But law, M

herself. "And Et

she does not find him she is to run o

ry said. "Did Tof

if there is a bath wanted, and I've put

ve looked everywh

e by token, I've some coffee

gusts of wind, in another a little pile of snow had drifted, and between the monsters that flanked the Gateway, the old hound, deaf and crippled, stood peering across the park. Mary fancied that the dog descried Toft returning, and she ran across

ll me about it, pleas

inued, rubbing her nose, "for I heard the kitchen clock strike eleven, and I was asleep when Toft came in. The next I remember was finding Toft had got out of bed. 'What is it?' says I. He didn't answer, and I roused up and was going to g

ime was

n I woke again it was on six. But God knows it was a thousand pities we didn't search then, fo

gravely. "And when

as well, and since the Master's illness and him coming and going at all hours, he has not always locked the door; so she made no remark. A bit before

heavily--not wi

aid anxiously

tter? Who's gone?' 'The Master!' he said. 'Fiddlesticks!' says I. 'Where should he go?' And with that I went into the house and up to the Master's room. When I saw it was empty you could have knocked me down with a feather! I looked r

Twice she had looked throug

ut think! It's my belief he's away sleepwalking or what not, to the plac

he be bac

ound him, he couldn't carry him! Toft's not all that strong. And if the Maste

t gaze in the gateway, still staring with purblind eyes down the vistas of the park. "Maybe he sees more than w

the park towards them. It was impossible to mistake Toft's lanky figure. T

iously. "Have they fo

they'd found him, one wo

g past them, they waited until Toft and the others, talking together, came up. Mary saw that, in spite of the pace at which he had

within hearing, "You've

," Etruri

any t

far as the iron gate, and found i

lp," Mrs. Toft said. "If the Master's not be

aghast. She looked from one to t

let them fall. It was clea

said briskly. "Anyway, you'll be perished here, Miss, and I don

t, and were loth to leave it. Each hung for a moment, searching this alley or that, fancying a clue in some distant object, or taking a clump of gorse, or a jagged stump for the fallen

k," the keeper muttered. "And a dozen

, Petch, and we'll know better what's to do. The poor gentleman's off his head, I doubt, and there's no

," she said, "but Toft will be the better for this," and without ceremony she poured out a cup of coffee, jerked into it a little brandy from the decanter on the sideboard, and handed it to her husband. "Drink that,

d passed his hand across his forehead. "If I'd never

means, Miss, that up to three nights ago he slept in the Master's r

im," Toft repeated. That seeme

stand talking--can't you think where he might go? Are t

"There's the locked closet in his room where he keeps his

e as she passed the threshold. The angular faces, the oblique eyes, of the watchers in the needlework on the wall, that from generation to generation had looked down on marriage and birth and death--what had they seen during the past night? On what had they gazed, she

set her eye to the keyhole. "He's not there," she said. "There'

another beside the bed-head stood a tray with night drinks, a pair of candles, an antique hour-glass, a steel pistol. The bedclothes were dragged down, as if the bed had

sed then?" s

I've no doubt he was," he said d

to leave the ho

sav

ria said in a low voice. She was examin

wat

, Mi

t's odd? If my uncle had rambled out in some nightmare or--or wandering, w

pillow, felt under the bolster. "No

. Now, Toft!"--she looked hard at the man--"think again! Surely since he h

ead. "Not that I he

or stick you are in time of trouble! I couldn't have believed it! Find your tongue, Toft, say something! You knew the Master down to his sh

g actors--had stepped down, it would hardly have affected them more deeply. The man sat down on the bed, covered his face with his h

She forgot that she had never been able to love him, she forgot that behind the man whom she had known she had been ever conscious of another being, vague, shifting, inhuman. She remembered o

ready for burial--and we're some way off that, the Lord be thanked!--he couldn't carry on more! But there, let's look now, and weep afterwards! Pull yourself together, Toft, or who's the young lady to depend on? I

t's distaste for the room. "We're doing no good here, and your husband can follow us when he is him

resh energy, took things into her own hands. She gave Petch his orders. He must get together a dozen men, and search the park and every place within a mile

set?" Mrs. T

rms. I will write it now." She sat down in the library, cold as the room was, and scrawled three lines, te

farms at hand--she and Mrs. Toft searched the house room by room, while Etruria and her father

nor ever looked back on it without a shudder. Probably there were moments when she sat down, when she took a tasty meal, when she sought Mrs. Toft in her warm kitchen or talked with Etruria before her own fire. But as she remembered the day, she spent the long hours gazing across the wintry park; now catching a glimpse o

eaping pulses. But nothing came of it except some minutes of anxiety. And once her waiting ear caught the clang of the bell that hung in the hall and she flew through the house to the front door, only to learn that the visitor was the carrier who three times a week called for letters on his way to town. The dreary house

and also the gardens at the Great House, but had found nothing. Half his men were now searching the slope on either side of the

the windswept park, the sullen ponds, the frozen moorland; they spread before her fraught with some brooding terror. She had never much marked, she had seldom fe

TER

TEP IN

elieve that you've sat down this blessed day, Miss!" she said. "Nor no more than looked at good food. But tea you shall have

"it's the thought that he may be lying out th

e he's gone, poor gentleman, long ago. And Dr. Pepper'll say the same. It's not in reason he

ive!" Mary cried. "Th

at dratted doctor is, beats me, though he could do no more than we've done! But there, Mr. Basset will be with us to-morrow, and he'll fi

Toft?" Ma

re's no one would say he was a man to wear his heart outside. But you saw how hard he took it? I don't know," Mrs. To

asked, "that he knows mo

, Miss," she said, "you don't mean as y

it possible that he knows the

be strange if he wouldn't tell his own w

ry pleaded. "My uncle is

uld not. And there came an interruption. "Tha

Petch leading, a man whom Mary did not know next to him, after these a c

lightens things much. He was going home by the Yew Tree Walk and pretty close to

out a sil

's, sure enough,

ost inch by inch, looking for footprints, and I went over it again when we were bea

ssed it, Mr. Petch," the finder sa

ked. She had already as much mystery as s

t long,"

's right," Petch added. "I

background said. "I was next man, and I

Mary answered. "If it was

" the keeper rejoined. "But it is

ted, "who--why should

anybody as would. But there's the flask, and flasks don't tra

ternoon?" Mary suggested. "Suppose h

sed that way this afternoon it isn't one

g the drama, taking in every change that appeared on the girl's

ow with the eyes of all these men upon her she grew bewildered. The rows of faces, the bashful hands twisting caps, t

came to the rescue. "What's

Petch agreed. "I dunno a

ed. His tone was low, and in the middle of his speech he shivered. "But I'

ed, Mr. Toft," the keeper repli

obody foreign, as I can fancy. I've no doubt at all the poor gentleman awoke with some maggot in his brain and wandered o

e've found nothing in the daylight we'll find nothing in the dark. We'll be b

d like to know? But there, you've said what you come t

says about the flask, he's right to speak out, but I can't think any one would touch my uncle. Only--can we do n

where to look. I own I'm fair beat. Still Tom and I'll stay an hour or two with T

rooped out into the darkness. Mrs. Toft bust

did not come, the Tofts were but servants. They could not take the onus, they could not share her burden; and Toft

imagination, and she could not be blind to the issues, or to the value of every moment that passed. Even while she listened to Etruria she saw with the eyes of fancy a hollow amid a clump of trees not far from a pool that she knew. In summer it was a pleasant dell, clothed with mosses and ferns and the flowers of the

. "You don't think! You don't understand! We can't go through the night like this! The

st as quickly she came back. Toft had gone out wi

d her to sit down and eat; and tea and food restored her balance. Still, as she sat and ate she

!" Mary cried. "What are th

ight well have been more than startled, had she been free to think of anything but the lost man. It was Basset's step, and she knew it--she would have known it, she felt, among a hundred! He had come! An instant later he stood

You are here! How-

ng off his gloves. "Your messenger met me half-way to Blore. I was comi

asked fearfully. Was he

ive me a cup of tea, Toft? I will hear Miss Audley's account first. Keep Petch and t

t an infinite love and pity, though he drove both out of his voice when he spoke. "Yes, tea first," he said coolly, as he took off his riding coat. "I've had a long journey. You must take another cup with me. You can leave things to me now. Yes, two lumps, please, and not too strong."

irst alarm, the hunt through the house, the discoveries in the bedroom, Toft's

When she had done, "What of Toft?" he inquired. "No

you guess?" she a

p the hope of finding your uncle alive. I have none. But I think I can promise you that there has been no suffering.

nderstand,

She nodded. He rang, and after a pause, during which he stood, silent and wait

tes," Basset said. "Let them fetch a hurdle, and do you put a mattress

ad expected it. After a pause, during which Basset did not take his eyes from him, "I made sure

so badly of you as that. But nothing but frankn

, but he seemed unabl

bout th

"I could not bear to think he was lying there. I thought it

ugh now. Be ready

was horror-stricken. "And he has known it all th

ult position--and he did not see his way to explain. He may have seen some advantage in gaining time--I don't know. The first thing

hour passed, two hours. At length they caught the first distant murmur, the tread of men who moved slowly and heavily under a burden--there are few who have not at one time or another heard that sound. Little by little the shuffling feet, the subdued orders, the jar of a stumbling bearer, drew nearer, became more clear. A gust of w

*

wine. Mary saw that his hand shook as he raised the glass, and gratitude for what he had done for her brought the tears to her eyes. He stood

een here, could he have helped her in this pinch. He could not have taken Basset's

told her uncle, and that John Audley had passed away in ignorance. It was his doing that in her trouble she had had to lean on the other. It was not the first time during the long h

," he said. "You can go now with an easy mind. It was as I thought--he lay on the stairs of the Great House and he had been dead many hours. D

r, but he had been good to her in his way and she sorrowed for him. But at least she was freed from the nightmare

ore than once to go with him and search for them, and I refused. He fell back on Toft. They had begun to search--so Tof

vant strove to pour brandy between the lips of the dying man; and truly she was thankful that in this strait she had Basset to support her, to a

s, the house was his, all was his. In my opinion he was wrong. But if h

glad o

guess what Mr. Audley's errand was. But Lord Audley will have nothing to gain by moving in it. And if only

nything, which would convey to him what his coming had been to her. B

TER

S FROM

posing camps, and would be reaching out every way for support. New men would be learning their value, and to those who dared, all things might be added. Places, prizes, honors, all might be the reward of those who knew how to choose their side with prudence and to support it with courage. The clubs were like hives of bees. All day long and far into the winter night Pall M

erned. He had a little influence in the Foreign Office, he had his vote in the House of Lords. And though he did not think that these would

t. He could return the younger Mottisfont and have the credit of returning him, in the landed interest; but however much it might suit his book--and

and he did not despair. The occasion was unique, and he thought that it would be odd if he could not pluck from the confusion something

d no Tory browbeat him. For he had only this to look to now: a rich marriage was no longer among the possibilities. Not that he regretted his decision in that matter as yet, but at times he wonder

ies of arrogant leaders, who talked of his duty to the land and assumed that duty was its own reward. Above all, there was the difficulty that he could only sell to the party that was out of office and must pay in promises--bills drawn at long dates and for which no discounters could be found. For wh

iberals under little Lord John, though to their promises some prospect of office gave value. So that at times he almost despaired. For he had only this to look to now; if he failed in

-the cast was such an unlucky, if not an unfair one! And presently he has seen that at the cost of a little pride, or a li

ar. To begin with, he did not overwhelm Mary with letters--his public engagements were so many; and when he wrote he wrote on ordinary matters. His pen ran more glibly on party gossip than on their

atform was to be challenged, and that the assailant was Peter Basset. Stubbs added that the Working Men's Institute was beside itself with j

hat party, unfortunately, they could only pay in promises. It also tickled my lord's vanity. His rival, unhors

ow that I ever knew anything more like him than this! From the day I first saw him, standin

d the poor figure Basset ha

ut thought that his lordship should be among the first to learn the fact. He added a hasty postscript, in which he said that Mr. Basset was proving himself a stronger candidate than either side had expected, and that no

ed to the postscript. As long as the issue was certain, the election was Mottisfont

ame had rung mischief in his ears, by whom, during many a sleepless night, he had seen himself ousted from all that he had gained from title, income, lands, p

his rooms at the Albany and said again and again, "He's dead! By gad, he's dead!" Later, he could not refrain from the thought that if the death had taken place a few weeks earlier, i

d visited the house the moment the facts became known. He had examined the muniment room and found part of the wall broken down, and in the room two boxes of papers which had been taken from a recess which the breach had disclosed. One of the boxes had been broken open. At present Stubbs could only say that the papers h

e in. "Will you wear the black velvet vest,

er cried--so furiously that

re wisely than he knew. For who could say what John Audley had found? Or who, through those papers, had a hold on him?

t what was going on? Had he not put it to Stubbs that the place should be guarded? But the lawyer, stubborn in his be

to ruin him, but he had saved himself.

oticed this, but her tone did not alarm him, becau

He wrote with tact, too. He could not attend the funeral; the dead man's feelings towards him forbade that he should. But his agent would attend, and his carriage and se

nd with death in it--but no, in the circumstances it was not possible. He would go down to The Butterflies

ng came of the meeting--it was one of those will-of-the-wisps that draw the unwary on until they find themselves committed. But it kept Audley in London, and it was not until the evening of Monday, the day

sters. "He has a kind heart and he feels it. Mr. John was

TER

UDLEY

e he rehearsed the scene, toning down this phrase and pruning that. For he knew that after all Stubbs was a good agent. He was honest, he thought much and made much of the propert

to make his displeasure felt. And he wished this the more because he began to suspect that if Stubbs ha

s trespasses, and had let things pass that he should have stopped. Then, too, he had been over-positive that there were no mor

t on the room. The wine stood at Audley's elbow, and his glass was half full. But he did not give Stubbs even two fingers, nor did he ask him to take w

rns. "You are displeased, my lord," he said, as he took the seat to which the other pointed. "And I admit with some cause. I have been mistaken and, p

us," my lord growled, "in

lesson to me," Stubbs replied. "

right to

would not have been there if I had seen that the

the penalty; that may fall upon me. Anyway, it was a d--d silly thing,

ons were. I made a careful examination of the two chests of papers and I came to the conclusion that Mr. Audley had done little more than open the

ked grimly. "But the point of the matter does not lie there. It lies

lo

ed the table with his fingers. "That

put out than his employer expected. "I have little doubt

exclaimed, "I

eyebrows. "You k

atter? He had made himself safe. Whatever papers he had found, John Audley was dead, and John Audley's heiress was going to be his wife! The danger to him was naught

renders, fines, and recoveries with some ancient terriers. I

thing that related to the title! He knew more than we knew. He knew th

ined before this that he was disappointed in his expectation; nay, more, that it wa

vil do you

. He rose from his seat and took from a chair beside the door a parcel which he had laid there o

wly untied the tape and spread wide the wrappers. The action disclosed a thick quarto volume bound in blue leather, sprinkled

h there was so much talk at the opening of the suit. It was identified by a score of

here

of fashion, was laid aside and lost sight of, and eventu

with difficulty. "And what

and amongst them is an entry of the marriage of Peter Paravicini Audley on the date alleged by us; an entry made in the handwriting of his father, and one of e

after a moment of pregnant silence. He had

s he came on it at the moment when he thought success wa

d Lord! And how

Mr. Ba

sse

oubt, from the man, Toft, eit

-d rascal! He ought

hers; without bringing Mr. John's name into it--and he is dead. As a fact, I have passed my word to Mr. Basset tha

man ought to

as paid for his silence or

engagement to Mary--the moment was hardly opportune; and nothing--it was too late in the day--of Toft's former exploit. He stood awhile absorbed and dreaming, staring through the haze of the candles. Here at last was final and complete relief. No more fears, no more calculations. Here was an end at last of the feeling that th

he talk passed

"that Mr. Basset is a stronger ca

litician! He ha

o," he said. "But the truth is, though it is beyond me how a gentleman of

a spe

en minutes, and at the start he was so jumpy I thought that he would break down. But when he got going--well, I saw how it was and what took the people. He believes what he says, and he says it plain. The wa

st conve

re's some that mean to, but will think better of it at the last. And some would but daren't! Two or three may. Still, he's such a candidate

aid, in a voice that was unnaturally even, "that he's going to beat

ottisfont will hold the seat! I mean only that it wil

ought that he might, after all, have bargained with the party in power, was almost too much for the other's self-command. It was too late now,

as the narrowest Leaguer of them all, had done him a deadly injury! My lord bit off an oath, and y

what's to be done about the two Boshams. You remember them, my lord? They've had the small holding by the bridge with the water

" the other as

aid they'll no

they'll not vote

r own pigs! I've spoken to them myself and told them that they'

l, make that quite clear to them, Stubbs, a

wice, I am told--and the story goes that he laid his stick about Ben Bosham's shoulders in the stre

hing to me. They will vote for Mottisfont or they will go, Stubbs. That is flat,

w if your lordship's hear

ven some thought to this, and had weighed Mary Audley's chances

young lady eight

have had more than that? He wasted a small fortune in that

e goes to M

e flushed with passion. "To Bas

nswered, staggered by the temper in

s own niece! Basset? He

e very ol

housand pounds of Audley money! Money taken straig

ntured. "Not much above twenty,

uldn't be far wrong! But there, there, never mind! Good-night! Can't you see I'm dead

ttered something, and got out of the room. On the stairs he relieved his feelings by a word or two. In

PTE

END I

that he might make something of what they had discovered could he secrete it; and with every nerve quivering the man had fought down panic until he had hidden the parcel which had caused John Audley's collapse. Then he had give

o persist in his denials. But to tell and to give were two things, and it is doubtful whether he would have re

The spirit had gone out of him, and he had taken with thankfulness the sum which Basset, as John Audley's representative, ha

e impulse to withhold it. Audley was his rival, but that he might have forgiven, as men forgive great wrongs and in time smile on their enemies. B

d to see her face light up at his entrance; he had to look back, and to see her watch him as he rode from the door. Nor when he was absent from the Gatehouse was it any better; nay, it was worse. For then he was forced to think of her as alone and sad, he had to picture her brooding over the fire, he had to fancy her at her solitary meals. And alike, with her or away from her, he had to damp down the old passion, as well as the ne

He was standing before the fire drawing on his gloves as he prepared to leave. The

id," she said, "that some formalities w

nd some one to be with you? You ought not to be alone. Mrs. J

es

ord. I know it's n

she replied gently, "with as much res

But why--why d

?" She stood up, slender and straight, with the table between them--and he did not guess that her knees were trembling. "Please to understand," she continued, "that Lord Audley and I are entirely at one in this. We have our lives before us, and it were indeed selfish of us, and ungrateful of m

of your inheritance! Don't forget that!" He had been explaining the

. "My uncle has left me the portion his wife brought to him. I am more than satisfied. I am very grat

was the least he could do for you, and had he made a new will he would doubtless have increased it. But," breaking off, "I must be going."

to-m

e to come again. But I must be sure that there is some one here." He spoke almost harshly, partly to impress her, partly to hide his own feelings; and he did not suspect that she, too, was fighting for calmness; that she was praying that

nkful that it was too dark for him to see her face. Would he never go? And still the slow tap-tap of his w

o thought of

ered. At the door he looked back. "I am going into the lib

thought of the dead man steadied her and gave her

ng of her uncle. But she knew that she deceived herself. She knew that her uncle had little to do with her tears, or with the feelin

e of women; for quietly as John Audley had lived, he could not be buried without some stir. Odd people would come, drawn by the Audley name, squires who boasted some distant connection with the line, a few who had been intimate with him in past d

. Basset, sir!" she said in a low voice. "Is this true, what Toft tells me? I declare, when I heard it, you could ha' k

ut you had better let her take her own time to

d she'll make none, or I don't know her! Well, indeed, I hope she's wise, but wedding cake, make it as rich as you like, it's soon stale. And for him, I don'

rs. Toft," he

dead, and you going in for elections--drat 'em, I say, plaguy things that set folks by the ears--and Mr. Colet gone and 'Truria th

Mrs.

minds me. You know they two B

w them

lows, always meddling and making and gandering with things they'd ought to leave to the gentry! The ol

they have promised

f money by, odd times; but they two Boshams I've no patience with. Sally, Ben's wife, was with me to-day, and t

," Basset said. "

ts and Audleys, Audleys and Bassets were knights of the shire, time never was, as all the country knows! But for this little borough--place it's what your gre

heap bread?" Bass

er! Swim in it they do, more shame to you gentry! I'll be bound to say there's three goes to bed drunk in the town th

t promise," he ans

t. The fret of the contest, the strivings of the platform, the rubs of vanity flitted to a distance, they became small things. Even passion lost its fever and love its selfishness; and he thought of Audley with patience and of Mary as he would think of her in years to come, when time had enshrined her, and she was but a memory, one of the thing

h not itsel

self hath

emain w

st him much to speak, and the occasional failure, the mistake, the rebuff, worried him for hours and even days. Trifles, too, that would not have troubled another, troubled his conscience; side-issues that were fals

hails you

by thumps u

steems y

friend that

ch his fri

n or to

d fits of lowness when he was tempted to deny that honesty existed anywhere in politics; when Sir Robert Peel no less than Lord George Bentinck--who was coming to the front as th

orld, were it only the few hundred acres that he owned, or the hamlet in which he lived, better than he had found them. The turmoil of the election over, he would devote himself to his property at Blore. There John Audley's twenty thousand po

rein at their door. Ben Bosham came out, bare-headed; a short, elderly man with a bald foreh

am," Basset said. "I

stooped from the saddle and said

ring up through the darkness. "It be you, S

ot say, vote for him, Bosham. But leave it al

"that our two votes may make the differ? T

e you put out of your place," Basse

ted. "We're freemen o' Riddsley, and almost the last of the freemen that has votes as freemen! And while free we are, free we'll be, and vote as we choose, Squire! Vote as we choose! I'd not show my fac

wish you to do anything against your conscience, Bosham, and I'm obliged to you and your broth

t off first!" cr

hole. He wondered what his committee would think of him if they knew, and what Bosham thought of him--who did know. For Bosham seemed to him at this moment a

TER

BO

their necks, streamed from the yards of the Packhorse and the Barley Mow, and meeting a friend planted themselves in the roadway as firmly as if they stood in their own pastures. Now and again a young spark, fancying all eyes upon his four-year-old, sidled through the

that the land was at stake had brought in some, others had come to see what was afoot. Many a stout tenant was here who at other times left the marketing to his womenfolk; and shrewd glances he cast at the gentry, as he e

called by his first name. But, for the most part, they clung together, fine upstanding figures, in high-collared riding-coats and top-boots. They were keen to a man; the farmers keen also, but not so keen. For the arg

orers, no one asked what they thought of it--they had ten shillings a week and no votes. "Peel--'od rot him!" cried the majority, "might shift as often as his own spinning-jenny! But not the

he would say, his hand on the yeoman's shoulder. "Peel says he's been wrong all these years and is only right now. Then, if you believ

lomon, to the "Duke," who mouthed it and liked it and rolled it off to the first he met. It went the round of the inns and about four o'clock a farmer fresh from the "tap" put it

h the main trade of the town sided with them, the two factories were in opposition; and cheap bread had its charms for the lesser fry. But the free traders wer

ard issuing from a group who stood near the Audley Arms. "Be

velveteen coat and drab breeches, his hand on an ash-plant, he held his ground among them, tickled

e a fool of yourself, Ben! I'm thinking you'd ha' us all lay

of many acres, whose contempt f

ried a third. "That's what you'll be free t

landlord, and in the Bridge End or out of the Bridge End, I've a vote while I've a breath! 'Tain't the landlord's vote, and why'd

slyly. "There's a many lose their freedom that way

ain, too, as I h

the little man's temper grew short, for his wife was no

illet," he said angrily, "

d, same as any other lump o' dirt! But yo' don't let us. Yo' set up to know more t

a lad who had poked himse

. You be all a set of slaves! You'd set your thatch afire i

joined the group. "Head of the men, bain't you? Che

seems yo' be? Don't yo' let me find you in my boosey pasture talking to

n's line," sai

not half an hour agone coming out of Stubbs's office! I know w

laborers' friend!

went to show. Bosham knew that he might flout the squires, and at worst be turned out of his holding; but woe betide him if he got the name of the laborers' friend. Moreover, there was just so much truth in the accusation as made it dangerous. Ben and his brother eked out the profits of the dairy by occasional labor, and Ben ha

ig farmer slowly and weightily. "I'm

of Stafford Gaol some morning!" sa

vehicles festooned with rabbits and market-baskets and drawn by three horses abreast, lumbered through the cr

And in the nick of time he saw a chance--if only he had the courage to rise to it. He saw moving towards him through the press a mail-phaeton and pair. On the box, ca

ssed, and he was acknowledging the courtesy with his whip when Ben stepped before the horses and lifted his hand. In

hat impudently. "I want to know

cked them. Ben stood aside then but, as the carriage passed him, he laid his hand on the splashboard and walked beside it. He looke

at the man referred to the Election, and what was the use o

d brazenly. "I'm not ashamed of my name. I want to know whether you be a

though he still shouted. "Dunno be a fool!" cried the farmer, deeply shocke

en was fairly sober. "Ought to be ashamed of himself!" cried a third, and he shook the a

ne. But word of the brawl outran the carriage and, as it chanced, reached the door of Hatton's Works as the men came out to dinner. Ben Bosham had spoken his mind to his lordship! His lordship had dr

d in the men's faces and taken it as part of the day's work; or had he been the old lord, h

ing angered him. It was in an ill-temper that he drove on a

ispered to him to put the vessel about; to steer the course which experience told him that it behooved a man to steer who was not steep

rted man, yet he feared that when it came to the point he would flinch. Besides, he told himself that he was a man of honor; and t

nd cavil or question, while the political situation was such that he saw no opening, no chance of enrichment in that direction. To make Mary, handsome, good, attractive as s

ncrease. He might not find it so difficult to speak to her. A little effort and the thing would be done. Eight thousand pounds? The interest would barely dress h

erned at the end of a long, straight piece of road, the moss-clad

come to meet him at a place that had recollections for him. It seemed to

and the east wind had whipped a fine color into her cheeks. Perhaps tha

TER

KES A D

of the harness glittering from a score of points, he made a gallant show. The most eager lover, Apollo himself in the chariot o

mself into the front seat the master sprang to the ground. His hand met Mary's, his curly-

soberly than he expected and her face wa

der his eyes it could not be warmer. Whether one

aid. "Drive back a mile or two and return." Then to Mary, his hat still in his hand, "A long time

ose that," she said. "I a

t she grew more handsome every day. Why hadn't she thirty thousand pounds? Aloud he said, "So am I, very glad. Oth

has been gone so very short a ti

dmiring the purity of her co

im, it would have

troubled his last days? And now, tell me all, Mary, from the beginning. You have gone t

ught that her uncle might be lying in some place which they had overlooked! Then she told him of Basset's arrival, of the discovery, of the manner in which Peter h

aid. "He was made to be of use, poor chap! If it were any one else I s

alled up, and it was only by an effort that she checked t

s much," he replied complace

self that he was treating her with scant affection, scant confidence, almost with scant respect. But then again she had reflected that she must be mistaken, that she brought him nothing but herself, and that if he did not l

she did not feel was anothe

me. Well, we must make up for it. As soon as we can make arrangements you must leave that gloomy house where

ambled upwards through the scrub that clothed the slope below the Gatehouse.

But don't be afraid

don't think I could b

s, what we might have enjoyed had fortune been more kind to us! Had we been rich, Mary

been beyond

se months wi

he did not wish it. It was one of the

s a right to be there, it is you! And I want to be the one to take you there. I want you to see for yourself that it is only fallen grandeur that you are marrying, Mary, the th

antage of the undergrowth which hid them from the road below, he put his arm about her and assisted her in her climb, she yielded readily.

hed to be take

t that is the most lover-

ed. "Indeed, it is possible," she continu

inty curves of her figure, while the other uncertain, wavering, was asking continually, "Shall I or shall I not?" But if she did not guess thoughts to which sh

't find

ned door, once painted green, and masked by trees somewhat higher than the underwood through which they had climbed. Ivy hung from the wall above it, rank grass grew against it, the air about it was dank, an

not open the door. Instead, he turned to Mary with a smile. "This is my surpr

uided by his hand she advanced three or four paces. She heard the door close beh

and, before she knew what to expect, he had crushed her t

Then the instinctive impulse to resist overcame her, and she struggled fiercely; and, presently,

darl

te. Her lips trembled, and there were tears in her eyes. He thought that he had been too rough with her, and though he

s put to it, he could see, not to burst into tears. "Perhaps

one the less, he was piqued. What a prude the girl was! Wha

. "I know I am silly," she said

l be good, and next time I will give you warning.

mured. Then he saw that the co

of dead leaves. He swept it clear, and she sat down on

impulse to resist. But she must have known that he would kiss her sooner or later. And she wa

the certainty forced on her by his embrace, that she did not love him! That, however much she might have deluded herself a few weeks earlier, however far she might have let the lure of love mislead her, she did no

set's step come through the hall, that moment when his presence had lifted the burden of suspense from her, should have made her wise. And for an instant the veil had been lifted, and she had been alarmed. But she reflected that the

me one else. And it was too late. She had misled herself, she had misled the ma

t lost in thought and unconscious of his presence. At length he could bear it no longer. Pa

u will catch cold sitting there!

she said, "It is I--who am

uld like t

ewborn fear of him she hastened to appease him. "Oh n

tell you." She rose and, taking her arm, he led her some fifty yards along the alley in which

t of soil with leaf and bloom, had veiled the progress of neglect. Now, as by magic, all was changed. The sun still shone, but coldly and on a bald scene. The roses that had run riot, the spires of hollyhocks that had risen above them, the sunflowers that had struggled with the encroaching elder, nay, the very bindweed that had strangled all alike

ts days of stillness and mourning, but this garde

spoke. "Oh, it is t

le," he answe

She was trying to think of something to comfort him, when he repeated, "It is terrib

ng a moment, wishing to read the inscription, but he would not stay. "It's the old s

nymphs and hot with summer sunshine, echoed the tread of red-heeled shoes and the ring of spurs. Now, elder gre

power to help. She shared, she more than shared, his depression. And it was not until they had surmounted the last flight and stood gazing on the Grea

urteenth Lord Audley--and a millstone about his neck! It is well, my dear, that you should see it! It is well th

in the significance of his words. Her mind--so much of it as she could divert from herself--was engaged with the sight before her, with the long rows of blank and boarded windows, the sm

"And this is Beau

e I've come to own! It's a pleasant possession!

of--of doing anything to

thought of completing

meant that,

've stood on this lawn on summer days and I've told myself that I would build it up again, and that the name of Audley should not be lost. But I am a peer, what can I do? I cannot trade, I cannot plead. For a peer there is but one way--marriage. And there were times when I had visions of repairing the breach--in that way; when I th

exasperation. She did not, and he looked down at her. Then, "I

" she answered meekly. "Please forgive me. I was t

lead, an opening; and he had wasted his pains. He could hardly believe that she had not heard. He could almost believe that she was playing

ink more of your uncle

u." She was beginning to be afraid of him; afrai

st be more kind to me--or I do

spoke in jest, and

ant to go in

uld not bear

. I have to look to something inside. I shall not b

d disappeared round the corner of the old wing where the yew trees grew close to the walls. He let himself into the house. H

her than the shadowy drawing-room with its mouldering furniture and fallen screen. There, placing himself before an unshuttered pane, he stood some minut

no depression could mar, overcame the dictates of prudence, he hesitated. At last, "I can't do it!" he mutte

ted from her at the old Cross at the

TER

ING AT T

farmers about Riddsley took them up and resented them. The feudal feeling was not quite extinct. Their landlord was still a great man to them, and even those who did not love him believed tha

he was asking Hodge what he got out of dear bread, a third that he was vaporing about commons and enclosures. The farmers growled. The farmers' sons began to talk to

ch in earnest to pick and choose. They believed that this was a fight between the wholesome country and the black, sweating town, between the open life of the fields and the tyranny of mill and pit; and that the only aim of the repealer was to lower wages, and so to swe

ere brought into play. Women were sent out to sing through the streets of

s thy fa

r is

hey tax h

will b

swer. A big loaf and a little loaf, carried high through the streets, made a wide appeal to non-voters; and a banner with, "You be taxing, we be starving!" had its success. Then, on the evening of the market-day, a band of Hatton's men, fresh from the Three Tai

shock. Bosham's impudence had not moved him, nor the jeers of Hatton's men. But this turned out to be another matter. Farthingale, the shabby

. "Impossible, man! The wo

at him over his steel-rimmed s

lieve it!" cri

"That won't alter it," he

erved me for years! For year

are in his pocket--buy his offal. With the other six, it's mainly the big loaf--Lake has a sister with seven c

t!" Stubbs urged, with a sinki

d it takes. And partly the split. When a party splits you can't expect to keep all. I doubted Dyas f

At last, "How

may be shaking Dyas's hand and find it's Hatton

the d--d ingratitude I ever heard

-to him. At such times his normal wage was royally swollen by Election extras, such as: "To addressing one hundred circulars, one guinea. To folding and closing the same, half a gui

confidence that was placed in him and might safely be placed. The

mself answerable for success, to his lordship, to the candidate, to the party. Not once, but twice, he had declared in secret counc

so much, were voting for the ruin of their children, for the impoverishment of the town. They would live to see the land pass into th

pite of fortune. But a majority of four--for that was all that remained if these nine went over--a majority of four was a thing to pale the cheek. Perspiration stood on his brow as he th

ould get at Dya

ook his head. "No one," he said. "You m

to be do

t the farmers on them! Show them that what they're doing will be taken ill. Show 'em we're in earnest. Badger'

re he went into the Portcullis that night Far

ad declared himself a follower of Peel. He had posed as ready to take off the corn-tax to meet an emergency, but not as convinced that free trade was always and everywhere right. He had striven to keep the question of Irish famine to the front, and had constantly stated that that which moved his mind was the impossibility of taxing food in one part of the country while starvation reigned in another. Above all, he had tried to

the truth, had stolen a march on him. They had said much which he would not have said. They had set up Cobden where he had set up Peel. To

by their prospects, were neither to coax nor hold. For a few hours he thought of retiring. But to do so at the eleventh ho

ssible, promised something--a new sphere, new interests, new friends. In the hurly-burly of the House and amid the press of business, the wound that pained him would heal more

he meeting was a novelty, and a few minutes before three the Committee began to assemble in strength at the Institute, which stood no more than a hundred yards from the Maypole, but in anot

hands. "What's wanting, he'll win! He's addressed as man

y man with an immense chin, who moved his whole body when he turned his hea

Basset said. "Strong meat, Mr. Brierly, is n

!" Brierly replied, and he rumbled with laughter. "An' a

same words do not convey t

re down-right chaps up North, and none for chopping words. Hands off the hands' loaf, is Lancashire gospel, and we're out

the company in which they found themselves. So they marched solemnly into the street, a score of Hatton's men forming a guard of honor, and a long tail of the riff-raff of the town falling in behind with orange flags and favors. These at a cer

of the position. With the tail of his eye he discerned that the stranger was taking off a large white hat, alternately to the right and left, in acknowledgment of the cheers of the crowd, while ominous sniggers

each of the principals with cheers

ted Hatton's men as he

t man now!" a ba

d a shrill treble. The gibe won roars of laughter,

r man's loaf!" shouted his suppo

b he'll leave the poor m

uted the crowd with special fervor. Handkerchiefs were waved fro

e doing, Tommy, along o' these

there Samaritan, Samm

the wine an

of laughter that followed covered the appearance of the stranger. He was not to esca

he treble. "He's the big loaf

he Burnley man began, leanin

y, too!" cr

al, there was a rush, the two interrupters were seized and, surrounded by a gang of hob

o the edge of the cart and take off his hat

isis the most momentous--the most momentous----" he paused and looked into his hat, "that history has known,

" cried a voice, "y

iling to find it, went on in a different strain. "I'm a business man," he said, "you all know that

go on

ed, "is to ask your attention for the distinguished candidate who seeks your suffrage

," he continued, "I propose, with your permission, to say a word on the--the great

to his neighbor that Hatton was set now for half an hour. He

g! My friends, it is to me the Ark of the Covenant. The bread is the life. It should go straigh

Hear!" Then, "Wha

e poor! And to the man," slipping easily and fatally into his Sunday vein, "that lays his 'and upon it, let him be whom h

s! Hands off them!"

s!" shrieked the treble. "

n get a hearing he had lost his thread and his temper. "That's a low insinuat

be," shouted a new torme

crowd. "A low, dirty insinuat

scorn the

ord! You're not worth it! You're below it! I call o

, he stood back. He began for the first time to think the meeting a mistake. Basset,

y for silence. Nor could he see that, behind the cart, there had been gathering for some time a band of men of a different air from those who faced the platform. These men were still coming up by twos and threes, issuing from side-streets; men clad in homespun and wit

complacent and confident of the effect

the edge of the meeting. "Gentlemen, free electors! And I tell

g his voice. He stopped, his mouth open; for an instant surprise held the crowd also.

wly, the hurrahs, yells, laughter, died down, the laughter the last to fail, for not only had the big man's face of surprise ti

e said, "it's funny, but you don't drum me down, let me tell you! You don't drum me down

hope. And this time, with the fourth stroke, a couple of fifes struck into a

e the litt

ace he wi

it, don't

mp Jim

it see him

mp Jim

t, and wh

o jus

or

ance Sir R

mp Ji

ance Sir R

mp Ji

alling. Shrieks of alarm routed laughter. The crowd swayed stormily, flowed this way, ebbed that way. The clatter of staves on clubs rang above oaths and shouts of defiance, as the Yellows made a rush for the drum. Men were down, men were trampled on, men strove to scale the cart, others strove to descend from it. But to descend from it

far as mischief was meant, it was aimed at the Manchester man. He was a stranger, he was the delegate of t

There's Pritchard's house opposite. We must fight our way to it. Pass the word!" The

ried the Manchester m

he saw the band whom he had already marked, pressing up to the cart through the mêlée--they moved with the precision of a disc

ughter, and before the last of the platform was over the side, the cart was tipped up by a dozen sturdy arms. Hatton and another were thrown down, but a knot of

a rush for Brierly, striking at him over the shoulders of his companions. But it was plain that the assailants shrank from coming to

in their faces as he fell back before them. "Fair play! You

n the land that bred you! You didn't ought to be th

s dust?" yelled another. "

the panting and discomfited Yellows, thronging the passage and pulling their coats into shape, were free to exchange condolences or recriminations as they pleased. More than one had been against the open-ai

ng them. He had slipped into the house by the back way. "For God's sa

?" asked a

them! They're away to the canal with him. T

t really be done. He snatched a thick stick from a corner--he had been hitherto unarmed--and raised his voice. "Mr. Banfield," he said, "go to

t enough," a

"Come, gentlemen, they'll not dare to touch us w

e!" cried Brierly

to take you!" Basset retor

TER

HE C

ooping over the fire with her eyes on the embers. The old hound lay beside her with his muzzle resting on her shoe, and Mrs.

don't know that I'm better for it, myself, and Toft goes up and down like a toad under a harrow, he's that restless! For 'Truria, she's f

," Mary sa

e we staying?' And, bless the man, he looks at me as if he'd eat me. 'Take time and you'll know,' he says. 'But whose is

's," Mary explained, "for the rest of

ppose you'll be naming the day soon? The Master's gone and

Mary said quietl

mfortably. "The Squire's brought a foreigner down to trim their nails, and there's to be a wagon and speaking and such like foolishness at the Maypole. As if all the

refully put a piece

pened to the reverend Colet, and I wish the young master safe out of it. It's all give and no take with him,

etch--couldn't Pet

continued thoughtfully, as she began to dust the sideboard, "as people don't know their own minds. There's the Squire, now. He's lived quiet and pleasant all these years and now he must dip his nose into this foolishness, same as if he dipp

t?" Mary asked i

at else! Which reminds me, Miss, are

lieve

re is a bit of a clash there's none will hurt you. Do you go, Miss, and get a little color in your cheeks

will go,"

d beside the driver. Here, were it only for an hour, was distraction and a postponement of

her memory, never to be wiped from it. In Audley's company, and for a time after they had parted, the shock had numbed her mind and dulled her feelings. B

er happiness and another's happiness. And what was she to do? What ought she to do? In a moment of emotion, le

s of our blo

d made this mistake, and now, self-tri

re an

tumbl

dust were

crooked scyt

ly did not avail.

e to go through with it, to do her duty and save him at least from hurt? Either way, she had wrecked he

a fever of anxiety. What was she to do? She could not decide. Now she thought one thing, now another. And time was passing. No wonder that she was glad even of t

side of the battle she turned her eyes with all the strength of her will. Her conduct had been that of a silly girl rather than that of a

yes. Surely it must have been in some other life that she had made it th

n right. She woul

rd passed between them until they were close upon the outskirts of the town. Then the driver, to whom the dull

re's a fine rumpus in the town. Do you he

o one wil

be a hanging, front o' Stafford gaol, by the roar! I met a tidy lot going in as I came out

won't do an

errupting her, "they'll never touch us. And for the old nag,

e road a hundred yards before them, hid all of the town from them save a couple of church to

l be work for the crowner out of this! Gee-up, old nag, let's see what's afoot!

On the contrary, she looked eagerly to the front as the old horse, urged by the whip, took the r

mean business! It's in knee in neck with 'em! Never thoug

Cheering, hooting, and brandishing sticks, they came on at something between a walk and a run, although in the heart of the mass there was a something that now and again checked the

ooting, there was, after each of

driver, scared by the sight, pu

n Bosham they've got! It is Ben! And they're for ducking him! It's mortal dee

ers of the mob were swerving in that direction. As they did so--and were once more checked for a moment--Mary espied among them a man's bald head twisting this way and that, as he strove to escape. The man was struggling desperately, his clothes almost torn from his back, but he was helpless in the hands of

r spoke. She clutched the driver's arm and shook

m, trotted gently forward as if the road were empty before him. The crowd waved and shouted, and cursed the driver. But the horse, thinking perhaps that

"Let that man go," she cried. "Do you hear? Do you want to murder him?" And, advancing a step, she laid her hand on Ben Bosham's ragged, filthy sleeve

asked her what she would do, another cried that she had best make herself scarce! Furious faces surrounded her, f

his!" cried a voice. "We're

and, advancing a step, she actually plucked the man from the hand

h him, lady," whined one

chimed in half-a-d

y're going to drown me!" he spluttered, his eyes wild. All the fight h

lf-a-dozen at the rear of the cro

lay another hand on you. Get in! Get in here!" And t

onishment, Ben was above their heads, on the seat of the gig--a blubbering, ragged, mud-caked figure with a white face and bleeding lips. "Go on!"

tragedy; the danger was over. "We'll tell your wife, Ben!" screamed a youth, and the crowd laughed and followed. Other wits took their turn. "You'll want a new coat for t

the news, entered the streets of the town. On either side women thronged the doorways and steps, and while some cried, "Bravo, Miss!" others laughed and calle

--for Basset and his rescue party had gone to the canal by another road--she saw nothin

w, some of Hatton's men, some of Banfield's, yellow favors as well as blue. If Mary had known it, she might have set Ben down and not a hand w

owd of three or four hundred of the riff-raff of Riddsley that she broke in upon the quiet of the suburban road in which The Butterflies

sisters' caps showed above another. Was it an accident? Was it a riot? Was it a Puseyite pr

grasped his arm. With a burning face, but with her head in the air, she guided his stumbling fo

appen. What would his lordship say? What would his lordship do? This was bringing the election to his

TER

D SPEA

his, and she was still trembling with indignation, a creature all fire and passion, when the door of The Butterflies opened to admit her. Leaving Ben

le, grasped the facts, and cursed the busybody, all within thirty seconds. "D--n it! this passes everything," he had muttered to himsel

ed? I could not believe my eyes when I saw you in company with that wretched creature!"

she thought that it was only that he did not understand, and, "That wretched creature, a

ar girl, don't be silly! Don't let yourself be carried away. You've lost your head.

to throw him into the

ne. The man is a low, pestilent fellow!" he continued severely, "and obnoxious to me and to all dece

still thought, or she strove to think, that he did not understand, and tried to make the facts clear. "But you d

n see

ful to see him! They were handling him bru

are say you thought all this. But d

o-

e an election in

N

ngs, the commonest of things at such a time, and that sensible people turn their backs on them. You've

aid, "I do not think you woul

, many. But there is one thing I have never seen, and that is a man killed in an elec

e saved me

incident! Peers have nothing to do with elections, as you ought to know; and to bring this mo

had welcomed her, who had hung over her, whose eyes had paid her homage, who had foreseen her least want, who had lapped her in

tone, his manner, which held no respect for the woman and no softness for the sweetheart, were far from the tone of one in the wrong. On the contrary, they presented a side of him which had been hitherto hidden from her; a phase of the streng

a smouldering fire in her eyes. "Perhaps I was wrong," she said. "I have had little experience of these things. But are not

uct. A girl in yours should be careful to guide herself by my views. Instead, out of a foolish sentimentality,

f us considered the relati

again, "I am not sure, Mary, that

y to his reasons. And she closed her lips, a spot of color in each cheek. In other circumstances she would have taken on herself a ful

ngagement, had recalled his long absence, the chill of his letters, the infrequency of his visits; and she saw by that light that this was no sudden shift, but an oc

ts, had to go on. "I am not sure that we did think enough about it?" he said doggedly. "I

d?" sh

e of a man, placed as I am, should have an idea of values, a certain reserve, that comes of a knowledge of the world; above all, no sentimental notions such as lead to mistakes like this." He indicated the street by a gesture. "If I was mistaken a whi

"that you wish it to be at an end between

ever, I am in the wrong, and I have no right to quarrel with a word. I do think th

e you felt th

suring his words, "I have been c

t fitted to b

ike to pu

you treated me at Beaudelays--in the garden? What right had you to kiss me? Rather, what right had you to insult me? For it was

face, and on her eyes sparkling with anger. He took in the picture, he owned her charm, he even came near to repenting. But it was too la

would

e handsome enough to turn any man's head? And what is a kiss after all

be angry when in her heart a little bird was beginning to sing--was telling her that she was free, that presently this cloud would be behind her, and that th

was he not riding off too lightly? "Oh!" she cried, "

he was anxious to be done with it. "And what then?" he said. "I believe that you k

I will let yo

o that you might be 'my lady' at too high a price. I'm not the most manageable of men. I'd make a

ved meanly, and I believe falsely! Not to-day! You are speaking the truth to-day. But I believe that from the start you had this in your mind, tha

lass!" he answ

me anything worthy of the name of love is impossible! For the rest, let me tell you this! If I ever felt thankf

aking it suited him better than if she had wept and appealed.

another now. At any rate, I understand you. Perhaps you wi

no more than a handful remained; the nipping air, the attractions of free beer, the sound of the muffin-bell, had drawn away the

afety," Audley said with iron

rouble you,"

we may still

some day I may be able to think more kindly of you. If that day comes I will tell

resently she was driving again through the darkling streets, passing the Maypole, passing the quaint, low-browed shops, lit only by an oil lamp or a couple of candles. The Audley Arms, the Packhorse, the Portcullis, were all alight and buzzing with the voices of those who fought their battles over again or laid bets on this candidate or that. What t

reary stretch that lay beyond the canal-bridge, Mary found the darkness pleasant and the chill no more than bracing. For what were that night, that chill beside the numbing grip from which she

Bosham--she laughed, thinking of his plight--blessings on his bare, bald head and his ragged shoulders! The old horse plodding on, with the hill that mounts to t

e him when he's

plomacy, "times a quart of ale, Mi

night!" she said with a happy laugh. "

as aware of the change in her. "Why, Miss," she said, "you look like another c

briefly she told the tale of Ben Bosham's plight and of her

ented. "And that," she continued shrewdly, "was

red the parlor, "Perhaps I'd better tell you, Mrs. Toft," she said, "that the engagement between m

wood. "Well, one thing's certain, and many a time my mother's drummed it into me, 'Better a plain shoe than one that pin

man-servant. He stood an instant, his lank figure motionless. Then he opened the door beside him, slipped out into the chill and the darkness, and silently, but with extravagant gestures, he b

TER

DSLEY E

now resorting to violence. The Morning Herald rejoiced that there were still places which would not put up with the incursions of the Manchester League, "the most knavish, pestilent body of men that ever plagued this or any country!" In the House, where the tempest of the Repeal debate already raged, and the air was charged wit

he names and the past of the candidates; those behind the scenes whispered of Lord Audley. Whips gave thought to him, and that one to whom his lordship

lt that the Whi

eckon towards

er gives to o

e Treasury loa

written so! But that cursed Stubbs had blocked his play in that direction by asserting that it was hopeless, though

the Big Loaf: on the other stood the landed interest! Just the landed interest led by Lord George Bentinck, handsome and debonair, the darling of the Turf, the owner of Crucifix; but hitherto a silent member, and one at whom, as a leader, the world gaped. Only, behind this Joseph there lurked a Benjamin, one whose barbed sh

r men went about, vowing to take vengeance at the hustings. The mayor went about, swearing in constables. The farmers and their allies went about grinning. Fights took place nightly behind the Packhorse

speech as short as it was simple. He told them that in his opinion it was impossible to keep food out of the country by a tax while Ireland was threatened by famine. Secondly, that the sacrifice which Peel was making of his party, his reputation, and his consistency was warrant that in his view the change was urgently needed. Thirdly, he asked them whether the farmers were so prosperous and the laborers so comfortable that c

Will it change a

nge

vote, man? You h

erk answered. "I n

y. "Get on with those poll-cards! I don't pay you a g

fairly successful. It had brought back two votes to the fold; and he calculated that the seat wou

ll-head that guarded the pure waters, the fence that saved from smoke and steam, from slag-heap and brickfield, the smiling face of England. For him, the home of his fathers, the land of field and stubble, of plough and pinfold, was at stake; nay, was passing, wasted by men who thought in percentages and saw no farther than the columns of their ledgers. To that Engl

mer struggled and the laborer starved, his answer was short. "Bette

paragraphs of his long-winded speeches. When he heard that the owner of Crucifix had dismissed his trainers, released his jockeys, sold his stud, and turned his back on th

not believe a word of it. He c

s. Before him reeled a huge banner upheld by eight men and bearing on one side the legend, "The Land and the Constitution," on the other, "Mottisfont the Farmers' Friend!" Behind the horsemen, and surrounded by a guard of laborers in smocked frocks, moved a plough mounted on a wain and drawn by eight farm horses. Flags with "Speed the Plough,"

door, and the men who would raise the steps and lower the steps, who would all look for the same tip? So, perforce, he drove in state to the Town Hall--before which the hustings stood--in a barouche and four accompanied by Banfield and Hatton and his agent. The rest of his Committee followed in postchaises. A bodyguard of "hands" escorted them, and they, too, had their bands--of equal badness--an

, the right hand to Mottisfont, and by a little a

g, bullying, a

melling and

, jostling a

hat looked out upon the seething mob was white with faces, every 'vantage-point was occupied. It was such a day and such a contest as Riddsley had never seen. The eyes of the country, it was felt, were upon it! Fights took place every five min

Basset! Basset and the Big Loaf! Basse

to one on Mottisfont! Three cheers

ed voices

y-corn, my

ere first

ause they were howled down or they knew no more of t

s thy fa

r is

hey tax h

will b

h the

lords' d

elect

r cake, and

w our ca

ithout your starch, Hayward?" "How's your dad, Farthingale?" "Who w

On his heels entered, first the mayor and his assistants, then the candidates, the proposers, the seconders. Each, as he made his appearance, was greeted with a storm of groans, cheers, and cat-calls. Each put on to meet

led the middle passage of the slave trade, would be over, and if he were not elected he would be free to retire to Blore, and to spend days, lonely and sad indeed, but clean, in the improvement of his acres and his people. His eyes dwelt upon the sea of faces, and from time to time he smiled;

set dwelt briefly on the crisis in Ireland, the integrity of Peel, and the doubtful wisdom of taxing that which, to the poorest, was a necessity of life. If bread wer

speak, for he was an agent. At the last moment, when a seconder for a formal motion was needed, he thrust himself forward to the astonishment of all. The same as

n that he was acting under the stress of great emotion. The very fugl

cheap bread, and, maybe, you are! But at what a cost! Cheap bread is foreign bread. To you, the laborers, I say that foreign bread means that the fields you till will be laid to grass and you will go to work in Dudley and Walsall and Bury and Bolton, in mills and pits and smoke and dust! And your children will be dwarfed and wizened and puny! Foreign brea

han those about him. Young Mottisfont clapped him on the back and affected to make much of him. But even he hardly knew how to take it. Some said that Stubbs had had tears in his eyes, whil

and sharp for Mottisfont. Basset's agent asked them pleasantly if they were not making a mistake; and then less pleasantly had the Bribery Oath administered to them. But they stuck to their guns, the votes were recorded, and Mottisfont shook hands with them. Later in the day when the two were fudd

s, and Mottisfont was up and down shaking hands all the morning. At noon the figures

font .

t . .

red from his fright, flung his hat before him into the booth, danced a war-dance on the steps, and gave three cheers for Basset as he came down

font .

t . .

avors, but Stubbs, returned to his senses, continued to read his newspaper in a closet b

they had gone to dine with the mayor. The bludgeon-men and blackguards went home to sleep off their morning's drink, and to recruit themselves for the org

up, and the message, having been read with much parade, was posted up through the town and as promptly pulled down. Animated by the message, and making as much of

t . .

font .

sset and th

et w

The placard, mounted as a banner, was entrusted to the two Boshams. The band was ready, a dozen flares were ready, the Committee were ready, al

o the polling-booth, a third to his agent's office. He could not be found. All that was known of him or could be learned was that a tall man, who lo

ts running riff-raff, now luridly thrown up by the lights, now lost in shadow, formed the most picturesque scene that the election had witnessed. The absence of the candidate was a drawback, and some sho

t five the f

t . .

font .

to poll, and on the face of th

is hat, and went by way of the darkest street to The Butterflies. He walked thoughtfully, with his chin on his brea

font .

t . .

d a crowd filling every yard of space within eye-shot of the polling-booth greeted the news. To hell with Peel! Down with Cobden! Away with the League! Hurrah! Hurrah! Stubbs, had he been there, would have been c

, Stubbs nodded to the maid and went up the stairs unannounced. Audley was writing at a side-ta

ot over, my lord," he answered soberly. "But that

he looked again at the paper. "Nine? Good G--d, man, you don't mean i

seat, my lord

afe seat? I thought that it was a seat that couldn't be lost! When five, only five, votes would have cast it the

lord

other side, the side that had sinecures and places and pensions, he would have turned the scale--this was too much for his temper. "Nine!

ordship th

him had thwarted his plans, carrying him farther than he in

low me to speak now--what I promised would have been borne out--fully borne out by the result in n

u thin

s swept over the country! In these circumstances it is something to hold the se

rnfully. For the moment he was too angry

ordship is dis

I am d--nably

ower," Stubbs said slowly, "t

w that

hink fit to take tha

l consi

ere too angry to fence. But before that last word was spoken A

ssary and under cover of the pause regained co

from the Sw

ut the card for Stubbs to take, "Do yo

. "No, my lord," he said

ant to me can he have?" Audley muttered. Then, "My compliments to Mr. Basset

ent. "You'd better be here," he muttered ungraciousl

answered. And nothing more be

ency, but rather than be treated as if he were a servant, he would surrender both--in his way he was a proud man. Still

f cheering, a glare of smoky light, a medley of leaping, running forms, a something uplifted above the crowd, moved across his line of vision. Almost as qu

mself. It was the writing on the wall. The Corn Laws were doomed, and with t

TER

OF TH

nted. The possibility that Basset came to champion Mary had crossed his mind more than once; if that were so he would soon dispose of him! In the meantime he took civility for h

a minute or two had been spent in this by-play

ave. "I should tell you at once, Audley," he

yebrows. "You are sure

hree o'clock to-day, and at first I doubted if it was my duty to communicate it. But the facts are known to a third p

ainst the mantel-shelf. "But if t

they might under other c

on end! I confess you puzzle me. Well

ed, if you remember, your Fami

not hand over all that he had. He kept

he has had his chance. This time, I c

will hear m

r motive an excellent one I don't doubt. But if he now thinks to get more money from me--and for other papers--I can promise him t

ong. Why he deceived me, and has now tu

r were aroused. "The rogue is shallow. He thinks to be paid twice. Once by you an

t," Basset said. "The fact is the papers he n

u don't mean that you've come here--why, d--n it, man," with sudden

need to quarrel! I am sure that Mr. Basset's intentions are friendly. It will be better if he just tel

ly relapsing against the mantel-shelf. "Put your que

de between Peter Paravicini Audley, your ancestor, the Audley the date of whose marriage has been

e date?" St

n hundred

n as he could make it, but an acute listener would ha

oing into it?" he cried. "If this man is out for plunder I will make him smart as sure as my

hair as if he would r

"And I'm not saying that it is the wrong way. But I think we had b

w!" Audley cried. His face was flushed

posed. "At present I don't see"--he turned and care

an unpleasant business. His own temper was not too good. "You see this, at a

ear--was going to befall him? Was it possible that at the eleventh hour, when he had burnt his boats

her, it would be of vital impor

ircumstances? Wh

marry the only person who,

. Then, and as quickly, the blood ebbed, leaving it gray and flabby. He would have given much, very much at this moment to be able to laugh or to utter

-intervened. "I think, my lord," he said, "you had better leave this to me. I think you had, indeed. We are quite in the dark

hav

rea

hav

-I only say it appe

"It bears the marks of age, and it was found in the

" he said. "You say it was found! You

es

Still, we have cleared the ground. No

age in the register is misleading and that no marriage took place until after the birth of his son, Peter Paravicini undertakes that, in consideration of his father and his brothers takin

he listened and understood, his mind was working to another end, and viewing with passion the tragedy which fate had prepared for him. Too late! Too late! Had this become known a week, only a week, earlier, how lightly had the blow fallen!

was careful not to look at him. The lawyer sat thinking and drumming gently with his fingers on the table. "Just so, just so," he said presently. "On the face of it, the doc

was his cousin

be proved before any weight can be given to this document; its origin, the custody from which it comes, the signatures, the witnesses. Its pr

ch is to secure the younger sons' rights w

ever," he said. "But, frankly, the

," Basset replied, nettle

rstand them, he is not affected as he might be, but this is still a serious matter. We are not quarrelling

ested. The moment I learned this I saw that, be it true or false, I must disclose it to Miss Audley. But I thou

replied. "And where, in the meant

Mr. Audley's banke

"Also very proper,"

aid. He looked at Audley, who had turned his back on them and, with his

e that his lordship is obliged to you, Mr. Basset, thou

rankly, "I owe you many thanks for the straightforward course you have taken, Basset. You must pardon my momentary annoyance. Perhaps you will kindly

d of opposition to his rival which he loathed. It was only after some hesitation that he had determined to see Audley, and now that he had seen him, the sooner he was clear of

lord added warmly, "we recognize

nd the old life there! He could go to his inn and sleep the clock round. In his bed he would be safe, he would be free from troubles. It seemed to him a refuge. Till the morrow he need think of nothing, and when he came forth again it would be to a new life. Henceforth Blore, his old house and his starved acres must bound his ambitions. With the money which John

ursed the man anew. Why had he played these tricks? Why had he kept back th

ER XX

LITTLE

eclared in wrath, "beats me! To be there hours and hours and come out no wiser than he went, and we waiting to hear--a babe would ha' ha

concealed them. "He must know how i

ld! 'What else matters, man?' says I. 'What did you go for?' But there, Miss, he's beyond me these days! I believe he's going like the poor master, that had a

t is for Repea

Toft replied loftily. "But to wait till morn

r. Colet's affection, and he came determined to come to an understanding with his mistress. He saw his way to making a small income by writing sermons for his more indolent brethren, and, in the meantime, Mr. Basset was giving him food and shelter; in return he was keeping Mr. Basset's accounts, and he was saving a little, a very little, money. But the body

not?" M

ia replied. She stood with bowed head, her hand

Mary said, blushin

ejoined. "I am a servant, my father's a servant. I s

f such a marriage! He's poor, begging his reverence's pardon, but, poor or rich, his

hat when she is Mr. Colet's wif

ir black books for preaching too free--and when you come to tithes one parson is as like another as pi

er do it,"

as good manners and some education, Mrs. Toft, and what she does not know she will learn. She will be judged by what she is. If

hat were all," she said. "She'd come to us somet

a will come to me," he said, "I will be

said!" Ma

And it's my opinion that if his reverence gets a curacy, he'll lose it as soon as it's known who his wife is. And

interruption took them aback. "He'll not need them," he repeated, "nor their curacies. He'll not need to dig nor beg. There's chang

ds," Mr. Colet said, his eye

ive hundred pounds that I have in hand, and five hundred more that I look to get. Put 'em together and t

ne, cried, "You're out of your mind, Toft! Five hundred pou

Toft said. "You kn

in earnest? Do you understand w

his sallow cheek reddening. "I

let said slowly, "I don't

ome to you empty-handed, and you'll have no need to be ashamed of a wife that brings you a living. We'll not trouble except

etween admiration and protest. "Y

e as happy as she is good, and Mr. Colet will have a wife of whom he may be proud. But Etruria will not b

of it," Toft replied. "The other half

anybody'd told me yesterday that I'd hav

et it is doubtful if the moment was as much to her as to the unga

ve the sufferer. "Etruria will have more to say to Mr. Colet,"

, well, well!" said Mrs. Toft, when they stood in the hall. "I'm sure I w

on't know it!" the man said

the liberties we've taken! But you'd always a fancy for 'Truria. Anyway, if there's one will be pleased to he

ught that Mr. Basset

?" Mrs. Toft replied. "They had oug

and cloak, went out. The day was cold and bright, a sprinkling of snow lay on the ground, and a walk promised her an opportunity of thinking things over. Be

e man really sane? But soon her mind took another turn. She had strayed this way on the morning after her arrival at the Gatehouse, and, remembering this, she looked across

gay with the songs of larks and warm with the scents of spring were of the past. To-day she looked on a bare, cold landscape and her thoughts matched it. Yet she had no ground to complain, she to

py, being free; and, mor

oms, its austerity, its stillness, the ancient woodlands about it were endeared to her by the memory of lamp-lit evenings and long summer days. The very plainness and solitude of the lif

tin for silver! And now it was too late. So that it was no wonder that when she came to the hawthorn-tree where she had gathered her may that morning, a sob rose in her throat. She kne

Walk. Its recesses showed dark, the darker for the sprinkling of snow that lay in the park. But it was high noon, there

moved in the copse and she glanced nervously behind her, expecting she knew not what. The dark yews shut her in, and involuntari

trees and stood half-hidden. A moment passed and a man appeared. He came from the Great House. He crossed the opening slowly, his

him had crept so much of distaste that she was glad that she had not met him in this lonely spot. She went on to the Iron Gate, and viewed for a few moments the desolate lawn and

and that in the end Toft had seen him; and that he had departed in no good temper. "What Toft said to him," Mrs. To

do?--and perplexed by Toft's mysterious fortune--how had he come by it? Toft himself was on the rack, looking for things to happen--and nothing happen

e only address of the kind that she knew. But she received no answer, and her heart sank. The difficulty, small as it was, harassed her; she had no adviser, and ten times a day, to keep up her spirits, she had tell her

t she had had work to d

ght the thought that Basset had abandoned her, that he no longer cared, no longer desired to come near her, broke her down. Of course, he was not to blame. He fancied her still engaged to her cousin and receiving from him all the advice,

the letter the whole astonishing, overwhelming story of the discovery of the

cle's executor to lay them before you in detail and also to advise you that in your interest and in view of the chan

read this letter. At length she grasped its meaning, and truly what astounding, what overwhelming news! What a shift of fortune! Wh

deed all hers! This dear house and the Great House! This which had seemed to its possessor so small, so meagre, so cramping an inheritance, but was

ence, might resolve some doubt. Oh, it was a wonderful, it was a marvellous, it was an incredible turn of fortune! And presently her mind began to deal with and to sift the past. An

TER

OF RENU

ked at the fire, he looked askance at Mary. "But do you mean," he

t a word." She, too, found it

e been very m

u to bring me the papers--to bring me everythi

y Audley did not tell

ing there were passages which she would fain have shunned, fain have omitted, had it been possible; and this was one of them. She saw that there was nothing else for it, however--the thing must be told, and told by her. She tried, and no

ell what effect it had on him. She only knew that the silence seemed age-long, the pause cruel, and that her heart was beating so loudly that

she answered soberly. "It was

when di

e before this arose." She spoke

not te

N

mask it altogether, for she was observing him--ah, how keenly was she observing him! "On the contrary, he led me to believe," he continued, "that

that in another minute this would be done and past. "Just so, I quite understand. At any rate there is no longer any questio

bout with old and faded green ribbon, and bore a docket on the outside. She looked at it with curiosity. That ribbon had been tied by a long-dead hand in the reign of Queen Anne! Those yellowish papers had lain in damp and darkness a hundred

pends upon the

ryth

it was a deed--just

tters, bearing on the preparation of the agreement. They were found all together as they are now, and in the same order. I did not disclose the letters to Audley, or to his la

t you t

e is gone. It was practically common ground in the former suit that if this agreement could be produced and proved his claim

as not responsive. He shrugged his shoulders. "He has had it long enough to feel the loss of it," she

on ribbon ends dangled from it. It was written all over in a fine and curious penmanship, its initial letter adorned with a portrait of Queen Anne; alt

little distaste. She turned it, she read the signature

o save his wife, his cousin, a young girl, a girl of my age perhaps! To s

all dead

joys and failings, hopes and fears--all dead! It

ty on you

re glad, o

our rights?" he said ma

and her face was marvellously soft. "You will be the first, won't you, to congratulate me? You who have done

st doubt faded. He took her hand--his own was cold--but he could not s

something for me, Mr. Basset? It is not much. Will you deal with Toft for me? You told me in your letter that he held my uncle's no

t is

hould be pai

it must

I am fond of Etruria, but I am not so fond of Toft,

t." They had both regained the ordinary plane of feeling and

ou pl

matter, he went round the house and gave the orders he had to give. The light was beginning to fail and shadows to fill the corners, and as he glanced into this room and that and v

iscovery that trod upon his threshold, freed her? And if so, why? He was in the dark as to this and as to all--her attitude, her thoughts, her feelings. He knew only that while her

g above the horizon--and she had been kind, ah, in that moment of so

ender figure darkly outlined against the blaze. She held the poker in her hand, and she was stooping forward; and something in her pose, something in the tense atmosphere o

and defiance in her tone. "Parchment is so hard to burn--

he cried. Frantically, he went down on his knees, he raked among the embers. But he knew that it was futile, he had known it before he knelt, and he stood up again with a gestur

be Lady Audley?" she said, facing hi

he full burden of his responsibility. He had left the papers with her, the true value of which

by my cousin, I do not wish for this common, this vulgar, this poor revenge? Because I will not stoop to the game he plays a

f, trying to see the thing all round and not only as she saw it, but in i

e," she replied gently, "he sees

till--those who

Queen Elizabeth? No, a thousand times no! And do not think, do not think," she continued more soberly, "that I have acted in haste or on impulse. I have not had this out of my thoughts for a moment since I knew the truth. I have weighed, carefully we

ave no r

e no right

ill

en you have gained the right

of raillery and tenderness, with a tear and a smile, with something in her eyes that he had never seen in them before? With--with--but her face was in shadow, she had her b

wh

n that now that he--now that Audley is o

epeated. She stared at hi

ng upon her. "You understand me? You un

you," she answered slowly, still confronting

A

hand," she continued, with a tremulous laugh, "you may take me. I don't deserve it, but I know my own mind now. I h

while she, shaken out of her composure, trembled between tears and laughter. "Peter! Peter!" she said again and again. And onc

he had used, came home to him now with double force. It had been a poor, it had been a common, it had been a pitiful revenge! It had mingled the sordid with the cup, it had cast the shadow of the Great House on their happiness. In that room

in her surprise. As she said afterwards, "The sight of them two as close as chives

PTE

AKE OTHER

-cited deed his chance of retaining the title and property was anything but desperate. He made the one attempt to see Mary of which we know; and had he seen her he would have done his best to knot again the tie which he had cut. But missing her by a hair's breadth, and confronted by Toft who knew all, he had found even his courage u

. He appreciated--none better and more clearly now--what the effect of his easiness would have been had Lord Audley not been engaged to his cousin; nor did his negligence appear in a less glaring l

seemed to him to be going wrong. All good things, public and private, seemed to be verging on their end

invective and sarcasm, taunt and sneer might rain upon the traitor as he sat with folded arms and hat drawn down to his eyes, rectors might fume and squires swear; the end was certain, and Stubbs saw that it was. Those rascals in the North, th

cottage chi

ixt two a

the country folk would be ruined, and Shoddy from Halifax and Brass from Bury would buy their lan

ing, the Christmas dole, the human ties, where father had worked for father and son for son, and the thatch had covered three generations--all these were past and gone. He found one fault, it is true, in the past. He had one regret, as he looked back. The l

ed, a shaken man. When he passed through the streets, he walked with his chin on his breast, his shoulders b

r the lawyer hastened, Audley met him with moody and repellent eyes, and in the first flush of the news which the lawyer brought refused to believe it. It was not only that the tidings seemed too good to be true, the relief from the nightmare which weighed upon him too great

oath. "You may depend upon it, it w

ach which had threatened to sever the long connection between the lawyer and Beaudelays. If Stubbs's opinion of my lord could never again be wholly what it had been, if Audley still had hours of soreness when the other's negligence recurred to his mind, at least they were again at one as to the future. They were once more fre

new ones, he fell by a man?uvre which even his enemies could not defend. Whether he was more to be blamed for blindness than he was to be praised for rectitude, are questions on which party spirit has much to

common di

t memora

d his co

s upon

ho do not agree with him, to think o

, they continued their quiet journey along the inland waterways which formed in the 'forties a link, now forgotten, between the great cities. In this way--somewhat to the disgust of Mary's new maid, whose name was Joséphine--they visited strange things;

Basset said on the last evening before their return. "I'l

houlder. "You are paying me out, Peter," she said. "I k

?" Basset sa

d be done without an earthquake. I kno

th nothing but a gilt coach, Mrs.

d softly, "only--for what we have received

try," he

E