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LIKE AND UNLIKE

BY THE AUTHOR OF

"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN,"
''MOHAWKS" Etc. Etc.

IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.

LONDON
SPENCER BLACKETT

(Successor to 3). Sc m. J^axtocll)

MILTON HOUSE, ST. BRIDE ST., LUDGATE CIRCUS
And SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET, E.C.

\An rt gilts reserved']

V. /

CONTENTS TO VOL. I.

CHAP.
I.

ir,

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

, IX.

\i X.

;;;5 XI.

XII.

Jen,.

^.XIV.

CONTRASTS

A WILD IRISH GIRL .

DANGER ....

ACROSS COUNTRY

AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD

EASY TO LOVE HER .

NOT QUITE CONTENT.

"NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE

NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL .

CHANGEFUL AS THE WIND

A DANGEROUS PILOT.

TOTAL SURRENDER .

MAKING THE TEST OF IT .

NOT A COMMON GIRL

ACTED

SO

4

PAGE
1

. 39
. 69
. 103
. 112
. 135
. 166
. 181
. 196
. 225
. 241
. 258
. 291
. 302

LIKE AND UNLIKE

CHAPTER I.

CONTRASTS

" Has Mr. Belfield come in yet? '^

''No, Sir Adrian/'

'' He rode the new horse, did he not ? ''

" Yes, Sir Adrian/'

Sir Adrian Belfield moved uneasily in his chair,
then walked to the fireplace, and stood there, look-
ing down at the smouldering logs upon the hearth,
with an anxious air. The footman waited to be
questioned further.

"What sort of character do they give the new
horse in the stables, Andrew ? '' asked Sir Adrian^
presently.

Andrew hesitated before replying, and then

VOL. I. B

2 CONTRASTS

answered, with a somewhat exaggerated cheerfulness,
'^ Well, Sir Adrian, they say he's a good 'un, like
all the horses Mr. Belfield buys/'

" Yes, yes, he's a good judge of a horse — we
know that. But he would buy the maddest devil
that was ever foaled if he fancied the shape and
paces of the beast. I didn't like the look o£ that
new chestnut."

" You see. Sir Adrian, it's Mr. Belfield's colour.
You know, sir, as how he'll go any distance and
give any money for a handsome chestnut when he
won't look at another coloured 'oss."

" Yes, yes ; that will do, Andrew. Is her lady-
ship in the drawing-room ? "

'^ Yes, Sir Adrian," said the footman, who was
middle-aged and waxing grey, and ought long ago
to have developed into a butler, only Belfield Abbey
was so good a place that few servants cared to leave
it in the hope of bettering themselves. The butler
at Belfield was sixty, the under-butler over fifty,
and the younger of the two footmen had seen the
sun go down upon his thirty-second birthday. That
good old grey stone mansion amidst the wooded

COXTKASTS 3

bills of North Devon was a paradise for serving
men and women ; a paradise not altogether free
from the presence of Satan ; but the inhabitants
were able to bear with one Satanic element where
so much was celestiaL

Sir Adrian went to the window — a mullioned
window with richly painted glass in the upper
mullions, glass emblazoned with the armorial bear-
ings of the Belfields, and rich in the heraldic
history of aristocratic alliances. Like most Eliza-
bethan windows, there was but a small portion of
this one which opened. Adrian unfastened the
practicable lattice and put his head out to survey
the avenue along which his brother would ride
home.

There was no horseman visible in the long vista
— only the autumual colouring of elms and oaks
which alternated along the broad avenue with its
green ride at each side of the road, only the infinite
variety of fading foliage, and the glancing lights of
an October afternoon. How often had Adrian
watched his twirl brother schooling an unmanage-
able horse upon yonder turf, galloping like an

J} 2

4 CONTEASTS

infuriated centaur, and seeming almost as much a
part of his horse as if he had been made after the
fashion of that fabulous monster.

^^They must have had a good day/^ thought
Adrian. ^' He ought to have been home before
now, unless they killed further off than usual/^

He looked round at the clock over the fireplace.
Half-past five ! Not so late after all. It was only
his knowledge that his brother was riding a hot-
tempered brute that worried him.

" What a morbid fool I am/^ he said to himself
impatiently. " What an idiot I must be to give
way to this feeling of anxiety and foreboding every
time he is out of my sight for a few hours. I
know he is one of the finest horsemen in Devon-
shire, but if he rides a restive horse I am miserable.
And yet I can sympathize with his delight in con-
quering an ill-tempered brute, in proving that the
nerve and muscle of the smaller animal, backed
with brains, can prevail over size and weight and
sheer brute power. I love to watch him break a
horse, and can feel almost as keen a delight as if I
myself were in the saddle, and my hands were doing.

CONTRASTS O

the work. And then in another moment,, while I
am exulting in his victory, the womanish mood
comes over me, and I turn cold with fear. Fm
afraid my mother is right, and that nature intended
me for a woman/"*

He was pacing slowly up and down the room as
lie mused upon himself thus, and, coming face to
face with a Venetian glass which hung between
twp blocks of book-shelves at the end of the library,
he paused to contemplate his own image reflected
there.

The face he saw in the looking-glass was hand-
some enough to satisfy the most exacting self-
consciousness; but the classical regularity of the
features and the delicacy of the colouring were
allied with a refinement which verged upon
effeminacy, and suggested a feeble constitution
and a hypersensitive temperament. It was not
the face of one who could have battled against
adverse circumstances or cut his way upward
from the lowest rung of the ladder to the top.
But it was a very good face for Sir Adrian Belfield,
born in the purple, with fortune and distinction

V

6 CONTEASTS

laid up for him by a long line of stalwart ancestors-.
Such a one could afford to be delicately fashioned
and slenderly built. In such a one that air of
fragility, tending even towards sickliness, was but
an added grace. ''So interesting/' said all the
young ladies in Sir Adrian's neighbourhood, when
they descanted on the young baronet's person-
ality.

For Belfield's own eye those delicately-chiseHed
features and that ivory pallor had no charm. He
compared the face in the glass with another face
which was like it and yet unlike — the face of his
twin brother, in which youth, health and physical
power were the leading characteristics. Sir Adrian
thought of that other face, and turned from his
own image with an impatient sigh.

" Of all the evils that can befall a man I think
a sickly youth must be the worst," he said to him-
self as he left the room and went across the hall ta
his mother's favourite sitting-room, the smallest in
a suite of three drawing-rooms opening out of each
other.

Lady Belfield was sitting in a low chair near

COXTEASTS 7

the fire^ but she started up as her son opened the
door.

^' Has he come home ? ^' she asked eagerly.

" Valentine ? No, mother/' answered Adrian
quietly. " Surely, you are not anxious about
him?"

" But I am anxious. How white and tired you
look ! I am always anxious when he rides a new
horse/'' Lady Belfield exclaimed, with an agitated
air. " It is so cruel of him to buy such wretched
creatures, as if it were on purpose to torture me.
And then he laughs, and makes light of my fears.
The stud-groom told me that this chestnut has an
abominable character. He has been the death of
one man already. No one but Valentine would
have bought him. Parker begged me to prevent
the purchase, if I could. He ought to have known
very well that 1 could not/' she added bitterly,
walking to and fro in the space before the bay
window.

" Dearest mother, it is foolish to worry yourself
like this every time Valentine rides an untried
horse. You know what a horseman he is.''

\

^ CONTRASTS

'' I know that he is utterly reckless, that he
would throw away his life to gratify the whim of
the moment, that he has not the slightest con-
sideration for me.'^

"Mother, you know he loves you better than
any one else in the world/^

" Indeed I do not, Adrian. But if he does, his
highest degree of loving falls very far below my
idea of affection. Oh, why did he insist upon
buying that brute, in spite of every warning ? "

" My dear mother, while you are making your-
self a martyr, I daresay Valentine is walking that
obnoxious chestnut quietly home after a distant kill,
and he will be here presently in tremendous spirits
after a grand day's sport.^'

" Do you really think so ? Are you sure you
are not uneasy ? ■'''

" Do I look it ? '^ asked Adrian, smiling at her.

He had had to conceal his own feelings many a
Ttime in order to spare hers when some recklessness
of the dare-devil younger-born had tortured them
both with unspeakable apprehensions. Ever since
he had been old enough to be let out of leading-

CONTEASTS V

•strings Valentine had been, perpetually endangering
his limbs and his life to the torment of other people.
His boats_, his horses^ his guns^ his dogs, had been
sources of inexhaustible anxiety to Lady Belfield
and her elder son. It suited his temperament to
be always in movement and strife of some kind ;
riding an unbroken horse, sailing his yacht in a
storm, making his companions and playthings of
ferocious dogs, climbing perilous mountain peaks ;
crossing the Channel or the Bay of Biscay, just
"when any reasonable being, master of his own time,
would have avoided the passage — doing everything
in a reckless, hot-headed way, which was agony to
his raother^s tender heart.

And yet, though both mother and brother
suffered infinitely from Valentine Belfield's folly,
they both went on loving him and forgiving him
with an affection that knew no diminution, and
which he accepted with a carelessness that was
akin to contempt.

'' You look pale, and fagged, and ill," said Lady
Belfield, scrutinizing her son with anxious eyes.
^' I know you are just as frightened as I am,

10 CONTEASTS

though you hide your uneasiness for my sake.
You are always so good to me, Adrian :" this with
a tone that seemed half apologetic^ as if she would
have said,, ^' I lavish the greater half of my affec-
tion on your brother, and yet you give me so
much/^

" Dear mother, what should I be but good to
the best and kindest of parents ? ''

" Oh, but I am more indulgent to him than to
you. You have never tried me as he has done,
and yet ^^

" And yet I love him better than I love you.''
That was the unspoken ending of her speech.

She went to the window, brushing away her
tears — tears of remorseful feeling, tears of sorrow-
ing love, tears which she half knew were wasted
upon an unworthy object.

" Cheer up, mother,'' said Adrian lightly. " It
will never do for Valentine to surprise us in this
tragical mood. He will indulge his wit at our
expense all the evening. If you want him to get
rid of the chestnut say not one word about danger.
You might remark in a careless way that the

CONTRASTS 1 1

animal has an ugly head, and does not look so
well bred as his usual stamp of horse — that is a
safe thing to say to any man — and if he tells us a
long story of a battle royal with the bea'=!t, be sure
you put on your most indifferent air^ i.s if the
thing were a matter of course, and nobody's busi-
ness but his own ; and before the week is out he
will have sold the horse or swopped him for
another, and_, as he could hardly find one with a
worse character,, your feelings will gain by the
change. He is a dear fellow, but there is a vein
of opposition in him/''

" Yes, he loves to oppose me ; but after all he is
not a bad son, is he, Adrian ? "

" A bad son ! Of course not ; whoever said he
was ? ''

'^ No one : only I am afraid I spoke bitterly
about him just now. He is always keeping my
nerves on the rack by his recklessness in one way
or the other. He is so like his poor father — so
terribly like."

Her voice grew hushed and grave almost to
solemnity as she spoke of her dead husband. She

12 COxXTRASTS

had been a widow for nearly twenty years, ever
siace her twin boys were four years old. It was
the long minority which had made Sir Adrian
Belfield a rich man.

'^And yet, mother, he must be more like you
than my father/"' said Adrian, " for he and I are
alike, and every one says that I am like yon.""

^' In person, yes, he is more like me, I suppose,^'
she answered thoughtfnlly ; ^' but it is his charac-
ter which is so like his father's : the same daring
spirit — the same restless activity — the same strong
will. He reminds me of poor Montagu every day
ofhislife.'^

Sir Montagu Belfield had met his fate suddenly
amidst the darkness of a snowstorm on the ice-
bound slopes of Monte Rosa, while his young wife
and two boys were waiting and watching for his
return in a villa on Lago Maggiore. The horror
of that sudden death, the awfulness of that parting,
had left a lasting shadow upon Constance Belfield's
existence, and had given a morbid tinge to a tem-
perament that had always been hypersensitive.
That first sudden sorrow had so impressed her

CONTRASTS ] 3'

mind that there was an ever-present apprehension
of a second blow. She quailed before the iron
hand of inexorable destiny, which seemed always
raised to strike her. She had lived much alone,
devoting her time and thoughts to the rearing and
education of her sons ; and her mind had fed upon
itself in those long, quiet years, unbroken by stir-
ring events of auy kind. She had read and
thought much in those years ; she had culti-
vated her taste for music and art, and was now a
highly accomplished woman ; but her studies and
accomplishments had always occupied the second
place in her life and in her mind. Her sons were
paramount. When they were with her she
thought of nothing but them. It was only in
their absence that she consoled herself with the
books or the music that she loved so well.

Her elder son, Adrian, resembled her closely in
person and disposition. His tastes were her tastes,
and it was hardly possible for sympathy and com-
panionship between mother and son to be closer
than theirs had been. Yet, dearly as she loved
the son who had never in his life thwarted or

14 CONTKASTS

offended her^ there lurked in the secret depths of
her heart a stronger and more intense affection for
that other son, whose wayward spirit had been
ever a source of trouble or terror. The perpetual
flutter of anxiety, the alternations of hope and
fear, joy and sorrow, in which his restless soul had
kept her, had made the rebel only so much the
dearer. She loved him better for every anxious
hour, for every moment of rapture in his escape
from some needless peril, some hazardous folly.
Valentine was the perpetually straying sheep, over
whose recovery there was endless rejoicing. It
was in vain that his mother told herself that she
had reason to be angry, and tried to harden her
heart against the sinner. He had but to hold out
his arms to her, laughing at her foolish love, and
she was ready to sob out her joy upon his breast.

She went back to her chair by the fire, and sat
there pale and still, picturing to herself all the
horrors that can be brought about by an un-
governable horse. Adrian took up a newspaper
and tried to read, listening all the time for the
sound of hoofs in the avenue.

CONTRASTS 1 5

At last that sound was heard, faint in the
distance, the rhythmical sound of a trotting
horse. The mother started up and ran to the
■window, while Adrian went out to the broad,
gravelled space in front of the porch to meet the
prodigal.

He came up to the house quietly enough,
dropped lightly from his horse, and greeted his
brother with that all- conquering smile which
made up for so many offences in the popular
mind.

" Look at that brute, Adrian/' he said, pointing
his hunting-crop at the horse, which stood meekly,
with head depressed and eye dull, reeking from
crest to flank, and with blood stains about his
mouth. " I don't think he'll give me quite so
much trouble another time, but I can assure you
he was a handful even for me. I never crossed
such an inveterate puller, or such a pig-headed
beast ; but I believe he and I understaud each
other pretty well now. Yah, you brute," with a
sharp tug at the bridle.

" You might let him off without any more

16 CONTRASTS

punishment to-niglit, I think, Val/^ said Adrian
quietly ; ''he looks pretty well done/^

" He is pretty well done ; I can assure you I
haven't spared him ! "

" And you've bitted him severely enough for the
most incorrigible Tartar.'-*

" A bit of my own invention, my dear boy ; a
high port and a gag. I don't think he has had
too easy a time of it/''

" I cannot understand your pleasure in riding
an ill-conditioned brute in order to school him
into good manners by sheer cruelty/' said Adrian^
with undisguised disapproval. " I like to be on
friendly terms with my horse/''

^^My dear Adrian, your doctors and nurses
have conspired to molly-coddle you/' answered
Valentine contemptuously. " They have made
you think like a girl, and they have made
you ride like a girl. My chief delight in a
horse is to get the better of the original sin
that's in him. You may give him a warm
drink, Stokes. He has earned it/' he added,
flinging the bridle to the groom, who had come

GOXTKASTS 17

from the stables at the sound of Mr. Belfield's.
return.

'' Had you a good run ? '' asked Adrian,, as they
went into the house.

" Capital j and that beggar went in first-rate
style when once he and I got to understand each
other. We killed on Hagley Heath after a ripping,
half-hour over the grass.^^

" Come and tell mother all about it^ Val.''''

" Has she been worrying herself about the
chestnut ? She was almost in tears this morning
when she found I was going to ride him."

'' She was getting a little uneasy just before you
came home/^ answered Adrian lightly.

That scornful glance of his brother's eye
wounded him to the quick. It implied a con-
temptuous acceptance of a too loving solicitude.
It showed the temper of a spoiled child who takes
all a mother's care as a matter of course, and ha*
not one touch of gratitude or genuine responsive^^
affection.

The two brothers went to the drawing-room
side by side. Like and unlike. Yes, that was

VOL. I. C

18 CONTRASTS

the description wliicli best indicated the close re-
semblance and the marked difference between
them. In the form of the head and face, in the
outline of the features,, they resembled each other
as closely as ever twin brothers have done since
Nature produced these human doublets ; but in
colouring and in expression the brothers were
curiously unlike. The elder one had the pallid
tints of ill-health, an almost waxen brow, hair of
a pale auburn, features refined to attenuation, eyes
of a dark violet, eyebrows delicately pencilled,
lashes long and drooping like those of a girl, lips
of faintest carmine. It was only his intellectual
power and innate manliness of feeling which re-
deemed Adrian's face from effeminacy; but mind
was stronger than matter, and here the brave,
calm spirit dominated the weakly frame.

Valentine was altogether differently constituted.
His head, though shaped like Adrian^s, was larger,
broader at the base, and lower at the temples —
a head in which animal propensities predomi-
nated. His complexion was of a dark olive,
browned by exposure to all kinds of weather;

COXTEASTS 19

his eyes were of deepest brown — splendid eyes
considered from a purely physical standpoint,
large, and full, and brilliant, with a wondrous
capacity for expressing all the passions of which
self-willed manhood is capable. Nose, mouth,
and chin were formed in the same lines as in
that other face, but each feature was larger
and mere boldly cut. The dark hair was
thicker than Adrian's, coarser in texture. Her-
cules might Isave had just such a head of hair,
bristling in short crisp curves about the low fore-
head. That likeness and yet unlikeness between
the twins was a psychological wonder to contem-
plative observers and theorists of all kinds.

Lady Bel field came to meet her sons as they
entered the room. It was only by the most
strenuous effort at self-control that she suj)pressed
all signs of emotion and laid her hand calmly on
the sportsman's shoulder, looking at him with a
happy smile.

" "Well, Valentine, had you a good day on the
,chestnut ? " she asked lightly.

" Splendid. That horse will make a first-rate

c2

20 CONTRASTS

hunter, in spite of you and Parker. Did you see
him from the window as I brought him home ? ''

'^YeS; I was watching you. I don't think he
is quite up to your usual standard, Val. Hasn^t
he rather an ugly head ? ''

'' That's just like a woman/' exclaimed Valen-
tine, with a disgusted air. '^ Her eye is always
keen on prettiness, as if it were the Alpha and
Omega. He hasn't a racer's head, if that's what
you mean. He has a good serviceable head, that
will bear a good deal of pulling about — rather a
plain head, if you will have it. But a horse-
doesn't jump with his head, or gallop on his
head, does he ? "

^' My dear Val, if you are satisfied with
him ''

" Satisfied," cried Valentine, looking as black
as thunder, " I tell you I am delighted with him.
He is out and away the best hunter in the stables
— beats that gingerbread piebald mare you gave
me on my last birthday hollow."

" And yet I have heard people say the pie-
bald is the prettiest horse in the county."

CONTRASTS 21

" There you go again — prettiness, all prettiness.
The piebald was never well up to my weight —
oh, she carries me fairly enough, I know that —
but she's over-weighted. You should have given
her to Adrian " — with a sneer.

" Adrian can afford to buy his own horses/^
answered the mother, with an affectionate look at
the elder born. " The only birthday gift he will
take from me is a bunch of early violets/'

^' All your life is full of gifts to me, mother/^
.said Adrian. '^Whenever you're tired of Cin-
derella I'll take her off your hands, Val/'

'' The deuce you will,'' cried Valentine. " You'll
find her a trifle too much for you. It's like the
.old saying about the goose, dear boy. She's too
much for you and not enough for me. She wants
work, Adrian, not gentle exercise. She was never
meant for a lady's palfrey."

Adrian sighed as he turned away from his
brother, and seated himself at lady Belfield's tea-
table, which had been furnished with due regard
to a hungry hunting man, too impatient to wait
for the eight o'clock dinner. That taunt of

22 CONTRASTS

Valentine's stung him as such taunts — and they
were frequent — always did sting. He keenly felt
his shortcomings as a horseman and as an athlete.
In all those manly accomplishments in which his
brother excelled, fragile health had made Adrian a
failure. The doctors had warned him that to ride
hard would be to endanger his life. He might
amble along the country lanes, nay, even enjoy a
slow canter over down or common ; might see
a little hunting sometimes in an elderly gentle-
man's fashion, waiting about upon the crest of a
hill to watch the hounds working in the hollow
below, or jogging up and down beside the cover
while they were drawing ; but those dashing flights
across country which so intoxicate the souls of
men were not for him.

^' You have a heart that will work for you very
fairly to a good old age, Sir Adrian, if you will
but use it kindly/'' said the physician, after careful
auscultation, "but you must take no liberties with
it. There are plenty of ways in which a man may
enjoy the country without tearing across it at a
mad gallop. There is fly-fishing, for instance. I

CONTRASTS 23

am sure with that noble trout stream in your own
park you must be fond of fly-fishing/''

'^ I cannot imagine anything tamer than fly-
fishing in one's own park/' replied Adrian, ' with a
touch of impatience. ^' Salmon-fishing in Scot-
land or in Norway "

^' Too fatiguing — too strenuous a form of plea-
sure for a man of your delicate constitution. A
little trout-fishing in mild spring weather "

" Merci. I must live without sport, Dr. Jason.
After all^ I have my library, and I have the
good fortune to be fond of books, which my
brother detests. ^^

" I should have guessed as much/^ said Jason
blandly ; " Mr. Belfield has not the outlook of a
reading man. lie has that hardy penetrating
gaze which denotes the sportsman — straight, keen,
business-like, rapid,, yet steady. What a wonder-
ful specimen of manhood. I think I never saw
a finer young man — and so like you^ Sir Adrian."

^- Is it not something of a mockery to tell me
that after you have sounded this narrow chest of
mine ? "

24 CONTRASTS

" Oh, there are constitutional divergencies.
Nature has been kinder to your brother in the
matter of thew and sinew; but the likeness be-
tween you is really remarkable, all the more re-
markable perhaps on account of that constitutional
difference. And I have no doubt there is a very
close aflPection between you — that sympathetic
bond which so often unites twin children .'''

" Yes, I am very fond of him/'' answered Adrian
dreamily. ^' Fond of him, do I say — it is more
than mere fondness. I am a part of himself, feel
with him in almost all things, am angry with
him, sorry with him, glad with him ; and yet
there is antagonism. There is the misery of it.
There are times when I could quarrel with him
more desperately than with any other man upon
earth ; and yet I declare to you, doctor, he is as
it were my second self.^^

" I can readily believe it. Sir Adrian. Who is
there with whom we are so often inclined to
quarrel as with ourselves ? I know there is a
damned bad fellow in me whom I should often
like to kick.''

COKTEASTS 25

Dr. Jason Tvound up -with a boisterous laugh^
and felt that he had earned the twenty-pound
note which Sir Adrian slipped modestly into his
comfortable palm. Joviality was the fashionable
physician's particular line ; and a case must be
bad indeed in which he would not venture to be
jovial. Were there but three weeks of life in a
patient, Dr. Jason would take leave of him with
a jocosity which was cheering enough to help the
patient on a fourth week. And this case of Sir
Adrian's offered no reason for dolefuluess. A
fragile body and a sensitive temperament, a life
that might be prolonged to three score and ten,
or might expire in a moment, in the very morn-
ing of youth, like the flame of a candle.

'' Are you ever going to give me my tea,
mother ? " asked Valentine impatiently ; ^^ I am ab-
solutely famishing.^^

" My dearest boy, everythiDg is ready for you.^'

Valentine surveyed the low tea-table with a
sweeping glance before he sat down, and then
strolled across to the bell and rang violently.
'^ Those stupid fellows always forget the coguac,"

26 CONTKASTS

he said, as he dropped into a chair. " I dare say
if one of them came home after seven hours in
the saddle^ he^d want something stronger than tea/'

^^ My dear Valentine, I am sure it is a very
bad habit to poison your tea with brandy,''^ said
Lady Belfield, with a distressed look.

''' Spare me the customary sermon, mother. It
is a much worse habit to lecture me every time
I take a spoonful of brandy. It will end by my
going straight to my dressing-room after hunting;,
where I can enjoy a stiff glass of grog with my
feet on the hobs, and with nobody to preach tem-
perance."

" You know I love to have you here, Yal," said
the mother, laying her delicate hand upon her
son's roughened wrist^ and looking at him with
ineffable tenderness.

'' So be it, and in that case don't let's have
any teetotal sermons because of a homoeopathic
dose of cognac."

The footman brought a small decanter, and
Mr. Belfield half filled his cup with cognac
before his mother poured out the tea. The table

COXTEASTS 27

was liberally furnished with varieties of cakes and
muffins, anchovy sandwiches, and dainty little
arrangements of foie gras in golden tinted rolls,
which Mr. Belfield snapped up as if he Lad been
a Newfoundland dog eating biscuits, ills mother
was delighted to see him in such good appetite,
and sipped her tea with the sere 11 est air, although
the smell of the brandy in Valentine^s reeking
cup almost sickened her. These tea-drinkings
after the hunt were her delight. To sit at her
low table, with a son on each side of her, to linger
long over the social meal, was the most delicious
relaxation of her days. She asked no higher
pleasure. Her evenings were often lonely, for
Valentine hated sedentary occupation and intellec-
tual dawdling of all kinds, and generally dragged
his brother off to the billiard-room directly after
dinner. If there were men visitors in the house
for Valentine to play with, Adrian would some-
times stay in the drawing-room with his mother;
but he was always at his brother's beck and call.
The influence of the younger over the elder was
supreme.

•.'28 CONTPtASTS

" I tMok we are like Jacob and Esau, and that
my father must have willed upon his death-bed
that the elder should serve the younger/'"' said
Adrian. ^^ I can but fulfil my destiny/^

The mother sighed and submitted, as she had
always submitted, to Fate in the person of her
sons. She had lived for them and in them so
long that she had almost ceased to have individual
desires or personal likings. Everything in house
and stables and gardens and park and home-farm
was regulated and governed by the inclinations of
the brothers, albeit Lady Belfield was tenant for
life in the mansion and its immediate surround-
ings. It happened somehow, almost imperceptibly,
that in all things whereof she was mistress the
inclinations of the younger son dominated those
of the elder. Adrian was at once too weak and
too proud to struggle against that overpowering
influence.

" My dear mother, the place is yours. It is
for you to decide," he would say, when Valentine
had hotly maintained his own opinion with scorn-
ful depreciation of everybody else's ideas, treating

CONTEASTS 29'

architects, landscape-gardeners, and nurserymen
as if Nature had stamped them so obviously as
fools that it would be mere hypocrisy to treat
them with the respect due to reason and good
sense. " It is for you to decide, my dear mother/'
said Adrian, deserting in the heat of the battle ;
and the upshot was inevitable. Valentine had
everything his own way.

How could two gentle, yielding natures stand
firm against the force of an indomitable will and
a boundless self-esteem ? It was natural to Adrian
to doubt his own judgment, to depreciate his
own capacity; but Valentine had believed in.
himself from his cradle, had asserted himself to
his wet nurse, and had reigned supreme ever
since.

Happily for the household, from an aesthetic
point of view, Mr. Belfield's taste was better than
his temper; his judgment was sounder than his
morality. If he erred, it was on the side of
strength rather than weakness ; he inclined to the
brilliant and striking in all things, was in favour
of large effects, bold lines, vivid colouring. There

so CONTKASTS

were those who shuddered at the first aspect of
Mr. Belfield's billiard-room, with its scarlet
draperies against black oak, its Japanese black
and gold, its Rouen pottery and Neapolitan
brass — there were those who declared that Mr.
Belfield was the worst-dressed young man in
London — but Ptoyal Academicians had admired
the arrangement of his den, and women liked his
style of dress because it was picturesque.

"A picturesque man must be a cad/^ said
Mr. Simper, who would have expired sooner than
wear a hat with a brim the infinitesimal part of
an inch wider or narrower than the Prince of
Wales's, or a check that had not the stamp of
equal authority. " A man who makes himself
different from other men is not a gentleman. No
gentleman ever courted observation.''^

It may be that Valentine Belfield rather defied
than courted observation. He dressed to please
himself, wore his hair long or short as his fancy
prompted, would wear a low hat in Bond Street in
the height of the season, and scowl upon observers
with supreme contempt for their opinion. He

CONTEASTS 31

had his clothes cut and fashioned as it pleased
him, and had never been known to accept an
opinion from his tailor — not even the West-end
tailor's final argument, " I wear this pattern my-
self, sir."

A man with a taste and a temper of his own
is generally admired and looked up to by other
men. Mr. Belfield had been the centre of an
aristocratic little circle at Trinity, his rooms the
favourite resort of some of the best-born and
wildest young men at the University. Needless
to say that he had not worked, that he had missed
chapel, and otherwise offended against the laws of
the college; that he had worn out the patience
of college tutors and college coaches ; and that,
with a reputation for first-rate talents, he had
contrived to place himself in the very lowest
rank of students. Uninfluenced by the shades of
the mighty dead — heedless of Bacon or Newton,
Byron or Macaulay, Whewell or Thackeray — he
had gone his idle way, drinking, rioting, gambling,
carousing at unholy hours, insulting the authori-
ties, flirting with barmaids, violating every rule

32 CONTRASTS

and regulation of that venerable pile. He had
disappointed his mother's ambition, and drawn
heavily upon her purse. His return to Belfield
Abbey was a signal for the commencement of a
rain of Cambridge tradesmen's bills and lawyers'
letters^ which for the next twelve months steadily
descended upon the house.

There were expostulations and explanations, tears
from gentle Lady Belfield, sullen defiance from
Valentine^ generous interposition on the part of
Adrian, and finally the Cambridge traders, with but
a few egregious exceptions, were paid their demands
in full, which was more than any of them deserved.
Lady Belfield found half the money out of her
private fortune, and Adrian insisted upon providing
the other half.

His own career at Trinity had been curiously
different from that of his brother. His weaker
health had shut him out from all the pleasures of
athleticism. He had been known neither as a
hunting man nor a rowing man. He had never
been heard of at Newmarket. He had read
assiduously, and had taken honours. He had

CONTRASTS 33

cultivated a few friends, but those were young men
of studious habits like his own. He had lived so
secluded a life that his presence in the college had
only been known to the men of his own quadrangle
and to the librarian^ who saw him sitting in his
own particular nook near Byron^s statue on many
a morning when other men were on the river or in
the hunting- field.

For Adrian, Trinity had meant seclusion and
earnest work ; for Valentine, college life had been
a long holiday, a riotous, reckless indulgence of
youthful pleasure and youthful passions, a bad
beginning for any life ; and yet he had contrived
amidst all his self-indulgence to leave Cambridge
with the reputation of having been one of the most
popular undergraduates in that great college of
Trinity. He had flung away his money with a
royal munificence, knowing that it was not his to
fling. He had been good-natured after his fashion ;
he talked well, had a handsome face and com-
manding appearance, kept his rooms open to all
the fast young men of his time, lent his horses
freely till they went lame, and had a box of irre-

VOL. I. D

^4 CONTEASTS

proacliable cigars always open on his table. For
one man who knew and liked Adrian there were
twenty who affected to be warmly attached to
Valentine. What their friendship was worth, only
the after-time could show. At present he was
tolerably independent of all friendship outside
Belfield Abbey.

He was six- and- twenty, and had been in love,
or had fancied himself in love, twenty times.
Indeed he had professed to have outgrown the
capacity for loving.

'^ Women are so monotonous," he said in one of
those gushes of confidence with which he some-
times honoured his brother. He loved talking
about himself, and Adrian was his most sympathetic
listener. ^' Women are all alike. Upon my soul,
Adrian, if you knew how little difference there
is between the idiosyncracies of a peeress and a
barmaid, you would not wonder that a man who
has had a few adventures soon begins to feel that
love is played out."

'^ My dear Val, I donH think you know much
about peeresses, and I hope you know next

CONTEASTS 35

to notMng about barmaids/^ replied Adrian
quietly.

It was on tbe evening after Valentine's first day
on the chestnut. The brothers had retired to the
billiard-room after dinner, and were sitting on each
side of the wide old fireplace, too lazy to play, and
luxuriating in the glow of the beech-logs and that
kind of careless, easy-going conversation which has
neither beginning, middle, nor end.

" My dear fellow, that shows how little you
know about the other half of yourself. I have not
reached my present age without an occasional
flirtation with a peeress, and I have been passion-
ately in love with a barmaid. The loveliest
woman I ever met was a girl at an inn near
Trumpington. What hogsheads of beer I have
consumed as a sacrifice to her charms. Once I
thought she loved me, and that I might have been
wild enough to marry her. And now I am told
she is singing patriotic songs, dressed as Britannia,
at an East-end music hall."'

"You know, Val, that a disreputable marriage
would break your mother's heart."

D 2

36 CONTRASTS

*^ Don't I tell you the thing is off. I am not
going to break anybody's heart — for the sake of
that lovely deceiver on the Trumpington Eoad/'

"But you are so reckless, so heedless of con-
sequences."

"Because I live for myself, and for the
enjoyment of the present hour/' answered Valen-
tine, in his deep strong voice, lying back in his low
chair, and slowly puffing at a cigar.

How handsome he looked in that easy graceful
attitude, the very embodiment of unblemished
youth and physical power. It was but the highest
type of sensual beauty — soul and mind went for
but little in the well-cut face, the bold flashing
glance ; but yet there was some kind of charm that
was not wholly physical — some touch of brightness,
mirth, and courage which attracted the regard of
men, and won the love of women. The creature was
not wholly clay, albeit flesh predominated over spirit,

" For what else should a man live but the pre-
sent ? ^^ said Valentine, continuing the argument,
" Who can count upon the future — who cares for
the past ? ''

CONTKASTS 37

" Conscience and memory both care for the
|)ast.-'"'

" Conscience is a bugbear which the parsons have
invented for us ; and memory is a morbid habit of
the mind which a healthy man should discourage.
I have no memory/'

" Oh, Valentine ! ''

" Well, I suppose if I were to sit down and try
back I could remember most things that have
happened to me since my cradle/' answered his
brother lightly ; " but I never cultivate my memory.
I make it a rule to ignore the past. Sally Withers,
ilie Trumpington barmaid, jilted me. I blot her
out of my existence. Lady Pimlico flirted with
me — courted me, made a fool of me — and then
deliberately dropped me. She is gone. Do you
suppose I sit and brood over the summer days we
spent together on his Lordship's house-boat at
Henley — when we sat in a corner under a Japanese
umbrella, hiding ourselves — as much as ostriches
are hidden — between two great Majolica tubs of
palms, and made ourselves conspicuously idiotic?
<0r that I ever dream of the nights at the opera,

38 CONTRASTS

when we were alone together in her ladyship's box ?
No^ Adrian. I make it my business to forget all
such twaddle. Life is too short for memory of the
past or forecast of the future. Carpe diem, dear
boy. Gather your roses while you may. Be sure
I mean to gather mine."

" Valentine,, I verily believe you were created
without a conscience."

'^ I was. You have the conscience, I the capa-
city for enjoyment. We are but two sides of one
character."

( 39 )

CHAPTER II.

A WILD IRISH GIRL

A WEEK after that first day with the chestnut,,
Valentine Belfield had gone off to Paris at an
hour's warning to accompany a college friend who
was going on to winter at Monte Carlo^ with an
infallible system which he and a mathematical
friend had invented two or three years before in
their midnight reveries at Trinity. Valentine told
his mother nothing about the system or the in-
tended trip to Monte Carlo. He only told her that
he felt hipped and wanted a change^ and that as
Touchwood was going to Paris he had decided on
going with him and making a round of the
theatres.

" The drainage is so dreadful in Paris ; I am
always afraid of fever," said Lady Belfield, looking
intensely anxious.

" My dear mother, we shall go to the Bristol.'^

40 A WILD IRISH GIRL

'' And the hotels are so horribly high. They
will be putting you on a fourth storey perhaps,
and if there were a fire "

" There never has been a fire at a good Conti-
nental hotel within my recollection/' answered
Valentine lightly. " Can't you suggest any other
calamity, or any other peril — a cyclone, an earth-
quake, an insurrection, the fall of the Vendome
Column. I don't suppose they fastened it very
securely when they put it up after the Commune.^'

'' Dear Val, you always laugh at me.''

*^ How can I help it, mother, when you give me
such opportunities ? There, kiss me, dearest, and
good-bye. Lucas will have packed my portmanteau
hj this time. There's the dog-cart. Je me sauve ! "
And, with a hurried embrace, he ran oflP to the hall,
his mother following to get the last look at him as
he sprang into the cart, took the reins from the
smart young groom, drove round the circular sweep,
and spun into the avenue at a pace that threatened
a catastrophe before he could reach the lodge.

He was gone, and Sir Adrian and his mother
settled down into that placid and studious existence

A WILD IRISH GIRL 41

which suited them both so well. Lady Belfield
divided her time between the newest books and the
most classical music. She played Scarlatti and
Bach. She read Browning and Herbert Spencer.
She dawdled away an occasional hour in her flower
gardens^ which were lovely ; she went the round of
greenhouses and hothouses, and talked to her gar-
deners, who were numerous, and who all adored
her. She moved among them as a queen whose
approving smile is like a ray of winter sunshine.
She went every day to the stables and petted Valen-
tine's hunters, with whom she was on the most
familiar terms. Even the new chestnut, although
he set his ears back when she opened ihe door of
his box, suffered her to go in and pat him, and
accepted a lump of sugar from her palm, after sniff-
ing at it suspiciously for a minute or so.

Life was full of interest for her without going
beyond her own park gates ; and then there were
duty drives to be taken almost every day, and calls
to be returned. There was a regular exchange
and barter in the way of visiting to be maintained,
though Lady Belfield rarely accepted a dinner in-

42 A WILD IRISH GIRL

vitatioD, or adorned a ball by her graceful presence
and her fine family diamonds. She went to
friendly tea-drinkings and tennis parties^, and so
maintained local friendships. She liked a free-
and-easy visiting, which did not oblige her to take
ofi" her bonnet or put on her diamonds. Genoa,
velvets and Mechlin flounces hung idle ia her
wardrobe. She liked to dine alone with her boys,
in a tea-gown_, and to read or play in the peaceful
solitude of her drawing-room. Life taken at this
gentle pace seemed never too long or too mono-'
tonous. She sighed for no change in an existence
which realized all her wishes.

People wondered much that so pretty and
attractive a woman should have escaped a second
marriage. But to Lady Belfield a second marriage
would have seemed a crime.

'^ I loved my husband, and I adore my sons,"
she said. " Yv^hat ^oom is there left for any other
affection ? ''

*' But you ought to marry, my dear," said her
friend, Mrs. Freeman tie, who was distinctly practical.
" A husband would be immensely useful to you

A WILD IRISH GIRL 43-

and those boys. He would look after your timber
and your tenants, and would launcb your sons —
get them elected at the proper clubs, and all that
kind of thing. He would be a steward without a
salary.^^

Constance Belfield did not contemplate the
matter from this common-sense point of view.
Second marriage in the mother of a family she
considered domestic treason. And when Valentine
was troublesome, when the outside world deemed
that a second husband, a man of strong will and
clear brain, would have been invaluable to the lad s
mother, Constance rejoiced that there was no one
but herself to whom the sinner need be account-
able, that she had the indisputable right of pardon-
ing all his follies and paying all his debts.

The intervention of a hard-headed man of busi-
ness at such times would have tortured her.

'* My poor foolish boy/' she said to herself,
weeping in secret over the young man's delinquen-
cies. " Thank God, there is no one to lecture
him, no one to complain of him, no one to make
him worse by hard measures.^''

44 A WILD IRISH GIRL

She was not altogether foolish, although she
erred on the side of soft-heartedness ; and she
knew that Valentine^s career had up to this poiot
been unsatisfactory^, but she went on hoping that
all would come right by-and-by ; that these evil
ways meant no more than the sowing of those wild
oats which she had been told most young men
were doomed to scatter before they sobered and
settled into propriety.

Adrian was exceptionally steady. For him there
were no wild oats to be sown. He had been his
mother's comfort and mainstay from his very child-
hood ; thoughtful, attentive, devoted, her com-
panion and counsellor when he was in Eton
jackets. His nature seemed almost passionless.
She never remembered to have seen him violently
angry. She had never suspected him of being in
love. He loved her, and he had an intense sym-
pathy with his brother; but she doubted if his
heart had ever gone forth beyond that narrow home
circle. His tastes and inclinations in all respects
resembled her own. He loved music, of which she
was passionately fond, and he was no mean per-

A WILD IRISH GIRL A-j

former upon the organ and piano. He had his
mother's subdued taste in colours, her scrupulous
refinement and orderly habits.

And now they two, mother and son, were alone
together by the hearth, in the long November even-
ings, while Valentine and his friend Touchwood
went the round of the theatres in Paris, and
danced at strange dancing places, and matured their
scheme for breaking the bank at Monte Carlo.

" Mother, did you know that Morcomb was let?"
asked Sir Adrian, as he scanned the county paper
at breakfast one morning, a few days after Valen-
tine's departure.

'' What, at last ? No, indeed, I have heard
nothing about it."

*^ Then you have not been with any of your
gossips for some time, I suppose. Here is the
paragraph. ' Morcomb, Lord Lupton's fine old
family mansion, has been recently let furnished to
Colonel Deverill, of The Rock, near Kilrush^ county
Clare. Colonel Deverill is a keen sportsman, has
been master of foxhounds in his own county, and
will doubtless prove an acquisition to the neigh-

,46 A WILD lEISH GIEL

bourhood/ Why, mother, how wonderstruck
you look. Do you know anything about this
Deverill?"

" A good deal, Adrian/^

" Nothing unpleasant, I hope/^

" No, dear ; but it was just a little startling to
Hear that he had settled so near us. His father
and mv father were bosom friends, and Gerald
Deverill and I used to see a good deal of each
other when he was a young man about town, in
one of the household regiments. I don^t mind
telling you that he wanted to marry me in those
days, and as he was a wild, self-willed young fellow,
he made himself extremely troublesome. I was
very young, you see, Adrian, and I was almost
afraid of him. And then your father came, and I
knew I was safe. I think it was that sweet feeling
of being protected by his love that first made me
fond of him — and then— and then — ah, Adrian,
how fond I was of him, and how good he was —
Qjily — only a little self-willed like your brother.
But he was always good to me/"*

The tears came into her eyes as she thought of

A WILD IRISH GIRL 47

that brief wedded life, whicli had been all love,
though it had not been all sunshine.

'^ This Deverill must be a disagreeable fellow/
said Adrian. '' I am sure I shall dislike him/''

" Oh, no, you won't, Adrian. He is not a bad
man, by any means. He was very wild in those days,
drank a good deal, I'm afraid, and was altogether
in a bad way ; but he married a year or two after
my marriage and sobered down, I was told. He
has lived a good deal on the Continent of late years,
and he and I have never met since your father's
death.''

" Whom did he marry ? '^

^^ Oh, a nobody, 1 believe — a girl with a little
money, which he spent in a year or two. Her
father was something in the City, a merchant or a
broker, I think they said ; and they lived in one of
the new districts on the far-away side of Kensington
Gardens. I have heard of them from time to
time ; but I have never seen him since his marriage,
and I never saw his wife."

'^ She was not in your set, then."

" My dear Adrian, her people were in trade,"

48 A WILD IRISH GIRL

answered Lady Belfield naively. '' I suppose you
ouglit to call on Colonel Deverill/^

" I can hardly avoid it without being uncivil ;
but if you dislike the notion of seeing him here I
won't call. He will understand, no doubt, why I
don't."

" And he might think that I was afraid of meet-
ing him. I would not have him suppose that for
the world. No, Adrian, I should like you to call
on him, just in the ordinary way. You can refer
en passant to his early acquaintance with my
family, not affecting to know that he was ever any
more to me than a friend. And you will find out
about his surroundings. His wife died some years
ago; but I believe there are daughters. If they
seem nice girls I might call on them. If not -''

'^ I may limit the matter to asking Colonel
Deverill to a bachelor dinner — eh, mother ? ^^

" I shouldn't like to be obliged to take up girls
with Continental ideas and fast manners ; and I
fear these poor girls must have been sadly
neglected."

^^I'm afraid I'm not much of a judge of the

A WILD IRISH GIKL 4^

species girl, but I'll give you as exact a report as I
can, mother/' answered Adrian gaily.

He was not in any hurry to set out upon his ad-
venture. He still retained a good deal of his boyish
shyness, and a visit to strangers was of all his
social obligations the most obnoxious ; so he let
some pleasant, studiously idle days slip by before
he found the weather good enough for a drive to
Morcomb, and then he girded up his loins, looked
out his least damaged hat from the array of well-
brushed felt and beaver in the hall, ordered his
phaeton, and turned his face resolutely towards
Lord Lupton's Park, which was a good five miles
from Belfield Abbey.

The stable clock chimed the half-hour after two
as he drove down the avenue. He would be at
Morcomb at about three, which was the prescribed
hour for ceremonial calls in that part of the world.
Intimates might drop in at five and join in a
friendly tea-drinking round a cosy little table ;
but for your visit of ceremony, patronage, or re-
spect, three o'clock was the hour. Unsustained by
luncheon, unrefreshed by tea, the visitor must face

VOL. L E

50 A WILD IRISH GIEL

his host or hostess in the awfulness of an empty
drawing-room, prepared to converse vivaciously
about nothing particular for at least twenty
-minutes.

Morcomb Park was not particularly well kept,
Park and home farm had been let to the local
butcher for some years, and his cattle grazed within
twenty yards of the drawing-room windows. There
-was an old-fashioned garden on one side of the
house, and there was a spacious and lofty conserva-
tory, which in Lord Lupton's prosperous days had
^een one of the glories of the neighbourhood ;
-and all the rest was pasture, upon which Mr. Pol-
lack^s oxen and sheep fed and fattened. Gardens
and conservatory had both been neglected since his
lordship's chronic asthma had obliged him to
winter at Nice, and the house had been either empty
or in the occupation of strangers. Those village
wiseacres who pretend to know a great deal more
than their neighbours, declared that chronic asthma
was only another name for impecuniosity, and that
Lord Lupton turned his back upon Morcomb because
he could not afford to live in his own country.

A WILD IRISH GIRL 51

Every one knew that poor Lady Lupton adored
the place, and was never really happy anywhere else.

A succession of tenants had occupied Morcomb
within the last ten years, and had been looked
upon more or less coldly by the surrounding
families. There is always a shade of suspicion in
the rustic mind attaching to the people who
occupy furnished mansions ; an idea that if they
were all that they ought to be they would have
houses of their own. If they are rich the neigh-
bourhood wonders where their money comes from.
If they are foreigners the neighbourhood is sure
they are not all they ought to be. Madame is a
£i-devant opera-singer ; Monsieur has a talent for
card-sharping. If they are Americans, and scatter
their money in the lavish Transatlantic style,
^opinion is against them from the outset. The only
people who are kindly looked upon in this con-
nection are those whose names and belongings are
plainly set forth in Debrett, and who have houses
of their own in other counties. To these are the
jarms of friendship opened.

Colonel Deverill was such a one. The Rock,

E 2

52 A WILD IKISII GTllL

Kilrush, was his ostensible dwelling-place ; and,-
though his reputation was by no means untar-
nished, he was known to be a gentleman by birth,
and to have begun life in a crack regiment. The
two facts, that he was an Irishman and had lived
a good deal on the Continent, counted naturally in
his disfavour, and the county looked upon him
with a qualified approval.

The house was half a mile from the lodge, and a-
fairly kept drive wound along the base of a low
hill, athwart undulating pasture land, dotted here
and there with oaks and elms, and clusters of
ancient hawthorns, and offered Sir Adrian a view
of Mr Pollack's beeves cropping the scanty sward
of late autumn. On the crest of the hill stood the
mansion, a classic villa about a hundred years old,
much after the manner of the Club House at
Hurlingham, with portico and pediment of white
stone, and uniform rows of long French windows.
A large bay window, broken out forty years before
by an unsestlietic Lord Lupton, at the end of the
south wing, was the only relief to that faultless
uniformity.

A WILD IRISH CURL 53

There were no servants about. Sir Adrian's
;groom pulled a bell^ which rang with startling
loudness a long way ofif, pealing with a determined
-clamour as if it would never have done ringing.
Sir Adrian alighted^ ashamed of the noise he had
caused to be made^ flung the reins to his groom,
and went up the steps. The hall doors were open,
and a girFs voice cried, " Your shot, Leo,^^ as he
approached the threshold.

This was embarrassing, but the situation became
even more involved when another voice exclaimed,
" That bell means another county family come to
stare and catechize. Je m'esquive.^'

But before the speaker could escape, Adrian had
jcrossed the threshold, and was standing, hat in
hand, face to face with two young ladies, dressed
as he had never seen girls dressed before, and both
of them a great deal prettier than any girls his
memory suggested to him by way of comparison.

" Miss Deverill, I thiuk,^' he said to one of the
-damsels. " My name is Belfield, and I must apolo-
gize most humbly for bursting in upon you in this
manner.^'

54 A ^Y1LD IRISH GIRL

'^ Oh^ but you could not possibly help it. If
architects will plan houses with billiard-rooms on
the doorsteps, the occupants must pay the penalty/"
answered the elder sister gaily. "We are very
glad to see you. Sir Adrian. This is my sister.
Miss Deverill, and I am Mrs. Baddeley. I am'
sorry my father is out this afternoon. He would
have been charmed to make your acquaintance.
He has talked tremendously about Lady Belfield,
whom he had the pleasure of knowing quite
intimately when they were both young. Will you
come to the drawing-room, or shall we sit and talk
here ? Helen and I make this our den for the
most part. You see we have no brothers to dispute
the ground with us.^^

" I would much rather stay here,^^ said Adrian.

Mrs. Baddeley had flung aside her cue while she
was talking, and Miss Deverill, who had been
sitting on the table when he first beheld her, was-
now standing beside it, flicking the chalkmarks off
the cloth with her handkerchief. She was a tall
slim girl, in a sage-coloured velveteen gown, with a
short waist and a broad yellow sash, and with her

A WILD IFJSn GIEL 0£>

reddish auburn hair, which was superb in hue and
texture and quantity, falling down her back in a
rippling mass of light and shadow. Her gown was
short enough to show a perfect instep and a
slender ankle, set off by Cromwell shoes and yellow
silk stockings. The married sister wore an olive
plush tea gown over an Indian red petticoat, red
shoes and stockings, and her hair, which was-
darker than Helen s, rolled up in a great untidy
mass, and fastened with a red ribbon. The style
and costume were altogether different from the
regulation afternoon attire in this part of the
world, which was generally severe — a tailor g-jwn
and a neat linen collar being the rule.

Had Sir Adrian seen this kind of picturesque
toilette in Bedford Park, on the person of a plain
girl, he would have regarded it with infinite disgust,
for he had all the masculine love of neatness and
subdued colouring : but both these women were so
pretty, both were so graceful, with the easy grace
of perfect self-assurance, that gracious air of
women who are accustomed to be admired, ap-
proved, and made much of on all occasions, that.

56 A WILD IRISH GIRL

had they been clad in such calicoes as Manchester
•manufactures to meet the crude desires of the un-
tutored African^ he must have not the less admired
them.

There was a large fire blazing in the "wide
grate, and there were three or four delightful arm-
chairs (of draped and cushioned bamboo) about the
hearth^ and a scarlet Japanese table^ suggestive of
afternoon tea. Those chairs, with their vivid reds
and yellows, and tassels and fringes, and Liberty
«ilk handkerchiefs tied about them, had never be-
longed to Lord Lupton, whose furniture had all
been bought in the reign of William the Fourth.
Chairs and table were an importation of the
Deverills, Adrian saw at a glance.

They all three sat down in front of the fire-
place, while the outer doors were shut by the
butler, who had come in a leisurely way to see if
that loud pealing of the hall bell were a matter
requiring his personal attention. He closed the
double doors, put a fresh log on the fire, and dis-
creetly retired.

" And now tell us all about Lady Belfield,'^ said

A WILD IRISH GIRL 0/

the married sister^ percliing her feet upon the old
brass fender, and affording Adrian a full view of
arched insteps and Louis heels. " Is she quite
well, and is she as lovely as she was when she was
young ?^'

" That might be saying too much — I mean about
the loveliness/^ answered Adrian, smiling ; " but
to my mind my mother is the prettiest woman of
her age that I have ever seen. Of course^ a son
is partial. As for health, well, yes, I think I may
say she is quite well. Would you like her to drive
over and see you ?"

" Of course we should. We are dying to see
her," said Helen, who was not at all shy. " If
English etiquette were not written in blood, like
the laws of Draco, we should have made father
take us to Lady Belfield the day after we arrived
here."

'' You don^t appreciate British conventionali-
ties?"

" I detest everything British, present company
of course excepted. We have always had such good
times in France and Italy; and as for Switzer-

0» A WILD IRISH GIRL

land, I feel as if I had been born there. I am
longing to be at Vevey, or at one of those dear
little villages on Lake Lucerne, now, when your
horrid English winter is beginning. I can't think
why father persisted in bringing us here. It is-
almost as bad as The Eock.^''

'^ You don't care for Ireland ?"

" Does any one, do you think ? If you knew
Kilrush, you wouldn't ask such a question ; but
you don't, of course."

" I have not that privilege."

" Well, perhaps it is a privilege to have lived in
the dullest, most out-of-the-way hole on the sur-
face of this earth," retorted Miss Deverill lightly,
flinging herself back in the Liberty chair, and
showing rather more ankle and instep than the
rival establishment on the other side of the hearth,
*' There is something exceptional in the fact, of
course. But why, being obliged to live at The
Rock occasionally for duty, my father should bring
us to a remote Devonshire village for pleasure, is-
more than this feeble intellect of mine can grasp."

" I don't think there's much mystery about it/''

A WILD IKISH GIRL d\)'

said Mrs. Baddeley. '^ In the first place, father is
tired of wandering about the Continent ; and in
the second^ my husband will be home on leave in
December^ and I must be in England to receive
him. So my father very good-naturedly suggested
a country place where Frank could stay with us
and get a little huntin' and shootin'. If Frank
had been obliged to find his own quarters the
choice would have been between London lodgings
or staying with his own people, both equally
odious for me.''

"Mr. Baddeley is in the army^ I conclude.'^

" Yes, he is a Major in the 17th Lancers, and
has been in India for the last two years, and Fm
afraid may have to go ' back there again after a
winter in England.""

" You return with him ?''

'' Unhappily, no/" sighed the lady, '' I cannot
stand the climate. I tried India for a year^ and it
was something too dreadful. I was reduced to a
shadow, and I looked forty. Now, Heleu, on your
lionour, didn^t I look forty when I landed from
Bombay ? "

•60 A WILD IRISH GIRL

" You certainly looked very bad, dear/^ said
Helen. " Do you think it would be too dreadful
to offer Sir Adrian tea at a quarter to four/'' with
a glance at a fine old eight-day clock. '' Do you
ever take tea_, Sir Adrian ? "

" A teapot is the favourite companion of my
studious hours/' answered Adrian. ^' May I ring
the bell for you ? '^

" Yes, please, and you won't laugh at us and call
us washerwomen for wanting tea so early."

" I promise to do neither ; but were my brother
here I would not answer for him. He is very
severe on my womanish passion for the teapot.''

" Is he very different from you ? "

" Altogether different."

"And yet you are twins. I thought twins were
always alike."

'^I believe we are alike in person, except that
Valentine is handsomer, stronger, and bigger than
T. But it is in tastes and character we are unlike.
Y^et perhaps, after all, it is mostly a question of
,health and physical energy. His robust constitu-
tion has made him incline to all athletic exercises

A WILD UaSH GIKL Gl

and manly sports, while my poor health has made
me rather womanish. I am obliged to obey the
doctors, were it only to satisfy my mother."

*^ If Mr. Belfield is as nice as you are, I am sure
we shall all like him,-"^ said ]\Irs. Baddeley frankly.
" I hear he is abroad just now."

" Yes, he is in Paris, en route for the South ;
but I don't think he will be long away. He is
very fond of hunting, and won't care to miss too
much of it."

The leisurely butler brought in the tea-tray, and
arranged it comfortably in front of Miss Deverill,
who was allowed to enjoy all those privileges which
involved the slightest exertion. Mrs. Baddeley was
the very genius of idleness, and never picked up a
pocket handkerchief, shut a door, or buttoned a
boot for herself. She required to be waited upon
and looked after like a baby. She attributed this
lymphatic condition entirely to the twelve months
she had spent in Bombay, which was supposed to
have shattered her nerves and undermined her con-
stitution. Helen, who had never been in India,
was expected to write her sister's letters, pick up her

^2 A WILD HUSH GIRL

handkerchief, and to find screens to protect her
complexion from the fire, by which she sat at all
times and seasons. Helenas maid was expected to
wait upon her from morning to night, to the neglect
of Helen's wardrobe.

So Helen poured out the tea, and they all nestled
cosily round the fire, with as intimate an air as if
they had been friends from childhood. The two
women chattered about their continental life, their
summers at Biarritz or Arcachon, their winters at
Nice or at Vevey, and of those dreadful penitential
periods of residence in Ireland. " Father is afraid
of our being boycotted if he once gets the reputa-
tion of being an absentee," explained Helen, " so we
make a point of spending three months of every
year at Kilrush, and we pretend to be very fond of
the peasantry on the estate. They really are nice,
warm-hearted creatures ; though I dare say they
would shoot us on the slightest provocation. And
father has a yacht on the Shannon, and altogether
it is not half a bad life."

" Speak for yourself, Helen," said her sister
peevishly ; ^' you can bear solitude. I can't. I

A WILD irJSlI GlllL Oo

liope the people about here give decent parties/' she
added, turning to Adrian.

^^They are not very energetic party-givers. A
couple of balls within a radius of t\Yenty miles and
half-a-dozen dinners constitute a rather gay season."

*' Good heavens, am I to exist all the winter upon
two balls ! " cried Mrs. Baddeley. '^ I shall forget
how to waltz. My diamonds will go off colour
from being shut up so long in their cases."

Sir Adrian wondered a little to hear an officer's
wife talk of diamonds as if she had been a duchess,
but he opined that Major Baddeley must be a man
of substance. Certainly Colonel Deverill's daughter
could hardly have been jewelled from the paternal
resources, which every one knew to be meagre.

What a lovely woman she was, lolling back in
her chair with the firelight shining on her hair and
eyes — large hazel eyes. Every feature was charm-
ing, if not altogether faultless : the nose small and
slightly retrousse, the mouth rather large, with full
carmine lips and a bewitching smile ; the chin
beautifully rounded, the complexion of creamy
whiteness. The younger sister was like her, only

64 A WILD IRISH GIRL

prettier, fresher, more girlish, eyes larger and more
brilliant, hair brighter and more luxurant, month
smaller and of a more exquisite mould, nose less
coquettish and more dignified, a face to dream about^
a face to sing in Society verses, and glorify in
fashionable photographs.

The clock struck five and startled Sir Adrian
from his forgetfulness of all things but the two
faces and the two voices and the little glimpses of
two hitherto unknown lives, revealed to him by
that careless prattle. He rose at once.

^' I must really apologize for the length of my
first visit,^^ he said.

" You wouldn't if you knew how dull we are^
and how anxious we were to see you and Lady
Belfield. I hope she will come soon,'' said the
elder sister.

" She shall come to-morrow," answered Adrian.

'' Oh, that is too good of you. Please bring her
to lunch. My father will be charmed."

'' I'm afraid to engage her for lunch. I know
that in a general way she dislikes going out so
early. Afternoon tea is her passion."

A WILD IRISH GIRL 65

" Then bring her to afternoon tea. She shall
not discover us in the hall as you did. She shall
find us in the drawing-room, behaving properly.^^

Adrian was glad to hear this. He had an idea
that the vision of two girls playing billiards with
open doors, and that exclamation, " your shot/'
would have disparaged the young ladies in his
mother's estimation. He also hoped that Helen
would have her hair less carelessly displayed to-
morrow afternoon.

"She shall certainly come to-morrow, imless
there is something extraordinary to prevent her,^*
he said, ^' and in that case FU send you a note,
Mrs. Baddeley."

" You will not put us to the trouble of being
proper for nothing. That is very kind of you.
Good-bye.^^ >$

She rang for Donovan, the butler, who appeared
five minutes afterwards, just as Sir Adrian was
disappearing. The sisters went with their visitor
to the door, whicb he opened for himself. They
went out into the windy afternoon with him, and
patted and admired his horses, which had waited

VOL. I. r

^6 A WILD IPJSH GIRL

in the cold mucli longer than they were accustomed
to wait. The two girls stood in the portico and
watched him drive away, and waved white hands to
him as to an old friend.

Scarcely had he driven out of sight of them when
Ms heart began to fail him as to that promise
which he had made about his mother. He had
heen eager to pledge her to friendship with these
strangers; and now he began to ask himself
whether these two young women, lovely as they
were, would not appear intolerable in her eyes.
His mother was the essence of refinement; and
these girls, though assuredly charming, were not
refined. They had a free and easy air which
would jar upon a woman whose secluded life had
kept her unacquainted with the newest develop-
ments in Society and manners. Young women who
wore their hair au naturel, and showed their ankles
freely, were an unknown race to Lady Belfield ;
nor was she familiar with the type of young woman
who is thoroughly at home with strangers of the
opposite sex the minute after introduction. Lady
Belfield^s manners had been formed in the quiet

A WILD IRISH GIRL 67

and reserved school. She had never played
billiards^ or been interested in racing, or gambled
in a Kursaal, or enjoyed any one of those amuse-
ments which society smiles upon now-a-days. She
had been an only daughter and an heiress, brought
up very strictly, permitted few amusements, and
only a chosen circle of friends ; knowing not Hur-
lingham or Ascot, Goodwood or Baden ; oscillating
between a dull house in London and a duller house
in the country; working at her piano conscien-
tiously under a fashionable German master, culti-
-vating her mind by the perusal of all the best
books of the day, attending all the best operas and
concerts, dancing at half-a-score of aristocratic
balls in the season, and knowing as little of the
world as an intelligent child of ten.

" I'm afraid she^ll hardly like them as much as I
do,^' thought Adrian innocently. " They are s o
frank, so friendly, so full of life, and so different
from all the girls we have met round about here.
I wonder what the father is like ? ^^

And then he recalled his feelings as he drove
•along this road two hours ago, and remembered

F 2

68 A WILD IRISH GIRL

witli what a suspicious mind he had thought of
Colonel Deverill, inclined to suspect that gentleman
of the most Macchiavellian motives for planting
himself within easy reach of Belfield Abbey. Had
he not come to Morcomb with the secret intention.
of renewing his old suit to Lady Belfield^ of trying
to win her for his spoil now that she was a wealthy
widow, her own mistress, not too old to marry
again, free to marry whom she chose ? Yes, he had
been inclined to suspect the Colonel of hidden
views in this direction; and yet had he any such
scheme it was strange that he should not have set
about the business ten years ago, since he had
been quite eleven years a widower. That such
a scheme should be an after-thought would be
strange.

And now, in his homeward drive, Adrian was
assured that Colonel Deverill had come to the
neighbourhood in all innocence of mind, in his
happy-go-lucky Irish way, glad to get a cheap house
in a picturesque country.

( 69 )

CHAPTER III.

DANGER

Ijady Belfield consented to fulfil the engagement
which her son had made for her, but she owned
that her dear Adrian had been somewhat pre-
cipitate.

" To call two days running seems rather too
eager," she said, " and if we find by-and-by that
Colonel Deverill has degenerated, and that the girls
are not nice, it will be difficult to draw back. To
go to them twice in a week implies such an ardour
4)f friendship."

Adrian blushed.

" I think you will like them," he said, with a
troubled air.

'^ You have told me so little about them after
l)eing with them so long. What did they talk
jabout all the time ? "

" The places where they had lived, mostly. You

70 DANGEK

see we had no common friends to pull to pieces^
Mrs. Baddeley seemed horrified when I told her
what a limited amount of gaiety she is likely ta
get in this part of the country."

" Then she is evidently fond of pleasure/'
" Fm afraid she is. However, her husband i»
expected home next month, and no doubt he will
keep her in the right path.''

'^ And the unmarried sister ; what is she
like?"

'^ Very like Mrs. Baddeley^ only prettier."
"^ My dear Adrian,, you talk of nothing but their
beauty. Tm afraid they must be empty-headed
gids."

^* They are not blue-stockings. They did not
quote Huxley or Sir John Lubbock, did not make a
single inquiry about the geology of the neighbour-
hood or our antiquarian remains. I believe they
are the kind of women who think that ruined
abbeys were invented for pic-nics^ and who only
consider a geological stratum in its adaptability
to the growth of roses or strawberries. They are
very handsome, and I think they are very nice.

DANGER 71

But you will be able to judge for yourself in ten
minutes/''

This dialogue took place in Lady Belfield's
barouche^ on the way to Morcomb.

They were approaching Mr. Pollack^s demesne^
and a little flock of Mr. Pollack's sheep had just
passed them in a cloud of dust on their way to
the slaughter-house, a sight that always afflicted
Lady Belfield, so tender was her love of all four-
footed beasts, from the petted fox-terrier in her
drawing-room to the half-starved horse on the
common.

The carriage drove up to the Corinthian portico,
and before the horses stopped Colonel Deverill was
out upon the steps to welcome his old love. He
handed her out of her carriage, and escorted her
into the house. He was a handsome-looking man,
with grey hair and black moustache and eyebrows,
a man whom strangers generally spoke of a&
" striking.^''

" I cannot tell you how grateful I am for this
early visit, Lady Belfield/' he said. '^ I was so
anxious for my girls to know you. They have had

72 DANGER

such a wandering life, poor children. I have so
few friends, except in that miserable country of
mine, where, of course, everybody knows them.
And this is your son ? " shaking hands with him as
he spoke; "my girls told me how well they got
on with you yesterday, Sir Adrian. Brazen-faced
hussies, Fm afraid you found them.^'

Again Adrian blushed, so strangely did the
paternal phrase jar upon his ear.

"They are not at all like the ordinary run of
young ladies,^' said Deverill. " I have brought
them up in the true spirit of camaraderie^ and I
always think of them as jolly good fellows."

Lady Belfield looked horrified. She accompanied
her host through an ante-room to the long drawing-
room, speechless with wonder that any father should
so speak of his daughters.

Two fair and graceful forms rose from before
the hearth, and Adrian breathed more freely. No
flowing tresses to-day, and a far less liberal display
of ankles. Mrs. Baddeley wore a fashionable tailor
gown and a high collar, and her hair was dressed
to perfection.

DANGER 76

Helen was in soft, grey cashmere, with a falling
collar of old lace, and long tight sleeves, which set
off the beautiful arms and slender white hands.
She was still sesthetic, but she was tidy, and her
little bronze slippers only played at bo-peep under
the long limp skirt, as she came forward to welcome
Lady Belfield.

Her beauty was indisputable; her smile would
have fascinated an anchorite. She received Lady
Belfield with caressing sweetness, almost ignoring
Adrian, to whom she only gave the tips of her
taper fingers. She seated herself on a low sofa
by her guest, and asked leave to loosen her
mantle.

'^ You will take it off, won''t you ? You are not
going to pay us a flying visit. Father, take Lady
Belfield's mantle directly, or she will be suffocated
in this warm room.^'

Between them they removed her ladyship's
cloak, and made her comfortable upon the sofa,
with a hassock for her feet, and a little table for
her teacup.

" Now, you look homelike and friendly," said

74 DANGER

Helen^ seating herself on a low ottoman, so as ta
be in a manner at the visitor's feet.

Colonel Deverill looked on with a pleased air.

'^ I hope you won't object to our being very
fond of you/' pleaded Helen. ^' You are not the
least like a stranger to us. Lady Belfield. Father
has talked so much of your girlish days and his-
young mannish days, when all the world was so
much better than it is now, and when even an
Irish estate was worth something. How hard it is
for us young people to be born into such a bad
used-up world, isn't it ? To be created at the fag-
end of everything ! "

The girl almost took Constance Belfield's breath
away. She was so easy, so spontaneous, and her
caressing manner had such an air of reality,
Adrian's mother had come in fear and doubt,
rather inclined to dislike Colonel Deverill's daugh-
ters, who were only beautiful ; and this one was
wheedling herself into the warm motherly heart
already.

" And so you have not forgotten the old days in
Eaton Square, when your father and my father were

DANGER 75-

such friendsj" she said to the Colonel at last, feel-
ing that she must say something. " It is very-
pleasant to find you have made your daughter like
me in advance/^

*^ I have not forgotten a single detail of that
time/' replied Deverill. " It was just the one
golden period of my life, before I had found out
what care means. So long as I was a pensioner
on my father everything went well with me ; if I
got into difiSculties the dear old boy always got me
out of them. There was a grow], perhaps, and
then I was forgiven. But when he died, and I
was my own master, with a rich wife, too, as
people told me, the floodgates of extravagance were
opened, and the stream was too strong for me. I
thought there must be a lot of spending in our two
fortunes, and I took things easily. When I pulled
up at last, there was deuced little left, only just
enough for us to get along with in a very humble
way. We have had to cut and contrive, I can tell
you, Lady Belfield. This girl of mine doesn't know
what it is to have a gown from a fashionable
milliner ; and I have left off" cigars for the last six

76 DANGER

years. I only keep a box or two on tlie premises
for my friends."

^' A case of real distress/^ sighed Mrs. Baddeley,
with a tragi-comical air ; " we contrive to be very
happy in spite of the wolf at the door, don't we
father ? It is an Irish gentleman's normal state to
be ruined. Now, Helen, go and pour out the tea,
and let me sit by Lady Belfield.''^

Helen went to the table, which Donovan had
just set out. There was no other servant in atten-
dance. This slow and faithful Hibernian seemed
to comprise the indoor staff.

" And are these all your family ? '^ asked Con-
stance, looking at the sisters.

" These are all I have in the world, and one of
these will be deserting me, I suppose, if her hus-
band can contrive to stay in England,''^ answered
•Colonel Deverill.

" Which I hope he may be able to do, poor
fellow," said Mrs. Baddeley, with a more careless
air than Lady Belfield quite approved in a wife's
mention of an absent husband.

Adrian handed the tea-cups and muffins, and

DANGER 77

when those duties were performed slipped into a
seat beside Helen, and they two talked confiden-
tially^ while Mrs. Baddeley and her father and
Lady Belfield carried on an animated conversa-
tion, chiefly about the neighbourhood and its little
ways.

Sir Adrian was questioning the young lady for
the most part^ trying to find out what manner of
girl she was, so that he might be the better able
to meet a second attack from his mother.

Did she hunt ? Yes, and she adored hunting ;
it was just the one thing in life worth living:
for.

" But I think you are fond of yachting, too,"
suggested Adrian. " You talked of yachting yes-
terday.^^

" I revel in a yacht. Yes, when there's na
hunting, yachting is just the one thing I live for.
When father had a two-hundred-ton yacht cruising
about the Mediterranean my life was ecstasy .^-'

" Then you are a good sailor ? "

"If that means never being ill I am a very
good sailor. But I go a little further than that^

'78 DANGER

for I know something about navigating a yacht.
I should not be in the least afraid o£ finding my-
self at sea without a skipper."

'^ These are out-of-door accomplishments/^ said
Adrian ; " no doubt you have equal gifts for winter
and wet weather. You are musical, of course."

" Comme ci comme ga. I can play a valse or
accompany a song."

'^ Your own songs,, for instance.^'

" My own, or yours^ if you sing."

" Alas, no ; I am not vocal^ though I do a little
in the way of instrumental music. But you — I
like to know all your talents. You paint, perhaps
— flowers."

*' Heaven forbid ! Do I look the kind of girl to
devote a week to the study of a carnation in a glass
of water, not a bit like when it's done ? or to a
hedge-sparrow's nest and a bunch of primroses ?
No, I never have used a brush ; but I sometimes
indulge in a little caricaturing with a quill pen and
an inkpot. But how very egotistically I am pros-
ing. Tell me about yourself, please. Sir Adrian,
since we are to be friends as well as neighbours.

DANGER 79

What are your particular vanities — tennis, shooting,
fishing? I hear you don't hunt/'

'' No, I don't hunt ; I do a little fly-fishing in
the season, and I shoot a few pheasants every
October, just to keep pace with the neighbour-
hood. I am not a sportsman. Miss Deverill.
Books and music are my only vanities."

'^ I adore books/' said Helen, smiling at him
^' they furnish a room so sweetly. If I were rich
enough I would have mine all in vellum, with dif-
ferent coloured labels."

'' You are a connoisseur of bindings, I see."

" Oh, I like everything to look pretty. It is the
torment of my life that I am not surrounded with
beautiful things. In our nomadic existence it is
impossible to have one's own atmosphere. Two or
three Liberty chairs and a little Venetian glass
won't make home in a wilderness. I hope some
day I shall have a perfect house of my own and
heaps of money."

Lady Belfield rose. The visit had lasted nearly
three-quarters of an hour, not so long as Adrian's
yesterday .

80 DANGER

"You will come and see me soon, I hope/^ slie
said to Mrs. Baddeley.

" I am dying to see the Abbey. I am told it is
too lovely/^

^^ It is a dear_, good old place, and we are all
fond of it. I heard you talking of books. Miss-
Deverill. I know Adrian will be pleased to show
you his library.^'

'' I shall be delighted to see it — and the stables/ '^
answered Helen. '^ I have heard so much of the
stables. And I want to see Mr. Belfield's hunters.'^

•^ I am sorry he is not at home to show them to
you. He is very proud of them.^'

" Oh, but it will be fun to get acquainted with
them in his absence ; and when he comes back it
will seem as if I had gone half-way towards know-
ing him,'^ said Helen laughingly.

She and her sister went with Lady Belfield to
the portico, and hung about her as she got into
her carriage. These caressing Irish ways were new
to Constance Belfield, but she yielded to the fasci-
nation of two fair faces and two fresh young voices,
full of music.

DANGER 81

^^I don^t know that they are altogether good
style^ Adrian/^ she said, as they drove home, '' but
they are very sweet/^

Adrian agreed as to their sweetness, but not as
to their deficiency in style.

^^I don^t believe in any hard and fast rules for
a woman's manners,^^ he said, rather irritably. " I
don^t recognize that conventional standard by which
every woman must speak and look and move in
exactly the same fashion. I think Mrs. Baddeley
and her sister are simply charming in their un-
studied frankness and warm-hearted enthusiasm.
How really pleased they were to see you.^^

^^ They seemed very cordial ; yet, as I was quite
a stranger to them ''

" Oh, but you were not a stranger. They had
talked of you and thought of you, and elevated you
into a kind of ideal friend. Their hearts went out
to you at once."

^' They are very charming, but when I meet with
girls of that kind I am always reminded of Tot, the
fox-terrier."

" As how, mother ? "

VOL. I. G

82 DANGER

" She is such a darling thing, and if she sees me
in the garden or the stableyard, she rushes to me
and leaps up at me in an ecstasy of affection ; but
I have seen her behave just the same five minutes
afterwards to the butcher. It seems an exuberance
of love that runs over anyhow."

" Rather hard upon Helen Deverill to compare
her with a fox terrier ! " said Adrian.

Helen Deverill ! How familiar seemed the
sound of her name to him already. Helen
Deverill ! and he had known her only four-and-
twenty hours.

'^ You'll ask them over soon, I suppose, mother ? "

'' If you like, dear.''

"To dinner?''

" That means a party."

" Oh, no, pray don't have a party. The Vicar,
perhaps, and the Freemantles — just three or four
friendly people. One sees so little of one's friends
at a set dinner. They would like to meet Free-
mantle and his wife, I dare say."

" And we could ask Jack Freemantle, as there
are girls."

DAXGER 83

'^ Yes, I suppose we must ask Jack. He is an
oaf, but tlie kind of oaf who always gets on with
girls/^

" He sings, Adrian/^

" Did I not say that he was an oaf, mother. In
my estimation, a man who sings ranks almost as
low as a man who plays the flute.'''

""And yet I thought you were fond of music."

^' Music, yes ; but not amateur singing and
playing. It is because I love music that I hate
the young man who carries a roll of songs when
he goes out to dinner, and the young woman who
<?an sit down in cold blood to murder Beethoven."

The mother smiled and then sighed. Her son
was all that was dear to her, but she had the feel-
ing that a good many mothers and fathers must
needs experience now-a-days, that the young men
and women of this present generation are trained
?too fine.

The invitation to a friendly dinner, at three
days' notice, was sent next morning. Adrian re-
minded his mother of the letter at least three

S4 DANGER

times before it was written, and despatched by a
mounted messenger. Posts in the country are so
slovr^ and there was always a hunter to be
exercised.

Sir Adrian walked across the fields to Chirwell
Grange^ and invited Mr. and Mrs. Freemantle,
whose house was just three-quarters of a mile from
the Abbey, as the crow flies. Mrs. Freemantle
was his mother's most intimate friend in the
parish, a sturdy, practical woman, who affected
nothing better than common sense, but excelled
in the exercise of that admirable quality. Her
well-to-do neighbours, for the most part, disliked
her. She was too keen and outspoken for them ;
but the poor and the sick adored her. She had
known the brothers from their cradles, and treated
them as cavalierly as she treated her own Jack,
future Squire of Chirwell, or her daughter Lucy, a
tall slip of a girl who scarcely seemed to have a
mind of her own, so overshadowed was she by her
strong-minded mother.

*' You must all come,^^ said Adrian to this
kindly matron, who stood bareheaded in the cold.

DANGER CO

clipping the dead leaves off a favourite shrub in a
thicket that bounded her lawn. " I am sure you
will like them."

'^ Them/' echoed Mrs. Freemantle. '^ Then there
are more than Colonel Deverill ? You only spoke
of him just now/'

*^ There are his daughters — two daughters."

" Oh, there are daughters,, are there ? Is that
the reason you are so eager to launch this new
man ? I thought you generally held yourself aloof
from girls, Adrian. I know you have been very
tiresome whenever I have wanted you here to play
tennis.''

" I am not particularly inclined to girlish society
in a general way, perhaps. But these ladies are —
well, a little out of the common."

Mrs. Freemantle gave a sotto voce whistle.

" I see/' she said, " They are the new style of
girls, fast and furious; just the kind of girls I
should not like my Lucy to know. They would
corrupt her in a week. She would begin to think
of nothing but her frocks, and consider herself a
martyr because she lives in the country eleven

SQ DANGER

months in every twelve. God forbid that she
should ever get intimate with such girls. Irisb
too ! I believe that after five-and-twenty they
generally drink.^'

" Don't you think it would be as well to see
them before you condemn them ? '' said Adrian,
who was used to Mrs. Freemantle's little ways^ and
not prone to take offence at her speech.

'' I am not condemning them. I am only pre-
paring myself for the worse. Yes^ of course we
will dine with you, if Lady Belfield wants us. We
are free for Saturday, I know."

'' You'll all come."

Mrs. Freemantle pursed up her lips in another
suppressed whistle.

'' Four would be too many. Jack and the father
and I will come. That will be more than enough
of us.^^

" You are afraid to trust Lucy among my
Hibernians. I don^t think the ladies have taken
to whisky yet. One of them is married, by-the-
by, her husband expected home from Bombay
shortly.''

DANGER 87"

" A grass widow/' exclaimed Mrs. Freemantle ;
" worse and worse. I feel sure they are a dis-
reputable setj and your eagerness to insinuate them
into society is a mistaken benevolence. And you
would make me your catspaw, I am to be the
thin end of the wedge.''

" I don't believe Colonel Deverili or his daughters
care a straw about your stuck-up rural society;
only they are bright, clever people, and I want to
see something of them myself."

'^ Take care, Adrian. What if this Irish Colonel
wants to be your step-father ? "

'^ He will never realize his wish. I can trust my
mother's discretion, and her love for her sons."

" My dear Adrian, nine people out of ten would
say your mother acted wisely in marrying again, if
she were to make a suitable match. Your brother
Valentine is not the easiest young man to manage

" Do you think a step-father would make him
more manageable, Mrs. Freemantle? I wonder you
can talk such nonsense," exclaimed Adrian, getting
angry.

88 DANGER

'^My dear boy, I don^t know what to think
about step-fathers and second marriages; but I
think your mother has a troublesome handful with
her younger son/^

" He is a very good fellow, and he is very fond
of his mother/^

" Fond of her, after his own fashion, yes — a
dutiful son, no. Well, Adrian, every back has to
carry its burden ; may your mother's rest lightly.
You are the person who can best lighten it for her.
She has at least one devoted son. There, there,
you look angry and you look distressed. My
foolish tongue has been running on too fast. I
promise to be in my most agreeable mode on
Saturday evening, and Til try to admire Colonel
Deverill's daughters. What is the married lady^s
name ? "

'' Baddeley.^'

'^ What ? We have some Baddeleys among our
family connections. I dare say we shall find out
that Mrs. Baddeley^s husband is a kind of cousin.
The world is so absurdly small. ^^

From Chirwell Adrian walked to the Vicarage,

DANGER S9

and in the dusty old library, wliere the worthy
Vicar had taught him his rudiments twelve years
ago, discovered that luminary nodding over his
Jeremy Taylor, exactly in the same attitude and,
as it seemed to his old pupil, in the same suit of
clothes which had marked him in those earlier
years. It was a tradition in Chadford that the
Vicar never read any other book than those
mottled-calf-bound volumes of the great divine,
and that he had never been known in his sermons
to quote any other authority, yet produced his
name ever with an air of novelty, as one who intro-
duced a new light to his congregation.

He looked up smilingly as Adrian entered unan-
nounced, having been always free to go in as one
of the family since his days of pupilage.

" My dear boy, I haven't seen you for an age/'
said the Vicar, holding out his thin right hand,
while his left still clasped his book. ^^ What have
you been doing with yourself? ''

" Making some new acquaintances, Vicar ; and I
want you to come and meet them next Saturday

90 DANGER

And then Adrian entered once again upon a
graphic description of Colonel Deverill and his
daughters, finding a more sympathetic listener in
the Vicar than he had found in Mrs. Freemantle.

Reginald Rockstone was a man of peculiar
delicacy of feeling,, not deeply learned but ex-
quisitely critical, knowing a few authors well,
worshipping a few poets with all his mind and all
his heart, and seeing all thiags from their most
spiritual standpoint.

" It must be sad for these young women to be
motherless, and with a wild Irish father/' he said
gently ; " and the married girl — she is little more
than a girl, I take it — sad for her to be separated
from her husband."

" She is just now expecting him home/' said
Adrian, " and she seems in excellent spirits.''

The Vicar was a bachelor, and his own master in
all things. The living was not one of the plums of
the Church, but the income was ample for a man
Avhose tastes were of the simplest and who had
some means of his own. He was a man of excel-
lent family, a gentleman to the core of his heart.

DANGER

91

His poor parishioners adored him ; his friends
among the country people tolerated him as a
harmless eccentric. The small professional people,
village doctor^ market-town solicitors, considered
him reserved and supercilious. He refused all
invitations to dinner from this class, though he
would take a cup of afternoon tea with their wives
now and then, to show them he bore no malice.

"Why should I dine out unless it be to dine
more pleasantly than I can at home?" he argued,
when he talked over his parish and his idiosyn-
cracies with his intimate friend Lady Belfield.
^' My evening by the fireside or in my garden is
always precious to me. I have the books I love
for my companions, and their company never palls.
At my age a man's leisure evenings are numbered.
He cannot garner them too carefully. Why
should I go out to sit an hour and a half at a
gaudily arranged dinner table, surrounded by petty
formalities, in an atmosphere of roast mutton, and
among people who look as if their evening dress
was a kind of armour, to hear the smallest of small
talk, to struggle with irrepressible yawns, to endure

^2 DANGER

all the agonies of casual attendance from a sliam
butler. When I come here — or to houses like this
— my body basks in a luxury that I am sybarite
enough to appreciate ; while my mind expands and
soars in unison with minds that think only noble
thoughts. Here we talk of books and of spiritual
things ; in the village or the town the talk is of
politics or persons — hovers between Gladstone's
last speech and the latest scandal about the Board
of Guardians."

To Belfield. Abbey, therefore, the Vicar went
whenever he was bidden. Lady Belfield^s low voice
and sympathetic manner had a peculiar charm for
him. So far as that great tender heart of his had
ever gone out to a woman, it had gone out to her
years ago, in the early days of her widowhood,
when she came home to the Abbey with her two
hojs — a stricken mourner, deeming her sorrow
above all sorrows. He — a grave man of seven and
thirty, old for his years — had comforted and advised
her, had helped her in the bringing up of her sons,
and had prepared them for Eton and coached them
for Oxford. He, who had never on any other

DANGER 93

occasion sacrificed that golden leisure whicli lie
prized so highly — the leisure to read old books and
muse and dream over them — had for Lady Belfield's
sake toiled at the very elements of classical educa-
tioDj at declensions and conjugations,, at Cornelius
Nepos and Livy. In Adrian he had found a pupil
after his own heart, and at five-and-twenty Adrian
was still his pupil^ still delighting to read a Greek
play with him^ proud to discuss a tough passage in
Plato or Aristotle ; or to talk about Horace and his
little ways, as if they both had known him inti-
mately.

With Valentine education had been a tougher
job. Clever, idle, arrogant, self-opinionated ; from
a very early stage always convinced that he knew
more, or understood better, than his master : to
teach him had been like hewing shapely stones out
of the hardest rock. The material was there, could
one but quarry it ; but the labour was ungrateful,
and often seemed hopeless. The pupil never wanted
to learn what the master wished to teach him.
When the good Vicar opened the iEneid, the boy
cried, " A fig for classics,^^ and was hot upon read-

•94 DANGER

ing " Don Quixote ^' in the original, angry with his
master because he would not turn from the beaten
path of duty to teach him Spanish.

" You are a good Spanish scholar ; my mother
told me so when she was sounding your praises/^
said Valentine ; ^* why won't you teach me
Spanish ? "

" Because you are very backward with your
Latin. Stick to that, Val, and it will help you
Avith Spanish by-and-by."

" I sha'n't care about Spanish by-and-by. I want
to learn it now.''

This was a sample of many such arguments.
The lad was obstinate and wrong-headed, but the
Vicar never gave way to his whims ; and this may
have been the reason that Valentine liked Mr.
Kockstone better than any one else at Chadford.

But with advancing manhood Valentine exhibited
characteristics which filled his mother's loyal friend
with apprehension. He was uneasy when the young
man was at the Abbey. He was more uneasy when
he was away ; dreading lest every day should bring
some evil tidings to the mother. He, who had studied

DANGER 95

Lady Belfield's thoughts and inclinations as closely
as only one who fondly loves can study a character,
knew that to the mother's heart the wayward son
was the more precious.

'' She loves them both/' he told himself; '^ she
loves Adrian exactly as a good mother should love
a good son ; but she loves the other one foolishly^
blindly^ sinfully — if, indeed_, it be a sin to make an
idol of poor humanity .''

Ten minutes to eight on Saturday evening, and
the Vicar was luxuriating in the glow of a splendid
fire, in a drawing-room full of light and colour, the
perfume of hothouse flowers, and the litter of new
books and periodicals. Lady Belfield sat in her
favourite chair by the hearth, with her eye on the
door. A kind of instinct told her that the Mor-
-comb party would be late. Adrian hovered about
near the door, with a slightly nervous air.

''That dear young man looks as if he expected
to be arrested,''' said Mr. Rockstone ; and then
went on questioning Lady Belfield about the last
book she had been reading. He used to say that

9G DANGER

he had no occasion to read new books on his own
account : Lady Belfield always kept him au
courant.

"An intelligent woman's synopsis of a shallow
book is always better than the book itself," said
the Vicar.

Mr. and Mrs. Freemantle and their son Jack
were announced as the clock struck eight. With
the Freemantle family there was always a military
exactitude. They were all well drilled. Even
Lucy had never been late for a lesson or a church
service in her life.

Mrs. Freemantle shook hands with Lady Belfield
and looked round for the strangers. Mr. Free-
mantle was an excellent man, with plenty of com-
mon sense but no cultivation, and very little
memory. He never opened a book^ and he rarely
listened to conversation, unless it had some direct
bearing upon field sports, politics, in which he
was faintly interested/ or his own affairs. He
had utterly forgotten that he had been asked to
meet anybody in particular, and when it came to
a quarter-past eight and there was no announce-

DANGER 97

ment of dinner, he began to wonder whether Lady
Belfield had changed her cook.

Lady Belfield and her friend talked of the
parish^ the sick and poor, whom they saw
almost daily, the Vicar joining in now and
then. Adrian still lingered near the door, and
made believe to be entertained by Jack Free-
mantle's account of a football match which had
come oflp with eclat to Jack's side that after-
noon.

(( w^e gave those fellows a tremendous licking ;
I had only just time to get home and dress/' said
Jack, who had the newly-washed look of a man
who had dressed in a desperate hurry.

" Your friends are very late, Adrian," said his
mother presently. " Do you think we ought to
wait any longer ? "

" My dear mother, their first visit ! Of course
we must wait. I know you'll forgive us, Mrs. Free-
mantle."

" I forgive you with all my heart, Adrian ; but
the Vicar and my husband have both been looking
at the clock every five minutes, and I am afraid

VOL. I. H

98 DANGER

they are beginning to feel rather vindictive towards
these friends of yours."

" Are you really expecting any one ? " asked
Freemantle innocently. "I thought it was your
cook that was behind time."

^^ Lady Belfield's servants are never unpunctual,
John. DidnH I tell you we were to meet Colonel
Deverill ? "

" Deverill ! Ah, to be sure, the man who has
taken Morcomb. I used to see him in London
five-and-twenty years ago. He was in the Guards
— a South of Ireland man."

The timepiece chimed the half-hour, and the
door was flung open.

" Colonel Deverill and Miss Deverill, Mrs. Bad-
deley."

The matron led the way, lovely, smiling, deli-
ciously unconscious of blame, svelte, graceful, in a
tight-fitting ruby velvet gown, and with only one
ornament — a large diamond pendant, which a
duchess might not have disdained to wear. Helen
followed, clad in some limp, creamy fabric, with
neither jewels nor gold, only a cluster of white

DANGER 99

lilies on her shoulder. If this was an aesthetic
toilet, sestheticism was very becoming to Miss
Deverill.

No one apologized for being late. The Mor-
comb party slipped into their places in the easiest
manner. Mr. Freemantle was told off to the
younger sister^ the Vicar was assigned to Mrs.
Freemantle, and Sir Adrian took Mrs. Baddeley.
His mother had told him that it must be so ; and
Jack followed his hostess and the Colonel as if he
had been an aide-de-camp.

The dinner was much livelier than rural dinners
are wont to be. Helen sat between the Vicar and
Mr. Freemantle, and prattled delightfully to both.
The sisters were full of talk and laughter, gayer and
more spontaneous than any girls Adrian had ever
met. They played into each other's hands, held
each other up to ridicule, bandied jokes with the
airiest touch — flew from subject to subject with
inexhaustible vivacity ; and yet their voices never
grew loud or harsh, their conversation never
degenerated into noise and clatter. To Adrian
the evening passed as if by enchantment. It was

H 2

100 DANGER

nearly mid night when the Deverill carnage drove
away. He and the sisters had pledged themselves
to all manner of engagements. He was to go
over to tea next day, and to inspect their stud.
He, who never hunted, was to be at the meet on
Monday, and was to potter about a little, and show
them the country.

'^ Adrian," remonstrated his mother, whose quick
ear caught that mention of hunticg, *' you know
Dr. Jason said you must not hunt."

'^ He said I mustn^t ride across country, mother.
He never forbade my jogging about the lanes on a
steady cob.^^

"He has had delicate health from his child-
hood," said Lady Belfield to Mrs. Baddeley, with
an apologetic air. " I may be forgiven if I am
over- careful of him."

Adrian escorted the ladies to their carriage.

" What do you think of them, Sophy ? " asked
Constance Belfield of her friend, while her son was
out of the room. Mr. Freemantle and the Vicar
were talking politics, Jack was yawning in a corner,
exhausted after having shouted all his best songs —

DANGER 101

** If doughty deeds my lady please/^ and '^ The
Stirrup Cup/' and ^^ Old London Bridge."

'' What I think of them may be summed up in
one word — Dangerous/'

" Oh, Sophy ! "

*' For Adrian most decidedly dangerous. Indeed
I believe the mischief is as good as done already.
But perhaps you would not object to his marrying
Miss Deverill."

" My dear Sophy, she is a perfect stranger to
me. How could I approve ? "

'^ Well, you will have to approve — or to dis-
approve very strongly."

" I can see that Adrian admires Miss Deverill ;
but there is no reason to conclude he must needs
be in love with her."

" Reason ! Fiddlesticks ! I tell you he is in
love with her. When did reason and love ever go
together ! When a young man has been bottled
up for the best part of his life in a village, his
heart is as inflammable as a haystack after a dry
summer."

And with this unpoetical comparison, Mrs. Free-

102 ^ DANGER

mantle drew her Canton crape shawl round her
shoulders, ordered her husband and son off with a
nod, bade her friend " Good-night/' and sailed out
of the room.

( 103 )

CHAPTER IV.

ACROSS COUNTRY

Mrs. Freemantle was right in her diagnosis.

Adrian was in love. He was not altogether
unconscious of his own condition ; but like most
intellectual young men he fancied himself much
wiser than he really was. He thought that he
only admired Helen Deverill; and he told himself
that he would go no further than admiration until
he knew a great deal more of the lady. He was
his own master, free to marry whomsoever he chose.
A penniless girl of good family seemed to him the
most proper person for him to marry : but he told
himself that he must have the highest qualities m
a wife. She must not be beautiful alone ; mentally
and morally she must be perfect. He was not to
be scared by a little unconventionality ; he admired
a girl who dared to think and act for herself, and
whose manners were not modelled upon the

104 ACROSS COUNTRY

manners of all other girls ; but he meant to study
the lady's character before he suffered his heart to
go out to her — never suspecting, poor fool, that his
heart was already hers, and that he who aspired to
be her judge was in reality her slave.

He had never ridden to hounds since he was a
boy; for from the hour he found hard riding was
perilous,, or even impossible for him, he had turned
his back upon the sport, and had tried to persuade
himself that he did not care for it. Yet now he
was out every hunting day, dawdling at the meet^
jogging up and down the lanes, watching and
waiting about, as much in the day's sport as it was
possible for him to be without going fast over
pasture or common and taking his fences with the
rest of the field. Whenever there was a bit of
slow-going he was at Helen's side. When the
hounds were in full cry she was off after them,
while he waited patiently in a sheltered corner,
hoping fate and the fox might bring her back
that way.

She seemed to like his society, but she was full
of caprices and uncertainties, wayward, wilful, a

ACROSS COUNTRY 105

coquette to the marrow of her bones, only Adrian
did not so judge her. He thought her a versatile
creature, a being of whim and fancy, disinterested,
uncalculating, innocent as a wood or water nymph,
but full of tricks and changes like the nymphs.
That she was a clever, keen-witted young woman,
who meant to make a good match, knew the value
of her own beauty to an iota, and intended to
enjoy all that is best and pleasantest in this brief,
swift race across the earth's surface, which we call
^j life — this he suapected not. He saw only graces
and charms and frank unconscious loveliness of
person and of mind in every look and word and
action. To him she appeared faultless; and yet
he thought that he was over-critical, thot he erred V
on the side of deliberation and severe juddment. ^/

Some days, when the fox was what Helen called
'' a ringing brute," and the run scarce worth
serious consideration, she would spend the whole
day in Sir Adrian's company, utterly indifferent
to the scandal such companionship might occasion.
She had been accustomed to be talked about ever
since she was fifteen, and would have fancied her

106 ACKOSS COUNTEY

attractiveness on tlie wane if people — womenkind
especially — had ceased to say hard things of her.
She had her sister for chaperon, but then Mrs.
Baddeley always had her own affairs to look after.
She was a splendid horsewoman, and rode in a
business-like way which admitted of no favour to
that little court of admirers which she always had
in her wake. Her admirers must be in the first
flight if they wanted to see anything of her. For
those who rode as boldly and as fast as she did, she
had ever the sweetest smiles and the kindest words ;
and the long ride home with two or three of these,
after the kill, was like a procession of lovers.

" Launcelot and Guinevere !^^ exclaimed Miss
Toifstaflf, one of the county Dianas ; '' the way
those two young women go on is too astounding.
I never saw anything worse in the Eow : and that"
added Miss ToflPstafF significantly, '^ is saying a
great deal/^

There were three Miss Tofi'staff's, who rode to
hounds, and who rode well, and were always well
mounted. They prided themselves in turning out
in perfect style, and had their habits, hats, and

ACEOSS COUNTRY 107

boots from the best maker, be be who he might.
Fashion is very capricious in its treatment of habit-
makers. There is always a new man coming to the
front, with advanced theories upon the cutting of
the knee ; so the Miss Toffstaffs changed their habit-
maker about once a year.

Mr. Toffstaff was a new man in that part of
Devonshire, who had lately acquired the estate of a
deceased native. Needless to say that he was more
" county ''■' than the county people whose ancestors
had been owners of the soil ever since the Hept-
archy, subscribed much more liberally to the hunt,
and gave himself more airs than the men of the
vielle roche.

In opposition to, and yet in friendly relations
with, the three Miss Toffstaffs, were the two Miss
Treduceys, whose father, Sir Nathaniel Treducey, of
The Moat, was of an older family, and owned more
aristocratic connections than any other man in
the neighbourhood. His mother came of a ducal
race in Scotland, and his wife was the daughter
of a French marquis, who had fallen in love with
the handsome young diplomatist at one of the

108 ACROSS COUNTRY

Empress's balls in the golden days of the Second
Empire,

The Miss Treduceys had been, as it were, born
on horseback, and looked down from a prodigious
altitude upon the Miss Toffstaffs, whom they
suspected of having been taught by a riding-master.
They were fair, rather pretty girls, with large
liquid blue eyes, and they were as thin as their
mother was fat. Their aquiline noses and slender
figures were an inheritance from Sir Nathaniel, who
belonged to an eagle-nosed race, and had the air of
a gentlemanlike bird of prey.

The Miss Toffstaffs and the Miss Treduceys
rarely agreed about any one subject, albeit they
were such very good friends ; but they were unani-
mous in their condemnation of Colonel DeverilFs
daughters.

''It makes one feel ashamed of being a girl,
don't it ? " asked Matilda Treducey of Marjorie
Toffstaff.

The Miss Treduceys had been christened Matilda
and Isabel, in honour of their Norman descent;
the Miss Tofistaffs were Dorothy, Marjorie, and

ACROSS COUNTRY 109

Jessie^ having been christened at a period when
quaint rustic names were in fashion. Mrs. Toff-
stafF was a woman who followed fashion assiduously,
and as she never thought of anything else, some-
times overtook it. Everything at Wilmington — the
dinner-table, the drawing-room, the stables, and
the gardens — was in the newest style. A fashion
could hardly be heard of in Devonshire before it
was to be seen at Wilmington. At The Moat,
on the contrary, everything was of the old school,
a curious and rather pleasant mingling of old
French and old English fashions. Lady Treducey
protested her abhorrence of all innovations, and
boasted of her husband's poverty as if it were a
distinction in an age when parvenus are egregiously
rich.

" Since France has been a Republic everything
new has been detestable,'''' she said, " and England
is very little better than a Republic. All our
fashions have an American taint. I look forward
with horror to a day when London and Paris will
be only suburbs of New York.^^

The five young ladies were all agreed as to one

110 ACROSS COUXTRY

fact — that Colonel Deverill's daughters were a dis-
grace to the neighbourhood ; but as Lady Belfield
knew them, and in a manner vouched for • their
abstract respectability, every one called at Mor-
<;omb, and the objectionable ladies had been bidden
to luncheons and afternoon teas.

Matrons and maids owned that the new-comers
were pretty, but were unanimous in denouncing
them as bad style. The word had been passed
round, as it were. They were to be called upon
and tolerated; but they were not to be admitted
to the inner sanctuary of friendship.

They were received, however, that was the main
point. Sir Adrian met them everywhere. His
life was a new life, full of new interests. He
wrote long letters to his brother, filled with de-
scriptions of Helen, her looks, her sweet little
ways, her sparkling conversation, which lost a
good deal of its sparkle when reduced to pen
and ink.

" I did not think it was in you to be such a
fool/' wrote Valentine, with brotherly candour ;
" the girl is evidently setting her cap at you. She

ACEOSS COUNTEY 111

has not a sixpencCj and you are one of the best
matches in Devonshire. However^ of course you
will please yourself. There is no reason why you
should try to please anybody else. I, who have
only my mother's fortune to depend upon, must
marry money, if I ever marry at all. To my own
mind at present my state is the more gracious as
a bachelor.'^

( 112 )

CHAPTER V.

AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD

Though lie was mucli of a student and more of a
dreamer, Mr. Eockstone was a true friend, helper,
and counsellor to the poor of his parish. It was a
sadly ignorant parish, such as one might expect to
light upon could some magician's wand reverse the
glass of time and take us back a century to the days
of Farmer George and Snuffy Charlotte. Reading
and writing were rarest accomplishments among
those of mature years, and, in spite of schools and
schoolmasters, the youthful mind was in a state of
darkness which made a simple game of dominoes
in the Vicar's reading-room seem as mysterious and
perplexing as an inscription on a Babylonian brick.
Often in the long winter evenings would Mr.
Kockstone tear himself away from his own com-
fortable fireside to go down to the little reading-
room, where he would labour with sublime patience

AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD 113

at the mystery of dominoes, or the perplexity of
*' Muggins '' or " Slap Jack," two games at cards,
by which he tried to enliven the dulness of a
purely literary evening. Here, too, he would read
aloud, and enlighten the rustic mind by a leader in
the Standard or the Post, and would listen good-
naturedly to the rustic ideas as to the last political
crisis. Nor did the Vicar confine his ministrations
to the vicinity of vicarage, church, and schools.
His sympathies extended to the furthest limits of
an extensive parish.

The Deverills had been settled at Morcomb for
nearly a month, and it was the first week in
December when Mr. Eockstone set out one mild,
sunny morning for a leisurely ride to Wymperley
Marsh, which was at the extreme edge of Chad-
ford parish. The soft west wind and blue sky
suggested April rather than mid-winter, and the
Vicar felt it a privilege to exist as he trotted along
a Devonshire lane on his steady-going old horse,
Don — so called because he was as stupid and as
lazy as some of the college dons Mr. Rockstone
had known in his youth.

VOL. I. T

114 AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWAKD

The Vicar loved Don, and Don loved the Vicar,
would recognize his master's voice afar off in the
garden, and appeal to him from his stable with
loud neighings. Don had carried the Vicar over
every acre of his capacious parish, and knew every
cottage at which he was accustomed to stop and
every turn in the lanes which led to his own
stable. Horse and rider had a gentle tussle now
and then when Don wanted to go home — which
was the normal condition of his mind — and when
the Vicar wanted to go further afield. But this
morning Don was as fresh and as ready for his
work as it was in his nature to be at any time,
and he got over the ground rather quicker than
usual.

The River Chad is one of the most picturesque
streams in England, but even the Chad has its bits
of commonplace; and it is never less romantic
than in that broad reach which is bounded on one
side by Wymperley Marsh, and on the other by low
level meadows, where the cattle wade breast deep
in the rank sedgy grass.

The marsh sustains nothing but wild-fow], and

AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD 115

can only be crossed at one point by horse or foot
passenger_, who has to pick his way along a rough
stone causeway, which was constructed in the dim
remoteness of an unrecorded past, and which it is
nobody's business to improve or repair in the
present.

Few but sportsmen intent on water-fowl would
have tempted the dangers of this dilapidated
causeway ; but Mr. Eockstone knew every stone
of it. A solitary hut^ which stood close to the
river, with water on one side and marsh on the
other, was the ultima thide of his parish; and
here he came about a dozen times in the year to
see two of his parishioners, who had awakened in
him a keener interest than their merits might be
said to deserve.

Yonder hovel, with low cob walls and a gable
roof of blackened reeds, had been tenanted for the
last forty years by a basket-maker, whose gipsy
wife had died soon after his establishment in that
solitary abode, and had left him with a daughter
of three years old. The child had grown up with
him somehow^ as the birds grow in their nests, in

I 2

116 AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWAKD

that lonely place, without womanly, help of any
kindj and she had grown into a creature of a
strange wild beauty, in which her gipsy blood was
manifest. She had grown almost to womanhood
when Mr. Rockstone came to the parish, and he
had been interested in her as a curious growth of
savage ignorance in the very midst of civilization.
She had grown up knowing hardly anything which
civilized young women know; but she had on the
other hand the innocence of ignorance, had no
more knowledge of the outer world, its pleasures,
temptations, and sins than she had of the great
shining worlds in that unfathomable uuiverse
above her head. She could neither read nor
write ; she could not count her own ten fingers
without breaking down two or three times in the
attempt ; and she had never been inside a
church since she was christened. Her father's
excuse when charged with his sins of omission
was, that he was a very poor man, and that
he lived four miles and a half away from every-
thing.

'^ How could I send her to school ? " he asked.

AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD 117

" You miglit have moved to a more civilized
home/^ said the Yicar.

'* Moved ! Why, this cottage is my own free-
hold, Parson. I'd as soon part with my right arm
as sell the house that shelters me. I should never
get another if once I sold this. The money would
all go in drink. ^^

" You might at least go to church once a week/''
pursued the Vicar. " Y^ou wander many a mile in
the week to sell your baskets. Could you not
walk a few miles on a Sunday to save your
soul ? "

John Dawley shook his head.

" When a man has been on the tramp all the
week he wants his rest on Sunday/' he said.

The Vicar talked to Madge Dawley — tried to
teach her the elements of Christianity; but the
task was difficult. lie could not ask her to walk
nine miles a day in quest of enlightenment. He
rode over to the cottage by the marsh as often as
he could, and he took more pains with this beauti-
ful young ignoramus than with anybody in his
parish. After he had been engaged thus for about

118 AS THE SPAEKS FLY UPWARD

a year, he began to think he had shed some rays
of light upon the dimness of the girl's mind.
Intelligence seemed to he awakening. Madge was
less childish in her remarks upon the Gospel, and
more inquisitive about the world in which she
lived. Mr. Rockstone was full of hope about her,
when she disappeared suddenly from the cottage,
the marsh, and parish of Chadford, without leaving
the slightest clue to the mode and motive of her
departure. All that her father could tell the
parson was that he had left the hovel at daybreak
to carry his baskets to a remote market town,
where there was a fair ; and on coming back at
midnight he had found the house empty.

Had he ever seen a strange man lurking about
the cottage ? Did he suspect his daughter of any
acquaintance with a person who might lure her
away ?

No, to both questions.

Mr. Rockstone took infinite pains to trace the
fugitive, but in vain ; she had not been seen in the
village, nor at the nearest railway station. The
local police could do nothing, the metropolitan

AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD 119

police were equally at fault. John Dawley's
daughter was but another vanished drop in the
great ocean of humanity.

Five years afterwards, the basket-maker, re-
turning towards midnight from the same market
town and the same annual fair, upon the anniver-
sary of his daughter's flight, found a child,
apparently between two and three years old, sitting
on his hearth staring at the fire, which had been
lighted not long before by unknown hands.

He had no occasion to puzzle his brains about
the child's identity, for she was the exact reproduc-
tion of his daughter's infancy, and she wore round
her neck the yellow glass necklace which Madge
had worn from infancy to womanhood, her
mother's favourite ornament,, without which she
had never considered herself dressed for the day.

He searched the hovel, thinking to find his
daughter in hiding somewhere, but the place was
empty save for that young thing squatting before
the fire. He questioned the child, but she was
backward in her speech, and could only express
her own wants in a very infantine fashion :

120 AS THE SPAEKS FLY UPWAKD

Maggie tired^ Maggie hungry, Maggie want milk.
She did not cry for her mother, or make any ob-
jection to her changed surroundings. She ate her
supper of dry bread contentedly ; but she refused
to sit upon the basket-maker^s knee. S?ie curled
herself up like a kitten upon the bed "where
he put her, and slept as peacefully as a kitten
sleeps.

The basket-maker took to his new burden with
a stolidity which might be either resignation or
indifference. He would have brought up the
granddaughter exactly as he had brought up the
daughter ; but here the Vicar interfered. He ar-
rarged that the child should be boarded for two
weeks out of every four in the house of a respect-
able cottager at Chadford. During that fortnight
the girl was to attend the school, and be taught
and cared for as a Christian child in a Christian
countiy. The second fortnight in each month she
lived with her grai^father ; and as soon as her
baby fingers were capable of work she began to
help him in his basket-making. Her friend the
cottager taught her domestic work of all kinds,

AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD 121

and trained her to usefulness in the earliest age.
She was able to keep the hovel in order from the
time she was eight years old. Her board was paid
for by the Vicar, who asked no oner's help in this
good work. When she was eleven years old the
cottager^s wife died, and Madge, who was able to
read and write and cipher, now took up her abode
permanently in the cottage on the marsh, and was
only expected to appear at Sunday-school and
church on fine Sundays.

Sometimes she tramped about the countryside
with her grandfather, selling baskets. At other
times she spent her solitary days in the cottage,
or in the little cottage garden, a quarter of an
acre redeemed laboriously from the marsh, a para-
dise of flaunting wallflowers, stocks, and nastur-
tiums, hollyhocks and sunflowers, with patches of
potatoes and cabbage, and a tall ^reen of scarlet-
runners, bright against blue river and blue sky
in the hot summer afternoons, when Madge sat on
a little mound at the edge of the stream, basket-
weaving, and watching the lazy tide flow by, her
fingers moving with a monotonous regular motion

122 AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD

as if she had been weaving a net to catch the souls
of men.

She was beautiful enough for an enchantress,
with those great dark eyes and raven hair^ a skin
like old ivory, and features of Roman mould.
The Vicar was mortal, and he could not help
feeling a deeper interest in the soul that dwelt
within this splendid form than in his snub-nosed,
apple-cheeked villagers. And then the girl was
shy, or proud, and held herself aloof from all sym-
pathy, which made the Vicar only the more
sympathetic.

Mr. Rockstone had deferred his visit to old
Dawley^s cottage longer than usual, and he ap-
proached the marsh to-day with a certain anxiety
of mind, inasmuch as Madge had not appeared in
her usual place in the gallery of his church for
more than a month. The weather had been either
bad or doubtful on all those Sundays, and he had
taken that to be the cause of her absence ; yet
when a fifth Sunday came and she was still
absent, the Vicar began to think there must be
some more serious reason than rain or wind.

AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD 123

The smoke rose in a thin, white column from
the low chimney of the hut_, and a gleam of fire-
light showed in the window that looked across the
marsh. There was some life in the hovel at any
rate.

Old Dawley was sitting by the hearth, which
occupied one side of the low, dark living-room,
making a basket ; his granddaughter knelt by the
window with her arms folded upon the sill, look-
ing out across the broad, level marsh to the road
on the edge of the low hill which shut out all the
world beyond. The marsh was about a quarter of
a mile in width, broken up here and there into
pools, where the wild fowl congregated ; a long-
stretch of waste land and dark water very dear to
the sportsman.

The girl turned her head with a listless air as
the Vicar entered ; but she did not rise from her
knees or offer him any greeting.

" How d''ye do, Dawley ? how's the rheumatism ?
No better, eh/'' as the old basket-maker shook
his head. " That's bad. The weather has been
against us old fellows for the last three months.

124 AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD

But I didn't think the Treather was bad enough
to keep a healthy young woman like you from
churchy Madge/^ added the Vicar, with good-
humoured remonstrance, smiling at the girl,
■whose great dark eyes were looking at him
dreamily, as if she were but half-conscious of
external things, in the absorption of her own
thoughts.

" She ain^t over-healthy now," said her grand-
father discontentedly. ^^ I don't know what be
come over her. She's just as if she was half- asleep
all day, yet she's awake almost all night, for I hear
her toss about t'other side the lath and plaster, and
sigh as if she'd a mort o' trouble, half the night
through. She spiles my rest, she do, as well as
her own. She's the most discontentedest young
female as ever I met with."

" Come, come, friend, you musn't be hard upon
her. It may be that the life is too lonely for her,
and that she's not well. Young women most of
them seem subject to neuralgia now-a-days. They
all seem to want tonics, quinine and iron, sea air,
and change of scene. What's the matter, Madge ?'^

AS THE SPAIIKS FLY UrWAED 125

asked the Vicar gently, laying his broad fatherly
hand upon the raven hair.

"Nothing's the matter/' the girl answered,
with a sullen air ; " 1 am sick of my life, that's
all."

" You are tired of this lonely place. You want
to leave your poor old grandfather ?"

" No, I should be no better anywhere else. It
isn't the place I'm tired of, it's my life."

"This is a case for quinine; I'll send you a box
of pills," said the Yicar cheerily.

Madge turned her back upon him and looked
out at the marsh, just as she had been looking
when her patron entered. The old man got up
from his three-legged stool, and jerked his head
significantly towards the door.

" Come out and have a talk, Dawley," said the
Vicar ; " your cottage is too warm for me, and I've
got Don outside to look after."

Don was browsing contentedly upon some rank
grass on the edge of the causeway, and had no
more intention of going away than if he had been
the original antediluvian horse in a museum.

126 AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWAED

The two men went out together, and strolled
along the causeway side by side.

" Of course you can see what it is, can^t you.
Parson?'^ began Dawley abruptly. ^'No mistaking
the signs in a gal/^

" You think she's in love/'' hazarded the Vicar.

" O' course she is, Parson. That's the way it
alius begins — sighin' and sulkin-*, and sleepless
nights a- thinking of him. Curse him, whoever he
is! He'll lure this one away like the other one
was lured away, of a sudden, without a word of
warning to the poor old father. I dursen't leave
the cottage, lest I should find it empty when I
comes back. I hain't sold a basket for a fortnight.
Fm here to guard her from the sarpent.^^

"Who can it be?" asked the Vicar, with a puzzled
air. " Is there any one in the village that she cares
for?''

"Lord! no. Parson. It ain't no one in the
village — it ain't a working man, or a gentleman's
servant, or any one of her own station — else it
would be all fair and above-board, and she wouldn^'t
be afraid to tell her old grandfather. It's some-

AS THE SPAEKS FLY UPWAllD 127

body whose love means ruin. Some lying, fine
gentleman, who'll speak her fair, and tempt her to
go away with him, and leave her to rot when his
fancy's over. I knows the breed/'

" Have you any reason to suspect mischief?"
" Too many reasons ; but I'll tell you one or
two, and you can judge. It's just about six weeks
ago that I noticed when I came home late at night
that there was a smell of 'baccy in the room
yonder. Well, I'm a smoker myself, but this
wasn't my ■'baccy that I smelt, and it wasn't twelve
hours old, neither. It was a gentleman's 'baccy ;
as different from what I smoke as the champagne
you gentry drink is from the cider they sell up
street. I know'd there'd been a stranger here
when I smelt that 'baccy. I asked my gal if
there'd been any one come to the cottage all day.
She said '^No,'' but I could see she was lying. I
noticed the same smell three nights running ; and
on the morning after the third night I found
another sign o' mischief. There'd been rain the
day before, but the wind shifted towards evening,
and there was a sharp frost in the night; and

128 AS THE SPAEKS FLY UPWARD

when I went out into the causeway there was my
gentleman's footprints^ as if they'd been cut in a
rock — the prints of a gentleman's strong-soled
shooting boots. There's no mistakin' the cut of a
fine gentleman's boot : it's as different from a poor
man's clodhopper as a gentleman's 'baccy is from
mine. Somebody had been hanging about the
cottage and making up to my gal."

'' Was that all ? Did you never see the man
himself?"

" Never. He was too artful. I've scarcely been
three days away from home since I saw the foot-
prints in the causeway ; but my gentleman has
never shown up hereabouts, and my gal has moped
all the time."

^' Have you never questioned her since then?"
" Now and again, careless like. Had there been
any one shooting the wild fowl, anybody going past
in a boat ? and such like. But I might as well
expect to get answers out of a stone. Not a word
would she say to me, except she didn't know, she
hadn't noticed — what reason was there for her to
watch for people in boats ? "

AS THE SrARKS FLY UPWARD 129

"Well, Dawley, we must be on our guard for
her, poor child. She is too handsome to be exempt
from dangers and temptations. I don^t think she
ought to be left to live this solitary life any longer.
Solitude encourages brooding. She wants change
and occupation — the sight of strange faces."

" How is she to get them ? " asked Dawley
despondingly.

" She might go into service.'^

" And be ruined and broken-hearted before she
had left me six months. I know what servant gals
are, and how little care there is taken of ^em.
She's not old enough or wise enough to be left to
take care of herself. Send her out to service any-
where hereabouts, and the fine gentleman who left
his footmarks on this causeway would soon find out
where she was, and be after her. She'd have her
evenings out, belike ; and he'd be waiting for her
somewheres in the dusk. I knows the world.
Parson. She don't, poor child ; and knowledge of
the world ain't to be learnt second-hand. I might
preach her sermons as long as my arm, but she'd
never be warned by them."

VOL. I. K

130 AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWAKD

'' There is service and service^ Dawley. I know
of houses in wliich the maids are as well looked
after as nuns in a convent. FIl talk to a lady I
know about your granddaughter, and if I can
interest her "

^' It will be hard to part with her/' said the old
man, " but I can't keep watch over her always and
sell my baskets ; and if I don't sell 'em we must
starve. And she's gettin' to hate me for being so
watchful of her, I can see that. It's a wicked
world, Parson."

" It's a troublesome world, my friend, and we
must make the best of it for ourselves and each
other. Man was born to trouble as the sparks fly
upward. Have you heard anything of Madge's
mother lately ? "

*^ Not a word, Parson. Ah, she was a bad lot,
an out-and-out bad lot, with a heart as hard as the
nethermost millstone."

^' You must not judge her, Dawley. She was
brought up in darkness and ignorance. No one
ever taught her her duty."

" There's duties that don't need to be taught —

AS THE SPAEKS FLY UPWARD 1-31

tlie duty of loving your father and mother. That
ought to come natural even to a savage/^

" Your daughter may have died years ago/^

" I don't think so, Parson. I heard of her six
or seven years ago — not a word from her_, mark
you — but I heard from a man who had seen her in
London^ riding in her carriage, or in somebody^s
carriage, as bold as brass — as fine a lady as any in
London, Joe Tronnion said. He^s a gipsy hawker,
sells brooms and baskets and such like, and travels
all over the country. He saw my gal, he did, not
seven year agone, all among the gentle folks on
Hepsom Downs, dressed in silk and satin, as bra-
zen as you like, she that never came to look after
her child since the little one was three year old."*^

" Well, we had best forget all about her, Dawley,
till God puts better thoughts into her mind and
brings her back to us. Til see what can be done
about Madge. She wouldn^t suit everybody, never
having been in service — but I think I know a lady
who will help me.^^

" In this or in any other emergency,'^ he said to
himself, by way of postscript.

K 2

132 AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD

He mounted Don, and rode slowly homeward
across tlie open waste to the lane with its tall
tangled hedges, bare now for the most part, save
where the foliage lingered on the pollard oaks, and
the beechwood showed copper-coloured leaves that
were to last till late into the coming year, when
the young growth came to drive them away. Very
slow was that homeward ride, for Don had ex-
hausted all his freshness in the outward journey,
and only quickened his pace when he saw the old
church tower and smelt the clover in the Vicarage
stable. But to his astonishment the Vicar took
him past that familiar gate, and trotted him, snorts
ing with indignant protest, to the gates of Belfield
Park and along the avenue to the Abbey, where
there was some consolation, as a groom came out
at the sound of hoofs, and conducted the clerical
steed to a loose box, while his master went into the
house to see Lady Belfield.

She was in her usual place in the innermost
drawing-room, a woman always ready to see her
friends, and give them cordial welcome ; not one of
those women who have to be hunted for on the

AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD 133

arrival of a visitor, and who are never fit to be
seen except when they are e7i gr ancle tenue.

She gave her hand to the Vicar with a smile,
and he sat down in the luxurious chair at her side,
and felt that life was worth living for.

He told her the state of things at old Dawley^s
cottage : the young life wasting, the young, undis-
ciplined heart pining, for want of womanly care
and sympathy, and he had enlisted her feelings
before his story was half finished.

" You want change of scene for her, a brighter,
busier life, a home where she will be taught and
cared for,^^ she said, when she had heard all.
" Let her come here by all means. My house-
keeper is an excellent creature — but you know my
good Mrs. Marrable as well as I do.^^

" I have reason to know her. Yes, she has a
heart of gold.^"*

" Well, I will place this protegee of yours under
Mrs. Marrable's especial care, and I will do all I
can for her myself."

"You are always good. Lady Bclficld, You
have taught me to rely upon your goodness. But

131 AS THE SPAEKS FLY TPWAED

I must warn you that this girl may he of very
little use in your establishment. She is untaught
and inexperienced/^

''■ I don^t expect her to be of use to me ; I want
to be of use to her. Bring her to me as soon as
you like, Vicar."

" God bless you. I will bring her to you to-
morrowj if I can.'"

CHAPTER VI.

EASY TO LOVE II E R

The Vicar rode Don across the marsli early
next morning, a liberty which that sage animal
felt inclined to resent, so rarely was he taken
far afield two days running. But the Vicar was
too iutent upon humanity just now to spare horse-
flesh.

Old Dawley had gone to the market-town with
a load of baskets, his exchequer having sunk to
the lowest point, dire necessity forcing him to
abandon his post as guardian of a girFs heart and
honour.

Madge was alone, in the same moody attitude,
with the same moody countenance which the
Vicar had observed yesterday. She took but the
slightest notice of his entrance — scarcely stirred
from her place by the window, scarcely ceased
from her contemplation of the marsh, only looked

136 EASY TO LOVE HER

at him ^ith a bored expression and rr, uttered a
sullen good morning.

'^ Madge, I have got you a place/^ he said,
without circumlocution.

'^ What place ?^'

" A place in a lady's house, where you will be
kindly treated and taught to be useful. I am
going to take you to a new and cheerful life, to
a good home, clean rooms, wholesome food, and
companions of your own age."

'^ You mean that I'm to go into service,^^ she
said, with the same sullen air.

" Yes, my dear girl ; the life you are leading
here is altogether an unnatural life. It is high
time you went out to service, and learnt to get
your own living."

The girl was silent for some moments, looking
across the marsh with that dreamy air of hers;
then she turned slowly and looked at the A'icar,
half in wonder, half in scorn, with large dark eves
that were capable of looking unfathomable things.

" Did my grandfather put that in your head!"
she asked.

EASY TO LOVE HER 137

" No. Your grandfather told me only that you
were unhappy. It was I thought of the cure/^

" A pretty cure ! " she cried^ contemptuously.
*' You think it will make me happy to scrub floors
and pots and pans, or perhaps you would send me
out as a nursemaid to mind squalling babies. I
would rather starve and have my freedom than be
a well-fed slave. "^

*^ There is no such thing as slavery in the house
where I am going to take you. Lady Belfield is
one of the kindest women I know. She will take
you into her service as a favour to me^ and she will
have you treated kindly and taught to be useful."

" Lady Belfield ! " cried Madge^ jumping up and
flushing to the roots of her hair ; " Lady Belfield
will take me into her service ! '^

"■ Yes, Madge, and will interest herself in your
welfare. She has heard of your dismal life here,
and has promised to do all in her power to make
you happy. You won't refuse such a service as
that, will you ? "

" No," answered the girl, after a long pause.
" I won't refuse. I ought to be very grateful, I

138 EASY TO LOVE HER

suppose. It's a fine thing for dirt like me to be
let into snch a house as that/"*

"It will be the making of you, Madge/' an-
swered the Vicar gravely, ^^ and I hope you accept
the situation in a right spirit, and "will try to do
your duty to that excellent lady."

The girl vouchsafed him no assurance as to her
intention upon this point.

'^ When am I to go ? " she asked.

'^At once — to-day.-"

" I have hardly any clothes but those on my
back."

" My housekeeper shall get you some more
clothes. You can come to the Vicarage as fast as
you can, and Deborah shall buy you what you
want in the village."

The girl took up his hand and kissed it in a
burst of gratitude.

^' You are a good man," she said ; " yes, I'll
come. Poor old grandfather ! He'll miss me of an
evening, when he comes home ; but anything will
be better than it has been lately. "We've both
been miserable — and perhaps some day "

EASY TO LOVE IIER 139

She smiled, her face flushed again as it had
flushed at the first mention of Lady Belfield^s
name.

" Will they let me come and see my grandfather
sometimes?" she asked.

" Of course ; and if you learn to be a valuable
servant, by-and-by you will get good wages, and
then you can be a help to him in his old age.^^

Madge appeared at the Vicarage before three
oY'lock, with all her worldly goods tied up in a
cotton handkerchief. She was not overcome by
the grandeur of the Vicarage, for that grave old
house, with its sombre rooms, cool in summer and
warm in winter, had been familiar to her in her
childhood, when the Vicar catechised her on Sun-
day evenings in his library Avith a class of Sunday-
school children. She remembered the look of the
panelled hall and the old Oriental jars, the Vicar's
fishing tackle and the perfume of rose leaves and
lavender. Deborah, the housekeeper, who was a
very homely personage as compared with Mrs.
Marrable at the Abbey, received her instructions

140 EASY TO LOVE HER

from the Vicar and sallied out with Madge to the
village shop where all the indispensables of this
life were kept in stocky and here the two women
sat for nearly an hour^ choosing and buying :
Deborah keenly interested, Madge indifferent,
looking with incurious scorn upon the snowy
calico and the neat pink and white prints which
were being bought for her.

" I suppose you can make your own gowns,"
said Deborah, rather snappishly, provoked at an
indifference which implied ingratitude to the good
Vicar.

" I have never had anybody else to make them
for me," answered Madge.

" That one you have got on fits pretty fair,
though I don't like the style of it," said Deborah,
eyeing the supple form from top to toe. '^I wouldn't
let one of our maids wear such a gown as that,
and you'll have to dress different at the Abbey.
And you won't be allowed to wear them beads
round your neck."

" And yet they say service isn't slavery," re-
torted Madge, with a scornful laugh.

EA.SY TO LOVE HER 141

Deborali spent a couple of sovereigns grudgingly,
knowing how many claims her master had upon his
benevolence, and having very little sympathy with
this ungracious young woman.

" You're to come back to the Vicarage and have
tea with us/^ she said curtly, " and then John is to
walk to the Abbey with you/"*

John was the Vicar's valet, butler, confidant, and
factotum. He was known only as John, and seemed
to have no occasion for any surname. The Vicar's
John was known and respected all over the parish.
He was a tall, lean, sharp-nosed man, very chary of
speech, and never talking except to the purpose.
He was a great reader of newspapers, and a pro-
found politician. Of books he knew none but the
Bible, and that he knew better than five curates
out of six. He had a way of talking about the
patriarchs and the kings and heroes of Israel as if
they had been Peel and Brougham, or Bright and
Gladstone, which was curious, and quite uncon-
sciously irreverent.

" I don't want any tea," Madge answered, un-
graciously.

142 EASY TO LOVE IIER

'^ Oh, but you must want your tea; you must
be almost sinking. What a queer girl you are !
Come along now ; let^s get home as fast as we
can. Martha will have got the kettle boiling,
and John will be wanting his tea/''

John was a person whose wants must always
be studied. He waited upon the Vicar with exem-
plary devotion, but he expected that the women
folk should wait upon him. In the kitchen and
servants* premises he was first in importance, and
all gave way before him.

The Vicarage kitchen looked very cheery in the
winter afternoon, with a bright red fire burning in
an old-fashioned open grate, and the hearth spot-
less, and the fender shining like silver. The Vicar
dined at eight, so this afternoon hour was a period
of leisure and repose. The large oak table at
which Deborah did her cooking was pushed on one
side, and a snug round table covered with a snow-
white cloth stood in front of the fire-place. Martha,
the housemaid, a rosy-cheeked buxom lass, had pre-
pared everything except the actual making of the
tea, a sacred office reserved for Deborah. The tea-

EASY TO LOVE HER 143

tray was spread,, and there was a dish of hot but-
tered cakes frizzling on the hearth^ by which sat
the Vicar^s John in a dignified attitude, reading
the Standard.

Mr. Rockstone's indoor establishment consisted
of these three, and they formed as happy and
united a household as could be found in all the
county. That catholic spirit of benevolence and
peace which breathed in the Vicar^s theology per-
vaded all the acts and thoughts of daily life at the
Vicarage.

Madge sat amongst them as an alien. She took
her cup of tea in silence, ate very little, had no
idea of " making a good tea," as Deborah urged
her. It might be that she was fretting at leaving
her old grandfather. This supposition softened
Deborah's heart a little.

" Now then, miss/'' said John, rising suddenly,
with a military squareness of action, after a
tremendous meal, " if you are ready, I am. It
will be dark before we get to the Abbey."

It was nearly dark when they passed in front of
the porch on their way to the servants' quarters.

144 EASY TO LOVE HER

There were a couple of grooms and three horses
waiting before the porch, two with side saddles.
Lights were shining in the windows of the lower
rooms, but the hall was lighted only by the fire-glow.
It looked a picture of luxury and bright colour as
Madge saw it through the open door : armour
flashing in the firelight — old tapestry — vivid
colouring of Oriental curtains draping chimney-
piece and doorways ; such an interior as Madge's
eyes had never looked upon before.

She caught but a glimpse of that strange
splendour, and then John hurried her on by a
shrubbery path which skirted one side of the
house, to a low door which opened into a stone
lobby and thence to the servants' hall. Beyond
the servants' hall there was another door, and at
this John tapped respectfully.

It was the door of Mrs. Marrable's private sit-
ting-room, only one degree less sacred than Lady
Belfield's own apartments. Indeed, the Abbey
servants were more afraid of iNIrs. Marrable than
of Lady Belfield.

The room looked delightfully cosy in the light

EASY TO LOV^E HER 145

of a bright wood fire. It was covered from floor
to ceiling with a heterogeneous collection of pic-
tures^ prints, oil paintings, and water-colours. All
the pictures rejected from the state apartments by
three generations of Belfields had been banished to
this limbo. There were doubtless some very vile
specimens among this collection, but the general
effect, seen in a half-light, was excellent. There
was a goodly array of old china also on shelves and
in cabinets, for here was brought all the damaged
porcelain.

Mrs. Marrable had been enjoying a nap by the
fire, preliminary to candles and tea, but she was
wide awake in an instant.

"How do you do, John ? Very glad to see you.
So this is the young person recommended by the
Vicar,^"* she said. " Her ladyship told me all
about you, my dear, and she wished to see you
directly you arrived. I^m to take you to the
drawing-room myself as you're a stranger. You
may just lay aside your hat and shawl — you'll
have to wear a bonnet in future — and come
with me. Perhaps }Ou'd like to i>top into the

VOL I. L

146 EASY TO LOVE IIER

servants' hall, John, and join them at their
tea/'

'^ Thank you kindly, ma'am, I tea'd before I
came/^ John answered gravely. " I must be
getting back to see after the Vicar's dinner.
Good-night, mum ; good-night, miss ; "" and John
marched off by the way he had come, while
Madge, trembling slightly, in spite of her
native audacity, followed Mrs. Marrable to that
enchanted chamber with the curtains of wrought
gold and vivid colour, the flashing arms and
great stags' heads, which she had seen from out-
side.

They crossed the firelit hall, and Mrs. Marrable
opened the drawing-room door and entered with
Madge at her heels, expecting to find this room
empty and Lady Belfield alone in her usual place
in the inner drawing-room. She was drawing
back at the sight of a group round a low tea-table
near the fire, two ladies in riding habits, and Sir
Adrian in his hunting clothes, lolling luxuriously
in their low easy chairs.

" Don't go away, Mrs. Marrable/' said Ladv

EASY TO LOVE HER 117

Belfield. " You have brought me the young per-
son, I see."

She rose and left the tea-table and came over to
the other end of the spacious room, where Mrs.
Marrable stood with Madge beside her, doubtful
whether to withdraw or to remain, while the girFs
dark eyes gazed across empty space to the bright
glow of lamp and firelight in which those three
figures were seated.

She gazed at Sir Adrian with a look half of sur-
prise, half of admiration. She had caught chance
glimpses of those pale, refined features, across
the width of the parish church as Sir Adrian
stood in the old-fashioned curtained pew in the
chancel. But those glimpses had not familiarized
her with his face. It was new to her to-night iu
the glow of lamp and fire, radiant with happiness,
as he talked to Helen Devcrill, who sat nursing
her hat upon her knees, and smiling up at him,
with a charming unconsciousness of her ver^^ liberal
display of patent-leather Wellingtons.

The girl hardly saw Lady Bclfield's calm, kind
face, so absorbed was all her power of vision by

L 2

148 EASY TO LOVE HER

that face in the firelight ; but she courtesied when
her new mistress spoke to her, as she had been
taught to courtesy to her betters in the Sunday-
school.

'' I am glad you have come so soon/'' said Con-
stance ; " I hope you will be happy with your
fellow-servantsj and that you will try to please
Mrs. Marrable, who will be very kind to you^ I
know."

There was no patronizing admonition, no word
about duty or desert^ only a kind and friendly wel-
come for the stranger.

" I should like to have had a little talk with
you/' added Lady Belfield, ''but I am engaged just
now. Mr. Rockstone has told me how much he is
interested in you.^'

" He has been the only friend I ever had except
grandfather,'^ answered Madge.

" Say, my lady," whispered the housekeeper.

*^ Then I hope you will try to be happy here, if
it is only to please that kind friend," said Lady
Belfield.

*' Yes, my lady, T will try.''

EASY TO LOVE HER 149

She courtesied again^ and followed the house-
keeper out of the room, and went back to the ser-
vants' offices to begin her new life. Helen and her
sister began to criticize her directly she was out of
the room.

" What a handsome girl ! '^ exclaimed Mrs. Bad-
deley : '' worlds too pretty for a servant. How
inconvenient when girls in that station of life are
born with such good looks. What made you
engage her, Lady Belfield ? For my part I detest
pretty servants. They always set all the indoor
men by the ears, and make the other maids ill-
tempered. There ought to be a dead level of com-
monplace features and muddy complexions among
young women of that class.^'

'^ Surely you would not like to be waited upon by
gorgons,^^ remonstrated Adrian, laughing.

" I did not say anything about gorgons. There
is a middle distance between beauty and ugliness.
I like my servants to occupy that neutral ground o£
inoffensive mediocrity. You haven't told me why
you engaged this girl, dear Lady Belfield. ^^

" You haven^t given me time/' said Constance

150 EASY TO LOVE IIEK

smiling at the animated face, and then she told
just enough of the girFs story to awaken interest
in sympathetic minds, and both sisters appeared
full of kindly feeling, frivolous as Lady Belfield was
sometimes disposed to consider them.

Adrian was in high spirits this afternoon as he
sat by Helen''s side, feeding her with sweet things
as if she had been a bird, thinking her absolutely
bewitching as she nibbled pound-cake, and acknow-
ledged to a passionate love for buns. These two
had been pottering about with the hounds side by
side all day — a wretched day for sport, but a very
good day for Adrian, who could only enjoy his
divinity's society fully when there was a bad scent
and a great deal of waiting about outside the
coverts. The Miss Toffstaffs had been eloquent
in their animadversions upon Miss Deverill. They
even wondered that Sir Adrian^s better judgment
did not prevent such immorality.

'* I call it disgraceful conduct even in him," said
Dorothy.

*' And what can one call it in her ? " responded
Isabel Treducey.

EASY TO LOVE HER 151

There were a knot of Dianas clustered on the
opposite side of the road, keenly observant of
Helen and Adrian, in the midst of their own light
prattle.

'^ I believe she has hooked him/^ said Matilda
Treducey, who was horsy and outspoken.

" What, you can't imagine he'll marry such a
brazen-faced flirt/^ exclaimed Dorothy.

^•' My dear, I can imagine anything. Men are
such fools.'"'

But if it were folly, it was a pleasant folly while
it lasted. Never had Adrian been so happy as in
this dreary December — never before had there been
for him this glory and brightness over earrh and
sky, this glamour of passionate love which filled the
world with light and life and gladness and ever-
hurrying emotion. He felt like a man borne down
the tide of a rushing river, or carried by a swift
horse, with the freshness of the air in his nostrils,
the sunlight shining upon him. He had a delicious
sense of being hurried onward without knowing or
caring whither. The journey was in itself so rap-
turous, he scarce asked himself where was the goal.

152 EASY TO LOVE HER

Ilis mother startled him one morning soon
after Madge's advent at the Abbey, by asking him
abruptly :

" Adrian, are you going to marry Helen
Deverill ? "

He flushed crimson at the suddenness of the
attack. They were alone together before break-
fast, standing in the window of the breakfast-
room, and had both been silent and thoughtful
until that moment, watching the falling snow.

" To marry/' he faltered ; ^^ what a startling
attack, mother ! "

" My dear boy, you must know your own mind
by this time. Everybody tells me you are in love
with Miss Deverill; and if you don't mean to
marry her, and if you are not compromised by
any declaration, you had better go away and let
people see that they are wrong. I am tired of
being questioned and congratulated about a^ poten-
tial daughter-in-law."

"Mother, how strangely you say that! You
like her, don't you ? "

" I hardly know my own mind about her.

EASY TO LOVE HER 153

Adrian. There are times when she bewitches me,
almost as she has bewitched you ; and then I am
afraid of her, Adrian ; I am full of fear for your
happiness/'

" It is too late to talk about fear, mother. I
gave her my heart long ago. I think it must
have been the first time I saw her. But indeed
you have no cause for fear. She is the most inno-
cent, childlike creature the sun ever shone upon.
She is as open as a summer sky. Yes, I have
studied her character, and I am not afraid to trust
my life into her keeping. You are right, mother :
it is time I should declare myself. I have been
living in a fooFs paradise — too happy to take
thought of the morrow."*'

" Then you mean to marry her ? "

" Mean ! How can I be sure that she will have
me f

" There is no fear of a refusal.''

" Then you think she loves me ? " he asked
eagerly, his face brightening as he spoke.

*^I think you are Sir Adrian Belficld, and the
best match in the county."

154 EASY TO LOVE HEP.

" Mother, that is a detestable speech,, and not a
bit like you/^

" My dearest, to my mind you are the most
loveable young man in England. But I am afraid
of Colonel Deverill's daughter. She has been
brought up in a bad school. She has graduated
at fashionable "watering-places and in gambling
saloons. I would ever so much rather you had
fallen in love with Lucy Freemantle.^'

" I should be as likely to fall in love with that
yew obelisk yonder," said Adrian impatiently.
" But don't let us argue the point, mother. If I
can but be so fortunate as to win her, I know she
will make you love her. She will creep into your
heart, and be to you as a daughter before you
have quite decided whether you can trust lier.^'

'^ And that is the worst of it, Adrian. I may
learn to love her without being able to trust her."
Mother and son breakfasted together, for the
most part in silence. Both were preoccupied.
Lady Belfield felt that she had precipitated the
inevitable by her questions ; and yet when evil is
inevitable it may as well be faced. She thought

EASY TO LOYE HER 155

of those other girls whom she would have pre-
ferred for her son^s choice. Of the Treduceys,
who were only just tolerable as individuals, but
who were excellent in the way of race and ante-
cedents ; of Lucy Freemantle, who was a really
estimable girl, a pretty-looking, fresh-complexioned;,
uninteresting young Englishwoman, much too shy
to make the most of her advantages. Could she
wonder that her son preferred this outspoken,
fascinating girl, with her light-hearted gaiety, her
child-like delight in life, her tender, caressing ways,
and low musical voice ?

*^ No hunting," said Adrian, after breakfast^
going off to the stables.

He ordered a pair of horses to be roughed, and
an hour afterwards he was driving his four-wheel
dogcart along the road that led to Morcomb.

Helen was alone in the billiard-room, practising
the spot stroke, in a neat little blue frock, with a
scarlet waistcoat. " The Guards' colours,^'' she told
Adrian, when he admired it.

" Leo was orderincr one from her tailor, so she

156 EASY TO LOVE IIEK

ordered one for me at the same time/^ said HeleD.
'^ Kind, wasn't it ? ''

" Very kind."'

Adrian wondered a little at Mrs. Baddeley's
somewhat lavish expenditure, since he had been
told that her husband had very small means — a
mere pittance beyond his pay.

" I am quite alone," said Helen, when they had
seated themselves on each side of the hearth.
*' There was a telegram from Brindisi this morning,
and father and Leonora rushed off by the express
on their way to Paris. They are not to stop tra-
velling till they get to Paris, and they may be just
in time to meet Major Baddeley, who will travel as
fast as ever he can from Brindisi ; and then they
will stop in Paris two or three days to see the
sights, and then they will come back to poor . dis-
consolate me.^'

" You do not look very disconsolate," said
Adrian, contemplating her admiringly, as she sat
in a lazy attitude, with her hands clasped above
her head, with its loose mass of dark auburn
hair.

EASY TO LOVE HER 157

"To tell you the truth, I don^t at all mind
being alone for a change. If it were hunting
weather I should rather rejoice in their absence,
for I could have a second horse — Leo's.. Of course
she told me not to ride him; but of course I
shouldn^t mind that, if this beastly snow would
only give way. But what can one do in such
weather as this ? "

" Well, there are resources — one^s books and
one's piano.''

" Oh, I have too much quicksilver in my veins
for that kind of life. I want movement, air,
variety — people to talk to me."

" People to admire and adore you, you mean,"
said Adrian.

" Yes, it is nice to be adored. One gets spoiled
at a place like Monte Carlo, where there are so
many idle young men, who can't afford to be
always shooting pigeons or playing trente-et-
quarante, and who are obliged to fall in love with
somebody, j90wr passer le temps. But don't let us
talk nonsense. I am growing a very serious
personage in this rural atmosphere, I can assure

158 EASY TO LOVE HER

you. If I were to stay here another winter I
should ask the Vicar to give me a district, and go
about among the cottagers. I find I am very
much looked down upon by other young ladies
because I don^t do that/''

"Pray, don't; it is not in your line. There are
bees and butterflies. You belong to the butter-
flies— beautiful insects, but useless except for the
delight their grace and beauty give to man. "We
might exist without bees, but life would be unen-
durable without butterflies.^'

" How sweet of you to say that," exclaimed
Helen. ^' Then I will not be false to my voca-
tion. I shall try to fulfil my mission as a but-
terfly."

And then, after a pause, she said carelessly :

" Isn't it funny that you and I should be
sitting on each side of the fire, like Darby and
Joan ? "

'^Funnj^, Helen? No, it is intensely serious.
It is the finger of Fate that has motioned us to
these two chairs." Then, suddenly crossing the
hearth and seating himself close beside her: ^' Shall

EASY TO LOVE HER 159

we not be Darby and Joan for life, Helen — always,
always together^ with the right to sit by our own
fireside ? Say yes, my darling ; say yes. You
know how dearly I love you. There need be no
passionate speeches, no romantic wooing. I have
loved you from the hour we first sat beside this
hearth. Tell me on this spot, dear love, where
first we met, that you give me love for love, that
you will be my wife.^'

He drew her to his breast, and she let her head
sink upon his shoulder. She was his own now;
that lovely hair, with its delicate perfume, was his
to caress ; and the lovely lips did not refuse them-
selves to the kiss of betrothal.

" I don't know if I ought to pledge myself like
this in my father's absence," she said, withdrawing
herself suddenly from her lovers arm, with a touch
of prudishness. " He ought to be consulted, ought
he not — Adrian ? "

How deliciously she murmured his name for the
first time.

" He shall be consulted," said Adrian. " But I
have no fear of his withholding his consent.''

160 EASY TO LOVE HER

'' Oh, you know you are a good match/' cried
Helen, tossing up her head. " You are King
Cophetua and I am the beggar maid; and what
can the beggar maid's father say to the King,
except to thank him for his condescension ? "

^' My darling, you know that you are the queen
and I am the beggar; a suppliant for the infinite
boon of your love."

** Pray, does Lady Belfield know that you mean
to give her me for a daughter-in-law ? " asked
Helen abruptly.

^' She does know that it is the desire of my
heart to do so."

'• Poor dear Lady Belfield, I am sure she would
rather have had anybody else. That strictly pro-
per and rather pretty Miss Freemantle, for instance.
Will you swear that you were never in love with
Miss Freemantle ? "

" I won't, because you know as well as possible
that I never knew what love meant till I loved
you."

" Ah, that is a kind of sophistical asseveration
that all lovers make. ' Were you never in love

EASY TO LOVE HER 161

before ? ' says the lady. We are such jealous
creatures — ^jealous of the past, the present, and
the future, but most of all of the past. ' I never
knew true love till I saw you/ replies the gentle-
man. But that commits him to nothing. He
may have been in love a hundred times before.
And you are five-and- twenty, Adrian. You must
have been in love."

''I may have had a spasm or two of calf-love.
I once rather admired Matilda Treducey.^^

" No, don't tell me that — anything but that. I
should like to think you had good taste even before
you knew me. And now, will you come for a
walk ? I want to see the horses and dogs. Don^t
be frightened. I am not going to present you to
the stablemen as my future husband.'''

'^ I wish you would. It would be a kind of
security that you will marry me. Put on your
warmest wraps, love. It is very cold out of
doors."

" I am not going to be called ^ love/ or ^ darling,'
or any of those sickly sweet appellations. You arc
to call me Helen^ and I shall call you Adrian. There

VOL. I. M

162 EASY TO LOVE HER

is a world more meaning in our own two names,
which belong to us individually, than in any barley-
sugar epithets that all the world uses/''

'^ Then you shall be Helen, my Helen, I ask for
no sweeter name. Helen, the destroyer of ships
and of men :

' Is this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? ' "

" Is that some of Tennyson^s nonsense ? "

" No, it is Marlowe^s nonsense/''

" Marlowe ? A new poet, I suppose. Please
ring that bell for me, Adrian. I want a handful
of sugar for the horses."

^' Happy horses to be fed with sweets from such
sweet hands."

" Now, have we not agreed that you arc to in-
dulge in none of that nonsense ? I will have no
sentimentality. You must treat me as your
comrade and friend, or I will have nothing to
say to you."

Her prettily authoritative air took the sting out
of her speech. He submitted, and accompanied

EASY TO LOVE HER 163

her meekly on her round to the stables^ which was
a long business. It was not that there were many-
horses, but each was a personal acquaintance and
had the strongest claims upon Helenas attention ;
and there was a good deal of time lost in running
in and out of boxes in the endeavour to re-adjust
the balance of favour, when one had had more
than his due share of sugar, and another snorted
indignant demands across the top of a door. And
then there were the fox-terriers that lived in the
stables, and the yard dogs outside, all equally
exacting.

^^ I hope they will be able to live without you
for a week or two/" said Adrian.

'' They cannot live without me. Where I go
they must go."'^

" What, on your father^s yacht, for instance ? "

''No, I have only a beggarly allowance of one
small dog on the yacht.^''

" And when you pay visits ? "

'^ I never do pay visits. Don^t you know that
we are nomads — almost friendless nomads. Leo
has friends — her husband's brother officers and

164 EASY TO LOVE HER

their people. It is a crack regiment, you know,
and Frank is quite the smallest person in it.
Leo goes into society. Leo visits at country
houses. I don't. I am a Bohemian, a savage, a
wild girl of the woods. You will change your mind
perhaps when you come to consider the kind of
person you have chosen. '^

" I have chosen her ; to me she is perfect. My
dearest, I love you ever so much better for not
being a woman of the world. But I am not going
to let you mope alone here while your people are
away. You must come to the Abbey. My mother
shall fetch you this afternoon. ''

'^ It would be very nice ; but do you think Lady
Belfield would like it?"

" I am sure she would. Y'ou cannot grow too
near and dear to her. I want you to be to her as
a daughter, in advance of the tie that is to make
you one."

^' She is very sweet," said Helen gravely. '' It
is easy for me to love her ; but I'm afraid it may
be difficult for her to love me."

" Indeed it will not. Come, and try your power.

EASY TO LOVE HER 165

I believe she loves you already. And now I will
leave you to make your preparations for coming to
the Abbey/'

" But shall I not look rather foolish if I pack my
trunks upon your invitation, and if Lady Belfield
should not care about having me ? "

^^ She will care. She shall be here at four
o'clock to fetch you. Show her how punctual and
business-like you can be. You can send your
heavy luggage in the stable cart — or shall I send
for it?"

** Oh no, our own men can take my luggage. If
you insist upon it, I will get ready^ even at the risk
of looking foolish.^'

( 16G )

CHAPTER VII.

NOT QUITE CONTENT

Helen Deverill had been staying at the Abbey
for nearly three weeks ; she had become domesti-
cated there, and seemed a part of the family life.
Lady Belfield found herself wondering how she had
ever managed her existence without the girlish
figure always at her side, prompt and swift to
anticipate her wants and wishes, to cut the leaves
of her books, and to arrange her crewels, to listen
with an enraptured air to her music. She was
more than reconciled to the idea that this girl
was to be her daughter in the future. Slie was
grateful to Providence for having given her such
a daughter.

" If she is only as devoted to Adrian as she
seems to be ! " thought the mother. '^ If she is
only true ! ''

There is always that doubt, until love and

NOT QUITE CONTENT 167

lovers have been tried in the furnace of hard
experiences.

Colonel Deverill and his elder daughter were
still in Paris. That lively city was at its best just
after the turn of the year. Major Baddeley and
his wife had numerous friends there, French and
English. They were staying at the Grand Hotel,
and they were seeing everything. The Colonel
had been less eager to go back to Devonshire,
seeing that Helen was so happily placed with her
future mother-in-law. He had replied to Adrian's
letter, asking his consent to the engagement, with
characteristic candour.

" I confess that I saw which way you and Helen
were drifting, and that I was heartily glad," he
wrote. " She is a sweet girl, and will make you
a sweet wife. Of course you know that, from a
worldly point of view, you could hardly do worse.
I have not a shilling to give my daughters. They
will have my estate between them when 1 am dead
and gone, and, if there should be a radical change
in the condition of Ireland, the property may be
worth something. At present it is worth little

168 NOT QUITE CONTENT

more than nothing. My best tenant is two years
and a half in arrear with his rent ; my worst has
threatened to shoot me for taking out his doors
and windows in a futile attempt to eject him. But
I won't plague you with these dismal details.
Happily, you are rich and generous, and you can
afford to marry a girl whose beauty and innocence
are her only dower.''''

Thus assured of the ColoneVs approval^ and see-
ing his mother growing daily better pleased with
his choice; Adrian Belfield was completely happy.
The die being cast, his friends and neighbours
accepted the inevitable, and congratulated him with
seeming heartiness on his engagement. Even the
Miss Treduceys and the Miss Toffstaffs were
gracious, taking an early occasion to call upon
Lady Belfield and to ask if this startling news was
really, really true.

'^ It is quite true, and I have my future daughter-
in-law staying with me," answered Constance.
" She and Adrian are out riding ; but they will be
home to tea, if you can stay and see them/'

" We shall be charmed/' said Dorothy ToffstaflP

NOT QUITE CONTENT 169

who had driven her smart little cart over from the
heights above Chadford, and had picked up Matilda
Treducey on her way. It was a long drive from
Chadford to Wilmington^ but the TofFstaffs, with
their inexhaustible stud, made light of distances.
They liked to be everywhere^ and were to be met
with at all possible points within twenty miles of
their house.

The Treducey stables were altogether on a
different footing, and there were daily quarrels
and heart-burnings as to who should have cattle
to ride or drive. Thus it had happened of late
that the Treduceys were always being driven in
Toffstaff carriages and riding TofFstaff horses.
They broke in difficult animals for the Miss Toff-
staffs, who, notwithstanding this fact, could never
be induced to own the Treducey superiority in
riding.

'^ They have very good hands/^ said Dorothy,
speaking of her dearest friends, *^ but they have no
style. They would be dreadful in the Row."

Style, as imparted by a fashionable riding-
master, at a guinea a lesson, was Dorothy's strong

170 NOT QUITE CONTENT

point. She balanced herself airily upon her saddle,
stuck out her elbows^ tossed up her head, or
straightened her spine in the last approved manner,
and she was an admirable horsewoman as long
as her horse behaved himself ; but it was the
Treduceys' strong point to master vice and in-
experience in their horses, and to make all the
hunters they ever rode.

And now Dorothy Toffstaff and Matilda Treducey
sat on each side of the hearth and complimented
Lady Belfield on her son^s choice.

" She is so pretty/' said Dorothy, " one can
hardly wonder that he fell in love with her. But
I hope you like her, dear Lady Belfield ? ''

Dorothy was prepared to receive a reluctant
negative.

" Yes, I like her very much ; but liking is a
cold word. I love her ? '^ Lady Belfield answered
frankly.

" Lucky girl, to have such a charming mother-
in-law,^' said Miss Treducey, looking round the
noble old drawing-room, which had been a drawing-
room in Queen Elizabeths time, and had echoed

NOT QUITE CONTENT 171

the silvery tones of that great sovereign's speech,,
and the graver accents of Burleigh. The Abbey
was rich in traditions about dead and gone
monarchs and senators. More than one sovereign
had rested there on a royal progress through the
West Countree.

Matilda Treducey had always admired the Abbey.
If there was one house in which she would rather
have ruled than in another^ it was this Elizabethan
mansion ; and to know that it was to be the home
of an Irish scapegrace's unsophisticated daughter, a
girl who had been brought up anyhow — this was
exceeding bitter. Miss TofFstaff also felt that she
had been cheated. Sir Adrian was the only good
match in that part of the country — and with his
family and position and her wealth, they might
have done anything. And he was throwing him-
self away upon a pauper.

Helen came in with her lover while the gentle
Dorothy thus mused. She was flushed with her
ride in the cold clear air, and looked lovely in her
neat little felt hat and girlish habit, a little blue
cloth habit made by an Irish tailor. Mrs. Baddeley

172 NOT QUITE CONTEXT

had her hunting gear from the noost fashionable
habit-maker in London ; but then Mrs. Baddeley
had her own bills and her own resources, great or
small.

Adrian and his fiancee were perfectly frank and
gracious in their talk with the two young ladies ;
had no idea of any leaven of malice lurking under
the outward semblance of goodwill ; accepted con-
gratulations and good wishes as a matter of course.

^' Yes, we are both very happy," said Adrian,
smiling at his betrothed; '^ I did not think it was
the common lot of man to know such bliss."

" You don^t hunt now, do you ? " asked Miss
ToffstafF of Helen. " I haven't seen you out for
ever so long."

" No, I have not been out. Adrian is advised
not to hunt, and I don^t care about it without him."

" That must be a dreadful deprivation though, to
anybody who is fond of sport."

The two girls were talking together on one side
of the room, while Adrian was engaged with his
mother and Miss Treducey on the other side, out of
hearing.

NOT QUITE CONTENT 173

" I am very fond of sport/^ Helen confessed, with
a sigh. ^' I can't help being sorry that Adrian can
never be a hunting man. I should so like him to
have had the hounds. They say there will be some
difficulty about a master when Sir George Rollestone
gives them up, as he means to do; and Adrian
would be the most natural person to take them.
But as he is not allowed to hunt it would be a
mockery for him to have anything to do with
them."

" What a pity he is not his brother."

^'Ah, Mr. Belfield is a capital sportsman, I
believe/ said Helen, with a slightly regretful air.

"Mr. Belfield is everything that Sir Adrian is
not/' said Miss TofiPstaff sententiously.

''Nature has been kinder to him. Poor
Adrian ?''

'' But then, Sir Adrian is so clever. Mr. Rock-
stone told me that he has read more than most
men of fifty.''

" Yes, he has surfeited himself with books. He
is very clever."

This was spoken with a sigh. Helen was apt to

174 KOT QUITE CONTENT

be oppressed by her lover's intellectual superiority.
It was a kind of barrier that kept them apart. He
knew so much of books and the men who had
written them, and she so little. She was ashamed
of her ignorance, and thus dared not talk freely
with him upon any intellectual subject, lest he
should discover her deficiencies.

'^Dorothy Toffstaff was talking about your
brother/^ she said to Adrian later, as they sat over
the drawing-room fire in the dusk before going off
to dress for dinner.

Helen had kept on her habit. She had a way
of sitting about for an hour or two just as she came
off her horse, with rumpled hair and bespattered
skirts. She was sitting on the hearthrug almost at
her lover's feet, staring at the fire in an idle reverie.
Lady Belfield had left them half-an-hour ago seated
just in the same attitudes. It was not that they
had very much to talk about. It was happiness to
Adrian even to be in the presence of the woman he
loved, to have her near him, a beautiful enchanting
creature, whose every tone was music, whose every
movement was grace.

NOT QUITE CONTEXT 175

^' She said that you and Valentine are utterly
unlike/' pursued Helen^ '^ and yet I have heard
your mother say that you are the image of each
other."

'^ I believe we are alike in face and figure — alike
with a difference/' answered Adrian dreamily.
'^ Our features were cast from the same sketchy but
not in the same mould. You will see him very
soon, I hope, and judge for yourself. He and I
have never lived so long apart,, and if I had not
had you to give a new colour to my life, I should
have felt miserable without him. Even with your
sweet companionship I begin to weary for his
return."

'^ Take care ! I shall be jealous of any one who
steals your thoughts from me — even of a brother.
You must be very fond of each other ? "

" Fondness can hardly express our feeling.
It is something more than affection. It is a sym-
pathy so close that his vexations and his pleasures
move me almost as strongly as my own. I have
never seen him out of temper without being
agitated myself ; and in all his great triumphs — on

176 NOT QUITE CONTENT

the river, in the cricket field, at a steeplechase — I
have been as elated as if I myself were the victor
Yes, I have felt a thrill of pride and delight far
keener than common sympathy."

" I don't think sympathy is by auy means
common/' said Helen lightly. '' I believe that the
great majority of people are supremely indifferent
to the joys and sorrows of others. The world
could hardly go on if it were otherwise. AVe have
such a little time to live that we must live fast if
we want to get anything out of life."

" Is not that rather a selfish theory ? '^

" I suppose it is ; but I frankly own to being
selfish. Selfishness is one of my numerous fail-
ings.''

'^ I will not hear you say so. I know you better
than you know yourself/' he said tenderly, lean-
ing down till his lips touched the golden-brown
hair.

" That is a delusion on your part. You only
know an ideal Helen, a Helen of your own inven-
tion, faultless, a bundle of virtues, a concatenation
of noble qualities and lofty feelings. I am not

NOT QUITE CONTENT 177

even a blood relation of your Helen. I am full
of faults/'

" Then I will love you with all your faults. I
have plenty of my own to balance them/'

'' No. You have only three — three great faults."

'^Name them. Let me know the worst."

'^ First, you are too good for me. Secondly, you
are far too clever for me. Thirdly, you are not a
sportsman.''

" The goodness and the cleverness might be
easily got over, since they belong rather to your
ideal Adrian than to the actual man. But I fear
I can never be a sportsman."

'^ I should have liked my husband to keep a
pack of hounds, and to hunt four times u week,"
sighed Helen, with the air of a child that has been
baulked in some eager fancy.

" My dearest, I can never be the typical Euglish
squire ; nor can I allow the wife I love to spend
half her days and nearly all her thoughts in the
hunting-field. I want to share your life, Helen ; I
want your company all day long — your mind, your
heart, and all your thoughts and fancies. I would

VOL. I. N

178 NOT QUITE CONTENT

not have one of your thoughts wasted upon horses
and hounds/^

" I have been brought up to care more for four-
footed friends than any others/^

" Perhaps you never had a friend who loved you
as I do. Such friendship is exacting, Helen.
There must be sacrifices."

'^ Must there ? Well, it is not a very great
sacrifice for a penniless Irish girl to be your wife,
and to live in this lovely old house. It will not be
my house, though ! I shall only be a secondary
person. Your mother must always be the first."

" You do not mind that ? ''■' asked Adrian.

^^ Mind ? No, I adore her. She is as much
above me as if she were an angelic being. But I
shall be Lady Belfield too. AYill not that seem
strange ? Two Lady Belfields in one house. We
must live half the year in London and Paris,
Adrian. We must not rust away our lives here."

'^ Do you call this rusting ? " he asked tenderly.

Her head rested against his knee, her eyes were
looking up at him, starlike in the dim light of the
low wood fire.

NOT QUITE CONTENT 179

•'' No, this is fairyland, dreamland, what you
will. But it cannot last much longer — not a
moment longer''' — as the timepiece chimed the
half-hour. '' There is half-past seven, and I shall
be late for dinner again."

'' Don't if you can help it, darling. It is one of
the few things that vexes my mother."

Helen made u moue as she ran out of the room.
It seemed to her that there were a good many
things which vexed Lady Belfield. Disorder of all
kinds set that gentle lady's teeth on edge, and
Helen was the very spirit of disorder.

Half-way to her room she met one of the house-
maids in a corridor.

^^ Is that you, Margaret?" she cried. "Come
and help me to dress. " I'm awfully late again."

Margaret, alias Madge, was Lady Belfield's last
protegee, the new girl who had been taken into the
household out of charity. Mrs. Marrable had
pronounced her very amenable, and had taken
pains to instruct her in certain domestic duties.
Her province was on the upper floor. Helen, who
had brought no maid to the Abbey, was struck

N 1

180 NOT QUITE CONTEXT

by the girl's good looks^ and had in a manner
appropriated her services. She was much quicker
of intellect and handier altogether than the average
housemaid.

With Margaret's help, Helen contrived to appear
in the drawing-room just two minutes before the
butler announced dinner.

( 181

CHAPTER VIIL

'' NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO "

There had been but the briefest letters from
Valentine either to Lady Belfield or to Adrian.
He was at Monte Carlo, shooting pigeons, riding
other peoples^ horses in steeplechases, drinking the
cup of pleasure to the dregs, and he intended to
return to the Abbey in time for the last of the
hunting. This was all that was known about him,
and now the season was nearly over, and he might
be expected at any time. His rooms were ready,
his horses fit, his own particular groom was on the
look-out for his return.

It was a dull afternoon in February, and Helen
was alone in the library, her lover's favourite room,
the very sanctuary of his life, as it were — the place
where he read, and thought, and played, and lived
his own sacred inner life, with which the rest of
the household had little in common.

182 NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO

It was not a conventional library — not a place of
massive bookcases and regulation sets of books. It
was half a music-room, with an organ at one end,
and a grand piano in the angle near the old-
fashioned fireplace. Adrian had inherited his
mother's love of music, and played both organ and
piano. The books were chiefly of his own collect-
ing, a library of modern belles lettres, in several
languages.

^' You are so awfully learned/^ exclaimed Helen,
after glancing at a shelf of German metaphysics.
^^ Do you really, really read those dreadful books ? '*

^' I have spent some thoughtful hours that way,
love. I won^t go so far as to say that I understand
them.''

'' Does anybody ? "

And then she would take out a volume of Keats
or Wordsworth, and twirl its pages for a little while,
and declare that the poetry was quite too lovely.

"Which do you like best, Keats or Words-
worth ? " he asked.

" I don't quite know," looking up at him with
interrogative eyes, to sec which of the two she

NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO 183

ought to prefer. " They are both so sweet. Keats
is delicious — but Wordsworth is — Wordsworth.
No, I cannot find the right words to express my
appreciation ; but I can feel his poetry.^'

And Adrian was content to accept this kind of
thing as the expression of a spiritual essence that
had not been concentrated into speech.

This afternoon Helen had the library all to
herself. Adrian had gone a long journey to Exeter,
to look at a pair of horses which he had been
advised to buy for his mother's barouche. The
horses she was using were beginning to show signs
of wear. He was not expected back till dinner-
time. Lady Belfield had complained of a headache
after lunch, and had gone to her room to lie down.
She had been having bad nights of late, and sorely
wanted sleep. The cause of these wakeful nights
was as far off as Monte Carlo. The mother had
been full of anxiety about that wayward younger
son, whose prolonged absence might mean mischief
of some kind.

This afternoon was dull and cold, with occa-
sional showers. Helen made up her mind to spend

184 NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO

it indoors. She would amuse herself in that dear
old room, free to peer and pry about like an in-
quisitive child.

The delight of looking at things all by herself —
opening private drawers — turning over books and
papers — lasted about half-an-hour. Then she
played the piano a little, trying first one piece and
then another, never getting beyond a page of any
composition before she was tripped up by a diffi-
culty, and turned the leaf in disgust. Wearying
of this, she went to the organ, and pulled out the
stops and touched the dumb, senseless keys ; and
then, in a fit of temper, she flew to the bell and
rang it sharply.

" It is miserably dull indoors," she said to her-
self; '' I must get a good gallop."

The footman appeared in the usual leisurely
manner of a servant who reproves any ill-bred im-
petuosity in the ringing of a bell by being a little
slower than usual in answering it.

" Will you ask Dodman to saddle a horse for
me," she said ; *^ I should like Mr. Belfield's last
new chestnut."

XO GEXTLEMAX WOULD HAVE ACTED SO 185

*^YeS; ma'am. Will you require Dodman?"

^^ I sha'n't require him, but I suppose I sliall be
obliged to have him," said Helen.

It was one of her grievances that Adrian would
not allow her to ride without her groom. She
liked the sense of freedom, being accountable to no
one for where she rode or what she did with her
horse.

She had heard a good deal about the chestnut
hunter^s evil propensities, and it was naturally on
that account she wanted to ride him.

But Dodman was not the kind of man to be
caught napping ; and he knew that Sir Adrian
would not put his future wife on an ill-disposed
brute like the chestnut. So when Helen ran down
to the hall in her habit and hat, eager for the fray,
she found the pretty skewbald Cinderella standing
in front of the porch.

" Am I to ride that brute ? " she asked.

It was the brute she generally rode with Adrian.

'' You don^t find no fault with her, do you,
ma'am ? '' asked Dodman, immovable as a rock.

" No, except that she is a sheep. I sent you a

186 NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO

message by Bellows. I wanted to ride the chest-
nut/'

^' You couldn't manage that 'oss, ma'am. He's
too much for any lady."

'^ He wouldn't be too much for me."

" I should be very sorry to see you on him,
ma'am."

" Oh, you are much too careful. You have
spoiled Sir Adrian's riding, and now I suppose you
want to spoil mine."

Dodman was too superior a person to notice this
unworthy petulance. He flung the young lady
into her saddle, and gave her the bridle without a
word, and then he mounted behind her and
followed her along the avenue.

She punished him for her disappointment by
taking the skewbald over some of the worst ground
in the neighbourhood, and at a breakneck pace.
She did everything that she ©ught not to have
done in the course of an hour and a half of hard
riding. It was six o'clock when she went back to
the Abbey.

There was a good fire in the library. She saw

NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO 187

the red light shining through the lattices and the
emhlazoned glass of the upper muUions. She was
cold after her ride in the wind and rain, and she
went to the library with the idea of enjoying her-
self for half-an-hour in front of the burning logs.

She did not expect to see Adrian till dinner-
time, but to her surprise there he was, sitting in a
low armchair by the hearth, figure and face both
in shadow, as she approached him.

She stole towards him on tiptoe, bent over the
back of his chair and kissed him.

The kiss was returned with interest. Two
strong arms were thrown back to clasp and
encircle her. She was caught and pinioned as
she bent over the chair.

But in the next instance she snatched herself
from those encircling arms, and drew back with an
indignant exclamation, crimson with rage.

^' It is not Adrian,"*' she said. ^' How dare you ?
How dare you ? ''

A tall figure rose from the chair with a careless,
easy movement, and stood before her, erect.
Taller and broader than Adrian's figure, stronger

188 NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO

- — dififerent somehow, and yet so like, so like — that
it was difficult to believe that this man was not
Adrian himself.

" How dare you ? " she muttered again, almost
beside herself with anger; all her Irish blood
boiling in her veins.

** My dear young lady, you must allow me to ob-
serve that it was you who began the assault/^ said
the stranger, with provoking placidity. '^ That con-
sideration ought at least to mitigate your wrath."

" To— to kiss me like that ! ''

He laughed at her rage, as if she had been an
angry child.

" Would you have a man's lips meet the lips of
beauty as if he were kissing his laundress ? " he
asked lightly. " Besides, I had a right to kiss you
— as your future brother/'

'^ No gentleman would have acted so/' she said,
still fuming, her riding whip vibrating in her
clenched hand.

What w^ould she have given to have horse-
whipped him ! There were women in the world
who had done such things.

NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO 189

"No gentleman ! Perhaps not/' said Valentine.
" I have never prided myself upon that conven-
tional distinction, to which every grocer's son
aspires from his cradle. I would rather be a
blackguard; and a man. I am a being of nerves
and muscles, passions and impulses. Whether
that kind of thing can be gentlemanlike, I don't
know aud don't care. Come, Helen, don't be
angry. 'Twas no stranger who returned your kiss
just now, but your lover's twin brother, who
claims the right to love you. You cannot be
greatly loved by him without being a little loved
by me. We are two halves of one whole, and I
am the stronger half. You cannot be wax to him
and marble to me ; melt at his touch, and freeze at
mine. Our natures are too closely interwoven.
To love one of us is to love the other. Come,
Helen, forgive and be friends."

He held out his hand, and she could not refuse
to give him her own. But the little gloved hand
lay supine in his strong clasp, and tliere was no
such thing as pardon in her heart.

^' I have always heard that you arc a very

190 NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO

strange person," she said, " but as you are Adrian's
brother, I suppose we must be friends."

And with this not over-civil speech she left him
to his reflections.

He threw himself into the chair by the fire,
stirred up the logs, and took out his cigar-case for
a comfortable smoke before he went to his dressing-
room. When the door was shut upon Helen — he
had not troubled himself to open it for her — he
laughed softly to himself.

" As lovely as her namesake and as spirited as
Kate the curst,-" he muttered. "I like her ever so
much better for that flash of temper. Upon my
soul, Adrian has not made half a bad choice. I
hardly gave him credit for such good taste. But
then the girl was flung into his lap, as it were.
No doubt Deverill came here of malice afore-
thought, to plant his daughter upon my mother's
son. Hark, there's the cart, and Adrian."

He went out to the porch to receive his brother,
who was almost overcome with delight at seeing
him.

^^ My dear fellowj what ages you have been

NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO 191

away. How glad my mother must be ! You have
seen her, of course/''

'' Not yet. I have only been here an hour ;
came by the slow afternoon train from Exeter.
They told me my mother was lying down, not over-
well, so I wouldn't have her disturbed. Fve been
sitting over the fire in the library, half asleep.
I came by the Rapide from Marseilles, straight
ahead, crossed the Channel last night, and have
been travelling ever since.'''

" And you have not seen Helen ? ''

'' Oh, yes, I have. Helen and I have made
friends already."

He laughed a little as he spoke of her, and the
light danced merrily in his eyes. He wondered
whether she would give her betrothed a detailed
account of their skirmish. The odds were against
it, he thought. Women are curiously shy about
trifles. She would lock the story up in her own
heart, and always bear malice against him on
account of it.

" And you like her ? " asked Adrian eagerly.

" There has been no time for liking, but I ad-

192 NO GENTLEMAX WOULD HAVE ACTED SO

mire her immensely, and I congratulate you on
your good luck."

" Yes, she is lovely, is she not ? And as dear as
she is lovely/^

" Clever and accomplished into the bargain, I
suppose ? "

^' 1 doubt if you would call her either; yet she
is the most fascinating girl I ever met.''

" I'm glad she's not learned, or a paragon in
the way of accomplishments. Every step that a
woman travels in the road to mental perfection is
a step that leads away from feminine loveliness.
A beautiful woman should be only beautiful. All
the rest is outside her sphere. Imagine a lovely
forehead that has grown wrinkled over Darwin."

He rattled on lightly, with his arm through
Adrian's, as they went into the house and uj^stairs
together.

" Not a word to my mother/' said Valentine, as
they parted ; '' I want to surprise her when I go
down to dinner."

"I shan't see her till then. I've only just time
to dress."

NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO 193

Half-an-hour later and Lady Belfield was sitting
in her accustomed chair at a respectful distance
from the drawing-room lire, with her book-table on
one side and her work-basket on the other, when
her two sons came in together, more like than
usual in their evening dress, which hardly varied in
the smallest detail.

The mother rose in a tumult of delight to
receive the wanderer.

" My dearest, how could you stay away so
long ? " she asked, almost piteously.

" A truant disposition, and the perversity of my
favourite colour. Never mind, mother. Here I
am, and here I mean to stay till after Adrian's
wedding. ^^

" I am so glad. I am so happy. Jlow well
you are looking. You must have enjoyed yourself
very much to stop away so loug."*'

" Oh, I was with very good fellows, and the sky
was blue and the wines were good, and we had a
yacht, and knocked about a good deal in some
deuced rough weather. The Mediterranean isn^t
all jam. But altogether the life suited me. There

VOL. I. 0

194 XO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO

were plenty of pretty women, but not one so pretty
as my future sister-in-law." he added in an under-
tone as Helen entered, in her esthetic frock of
pale blue cashmere, with short sleeves and a short
waist, and a babyish bodice which set off her
perfect shoulders and swan-like throat.

She came into the room more slowly than her
wont, and a sudden rosy flush swept over her face
and neck as she drew near the spot where the two
brothers were standing.

" Helen, let me introduce my other son/-* began
Lady Belfield.

'^ We are friends already," answered Valentine.
" Are we not, Helen ? "

He called her by her Christian name in the
easiest way, as a right.

" And will be more than friends — brother and
sister, in the future, I hope," said his mother.

"Amen to that sweet prayer," answered Valen-
tine. " Come, mother, it is my privilege to take
you in to dinner to-night," as the butler made his
announcement, *' and I shall astonish you by the
justice which a man who has been fed on kickshaws

NO GENTLEMAN WOULD HAVE ACTED SO 195

at a Monte Carlo hotel can do to your old-fashioned
English fare — your inevitable saddle of mutton and
your elderly pheasants/^

They went in to dinner, a snug little party of
four. The room looked all the brighter for that
fourth presence. Their triangular dinners had been
marked of late by a gentle dulness.

Lady Belfield was in high spirits, enraptured at
the return of her younger born, and Valentine was
full of talk about himself and his adventures,
good luck and bad luck, the people he had met,
and the women with whom he had flirted.

Helen was unusually silent, as if somewhat
oppressed by that exuberant gaiety.

Valentine was right in his surmise. Not one
word did she say to her betrothed, on that
night or afterwards, about her skirmish with
Valentine in the library.

( lOG )

CHAPTER IX.

NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL

" Adrian/^ said Helen, in the breakfast-room next
morning, '' I want to go home/^

It was half-past nine o'clock. Breakfast was
over, and Lady Belfield had gone off to her hot-
houses and morning interview with the head
gardener. It was a hunting day, and Valentine
was lolling in an easy chair by the fireplace, wait-
ing for his horse to be brought to the door.

Helen and Adrian were standing in front of the
window watching the drizzling rain. It was a
Devonshire morning, wet and warm, with a low
grey sky, and a mist from the distant sea.

" Go home, dearest — but why ? "

" First, I have been here mucli too long already.
I have no doubt the Treduceys and Toffstaffs are
talking about my living here, and expatiating upon
my pauperism. ^ Hardly bread to eat at home, poor

NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL 197

creature ! ' and so on. But tliat is a detail. My
secondly is more important. Leo and the governor
went to Paris ostensibly for a few days, and have
stayed three weeks.^"*

" Darling, if you knew how it sets my teeth on
edge to hear you say ' the governor.'' "

'^ Then in future it shall be ' my Father/ " with
a solemn air. " But if I really were your darling,
nothing I could say would ever set your teeth on
edge. However, as I was saying, those people
have stayed too long in Paris. They must be
spending a great deal of money. Somebody told
me the Grand is an expensive hotel.^^

'' It is not cheap."

'^I shall order them home immediately, and the
only way to make them obey is to go home myself.
As long as the gov — my father knows I am provided
for here, he will pursue his reckless career abroad.^^

" We can't spare you yet awhile, Helea," said
Adrian tenderly. '^ You have become the daugh-
ter of the house. My mother couldn't do without
you. AVe shall only let you go home in time to
get your frocks ready for your metamorphosis. I

198 NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL

believe the law which insists upon new frocks as a
preliminary of marriage is like the laws of the
Medes and Persians^ and altereth not with the
march of enlightenment.^^

" Perhaps when a man marries a girl out of the
gutter he does it to escape being pestered about
her trousseau/' said Valentine ; " and that when
a fellow runs away with another man's wife^ it is
for the sake of skipping the horrors of the marriage
ceremony and the ordeal by wedding presents/'

'^ No, Helen, we can't spare you yet/' pursued
Adrian, ignoring this ribald commentary.

" No, Helen, we can't spare you yet/' echoed
Valentine, from his easy chair. " There's my
horse. I'd better be off pretty sharp. It's a long
way to Tadpole Pond."

He jumped up, took his hat and whip, and
hurried out. Adrian and Helen watched him
mount and ride away, tall and straight, wearing
his weather-stained scarlet coat with an easy grace,
as much at home on the impatient hunter as he
had been in his easy chair.

The horse reared straight on end, while Helen

NOT THE AYEKAGE GIRL 199

and Adrian were watching, and liis progress for
the first few hundred yards seemed to be more
upon two legs than on four.

" Oh, how I envy him ! how I should like to be
going with him ! ^^ cried Helen spontaneously,
forgetting that only a few minutes before she had
been trying to get herself out of that house,
deeming that she could not exist beneath the same
roof with Valentine Belfield. " Would he take
me next Frida^^ do you think ? Would you
mind ? "

" Would I mind ? Well, no, not if you really
care for hunting so very much/^

" Care for it ? I adore it. Why, you know it
is my passion. I wish with all my heart it were
not. Just for once in a way, that I may see a
little more of your picturesque country,^^ she
pleaded.

'^ I could drive you all over Devonshire, Helen.''

" Oh, but there is no fun in driving ; and there
are lots of places where you could not drive —
break-neck hills, boggy bits of moorland, woods
and winding streams. The only proper way to see

200 NOT THE AVERAGK CUiL

a country is after the hounds, when one's blood
is up, and one's horse is on fire with eagerness.
You'll let me hunt a little more before the season
is over — just once or twice or so — won't you,
Adrian ? Think how very good I have been for
the last three weeks/'

This was said with the air of a martyr.

" My poor, self-sacrificing Helen/' said her lover,
half sad and half ironical. ^^ Yes, you must hunt,
I suppose. You must go and hazard that life on
which hangs my own in the most break-neck
country in England. I wall go out with you and
potter about while you follow Valentine, who
always takes the most hazardous line, and will
lead you over some of the worst ground in Devon-
shire/'

" Then may I send for my little Irish mare
to-morrow ? Your horses have charming manners,
but they are not quick enough for hounds. Norah
Creina is nothing much to look at, but she's a
splendid goer."

Naturally, Helen had her way. The Irish mare
was sent for that afternoon, and the young lady

NOT THE AVEKAGE GIRL 201

said no more about her desire to go back to
Morcomb.

She tried to forget Valentine's offence and her
own indignation. " After all^ he is to be my
brother/^ she told herself.

His presence in the house was a disturbing
influence ; even the expectation of his return
fluttered her spirits a little as she sat at work
with Lady Belfield that afternoon, while the rain
pattered against the windows. She was not very
fond of needlework, but she had felt constrained
to put on an air of occupation in the long wet
afternoons, lest her future mother-in-law should
take off'ence at her idleness.

This afternoon her thoughts were in the steep
break-neck lanes or on the brown barren moorland,
rather than with her basket of many- coloured silks,
or the bunch of poppies which she was stitching
at mechanically, caring very little whether the
shading came out well or ill, stopping every now
and then to stifle a yawn.

Adrian was in the library writing letters, and
the two women were alone together.

202 NOT THE AVERAGE GIKL

" What dreadful weather for the hunting," said
Lady Belfield, looking up at the window for the
twentieth time in half-an-hour.

" They won't mind it/' exclaimed Helen, with a
regretful air. " What does rain matter if they
have a run ? There is nothing more enjoyable than
dashing through wind and bad weather after a
good fox. It is only when one is standing about
in a hopeless condition that one minds the rain.
I only wish I were with them under that down-
pour.''

'^ My dear Helen, I hope you will never forget
that Adrian has been strongly warned against
hunting."

" I am not likely to forget it/' answered Helen,
with a touch of pettishness.

" And you won't tempt him to disobey his
doctor, will you, dear ? "

'^ Of course not. But I suppose there will be
no harm in my going out with Mr. Belfield next
Friday. I should not give him any trouble. I
can always take care of myself."

" Any harm — no I suppose not," replied Lady

NOT THE AVEEAGE GIRL 203

Belfield, with an air which implied that she
thought the proposition somewhat incorrect.

Valentine came home earlier than usual. The
day had been unsatisfactory. He had had two of
his best horses out, and there had not been work
enough for one. He went off to change his clothes
in no very agreeable humour. It was dusk when
he left his dressing-room, but the lamp was lighted
in the corridor, and there was light enough for him
to see the face of a girl whom he met half way
between his room and the open gallery above the hall.

She was dressed in the Abbey livery of dark red
merino and long white apron. She wore the
muslin mob cap of the Abbey housemaids ; but she
looked no more like them than if she had been a
duchess who had just put on that costume in a
frolic, a duchess whom Gainsborough might paint
and cognoscenti adore.

Her dark eyes flashed upon Valentine Belfield
like a danger signal. He pulled up suddenly, and
stood face to face with her.

" What in the deviPs name brings you here ?^'
he exclaimed.

204 >'0T THE AVERAGE GIRL

" I hope you arc not sorry to sec me, Mr. Bel-
field ?"

" Never mind what I am. Tell me what devilry
has brought you here, in that get up. You are not
a servant here, I hope ? '^

" But I am. I have been living here more than
a month. There was no devilry in it, I assure you.
It was my first and only friend, the Vicar, who got
me the place — and it was Lady Belficld's kindness
which made room for me. I have been trying to
improve myself,''^ she added, looking up at him
shyly. '^ I get a glimpse of your mother and of
other ladies now and then, and I am trying to find
out what ladies are like and how they behave, that
I may learn to be a lady.^'

" You are a fool," muttered Valentine scorn-
fully. '^ Your wildness was your charm. What
have you to do with women of my mother's status ?
You were a beautiful, ignorant creature, knowing
nothing of the world and its deadly-lively ways.
You were a woman for a man to love — a splendid,
untamed, perhaps untameablc, being, for whom a
man might go to the devil. Do you suppose that

NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL 205

electro-plated gentility Tvill improve you ? Do you
think your gipsy blood will show to advantage in a
Paris bonnet and gown ? ''

" I think that if I am ever to be a gentleman's
wife I must first learn to be a lady/' she answered
gravely.

" Come, Madge, don't be a fool/' said
Valentine, with a touch of tenderness, putting
his arm round her, and trying to draw her towards
him.

She drew herself away from him, pushing him
from her with an arm which was a good deal
stronger than the average young lady's arm.

He laughed at her vehemence.

'^ By Jove/' he cried, " was that a specimen of
your new manners ? Is that Herculean style your
notion of gentility ? Why, my girl, ladies are like
lilies : they snap at a gust of wind. Listen here,
Madge, there's no use in our talking nonsense.
You know 1 am ridiculously fond of you, and that
I would do anything in reason to make you happy;
but there is no use in our talking about marriage.
You must have seen a little more of what life is

20G NOT THE AVERAGE GIKL

like since you have been under this roof, and you
must begin to understand that ''

He hesitated, looking down at his embroidered
slippers — the mother^ s gift — at a loss how to frame
a sentence that would not end in a brutal admis-
sion.

" I must understand that gentlemen don^t marry
girls of my class/"* said Madge, finishing his sen-
tence for him, with those brilliant eyes of hers
fixed with steady gaze upon his downcast counte-
nance. He could feel their light, was conscious of
that earnest scrutiny, though his eyelids were
lowered. "Was that what you were going to
say?'^

*' Something like that."

" Well, that^s what I don^t understand. What
I do understand is that if a man loves a girl well
enough he will have her for his wife, however low
she may be. If he really and truly loves her, he
doesn^t want to bring shame upon her. It is only
half-hearted love that would do that. If a man
loves in earnest, and with his whole heart, he will
marry the girl he loves. Yes, if he were a duke,

NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL 207

and she a girl of blemished character. There is
nothing against my character,, Mr. Belfield, and
you know it. So you had best understand at
once that I shall never be anything more to you
than your mother^s servant — unless I am your
wife."

"That'^s hard upon me^ seeing that I am a
younger son and not a free agent. Dukes can do
as they like, but I can^t. You know I am
passionately fond of you, Madge. Come, child,
don^t be unreasonable.^'

Again he tried to draw her nearer to him, to
bring those lips closer to his own, and entangle
those flashing glances of hers in the light of his
own dark eyes, which were hardly less brilliant.

*' My dearest girl/' he pleaded, ^' you know I
adore you. What more can you want to know ?
You ought never to have put yourself into this
false position. A servant, you ! The queen of
beauty handling a broom ! You should have
listened to me, Madge. I know of the sweetest
little cottage, in a garden on the bank of the
Chad, far away from your vile swamp. A gentle-

208 NOT THE AVEKAGE GIKL

man's cottage, half hidden under flowering creepers,
with a verandah where a fellow could smoke his
cigarette after dinner in the summer evenings, and
a boathouse where a fellow could keep his boat.
You would be in your place, Madge, in that cottage,
with a couple of servants to wait upon you. 'V^'hy
should we not be happy, sweet ? This world was
made for love and lovers/'

" This world was made for honest men and
women. You are a scoundrel. Yes, you are right,
I was a fool to come to this house. But the
temptation was too great — to see you — to be near

you."

" You might be more than that, my dearest.
You might be with me always, if you would. AVill
you go with me to-morrow to see that cottage,
Madge ? You could slip out at the back of the
liouse quietly, and I could pick you up near the
stables, and drive you there in an hour. The place
would not look so pretty as in summer, but it is
always picturesque, and — Madge," pleadingly, " we
might be so happy there.''

" No," she answered resolutely, not with the air

IsOT THE AVERAGE GIEL 209

of a woman who means yes ; " I could never be
happy that way."

" Your mother was of another way of thinking,,
Madge."

" How dare you throw my mother^s shame in my
face. What do you know of my mother ? "

" I have had the honour of meeting her in
London society/^ he answered^ with a malicious
sparkle in his eyes.

" And I do not even know if she is alive."

" Oh, she is a lady who has made herself a re-
putation in London, I assure you. When was it i
met her ? About five years ago, I think, my second
year at Cambridge. I was up in town on the quiet,
went to a theatre, and supper-party afterwards — a
sporting nobleman's party. Your mother was there.
Mature, gone to seed a little, perhaps, but re-
markably handsome still, and dressed as only 2/
woman of genius knows how to dress at forty —
dressed to make forty more attractive than twenty.
Your mother would never wear a housemaid^s cap,
or trundle a mop, I can assure you. She knows
her own value too well. She has better scnse.'^

VOL. I. p

210 KOT THE AVEPwVGE GIRL

'^ What is her name in London ? I have never
heard of her by any name but my own, Madge."

" Oh, she has a name of greater dignity than
that. I was introduced to her as Mrs. Mandeville.
There was a Major Mandeville, about whom people
told some curious stories^ but I did not see much
of him."

" Do you know where my mother is living now ?"

" No, child. But I dare say I could find out.
Do you want to know ? ''

" Yes_, I want to know all I can about my
mother. Even if she is a wicked woman, leading
a bad life, she is more to me than any other woman
on this earth. The day may come when she will
want my help.^^

" I fancy she is too clever for that, Madge ; but
I have no doubt she would be glad to see you, if it
were only to be reminded how handsome she was
twenty years ago."

A bell rang in a lobby below, the servants' tea-
bell.

"I must go,'' said Madge hurriedly, and so they
parted, Madge to the back stairs and the servants'

NOT THE A.VEEAGE GIRL 211

hall, Valentine to his mother's drawing-room, where
tea had been waiting for him for a quarter of an
hour, Lady Belfield excusing the delay to Helen
and Adrian, on the ground that afternoon tea was
more to the returning sportsman than to any one
else. ^' And it is so much nicer for us all to have
our tea together,'^ she said.

" Don't apologize, mother,'' said Adrian, smiling
at her, ^^ as if we didn't know that your tea would
be worse than tasteless if you began without
Valentine."

" You have not been so expeditious as usual,
Val," said the mother, as her younger son saun-
tered into the room in velvet jacket and slippers,
and with a Byronic throat.

'' I was wetter than usual, mother, and taking
off my boots was like drawing double teeth," he
answered, as he seated himself at Lad}'- Belli eld's
side and attacked a pile of toast.

He looked across at Helen, who was sitting on
the other side of the fireplace with her workbasket
in her lap, the image of propriety. He looked at
her critically, as he sipped his tea and munched

P 2

212 NOT THE AYERAr;K GIRL

his toast^ comparing lier delicate beauty with that
darkly brilliant face he had just now been gazing
upon. No two faces could have been more distinct
in their beauty^ more widely diverse in their
characteristics. In Helen's countenance the light-
ness of a frivolous and shallow nature was as
obvious as her beauty ; in that other face there
were suggestions of the sublime in passion or in
thought. It was the face of a vroman strong for
good or for evil.

There was a relief in watching the play of
Helenas countenance after the passionate earnest-
ness and fixed purpose of that other face, so fall of
evil augury to him, the would-be seducer. Here
he could gaze unappalled.

" How pretty she is, just as butterflies and
flowers that last a day are pretty/' he said to him-
self, *' and how soon a sensible man would get tired
of her. Perhaps she may do for my brother all the
same/' he went on, musing lazily as he ate and
drank, " he is a dihttante : loves prettiness in
everything, from architecture to bookbinding. Yes,
she may succeed in making him happy, shallow as

NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL 213

she is. He will j)lay the organ to her^ expatiate
upon Bach and Beethoven, read Shelley and Keats
to her, and she will pretend to be interested ; and
they will get on pretty well together in their
namby-pamby way/^

He could read Helenas thoughts easily enough as
he watched her face in the lamplight. Her eyes
were cast down for the most part on her teacup or
her work-basket, but now and then she glanced
shyly_, inquisitively^ in his direction.

" She feels embarrassed still on account of yes-
terday's escapade/' he said to himself, ^' yet she is
monstrous curious about me, would like to know
what manner of man I am ; would like to be
friends.'^

He condescended to describe his day presently,
when he had taken the edge off his appetite, and
then asked Helen why she was not out.

" The Toffstaffs and the Treduceys were full of
inquiries about you, thinking it such a pity you
don't hunt now. You seemed to enjoy it so much
they said."

" They were not over civil to me when I was

214 NOT THE AVERAGE GIKL

out/^ said Helen ; " I shouldn't ride to hounds for
the pleasure of their society — but_, l)ut/' faltering a
little, and with a deprecating glance at Adrian,
" I should very much like to get one or two more
days before the end of the season/'

" One or two more days," cried Valentine.
" What bosh ! You must go every day — get every
chance you can. There are horses enough to give
you two a day if you like. I hope Adrian is not
so selfish as to want to keep you at home."

" Does it rank as selfishness, Val, for a man to
want his wife's society ? If Helen were to hunt
three days a week after we are married, it would
be a kind of semi-divorce, for which I am not
prepared/'

^' All the more reason that she should make the
most of her time while she is single," retorted
Valentine. " If I were you, Helen, I would not be
denied a single day. I would make the most of
my freedom in anticipation of a life of captivity/'

'^ I shall not think it captivity," murmured
Helen, with her sweetest smile ; and Adrian was
content.

NOT THE AVERAGE CilRL 215

There was a telegram from Colonel Deverill
next morning to announce liis arrival in London.
He would be at Morcomb next day with Major
and Mrs. Baddeley, and hoped to find Helen at
home.

" Then I shall not have to trouble you, Mr.
Belfield," said Helen. "Frank is devoted to
huntings and he will take care of Leo and me —
if, if you don't mind my having one or two more
days, Adrian."

'^ You will be out of my jurisdiction, Helen — if
you really must go home."

" Oh, indeed I must. Father is very peremp-
tory. I ought to go, dear Lady Belfield, though
I am heart-broken at ending this happy visit."

" It will not be long, dear, before this house will
be your home," answered Lady Belfield gently,

" Do you know that this is a very uncivil way
of throwing me over, Helen," said Valentine
laughingly. " You engage a man to show you
the country — a man who knows every inch of the
ground ; and then you inform him that a certain
Major Baddeley, who perhaps never put his nose

21C NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL

in North Devon before, will be ever so much
better a guide."

'' Only because he is an old friend, almost a
relation."

" And am I an enemy ; and am I not to be
almost a relation ? "

'' T think you know what I mean, Mr. Belfield.'"

She was going to answer her telegram. Quicker
'in his movements always than his brother, Valen-
tine sprang to the door.

'^Why am I Mr. Belfield?" he asked in a
lowered voice, as he opened it for her, " why not
Valentine as well as Frank ? "

"Oh, I could not — not yet," she said.

" Strangers yet ? Strangers, after the day
before yesterday ? " in still lower tones, detaining
her on the threshold.

She flushed crimson, looked at hitn angrily, and
passed him as if he were dirt.

" The butterfly can hold her own," he thought,
as he went back to the table to finish his breakfast.

He did not see Helen again till they met at the
covert side, where he was presented by her to ^Irs.

NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL 217

Baddeley, who was in high glee at returning to
country life after her Parisian dissipations.

'^ What did we see ? Everything ! " she an-
swered, when Valentine questioned her about '^ Le
petit Muffle," the last burlesque opera which was
convulsing the boulevards and commanding forty
francs for a stall. " We sent for an agent on the
morning after our arrival^ gave him a list of the
pieces we wanted to see, and gave him carte
blanche as to the price of seats. The tickets were
dear, but we saw all the pieces which native
Parisians had been waiting for months to see. It
is the only way."

" Yes, it is the only way," said Major Baddeley,
a fat fair man, who looked too heavy for his horse,
and whose province in life was to coincide with his
wife.

Valentine contrived to show his future sister-in-
law the way, in spite of Major Baddeley 's prior
claim as a brother-in-law in esse. He led her up
and down break-neck hills, and forded the stream
in all manner of risky places. Those two never
lost sight of the hounds, nor of each other, and

218 NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL

were the first in at the death after the hunt ser-
vants. When the Baddeleys came up, Helen and
Valentine had dismounted, and were standing side
by side, while the hounds were fighting over the
mutilated remains of poor pug.

It was their first day together, but not their
last. Mrs. Baddeley was devoted to fox-hunting,
and her devotion was an excuse for Helen.

'' It is my last season," she told Adrian. " I
shall give up all masculine sports when I am
married."

" Will you, dearest ? Then your self-sacrifice
shall not be unrewarded, for I will get you the
prettiest yacht that can be built at Devonport.
Shall it be steam or sailing, eh, Helen ? "'

" AVill you really ? Oh, you darling. Yachting
is my ruling passion. Yes, you may think I am
mad about hunting, but ray real lunacy is the sea.
Give me a yacht — a schooner, sailing of course, I
hate steam — and I shall adore you."

" Helen ! " reproachfully.

" More than I do now, if that be possible."

" I will write to the builders this evening, and

NOT THE AVERAGE GIEL 219

ask them to send me drawings and estimates for
the handsomest two-hundred ton schooner they
can build."

" Two-hundred ton ! Oh Adrian, you are only too
adorable/^

He smiled at her eagerness, her childish delight
in the pleasures she loved. She had taken his
gifts of jewellery almost with indifference, pleased
with the glitter and dazzle at the first opening of
the cases, but seeming to care very little to orna-
ment herself with her spoil.

" They never look so lovely as in their velvet
beds/^ she said.

Perhaps she knew that a limp white gown and a
cluster of Dijon roses were enough for her fresh
young loveliness, that neither gems nor gold could
add to her beauty.

And so things went on to the end of the hunting
season. Adrian spent a great deal of his time at
Morcomb, and the sisters came very often to lunch
or afternoon tea at the Abbey. There were dinner
parties also at both houses.

Morcomb was much gayer than it had been be-

220 NOT THE AVEI{Af;E GIRL

fore the advent of Major Baddeley. If not brilliant
himself — and it appeared to Sir Adrian that he
was a good-natured dullard — Frank Baddeley was
the cause of brilliancy in others. The house
brightened at his coming. He seemed to be popu-
lar with his friends, for two of them came all the
way from London, with a string of horses, and put
up at the old-fashioned family inn by Chadford-
Bridge, in order to be near him.

These two gentlemen were Lord St. Austell and
Mr. Beeching, and their appearance in the hunt-
ing field was not without interest to the native
mind.

The Miss Treduceys had met St. Austell '' in
society," and knew all about him. Sir Nathaniel
had been at Eton and Christ Church with his lord-
ship's father. It was almost a kind of cousinship.
Matilda affected to know the gentleman's history
from his cradle.

" The St. Austells have gone to Oxford for cen-
turies, but this one is a Cambridge man. He was
at Trinity, and went out a low wrangler ; " she
said. " He went into Parliament directlv he left

NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL 221

college. People thought he was going to dis-
tinguish himself, but when his father died he went
wron gsomehow — racing, I suppose — and he quar-
relled with his wife. I believe it was she who rau
away from hhrij but I've heard my father say he
drove her to it, so one couldn^t help feeling sorry
for her, especially as she was Lord Helvellyn's
daughter — and we knew her people. They were
not divorced — and she went to live abroad with an
old aunt.'^

This to Dorothy Toffstaff, who listened inwardly
writhing. It was hard to be so instructed^ when
as a young lady aspiring to be in society she
ought to have known all about Lord and Lady
St. Austell.

" I believe my father knows him/^ she said care-
lessly. '^ I fancy I have heard these old stories.''^

But it was made clear presently that Mr. Toff-
staff, who was sitting on the roadside in his mail
phaeton, pretending to criticize the appearance of
the hounds, did not know Lord St, Austell, for
there was Mr. Bceching introducing Toffstaff to
that nobleman.

222 JsOT THE AVEKAGE GIRL

TofFstaff and Beechiug were old friends. Toff-
staiF had made his money out of colonial produce
in the days when fortunes were to be made in
Mincing Lane. The Beeching family had grown
rich on the Stock Exchange. Mr. Beeching knew
all about the money market, but he had never
soiled his fingers with scrip. The Beeching for-
tune had been growing and quadrupling itself for
three generations,, since Beeching, grandfather, had
made his great coup in the railway mania year.
Joseph Beeching was an only son, and was reputed
to be fabulously rich. His wealth was a standing
joke among his particular friends. He did not
mind being chaffed about his millions. He took
the thing quite calmly.

" Hang it all, you know, a fellow canH help it if
he comes of a money-making ancestry. I know its
deuced vulgar to have plenty of cash nowadays.
One ought to be ruined. Every gentleman is hard
up. To own oneself rich is to confess oneself a
cad ; only Td rather be a rich cad than a poor cad,
if it^s all the same to you.^'

Lord St. Austell and Mr. Beeching were received

NOT THE AVERAGE GIRL 223

at Morcomb with the open hand of friendship.
Colonel Deverill had an Irishman's ideas of hospi-
tality, and considered it his duty to receive all
comers, in and out of season. The entertainment
might be of a somewhat scrambling and slovenly
order, the dinner might be very good or very bad —
a feast or a famine, as the Colonel said ; the wine
might be abundant or the last bottle out of the
cellar. The Colonel was equally at ease among his
guests^, and equally delighted to have them round
him. What he wanted most, perhaps, was an
excuse for enjoying himself and forgetting black
care.

No house could be well conducted where the
going and coming was always an uncertainty, and
the number of guests at dinner a riddle that was
only solved when they sat down. Neither Leo nor
Helen pretended to any talent for housekeeping;
they left everything to Donovan, the butler, and to
an old Irish cook and housekeeper who had been
in the Colonel's service ever since his marriage, and
from whom he had no secrets.

Lord St. Austell rode by Mrs. Baddcley's side

22'i NOT Tin-: avekace girl

when the hounds moved off, while Major Baddeley
followed, in conversation with Dorothy Toffstaff, who
was social and loquacious. Mr. Beechiug rode
alone, and talked to nobody. lie was not a parti-
cularly agreeable looking young man. He had a
low forehead, a pug nose, a large jaw, and alto-
gether too much of the bulldog type for beauty ;
and his dark sallow countenance and sullen ex-
pression contrasted curiously with St. AustelFs
delicately fair skin, blue eyes, and pale auburn
moustache. St. Austell had the air of having just
stepped out of a picture by Sir Peter Lely.

Miss Toffstaff was extremely gracious to ^lajor
Baddeley, but she was debating in her own mind
all the time how she could easiest get at St. Aus-
tell, who must be captured at once for display at
Wilmington. It was not to be endured that there
should be a noblemaii in the neighbourhood who
was not an intimate of the Toffstaff^\

" Father must ask him to dinner immediately,"
she thought, *' even if wc arj obliged to ask the
Morcomb people too."

( 225 )

CHAPTER X.

CHANGEFUL AS THE WIND

The Lamb at Chadford was a spacious old-
fashioned family inn and posting-house^ with long
passages, low-pitched rooms, a garden, and a pretty
view from almost every window. The garden was
on the banks of the Chad, and the house stood
close to the bridgp, and commanded a winding
reach of the river, the hilly high street, and the
old Norman church whose chimes marked the
progress of the hours for those who lay at the
Lamb.

Lord St. Austell and Mr. Beeching shared the
prettiest sitting-room of the inn, a room with a
bow window facing the bridge and the town, and
with two other windows opening on to a balcony
above the garden and the river. They sat in this
balcony after breakfast, smoking their cigars and
hearing the dip of the oars as a boat went slowly

VOL. I. Q

22G CIIAXGEFLL AS THE WIND

by in the morning sunsliine. But neither St.
Austell nor his friend spent much of their time
at the Lamb. Colonel Deverill was too hospitable
to leave his son-in-law's friends to mope at an inn.
They were welcome at Morcomb at all hours, and
were to be found there at all hours. 'With
Beeching's five horses, and St. Austell's three,
there was always an animal of some kind to carry
the two young men to Morcomb, or they would
ride home with Mrs. Baddeley after the kill, and
have their dress clothes brought over to them by
a valet.

"We might almost as well be living here
altogether,^' said St. Austell. '' I think we
must be more trouble than if we were in the
house.''

Mr. Beeching said nothing. lie accepted
everything tacitly, almost as if it were his due.
He was the most unemotional young man Colonel
Deverill had ever encountered. lie was polite and
accommodating enough in social intercourse, but
he was — or seemed to be — as cold as a stone.

" I can't think what you can see in him to

CHANGEFUL AS THE WIND 227

like," the Colonel said to St. Austell one niglit_,
in the confidence of the smoking-room.

^' I don't see anything in him, and I don't like
him particularly."

'^ Well, then, put it in another way. I can't
think how you can get on with him so well."

" Oh, I can get on with anybody, from Satan
downwards. That's my temperament. Beeching
is a useful person to know. He has a capital
stud, which his friends use pretty freely. His
drag and his yacht are good and serviceable ; and
he has a kind of table d'hote at his chambers
which we all use. In fact, he does whatever we
want, and makes no fuss about it."

'^ I shouldn't think he would make a fuss about
anything — not if you cut his head off. I never
saw such an unimpressionable young man ! "

" Oh, I don't know about that. Still waters
run deep, you know. I have an idea there arc
depths under that dulncss of Beeching's. Ho
is not a fool, and I believe he could be a black-
guard."

So much for Joseph Beeching from his dearest

Q 2

228 CHAXGEFUL AS TITE WTXD

friend's standpoint. There was a link between
the two which St. Austell had not taken the
trouble to explain. They were partners in a
raeing stable. Beeching found the money, St.
Austell the intellect and social status. St. Austell
had got the commoner into the Jockey Clul), and
into a certain fast and furious set in London,
which esteemed itself the very cream of Society —
a set on which royalty had been known to smile,
and every member of which was on the high road
to moral or financial ruin.

Sir Adrian Belfield saw a great deal of the two
men. He liked St. Austell, who was eminently
likeable, and never showed the cloven foot except
to his intimates ; but he did not like Mr.
Beeching, still less did he like his future sister-
in-law's manner with that young gentleman.

It was not that Mrs. Baddeley openly flirted
with liim, or encouraged his attentions. She only
allowed herself to be worshipped by him : let him
follow her about like her dog, and screw him-
self insiduously into the chair nearest hers on all
occasions. She hud a charmiug air of being

CHANGEFUL AS THE WIXD 229

totally unconscious of his admiration^ and almost
ignored his presence; and yet Adrian felt in-
stinctively that she knew all about him and his
feelings for her, and that she tacitly permitted his
adoration.

^^ I wonder Baddeley doesn't see what is going
on and give his wife a hint/'' thought Adrian,

But Frank Baddeley was one of those easy
tempered mediocrities who never do see what they
ought to see; men who, so long as they have good
dinners and good horses to ride, and pretty wives
to smile upon them, think that life is as it should
be. It never occurred to Frank that a wife who
was so invariably complacent could hardly be
seriously attached to him. He never asked him-
self whether love would not have been more exact-
ing and more fitful in its manifestations —
whether that monotony of sweetness might not
mean indifference. He was a sleepy kind of man,
fond of commonplace pleasures, and not on the
alert to find a thorn among his roses.

He had been a little perplexed by his wife's dis-
play of jewellery one evening, and had questioned

230 CHANGEFUL AS THE WIND

her about it as they drove tete-a-tete in a fly to a
dinner at the Abbey.

" Where did you get those diamonds, Leo ?
You hadn't them in India. You had to borrow
some jewellery for the ball at Government
Ilouse/^

*^ No, I left them with father. They are my
grandmother's diamonds — old Lady Ledbury's, don't
you know.""

^' Oh, she left you her jewels, did she ? ''

'^ Some of them. I was her god-daughter."

" Ah, to be sure. But you've had them re-set,
I suppose. They don't look a bit old-fashioned."

" No ; they are just as they came to me. Dia-
monds are never old-fashioned.''

He asked no more questions, perfectly satisfied
with the explanation; but that night, when the
sisters went home after the dinner party, Leo
followed Helen to her room.

" Helen, I want you to do me a favour."

*^ What is it, dear?"

" You know the old garnet necklace Lady Led-
bury left me ? "

CHANGEFUL AS THE WIND 2C1

" Of course I do ; but you never wear it/'

" I told Frank she left me diamonds. Don't let
the cat out of the bag, that's a darling. I didn't
want him to know that I had bought them out of
the money I won backing horses last spring. He
mightn't like me to bet.''''

" Of course he wouldn't like it. No^ I won't
betray you. But if I were you, Leo, 1 wouldn't
tell my husband lies. It can't answer long.''

" Wait till you have a husband of your own
before you sermonize. AnythiDg for a quiet life,
Helen. That is my motto.''

Adrian and Helen were to be married in June —
the first of June. The date had been fixed, the
trousseau had been put in hand under Mrs.
Baddeley's instructions. A forewoman from one
of the most modish houses in London came
down to Morcomb to measure Miss Deverill for
her gowns.

" I am afraid my things will cost a lot of money,
Leo," Helen said doubtfully, when this Parisian
personage was gone with her pattern boxes.

232 CHANGEFUL AS THE WIXD

" They will cost a goodish bit, but tvc are not
ordering many gowns, you see. Those we have
chosen will be lovely ; but there will be none to
hang idle in your wardrobes, getting dusty and
old-fashioned, as some bride^^ gowns do/'

" But the prices seem enormous. Will father
be able to pay for them ? "

Mrs. Baddeley made a wry face, which expressed
doubtfulness on this point.

^^ Some one will have to pay/' she said.

" Not Adrian. You will not let him ever see
those bills.''

"Adrian's wife, perhaps. Mrs. Ponsonby will
not press for her money, knowing what a good
match you are making."

" But to let Adrian pay for my wedding clothes,
directly or indirectly, would be so degrading, so
humiliating ! "

" My dear child, you cant be married without
clothes, and it's my opinion your father has not a
stiver."

" I wish I could win money on the turf, Leo,
like you."

CHANGEFUL AS THE WIND Zoo

Mrs. Baddeley reddened at the allusion.

" Oh, that is all very well once in a way ; a mere
fluke. It is not to be thought of.''^

" But you always seem to have money for every-
thing. If Frank were a rich man you could not
dress more extravagantly."

*' My dear child, I am awfully in debt. I dare
not think about my affairs. They are horribly
entangled. But you are such a lucky creature.
What can it matter who pays for your trousseau,
or when it is paid for ? Adrian has offered the
most liberal settlement. You will have six hundred
a year to do what you like with.^^

" Six hundred ! It seems a great deal. I shall
be able to help you, Leo."*'

" You are very good, darling ; but I hope I
shall never be obliged to sponge upon you.
Women were not made to prey upon each other.
Man is our natural quarry."

As the days went by and the hunting season
drew to its close, it seemed to that acute observer,
Lord St. Austell, to whom the study of a pretty

234 CIIAXGEFUL AS THE WIND

woman's sentiments was more interesting than any
other problem, that Helen Deverill had not quite
so happy an air as she ought to have had, con-
sidering that she was soon to he married to the
man of her choice, and the very best match in the
neighbourhood. It interested that student of cha-
i^acter to perceive that the young lady had often a
preoccupied manner, even in her lovers society, as
they sat side by side in a corner of the drawing-
room after dinner, or loitered in the billiard-room
at dusk.

" She never seems preoccupied when the brother
is showing her the way across the moors/' said
Lord St. Austell.

He had watched those two riding together
across the rough broken ground on the moor,
over hillock and hollow, their horses neck and
neck, the riders full of talk and happy laughter,
enjoying sky, landscape, rapid movement, every-
thing, as it seemed to St. Austell, as he passed
close beside them, or followed in their track.
Little gusts of laughter were blown towards him
on the keen, moorland air.

CHANGEFUL AS THE WIND 235

" How well you and your future brotlier-in-law
suit each other/' he said to Helen one day, when
they were out with the hounds.

She crimsoned; and was suddenly speechless.

" He really is a fine fellow, and I don't wonder
you like him : but a very rough diamond as com-
pared with his brother, I should say."

^' Yes/' she faltered, " Adrian is ever so much
more accomplished."

" Musical, artistic, highly cultured, a young man
in a thousand," pursued St. Austell, cruelly per-
sistent. ^' I believe you are quite the luckiest
young lady of my acquaintance. Miss Deverill."

She was silent ; all the happy light had gone
out of her face. Lips and eyes were grave and
mute. St. Austell watched the downcast face
with a deepening interest. He thought he had
never seen a lovelier countenance, and he was a
man who worshipped beauty.

" I used to think her sister the most beautiful
woman I ever met," he said to himself, " but this
one is lovelier. There is more of the wild rose —
the pure and delicate perfection which blooms and

23G CHANGEFUL AS THE WIND

dies in a day. To be true to her type this girl
ought not to live to be thirty. And she does not
care a rap for Sir Adrian Belfield, and she is over
head and ears in love Avith his brother. A
troublesome complication in the present stage of
affairs. She should have waited till she Tvas
married."

Adrian was not jealous either of Lord St.
Austellj whom he admired, or of Mr. Beeching,
whom he disliked ; but the atmosphere of Mor-
comb was not agreeable to him after Major Bad-
deley^s arrival. The house had too much the tone
of bachelor shooting quarters. Every room was
steeped in tobacco; for although men were sup-
posed not to smoke in the drawing-room or
morning-room, there were so many exceptions to
that rule, and Mrs. Baddeley and her sister were
so ready to rescind it upon all occasions, that,
practically, there was smoking everywhere. Ciga-
rettes and whiskey and water were the pervading
atmosphere. ^Vhatcvcr the hour or the occasion
there was generally a little table lurking in a

CHANGEFUL AS THE WIND 237

corner with a brace of spirit decanters and a
syphon. The talk, too, had the same masculine
flavour, and ranged from the stable to the ken-
nels, from billiards to baccarat. Reminiscences
of high play in London clubs or foreign
casinos were a favourite topic ; and the sharp
things that had been done on the turf by men
of high standing afforded a perennial source of
interest.

The sisters seemed in no wise out of their
element in this barrack-room society. They spent
their days in idleness, sat about among the men,
first in one room and then in another : played
billiards, pool, or pyramids with skill and success,
asked no points from any one, and pocketed a pool
with the easiest air in the world.

To Adrian the whole thing was hateful. He
could not tell Helen that her father's house and
manner of living were detestable, nor could he ask
her to live a life apart under her father's roof, or
to put on an air of exclusiveness which would pro-
voke ridicule. All he could do was to try and get
her away from that obnoxious abode.

238 CHANGEFUL AS THE WIND

He came one morning charged with a letter from
his mother.

" Dear Helen,

'*■ Adrian wants you here again, and I want
you almost as badly. I lost my new daughter just
as I had learned to feel that she was a part of my
existence. Come back^ dear. You have had quite
enough hunting and excitement of all kinds since
you left us. Come back and learn to reconcile
yourself to the quiet life and the grave old house
that must be yours in the future. However happy
you may be in the old home with your father, dear,
I think it must be better for you to be in your new
home with your mother.

'^'Ever your affectionate,

'^ You made her write this, Adrian."'
" Made her ! My mother is not a woman to be
made to write what she does not feel, Helen. You
should know her well enough by this time to know
that."

CHANGEFUL AS THE WIND 239

" Oh, but I believe she would make any sacrifice
for her son."

^' There is no sacrifice. She really wants

you."

" She is too good, too sweet to me. How shall
I ever repay her ?"

^' You will comcj won't you ? ''

" Of course I will come. This letter is a com-
mand. Yes, I shall like to come/' she added
eagerly. '' I have had more than enough
hunting, and this house is hateful since Frank's
return."

" I am so glad. I feared you liked the life."

" No, I am used to it, and the days go by some-
how. I shall be very pleased to get away from
home."

Mrs. Baddeley was not so pleased at losing her
sister.

'•' You put me in a false position," she said.
" It wont be very nice for me to be the only
woman among all these men."

" I thought you only cared for men's society. I
have never known you to cultivate women."

240 CHANCEFUL AS THE WIND

" That was because I had you. Sisters can go
anywhere and do anything. But now I suppose I
shall have to take up with an outsider. Perhaps
one of those Treducey girls would answer. They
seem to like flirting with St. Austell, though hes a
detrimental."

( 241 )

CHAPTER XI.

A DANGEROUS PILOT

Lady Belfield came next morniDg to fetch her
future daughter-in-law, and Colonel Deverill was
not displeased to see his younger daughter carried
off to a haven of safety. He had a vague idea
that the billiard-room at Morcomb was hardly the
best place for an engaged girl, and that a kind of
society which was all very well for Helen Deverill
was not good enough for the future Lady Belfield.

" It is a capital match, and it would be a deuced
pity to burke it," thought the Colonel.

So Helen drove away in the roomy barouche,
sitting by Lady Belfield's side, with Adrian seated
opposite. She seemed pleased to go with them,
and she had a quieter and more thoughtful air,
which charmed her lover. That chastened and
softened manner seemed only natural to a girl on
the eve of a new life : a girl for whom the

VOL. I. R

242 A DANGEROUS PILOT

responsibilities of womanhood were so soon to
begin.

It was early in April, the hedgerows were bud-
ding in the soft Devonian air, and there were
violets nestling here and there along the grassy-
banks. The final meet of the foxhounds had been
advertised, and people were beginning to put up
tennis nets on asphalte courts, and to talk of the
otter hounds that were to be out in June.

Lady Belfield was delighted with Helen's more
thoughtful mood. It seemed to bring them nearer
together. They sat together^ and worked and
talked in the quiet morning hours ; and in the
evening, when Valentine had carried his brother off
to the billiard-room, Constance Belfield would sit
down to her beloved piano and play ; while her
young companion sat on a low chair close by,
listening, thinking, or dreaming, with her work-
basket standing by untouched, or her book o'pen
in her lap.

That dreaming mood was a new phase in Helens
character. On her former visit she had been all
gaiety and lightness, full of movement and fitfuluess.

A DANGEEOUS PILOT 243

The mother loved to talk of her sons, and slie
found a sympathetic listener in Helen. She talked
of both, but she talked most of Valentine ; of his
errors and failings, his wildness, recklessness, follies
of all kinds ; but soDaehow or other the result of
all the mother's talk was to prove that wayward
son the most brilliant and loveable of young men.
Unconsciously, that favouring love pleaded for him,
and spread a gloss over all the dark spots in his
character.

" I am sorry you and he are not better friends,"
said Lady Belfield, after one of these conversa-
tions,

^' Oh, but we are excellent friends. Mr. Belfield
was very kind to me out hunting. He was my
pilot through some of our best runs."

" A dangerous pilot, I fear, child. But you are
so very distant to each other."

" Are we ? " faltered Helen. " Perhaps we have
very little in common except our love of fox-
hunting. ]\Ir. Belfield cannot care to talk to au
inexperienced girl."

'- Ob, but I think it is you who keep him at a

R 2

211< A dan(;erous pilot

distance. You might be a little more sisterly in
your manner."

*' I'll try," said Helen, ^' but as I never had a
brother, I hardly know how brothers are to be
treated."'

'^ If you liked him there would be no difhculty,'
answered Lady Belfield, reproaehfuUy.

Helen hung her head and said never a word.

Constance Belfield had been struck by something
strange in her son's manner to his brothers
betrothed, and in her manner to him. There was
not that frank, easy friendliDcss which the mother
would have liked to see ; and, knowing Valentine's
difficult temper, she foresaw trouble in the
future.

The Abbey belonged to Lady Belfield for her
lifetime, but it had been agreed between Adrian
and his mother that he and his wife were to live
there, and to be master and mistress in all things.
Constance Belfield would slip into the second place.
She could lead her quiet intellectual life just as
happily as queen dowager as she had done when
she was queen regnant. She would have her own

A DANGEEOUS PILOT 245

rooms, and lier own occupations, her own old
friends.

'^ Everybody will naturally look to your wife as
the principal personage in this house/' said Lady
Belfield. " It would never do for her to be
secondary in anything. She had better begin as
sole mistress. She will fall into her place more
naturally, and fill it better in the days to come.
With such a housekeeper as Mrs. Marrable, she can
have no difficulties. As for myself, I shall be quite
happy when I am no longer sovereign. And I
shall not be too continually with you. I am con-
templating a cottage by the sea, somewhere on the
north coast of Cornwall — a wild, lonely spot —
where I can take an occasional rest from all
society."

" Dear mother, do you suppose I could ever
have too much of you, or Helen either. She will
look to you for help and counsel in all things.
And when you start your Cornish cottage, it must
be big enough for all three of us."

" I have only one difficulty about the future,
Adrian."

24G A DAXGEKOUS TILOT

" What is that ? "

'^ Your brother Valentine has been used to think
of this house as his home."

"And it "will be his home still, after I am
married. There will not be the slightest lessening
of his freedom. You know what he and I have
been to each other, and that I could hardly live
without him.''

This was satisfactory, but Lady Belficld had a
lurking dread of evil. She could not help think-
ing that there was a silent antagonism between
Valentine and Helen. There was such a chilling
reserve in their manner towards each other ; they
seemed so scrupulously to avoid all occasions of
friendly companionship. Valentine seemed to take
a diabolical delight in withdrawing Adrian from
the society of his betrothed. There was always an
excuse for carrying him off somewhere in the
morning; and in the evening there was the billiard-
room, which at the Abbey was an exclusively
masculine apartment. Valentine smoked there,
and smoked furiously. He kept his guns and
single-sticks there, his foils and fencing apparatus.

A DANGEROUS PILOT 217

and had contrived to stamp the room with his own
individuality. The billiard-room was as much his
peculiar den as the library was Adrian's.

Madge had been more than three months at the
Abbey, and she had given no reason for fault-find-
ing in either Mrs. Marrable or the upper house-
maid. She had worked well, and had shown
herself quick and clever in learning the duties of
domestic service. She was very quiet in her
demeanour, kept herself to herself, as the other
servants said, and was not good company. She
had a little room of her own in the great gabled
roof, a room with a dormer window that overlooked
the wooded valley and that broad deep stream which
was the chief glory of Belfield Park. She would
stand for an hour looking out of this window, far
away over the valley to the distant moorland,
thinking or dreaming, just as Helen sat thinking or
dreaming in the drawing-room below stairs, lulled
by the pathetic melodies of Beethoven or Mozart,
or by soft, sad, wordless songs by Schumann or
Schubert.

218 A DANGEROUS PILOT

In the heart of each girl there dwelt a profouud
sadness, a yearniog for escape from the actual into
the unreal.

Madge had seen Valentine but few times since
their conversation in the corridor, and their meet-
ings on those occasions had been accidental and
brief. The girl would have passed him without a
word, without a look even ; but on their latest
meeting Valentine was in a conversational humour,
and he stopped her with a strong liand upon her
arm.

"Well, Madge, how are you getting on?"

" Very well, thank you, sir.^'

"Sir. That's rather formal, ain't it?^^

" No, sir. You are a gentleman, and a
stranger."

" A stranger. Come, Madge "

" I told you I could be nothing to you if I
wasn't to be your wife. I could never be that, you
said — so there it ended. Can't you understand
that?"

She spoke as deliberately as a man of business
who wants to be decisive and definite about a

A DANGEROUS PILOT 249

business matter : she looked liim in the face as
resolutely as a man looks at a man.

" No, I can't," he answered doggedly. " What
devilish hard wood you are made of, Madge. I
never met a woman like you."

^^ I know my own mind. Some women don't
know even as much as that. There's one in this
house that doesn't, anyhow."

" What do you mean ?" he asked, angrily.

" No need to say. You know well enough.
Good afternoon, sir. I'm too busy to stop here
talking."

She made him a courtesy, and left him, left him
brooding, with his head down and his hands in the
pockets of his shooting jacket.

The corridors at Belfield Abbey were places to
live in : low and wide, with Tudor windows deeply
recessed, and provided with cushioned seats, on
which a man might loll at full length. There were
old pictures, old china jars, old cabinets to break
the monotony of the long straight passages ; there
were thick damask curtains to keep out tlie cold.

'^ Trust a jealous woman for scenting a rival,"

250 A DAXGEKOUS PILOT

muttered Valentine, flinging himself upon one of
those comfortable window seats^ and taking out
his cigar case. " Yet I thought I had kept things
very dark, and that no one but my angel herself
knew the state of the case. She knows. She
knows, I'll swear. I've seen it in her face when
we rode over the break-neck ground together.
Once when I was leading her across a stone wall
that might mean broken bones, I looked back as
my horse rose for the leap, and saw her eyes.
They said as plain as words can speak, ' I don't
care if I follow you to your death.' Yes, I saw
the love-light in those eyes, and I knew she was
mine. Poor Adrian. He's so absurdly fond of her
that it seems a pity to come between them ; and
she hasn't a stiver, and it will be altogether a
wretched match for me. I certainly ought to fight
it out, and give her up."

The third week in April began with south-west
winds and sunny skies. The old oaks and beeches
in Belfield Park seemed to smile in the sunshine,
though not a leaf showed upon their rugged

A DAXGEHOUS PILOT 251

branches. But there was the purple of ripening
leaf-budsj there was the warmth of reviving nature,
even in things that seemed dead.

It was glorious weather for tennis^ and everybody
at Chadford and in the neighbourhood seemed to
be seized with a tennis mania. All the young men
and women put on flannel garments, and met at
each other's houses^ and played with all their might
and main.

There was no tennis club at Chadford. There
had been talk of such an institution, but no one
liad been enterprising enough to set the thing
going ; so play on private lawns, and tea drinkings
after the play, were eminently popular. Valentine
excelled at tennis, as at all athletic games; so
directly the hunting was over, he had the ground
marked and the nets out, and, invited Helen to
play with him. They played all the morning, and
a messenger was sent to Morcomb to invite ]Mrs.
Baddeley and Mr. Beeching over for the afternoon.

" Do you know, that surly fellow, Beeching, is a
crack player ? '' said Valentine, at lunch.

" I'm rather sorry you've asked him over, how-

252 A DANGEROUS PILOT

ever good he may bc/^ answered Adrian. '^ I
dislike him intensely, and so I think does Helen."

" He certainly is no favourite of mine," agreed
Helen, " but Frank seems deeply attached to him.
Frank has always some friend of that kind, without
whom he seems hardly able to exist."

" Oh, but one doesn't asik for a certificate of
character from a man who is wanted to play
tennis," said Valentine contemptuously. " All I
ever inquire is. Can the fellow play, and will he help
me to keep up my form ? There's no use in
playing against one's inferiors."

Helen and Valentine went off to the lawn again
directly after lunch. It was hardly weather for
sitting in the garden yet, or Adrian would have
sat by and watched the play. As it was, he
strolled up and down an adjacent path with his
mother, stopping now and then to look at the
players.

^' How well she plays, and how graceful she is,''
said Lady Belfield, watching the slim, girlish figure
in a simple cream white gown.

"Yes; she is like Valentine. She excels in all

A DAXGEKOUS PILOT 253

outdoor sports, in all games of skill. She plays
billiards better than many youcg men, and she
rides better than any woman I know. She is just
the wife for a country squire. I only wish I were
better fitted for making her happy.''-'

'^My dearest Adrian, how can she fail to be
happy with you^ who are so kind and good to
her ? "

" Ah, but goodness doesn't count for very
much in this life. People would rather have
congenial tastes. It is a constant trouble to me
that I cannot share the pleasures Helen loves —
that if we are to be much together by-and-by,
as man and wife, she may feel like a snared bird
in a cage.'^

'' She will never feel that if she loves you.''-'

" Oh, I know that she loves me. I have been
sure of that from the first ; but I don't know if I
am right in accepting the sacrifice she will have
to make in marrying a man who may be always
something of an invalid — forbidden to do tliis
and that — a dull companion for a high-spirited
girl."

251' A. DANGEROUS PILOT

'' But as a wife her whole nature will undergo
a change. You will not have a high-spirited girl
to deal with, but a woman, full of loving care and
womanly thoughts."

" Do you think so ? " he asked, wonderingly.
'^ Will not that be asking too much of her — that
she should pass all at once from girlhood to
womanhood, from the holiday of life to the
bearing of burdens. She is so bright a creature ;
she does not seem made for thoughtfulness or
care.-"*

" Oh, but she has been much more serious of
late. I have seen a marked change in her.''

*' Yes, she is certainly more serious.''

A ripple of girlish laughter came like a mock-
ing commentary upon his words. Helen and
Valentine were finishing a single sett, in wild
spirits.

" You play as if you were bewitched," said
Valentine, when they had finished. " I never
saw such strokes from a bit of a jiirl like

o

you."

Mrs. Baddelcy and ^Ir. Beeching appeared upon

A DAXGEROUS PILOT 255

the lawn at this moment — the lady in a terra-cotta
tailor gown, which would do for tennis or any-
thing; the gentleman in flannels. They would
only stop to shake hands and say a few words
to Lady Belfield, and then began a double sett,
■with Valentine and Helen on the same side.

Mr, BeechiEg distinguished himself at tennis,
and behaved rather nicely at tea. He unbent
considerably, and showed a somewhat boyish
simplicity which p)leased Lady Belfield. Mrs.
Baddeley was superbly patronizing to the three
young men, allowing them to wait upon her and
administer to her appetite for pound-cake and
chocolate biscuits. It was arranged that they
were to play tennis on the Abbey lawn every
afternoon until Lady Belfield gave them notice to
quit.

''^ I am not likely to do that," said that lady;
" I am very glad for Helen to be amused. Her
life here has been somewhat dull hitherto.^'

The tennis afternoons were highly appreciated.
Jack Freemantle and his sister Lucy were invited,
aud came frequently. The Miss TofTstafTs and the

256 A DANGEROUS PILOT

Miss Treduceys ])ut in an appearance, and !Major
Baddeley sometimes drove over to the Abbey, not
to play — he was too lazy for that — but to fetch
his -wife.

*' I am bound to show my allegiance occa-
sionally," he said ; and people agreed that the
Major's devotion was altogether occasional.

He was a large, placid man, with a broad, good-
tempered face — a man who liked to take every-
thing easily, and to whom dinner was the leading
event of every day. He admired his wife as
much as it was in his power to admire anybody,
but he had never knovvn what it was to feel a
pang of jealousy. He had far too high an esti-
mate of his own merits, and had never met witli
a better fellow than himself. He was very parti-
cular as to what kind of champagne he bought or
drank, but he was not over choice in the selection
of his friends. So long as thoy amused and
served him he never stopped to consider whether
they might or might not be worthy associates for
his wife. Tn a word, he was frankly and uncou-
consciously selfish.

A DANGEROUS TILOT 257

Lord St. Austell had vanished from Chadford
with his hunters at the end of the season, but
Mr. Beeching and his string of horses still re-
mained at the Lamb, and there was no talk of his
departure.

VOL. I.

( 258 )

CHAPTER XII.

TOTAL SURRENDER

All Helen's seriousness seemed to have taken
flight, as i£ blown away by the balmy west wind.
Once more she was gay and volatile, for ever on
the wing, with a ceaseless vivacity. The change
puzzled Lady Belfield, who liked her daughter
better in her serious mood.

" My dear child, you seem as if you were be-
witched,'* she said.

Helen blushed and was silent for a few moments,
then replied, with a laugh :

^' I am so glad summer is coming, so glad to be
out of doors again. You must not forget that I
am a wild Irish girl, and love my liberty .''

" I am pleased to see you happy, Helen,"
answered the mother kindly, and then Helen went
back to the tennis court, and the balls were flying
across the net again, and the girl's graceful form

TOTxVL SUEREXDER 259

was sklmmmg over the grass, swift as the flight of
a bird.

She came back to the drawing-room flushed and
excited at tea time, and then Adrian had her all
to himself for an hour or so^ while she lolled in a
low easy chair, resting from the fatigues of the
afternoon, and allowing her lover to wait upon her.
She had a prettily deprecating air, as if apologizing
for taking pleasure in a sport which had no interest
for him.

" It is a foolish, childish game, I dare say,"*^ she
said ; '' but it is something to live for/'

She did not know how such a speech as that
wounded Adrian ; or how much it revealed to
him.

He went up to his room to dress for dinner one
evening, after having lingered longer than usual in
the drawing-room with Helen. She had been out
of spirits, fretful, like a child overtired with play,
and he had been soothing her as tenderly as a
mother might soothe a wilful child.

He was so deeply in love that all her failings,
her childishness, her triviality, endeared her to him

s 2

zb'O TOTAL SUKREXDEU

only tlie more. There was a fascination in lier
very faults which seemed to be inseparable from
her beauty.

Fastened to the pincushion upon his dressing
table he saw a slip of papsr, with four words written
upon it in a firm round hand, " Somebody is false.
Watch."

He felt as a man feels who finds a cobra on his
pillow. Who could have dared to put that diabo-
lical scrawl there ? Some one in his mother's
household — some servant eating his mother's bread,
had been black-hearted enough to stab an inno-
cent girl's reputation.

His first impulse was to tear the paper to atoms ;
his next was to put it in his letter cas^, with a view
to identifying the writer.

" I will have every one of the servants in the
library to-morrow morning,'^ he thought, " and each
shall write those four words before my eyes, until I
discover the wretch who penned that lie."

Yet to do this wonld create a scandal. Better
that than to exist under the same roof with the
venomous traitor who wrote that insult to truth and

TOTAL SUEEEXDER 2C1

purity. False ? With whom should she be false ?
What tempter had ever tried to seduce her from the
straight line of faith and honour since she had been
his plighted wife ? Spurn that paper as he might
the suspicion it suggested forced itself upon his
mind ; haunted him and goaded him almost to
madness as he hurriedly dressed, anxious to be early
in the drawing-room^ to see Helen again before
dinner, to be reassured by her presence, by the
steady light of truth in those lovely eyes.

Not a word would he say to her of that foul
slander, that stab in the dark ; not for worlds would
he have her know of that base attempt to blemish
her name. But he wanted to be with her again.
Never since the first hour of their betrothal had he
been so eager to see her.

It was a little more than half-past seven when he
went downstairs, his heart beating impatiently for
the sound of the only voice that could give him
comfort. There was the sound of the piano in the
drawing-room, but not his mother's touch. A
modern waltz lightly played ; fitfully, as if the
player were preoccupied.

2G2 TOTAL SUKKENDER

He noticed tins detail us lie opened the door and
went in. Helen was seated at the piano at the
further end of the room, her head bent over the
keys, in an attitude of self-abasement ; Valentine
was leaning upon the piano, talking to her, his head
close to hers, his lips almost touching her hair.

The girl started guiltily at the opening of the
door; the man went on talking.

" Say yes/-' he urged ; " say yes.-"

" Well, yes, if you like," she answered carelessly,
and resumed the waltz, which she had stopped for a
moment.

She played more brilliantly than usual, it
seemed to Adrian, with the spasmodic brilliancy of
an indifferent, unscientific player, who has spurts
of execution and dash now and then, occasional
moments in which the fingers have an unaccustomed
precision and power. She played for the next ten
minutes — a waltz, a mazurka, a nocturne of Chopin's;
all with the same air of being engrossed by the
nnusic.

Then she rose from the piano suddenly, and
went across the room to Adrian.

TOTAL SUEREXDEK 263

" IIow early you are down ! '■* she said.

''There is nothing strange in that/^ he answered
coldly, '' but you are not generally so early. What
compact were you making with Valentine just
now ? "

His brother was sitting at a book-table near the
piano, reading a newspaper, and apparently un-
conscious of anything going on in the room.

*' It was about our tennis tournament. We are
thinking of a tournament, you know.'^

" Indeed I know nothing about it. The tourna-
ment will be something to live for, I suppose.^'

*' Oh, Adrian, you never spoke to me before
with a sneer.^'

" Did I not ? There must be a beginning for
all things.''

She stood looking at him, stricken, guilty.
That light nature might be false, but was not yet
skilled in hypocrisy. His mother entered the
room at this moment, and he went over to her,
taking no further notice of Helen.

His heart was as heavy as lead. Good heavens !
AVhat an idiot he had been to need this rough

2G1 TOTAL SUfJKKNDEH

awakening to au obvious bitter fact ; what a blind
besotted idiot he must have been not to see that
which was visible to every servant in his mother's
house.

'^ I trusted her so completely/' he said to him-
self; "I thought her so pure and true."

Pure ! True ! He could never think her either
of these again, after that little scene by the piauo.
It was so little, yet it had told him so much. The
drooping head and arms, the half-despairing lan-
guor, as of one who submits to superior will ; and
Valentine's attitude, his lips so close to her hair
and brow, his easy air of mastery.

Not for a moment after that revelation could
Adrian doubt that his brother had stolen the heart
of his betrothed.

'' Nature made him to rule and me to serve,'' he
told himself. '' How could I ever hope to be vie-
torious where he could be a competitor. He has
beaten me in all things in which men care to
conquer. He has left mc my books, and my
music : a woman's occupation, not a man's. He
might have left mc my bride. There are women

TOTAL SUREEXDER 2G5

enough in the world for him to subjugate. He
might have left her free.''

" Watch, '^ wrote the anonymous denouncer.
He had not watched ; but the discovery had been
made ; the humiliating truth had been forced upon
him ; accident had given him the key to that
secret accusation.

He had considerable power of self-control^ and
exercised it this evening. He talked easily and
even gaily all through dinner, but the conversation
was a trio. Valentine talked much and seemed in
excellent spirits, Helen sat silent, and Adrian did
not attempt to draw her into the conversation.

'' How tired you look, Helen," said Lady Eel-
field, after an animated discussion upon the news
in the papers of the day.

Adrian and his mother were strong Conserva-
tives, but Valentine had taken upon himself the
opinions and the arrogance of an advanced lladical.
Hence politics always offered a theme for lively
discussion and a little temper. Nothing so dull as
a one-opinioned family !

" Yes, I am rather tired/' answered Helen,

2GG TOTAL SURRENDER

listlessly. " The day has been so dreadfully
"warm/^

Adrian went back to the drawing-room with the
two ladies. Valentine stopped behind, ostensibly
for his after-dinner smoke.

The old mullioned windows were closed and
curtained; but a large bay window, which had been
added to the drawing-room twenty years ago, both
to give more light and as an outlet to the garden,
stood wide open to the moonlight and the soft
evening air. This modern window was an eyesore
to architects and all persons of artistic tempera-
ment ; but it was very convenient to the dwellers
in the room, and it brought Lady Belfield's
drawing-room and Lady Belfield's garden into one
perfect whole. In summer, people sat indifferently
in room and garden, and teacups circulated freely
between the Persian carpet within and the velvet
lawn without.

The day had been one of those precocious
summer days that perk themselves up in the midst
of the spring, and Helen's complaint of its sultri-
ness was not unfounded. There were two or three

TOTAL SUllEEXDER 2G7

small logs burning on the open hearth, for show
and not for heat, and Lady Belfield took her accus-
tomed chair, not remote from the hearth ; but
Helen went at once to the open wiudow, and seated
herself on a low ottoman close to the threshold.

The moon was near the full, and all the garden
was steeped in light. The girl sat idle, watching
the night sk}', above the tall cypresses and
deodaras that bounded the shrubbery.

Adrian seated himself at his mother's book-
table, and took up a volume of biography which
had arrived that afternoon. Helen stole a look at
him presently, and saw him engrossed in his book.
She was not surprised that he should be so, as it
was a book he had been particularly impatient to
see, and the librarian had been slow in sending it.
Lady Belfield, finding the other two silent, had
resumed a new German novel which she had been
reading in the afternoon. They had been all three
seated thus for about a quarter of an hour, when
Helen rose quietly and went out into the garden.

Softly as she moved, Adrian heard the flutter of
her muslin gown as she passed out. He lifted his

2(38 TOTAL SUKKEXDKK

€yes from tlic page uliicli he had hccQ staring at
fixedly, without the faiutcst knowledge of its
contents.

" \Yatch.'^

He put down his book softly, and went across
to the window.

Helen was slowly walking along a path that
skirted the lawn. His eyes followed the white-
robed figure till it disappeared at a turn of the
path which led into the heart of the shrubbery,
where a narrow walk wound in and out among
thickets of coniferse laurels and arbutus.

Those shrubberies had been laid out and planted
a century before, and had been improved and
added to by every new owner of Belfield Abbey.

The ground fell away steeply on the other side
of the shrubberies^ and there \\ere grassy banks
sloping down to a long Italian terrace beside the
river.

This terrace had always been a favourite pro-
menade with the ladies of the Belfield family.

Scarcely had the white gown vanished into
darkness, when a man's figure skirted the lawn

TOTAL SURRENDER 269

upon the opposite side, and then disappeared, in
the shrubbery. There was just light enough for
Adrian to identify that hurryiog figure as his
brother Valentine.

He went out, bareheaded, and crossed the lawn
to the shrubbery. His quick ear caught the sound
of a man's footsteps on the winding path, and with
that sound for his guide it was easy for him to fol-
low in the right direction, though there was no one
visible in the leafy labyrinth.

Presently, that quick firm step stopped, and theu ,
after a pause, went on with slackened pace. He
could guess that those two were now together,
walking slowly side by side, the girVs light footfall
inaudible amidst the sound of the man's firmer
tread.

He knew he was gaining upon them presently,
for he could hear their voices at intervals^ faiut
gusts of sound blown towards him on the evening
air. He followed to a narrow walk, parallel with
the river-terrace, and standing there in the shadow
of a cypress saw them on the moonlit walk below
him. He was near enough to hoar every word,

270 TOTAL SUKRENDEll

every breath, and lie had to control his own hurried
breathing lest they should hear him. They were
standing by the waterside, she clasped in Valen-
tine's arms, with her head upon his breast, and
Adrian could hear her sobs in the stillness, the
passionate sobs of a despairing love. Never had
his arms so held her, never had her passionate
tears been shed for him. They had been like
children playing at love. Here w^as love's stern
reality — tears and despair. A'alentine's head was
bent over the half-hidden face. He was trying to
kiss those sobs into silence. And then came the
sound of his voice, deep and resolute.

"Break with him. dearest? — yes, of course you
must break with him. You were meant to be
mine, not his. He has most of the good things in
this life. He is the elder born, the honoured and
wealthy. Vmt I have you, and I mean to keep
you, and hold you against all the world.''

" Lady Belfield has been so good to me,"
faltered the girl's tearful voice. ^' She has been so
loving — and for me to disappoint her "

" Who knows that you will disappoint her ? She

TOTAL SURRENDER 271

shall love you still, my sweetest — love you all the
better perhaps for that which you call treason.
Don't you know the secret of my mother^s heart,
Helen? She does her duty to Adrian, but she
gives the liou^s share of love to me. She will love
any wife who loves me.^^

" You are cruel to say so/^ cried Helen, escaping
from his arms. " What, are you to have every-
thing and he nothing, he who is so good ? "

" He has the estate, and he is Sir Adrian. Do
you call that nothing ? ^'

" Yes, nothing, nothing, nothing, if he is not
happy. No, I won^t betray him, I won^t be called
a jilt and a hypocrite. I loved him before I knew
you. I will try to forget you, and to be true to
him/^

" Helen, don't be a fool.''

He drew her to his breast again, snared her as
easily with an unmannerly speech as with the
honeyed phrases of a modern Romeo. His influ-
ence over her was a thing apart from words. It
was the despotic power of a strong man's will,
which to a weak woman represents destiny.

272 TOTAL SL'KKEXDEIl

Adrian stepped lightly down the sloping bank, and
stood suddenly beside them. Tlie girl started away
from her lover, horrified at being seen by a game-
keeper or some such insignificant person ; but at
sight of Adrian she clasped her hands before her
face and stood motionless, as if she had been
turned to stone.

" I did not think myself passing rich, Valentine,"
he said quietly, as his brother faced him boldly
and resolutely, with the defiant look with which
he had faced angry college dons and aggrieved
authorities of all kinds. " I was like the poor
shepherd with his one ewe lamb,*^ laying his hand
lightly upon Helen's shoulder, " and you have
robbed me of my one inestimable possession."

" Don't talk about robbery," said Valentine,
" that's arrant nonsense. Men are the slaves of
circumstances in such matters. You bring a lovely
fascinating girl into the house where I live, and
say, * She is mine, she is taboo, you are not to fall
in love with her.' But I am mortal. I am of a
clay that is quicker to take fire than most other
clay. I have not been under the same roof for

TOTAL SURREXDER 273

four-and-twenty hoars with your privileged young
lady^ before I am over head and ears in love with
her. I don't give myself up without a struggle.
I say^ No surrender, and try to be as uncivil as I
possibly can to the young lady. Helen will bear
me out that I was a thorough savage during the
earlier part of our acquaintance. And then we
hunted together^ and I got fonder and fonder of
her, and she — yes, I know she began to get rather
fond of me. But she too cried No surrender, and
then she took to being uncivil ; and then I knew
it was all over with us both. Tennis finished us ;
and you will please to remember, Adrian, that
tennis was my mother's proposition, not mine.
Poor simple soul, she wanted to see Helen and me
more like brother and sister, and she thought
tennis might help to bring us together."

" You are laudably candid now," said Adrian.
" Would it not have been better to be candid
before resorting to a secret meeting like this, and
degrading your future wife by a clandestine court-
ship while she was betrothed to your brother ?
Would it not at least have been wise to spare her

VOL. I. T

271 TOTAL SURKEXDER

the liumiliation of bciug spied upon by ser-
vants?"

'' What do you mean ?"

"Only that it was some servant or hanger-on iu
the Abbey who gave me the hint that brought me
here to-night."

'^^ One of the servants spoke to you about me,
about Helen ?"

" No one spoke to me. I found a paper in my
room^ with a suggestion that there was falsehood,
and that I should watch."

'' The she-deviij" muttered Valentine, between
his set teeth.

" What ! you know who wrote it? " asked Adrian.

" No. but I can guess ; some old busybody. The
housekeeper perhaps."

" What ! Mrs. Marrable ? That good old soul
never did anything underhand in her life. But
whoever my informant was I am grateful to the
hand that lifted the veil. You and Miss Deverill
might have left me in my fool's paradise ever so
much longer."

" There you wrong us both. Things had come

TOTAL SURRENDER 275

to a crisis to-niglit_, and it would have been our
duty to confess the truth to you to-morrow. Ml
I wanted to be sure of was that Helen would give
up an ample fortune and the privilege of being
Lady Belfield, in order to share the obscurity of
a younger brother's position."

'• And Miss Deverill has made her choice? "
'' Well, I believe she was on the point of making
it definitely when you interrupted us.''

" I can at least simplify the question/'' said
Adrian, "by assuring Miss Deverill that after what
has happened to-night I withdraw all claim upon
her fidelity or her consideration. She may hold
herself as free as the wind that is moving yonder
leaves.'^

Helen's hands had fallen from before her face,
which showed death-like in the moonlight. She
tried to take Adrian's hand, but he recoiled from
her touch.

" Forgive me 1 " she cried, with passionate en-
treaty ; " oh, forgive me, Adrian. I hate myself
for my inconstancy, my weakness, my folly. Be more
merciful to me than I am to myself. Forgive me ! ''

T 2

276 TOTAL SURRENDER

"When I can/^ he answered, and left them with-
out another word.

He had left the Abbey before Helen came down
to breakfast next morning, and he left the following
letter for his brother : —

" You have shown yourself my superior as a
lover, as you have in all other accomplishments in
which men wish to excel. I submit to fate, which
gave me failure and disappointment as a part of
my birthright. I think you have used me ill, and
that Helen has used me worse; but it is a quality
of my nature to love you, and, even while smarting
under the sense of a deep wrong, you are still to
me something more than a brother. You are a
part of myself. Be as happy as you can, and I
will take comfort in my desolation from the
thought of your happiness. But above all things
make her happy. She is all that is lovely and
sweet in womanhood, but she lacks strength of
character and stability of purpose, as you have
already proved. Bear with her, and be patient
with her, as I would have been. Her nature will

TOTAL SURRENDER 277

expand like a flower in the warmth of your love,
but it will be warped and withered by unkindness
or neglect. I resign her to you as a sacred trust.
Let me never have to call you to account for her
peace of mind. When once my mind and heart
are reconciled to my loss^ I shall accept my position
as your wife's broth er^ and shall assume all a
brother's responsibilities. Tell Helen I am leaving
England in the hope that absence may teach me the
lesson of forgiveness. Good-bye.""

This was all : but in a letter to Lady Belfield
Adrian explained that he was going to London,
whence he would start for Norway, after a day or
two spent in preparation for his journey. He
meant to spend the summer and early autumn in
Norway and Sweden, and thence to go to Vienna,
and to follow the Danube southward, and winter in
Greece.

'' If you should feel tempted to join me during
any part of my travels, I would go to Frankfort to
meet you, and would adapt my wanderings to your
comfort and pleasure. My engagement is broken
— suddenly, like a dream from which one awak-

278 TOTAL SURRENDER

cneth. All the good fairies were at my brother's
christening feast, and one of them gave him power
over the heart of woman. He has stolen Helen's
love — almost involuntarily, I believe, so you must
not upbraid him with treachery. Make the best of
the position, dear mother. Do all you can for your
younger son and his betrothed, and be assured of
my co-operation in all you do."

The letter was a shock to Lady Belfield. Her
loyal nature revolted against Helen's treachery.
She, who was truth itself, could not understand
how any other woman could be false. However
her heart might secretly incline to the wayward
self-indulgent younger son, her sense of honour
and justice were outraged by his triumph.

Helen came into the breakfast-room while Lady
Belfield sat with Adrian's letter in her hand. The
girl's white face and hollow eyes, Mith traces of
prolonged wTcpiug, made a silent appeal to the
mother's pity, but even that remorseful countenance
could not lessen Constance Belfield's contempt for
the offender.

" I find, Helen,'' she began coldly, '' that I have

TOTAL SUIlKEXDEIi 279

been looking on at a comedy, and tliat you Lad
your secrets, while I thought that you were to me
as a daughter, and that I knew your heart as a
mother knows the heart of her child."

" Do mothers always know ? " faltered Helen.
" There are things in life that no one can reckon
against. Oh, Lady Belfield, forgive me if you can.
I can't help your despising me ; I don't wonder at
it. He has told you how base I have been," with
a glance at the open letter, " but indeed if you
only knew, if I could ever make you understand
how I struggled, how I tried to be good and true,
and how my heart went to Valentine in spite of
myself. Indeed I tried not to love him — tried to
hate him, to avoid him, to shrink from all contact
with him, but it was all in vain. From the hour
we first met — a fatal, foolish, mistaken meeting on
my part, a cruel sport on his — from that hour I
was lost, my fidelity to Adrian was shaken, and I
began to ask myself if I had ever really loved
him.^'

She flung herself on her knees before Lady
Belfield and buried her tearful face in the mother's

280 TOTAL SUKRENDER

lap, sobbing heart-brokenly. It was hardly pos-
sible to be angry with a creature so bowed down by
remorse and the consciousness of her own sin.

"My child, it is the most miserable turn that fate
could have taken/^ said Constance Belfield gravely.
" You were all the world to Adrian, and the loss
of your love may darken all the best years of his
life. He is not the kind of man to recover quickly
or easily from such a blow. You will never be all
the world to my other son. I have studied them
both from their cradles, and know what stuff each
is made of. Fondly as I love Valentine, I am not
blind to his faults. He has a passionate self-willed
nature, and to be loved by him will not be all
sunshine. This young head will not escape the
storms of life, Helen, if you are mated with my son
Valentine. It is your heart that will have to bear
the heavier burdens in a our life journey, it is you
who will have to suffer and submit. Adrian would
have subjugated his own inclinations to make you
happy. Valentine will expect you to yield to him
in all things."

" I know that he is my mastcr,^^ ans^^crcd

TOTAL SURRENDER 281

Helen, in a low voice. '' If his will were not
stronger than mine I should have been true to
Adrian. I know that in our life to come I shall
be his slave — his^ fond adoring slave. But I shall
be utterly happy if he always loves me as he loves
me now/^

^' It would be hard if that should ever waver,
when you have sacrificed so much for his sake.
You know that jour position as Valentine's wife
will be very different from what it would have been
as Lady Belfield/'

'' 1 have never thought of position — not even
when I accepted Adrian. I thought it would be
nice to have a home of my own, and to hear no
more of debts and difficulties and unpaid rents.
That is all I ever thought of from a mercenary
point of view."

'^ Well, Helen, the die is cast, and we must
make the best of fate/^ said Constance Belfield
gently. " Adrian is gone, and if we were to ask
him to come back he would not come."

" He has gone ? So soon," cxclaimeil Helen.

" Yes 5 he knew, no doubt, that his presence here y

9«-7

TOTAL SUl;l:EXD£Jt

would have been an embarrassment to you and
A'aleatine. He leaves you mistress of your own
life. And' now I think, to lessen seandal, the
sooner you and Valentine are married the better.
J3ut the lirst thing is to obtain your father's con-
sent/'

^' He will be dreadfully angry/' said Heleu^ with
a shiver of apprehension.

She was still crouching at Lady Belfield's feet.
Her sobs had ceased, but her whole attitude
betokened the depth of self-abasement.

*' He is a man of the world, and we can scarcely
expect him to be pleased."

"I dare not see him/' said Helen. "Oh. Lady
Belfield, you are so good to me, even in my dis-
grace. ^Vill you break the news to my father?
You have only seen the sunny side of his character.
He is dreadful when he is angry."

" I will do all I can, Helen. I will send for him
tbis morning."

"No, no; not so scon. Kot to-day. There is
no hurry."

" I will not delay an hour, Helen."

TOTAL SUHEENDER 283

Valentine came into the room, carrying liimself
as easily as if his conscience were without stain-
He had received his brother's valedictory letter,
and had digested its contents at his leisure. He
thought that everything was settling itself in a very
comfortable manner, and that there need be no
more fuss.

He went over to his mother and kissed her.

" I see you know all about it," he said ; ^' that
foolish child has been crying and confessing, and
breaking her poor little heart about that which
neither she nor I could help/^

He took the tone of a master at once, spoke of
his newly-betrothed with the free and easy air of
a husband of five years' standing. There was none
of the reverential tone with which a lover usually
speaks of his mistress, none of the respect which
the worshipper gives his divinity in the early days
of betrothal.

** It is all very sad, Valentine/^ said Lady Bel-
field, while Helen rose slowly, and went to her
place at the breakfast table, downcast, pale, and
unhappy-looking.

Zm TOTAL SUKKENDEU

" Bosh, my dear mother. There need be no
sadness about it/*'' answered her son, seating him-
self before a savoury dish, and helping himself
Tvitli the air of being in excellent appetite. " I
wish you'd pour out my coffee, Helen^ instead of
sitting there like a statue, l^ray, mother^ let us
have no funereal faces. Adrian is disappointed, I
admit, and has the right to feel angry, with us or
with his destiny. But he has acted like a sensible
fellow, and he is going the right way to get the
better of his disappointment. Six months hence I
dare say he will be engaged to somebody else ; and
then you will feel what a simpleton you have been
to make a tragedy out of such a very simple
matter."

Constance Belfield said no more. She knew her
son's temper too well to argue with him. To her
mind the whole business was fraught with wrougr
and folly ; but if Valentine's happiness were at
stake — if he could be happy this way, and in no
other, her love for him forbade her opposition. It
might be that in this strong and passionate na^pre
there might be a greater capacity for love than in

TOTAL SURRENDER 285

Adrian^s calmer temperament; that Adrian could
better bear the loss of his promised wife than
Valentine could have borne disappointment in his
unreasonable love.

A mounted messenger was depatched to Mor-
comb directly after breakfast^ and Colonel Deverill
was with Lady Belfield before luncheon.

The interview was long, and in some parts
stormy. Colonel Deverill was deeply indignant.
He would have sent for Helen and wreaked his
wrath upon her, but Lady Belfield interfered.

^* You shall not see her till you are calmer, till
you have taught yourself to think more indulgently
of her error/' she said. " She is in my charge,
poor motherless girl, and I am beholden to act to
her as a mother.^^

" She was engaged — engaged herself of her own
free will, mark you — to a gentleman of high posi-
tion, a man of wealth and substance : and without
the faintest justification she jilts that estimable
highly accomplished young man to take up with
his brother. She is so false and fickle that she
cannot keep steadfast for half a year to the man

286 TOTAL SURRENDER

who has honoured her by his choice. She is a
shameless "

" She is your daughter and my future daughter-
in-law, Colonel Deverill/'

'^ Pardon me, Lady Belfield, she was to have been
your daughter-in-law, and that connection would
have been at once an honour and a source of
supreme happiness to me; but I have not consented
to her marriage with your younger son. Forgive
me if I say that with my daughter's exceptional
attractions she ought to make a good match.
Beauty rules high in Society just now ; a really
beautiful girl has the ball at her feet. Now, Mr.
Belfield is a very fine fellow, but he is not a good
match."

*^Your daughter loves him. Colonel Deverill, and
she will never be happy with any one else."

" My dear Lady Belfield, you know that is a
facon de parler. Every girl says as much when she
fancies herself in love. I have known a girl say as
much six times about six different men. My
daughter Helen will have to subjugate her inclina-
tions. She has forfeited a splendid position and

TOTAL SUEREXDER 287

stamped herself as a jilt. She has shown herself
incapable of managing her own life. It will be
my business to look after her in future/''

Lady Belfield was silent for some moments.
She knew her son^s determined character, and she
told herself that^ once having won Helen^s heart, he
would find a way of marrying her with or without
the father's consent. He was not the kind of young
man to submit his inclinations to Colonel Deverill's
authority. Opposition would only lead to a clan-
destine marriage.

" My younger son may not be a good match/''
she said quietly, after that interval of thought,
''but he will not be penniless. He will inherit my
for tune.''

'^ May it be long before his day of inheritance,
dear Lady Belfield. But in the meantime, if he
marries he will have to maintain his wife. Pardon
me if I remind you that he can't do that — upon
expectations.^^

" I would make a settlement. I could spare five
or six hundred a year.''

" You would settle that upon my daughter. A

288 TOTAL SURRENDER

very liberal settlement on your part, and more than
a penniless girl like Helen Las the right to expect ;
but if the young people had to live upon it —
starvation, or at least genteel penury. I should be
sorry to see my pretty daughter fading in a third-
rate West End lodging, afraid to accept invitations
on account of the expense of cabs, or dying of
dulness in a small country town/^

" If my son marries, he must turn bread-winner,
take up a profession."

*' Very good in intention, dear Lady Belfield, but
there are so few professions that will take up a
young man who has not been bred to work from his
fifteenth year. Your son Valentine has a splendid
intellect, but I doubt if he will ever earn
sixpence.''

** Then I must do more for him. Trust me with
your daughter's future, Colonel Dcverill, and she
shall be to me as my own child."

" She is a fool, and I have no patience with her/'
said the Colonel, pacing the room. '^ She had as
fine a chance as a girl need have, and she flung it
away. And now you ask me to reconcile myself to

TOTAL SURRENDER 289

genteel poverty for a girl who might have set the
town in a blaze. But you are all goodness, Lady
Belfield. You would melt a stone — and I am not
a stone, as you might have known nearly thirty
years ago. It seems natural that my daughter
should marry your son. Such a marriage links
past and present curiously together. Please send
for Helen.^'

" You will not be unkind to her — you wiJl
not scold/^ pleaded Constance, as she rang the
bell.

" There is no good in scolding. The girl is a
fool, and there is no more to be said about her.^'

Helen came, pale and trembling.

*'Y^ou have trifled with a good man's affection,
and with a splendid position, girl,^^ said her father
sternly. " You ought to be desperately in love with
Mr. Belfield."

" I love him with all the strength of my heart. ^^

'^ And were I to forl)id you to marry him ? AVhat
would happen then, do you think ?"

'^ I believe I should die.'^

" Well, you need not die. You can take your

VOL. I. U

290 TOTAL SURRENDER

own way. Lady Belfield; I leave everything to
you — settlement, everything. I submit myself to
you in all things ; and as for this young lady, I
wash my hands of her and her fate.

( 291 )

CHAPTER XIII.

MAKING THE BEST OF IT

While Lady Belfield pleaded lier son^s cause with
Colonel Deverill, Valentine himself was engaged in
a business which had very little to do with Helen's
future happiness.

He was trying to find out the writer of the
anonymous warning which opened his brother's
eyes.

Mrs. Marrable had been his mother's house-
keeper for nearly twenty years, and Valentine had
been her favourite as a boy. She had indulged all
his juvenile whims, and had kept him liberally
supplied with preserves and pickles, pound-cakes
and Devonshire cream, when he was at the Univer-
sity. Marrable's jams had been a famous institu-
tion among the undergraduates who breakfasted
with him.

He went to Mrs. Marrable's room this morning

u 2

292 .MAKING THE BEST OF IT

under pretence of inquiring about a groom who
had been on the sick list ; and then, after allowing
the housekeeper to enlarge upon the efficacy of her
beef-tea and the infallibility of her mutton broth,
he asked casually :

" How about that half-gipsy girl my mother
took in ? Does she get on pretty well ? "

^^ It's a very curious thing, sir, that you should
ask that question to-day above all other days/'
she said. " The young woman worked with a
good heart,, and did her very best to give satis-
faction, up to yesterday. She was a very reserved
young woman, and did not seem to be altogether
happy in her mind. She was always on the watch
and on the listen for what was going on in the
drawing-room and library, and such like; seemed
to take more interest in the family's doings than
it was her place to take ; but beyoi:d that I had
no fault to find with her. But this morning she
did not appear at the servants' breakfast ; and
when one of the maids went up to her room to see
if there was anything amiss with her, she found a
letter pinned on her pincushion, and the bird was

MAKING THE BEST OF IT 293

flown. She had taken some of her clothes in a
bundle, I suppose, and had left the rest in her
drawers. There's the letter, Mr. Belfield. I took
it to the morning-room an hour ago, meaning to
show it to ray lady ; but I thought she looked
worried and upset at Sir Adrian^s having left home
so suddenly ; and I made up my mind to say
nothing about Margaret for a day or two. Why
should I trouble my lady about such an insig-
nificant matter ? "

" Why, indeed ? I hope she hasn't eloped with
my brother. ^^

" Fie, for shame, sir ! It's just like your mis-
chievous ways to say such a thing."

" Let me look at her letter."

The letter was fairly written, in a bold hand,
more masculine than feminine in character, and
there were no errors in spelling :

" Dear Mrs. Marrable,

'' You have been very kiud to me,
and I can assure you I am grateful to you and
to all at the Abbey who have been good to a

294 MAKING THE BEST OF IT

waif and stray like me. I am going to London to
seek my fortune in service or in some other
employment. You need not be afraid that I am
going wrong. I am not that kind of girl. I
believe I am made of very hard stuff, and that I
can stand the wear and tear of ]ife. I thank Lady
Belfield, if she will allow me to do so, for her
goodness to a nameless girl. I shall always re-
member her with loving gratitude.

^'^ Yours truly,

'' Madge."

'^ She must be a determined hussy,"' said Valen-
tine.

'^ She^s a curious kind of girl, but I believe
what she says of herself in her letter,^^ answered
the housekeeper. '^ She is not the kind of girl to
go wrong."

'' Bosh ! " cried Valentine, contemptuously.
" She goes to London, and she goes to perdi-
tion as surely as a raindrop is lost when it falls
into the sea. She has gone to look for her mother,
I dare say. Her mother went to the bad before

MAKING THE BEST OF IT 295

this girl was born ; and this girl is tired of rusticity
and servitude, and has gone after her mother. I
wonder you can be humbugged so easily, Mrs.
Marrable/'

"I know more of girls and their dispositions
than you do, Mr. Belfield, and I believe this one
is no common girl/'

" She may be an uncommon girl, but it will all
come to the same in the end," answered Valentine,
as he went out of the room.

Lady Belfield had her own way. Valentine was
impetuously eager to seal his fate, would not have
heard of a long engagement, had the impediments
to speedy marriage been ever so numerous. Hap-
pily there were no impediments. Lady Belfield's pri-
vate income, inherited from her father, and settled
upon her at her marriage with full disposing power,
amounted to nearly three thousand a year. She
settled six Imndred a year upon Helen, with re-
mainder to her children, or to Valentine in the
event of his wife dying childness ; and she gave her
son an allowance of four hundred a year. They

296 MAKING THE BEST OF IT

would thus have a thousand a year to live upon.
Lady Belfield's position as tenant for life of the
Abbey and home farm obliged her to maintain a
certain state, and her income would henceforward
be barely adequate to her expenses ; but she knew
Adrian's generous temper, and that she would be
assisted by him to any extent she might require.
They had divided some of the expenses between
them hitherto, his purse maintaining the stables
and paying his mother's coachbuilder. She had
saved some thousands since her husband's death,
and had added two or three hundred a year to her
income by the judicious investment of her accumula-
tions : all this without detriment to her charities,
which were large.

Valentine accepted her sacrifice of income lightly
enough, dismissing the subject with brief and
careless thanks. He was living in a lover's para-
dise, spending all his days with Helen, in the
gardens, on the river, on horseback in the early
mornings before the sun was too hot for riding ;
thinking only of her, living only for her, as it
seemed.

MAKING THE BEST OF IT 297

They were to be married on the tenth of June,
just ten days later than Adrian^s appointed
wedding day.

In a week after Sir Adrian's departure^ every-
body in the neighbourhood knew what had hap-
pened, and pretended to know every minutest
detail. There were at least six different versions
of the breach between Adrian and his betrothed,
and not one of them was in the least like the
truth. But every account was dramatic, and had
a life-like air, and made excellent sport for
afternoon tea parties.

Mrs. Baddeley had not been reticent. She had
gone about everywhere lamenting her sister's
fatuity. ^' Such a nice marriage, and we were all
so fond of Sir Adrian, and to take up with the
younger brother. I feel vexed with myself for
having ordered such a lovely trousseau. It is far
too good/'

Happily very few wedding presents had arrived
before the change of plan. Those premature gifts
were sent back to the donors, with an explanation,
and duly came back again to Helen. It was for

298 MAKING THE BEST OF IT

her pleasure and not for her bridegroom they were
given, wrote the givers reassuringly.

Except for those early morning rides, or for
boating on the river, Helen hardly left the
grounds of Belfield Abbey till she went back to
Morcomb at the end of May. She was never in
the drawing-room when callers came to the Abbey.
She ran away at the sound of the bell, and hid
herself somewhere — afraid to face people, who had
doubtless condemned her as a jilt and a hypocrite.

" You should brazen it out/^ said Valentine,
laughing at her.

" So I will, when I am your wife. But now it
tortures me to think of the way people talk about
me.^^

'' I never cared a straw for the opinion of my
dearest friend, much less for that of a set of busy-
bodies," said Valentine contemptuously.

It was all over, and Helen was Valentine
Belfield's wife. The wcddiug had been the
simplest of ceremonials : no guests had been
bidden, and relatives only were present. There

MAKING THE BEST OF IT 299

were no bridesmaids, and there was no best man.
Colonel Deverill, his elder daughter and her
husbandj and Lady Belfield were the only witnesses
of the marriage, save the clerk and pew-opener.
The bride was married in her travelling dress, and
bride and bridegroom drove straight from the
church to the station, on the first stage of their
journey to Switzerland, where they were to spend
a long honeymoon, moving about by easy stages as
fancy led them, and not returning to England
until September.

^' Foolish people ! " exclaimed Mrs. Baddeley.
'^ They will have more than time enough to get
tired of each other."

While they were honeymooning, Lady Belfield
was to find a small house at the West End, just
fitted to their requirements and their income; such
a house as exists only in the mind of the seeker.
She was to spend a month in London, in order to
accomplish this task, and when the house was
found she was to furnish it after her own taste,
and at her own expense.

" No wonder they were married in that

oOO MAKING THE 13EST OK IT

sneakiug fashion/' said Miss Toffstaff. when she
heard that !Miss Devcrill's wedding was over. '• It
shows how thoroughly ashamed of themselves they
all are."

*^ Come, now, Dolly, after all, it must be owned
that the girl was not mercenary," remonstrated
her sister. " It ainH often a girl throws over a
rich man to marry a poor one."

'^ How do you know it was the girl who broke
off the engagement ? She flirted audaciously with
Mr. Belfield, and Sir Adrian threw her over.
That's the truth of the story."

The Miss Treduceys shrugged their shoulders,
and declared they had never expected any good to
come of Sir Adrian's foolish entanglement. They
talked of it now as an "' entanglement," and
congratulated dearest Lady Belfield upon her elder
son's having got himself disentangled.

" You must be so glad," said Matilda.

" But I am not at all glad. I am very fond of
Helen, and I am pleased to have her for my
daughter upon any terms ; but I had much rather
she had proved true to her first love."

MAKING THE BEST OF IT 301

'' She is very sweet," murmured Matilda, per-
ceiviug that it would not do to depreciate Lady
Belfield^s daughter-in-law, "' but I cannot think,
from what I have seen of her, that she has much
strength of character/^

" She has no strength of character," replied
Lady Belfield, " but she has a warm affectionate
nature, and she will make an admirable wife for
Valentine. He has too strong a character himself
to get on with a strong-minded wife."

" Yes, I understand. He will have his own way
in all things, and she will be like an Oriental wife,
Nourmahal, the Light of the Harem, and that kind
of thing."

" I believe she will make him happy," said Lady
Belfield decisively; whereupon the Miss Treduceys
told all their acquaintance that Lady Belfield was
very soft about her daughter-in-law, and inclined
to be huffy at any word of disparagement.

( 302 )

CHAPTER XIV.

NOT A COMMON GIRL

The thing -which decided Madge upon leaving the
comfort and protection of Belfield Abbey for the
uncertainties of a great city, with its imminent
dangers and possibility of starvation, was a passage
in the police reports of that London paper vrhich
was most affected in the servants' hall.

" Mrs. Mandeville, of No. 14a, Little Leopold
Street^ Mayfair, was brought before the magistrates
at the Westminster Police Court for attempting
to commit suicide by taking oxalic acid. The
evidence showed that the lady had been dining
with a gentleman who passed in the house as
Major Mandeville, but who is supposed to have
lived there under an assumed name, and that after
dinner a scene of some violence occurred between
Mrs. Mandeville and the gentleman in question, in
the course of which Mrs. Mandeville rushed from

NOT A COMMON GIRL 303

the room, and ran to a cupboard upon an upper
floor, where a solution of oxalic acid was kept by
the housemaid for the purpose of cleaning lamp-
glasses. She drauk a large quantity of this
solution, and was immediately seized with all the
symptoms of virulent poison, and was for some
hours in danger of her life. The person passing
as Major Mandeville left the house while she was
lying in agony. The screams of one of the
servants had attracted a police-constable, who
entered the house, and took the prisoner in charge
as soon as she was so far recovered as to be
brought to the station. It was not the first time
she had attempted suicide.

'^ His Worship : And I suppose you had no more
intention of dying on this occasion than you had
upon your previous attempt. You only wanted to
give Major Mandeville a lesson?

^' The Prisoner : I wanted to make an end of my-
self on both occasions. I have been very cruelly
treated, and I have nothing in the world to live for.

" His Worship : That is a bad hearing from a
person of your attractive appearance.

304 NOT A COMMON CAV.L

" The Prisoner : I might have been better off if
I had been as ugly as sin.

" His Worship : Is Mandeville your real name ?

" The Prisoner : It is the name I have borne for
nearly twenty years.

" His Worship : And you think you have a pretty
good right to it — a squatter^s right. But it is not
your real name ?

" The Prisoner : I have no real name — not in the
Red Book — if that's what you mean. My father
is a basket-maker in the country. He was always
called John Dawley in my hearing. I never heard
that he had any other name."

Hereupon followed a brief lecture from the
magistrate, and the prisonej', having promised to
refrain from any future attempt upon her life, was
finally dismissed in a spirit of half-contemptuous
pity upon the part of his worship.

The paper gave the little scene and dialogue in
extenso. The offender was a handsome woman,
living in Mayfair, and the case was therefore
deemed of sufficient interest to be reported fully,
with a sensational side-heading, "Mayfair Morals.^'

NOT A COMMOX GIRL 305

The perusal of this report turned the scale of
Madge's mind, which had been wavering for some
time. She would go to London and seek out her
mother, rescue that brand from the burning, if it
were in the power of her intelligence and her
affection to do as much. It would be something
for her to do, some fixed purpose and useful end
in life at the least. Here she had neither end nor
aim. She despised herself as an impostor and a
spy. To watch Valentine from a distance, to see
him falling deeper and deeper in love with Helen
Deverill, to hear an occasional snatch of talk
between those two ; words and tones which said so
much to that eager ear — to know that whatever
fancy he had once had for her was dead and for-
gotten : all this had been acutest agony : and yet
she had stayed on at the Abbey to endure that
jealous pain, that bitter humiliation.

The report in the newspapers decided her. She
would go to her mother at once, in the hour of her
despair. That was surely the time in which a
daughter's love might avail most, might mean
redemption.

VOL. I. X

306 NOT A COMMON GIIJL

She would go; but before leaving she would
launch a thunderbolt. Those two — traitor and
traitress — should stand revealed to the man who so
blindly trusted them. She wrote her few words of
warning, and put the slip of paper in Sir Adrian's
room in the twilight, after his valet had laid out
his master's dress clothes and made all ready for
the evening toilet.

Within an hour of daybreak next morning she
had left the Abbey, and was trudging along the
road to the station. She had a little money, just
enough to pay for a third-class ticket for Waterloo,
and to leave her a few shillings in hand. Mrs.
Marrable had given her three sovereigns on account
of wages to be fixed in the future, when it was
decided how much her services were worth in the
household.

She had been on trial hitherto, as it were, an
apprentice to domestic service. She had taken one
of her sovereigns to Mr. Rockstone, and had insisted
upon his receiving it as part payment for the money
he had advanced for her clothes. She had given
ten shillings to her grandfather on her last Sunday
visit to the hovel by the river. She had thus thirty

NOT A COMMON GIRL 307

shillings with which to begin the world. What
was she to do when those few shillings were ex-
hausted, when she found herself penniless in the
great desert of London ?

Did she mean to live upon her mother, Mrs.
Mandeville, whose West End house might be an
abode of wealth and luxury ?

No, she had no intention of accepting either food
or shelter in that house, which seemed to her as
Tophet in little. Mrs. Marrable had said of her
that she was not a common girl, and her intentions as
to her future life were not those of a common girl.
She was exceptionally strong, and she meant to
work for a living, to labour with those strong
hands and robust arms of hers, to accept the
roughest toil, were it necessary, to earn her bread
in the sweat of her brow, and if possible to earn
her mother''s bread also.

" I will rescue her out of that hell upon earth, if
I can,^' she said to herself. '^ People can live upon
so little if they have only a mind to do il. Bread
is cheap, and I have lived upon dry bread before
now."

In the basket-maker's household life had been

X 2

308 NOT A COMMOX GIRL

sustained upon the hardest fare. Madge had never
seen smoking joints or good cheer of any kind till
she went to the Abbey. Her soul had almost
revolted against that plethora of food in the
servants^ hall. She thought of the multitudes who
were starving, those seething masses of London
poor about whom the Vicar had told her, and she
sickened in that atmosphere of plenty. Not by
any means a common girl. She thought she had
a mission, something to do in this life ; and that
her first duty was to care for the mother who had
never cared for her.

She had been carefully taught in her place in
the village school, taught earnestly and conscien-
tiously by Mr. Rockstone, and she had a stronger
idea of duty than many a girl who has been expen-
sively trained by French and German governesses,
with occasional supervision from the parental eye.
She had taken the Vicar^s teaching in her onyu
way ; worked it out in her own way ; and she
was assuredly not a common girl.

She kncAV that she was handsomer than one
woman in fifty. She had looked at herself in the

XOT A COMMON GIRL 309

shabby little glass which her mother had bought
of a travelling hawker five-and-twenty years before
— the blurred and clouded glass which hung against
the whitewashed wall in the old basket-maker's
cabin — and the reflection had told her that she was
beautiful. Those flashing eyes with their long
black lashes and arched brows^ that rich olive com-
plexion with its warmth and colour, the perfect
mouth and teeth, and beautifully moulded chin,
set on to a throat that might have given immor-
tality to marble — these were elements of beauty
not to be mistaken, or underrated by the ignorance
of an inexperienced girl.

She knew that she was beautiful, and in her
scanty converse with the world she had learnt just
enough to understand that beauty is a rare and
wonderful gift, and that her whole future life
might depend upon the use she made of it.

Beauty has its price all the world over. What
was to be the price of hers ? Not shame and
infamy, she told herself. Not such a name as her
mother had left behind her amongst the villagers,
who still remembered and talked of her.

310 NOT A COMMON GIRL

Thus it was that when Valentine Belfield came
to the basket-maker's hovel, prepared for easy
conquest, he found a woman of a different stamp
from other women whom he had admired and
pursued in the past. Not so easily did the bird
fall into the net of the fowler.

He came upon her unawares one day as she
stood at the cabin door, watching his boat drift
slowly by with the tide, while he sat lazily reload-
ing his gun. He looked up and saw her at her
cottage door, a dazzling apparition.

He put down his gun and took up a boat-hook
and pushed in towards the bank, tied his boat to
the trunk of a pollard willow, and landed.

He went straight up to the threshold where the
girl was standing, and accosted her easily and
frankly, asking some commonplace questions about
the ground and the shooting. She answered him
as freely, looking him full in the face, in no wise
abashed by his striking presence or superior rank.
She told him all that could be told about the sport on
that dreary bit of marsh. And then he went on to talk
of other things, and asked her for a light for his cigar,
and seated himself on a bench by the door to smoke.

NOT A COMMON GIRL 311

She had seen him in church occasionally with
his mother^ and had recognized him at the first
glance. She was in no wise abashed by his
presence. She looked at him fearlessly with those
deep inscrutable eyes of hers^ which seemed fraught
with the mysterious influences of an ancient race.
It was he who felt abashed in her presence^ as she
stood in a careless attitude,, leaning against the
door post^ lookiug gravely down at him.

He lingered for an hour ; went again the next
day; and the next^ and the next^ and so on daily,
remaining longer and longer each day, until he
reached the limit of safety, and only left just
early enough to escape a meeting with the basket-
maker. He went as one drawn by a spell. He
carried his gun and game-bag with him every
morning, but the birds had an easy time. The
only bird he wanted to snare wore a different
plumage.

He had practised all the tempter's arts, and yet
he seemed no nearer success than he had been
when he first stopped his boat, surprised by that
sudden vision of low-born beauty. His proff'ered
gifts had been refused with a quiet scorn which was

312 NOT A COMMON GIRL

a new thing in his experience. His subtlest flat-
teries had been resisted with a steadfastness which
might be pride or calculation. And yet he thought
she loved him ; that beneath this strength of
character there burned hidden fires. Yes, he had
seen her face light up at his coming, and had noted
the cloud of sadness when he bade her good-night.
Yet to his reiterated prayer that there should be
no such parting, that their lives should flow on
together in some luxurious retreat, some dainty
villa beside yonder river where its banks were
loveliest, some hidden haven where they might
make their mutual paradise apart from the outer
world, she had been as adamant.

She provoked him at last into quarrelling with
her. That stubborn persistance roused his worst
passions, his pride, his cruelty, his anger against any
creature who opposed his will. He upbraided her
with her coldness, her selfish, calculating temper,

"You are playing me as an angler plays a
fish,^' he said. " You think that by keeping me
at bay, driving me to madness with your cold-
hearted obstinacy, you will make a better

NOT A COMMON GIRL 313

bargain. It is a matter of exchange and barter
with you. If you loved me you would not treat
me so."^

'' Perhaps I don't love you."

" You are a strange girl, with a heart as hard as
the nethermost millstone," he answered, and left
her in a fit of temper.

Never before had he been so thwarted, never
had he been so resolved on conquest. He hardly
knew whether he loved or hated her most, that
winter evening, as he tramped along the causeway,
leaving tell-tale footprints in the clay which were
to be frozen hard before to-morrow morning.

He would leave her to her pride and her folly ;
he would leave her to find out what life was worth
without him, once having known the sweetness oi
his flatteries, the delight of his company. He had
a letter from an old college friend in his pocket, a
letter proposing a month at Monte Carlo. Yes, he
would go ; he would forget this gipsy girl, and let
her forget him if she could.

He returned from his holiday half cured of his
passion for that strange girl, and it was a shock to

314 NOT A COMMON GIEL

him, and far from a pleasant one, to find her in his
mother's house.

He accepted her presence there as a sign of her
complete subjugation. She had risked everything
to be near him. He felt certain of ultimate
conquest. She might carry herself ever so proudly,
but at heart she was his slave.

Then came an unexpected distraction in the
presence of another woman. He began to make
love to his brother's betrothed in sport. It pleased
him to discover his influence over that weak and
giddy nature, like the power of a snake over a bird.
Poor little bird, how it fluttered and drooped under
the spell, and waited helplessly to be caught. His
earlier feelings were those of amusement, flattered
vanity only. He did not mean to be disloyal to
Adrian. And then arose within him the old
thirst for conquest, the hunter's passion for the
chase and the kill. It was not enough to have
fluttered that foolish heart. He must be sure of
victory. His own fancy had been kindled in the
pursuit, and he told himself, as he had often done
before, that this was the most serious passion of his

NOT A COMMON GIRL 315

life. "What was fidelity to a brother that it should
hinder a man's life-long happiness ?

It was seven o'clock in the evening when Madge
found herself at Waterloo Station. In her ignorance
of railways and time-tables, she had contrived to
spend a long day upon a journey that might have
been easily accomplished in five or six hours. She
had wasted hours at various junctions, and it
seemed to her that she had been travelling for a
week when she alighted amidst the crowd and
bustle at Waterloo. She had eaten only a penny
roll upon her journey, and she longed for the
refreshment of a cup of tea after the dust and heat
of the way; but she had to husband her few
shillings, and so tramped off, faint and thirsty, in
the direction which a policeman had indicated to
her as the nearest way to Mayfair.

The nearest way seemed a very long way to that
solitary explorer before she had reached her
destination, and York Road, Lambeth, gave her a
sorry idea of the great city. But when she came
to Westminster Bridge the grandeur of colossal
London burst upon her all in a moment. She was

31 G NOT A COMMON GIKL

awed by that spectacle of Senate Houses and
Abbey, the broad river veiled in the mists of even-
ing, the long lines of golden lamps. It was all
grand and wonderful ; but the heavy smoke-laden
atmosphere oppressed her. She seemed to lose all
the elasticity of her nature, the light free step of
the rustic.

It was a weary walk from the bridge to Little
Leopold Street^ for at almost every turn she had
to inquire her way_, and the roar of the traffic
bewildered her, while every omnibus looked like a
Juggernaut car bearing down upon her with
murderous intent.

Little Leopold Street seemed a haven of rest
after the noise and bustle of the great thorough-
fares. It was a quiet little street, lying perdu
among streets of greater altitude and social im-
portance. It was an exclusive little street, or
gave itself airs of aristocracy, and there were
flowers in all the windows. Number 14a was
brightened by red silk blinds, behind which lights
were shining in drawing-room and dining-room,
shining dimly in the dusk. Madge's heart almost

NOT A COMxMON GIRL 317

failed her as slie rang the bell. The house had
such an aspect of elegance and luxury, as she
waited there, with the perfume of the flowers in
her nostrils. Every window was full of flowers.
And it was from such a nest as this she was to ask
her mother to go out with her into the stony
wilderness of London, to toil for daily dread.

She had to remember the dialogue in the police
court in order to give herself courage.

A smartly dressed young woman opened the
door.

" I want to see Mrs. Mandeville, if you please/^
said Madge.

" I ain't at all sure as she can see you. What's
your business?"

"• You can tell her that I am a relation of hers,
and that I have come a long way on purpose to
see her.^^

'^ You can step inside while I go and ask ; but
Fm pretty sure Mrs Mandeville won^t be able to
see you to-night. She's expecting company."

" Please ask her to let me speak to her, if it's
only for five minutes.'^

318 NOT A COMMON GIRL

" Well, I'll see. You can take a seat while I
go upstairs."

Madge entered the hall. It was small, but made
important by the artistic trickery of the fashionable
upholsterer: white panelling, Japanese curtains,
Japanese lanterns, Japanese jars. Madge sat on a
bamboo bench, and waited. The door of the dining-
room stood open, and she saw a table luxuriously
arranged for four people. While she was looking
at this bright interior, the table, sideboard, and
mantelpiece lighted with wax-candles, and glowing
with flowers, the door of a back room was stealthily
opened, and a shabby-looking old man with a grimy
countenance peered curiously at her, and then with-
drew. She had but just time to see a small room,
with two candles and a jug and glass upon a table.

Who could that horrid looking old man be, and
what had he to do amidst all this smartness and
glitter ?

The maid reappeared upon the narrow staircase.

" You can step this way,"*^ she said, beckoning,
and Madge went up to the second floor, wondering
as she went at the hothouse flowers on the stair-
case, the velvet-covered hand-rail, the amber

NOT A COMMON GIRL 319

brocade curtains whicli veiled the large window
on the landing.

The servant flung open the door with an angry air.

''' She ain't in a sta-te to see any one/^ she said
as she retired, and left Madge standing just within
the threshold.

She had never been in such a room before, so
gaudily decorated and richly furnished, and so
wanton in its disorder. The low French bed was
draped with velvet and lace, and the silken coverlet
was heaped with things that had been flung there
haphazard one upon another. A silk gown, a
riding habit, hat, whip, and gloves, a pearl and
feather fan, a pair of satin slippers, a newspaper or
two, and a volume of a novel. All the chairs were
encumbered. There was a Persian cat asleep upon
one, a heap of books and newspapers on another,
a tea-tray on a third. Mantelpiece and fireplace
were draped with point lace, over turquoise velvet.
There was a fire burning in the low hearth, and
the atmosphere was oppressively hot.

A woman was lying on a sofa in front of the
fireplace, her long black hair hanging loose over
her white muslin dressing gown. A woman who

320 NOT A COMMON C.lllL

had once been strikingly handsome, and who was
handsome still, even in decay. Her cheeks were
hollow^ and there were lines upon the low broad
forehead, but the large dark eyes had lost little of
their splendour, and the finely cut features were
unimpaired by time.

The woman who called herself ^Irs Mandeville
turned those darkly brilliant eyes upon the intruder
with a look of keenest scrutiny. Then slowly,
without a word, she rose with languid movements
from her sofa, walked across to ]\Iaclge, and laid
her hands upon the girPs shoulder.

She scanned her face, silently and deliberately, as
they stood thus, confronting each other. Madge's
eyes seemed transfixed by those other eyes, so like
her own.

" To my knowledge I have but two relations in
the world,^^ said Mrs Mandeville slowly, " my father
and my daughter. Are you my daughter ?^'

'^ Yes, mother,^' answered !Madge, with her arms
round her mother's neck.

END OF VOL. I.

t\J