indeed to Mary or any one in authority; nor did it dwell in her mind as
a thing of much importance. The kind of things that strike a child’s
mind as wonderful are not always those which would most impress an older
person. There were many things at Penninghame very curious and strange
to the little girl. The big chimneys of the old house, for instance, the
sun-dial in the old garden, and on a lower level the way in which Cook’s
cap kept on, which seemed to Lilias miraculous, no means of securing it
being visible. She pondered much on these things, trying to arrive at
feasible theories in respect to them, but there was no theory required
about the other very natural incident. That an old woman should meet her
in the woods, and kiss her, and ask to be called granny, and cry over
her,--there was nothing wonderful in that; and indeed if, as she already
suspected, it was no old woman at all, but a fairy, such as those in the
story-books, who would probably appear again and set her tasks to do,
much more difficult than calling her granny, and end by transforming
herself into a beautiful lady--this would still remain quite
comprehensible, not by any means unparalleled in the experience of one
who had already mastered a great deal of literature treating of such
subjects. She was interested but not surprised, for was it not always to
a child or children by themselves in a wood that fairies did speak? She
told Nello about the meeting, who was not surprised any more than she
was; for though he was not very fond of reading himself, he had shared
all his sister’s, having had true histories of fairies read to him
almost ever since he could recollect anything. He made some cynical
remarks prompted by his manhood, but it was like much manly cynicism,
only from the lips, no deeper. “I thought fairies were all dead,” he
said.

“Oh, Nello; when you know they are spirits and never die! they are
hundreds and hundreds of years older than we are, but they never die;
and it is always children that see them. I thought she would tell us to
do something----”

“I would not do something,” said Nello; “I would say, ‘Old woman, do it
yourself.’”

“And do you know what would happen then?” said Lilias, severely;
“whenever you opened your mouth, a toad or a frog would drop out of it.”

“I should not mind; how funny it would be! how the people would be
surprised.”

“They would be frightened--fancy! every word you said; till all round
there would be things creeping and creeping and crawling all over you;
slimy cold things that would make people shiver and shriek. Oh!” said
Lilias recoiling and putting up her hands, as if to put him away; “the
frogs! squatting and jumping all over the floor.”

At this lively realization of his problematical punishment, Nello
himself grew pale, and nervously looked about him. “I would kill her!”
he cried, furiously; “what right would she have to do that to me?”

“Because you did not obey her, Nello.”

“And why should I obey her?” cried the boy; “she is not papa, or
Martuccia--or Mary.”

“But we must always do what the fairies tell us,” said Lilias, “not
perhaps because they have a right--for certainly it is different with
papa--but because they would hurt us if we didn’t; and then if you are
good and pick up the sticks, or draw the water from the well, then she
gives you such beautiful presents. Oh! I will do whatever she tells
_me_.”

“What kind of presents, Lily? I want a little horse to ride--there are a
great many things that I want. Do fairies give you what you want, or
only what they like?”

This was a puzzling question; and on the spur of the moment Lilias did
not feel able to answer such a difficulty. “If you do it for the
presents, not because they ask you, they will not give you anything,”
she said; “that would be all wrong if you did it for the presents.”

“But you said----”

“Oh, Nello; you are too little, you don’t understand,” cried the elder
sister, like many another perplexed authority; “when you are older you
will know what I mean. I can tell you things, but I can’t make you
understand?”

“What is it he cannot understand?” said Mary, coming suddenly upon their
confidential talk. The two children came apart hastily, and Lilias, who
had two red spots of excitement on her cheeks, looked up startled, with
lips apart. Nello laughed with a sense of mischief. He was fond of his
sister, but to get her into trouble had a certain flavour of fun in it,
not disagreeable to him.

“It is about the fairies,” he cried, volubly. “She says you should do
what they tell you. She says they give you beautiful presents. She says,
she----”

“Oh, about the fairies!” said Mary, calmly, with a smile, going on
without any more notice. Lilias was very angry with her brother, but
what was the use? And she was frightened lest she should be made to look
ridiculous, a danger which is always present to the sensitive mind of a
child. “I will never, never talk to you again,” she said to him under
her breath; but knew she would talk to him again as soon as her mind
wanted disburdening, and was not afraid.

And of how many active thoughts, and wonderful musings, and lively
continued motion of two small minds and bodies, the old hall was witness
in those quiet days! Mary coming and going, and the solid figure of
Martuccia in the sunshine, these two older and more important persons
were as shadows in comparison with that ceaseless flow of existence. The
amount of living in the whole house beside, was not half equal to that
which went on in the motherly calm of the old hall, which held these two
small things like specks in its tranquil embrace, where so much had come
to pass. There was always something going on there. Such lively
counterfeitings of the older life, such deeply-laid plans, dispersed in
a moment by sudden changes of purpose, such profound gravity upset by
the merest chance interruption, such perpetual busyness without thought
of rest. Their days went on thus without hindrance or interruption,
nothing being required of them except to be amused and healthy, and
competent to occupy and please themselves. Had they been dull children,
or subject to the precocious _ennui_ which is sometimes to be seen even
in a nursery, no doubt measures would have been taken to bring about a
better state of affairs; but as they were always busy, always gay, they
were left completely to their own devices, protected, sheltered, and
ignored, enjoying the freedom of a much earlier age, a freedom from all
teaching and interference, such as seldom overpasses the first five
years of human life. Mary had her whole _métier_ to learn in respect to
the children, and there were many agitating circumstances which
pre-occupied her mind and kept her from realizing the more simple
necessities of the matter. It had cost her so much to establish them
there, and the tacit victory over fate, unnatural prejudice, and all the
bondage of family troubles, had been so great, that the trembling
satisfaction of having gained it blunted her perceptions of further
necessity. It was from a humble quarter that enlightenment first came to
her. Her teacher was Miss Brown, her maid, who had early melted to the
children, and who by this time was their devoted vassal, and especially
the admiring slave of Nello, whom, with determined English propriety,
she called Master John. Miss Brown’s affection was not unalloyed by
other sentiments. Her love for the children indeed was intensified by
strenuous disapproval of their other guardians--Martuccia with her
foreign fashions, and Miss Musgrave, who was ignorant as a baby herself,
and knew nothing about “children’s ways.” Between these two incapable
persons her life became a burden to Miss Brown. “I can’t get my night’s
rest for thinking of it,” she said to Cook, who like herself had the
interest of many years’ service in the “the family.” “I would up and
speak,” said Cook. “Speak!” cried Miss Brown, “I’m always speaking; but
what can a body do, when folks won’t understand?” It is the lament of
the superior intelligence over all the world. However, Miss Brown
finally made up her mind to speak, and did so, pointing out that Master
John was eight, though he looked no more than six, and that “schooling”
was indispensable. The suggestion when once made could not be disputed,
and it raised a great perturbation in Mary’s breast. She sent away the
maid with some haste and impatience, but she could not send away the
thought.

And the more Mary thought upon this matter, the more serious it grew;
she brooded over it till her head ached; and she was glad beyond measure
to see Mr. Pennithorne coming slowly along the road. She could see him
almost from the moment his spare figure turned the corner from the
village; the outline and movement of him was so familiar to her, as he
grew upon the quiet distance drawing nearer and nearer. It was seldom
that she anticipated his approach with so much satisfaction. Not that
Mr. Pennithorne, good man, was likely to invent an outlet out of a
difficulty, but he was the only person to whom she could talk with
absolute freedom upon this subject, and to put it forth in audible
words, and set it thus in order to her own ear and mind, was always an
advantage. How like Mr. Pen it was to come on so quietly step after
step, while she was waiting impatient for him! not a step quicker than
usual, no swing of more rapid motion in the droop of his long coat. Why
should he quicken his steps? She laughed to herself at her own childish
impatience. Ought he not to have divined that she wanted him urgently
after all these years? Mary had gone into the hall, the children being
absent on their daily walk. They were so much in her thoughts that she
was glad to get them out of her sight for the moment and thus relieve
the air which rustled and whispered with them. She went out to meet the
slowly approaching counsellor. It was summer by this time, and all was
green and fair, if still somewhat cold in its greenness to a southern
eye. The sunshine was blazing over the lake, just approaching noon, and
the sky was keenly blue, so clear that the pleasure of it was almost a
pain, where the green shoulder of the hill stood against it in high
relief. It was seldom that Mary was at leisure so early, and very seldom
that in the morning when both were busy she should have a visit from Mr.
Pen. As she made a few steps down the slope that led from the hall door,
to meet him, the sunshine caught her full, streaming from behind the
corner of the house. It caught in her hair, and shone in it, showing its
unimpaired gloss and brightness. Mr. Pennithorne was dazzled by it as he
came up, and asked himself if she was superior to time as to most things
else, and, after all those years, was young as well as lovely still?

“I am very glad to see you,” she said, holding out her hand. “I just
wanted you; it is some good fairy that has sent you so early to-day.”

His face brightened up with an answering gleam; or was it only the sun
that had got hold of him too, and woke reflections in his middle-aged
eyes? “I am very happy to have come when you wanted me,” he said, his
eyelids growing moist with pleasure. He went in to the hall, where all
was comparative dusk after that brilliant shining of the noon, and sat
down on the stool which was Martuccia’s usual place. “Whatever you want,
Miss Mary, here I am,” her faithful servant said.

Then she unfolded to him her difficulty: “Their education!” what was she
to do? what could be done? Mr. Pen sat by her very sympathetically and
heard everything. He was not very clever about advising, seeing that it
was generally from her that he took advice, instead of giving it. But he
listened, and did not see his way out of it, which of itself was a
comfort to Mary. If he had been clever, and had struck out a new idea at
once, it is doubtful whether she would have liked it half so well. She
went into the whole question, and eased her mind at least. What was she
to do? Mr. Pen shook his head. He was quite ready to take Nello, and
teach him all he remembered, after a life spent in rural forgetfulness,
of Latin and Greek; but Lilias! and Lilias was the most urgent as being
the eldest. There was no school within reach, and a governess, as Mr.
Pen suggested with a little trembling--a governess! where could Mary put
her,--what could she do with her? It seemed hopeless to think of that.

“I don’t know what you will think of what I am going to say--but there
is Randolph, Miss Mary; he is a family man himself. I suppose--of
course--he knows about the children?”

“Randolph!” said Mary, faltering; “Mr. Pen, you know what Randolph is as
well as I do.”

“People change,” said Mr. Pen, evasively. “It is not for me to say
anything; but perhaps--he ought to know.”

“He has never taken any interest in the house; he has never cared to
be--one of us,” said Mary. “Perhaps because he was brought up away from
us. You know all about it. When he came back--when he was with you and
poor John---- You know him as well as I do,” she concluded abruptly. “I
don’t see what help we could have from him.”

“He is a family man himself,” said the vicar. “When children come they
bring new feelings; they open the heart. He was not like you--or poor
John; but he was like a great many people in this world; he would not be
unkind. You write to him sometimes?”

“Once or twice a year. He writes to ask how my father is--I often wonder
why. He has only been here once since--since it all happened. He would
not have it known that he was one of the family which was so much talked
about--that he was the brother of----” Mary stopped with a flash of
indignation in her eyes. “He has separated himself altogether from us,
as you know; but he asks from time to time how my father is, though I
scarcely know why.”

“And you have told him, I suppose, about the children?”

“No, Mr. Pen; he turned his back upon poor John from the beginning. Why
should I tell him? what has he to do with it? We have left our subject
altogether talking of Randolph, who is quite apart from it. Let us go
back to our sheep--our lambs in this case. What is to be done with
them?”

“I will do what I can for them, as I did for their father,” said the
vicar. “I was thinking that little Johnny must very soon--and Mary might
as well--They can come to me for an hour or two every day; that would be
something. But I think Randolph should be told. I think Randolph ought
to know. He might be thinking, he might be calculating----”

“What, Mr. Pen?” Mary confronted him with head erect and flashing eyes.
“Why should he think or calculate about us? He has separated himself
from the family. John’s children are nothing to him.”

It was not often that Mr. Pen was worldly wise; but he had an
inspiration this time. He shook his head slowly. “It is just that;
John’s children might make all the difference to him,” he said.

CHAPTER XIV.

AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR.

Mr. Pennithorne went home thoughtful, and Miss Musgrave remained behind,
if not exactly turned in a new direction, yet confused and excited in
her mental being by the introduction of a new element. Randolph
Musgrave, though her brother, was less known to Mary than he was to the
tutor who had travelled and lived with him in the interval during which
he had made his nearest approach to friendship with his own family. He
had been brought up by an uncle on the mother’s side who did not love
the Musgraves, and had succeeded to the family living belonging to that
race, and lived now, as he had been brought up, in an atmosphere quite
different from that which belonged to his nominal home in the north.
Except now and then, in a holiday visit, Randolph had scarcely spent any
portion of his life at Penninghame, except the short period just before,
and for a little time after, his university career, when he shared with
his brother John the special instructions of Mr. Pennithorne. The two
young men had worked together then, or made believe to work, and they
had travelled together; but being of very different dispositions, and
brought up in ways curiously unlike, they had not been made into cordial
friends by this period of semi-artificial union. Randolph had been
trained to entertain but a small opinion of everything at Penninghame,
and when Penninghame became public property, and John and all his
affairs and peculiarities were discussed in the newspapers, the younger
son did something very like the Scriptural injunction--shaking the dust
from off his feet as he departed. He went away after some painful scenes
with his father. It was not the old Squire’s fault that his eldest son
had become in the eyes of the world a criminal; but Randolph was as
bitter at the ignominy brought upon his name as if it had been a family
contrivance to annoy and distress him, and had gone away vowing that
never again would he have anything to do with his paternal home. There
had been a long gap in their relations after that, but at his marriage
there had been a kind of reconciliation, enough to give a decorous
aspect to his relations with his “people.” He had brought his bride to
his father’s house, and since then he had written, as Mary said, now and
then, once or twice in the year, to inquire after his father’s health.
This was not much, but it saved appearances, and prevented the open
scandal of a family quarrel. But Mary, who replied punctiliously to
these questions, did not see the need of making a further intimation to
him of anything that affected the family. What had he to do with John’s
children? She would no more have thought of informing him of any private
event in her own history, or of looking to him for sympathy, than she
would have stopped a beggar on the road to communicate her good or evil
fortune. But the very name of Randolph suggested new complications. She
was glad to escape from the whole matter and listen to the account of
the lessons when Lilias and Nello came back from one of their earliest
experiences of the instruction given by Mr. Pennithorne. The children
came in breathless with the story they had to tell. “Then he made me
read out of all the books,” said Lilias, her dark eyes shining; “but
Nello, because he was so little, one book was enough for him.”

“But it was not a girl’s book,” said Nello; “it was only for Johnnie and
me.”

“And I looked in it,” said his sister; “it is all mixed with
Italian--such funny Italian: instead of _padre_ it was put _payter_--Mr.
Pen called it so. But it would not do for Nello, when we go back, to say
his Italian like that. Even Martuccia would laugh, and Martuccia is not
educated.”

“It was Latin,” said Nello; “Mr. Pen said so. He said girls didn’t want
Latin. Girls learn to dance and sing; but I--and Johnnie----”

“Will Mr. Pen teach me to dance--and sing, Mary?” said Lilias, with a
grave face.

“And me, I wrote a copy,” said Nello, indifferent to the interruption;
“look!” and he held up fingers covered with ink. “You cannot read it
yet, but you will soon be able to read it, Mr. Pen says. And then I will
write you a letter, Mary.”

“It would be better to write letters to some one far off,” said Lilias,
half scornful of his want of information. “You can _talk_ to Mary,
Nello. It is to far-off people that one makes letters.”

“We have nobody that is far off,” said Nello, shaking his head with the
sudden consciousness of a want not hitherto realized. “Then I need not
write copies any more.”

“Your father is far off, Nello,” said Mary; “your poor papa, who never
hears any news of you. Some time I hope you will be able to write to
him, and ask him to come home.”

“Oh,” cried Lilias, “you need not be sorry about that, Mary. He will
come home. Some day, in a moment when you are thinking of nothing, there
will be a step on the stair, and Martuccia will give a shriek; and it
will be as if the sun came shining out, and it will be papa! He is
always like that--but you never know when he will come.”

Mary’s eyes filled in spite of herself. What long, long years it was
that she had thought but little of John! and yet there suddenly seemed
to come before her a vision of his arrival from school or from college,
all smiles and, making the old roof ring with his shout of pleasure. Was
it possible that this would happen over again--that he would come in a
moment, as his little daughter said? But Lilias did not know all the
difficulties, nor the one great obstacle that stood in John’s way, and
which perhaps he might never get over. She forgot herself in these
thoughts, and did not perceive that Lilias was gazing wistfully at her,
endeavouring with all her childish might to penetrate her mind and know
the occasion of these tears. Mary was recalled to herself by feeling the
child’s arm steal round her, and the soft touch of a little hand and
handkerchief upon her wet eyes. “You are crying,” said Lilias. “Mary,
is it for papa?--why should you cry for papa?”

“My darling, we don’t know where he is, nor anything about him--”

“That does not matter,” said Lilias, winking rapidly to throw off the
sympathetic tears which had gathered in her own eyes; “he is always like
that. We never knew where he was; but just when he could, just when it
was possible, he came home. We never could tell when it would be--it
might be any day. Some time when we are forgetting and not expecting
him. Ah----!” cried the child, with a ring of wonder in the sudden
exclamation. The hall-door was open as usual, and on the road was a
distant figure just visible which drew from Lilias this sudden cry. She
ran to the door, clutching her brother--“Come, Nello, Nello!” and rushed
forth. Mary sat still, thinking her heart had stopped in her breast--or
was it not rather suffocating her by the wildness of its beating? She
sat immovable, watching the little pair at the door. Could it be that
John had come home? John! he who would be the most welcome yet the most
impossible of visitors; he who had a right to everything, yet dared not
be seen in the old house. She sat and trembled, not daring to look out,
already planning what she could do, what was to be done.

But the children stopped short at the door. Lilias, with the wind in her
skirts and her ribbons, half-flying, stopped; and Nello stopped, who
went by her impulse, not by his own. They paused: they stood for a
moment gazing; then they turned back sadly.

“Oh no, no!” said Lilias. “No, Mary! no. It is a little, something
like--a very little; it is the walking, and the shape of him. But no,
no, it is not papa!”

“Papa!” said Nello, “was that why you looked? I knew better. Papa is all
that much more tall. Why are you crying, Lily? There is nothing that
makes cry.”

“I am disappointed,” said the little girl, who had seated herself
suddenly on the floor and wept. It was a sudden sharp shower, but it was
soon over; she sprang up drying her eyes. “But it will be for
to-morrow!” she cried.

Mary sat behind and looked on. She did not think again of the chance
resemblance Lilias had seen, but only of the children themselves, with
whom her heart was tuning itself more and more in sympathy. She had
become a mother late and suddenly, without any gradual growth of
feeling--leaping into it, as it were; and every response her mind made
to the children was a new wonder to her. She looked at them, or rather
at Lilias, who was always the leader in her rapid changes of sentiment,
with a half-amused adoration. The crying and the smiles went to her
heart as nothing else had ever done; and even Nello’s calm, the steadier
going of the slower, less developed intelligence, which was so often
carried along in the rush without any conscious intention, and which was
so ready to take the part of the wise and say, “I knew it,” moved Mary
with that mixture of pleased spectatorship and profound personal feeling
which makes the enthusiasm of parents. Nello’s slowness might have
seemed want of feeling in another child, and Lilias’s impetuosity a
giddy haste and heedlessness; but all impartiality was driven from her
mind by the sense that the children were her own. And she sat in a
pleased abstraction yet lively readiness, following the little current
of this swiftly-flowing, softly-babbling childhood which was so fair and
pleasant to her eyes. The two set up an argument between themselves as
she sat looking on. It was about some minute point in the day’s work
which was so novel and unaccustomed; but trivial as it was Mary listened
with a soft glow of light in her eyes. The finest drama in the world
could not have taken her out of herself like the two little actors,
playing their sincerest and most real copy of life before her. They were
so much in earnest, and to her it was such exquisite play and delicate
delightful fooling! And until the light in the open doorway was suddenly
darkened by some one appearing, a figure which made her heart jump, she
thought no more of the passer-by on the road who had roused the
children. Her heart jumped, and then she followed her heart by rising
suddenly to her feet, while the children stopped in their argument,
rushed together for mutual support, and stood shyly with their heads
together, the arrested talk still hovering about their lips. Seen thus
against the light the visitor was undecipherable to Mary. She saw him,
nothing but a black shadow, towards which she went quietly and said--

“I beg your pardon, this is a private door,” with a polite defence of
her own sanctuary.

“I came to look for--my sister,” said the voice, which was one which
woke agitating memories in her. “I am a--stranger. I came---- Ah! it is
Mary after all.”

“Randolph!” she cried, with a gasp in her throat.

A thrill of terror, almost superstitious, came over her. What did it all
mean? Good Mr. Pennithorne in his innocence had spoken to her of John,
and that very day John’s children had arrived; he had spoken of
Randolph, and Randolph was here. Was it fate, or some mysterious
influence unknown? She was so startled that she forgot to go through the
ordinary formulas of seeming welcome, and said nothing but his name.

“Yes; I hope you are well,” he said, holding out his hand; “and that my
father is well. I thought I would come and see how you were all getting
on.”

“It is a long time since you have been here,” she said. What could she
say? She was not glad to see him, as a sister ought to be. And then
there was a pause.

The children stood staring open-mouthed while these chill greetings were
said. (“I wonder who it is?” said Lilias, under her breath. “It is the
one who is a little, a very little, like papa.” “It is a--gentleman,”
said Nello. “Oh you silly, silly little boy! not to know that at the
very first; but Mary is not very glad to see him,” said the little
girl.)

Mary did not even ask her visitor to come in; he stood still at the
door, looking round him with watchful, unfriendly eyes. This was not a
place for any one to come who was not tender of Mary, and of whomsoever
she might shelter there. She did not want him in that special place.

“Shall we go round to the house?” she said; “my father ought to know
that you are here, and he never comes into the hall.”

“I am very well where I am,” Randolph said. “I know it was always a
favourite place with you. Do not change your sitting-room for me. You
have it in very nice order, Mary. I see you share the popular passion
for art furnishing; and children too! This is something more novel
still. Who are the children, may I ask? They are visitors from the
neighbourhood I suppose?”

“No,” she said, faltering still more, “they are not
visitors--they--belong to us----” Mary could not tell how it was that
her lips trembled, and she hesitated to pronounce the name. She made an
effort at last and got it out with difficulty. “They are--John’s
children.”

“John’s children! here is a wonderful piece of news,” said Randolph; but
she saw by his countenance that it was no news. Howsoever he had heard
it, Mary perceived in a moment not only that he knew, but that this was
his real errand here. He stood with the appropriate gesture of one
struck dumb in amazement; but he was not really surprised, only watchful
and eager. This made his sister more nervous than ever.

“Children,” she said, “come here--this is your uncle Randolph; come and
speak to him.” Mary was so much perplexed that she could not see what
was best to do--whether to be anxiously conciliatory and convince
Randolph in spite of himself, without seeming to notice his opposition,
or to defy him; the former, however, was always the safest way. He did
not make any advance, but stood with a half-smile on his face, while the
children drew near with suspicious looks.

“It is the--gentleman who is--a little--not very much, just a little,
like papa,” said Lilias, going forward, but slowly, and with that look
of standing on the defensive which children unconsciously adopt to those
they do not trust.

Nello hung on to her skirts, and did as she did, regarding the stranger
with cloudy eyes. Randolph put out his hand coldly to be shaken; his
smile broadened into a half-laugh of amusement and contempt.

“So they are said to be his children, are they?”

“They _are_ his children,” said Mary.

Randolph shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “They look like foreigners
anyhow,” he said. “My father, I suppose, is delighted. It must be a new
experience both for him and you.”

“Go away, my darlings, go to Martuccia; you see I have some business
with--this gentleman.” She could not again repeat the title she had
given him. When the curious little spectators had gone, she turned to
Randolph, who stood watching their exit, with an anxiety she did not
attempt to conceal. “For Heaven’s sake do not talk to my father about
them! I ask it as a favour. He consents tacitly that they should be
here, but he takes no notice of them. Do not call his attention to them.
It is the only thing I ask of you.”

He looked at her fixedly still, with that set smile on his face with
which he had looked at the children.

“I am scarcely the person to be called upon to make things smooth with
my father,” he said. “Come, come; my father is old, and can be made to
believe anything, let us allow. But what do you mean by it, Mary, what
do _you_ mean? You were never any friend to me.”

“Friend to _you_! I am your sister, Randolph, though you don’t seem to
remember it much. And what have you to do with it?” asked Mary, with a
certain amount of exasperation in her voice; for of all offensive things
in the world there is none so offensive as this pretence of finding you
out in a transparent deception. Mary grew red and hot in spite of
herself.

“I have a great deal to do with it. I have not only my own interests to
take care of, but my boy’s. And why you should prefer to us, about whom
there can be no doubt, these little impostors, these supposed children
of John----”

“Randolph,” said Mary, with tears in her eyes, “there is no supposing
about them. Oh don’t go against us and against truth and justice! They
brought me a letter from their father. There was no room to doubt, no
possibility. John himself is most unfortunate----”

“Unfortunate! that is not the word I should use.”

“But why remember it against _them_, poor little things, who have done
no harm? Oh, Randolph, I have never been otherwise than your friend when
I had the chance. Be mine now! There are a hundred things about which I
want to consult you. You have a family of your own; you have been
trained to it; you know how to take care of children. I wanted to ask
your advice, to have your help----”

“Do you think me a fool then,” he cried, “as silly as yourself? that you
try to get _me_ to acknowledge this precious deception, and give you my
support against myself? Why should I back you up in a wicked contrivance
against my own interests?”

“What is it you mean? Who has been guilty of wicked contrivances?” cried
Mary, aghast. She gazed at him with such genuine surprise that he was
arrested in his angry vituperation, and changed his tone to one of
mockery, which affected her more.

“Well,” he said, “let us allow that it is your first attempt, Mary, and
that is why you do it so clumsily. The mistakes good people make when
they first attempt to do badly are touching. Villany, like everything
else, requires experience. But it is too funny to expect _me_ to be the
one to stand up for you, to persuade my father to believe you.”

“Oh,” she said, clasping her hands, “do you think this is what I ask? It
is you who mistake, Randolph. It has never occurred to my father, or any
one else, not to believe. He never doubted any more than I was capable
of doubting. I will show you John’s letter.”

Randolph put up his hand, waving off the suggested proof.

“It is quite unnecessary. I am not to be taken in by such simple means.
You forget I have a stake in it--which clears the judgment. And I warn
you, Mary, that I am here to look after my personal interests, not to
foist any nondescript brat into the family. I give you notice--it is not
to help your schemes, it is for my own interests I am here.”

“What do interests mean?” she said wondering. “Your own interests!--what
does _that_ mean? I know _I_ have none.”

“No--it cannot make much difference to you whatever happens; therefore
you are free to plot at your leisure. I understand that fully; but, my
dear, _I_ am here to look after myself--and my boy. You forget I have an
heir of my own.”

Mary looked at him with a dulness of intelligence quite unusual to her.
There are things in the most limited minds which genius itself could not
divine. The honourable and generous, and the selfish and grasping, do
not know what each other mean. They are as if they spoke a different
language. And her brother was to Mary as if he veiled his meaning in an
unknown tongue. She gazed at him with a haze of dulness in her eyes.
What was it he intended to let her know? Disbelief of her, a suggestion
that she lied! and something more--she could not make out what, as the
rule of his own conduct! He looked at her, on the other hand, with an
air of penetration, a clever consciousness of seeing through and through
her and her designs, which excited Mary to exasperation. How could they
ever understand each other with all this between?

“I am going to see my father,” said Randolph; “that of course is the
object of my visit; I suppose he will not refuse to keep me for a day or
two. And in the mean time why should we quarrel? I only warn you that I
come with my eyes open, and am not to be made a dupe of. Good-bye for
the present--we shall meet no doubt at dinner the best of friends.”

Mary stood still where he left her, and watched him as he went slowly
down the slope and round the corner of the house. He was shorter than
John and stouter, with that amplitude of outline which a wealthy rural
living and a small parish are apt to confer. A comfortable man, fond of
good living, fond of his ease; yet taking the trouble to come here, for
what?--to baffle some supposed wicked contrivances and plots against
himself. Mary remembered that Randolph had taken the great family
misfortune as a special wrong to him. How dared the evil fates to
interfere with his comfort or rumour to assail his name? He had said
frankly that it could be nothing to the others in comparison. And was it
once more the idea that he himself was touched, which had roused him out
of his comfortable rectory to come here and assert himself? But how did
the arrival of John’s children affect that? Mary, in her long calm, had
not entered into those speculations about the future which most people
more or less think necessary when the head of the house is old. She had
not asked herself what would happen when her father died, except vaguely
in respect to herself, knowing that she would then in all likelihood
leave the old Castle. John was the heir. Somehow or other, she did not
know how, the inheritance would be taken up for him. This had been the
conclusion in her mind without reason given or required. And Randolph
had not come into the sphere of her imagination at all as having
anything to do with it. What should he have to do with it when there was
John? And even now Mary did not know and could not understand the reason
of his objection to John’s children. She stood and looked after him with
a dull beating of pain in her heart. And as he turned round the corner
of the old house towards the door, he looked back and waved his hand.
The gesture and look, she could scarcely tell why, gave her a sensation
of sickening dismay and pain. She turned and went in, shutting the door
in the sudden pang this gave her. And to shut the great door of the hall
was the strangest thing, except in the very heart of winter. While the
sun was shining and the air genial, such a thing had never happened
before. It seemed in itself a portent of harm.

CHAPTER XV.

RANDOLPH.

Randolph Musgrave was a squire-parson, a class which possesses the
features of two species without fully embodying either--which may be
finer than either, the two halves of the joint character tempering each
other--or may be a travesty of both, exaggerating their mutual defects.
He was of the latter rather than of the former development. His living
was small in one sense and large in another, the income being large, but
the people few and very much given up to dissent, a fact which soured
his character without moving him to exertion. He was not fond of
exertion in any case, and it was all but hopeless in this. But not less
was he daily and hourly irritated by the little Bethels and Salems, the
lively Methodists, the pragmatical Baptists, who led his people away.
They made him angry, for he was easily moved to anger, and they
increased that tendency to listen to gossip and be moved by small
matters which is one of the temptations of a rural life. He had become
accustomed to make much of petty wrongs, calling them insults and
crimes, and perhaps to be more disposed to petty vengeances than a man
who is placed in the position of an example to others ought to be; and
whereas he had always been disposed to consider himself a sacred person,
above the ordinary slights of fortune, this tendency had grown and
strengthened so, that every petty pin-prick was like a poisoned arrow to
him. By natural laws of reverberation he heard more evil of himself, had
more mishaps in the way of gossip, of receiving letters not intended for
him, and otherwise surprising the sentiments of his neighbours, than
almost any one else ever had--which had made him suspicious of his
neighbours in the highest degree, and ready to believe every small
offence a premeditated insult. This perhaps made him all the more ready
to believe that his sister had conceived a villanous plan against him
and his. He would not have done such a thing himself; but was not his
life full of such attempts made upon him by others? everybody almost
whom he encountered having one time or other conspired against his hopes
or happiness. But he had always found out the plots in time. It was true
that this villany might be John’s, of whom he would have believed
anything; and Mary herself might be the dupe: but most likely it was
Mary, who did not like him nor his wife, and who would no doubt be
capable of anything to banish him finally from Penninghame, and set up
there some creature of her own. This was the idea which had come into
his mind, when he heard accidentally of the arrival which had made so
much commotion in the north country. He had talked it over with his wife
till they both saw gunpowder plots and conspiracies incalculable in it.
“You had better go and see into it yourself,” Mrs. Randolph said. “I
will,” was the Rector’s energetic reply. “And believe nobody, believe
nothing but what you see with your own eyes.” “Never! I will put faith
in nobody,” Randolph had said. And it was in this frame of mind that he
had come here. He meant to believe nobody save when they warned him of
plots against himself: to trust nothing save that all the world was in a
league to work him harm. But for this determined pre-conclusion, he
might perhaps have been less certain of his sister’s enmity to himself,
and of the baseness of the deception she was practising; but he had no
doubt whatever on this matter now. And he meant to expose her
remorselessly. Why should he mince matters? His father was an old man
and might die at any moment, and this villany ought to be exposed at
once.

With these thoughts in his mind he went round to the great door. How
different was the grey north-country house from anything he was used to!
The thought of his snug parsonage embosomed in greenery, roses climbing
to the chimney-stacks, clustering about all the windows, soft velvet
lawns and strict inclosures keeping all sacred--made him shiver at sight
of the irregular building, the masses of ivy fostering damp, the open
approach, a common road free to everybody. If it ever was his, or rather
when it was his--for these supposititious children would soon be done
away with, and John, a man under the ban of the law, how could he ever
appear to claim his inheritance?--_when_ it was his, he would soon make
a difference. He would bring forward the boundaries of the Chase so as
to inclose the Castle. He would make the road into a stately avenue as
it once was and ought to be. What did it matter who objected? He would
do it; let the village burst with rage. The very idea of exasperating
the village and making it own his power, made the idea all the more
delightful. He would soon change all this; let it but get into his
hands. In the midst of these thoughts, however, Randolph met a somewhat
ludicrous rebuff from Eastwood, who opened the door suddenly and softly,
as was his fashion, as if he hoped to find the visitor out in something
improper. “Who shall I say, sir?” said Eastwood, deferentially. This
gave Randolph a sense of the most ludicrous discomfiture; for to be
asked what name is to be announced when you knock at the door of your
father’s house is a curious sensation. It was nobody’s fault unless it
might have been Randolph’s own, but the feeling was disagreeable. He
stood for a moment dumb, staring at the questioner--then striding inside
the door, pushed Eastwood out of his way. When he was within, however,
somewhat conciliated by the alarmed aspect of the butler, who did not
know whether to resist or what to do, he changed his mind.

“I don’t want to startle my father,” he said; “say Mr. Randolph Musgrave
has arrived.”

“I beg your pardon humbly, sir,” cried Eastwood.

“No, no, it was not your fault.” Randolph replied. It was not the
servant’s fault; but it was _their_ fault who had made his home a place
of disgrace, and no longer a fit home for him.

The Squire was seated among his books, feeling the drowsy influence of
the afternoon. He had no Monograph to support his soul, and no better
occupation than to rummage dully through the records of antiquity,
cheered up and enlivened if he found something to reply to in _Notes and
Queries_, but otherwise living a heavy kind of half-animate life. When
the critiques and the letters about that Monograph had ended, what a
blank there was! and no other work was at hand to make up, or to tempt
him to further exertions. The corner of land that he desired to attain
had been bought, and had given him pleasure; but after a while his eyes
were satisfied with the contemplation, and his mind almost satisfied
with the calculation, of so many additional acres added to the property.
The sweetness of it lay in the thought that the property was growing,
that there was sufficient elasticity in the family income to make the
acquisition of even a little bit of land possible. The Squire thought
this was the fruit of his own self-denial, and it gave him that glow of
conscious virtue which was once supposed to be the appropriate and
unfailing reward of good actions, till conscious virtue went out of
fashion. This was sweet; and it was sweet to go and look at the new
fields which restored the old boundary of the Penninghame estate in that
direction; but such gratifications cease to be sustaining to life after
a time. And Mr. Musgrave was dull sitting among his books; the sounds
were in his ears which he was always hearing now--the far-off ring of
voices that made him sensible of those inmates in his house whom he
never noticed, who were to him as if they did not exist. When the mind
is not very closely occupied, sounds thus heard in the house come
strangely across the quiescent spirit of the solitary. Voices beloved
are as music, are as sunshine, conveying a sense of happiness and soft
exhilaration. Hearing them far off, though beyond the reach of hearing,
so to speak, does not the very distant sound, the tone of love in them,
make work sweet and the air warm, softening everything round the
recluse? But these were not voices beloved. The old man listened to
them--or rather, not permitting himself to listen, _heard_ them acutely
through the mist of a separation which he did not choose to overcome.
They were like something from another world, voices in the air,
inarticulate, mysterious, known yet unknown. He turned the leaves idly
when these strange suggestions came to him in his solitude; he had
nothing to do with them, and yet so much. This was how he was sitting,
dully wistful, in that stillness of age which when it is not glad must
be sad, and hearing almost, as if he were already a ghost out of his
grave, the strange yet familiar stir in the unseen stairs and passages,
the movements of the kindly house----

“Mr. Randolph Musgrave!” The Squire was very much startled by the name.
He rose hastily, and stood leaning upon his writing-table to see who it
was that followed Eastwood into the room after a minute’s interval. It
seemed scarcely possible to him that it could be his son. “Randolph!” he
said. The children’s voices had made him think, in spite of himself, of
the time--was it centuries ago?--when there were two small things
running about those old passages continually, and a beautiful young
mother smiling upon them--and him. This had softened his heart, though
by means which he would not have acknowledged. He looked out eagerly
with a sensation of pleasure and relief for his son. He would (perhaps)
take Randolph’s advice, perhaps get some enlightenment from him. But the
shock set his nerves off, and made him tremulous, though it was a shock
of pleasure; and it hurt his pride so to be seen trembling, that he held
himself up strained and rigid against his table. “Randolph! you are a
stranger indeed,” he said, and his countenance lighted up with a cloudy
and tremulous smile.

(“Strange that he was never seen here before in my time,” said Eastwood
as he withdrew. “I’ve seen a many queer things in families, but never
nothing more queer than this--two sons as never have been seen in the
house, and children as the Squire won’t give in he owns them. I thought
he’d have walked right straight over little master Saturday last as if
no one was there. But I don’t like the looks of _’im_. When he’s master
here I march, and that I can tell you--pretty fast, Missis Cook.”

“Mr. Randolph? He’ll never be master here, thank God for it,” said Cook
with pious fervour, “or more than you will go.”)

“Yes,” said Randolph, walking in, “I have been a stranger, but how can
we help that! It is life that separates us. We must all run our own
course. I hope you are well, sir. You look well--for your time of life.”

It is not a pleasant thing to be told that you look well for your time
of life--unless indeed you are ninety, and the time of life is itself a
matter of pride. The Squire knew he was old, and that soon he must
resign his place to others; but he did not care for such a distinct
intimation that others thought so too.

“I am very well,” he said, curtly. “You are so completely a stranger,
Randolph, that I cannot make the usual remarks on your personal
appearance. You deny me the opportunity of judging if you look ill or
well.”

“Ah,” said Randolph, “that is just what I said. We must all run our own
course. My duties are at the other end of England, and I cannot be
always running back and forward; but I hope to stay a few days now if
you will have me. Relations should see each other now and then. I have
just had a glimpse of Mary in the old hall as usual. She did not know me
at first, nor, I daresay, if I had not seen her there, should I have
known her”--

“Mary is little changed,” said the Squire.

“So you think, sir, seeing her every day; but there is a great change
from what she was ten years ago. She was still a young woman then, and
handsome. I am afraid even family partiality cannot call her anything
but an old maid now.”

Mr. Musgrave did not make any reply. He was not a particularly
affectionate father, but Mary was part of himself, and it did not please
him to hear her spoken of so.

“And, by the bye,” said Randolph, “how did such a thing happen I wonder?
for she _was_ handsome;--handsome and well-born, and with a little
money. It is very odd she never has married. Was there anything to
account for it? or is it mere ill-luck?”

“Ill-luck to whom?” said the Squire. “Do you think perhaps your sister
never had the chance, as people say? You may dismiss that idea from your
mind. She has had enough of chances. I don’t know any reason; but there
must have been one, I suppose. Either that nobody came whom she cared
for, or--I really cannot form any other idea,” he concluded, sharply. It
was certain that he would not have Mary discussed.

“I meant no harm,” said Randolph. “She has got the old hall very nicely
done up. It is not a place I would myself care to keep up, if the Castle
were in my hands; but she has made it very nice. I found her there
with--among her favourite studies,” he added, after a momentary pause.
It was too early to begin direct upon the chapter of the children, he
felt. The Squire did not show any sign of special understanding. He
nodded his head in assent.

“She was always fond of the hall,” he said. “I used to think she suited
it. And now that she is--past her youth, as you say----”

“Well into middle age I say, sir, like other people; which is a more
serious affair for a woman than for a man; but I suppose all hopes are
over now. She is not likely to marry at her time of life.” This was the
second time he had mentioned the time of life. And the Squire did not
like it; he answered curtly----

“No, I don’t think it likely that Mary will marry. But yourself,
Randolph, how are things going with you? You have not come so far merely
to calculate your sister’s chances. Your wife is well, I hope; and your
boy?”

“Quite well. You are right in thinking, sir, that I did not come without
an object. We are all getting on in life. I thought it only proper that
there should be some understanding among us as to family
affairs--something decided in the case of any emergency. We are all
mortal----”

“And I the most mortal of all, you will say, at my ‘time of life,’
Randolph,” said the Squire, with a smile, which was far from genial. “I
daresay you are quite right, perfectly right. I am an old man, and
nobody can tell what an hour may bring forth.”

“That is true at every age,” said Randolph, with professional
seriousness. “The idea ought to be familiar to the youngest among us. In
the midst of life we are in death. I recommend everybody over whom I
have the least influence to settle their affairs, so that they may not
leave a nest of domestic contentions behind them. It is only less
important than needful spiritual preparation, which of course should be
our first care.”

“Just so,” said Mr. Musgrave. “I presume you don’t mean to bring me to
book on that point?”

“Certainly not, sir--unless there is any special point upon which I
could be of use; but you are as well able to judge as I am, and have
access to all the authorities,” said Randolph with dignity. “Besides,
there is your own clergyman at hand, who is no doubt quite equal to the
duties of his position. It is old Pennithorne, is it not?” he added,
with a momentary lapse into a more familiar tone. “But there is no
question of that. In such matters a man of your experience, sir, ought
to be able to instruct the best of us.”

“The bench of bishops even,” said the Squire, “sometimes I think I
could--at my time of life. But that is not the question, as you say.”

“No indeed--not to say that my best advice in every way is at your
service, sir; but I thought very likely it would be an ease to your mind
to see me, to give me any instructions or directions--in short, to feel
that your nearest representative understood your wishes, whatever might
happen.”

Now Randolph was evidently his father’s representative, John being out
of the question; and that John was absolutely out of the question, not
only from external circumstances, but from the strong prejudice and
prepossession against him in his father’s mind, was certain. Yet the
Squire resented this assumption as much as if John had been his
dearly-beloved son and apparent heir.

“Thanks,” he said, “I feel your care for my comfort--but after all, you
are not my direct representative.”

“Sir!” cried Randolph reddening, “need I remind you of the disabilities,
the privation of all natural rights----”

“You need not remind me of anything,” said Mr. Musgrave, getting up
hurriedly. “I don’t care to discuss that question--or anything else of
the kind. Suppose we go and join Mary, who must be in the drawing-room,
I suppose? It is she, after all, who is really my representative,
knowing everything about my affairs.”

“She--is a woman,” said Randolph, with a tone of contempt.

“That is undeniable--but women are not considered exactly as they used
to be in such matters.”

“I hope, sir,” said the clergyman, with dignity, “that neither my sister
nor you add your influence to the foolish movement about women’s
rights.”

“Do you mean that Mary does not want a vote?” said the Squire. “No, I
don’t suppose it has occurred to her. We add our influence to very few
public movements, Randolph, bad or good. The Musgraves are not what they
once were in the county; the leading part we once took is taken by
others who are richer than we are. Progress is not the thing for old
families, for progress means money.”

“There are other reasons why the Musgraves do not take their proper
place. I have hopes, sir,” said Randolph, “that under more favourable
circumstances--if we, perhaps, were to draw more together----”

“What do you mean, sir?” said the Squire; “it was you who separated
yourself from us, not us from you. You were too good, being a clergyman,
as you said, to encounter the odium of our position. That’s enough,
Randolph. It is not an agreeable subject. Let us dismiss it as it has
been dismissed these fifteen years; and come--to Mary’s part of the
house.”

“Then, am I to understand,” said Randolph, sharply, rising, yet holding
back, “that your mind is changing as old age gains upon you, that you
are going to accept the disgrace of the family? and that it is with your
sanction that Mary is receiving--adopting----”

He stopped, overawed in spite of himself, by the old man’s look, who
stood with his face fixed looking towards him, restraining with all his
force the tremor of his nerves. The Squire had been subject all his life
to sudden fits of passion, and had got the habit of subduing, by
ignoring them, as all his family well knew. He made no reply, but the
restrained fire in his eyes impressed even the dull imagination of his
son, who was pertinacious rather than daring, and had no force in him to
stand against passion. Mr. Musgrave turned round quickly, and took up
his book, which lay on a table near.

“Mary sent you a copy of the Monograph?” he said; “but I don’t remember
that you gave me your opinion of it. It has had a very flattering
reception generally. I could not have expected so much interest in the
public mind on a question of such exclusive family interest. But so it
has been. I have kept all the notices, and the letters I have received
on the subject. You shall see them by and by; and I think you will agree
with me, that a more flattering reception could scarcely have been. All
sorts of people have written to me. It appears,” said the Squire, with
modest pride, “that I have really been able to throw some light upon a
difficulty. After dinner, Randolph, if you are interested, you shall see
my collection.”

“My time is short,” said Randolph, “and with so many more serious
matters to discuss----”

“I know few things more serious than the history of the family honours,”
said the Squire, “especially as you have a boy to inherit the old
blazon; but we’ll go into all that this evening, as your stay is to be
short. Better come and see Mary before dinner. She will want to know all
about your home-concerns, and your wife. The house is unchanged, you
will perceive,” the Squire continued, talking cheerfully as he led the
way; and the sound of his voice, somewhat high-pitched and shrill with
age, travelled far through the old passages. “I hope no sacrilegious
hands will ever change the house. My heirs may add to it if they please,
but it is a monument of antiquity, which ought never to be
touched--except to mend it delicately as Mary mends her old lace. This
way, Randolph; I believe you have forgotten the way.”

They were standing in an angle of the fine oak staircase, where the
Squire waited till his son came up to him. At this moment a rush of
small footsteps, and a whispering voice--“Run, Nello, Nello! he is
coming,” was audible above. Randolph looked up quickly, with a look of
intelligence, into the old man’s face. But the Squire did not move a
muscle. His countenance was blank as that of a deaf man. If he had
heard, he allowed no sign of hearing to be visible. “Come along,” he
said, “it seems to me that my wind is better than yours even at my time
of life,” with a half-sarcastic smile. Was he hard of hearing? a
hypothesis rather agreeable to think of; or what was the meaning of it?
Were these obnoxious children the pets of the house? but why should they
run because he was coming. The hostile visitor was perplexed, and could
not make it out. He followed into the drawing-room without a word, while
the small footsteps were still audible. Mary was seated at a low table
on which there was work, but she was not working. She rose to receive
them with a certain formality; for except after dinner, when the Squire
would sometimes come for a cup of tea, or when there were visitors in
the house, she was generally alone in the low quaint drawing-room, which
transported even the unimaginative Randolph back to childhood. The
panelled walls, the spindle-legged furniture, the inlaid cabinets and
tables, were all exactly as he remembered them. This touched him a
little, though he had all the robustness against impression which
fortifies a slow intelligence. “It seems like yesterday that I was
here,” he said.

This, in her turn, touched Mary, whose excitement made her subject to
the lightest flutter of emotion. She smiled at him with greater kindness
than she had yet felt. “Yes,” she said. “I feel so sometimes, too, when
I look round; but it tells less upon us who are here always. And so much
has happened since then.”

“Ah, I suppose so: though you seem to vegetate pretty much in the old
ways. Those children though, for instance,” said Randolph, with a laugh,
“scurrying off in such haste as we came within hearing, that is not like
the old ways. Are you ashamed of them, or afraid to have them here? I
should not wonder, for my part.”

The tears sprang to Mary’s eyes. She did not say anything in the sudden
shock, but looked at Randolph piteously with a silent reproach. It was
the first time since the day of their arrival that any public mention
had been made of the children in her father’s presence. And there was a
pause which seemed to her full of fate.

“You must not look at me so,” said her brother. “I gave you fair
warning. My father is not to be given up to your plots without a
remonstrance at least. I believe it is a conspiracy, sir, from beginning
to end. Do you intend our old family, with all the honours you are so
proud of, to drop into disgrace? With the shadow of crime on it,” cried
Randolph, warming into excitement; then, with a dull perception of
something still more telling, his father’s weak point, “and the bar
sinister of vice?” he said.

CHAPTER XVI.

DUCKS AND DRAKES.

The Squire made use of that discretion which is the better part of
valour. When Randolph for the second time insisted upon coming to an
understanding on family affairs, which meant deciding what was to be
done on the Squire’s death, Mr. Musgrave, not knowing how else to foil
his son, got up and came away. “You can settle these matters with Mary,”
he said, quietly enough. It would not have been dignified to treat the
suggestion in any other way. But he went out with a slight acceleration
of his pulses, caused half by anger and half by the natural human thrill
of feeling with which a man has his own death brought home to him. The
Squire knew that there was nothing unnatural in this anticipation of his
own end. He was aware that it required to be done, and the emergency
prepared for; but yet it was not agreeable to him. He thought they might
have awaited the event, although in another point of view it would have
been imprudent to await the event. He felt that there was something
undesirable, unlovely, in the idea of your children consulting over you
for their own comfort “afterwards.” But then his children were no longer
children whose doings touched his affections much--they were middle-aged
people, as old as he was--and in fact it _was_ important that they
should come to an arrangement and settle everything. Only he could
not--and this being so, would not--do it; and he said to himself that
the cause of his refusal was no reluctance on his own part to consider
the inevitable certainty of his own death, but only the intolerableness
of the inquiry in other respects. He walked out in a little strain and
excitement of feeling, though outwardly his calm was intense. He
steadied himself, mind and body, by an effort, putting a smile upon his
lip, and walking with a deliberate slow movement. He would have scorned
himself had he showed any excitement; but strolled out with a leisurely
slow step and a smile. They would talk the matter out, the two whom he
had left; even though Mary’s heart would be more with him than with her
brother, still she would be bound to follow Randolph’s lead. They would
talk of his health, of how he was looking feeble, his age beginning to
tell upon him, and how it would be very expedient to know what the
conditions of his will were, and whether he had made any provision for
the peculiar circumstances, or arrangement for the holding of the
estate. “I ought to be the first person considered,” he thought he heard
Randolph saying. Randolph had always thought himself the first person to
be considered. At this penetration of his own the Squire smiled again,
and walked away very steadily, very slowly, humming a bar of an
old-fashioned air.

He went thus through the broken woodland towards the east, and strolled
into the Chase like a man taking a walk for pleasure. The birds sang
overhead, little rabbits popped out from the great tree-trunks, and a
squirrel ran up one of them and across a long branch, where it sat
peering at him. All was familiar, certain, well known; he had seen the
same sights and heard the same sounds for the last seventy years; and
the sunshine shone with the same calm assurance of shining as at other
times, and all this rustling, breathing life went on as it had always
gone on. There was scarcely a leaf, scarcely a moss-covered stone that
did not hide or shelter something living. The air was full of life;
sounds of all kinds, twitter and hum and rustle, his own step among
other movements, his own shadow moving across the sunshine. And he felt
well enough, not running over with health and vigour as he had sometimes
felt long ago, not disposed to vault over walls and gates in that
unlicensed exuberance which belongs to youth only, but well
enough--quite well, in short; steady afoot, his breathing easy, his head
clear, everything about him comfortable. Notwithstanding which, his
children were discussing, as in reference to a quite near and probable
event, what was to be done when he should die! The Squire smiled at the
thought, but it was a smile which got fixed and painful on his lip, and
was not spontaneous or agreeable. The amusement to be got from such an
idea is not of a genial kind. He was over seventy, and he knew, who
better? that threescore and ten has been set down as the limit of mortal
life. No doubt he must die--every man must die. It was a thing before
him not to be eluded; the darkness, indeed, was very near, according to
all ordinary law; but the Squire did not feel it, was not in his soul
convinced of it. He believed it, of course; all other men of his age
die, and in their case the precautions of the family are prudent and
natural; in his own case it is true he did not feel the necessity; but
yet no doubt it must be so. He kept smiling to himself; so living as he
was, and everything round, it was an odd sort of discord to think of
dying. He felt a kind of blank before him, a sense of being shut in. So
one feels when one walks along a bit of road surrounded with walls, a
_cul de sac_ from which there is no outlet. A sense of imprisonment is
in it, of discouragement, too little air to breathe, too little space to
move in--certainly a disagreeable, stifling, choking sensation.
Involuntarily a sigh came from his breast; and yet he smiled
persistently, feeling in himself a kind of defiance to all the world, a
determination to be amused at it all, notwithstanding the sentence they
were passing against him.

While the Squire continued his walk, amid the twitter of the birds and
the warble and the crackle and rustle and hum in the woods, and all the
sounds of living, now and then another sound struck in--a sound not
necessarily near, for in that still summer air sounds travel easily--an
echo of voices, now one soft cry or laugh, now a momentary babble. It
struck the old man as if an independent soul had been put into the
scene. He knew very well what it meant--very well--no one better. By
very dint of his opposition to them he recognized the sound of the
children wherever they were. They were there now, the little things
whose presence had moved Randolph to this assault upon his father. They
were altogether antagonistic to Randolph, or rather he to them; this
gave them a curious perverse interest in their grandfather’s eyes. They
offered him an outlet from his _cul de sac_; the pressure seemed
suddenly removed which had bowed him down; in a moment he felt relieved,
delivered from that sense of confinement. A new idea was like the
opening of a door to the old man; he was no longer compelled to
contemplate the certainty before him, but was let softly down into the
pleasant region of uncertainty--the world of happy chances. The very
character of the smile upon his face changed. It became more natural,
more easy, although he did not know the children, nor had any intention
of noticing them. But they were there, and Randolph might scheme as he
liked; here was one who must bring his schemes to confusion. A vague
lightening came into the Squire’s thoughts. He was reprieved, if not
from the inevitable conclusion, at least from the necessity of
contemplating it; and he continued his walk with a lighter heart. By and
by, after a somewhat long round, and making sundry observations to
himself about the state of the timber which would bear cutting, and
about the birds which, without any keeper to care for them, were
multiplying at their own will, and might give some sport in September,
Mr. Musgrave found himself by the lake again with that fascination
towards the water which is so universal. The lake gleamed through the
branches, prolonging the blue of the sky, and calling him with soft
plashing upon the beach, the oldest of his friends, accompaniment of so
many thoughts, and of all the vicissitudes of his life. He went towards
it now in the commotion of feeling which was subsiding into calm, a calm
which had something of fatigue in it; for reluctant as he was to enter
into the question of age and the nearly approaching conclusion, the fact
of age made him easily tired with everything, and with nothing more than
excitement. He was fatigued with the strain he had been put to, and had
fallen into a languid state which was not unpleasant; the condition in
which we are specially disposed to be easily amused if any passive
amusement comes in our way.

So it happened that as he walked along the margin of the lake, with the
water softly foaming over the pebbles at his feet, Mr. Musgrave’s ear
was caught by a series of sharp little repetitions of sound, like a
succession of small reports--one, two, three. He listened in the mild,
easily-roused, and not very active curiosity of such a moment, and
recognized with a smile the sound of pebbles skipping across the water;
presently he saw the little missiles gleaming along from ripple to
ripple, flung by a skilful but not very strong hand. The Squire did not
even ask himself who it was, but went on quietly, doubting nothing.
Suddenly turning round a corner upon the edge of a small bay, he saw a
little figure between him and the shining water, making ducks and drakes
with varying success.

The Squire’s step was inaudible on the turf, and he paused in sympathy
with the play. He himself had made ducks and drakes in the Penninghame
water as long as he could recollect. He had taught his little boys to do
it; he could not tell how it was that this suddenly came to his mind
just now--though how it should do so with Randolph, a middle-aged,
calculating parson, talking about family arrangements--Pah! but even
this recollection did not affect him now as it did before. Never mind
Randolph. This little fellow chose the stones with judgment, and really,
for such a small creature, launched them well. The Squire felt half
disposed to step forward and try his skill too. When one shot failed he
was half-sorry, half-inclined to chuckle as over an antagonist; and when
there came a great success, a succession of six or seven reports one
after another as the flat pebble skimmed over fold after fold of the
water, he could not help saying, “Bravo!” in generous applause;
generous, for somehow or other he felt as if he were playing on the
other side. This sensation aroused him; he had not been so
self-forgetting for many a day. “Bravo!” he cried, with something like
glee in his voice.

The little boy turned round hastily. What a strange meeting! Oddly
enough it had never occurred to the Squire to think who it was.
Strangers were rife enough in these regions, and people would now and
then come to Penninghame with their families--who would stray into the
Chase, taking it for public property. But for the ducks and drakes
which interested him, he would probably have collared the little fellow,
and demanded to know what right he had to be here. He was therefore
quite unprepared for the encounter, and looked with the strangest
emotions of wonder and half-terror into the face which was so familiar
to him, but so strange, the face of his grandson and heir. When once he
had seen the child no further doubt was possible. He stared at him as if
he had been a little ghost. He had not presence of mind to turn on his
heel and go away at once, which would have been the only way of keeping
up his former tactics; he was speechless and overpowered; and there was
nobody by to spy upon him, no grown-up spectators--not even the other
child to observe what he did, or listen to what he said. In this case
the Squire did not feel the need to be vigilant, which in other
circumstances would have given him self-command. Thus the shock and
surprise, and the perfect freedom of his position, unwatched and unseen,
alike broke down all his defences. After the first start he stood still
and gazed at the child, who still, more frankly and with much less
emotion, gazed at him.

“Who are you, sir?” the grandfather said, with a tone that was meant to
be very peremptory. The jar in it was incomprehensible to Nello: but yet
it gave him greater courage.

“I am Ne--that is to say,” the little fellow answered, with a sudden
flush and change of countenance, “my name, it is John.”

“John what? Speak up, sir. Do you know you are a little trespasser, and
have no business to be here?”

“Oh yes, I have a business to be here,” said Nello. “I don’t know what
it is to be a trespasser. I live at the Castle, me. I can come when I
please, and nobody has any business to send me away.”

“Do you know who I am?” asked the Squire, bending his brows. Nello
looked at him curiously, half amused, though he was half frightened. He
had never been so near, or looked his grandfather in the face before.

“I _know_; but I may not tell,” said Nello. He shook his head, and
though he was not very quick-witted, some latent sense of fun brought a
mischievous look to his face. “We know very well, but we are never to
tell,” he added, shaking his head once more, looking up with watchful
eyes, as children have a way of doing, to take his cue from the
expression of the elder face; and there was something very strange in
that gleam of fun in Nello’s eyes. “We know, but we are never, never to
tell.

“Who told you so?”

“It was--Martuccia,” said the boy, with precocious discretion. His look
grew more and more inquisitive and investigating. Now that he had the
opportunity he determined to examine the old man well and to make out
the kind of person he was.

Mr. Musgrave did not answer. He on his side was investigating too, with
less keenness and more feeling than the child showed. He would have been
unmoved by the beauty of Lilias, though it was much greater than that of
Nello. The little girl would have irritated him; but with the boy he
felt himself safe, he could not tell how; he was more a child, less a
stranger. Mr. Musgrave himself could not have explained it, but so it
was. A desire to get nearer to his descendant came into the old man’s
mind; old recollections crept upon him, and stole away all his strength.
“You know who I am; do you know who you are, little fellow?” he asked,
with a strange break in his voice.

“I told you; you are--the old gentleman at home,” said Nello. “I know
all about it. And me? I am John. There is no wonder about that. It is
just--me. We were not always here. We are two children who have come a
long way. But now I know English quite well, and I have lessons every
day.”

“Who gives you lessons, my little boy?” The Squire drew a step nearer.
He had himself had a little brother sixty years ago, who was like Nello.
So it seemed to him now. He would not think he had likewise had a son
thirty years ago, whom Nello was like. He crept a little nearer the
child, shuffling his foot along the turf, concealing the approach from
himself. Had he been asked why he changed his position, he would have
said it was a little damp, boggy, not quite sure footing just there.

“Mr. Pen gives us lessons,” said Nello. “I have a book all to myself. It
is Latin, it is more easy than English. But it takes a great deal of
time; it does not leave so much for play.”

“How long have you been at your lessons, my little man?”

The Squire’s eyes began to soften, a smile came into them. His heart was
melting. He gave a furtive glance round, and there was nobody near to
make him afraid, not even the little girl.

“Oh, a long, long time,” said Nello. “One whole hour, it was as much as
that, or perhaps six hours. I did not think anything could be so long.”

“One whole hour!” the Squire said in a voice of awe; and his eyes melted
altogether into smiling, and his voice into a mellow softness which it
had not known for years. Ah! this was the kind of son for an old man to
have, not such as Randolph. Randolph was a hard, disagreeable equal,
superior in so much as he had, or thought he had, many more years before
him; but the child was delightful. He did the Squire good. “Or perhaps
six hours! And when did this long spell of study happen? Is it long
ago?”

“There was no spell,” said Nello. “And it was to-day. I readed in my
book, and so did Lily; but as she is a girl it was different from mine.
Girls are not clever, Martuccia says. She can’t make the stones skim.
That was a good one when you said ‘Bravo!’ Where did you find out to say
Bravo? They don’t talk like that here.”

“It was a very good one,” said the Squire; “suppose we were to try
again.”

“Oh! can _you_ do it?” said Nello, with round eyes of wonder. “Can you
do it as well as me?”

“When I was a child,” said the Squire, quite overcome, “I had a little
brother just like you. We used to come out here, to this very place, and
play ducks and drakes. He would make them go half across the water. You
should have seen them skimming. As far out as that boat. Do you see that
boat----”

“When he was no bigger than me? And what did you do? were you little
too? did you play against him? did he beat you? I wish I had a brother,”
said Nello. “But you can’t have quite forgotten, though you are an old
gentleman. Try now! There are capital stones here. I wish I could send
one out as far as that boat. Come, come! Won’t you come and try?”

The Squire gave another searching look round. He had a sort of
shame-faced smile on his face. He was a little shy of himself in this
new development. But there was no one near, not so much as a squirrel or
a rabbit, which could watch and tell. The birds were singing high up in
the tree-tops, quite absorbed in their own business; nothing was taking
any notice. And the child had come close to him, quite confiding and
fearless, with eager little eyes, waiting for his decision. He was the
very image of that little brother so long lost. The Squire seemed to
lose himself for a moment in a vague haze of personal uncertainty
whether all this harsh, hard life had not been a delusion, and whether
he himself still was not a child.

“Come and try,” cried Nello, more and more emboldened, and catching at
his coat. When the old man felt the touch, it was all he could do to
suppress a cry. It was strange to him beyond measure, a touch not like
any other--his own flesh and blood.

“You must begin then,” he said, a strange falter in his voice,
half-laughing, half-crying. That is one sign of age, that it is so much
nearer to the springs of emotion than anything else, except youth.
Indeed, are not these two the fitting partners, not that middle state,
that insolent strength which stands between? The Squire permitted
himself to be dragged to the margin of his own water, which lay all
smiling in soft ripples before him as it had done when he was a child.
Nello was as grave as a judge in the importance of the occasion,
breathless with excitement and interest. He sought out his little store
of stones with all the solemnity of a connoisseur, his little brows
puckered, his red lips drawn in; but the Squire was shy and tremulous,
half-laughing, half-crying, ashamed of his own weakness, and more near
being what you might call happy (a word so long out of use for him!)
than he had been, he could not remember when.

Nello was vexed with his first throw. “When one wants to do very good,
one never can,” he said, discomfited as his shot failed. “Now you try,
now you try; it is your turn.” How the Squire laughed, tremulous, the
broken red in his old cheeks flushing with pleasure and shame! He failed
too, which encouraged Nello, who for his part made a splendid shot the
second time. “Two, three, four, _five_, SIX, SEVEN!” cried the child in
delight. “Don’t be afraid, you will do better next time. Me too, I could
not make a shot at all at first. Now come, now come, it is your turn
again.”

What a thing it is to have a real long summer afternoon! It was
afternoon when the Squire’s calm was broken by his son Randolph; and it
was afternoon still, dropping into evening, but with a sun still bright
and not yet low in the sky when Mr. Musgrave warmed to his work, and,
encouraged by Nello, made such ducks and drakes as astonished himself.
He got quite excited as they skimmed and danced across the water. “Two,
three, four, five, _six_, _seven_, EIGHT!” Nello cried, with a shriek of
delight. How clever the old gentleman was--how much nicer than _girls_.
He had not enjoyed his play so much for--never before, Nello thought.
“Come back to-morrow--will you come back to-morrow?” he said at every
interval. He had got a playmate now after his own heart--better than Mr.
Pen’s Johnnie, who was small and timid--better than any one he had ever
seen here.

The two players did not in the growing excitement of their game think
any more of the chance of spectators; and did not see a second little
figure which came running across the grass through the maze of the
trees, and stopped wondering in the middle of the brushwood, holding
back the branches with her hands to gaze at the strange scene. Lilias
was never quite clear of the idea that this wood was fairy-land: so she
was not surprised at anything she saw. Yet at this, for the first
moment, she was tempted to be surprised. The old gentleman! playing at
ducks and drakes with Nello! He who pretended never to see them, who
looked over their heads whenever they appeared, for whom they always had
to run out of the way, who never took any notice! Lilias stood for two
or three whole minutes, holding the branches open, peeping through with
a rapt gaze of wonder; yet not surprised. She applied her little
faculties at once, on the instant, to solve the mystery; and what so
natural as that the old gentleman had been “only pretending” all the
time? Half the pleasure which Lilias herself had in her life came from
“pretending.” Pretending to be Queen Elizabeth, pretending to be a
fairy and change Nello into a lion or a mouse, both of which things
Nello “pretended” to be with equal success; pretending to be Mr. Pen
preaching a sermon, pretending to be Mary, pretending even now and then
to be “the old gentleman” himself, sitting up in a chair with a big
book, just like him. She stood and peeped through the branches, and made
up her mind to this in a way that took away all her surprise. No doubt
he was “only pretending” when he would not let it be seen that he saw
them. Motives are not necessary to investigators of twelve; there was
nothing strange in it; for was not pretending the chief occupation, the
chief recreation of life? She stood and made this out to her own
satisfaction, and then with self-denial and with a sigh went back to
Martuccia. It was very tempting to see the pebbles skimming across the
water, and so easy it seemed! “Me too, me too,” Lilias could scarcely
help calling out. But then it came into her head that perhaps it was
herself whom the old gentleman disliked. Perhaps he would not go on
playing if she claimed a share, perhaps he would begin “pretending” not
to see her. So Lilias sighed, and with self-denial gave up this new
pleasure. It was very nice for Nello to have some one to play with--some
one _new_. He was always the lucky one; but then he was the youngest,
such a little fellow. She went back and told Martuccia he was playing,
he was coming soon, he was not in any mischief--which was what the
careful elder sister and mild indulgent nurse most feared.

When Lilias let the branches go, however, with self-denial which was
impulsive though so true, the sweep with which they came together again
made more sound than could have been made by a rabbit or squirrel, and
startled the Squire, who was quite hot and excited in his new sport. He
came to himself with a start, and with the idea of having been seen,
felt a pang of shame and half-anger. He looked round him and could see
nobody; but the branches still vibrated as if some one had been there;
and his very forehead, weather-beaten as it was, flushed red with the
idea of having been seen, perhaps by Randolph himself. This gave him a
kind of offence and resentment and self-assertion which mended matters.
Why should he care for Randolph? What had Randolph to do with it? Was he
to put himself under tutelage, and conform to the tastes of a fellow
like that, a parson, an interloper? But all the same this possibility
stopped the Squire. “There, my little man,” he said with some confusion,
dropping his stone, “there! I think it is time to stop now.”

“Oh!--was it some one come for you?” said Nello, following the direction
of the old gentleman’s eyes. “Stay a little longer, just a little
longer. Can’t you do just what you please--not like me----”

“Can you not do what you please, my little boy?” The Squire was a little
tremulous with the unusual exertion. Perhaps it was time to stop. He
stooped down to lave his hand in the water where it came shallow among
the rocks, and that act took away his breath still more, and made him
glad to pause a moment before he went away.

“It is a shame,” said Nello, “there is Lily, and there is Martuccia, and
there is Mary,--they think I am too little to take care of myself; but I
am not too little--I can do a great many things that they can’t do. But
come to-morrow, won’t you _try_ to come to-morrow?” said the child,
coming close up to his grandfather, and taking hold of the skirt of his
coat. “Oh please, please _try_ to come! I never have any one to play
with, and it has been such fun. Say you will come! Don’t you think you
could come if you were to _try_?”

The Squire burst out into a broken laugh. It would have been more easy
to cry, but that does not do for a man. He put his soft old tremulous
hand upon the boy’s head. “Little Johnny,” he said, “little
Johnny!--that was my little brother’s name, long, long ago.”

“Did he play with you? I wish I had a little brother. I have nothing but
girls,” said Nello. “But say you will come to-morrow--do say you will
try!”

The Squire gave another look round him. Nobody was there, not a mouse or
a bird. He took the child’s head between his trembling hands, and
stooped down, and gave him a hasty kiss upon his soft round
forehead--“God bless you, little man!” he said, and then turned round
defiant, and faced the world--the world of tremulous branches and
fluttering leaves, for there was nothing else to spy upon the
involuntary blessing and caress. Then he plunged through the very
passage in the brushwood where the branches had shaken so
strangely--feeling that if it was Randolph he could defy him. What right
had Randolph to control his actions? If he chose to acknowledge this
child who belonged to him, who was the image of the little
Johnny of sixty years ago, what was that to any one? What had
Randolph,--_Randolph_, of all men in the world,--to do with it? He would
tell him so to his face if he were there.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE BAMPFYLDES.

The same day on which these incidents occurred the Stanton family were
in full conclave at Elfdale. It was the birthday of Laura, and there
were various merrymakings on hand, an afternoon party, designed to
include all her “young friends,” besides a more select company in the
evening. As Laura was the one whom the family intended to be Lady
Stanton, her affairs, with the willing consent, and indeed by the active
energy of her sister, were generally pushed into the foreground. And
Geoff and his mother were the chief of the guests specially invited, the
only visitors who were staying in the house.

To say that the family intended Laura to be Lady Stanton is perhaps too
wild a statement, though this settlement of conflicting claims had been
tacitly decided upon when they were children. It was chiefly Lydia who
actively intended it now, moved and backed up by some of the absent
brothers, who thought it “hard luck” that the young unnecessary Geoff
should have interfered between their father and the title, and vowed by
Jove that the only fit thing to do in the circumstances was to marry him
to one of the girls. Lydia, however, was the most active mind in the
establishment at Elfdale, and carried things her own way, so that though
Sir Henry disliked fuss, and disliked Geoff’s mother, who had done him
so much wrong, yet the party in the evening had been specially selected
to suit her, and Maria, Lady Stanton, was established in the house.

“It can’t last long, papa,” Lydia said; “but we can’t have Geoff without
her.”

“What do you want with Geoff?” growled Sir Henry.

“Papa! in the first place he is our cousin; and Laura likes him; and you
know we girls must marry somebody. You can’t get commissions and
nominations for us, more’s the pity; so we must marry. And Laura may as
well have Stanton as any one else, don’t you think? and of course in
that case she ought to be on good terms with her mother-in-law; and
people expect us----”

“Oh, that will do,” said Sir Henry, “ask whom you like, only free me
from all this clatter. But keep that woman off me with her sanctified
airs, confound her,” said the baronet. He had forgiven Geoff for being
born, but he could not forgive Geoff’s mother for bringing him so
unnecessarily into the world.

And thus it was that Geoff and his mother were at Elfdale. The elder
Lady Stanton was no more disposed to go than Sir Henry was to ask her.
Visits of this kind are not rare--the inviters unwilling to ask, the
invited indisposed to go; and with such cordial results as might be
anticipated. “I care for nobody in that house except Cousin Mary,” Lady
Stanton said, “and even she perhaps--though it is wrong to say so,
Geoff, my dear boy, for of course everybody means for the best.” With
these mutual objections the party had met all the same. The other Lady
Stanton was very mild and very religious. She could not prevent herself
from having an occasional opinion--that is to say, as she explained it
herself, for “caring for” one person more than another; but that was
because she had not seen enough of the others perhaps--had not quite
understood them. “Yes, Geoff, I do not doubt, my dear, that the girls
are very nice. So many things are changed since my time. Manners are
different. And we are all such prejudiced, unjust creatures, we
constantly take the outside for our standard as if that was everything.
There is but One that sees fully, and what a blessing, Geoff, that it
is Him whom we have most to deal with!” said his mother. For it was one
of her troubles in life that she had uneasy instincts about the people
she met with, and likings and dislikings such as she felt--the latter at
least--a true Christian ought not to indulge in. There was a constant
conflict of duty in her against such rebellious feelings. As for Cousin
Mary, Sir Henry Stanton’s wife, she was one of those whom Geoff’s mother
had no difficulty in liking, but a cold doubt had been breathed into her
mind as to the “influence” which this lady might exercise over her boy.
She could not quite get it out of her thoughts. Mary could mean no harm,
that was certain, but--and then Lady Stanton would upbraid herself for
the evil imagination that could thus believe in evil. So that altogether
she was not happy to go to Elfdale. When she was there, however, the
family paid her a sort of court, though the girls frankly considered her
a hypocrite. What did that matter? “All the people one meets with are
humbugs more or less,” Lydia said with superior philosophy. Lydia was
the one who saw through everybody, and was always unmasking false
pretensions. Laura only acquiesced in the discoveries her sister made,
and generally followed her in whatever was going on.

The morning of the birthday dawned brightly and promised to be all that
could be desired, and the presents were pretty enough to please any
_débutante_. Laura was nineteen, and so far as the county gaieties went
she had been already “out” for nearly a year. Any more splendid
introduction into society had been denied to the girls. They had
entertained dreams of London, and had practised curtseys for a
problematical drawing-room during one whole year, but it had come to
nothing, Sir Henry being economical and Lady Stanton shy. It was to
their stepmother’s account that Laura and Lydia set down this wrong,
feeling convinced that if she had been their _real_ mother she would
have managed it somehow. “You’ll see she’ll find some way of doing it
when these little things grow up,” the elder sisters said to each other,
and they bore her a grudge in consequence, and looked at her with
glances of reproaches whenever London was spoken of--though that she was
not their real mother could not be held to be poor Mary’s fault.
However, all this was forgotten on the merry morning, when with the
delights of the garden party and a dance before them they came to
breakfast and found Laura’s place at table blocked up with presents.
Many of them it is true were not of very much value, but there was a
pretty bracelet from Geoff and a locket from his mother, which amply
rewarded the young ladies for their determination to have their cousin
and his mother invited. The opening of the presents made a little
pleasant commotion. The donors were all moved by an agreeable curiosity
to see how their gifts were received, and as Laura was lavish in her
expressions of delight and Lydia in generous admiration, and the little
girls hovered behind in fluttering awe, curiosity, and excitement, a
general air of family concord, sympathy, and happiness was diffused over
the scene. There was not very much love perhaps in the ill-compacted
household. But Sir Henry could not help sharing the infection of the
half-real amiability of the moment, and his wife could not but brighten
under any semblance of kindness. They sat down quite happily to
breakfast and began to chatter about the amusements of the afternoon.
Even little Fanny and Annie were allowed to have their say. To them was
allotted a share in the croquet, even in the delightful responsibility
of arranging the players. All the old fogies, the old-fashioned people,
the curate and his sister, the doctor and his niece, the humbler
neighbours, were reserved for that pastime which is out of fashion--the
girls kept the gayer circle and the more novel amusements for Geoff and
their own set. And moved by the general good-nature of the moment Sir
Henry made apologies to his guests for the occupations which would
occupy his morning. He was an active magistrate, and found in this
version of public duty a relief from the idleness of his retired life.

“I have that scamp Bampfylde in hand again,” he said; “he is never out
of mischief. Have you ever seen that fellow, Geoff? Wild Bampfylde they
call him. I think the keepers have a sneaking kindness for him. There is
not a poaching trick he is not up to. I am tired of hearing his name.”

“What did you say was his name?” said Geoff’s mother.

The other Lady Stanton had looked up too with a little start, which
attracted Geoff’s attention. He stopped short in the middle of an
animated discussion with the girls on the arrangements of the afternoon,
to hear what was being said.

“Ah! to be sure--Bampfylde; for the moment I had forgotten,” Sir Henry
said. “Yes--that family of course, and a handsome fellow; as fine a man
as you could see in the north country. Certainly they are a good-looking
race.”

“I suppose it is gipsy blood,” said the elder Lady Stanton, with a sigh.
“Poor people! Yes, I say poor people, Sir Henry, for there is no one to
care what evil ways they take. So far out of the way among the hills, no
teaching, no clergyman; oh, I make every excuse for them! They will not
be judged as we are, with our advantages.”

“I don’t know about our advantages,” said Sir Henry, somewhat grimly;
“but I sha’n’t make excuses for them. A pest to the country; not to
speak of the tragedy they were involved in----”

“Oh, don’t let us speak of that,” said Mary, under her breath.

Sir Henry gave her a look which irritated young Geoff. The young man
felt himself his beautiful cousin’s champion, and he would have liked to
call even her husband to account for such a glance under frowning
eyebrows at so gentle a creature. Sir Henry for his part did not like
his wife to show any signs of recollecting her own past history. He did
not do very much to make her forget it, and was a cold and indifferent
husband, but still he was affronted that she should be able to remember
that she had not always been his wife.

“I wish it did not hurt you, Cousin Mary,” said Geoff, interposing, “for
I should like to speak of it, to have it all gone into. I am sure there
is wrong somewhere. You said yourself about that young Musgrave----”

“Oh hush, hush, Geoff!” she said under her breath.

“He cannot be young now,” said the elder lady. “I am very sorry for him
too, my dear. It is not given to us to see into men’s hearts, but I
never believed that John Musgrave---- I beg your pardon, Mary, for
naming him before you, of course it must be painful. And to me too. But
it is such a long time ago, and I think if it were all to do over
again----”

“It would have been done over again and the whole case sifted if John
Musgrave had not behaved like a fool, or a guilty man,” said Sir Henry.
“It is not a pleasant subject for discussion, is it? I was an idiot to
bring up the fellow’s name. I forgot what good memories you ladies
have,” he said, getting up and breaking up the party. And there was
still a frown upon his face as he looked at his wife.

“What is the matter with papa?” cried the girls in a breath. “You have
been upsetting him. You have worried him somehow!” exclaimed Lydia,
turning upon her stepmother. “And everything was going so well, and he
was in such a good humour. But it is always the way just when we want a
little peace and comfort. I never saw such a house as ours! And he is
not very unreasonable, not when you know how to manage him--papa.”

As for Mary, she broke down and cried, but smiled again, trying to keep
up appearances. “It is nothing,” she said; “your father is not angry. It
will all be right in a moment. I suppose I am very silly. Run, little
ones, and bring me some eau-de-cologne, quick! You must not think Sir
Henry was really annoyed,” she said, turning to Lady Stanton. “He is
just a little impatient; you know he has all his old Indian ways; and I
am so silly.”

“I don’t think you are silly,” said Lady Stanton, who herself was
flushed and excited. “It was natural you should be disturbed, and I too.
Sir Henry need not have been so impatient; but we don’t know his
motives,” she added hastily, with the habitual apology she made for
everybody who was or seemed in the wrong.

“Oh, how tiresome it all is,” cried Lydia, stamping her foot, “when
people will make scenes! Come along, Geoff; come with us and let us see
what is to be done. Everything has to be done still. I meant to ask papa
to give the orders; but when he is put out, it is all over. Do come;
there are the hoops to put up, and everything to do. Laura, never mind
your tiresome presents. Come along! or the people will be here, and
nothing will be done.”

“That is how they always go on,” said Laura, following her sister with
her lap full of her treasures, “Come, Geoff. It is so easy to put papa
out; and when he is put out he is no good for anything. Do come. I do
not think this time, Lydia, it was _her_ fault.”

“Oh, it is always her fault,” said the harsher sister: “and sending
these two tiresome children for the eau-de-cologne! She always sends
them for the eau-de-cologne. As if that could do any good! like putting
out a fire with rose-water. There now, Laura, put your rubbish away, and
I will begin settling everything with Geoff.”

The young man obeyed the call unwillingly; but he went with his cousins,
having no excuse to stay, and did their work obediently, though his mind
was full of very different things. He had put aside the Musgrave
business since his visit to Penninghame, not knowing how to act, and he
had not spoken of it to his mother; but now it returned upon him with
greater interest than ever. Bampfylde he knew was the name of the girl
whom John Musgrave had married, whom his brother Walter had loved, and
whom the quarrel was about; and she it was who, with her mother, had
been accused of helping young Musgrave’s escape. All the story seemed to
reopen even upon him with the name; and how much more upon those two
ladies who were so much more deeply interested. The two girls and their
games had but a slight hold of Geoff’s mind in comparison with this
deeper question. He did what they wanted him, but he was _distrait_ and
preoccupied; and as soon as he was free went anxiously in search of his
mother, who, he hoped, would tell him more about it. He knew all about
it, but not as people must do who had been involved in the
circumstances, and helped to enact that sad drama of real life. He found
his mother very thoughtful and preoccupied too, seated alone in a little
sitting-room up-stairs, which was Lady Stanton’s special sanctum. The
elder Lady Stanton was very serious. She welcomed her son with a
momentary smile and no more. “I have been thinking over that dreadful
story,” she said; “it has all come back upon me, Geoff. Sometimes a name
is enough to bring back years of one’s life. I was then as Mary is now.
No, no, my dear, your good father was very different from Sir Henry; but
a stepmother is often not very happy. It used to be the other way, the
story-books say. Oh, Geoff, young people don’t mean it--they don’t
think; but they can make a poor woman’s life very wretched. It has
brought everything back to me. That--and the name of this man.”

“You have never told me much about it, mother.”

“What was the use, my dear? You were too young to do anything; and then,
what was there to do? Poor Mr. Musgrave fled, you know. Everybody said
that was such a pity. It would have been brought in only manslaughter if
he had not escaped and gone away.”

“Then it was madness and cowardice,” said Geoff.

“It was the girl,” said his mother. “No, I am not blaming her; perhaps
she knew no better. And his father and all his family were so opposed.
Perhaps they thought, to fly away out of everybody’s reach, the two
together, was the best way out of it. When young people are so much
attached to each other,” said the anxious mother, faltering, half afraid
even to speak of such mysteries to her son, “they are tempted to think
that being together is everything. But it is not everything, Geoff. Many
others, as well as John Musgrave, have lost themselves for such a
delusion as that.”

“Is it a delusion?” Geoff asked, making his mother tremble. Of whom
could the boy be thinking? He was thinking of nobody--till it suddenly
occurred to him how the eyes of that little girl at Penninghame might
look if they were older; and that most likely it was the same eyes which
had made up to John Musgrave for the loss of everything. After all,
perhaps this unfortunate one, whom everybody pitied, might have had some
compensation. As he was thinking thus, and his mother was watching him,
very anxious to know what he was thinking, Lady Stanton came in suddenly
by a private door, which opened from her own room. She had a little
additional colour on her cheeks, and was breathless with haste.

“Oh, where is Geoff, I wonder?” she said; then seeing him, ran up to
him. “Geoff, there is some one down-stairs you will like to see. If you
are really so interested in all that sad story--really so anxious to
help poor John----”

“Yes, who is it? Tell me who it is, and I will go.”

“Elizabeth Bampfylde is down-stairs,” she said, breathless, putting her
hand to her heart. “The mother of the man Sir Henry was speaking of--the
mother of--the girl. There is no one knows so much as that woman. She is
sitting there all alone, and there is nobody in the way.”

“Mary!” cried the elder lady, “is it right to plunge my boy into it? We
have suffered enough already. Is it right to make Geoff a victim--Geoff,
who knows nothing about it? Oh, my dear, I know you mean it for the
best!”

Mary fell back abashed and troubled.

“I did not mean to harm him, Lady Stanton. I did not think it would harm
him. Never mind; never mind, if your mother does not approve. After all,
perhaps, she knows no more than we do,” she said, with an attempt at a
smile. “The sight of her made me forget myself.”

“Where is she?” said the young man.

“Ah! that is just what overcame me,” said Mary, with a sob, and a
strange smile at the irony of fate--“down-stairs in _my_ husband’s room.
I have seen her often in the road and in the village--but here, in my
house! Never mind, Geoff; it was she that helped him to get out of
prison. They were bold, they had no fear of anything; not like us, who
are ladies, who cannot stir a step without being watched. Never mind,
never mind! it is not really of any consequence. She is sitting there
in--in my husband’s room!” Mary said, with a sob and a little hysterical
laugh. It was not strange to the others, but simple enough and natural.
She alone knew how strange it was. “But stop, stop--oh, don’t pay any
attention. Don’t go now, Geoff!”

“Geoff! my dear Geoff!” cried his mother running to the door after him,
but for once Geoff paid no attention. He hurried down-stairs, clearing
them four or five steps at a time. The ladies could not have followed
him if they would. The door of Sir Henry’s business room stood open, and
he could see an old woman seated like a statue, in perfect stillness, on
a bench against the wall. She wore a large grey cloak with a hood
falling back upon her shoulders, and a white cap, and sat with her hands
crossed in her lap, waiting. She raised her eyes quickly when he came in
with a look of anxiety and expectation, but when she found it was not
the person she expected, bowed her fine head resignedly and relapsed
into quiet. The delay which is always so irksome did not seem to affect
her. There was something in the pose of the figure which showed that to
be seated there quite still and undisturbed was not disagreeable to her.
She was not impatient. She was an old woman and glad to rest; she could
wait.

“You are waiting for Sir Henry?” Geoff said, in his eagerness. “Have you
seen him? Can I do anything for you?”

“No, sir. I hope you’ll forgive me rising. I have walked far and I’m
tired. Time is not of so much consequence now as it used to be. I can
bide.” She gave him a faint smile as she spoke, and looked at him with
eyes undimmed, eyes that reminded him of the child at Penninghame. Her
voice was fine too, large and melodious, and there was nothing fretful
or fidgety about her. Except for one line in her forehead everything
about her was calm. She could bide.

And this is a power which gives its possessor unbounded superiority over
the impatient and restless. Geoff was all curiosity, excitement, and
eagerness. “I don’t think Sir Henry will have any time for you to-day,”
he said; “tell me what it is. I will do all I can for you. I should like
to be of use to you. Sir Henry is going to his luncheon presently. I
don’t think you will see him to-day.”

Just at this moment a servant came in with the same information, but it
was given in a somewhat different tone. “Look here, old lady,” said the
man, “you’ll have to clear out of this. There’s a party this afternoon,
and Sir Henry he hasn’t got any time for the likes of you. So march is
the word.--I beg your lordship ten thousand pardons. I didn’t see as
your lordship was there.”

“You had better learn to be civil to every one,” said Geoff,
indignantly; “beg _her_ pardon, not mine. You are--Mrs. Bampfylde, I
think? May I speak to you, since Sir Henry cannot see you? I have very
urgent business----”

She rose slowly, paying no attention to the man--looking only at Geoff.
“And you are the young lord?” she said with an intent look. There was a
certain dignity about her movements, though she seemed to set herself in
motion with difficulty, stiffly, as if the exertion cost her something.
“I’ve had a long walk,” she added, with a faint smile and half apology
for the effort, “there’s where age tells. And all my trouble for
nothing!”

“If I can be of any use to you I will,” said Geoff. Then he paused and
added, “I want you to do something for me.”

“What is it that old ’Lizabeth Bampfylde could do for a fine young
gentleman? Your fortune?--ay, I’ll give you your fortune easy; a kind
tongue and a bright eye carries that all over the world. And you look as
if you had a kind heart.”

“It is not my fortune,” he said with an involuntary smile.

“You’re no believer in the likes of that? May be you have never met with
one that had the power. It runs in families; it runs in the blood. There
was one of your house, my young lord, that I could have warned of what
was coming. I saw it in his face. And, oh that I had done it! But he
would not have been warned. Oh! what that would have saved me and mine,
as well as you and yours!”

“You think of my brother then when you see me?” he said, eager at once
to follow out this beginning. She looked at him again with a
scrutinizing gaze.

“What had I to do with your brother, young gentleman? He never asked me
for his fortune any more than you; he did not believe in the likes of
me. It is only the silly folk and the simple folk that believe in us. I
wish they would be guided by us that are our own flesh and blood--and
then they would never get into trouble like my boy.”

“What has he done?” asked Geoff, thinking to conciliate. He had followed
her out of the house, and was walking by her side through the
shrubberies by the back way.

“What has he done? Something, nothing. He’s taken a fish in the river,
or a bird out of the wood. They’re God’s creatures, not yours, or Sir
Henry’s. But the rich and the great, that have every dainty they can set
their face to, make it a crime for a poor lad when he does that.”

Geoff did not make any answer, for he had a respect for game, and would
not commit himself; but he said, “I will do anything I can for your son,
if you will help me. Yes, you can help me, and I think you know you can,
Mrs. Bampfylde.”

“I am called ’Lizabeth,” said the old woman, with dignity, as if she had
said, I am called Princess. Her tone had so much effect upon Geoff that
he cried, “I beg your pardon,” instinctively, and faltered and coloured
as he went on--

“I want to know about what happened when I was a child--about my
brother’s death--about--the man who caused it. They tell me you know
more than any one else. I am not asking for idle curiosity. You know a
great deal, or so I have heard, about John Musgrave.”

“Hus--sh!” she cried, “it is not safe to say names--you never know who
may hear.”

“But all the world may hear,” said Geoff. “I am not afraid. I want him
to come home. I want him to be cleared. If you know anything that can
help him, tell me. I will never rest now till I have got that sentence
changed and he is cleared.”

The old woman looked at him, growing pale, with a sort of alarmed
admiration. “You’re a bold boy,” she said, “very bold! It’s because
you’re so young--how should you know? When a man has enemies we should
be careful how we name him. It might bring ill-luck or more harm.”

“I don’t believe much in ill-luck, and I don’t believe in enemies at
all,” said Geoff, with the confidence of his years.

“Oh!” she cried, with a long moan, wringing her hands. “Oh, God help
you, innocent boy!”

“No,” Geoff repeated, more boldly still, “neither in enemies nor in
ill-luck, if the man himself is innocent. But I believe in friends. I am
one; and if you are one--if you are his friend, his true friend, why,
there is nothing we may not do for him,” the young man cried, standing
still to secure her attention. She paused too for a moment, gazing at
him, with a low cry now and then of wonder and distress; her mind was
travelling over regions to which young Geoff had no clue, but his
courage and confidence had compelled her attention at least. She
listened while he went on repeating his appeal; only to tell him what
she knew, what she remembered--to tell him everything. It seemed all so
simple to Geoff; he went on with his pleadings, following through the
winding walk. It was all he could do to keep up with her large and
steady stride as she went on quickening her pace. The stiffness had
disappeared, and she walked like one accustomed to long tramping over
moor and hill.

“My young lord,” she exclaimed abruptly, stopping him in the midst of a
sentence, “you’ve talked long enough; I know all you can say now; and
here’s the bargain I’ll make. If my lad gets free, I’ll take his
advice--and if he consents, and you have a mind to come up to the fells
and see me where I bide----”

“Certainly I will come,” cried Geoff, feeling a delightful gleam of
adventure suddenly light up his more serious purpose. “Certainly I will
come; only tell me where I shall find you----”

“You’re going too fast, my young gentleman. I said if my lad gets free.
Till I have talked to him I’ll tell you nothing. And my bit of a place
is a lonely place where few folk ever come near.”

“I can find it,” said Geoff. “I do not mind how lonely it is. I will
come--to-morrow, whenever you please.”

“Not till my lad comes to fetch you,” said ’Lizabeth, with a gleam of
shrewd humour crossing her face for a moment. “I must see my lad first,
and hear what he says, and then I’ll send him to show you the way.”

“It would be better not to make it dependent on that chance,” said Geoff
prudently. “He might not care to come; I don’t know your son; why should
he take so much trouble for me? He may decline to do it, or he may
dislike my interference, or----”

“Or he may not get free,” said ’Lizabeth, stopping short, and dismissing
her young attendant almost imperiously. “Here you and me part paths, my
young lord. It will be soon enough to say more when my lad is free.”

Geoff was left standing at the outer gate, startled by the abruptness of
his dismissal, but incapable he felt of resisting. He gazed after her as
she sped along the road with long swift steps, half-appalled, greatly
excited, and with a touch of amusement too. “I am to cheat justice for
her in the first place, and elude the law,” he said to himself as he
watched her disappearing along the dusty road.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A NEW FRIEND.

The result of this interview was that Geoff, as was natural, threw
himself body and soul into the cause of Wild Bampfylde. When he had once
made up his mind to this, a certain comic element in the matter
delighted him and gave him double fervour. The idea of defeating justice
was delightful to the young man, not much older than a schoolboy. He
talked to all the people he met about the case of this wild man of the
woods, this innocent savage, to whom all the sylvan sins came by nature;
and he engaged the best lawyer who could be had to defend him, and if
possible get the wild fellow free. Where was the harm? Wild Bampfylde
had never been guilty of violence to any human creature, he ascertained.
It was only the creatures of the woods he waged war against, not even
the gamekeepers. And when Sir Henry, coming home from Quarter Sessions,
informed the party that Wild Bampfylde had managed to get off by some
quibble, the magistrates being fairly tired of convicting him, everybody
was delighted to hear of the safety of Geoff’s _protégé_ except the two
elder ladies, who showed no satisfaction. Neither of them were glad,
notwithstanding that Geoff was so much interested; Lady Stanton from a
vague concern for her son, and Mary because of the prejudice in her
which all her gentleness could not eradicate. She looked at Geoff with
tears in her eyes. “You will have nothing to do with them,” she said;
“him nor any of them? Oh, Geoff, promise!” which was inconsistent, as it
was she herself who had put the old mother in his way. But Geoff only
laughed, and asked what he could have to do with them, and made no
promise. This episode had not interfered with the business of life, with
the afternoon party or the dinner, the dancing or the croquet. All had
“gone off” as well as possible. Laura and Lydia had “enjoyed
themselves” to their hearts’ content. They had been admired and praised
and fêted, and every one had said it was a delightful party. What more
could any young lady of nineteen desire? Geoff was very good-natured,
and did everything that was asked of him. And Laura wore his bracelet,
which was much admired by her friends, and gave rise to many pleasant
suggestions. “He is just the very person for you,” Lydia said
reflectively, as she examined it. “Now I should have liked emeralds or
diamonds, or grown-up jewels; but the turquoises are the very thing for
you. He sees your taste. If he were not Lord Stanton, just for simple
suitableness you should marry Geoff--he is the very person for you.”

“I do not see why I should be made to marry any one for simple
suitableness, as if I were a baby,” was Laura’s protestation; but she
liked the turquoises, and she did not dislike the hints and smiling
gossip. And when young Lord Stanton and his mother went away, the house
regretted them from the highest to the lowest. The little girls stood
behind backs, crying, when the carriage drove away. “I should like to
know what they have to cry about,” Lydia said; “what is Geoff to them?
It is such nonsense; but they always are encouraged in everything. You
two little things, stop that, and be off with you! You are always in
some one’s way.”

“He is as much our cousin as yours,” said Fanny, who was always known to
be saucy; but they skimmed away in a panic when Lydia turned round upon
them, not knowing what she might do. “Oh, how nice it would be to have
nothing but a mamma!” they said to each other as they alighted in her
room, where it was always quiet, and smoothed down their ruffled plumes.
Poor little doves! it was not for Geoff alone they were crying, for
Geoff’s mother had been very good to them. They had hung about her for
hours, and had stories told to them, and the world seemed an empty sort
of place when these two visitors went away.

The mother and son drove home to their own house, he a little sorry, she
a little glad. It was wrong perhaps to be glad, implying a kind of tacit
censure on the people she had left; but there was no harm in being
happy to get home. Stanton Hall was not an immemorial place like
Penninghame, nor a cosy unpretending country house like Elfdale, but a
great mansion intended to be grand and splendid, and overawe the
country. The splendour had fallen into a little disuse during Geoff’s
long minority, but as he had lived chiefly at home with his mother, it
had proportionately gained in comfort and the home aspect which only
being lived in can give to a house. They lived chiefly in one wing,
leaving the state part of the mansion almost unoccupied. Geoff had not
been brought up as most youths of his age are brought up. His mother had
been too timorous, both physically and spiritually, to trust her child
amid all the appalling dangers and indulgences of a public school. And
he had not even, more wonderful still, gone to any university. She was
his sole guardian, no one sharing her powers, for it never had been
supposed that little Geoff would be anybody in particular, or that it
was of the least importance how his mother brought him up. His education
had therefore been chiefly conducted at home by a tutor, chosen rather
for his goodness than his learning. Did it matter very much? Geoff was
not very clever, and it does not require much learning, as Mrs.
Hardcastle concluded in the case of her son Tony Lumpkin, to spend
fifteen thousand a year. Geoff had learned a great many things which
university men do not much meddle with, and he had forgotten as
successfully as any university man could do. He had a great deal less
Greek, but a good deal more French than most of those heroes; and he was
a good, honest, simple-hearted boy, as, Heaven be praised, in spite of
their many advantages, a great many of those same university men manage
to be. And, in short, he was very much like his contemporaries, though
brought up so very differently--a fact which would have wounded his
mother’s feelings more than anything else you could have said; for if
the result is just about the same as it would have been by the other
process, what is the good of taking a great deal of additional trouble?
Mr. Tritton, the tutor, had been all alone at Stanton during this visit
to Elfdale. He was a very good man. He had been as kind as a father to
Geoff from the moment he took charge of him, and had watched over him
with unfailing care; indeed he was like a second mother as
well--perhaps more like that than the other--very anxious not to
“over-tire” his pupil, or to put any strain on his faculties. They were
the most peaceful household that could be conceived, and Geoff,
according to all rule, ought to have grown up a very feminine youth. But
by good luck he had not done so. In that demure household he got to be a
lively, energetic, out-door sort of person, and loved adventure, and
loved life perhaps all the better in consequence of the meek atmosphere
of quietness which surrounded him. To tell the truth it was he who, for
a long time, had held the helm of the house in his hand, and had
everything his own way.

Mr. Tritton was upon the steps to welcome them, and the servants, who
were glad to see them back after the week of quiet. Who does not know
the kind of servants Lady Stanton would have?--men and women who had
seen the boy grow up, and thought or seemed to think there was nobody in
the world like Geoff--a housekeeper to whom her mistress was very
obsequious and conciliatory, but whom Geoff treated with a familiarity
which sometimes froze the very blood in his mother’s veins, who would
not for the world have taken such liberties; and a butler, who felt
himself an independent country gentleman, and went and came very much at
his own pleasure, and governed his inferiors _en bon prince_, but with a
lively sense of his own importance. These all received the travellers
with cordiality at the door, and brought them tea and were very kind to
them. It was quite touching and gratifying to Lady Stanton that they
should always be so kind. Harris, the butler, took her little
travelling-bag, and carried it into the drawing-room with his own hand;
and Mrs. Benson herself came to pour out her cup of tea. “I hope your
ladyship is not too much tired with your long drive,” Mrs. Benson said;
and Harris kindly lingered to hear her reply, and to assure her that all
had been going on well at Stanton while she was away.

Geoff did not pay so much attention to the kindness of the servants. He
went off to the stables to give some orders, leaving Mr. Tritton with
his mother. Geoff called his tutor Old Tritton as easily as if he had
mixed in the world of men at Eton or Oxford, and went off about his own
business unconcerned. But when he had turned the corner of the house to
the stables, Geoff’s whistle stopped suddenly. He found a man standing
there with his back against the wall, whose appearance startled him. A
poacher is a thing that is obnoxious to every country gentleman, however
easy his principles may be on the question of game; and a tramp is a
thing that nobody with a house worth robbing can away with. The figure
that presented itself thus suddenly before Lord Stanton’s eyes was the
quintessence of both; a tall, loose-limbed man, with strong black locks
and an olive skin, in coarse velveteen and gaiters, and a coat with
multitudinous pockets, with a red handkerchief knotted round his neck, a
soft felt hat crushed into all manner of shapes, and a big stick in his
hand. He stood in a careless attitude, at his ease, leaning against the
wall. What had such a man to do there? and yet there he was for a
purpose, as any one could see, lying in wait; was it to rob, or to kill?
Geoff’s heart gave a little leap at the sight of the intruder. He had
not had much experience of this kind.

“What are you doing here?” he asked sharply, the instincts of property
and authority springing up in disapproval and resistance. What had such
a fellow to do here?

“I am doing nothing,” said the man, not changing his attitude, or even
taking off his hat, or showing the smallest mark of respect. He
continued even to lounge against the wall with rude indifference. “I am
here on your business, not on mine,” he said, carelessly.

“On my business! Yes, I know,” said Geoff, suddenly bethinking himself;
“you are Bampfylde? I am glad you’ve got off; and you come to me
from----”

“Old ’Lizabeth; that is about it. She’s a funny woman: whatever silly
thing she wants she always gets her way. She wants you now, and I’ve
come to fetch you. I suppose you’ll come, since she says it. And you’d
better make up your mind soon, for it does not suit me to stay here.”

“I suppose not,” said Geoff, scarcely noticing what he said.

“Why should you suppose not!” said the man, rousing himself with an air
of offence. He was taller than Geoff, a lanky but muscular figure. “I
have eyes and feelings as well as you. I like a fine place. Why
shouldn’t I take my pleasure looking at it? You have a deal more, and
yet you’re not content.”

“We were not discussing our feelings,” said Geoff, half contemptuous,
half sympathetic. “You have brought me a message, perhaps from your
mother?”

“I’ve come from old ’Lizabeth. She says if you like to start to-night
along with me we’ll talk your business over, and if she can satisfy you
she will. Look you here, my young lord, your lordship’s a deal of
consequence to some, but it’s nothing to her and me. Come, if you like
to come; it’s your business, not our’s. If there’s danger it’s your own
risk, if there’s any good it’s you that will have it, not us----”

“Danger!” said Geoff; “the danger of a walk up the fells! and good--to
me? Yes, you can say it is to me if you like, but you ought to be more
interested than I am. However, words don’t matter. Yes, let us say the
good is mine, and the danger, if any, is mine----”

“Have it your own way,” said Bampfylde. “I’ll come back again, since
you’ve made up your mind, at ten to-night and show you the way.”

“But why at night?” said Geoff; “to-morrow would be better. It is not
too far to go in a day.”

“There’s the difference between you and us. Night is our time, you see.
It must be by night or not at all. Would you like to walk with me across
country, my lord? I don’t think you would, nor I wouldn’t like it. We
shouldn’t look natural together. But at night all’s one. I’ll be here at
ten; there’s a moon--and a two hours’ walk, or say three at the most,
it’s nothing to a young fellow like you.”

This was a very startling proposition, and Geoff did not know what to
make of it. It grew more and more like a mysterious adventure, and
pleased him on that side; but he was a modern young man, with a keen
perception of absurdity, and everything melodramatic was alarming to
him. Why should he walk mysteriously in the middle of the night to a
cottage about which there need be no mystery on a perfectly innocent and
honest errand? He stared at his strange visitor with a perplexity beyond
words.

“What possible object could be gained,” he said at last, “by going in
the night?”

“Oh, if you’re afraid!” said this strange emissary, “don’t go--that’s
all about it: neither me nor her are forcing you to hear what we may
happen to know.”

“I am not afraid,” said Geoff, colouring. It was an accusation which was
very hard to bear. “But there is reason in all things. I don’t want to
be ridiculous--” The man shrugged his shoulders--he laughed--nothing
could have been more galling. Geoff standing, looking at him, felt the
blood boiling in his veins.

“Quite right too,” said Bampfylde. “What can we know that’s worth the