a long dark road which had to be trodden somehow before he came to
the inn at which there would be light and comfort, cheerful voices,
and friendly greetings. He set his face resolutely towards that dark
prospect, and tramped along, doing the work he had to do, living the
life of a hermit in those chambers in Ferret Court, which had already
taken the stamp of his own character, and looked as if he had lived
in them for years.

He had no need to sit alone at night with his books and his lamp, for
there were plenty of houses in which he would have been welcome. His
name was a passport in legal circles. Old friends of James Dalbrook’s
were ready to welcome his kinsman to their tables, eager to be of
service to him. He had his college friends, too, in the great city,
and need not have gone companionless. But he was not in the mood for
society of any kind, old or young, except the society of Blackstone,
Coke, and Justinian, and divers other sages who out of the dim past
shed their light upon the legal wilderness of the present. He sat
by his fire and read law, and laid down his book only to smoke his
meditative pipe and indulge in foolish waking dreams about that grave
old house in Dorsetshire and the young widow who lived there.

He had followed two of those three children of the old Squire, two
out of the three faces in the picture in the hall at Cheriton, to
the end of their story. No man could discover any postscript to that
story, which in each case was closed by a grave.

There remained only one last unfinished record—the history of the
runaway wife, the end whereof was open to doubt. That unlucky lady’s
fate had been accepted upon hearsay. It had been said that she had
died at Boulogne, within a year or so after the Vicar met her there.

Upon his return from Jersey, Theodore wrote to his father’s oldest
and most experienced clerk, begging him to hunt up the evidence of
Mrs. Darcy’s death, so far as it was obtainable at Cheriton or in the
neighbourhood.

The clerk replied as follows, after an interval of ten days:—

  “DEAR SIR,

  “I have been twice to Cheriton, and have made inquiries, cautiously
  as you wished, with respect to the report of Mrs. Darcy’s death,
  some fifteen years ago, and saw Mr. Dolby, the doctor, and Gaster
  at the general shop, who, as you are no doubt aware, is a gentleman
  who busies himself a good deal about other people’s affairs, and
  sets himself up for being an authority upon most things.

  “Mr. Dolby I found very vague in his ideas. He remembered the late
  Vicar telling him about having met Mrs. Darcy in the market-place
  at Boulogne, and being shocked at the change in her. He told Mr.
  Dolby that he did not think she was long for this world; but it was
  some time after when Dolby heard some one—he could not remember who
  it was—assert that Mrs. Darcy was dead.

  “Gaster had much more to say upon the subject. He pretends to be
  interested in all reminiscences of the Strangways, and boasts of
  having served Cheriton House for nearly forty years. He remembers
  Evelyn Strangway when she was a little girl, handsome and
  high-spirited. He remembered the report of her death at Boulogne
  getting about the village, and he remembered mentioning the fact
  to Lord Cheriton at the time. There was an election going on just
  then, and his lordship had looked in to consult him, Joseph Gaster,
  about certain business details: and his lordship seemed shocked to
  hear of the poor lady’s death. ‘I suppose that is the end of the
  family, my Lord?’ Gaster said, and his lordship replied, ‘Yes, that
  is the end of the Strangways.’

  “Gaster believes that he must have read of the death in the
  newspapers; perhaps copied from the _Times_ into a local paper; at
  any rate, the fact had implanted itself in his mind, and it had
  never occurred to him to doubt it.

  “I asked him if he knew what had become of the lady’s husband, but
  here his mind is a blank. He had heard that the man was a scamp,
  and that was all he knew about him.

  “Since making these inquiries I have spent a long evening at the
  Literary Institute, where, as you know, there is a set of the
  _Times_, in volumes, extending over a period of forty years. I have
  looked through the deaths for three years, taking the year in which
  Gaster _thinks_ he heard of Mrs. Darcy’s death, as the middle year
  out of three, but without result. It is, of course, unlikely that
  the death would be advertised if the poor lady died friendless and
  in poverty in a foreign town; but I thought it my duty to make this
  investigation.

  “Awaiting your further commands, &c., &c.”

There was nothing conclusive in this; and Theodore felt that the
history of Mrs. Darcy’s later years remained to be unravelled. It was
not to be supposed that the runaway wife, who, if she were yet living
must be an elderly woman, could have had act or part in the murder of
Sir Godfrey Carmichael; but it was not the less a part of his task
to trace her story to its final chapter. Then only could he convince
Juanita of the wildness of that idea which connected the catastrophe
of the 29th of July with the exiled Strangways. When he could say to
her, “You see that long before that fatal night the Squire’s three
children had vanished from this earth,” she would be constrained to
confess that the solution of the mystery was not to be sought here.

He went over to Boulogne, saw the English chaplain, and several of
the hotel-keepers. He explored the cemetery, and examined the record
of the dead. He visited the police, and he made friends with the
elderly editor of an old-established newspaper; but from all his
questioning of various people the result was blank. Nobody remembered
a Mrs. Darcy, an Englishwoman of distinguished appearance but fallen
fortunes, a woman long past youth and yet not old. If she had lived
for any time in Boulogne she had left no trace of her existence; if
she had died and been buried there she had left no record among the
graves.

Boulogne could tell him nothing. He came back to the great wilderness
of London, the rallying point for all wanderers. It was there perhaps
that the end of Evelyn Strangway was to be sought.

He had, as it seemed to him, only one clue, the name of her
governess. The governess was only seven or eight years older than the
pupil, and she might have survived her pupil, and might have been in
communication with her till the end. Jasper Blake had told him that
there was a strong attachment between Sarah Newton and the wayward
girl she taught.

To hunt for a governess among the thousands of portionless
gentlewomen who try to live by teaching might seem more hopeless
than the proverbial search for the lost needle, but Theodore did not
despair. If Miss Newton had remained a spinster and had continued
to exercise her vocation as a teacher she might be traced through
one of those agencies which transact business between governess
and employer; but, on the other hand, if, as was more likely, she
had long ago abandoned the profession of teacher, and had made
some obscure marriage, she would have sunk into the vast ocean of
middle-class life, in whose depths it would be almost impossible to
discover her. The first thing to be done was to make a visitation of
the agencies, and this task Theodore began two days after his return
from Boulogne.

He had methodized his life by this time, devoting a certain portion
of his days to his cousin’s interests, but in no wise neglecting the
work he had to do for his own advancement. He had known too many
instances of men who had made reading law an excuse for an idle
and desultory life, and he was resolved that his own course should
be steady and persistent even to doggedness. He had been told that
success at the Bar was nowadays almost unattainable; that the men of
the day who had conquered fame and were making great fortunes, were
in a manner miraculous men, and that it was futile for any young man
to hope to follow in their steps. The road _they_ had trodden was
barred against the new comer. Theodore listened to these pessimists,
yet was not discouraged. He had told himself that he would emerge
somehow from the obscurity of a country solicitor’s practice—would
bring himself in some wise nearer the social level of the woman he
loved, so that if in the days to come one gleam of hope should ever
shine upon that love he might be able to say to her, “My place in
life is the place your father held when he offered himself to your
mother; my determination to conquer fortune is not less than his.”

He seldom passed the dingy door of the ground-floor chambers—on which
the several names of three briefless ones were painted in dirty
letters that had once been white—without thinking of his fortunate
kinsman, without wondering what his life had been like in those
darksome rooms, and in what shape fortune had first appeared to him.
He had not married until he was forty. Long and lonely years had gone
before that golden summertide of his life, when a young and lovely
woman had given him happiness and fortune. How had he lived in those
lonely years? Tradition accused him of miserly habits, of shabby
raiment, of patient grinding and scraping to accumulate wealth.
Theodore knew that if he had hoarded his earnings it had been for a
worthy end. He had set himself to win a place among the lords of the
soil. The land he loved had been to him as a mistress, and for that
he had been content to live poorly and spend his nights in toil.
For such miserliness Theodore had nothing but admiration; for he
had seen how liberally the man who had scraped and hoarded was able
to administer a large income—how generous as a master, friend, and
patron the sometime miser had shown himself.

He spent more than a week in visiting the numerous agencies which
are employed by the great governess-class, and the result of that
painstaking exploration was not altogether barren. He succeeded
in finding an elderly personage at the head of an old-established
Agency, who kept her book with praiseworthy regularity, and who
remembered Sarah Newton. She had had no less than four Miss Newtons
on her register at different times, but there was only one Sarah
Newton among them, and for this lady she had obtained a situation in
the Lake Country so lately as July 20, 1873—that is to say, about
eleven years before the period of Theodore’s investigation.

On that date Miss Newton had entered the family of a Mr. Craven—the
vicar of a small parish between Ambleside and Bowness. She was living
in that family four years afterwards, when Miss Palmer, the Principal
in the Agency, last heard of her.

“And in all probability she is living there still,” said Miss Palmer.
“At her time of life people are not fond of change. I remember her
when she was a young woman, full of energy, and very impatient of
control. I used to see her much oftener then. She seldom kept a
situation over a twelvemonth.”

“Except at Cheriton Chase. She was more than a year in that
situation, I think.”

“Cheriton Chase! I don’t remember the name. Some one else may have
got her the situation. How long ago was she there, do you suppose?”
asked Miss Palmer, turning over one of her neat basil-bound registers.

“It was in the year ’47 she left Cheriton.”

“Ah, then, it was not we who got her the situation. My first entry
about her is on the 11th December, ’48. She paid her entrance fee of
one guinea on that date. It is higher than that of inferior agencies;
but we take real trouble for our clients, and we make it our business
to be safe upon the point of CHARACTER. We are as careful about the
families into which we send governesses as about the governesses we
introduce into families.”

The next day was Sunday, and Theodore employed that day of rest in
travelling by a very slow train to Bowness; where he arrived at five
o’clock in the evening, to find mountain and lake hidden in densest
grey, and an innkeeper who seemed neither to desire nor deserve
visitors. Happily the traveller was of the age at which dinner is
not a vital question, and he was hardly aware of the toughness of
the steak, or the inferior quality of the codfish set before him in
the desolate coffee-room. He had a diamond Virgil in his pocket, and
he sat by the fire reading the sixth book by the paraffin lamp till
ten o’clock, and then went contentedly to a bedroom which suggested
ghosts, or at least nightmare.

No deadly visions troubled him, however, for the slow train had
brought about a condition of abject weariness which resulted in
dreamless slumber. The sun shone into his bleak bed-chamber when
he awoke next morning, and the lake stretched beneath his windows,
silver-shining, melting dimly into the grey of the opposite shore.
The mountains were sulking still, and only showed their ragged crests
above dark rolling clouds; but the scene was an improvement upon the
avenue of chimney-pots and distant glimpse of a murky Thames as seen
from Ferret Court.

His landlord greeted him in a more cheerful spirit upon Monday
morning than he had evinced on Sunday evening when his after-dinner
lethargy was rudely disturbed by a guest whose business-like air
and small Gladstone bag did not promise much profit; a visitor who
would want a dinner off the joint, most likely, and a half-crown
breakfast; a visitor whose libations would be limited to bitter beer
and an occasional whisky and soda. Such a guest in a house that was
beginning to hibernate was a burden rather than a boon.

This morning, however, the landlord was reconciled to his solitary
customer, having told his wife that after all, “little fish are
sweet,” and he went blithely to order the dog-cart—his own cart and
own man—ostler in the season, coachman or anything you please out of
the season—to drive Mr. Dalbrook to Kettisford Vicarage, a nine-mile
journey.

It was a pretty, out-of-the-way nook—half hidden in a cleft of the
hills—at which Theodore arrived a few minutes after noon; a little,
old-fashioned, world-forgotten village, and a sprawling old greystone
house, covered with Virginia creeper, passion-flower, and the
feathery leafage of the trumpet ash; a long, low house, with heavily
thatched roof, projecting over its upper casements; a sleepy-looking
old house in a still sleepier garden, so remote and so sheltered
that winter had forgotten to come there; and the great yellow roses
were still blooming on the wall, fattened by the misty atmosphere of
the adjacent lake, glorified by the untainted air. November was half
over, yet here the only signs of autumn were the grey sky, and the
crimson of the Virginia creeper.

The Vicar of Kettisford was one of those privileged persons who
can speak with their enemies at the gate, assured of being backed
up in their speech by a family contingent. The Vicarage seemed
overflowing with young life, from the very threshold of the hall,
where cricket-bats, a tricycle, a row of well-used tennis rackets,
a stupendous array of hats, overcoats, and comforters, testified to
that quiverful so esteemed in the patriarchal age.

A conscientious performer was pounding at the “Harmonious Blacksmith”
upon a wiry piano near at hand, having left the door wide open,
with the indecent disregard of other people peculiar to juvenile
performers upon all kinds of instruments. From the other side of the
hall came the twanging of an equally wiry guitar, upon which girlish
fingers began, and for ever recommenced a Spanish melody, which the
performer was striving to attain by that agonizing process known
among young ladies as “picking up” an air. Mark, gentle reader, what
the learned and reverend Haweis has to say upon this art of playing
by ear!

From a remoter room came young voices and young laughter; and amidst
all these sounds it was hardly surprising that Mr. Dalbrook had to
ring three times, and to wait in front of the open hall door for
at least ten minutes, before an elderly housemaid responded to his
summons and ushered him into the Vicar’s study, the one room in the
Vicarage which was ever fit to receive a visitor.

The Vicar was reading a newspaper in front of a comfortable fire. He
was an elderly man, of genial and even jovial aspect, and he received
Mr. Dalbrook’s apologetic account of himself and his business with
perfect good humour.

“You want to see Miss Newton, my dear sir. I am sorry to tell you she
left us nearly two years ago—heartily sorry, for Sarah Newton is a
very worthy woman, and a jewel of price in a motherless family like
mine,” said the Vicar. “I regret that you should have come such a
long way to find her when, had you written to me, I could have told
you where to look for her in London.”

“Yes, it was a mistake to come so far without making preliminary
inquiries—only, as she had not applied to her usual agent for a new
situation, I concluded that she was still under your roof.”

“She has not gone into a new situation, Mr. Dalbrook. She was too
much valued in this house to wish to change to another employment,
although she might have lived more luxuriously and done less work
elsewhere. She was a mother to my girls—ay, and to my boys as
well—while she was with us; and she only left us when she made up her
mind to live an independent life.”

“She has left off teaching, then, I conclude?”

“Yes. She had a little bit of money left her by a bachelor uncle,
safely invested in railway stock, and yielding about two hundred a
year. This, with her own savings, made her an independent woman, and
she made up her mind to realize her own ideal of a useful life—an
ideal which had been developing in her mind for a good many years—a
life which was to be serviceable to others, and yet pleasant to
herself.”

“Do you mean that she joined some sisterhood?”

“No, no, Mr. Dalbrook; Sarah Newton is much too fond of her own
way, much too independent and fiery a spirit, to place herself in a
position where other people would think for her, and where she would
be obliged to obey. She told me her plan of life very frankly. ‘I
have about two hundred and sixty pounds a year,’ she said; ‘I can
live comfortably upon half that money, if I live after a plan of my
own; and I can do a great deal of good with the other half if I do
it in my own way. I am elderly and plain. If I were to live amongst
small gentilities I should be a nobody, and in all probability
I should be considered a bore. I shall take a lodging in a poor
neighbourhood, furnish my rooms with the utmost comfort, treat myself
to a good piano, and collect my little library book by book from
the second-hand booksellers. I shall spend half my days in going
quietly about among the poor young women of the district—I ought to
know what girls are after nearly forty years’ teaching and managing
the species—and I shall spend half my income in doing as much good to
them as I can, in my own unorthodox way.’ I knew the good that brave
little soul had done in this parish, in her quiet, unpretentious
fashion, and I felt no doubt she would carry out her plan.”

“Have you seen her since she left you?”

“Yes, I went to see her last June when I had a fortnight’s holiday in
London. I found her in a shabby old house in Lambeth, not very far
from St. Thomas’s Hospital; but dingy as the house looked outside,
our good Sally’s apartments were the picture of comfort. I found
her as happy as a bird. Her plan of life had answered her highest
expectations. ‘My friends are legion,’ she said, ‘but I haven’t a
single gentility among them.’ Sally is a desperate Radical, you must
know.”

“Will you give me her address, that I may write and ask her
permission to call upon her?”

“You shall have the address, but I doubt if she will feel disposed to
receive you. She will count you among the gentilities.”

“I must try my chance at any rate. I want her to throw some light
upon the history of one of her earliest pupils. Did you ever hear her
talk of Cheriton Chase and the Strangway family?”

“My dear sir, I have heard her talk of any number of places, and
any number of people. I used to tell her she must be a female
Methuselah to have passed through so many experiences. She was very
fond of telling stories of the families in which she had lived, but
though I used to listen I remember very little about them. My girls
would remember better, I have no doubt. They can give you chapter
and verse, I dare say; so the best thing you can do is to eat your
luncheon with us, and then you can ask them as many questions as you
like.”

Theodore accepted the offer with gratitude, and ten minutes
afterwards followed the Vicar into the dining-room, where three
tall, good-looking girls and two straggling youths were assembled,
and where a fourth girl and another boy dropped in after the rest
were seated. The board was spread with a plenteous but homely meal.
A large dish of Irish stew smoked at one end of the table, and the
remains of yesterday’s roast ribs of beef appeared at the other.

The girls were evidently accustomed to droppers in, and received
Theodore with perfect equanimity.

Alicia, the eldest, carved the beef with a commanding wrist, and the
third daughter, Laura, administered to his appetite with pickled
walnuts and mashed potatoes. The girls were all keenly interested
directly he spoke of Miss Newton. They pronounced her a dear old
thing, not a bit like a governess.

“We all loved her,” said Alicia: “and we are not the easiest girls
to get on with, I can assure you. We have had two poor things since
Sally deserted us, and we have driven them both away. And now we are
enjoying an interregnum, and we hope the dear father will make it a
long one.”

“Did you ever hear your governess talk of the Strangways, Miss
Craven?”

“What, Evelyn Strangway, of Cheriton Chase? I should think we did,
indeed,” cried Laura. “She had a good many prosy stories—chestnuts,
we used to call them—but the Cheriton Chase stories were the most
chestnutty. It was her first situation, and she was never tired of
talking about it.”

“Do you know if she kept up her acquaintance with Miss Strangway in
after life?” asked Theodore.

“I think not; at any rate, she never talked about that. She knew
something about the poor girl’s later life—something very bad, I
think—for she would never tell us. She used to sigh and look very
unhappy if the subject was touched upon; and she used to warn us
against runaway matches. As if any of us would be likely to run
away from this dear old father?” protested Laura, leaning over the
table to pat the Vicar’s coat-sleeve. “Why, he would let us marry
chimney-sweeps rather than see us unhappy.”

There was a good deal more talk about Sarah Newton, her virtues
and her little peculiarities, but nothing bearing upon Theodore’s
business, so he only stayed till luncheon was finished, and then
wished the amiable Vicar and his family a friendly good-bye, offering
to be of use to them in London at any time they might want some small
business transacted there, and begging the Vicar to look him up at
his chambers when he took his next holiday.

“You may rely upon it I shall take you at your word,” said the parson
cheerily. “You’ve no idea what a gay old dog I am when I am in
town—the theatre every night, and a little bit of supper afterwards.
I generally take one of my lads with me, though, to keep me out
of mischief. Good-bye, and mind you don’t fall in love with Sally
Newton. She’s old and ugly, but she’s one of the most fascinating
women I know.”

Theodore drove off in the dog-cart with all the Vicarage family at
the gate waving their hands to him, as if he had been an old friend,
and with four Vicarage dogs barking at him.

He went back to London that night, and wrote to Miss Newton, asking
leave to call upon her upon a matter relating to one of her old
pupils on the following day. He should take silence to mean consent,
and would be with her at four in the afternoon, if he did not receive
a telegram to forbid him.

He worked in his chambers all the morning, and at a little after
three set out to walk to Lambeth. The address was 51, Wedgewood
Street, near the Lambeth Road. It was not a long walk, and it was not
a pleasant one, for a seasonable fog was gathering when Theodore
left the Temple, and it thickened as he crossed Westminster Bridge,
where the newly-lighted lamps made faint yellow patches in the dense
brown atmosphere. Under these conditions it took him some time to
find Wedgewood Street, and that particular house which had the honour
of sheltering Sarah Newton.

It was a very shabby old street. The shops were of the meanest order,
and the houses which were not shops looked as if they were mostly
let off to the struggling class of lodgers; but it was a street
that had evidently seen better days, for the houses were large and
substantially built, and the doorways had once been handsome and
architectural—houses which had been the homes of prosperous citizens
when Lambeth was out of town, and when the perfume of bean blossom
and new-mown hay found its way into Wedgewood Street.

The ground-floor of Number 51 was occupied by a shoemaker, a
shoemaker who had turned his parlour into a shop, who made to
measure, but was not above executing repairs neatly. The front door
being open, Theodore walked straight upstairs to the first-floor
landing, where there was a neat little Doulton ware oil-lamp burning
on a carved oak bracket, and where he saw Miss Newton’s name painted
in bold black letters upon a terra-cotta coloured door. The stairs
were cleaner than they generally are in such a house, and the landing
was spotless.

He rang a bell, and the door was promptly opened by a lady, whom he
took to be Miss Newton. She was rather below middle height, strongly
built, but of a neat, compact figure. She was decidedly plain, and
her iron grey hair was coarse and wiry; but she had large bright eyes
which beamed with good nature and intelligence. Her black stuff gown
and narrow linen collar, the knot of scarlet ribbon at her throat,
and the linen cuffs turned back over perfectly-fitting sleeves, were
all the pink of neatness, and suited her as no other kind of dress
would have done. The trim figure, the bright eyes, and the small
white hands made a favourable impression upon Theodore, in spite of
the lady’s homeliness of feature and complexion.

“Walk in, Mr. Dalbrook,” she said cheerily. “Pray come and sit by
the fire; you must be chilled to the bone after coming through that
horrid fog. Ah, how I hate fog! It is the scourge of the London poor,
and it sometimes kills even the rich. And now we are only at the
beginning of the evil, and there is the long winter before us.”

“Yes, it is very bad, no doubt; but you do not look as if the fog
could do you much harm, Miss Newton.”

“No, it won’t hurt _me_. I’m a hardy old plant, and I contrive to
make myself comfortable at all seasons.”

“You do, indeed,” he answered, glancing round the room. “I had no
idea——”

“That anybody could be so comfortable in Lambeth,” she said,
interpreting his thoughts. “No, people think they must pay for
what they call ‘a good situation.’ Poor pinched widows and shabby
spinsters spend more than half their income on rent and taxes, and
starve on the other half, in order to live in a genteel locality—some
dingy little street in Pimlico perhaps, or a stucco terrace in
Kensington. Here am I with two fine large rooms in a forgotten old
street, which was built before the age of shoddy. I live among poor
people, and am not obliged to sacrifice a sixpence for the sake
of appearances. I buy everything in the cheapest market, and my
neighbours look up to me, instead of looking down upon me, as they
might if I lived among gentilities. You will say, perhaps, that I
live in the midst of dirt and squalor. If I do I take care that none
of it ever comes near me, and I do all that one woman’s voice and one
woman’s pen can do to lessen the evils that I see about me.”

“It would be a good thing for poor neighbourhoods if there were many
ladies of your mind, Miss Newton,” said Theodore, basking in the
glow of the fire, and looking lazily round the room, with its two
well-filled book-cases, occupying the recesses on each side of the
fireplace, its brackets and shelves, and hanging pockets, its large
old-fashioned sofa, and substantial claw-footed table, its wicker
chairs, cushioned with bright colour—its lamps and candlesticks on
shelf and bracket, ready to the hand when extra light should be
wanted, its contrivances and handinesses of all kinds, which denoted
the womanly inventiveness of the tenant.

“Well, I believe it would. If only a small percentage of the lonely
spinsters of England would make their abode among the poor, things
would have to be mended somehow. There could not be such crying evils
as there are if there were more eyes to see them, and more voices
to protest against them. You like this old room of mine, I see, Mr.
Dalbrook,” added Sarah Newton, following his eyes as they surveyed
the dark red wall against which the brackets and shelves, and books
and photographs, and bits of old china stood out in bright relief.

“I am full of admiration and surprise!”

“It is all my own work. I had lived in other people’s houses so
long that I was charmed to have a home of my own, even in Lambeth.
I was determined to spend very little money, and yet to make myself
comfortable; so I just squatted in the next room for the first three
months, with only a bedstead, a table, and a chair or two, while I
prowled all over London to find the exact furniture I wanted. There’s
not an article in the room that did not take me weeks to find and to
buy, and there’s not an article that wasn’t a tremendous bargain.
But what an egotistical old prattler I am! Women who live much alone
get to be dreadful prosers. I won’t say another word about myself—at
any rate, not till after I’ve made you a cup of tea after your cold
walk.”

She had seen the mud upon his boots, and guessed that he had walked
from the Temple.

“Pray do not take any trouble——”

“Nonsense; it is never trouble to a woman to make tea. I give a
tea-party twice a week. I hope you like tea?”

“I adore it. But pray go on with your account of how you settled down
here. I am warmly interested.”

“That’s very good of you—but there’s not much to tell about myself,”
said Miss Newton, producing some pretty old china out of an antique
cupboard with glass doors, and setting out a little brass tea-tray
while she talked.

There was a small copper kettle singing on the old-fashioned hob,
and there was a covered dish of toast in the capacious fender. Miss
Newton’s dinners were ever of the slightest, but she was a sybarite
as to her tea and toast. No cheap and powdery mixture; no “inferior
Dosset” for her. She made her brew with a dainty precision which
Theodore admired, while she went on talking.

“Do you like the colour of the walls? Yes, I painted them. And you
like that paper on the ceiling? I papered it. I am rather a dab at
carpentering, too, and I put up all those shelves and brackets, and
I covered the chairs, and stained the boards round that old Turkey
carpet; and then, after a day’s hard work, it was very pleasant to
go and stroll about among the bookshops of an evening and pick up a
volume here and there till I got all my old friends about me. I felt
like Elia; only I had no Bridget to share my pleasure.”

She seated herself opposite to him with a wicker table in front of
her, and began to pour out the tea. He wondered to find himself as
much at home with her as if he had known her all his life.

“It is very good of you to receive me so cordially,” he said,
presently. “I feel that I come to you as an unauthorized intruder.”

“Can you guess why I was willing to receive you?” she asked, looking
at him intently and with a sudden gravity. “Can you guess why I
didn’t telegraph to forbid your coming?”

“Indeed, no, except because you are naturally kind.”

“My kindness had nothing to do with it. I was willing to see you
because of your name. It is a very familiar name to me—Dalbrook, the
name of the man who bought the house in which she was born. Poor
soul, how she must have hated him, in her desolate after years. How
she must have hated the race that ousted her from the home she loved.”

“You are talking of Evelyn Strangway?”

“Yes, she was my first pupil, and I was very fond of her—all the
fonder of her, perhaps, because she was wayward and difficult to
manage: and because I was much too young and inexperienced to
exercise any authority over her.”

“It is of her I want to talk to you, if you will allow me.”

“Certainly. I like talking of those old days when I was a girl. I
don’t suppose I was particularly happy at Cheriton Chase; but I was
young, and we most of us hug the delusion that we were happy in our
youth. Poor Evelyn—so often in disgrace—so often unhappy, from the
very dawn of girlhood! What reason can _you_ have for being curious
about her?”

“I have a very strong reason, though I cannot explain it yet awhile.
I have set myself to discover the history of that banished race.”

“After the angel with the flaming sword stood at the gate—that is to
say, after Mr. Dalbrook bought the property. By-the-by, what are you
to Lord Cheriton? His son perhaps?”

“No, I am only a distant cousin.”

“Is it on his account you are making these inquiries?”

“He is not even aware that I am making them.”

“Indeed; and pray how did you find me out? My tea-parties are
not recorded in the Society papers; I have never figured among
‘Celebrities at Home.’”

“I took some pains to find you,” said Theodore, and then he told her
of his visits to the agencies, and his journey to the Vicarage in
Lakeland.

“You have taken infinite trouble, and for a small result. I can give
you very little information about Evelyn Strangway—afterwards Mrs.
Darcy.”

“Did you lose sight of her after you left Cheriton?”

“Yes, for a long time. It was years before we met again; but she
wrote to me several times from Lausanne, during the first year of her
banishment; doleful letters, complaining bitterly of her father’s
cruelty in keeping her away from her beloved Cheriton, the horses
and dogs, the life she loved. School she detested. She was clever,
but she had no taste for intellectual pursuits. She soon wearied of
the lake and the mountains, and the humdrum society of a small town.
She wrote of herself as a galley-slave. Then came a sudden change,
and she began to write about _him_. You don’t know the way a girl
writes about _him_; the first him she has ever thought worthy to be
written about. Her tone was light enough at the beginning. She had
met a young Irishman at a little evening party, and they had laughed
together at Lausanne society. He was an officer, on furlough, full of
wit and fun. I need not go into details. I saw her danger, and warned
her; I reminded her that her father would never allow her to marry a
subaltern in a marching regiment, and that such a marriage would mean
starvation. Her father could give her nothing; it was incumbent on
her to marry well, and with her attractions she had only to wait for
a good offer. It would inevitably come in due time.”

“She was handsome, I suppose? I know her face in the picture at
Cheriton. My cousin bought all the old portraits.”

“She was much handsomer than the picture. That was painted when she
was only fifteen, but at seventeen her beauty had developed, and she
was one of the most brilliant blondes I ever saw. Well, I suppose you
know how useless my advice was. She ran away with her Irish admirer,
and I heard no more of her for nearly four years, when I met her one
afternoon in the Strand, and she took me home to her lodging in Cecil
Street, and gave me some tea. It was in October, and I stayed with
her till dark, and then she insisted on seeing me off in the omnibus
to Haverstock Hill, where I was then living in an artist’s family.
The lodgings were shabby, and she was shabbily dressed. She was as
handsome as ever, but she looked worried and unhappy. Her husband had
sold out of the army, and had a position as secretary to a West End
club.

“She told me that they would have been pretty well off but for
his extravagance. He was getting four hundred a year, and they
had no children. She complained that it was her fate to be allied
with spendthrifts. Her father had squandered his fortune; and
her husband’s improvident habits kept her in continual debt
and difficulty. It grieved me to see the shabbiness of her
surroundings—the squalid lodging-house parlour, without so much as
a bunch of flowers or a stand of books to show that it was in the
occupation of a lady. There was a cigarbox on the mantelpiece, and
there was a heap of newspapers on the sofa, and a pair of shabby
slippers inside the fender. It was a room to make one shudder. I
asked her if she was reconciled to her father, and she said no; she
had heard nothing of him since her marriage. I felt very unhappy
about her after we parted at Hungerford Market. I saw her standing
on the pavement as the omnibus drove away, a tall, slim figure,
distinguished-looking in spite of her shabby mantle and rusty black
silk gown. I had promised to go and see her again, though I was very
seldom at liberty at that time, and I went to Cecil Street two or
three times in the course of the winter, but she was always out, and
there was something in the tone of her letters that made me think
she did not wish to see me again, though I believe she was fond of
me always, poor soul. I saw nothing more of her, and heard nothing
until nearly four years afterwards, when I was spending an afternoon
at Richmond with my pupils—two girls of fourteen and sixteen—and I
came face to face with her in front of Thomson’s Seat. She was with
a tall, handsome man, whom at first I took to be her husband: but
there was something in the manner of both of them that impressed me
uncomfortably, and I began to fear that this was not her husband. She
looked much brighter than when I saw her in Cecil Street, and she
was better dressed—very plainly, but in excellent taste. She took me
aside a little way while her companion stood and talked to the two
girls. She put her arm through mine in her old caressing way, and
then she said, abruptly, ‘I almost wonder that you will speak to me.
I thought you would cut me dead.’ I looked puzzled, no doubt; so she
said, ‘Perhaps you don’t know what a lost creature I am. Perhaps
you have not heard.’ I told her I had heard nothing about her since
we parted at Hungerford Market, and then she gave a deep sigh, and
said, ‘Well, I am not going to deceive you. That,’ with a jerk of
her head towards the man who was standing with his back to us, ‘is
not my husband, but he and I are bound together for the rest of our
lives, and we are perfectly happy together. Society would scorn us
and trample upon us no doubt if we gave it a chance; but we don’t.
We live out of the world, and we live for one another. Now, aren’t
you shocked with me? Don’t you want to run away?’ she asked, with a
little laugh, which sounded as if she was very nearly crying. I told
her that I was very sorry for her. I could say no more than that.
‘You would be sorrier still if you could picture to yourself the
miserable life I led before I left my husband,’ she said. ‘I bore
it for five years, years that seemed an eternity. He cared for me
no more than for the flower-girls in the street. He left me to pine
in my dingy lodging, left me to be dunned and worried all day long,
left me out-at-elbows, ashamed of my own shabbiness, while he amused
himself at his club; and then he considered himself cruelly used when
he found out there was another man in the world who thought me worth
caring for, and when I told him I loved that man with all my heart.
My leaving him was the impulse of a moment. The moment came when his
brutality turned the scale, and I ran out of the house in my despair,
and jumped into the first cab I could hail, and drove away to _him_,’
pointing to the man in the distance, strolling beside my two gawky
girls, ‘and to happiness. I am a wicked wretch, no doubt, to be happy
under such circumstances, but I am, or, at any rate, as happy as
anybody can hope to be in this world. There is always a thorn among
the flowers,’ she sighed, as if the thorn was a big one, I thought.
‘I suppose I shall never see you again,’ she said. ‘When we say
good-bye presently, it will be farewell for ever.’ I told her that
was not inevitable. I was my own mistress, free to choose my friends.
I told her that if ever she had need of a friend I would go to her.
I felt that I was in some wise answerable for the bad turn her life
had taken, for had I been a more judicious counsellor, I might have
guided her better, might have prevented her coming into collision
with her father. I asked her for her address, but she told me she had
promised to tell nobody where she lived. ‘We are living out of the
world,’ she said, ‘we have no visitors, no friends or acquaintance.’
She clasped my hands, kissed me, and hurried away to rejoin the man
whose name I never learned. He lifted his hat to me and the girls,
and they walked away together towards the Star and Garter, leaving
us standing by Thomson’s Seat, staring idly at the landscape in the
summer sunlight. I felt dazed as I stood there, looking down into
that lovely valley. It had been a terrible shock to me to meet her
again under such circumstances.”

CHAPTER XVI.

    “Be useful where thou livest, that they may
     Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still.
     ... All worldly joys go less
     To the one joy of doing kindnesses.”

“What impression did the man make upon you in that brief meeting?”
asked Theodore. “Did he strike you as a _roué_?”

“No, that was the odd part of the business. He had the steady,
respectable air of a bread-winner, a professional, or perhaps a
commercial man. I could not tell which. There was nothing flashy
or dissipated in his appearance. He looked me steadily in the face
when he bowed to me at parting, and he had a frank, straightforward
expression, and a grave decision of manner that was not without
dignity. He was soberly dressed in a style that attracted no
attention. I had no doubt that he was a gentleman.”

“He was handsome, you say?”

“Yes, he was decidedly handsome—but I can remember only the general
character of his face, not features or details, for I saw him only
twice in my life.”

“Ah, you saw him again?”

“Once again—some years later, after her death.”

“She is dead, then?” cried Theodore; “that is the fact I am most
anxious to learn from a reliable source of information. There was a
rumour of her death years ago, but no one could give me any evidence
of the fact. I went to Boulogne last week to try and trace her to her
last resting-place; but I could discover neither tombstone nor record
of any kind.”

“And yet it was at Boulogne she died. I will tell you all I know
about her, if you like. It doesn’t amount to much.”

“Pray, tell me everything you can. I am deeply grateful to you for
having treated me with so much frankness.”

“It was on her account I received you. I am glad to talk to any one
who is interested in her pitiful fate. There were so few to care for
her. I think there is no lot more sad than that of a broken-down
gentleman’s daughter, born to an inheritance she is never to enjoy,
brought up to think of herself as a personage, with a right to the
world’s respect, and finding herself friendless and penniless in the
bloom of her womanhood, exposed to the world’s contumely.”

Theodore’s face flushed a little at this mention of his interest in
the unhappy lady, for he could but feel that the interest was of a
sinister kind; but he held his peace, and Miss Newton went on with
her story.

“It was ever so many years after that meeting in Richmond Park—I
think it must have been nearly ten years—when I ran against that very
man upon a windy March day in Folkestone. I had thought much and
often of my poor girl in all those years, wondering how the world had
used her, and whether the lover whom she trusted so implicitly had
been true to her. I shuddered at the thought of what her fate might
have been if he were false. I had never heard a word about her in all
that time. I had seen no report of a Divorce suit in the papers. I
knew absolutely nothing of her history from the hour I parted with
her by Thomson’s Seat till I ran against that man in Folkestone. I am
rather shy about speaking to strangers in a general way; but I was
so anxious to know her fate that I stopped this man, whose very name
was unknown to me, and asked him to tell me about my poor friend. He
looked bewildered, as well he might, at being pounced upon in that
manner. I explained that I was Evelyn Strangway’s old governess, and
that I was uneasy at having lost sight of her for so many years, and
was very anxious to see her again. He looked troubled at my question,
and he answered me gravely—‘I am sorry to say you will never do that.
Your friend is dead.’ I asked when she died, and where? He told me
within the last month, and at Boulogne. I asked if he was with her
at the last, and he said no; and then he lifted his hat and muttered
something about having very little time to get to the station. He was
going to London by the next train, it seemed, and he was evidently
anxious to shake me off; but I was determined he should answer at
least one more question. ‘Was her husband with her when she died?’
I asked. His face darkened at the question, which I suppose was a
foolish one. ‘Do you think it likely?’ he said, trying to move past
me; but I had laid my hand upon his sleeve in my eagerness. ‘Pray
tell me that her end was not unhappy—and that she was penitent for
her sins.’ He looked very angry at this. ‘If I stand here talking
to you another minute I shall lose my train, madam,’ he said, ‘and
I have important business in London this afternoon.’ A fly came
strolling by at this moment. He hailed it and jumped in, and he drove
off into what Thomas Carlyle would call the Immensities. I never saw
him again; I never knew his name, or calling, or place of abode, or
anything about him. I can no more localize him than I can Goethe’s
Mephistopheles. God knows how he treated my poor girl—whether he
was kind or cruel; whether he was faithful to a dishonourable tie,
or whether he held it as lightly as such ties have been held by the
majority of men from Abraham downwards.”

The little woman’s face flushed and her eyes filled as she gave vent
to her feelings.

“And this is all you know of Evelyn Strangway?” said Theodore, when
she had finished.

“This is all I know of her. And now tell me why you are so anxious to
learn her history—you who can never have seen her face, except in
the picture at Cheriton. I dressed her for that picture and sat by
while it was painted.”

“I will tell you the motive of my curiosity,” answered Theodore.
“You have treated me so frankly that I feel I must not withhold my
confidence from you. I know that I can rely upon your discretion.”

“I can talk, as you have just heard,” said Miss Newton; “but I can be
silent as the grave, when I like.”

“You must have read something about the murder at Cheriton last July.”

“I read a great deal about it. I took a morbid interest in the case,
knowing the house so well in every cranny and corner. I could picture
the scene as vividly as if I had seen the murdered man lying there. A
most inexplicable murder, apparently motiveless.”

“Apparently motiveless. That fact has so preyed upon the widow’s mind
that she has imagined a motive. She has a strange fancy that one
of the Strangways must have been the author of the crime. She has
brooded over their images till her whole mind has become possessed
with the idea of one of that banished race, garnering his wrath for
long years, until at last the hour came for a bloody revenge, and
then striking a death-blow out of the dark—striking his fatal blow
and vanishing from the sight of men, as if a phantom arm had been
stretched out of the night to deal that blow. She has asked me to
help her in discovering the murderer, and I am pledged to do my
utmost towards that end. I am the more anxious to do so as I tremble
for the consequences if she should be allowed to brood long upon this
morbid fancy about the Strangways. I think, however, that with your
help I have now laid that ghost. I have traced the two brothers to
their graves; and I suppose we may accept the statement of the man
you met at Folkestone as sufficient evidence of Mrs. Darcy’s death;
especially as it seems to fit in with the account of the then Vicar
of Cheriton, who met her in Boulogne in the summer of ’64 looking
very ill and much aged.”

“It was in the spring of ’65 I met that man at Folkestone. I could
find the exact date in my diary if you wished to be very precise
about it, for it is one of my old-maidish ways to be very regular in
keeping my diary. Poor Evelyn! To think that any one should be mad
enough to suspect her of being capable of murder—or Fred or Reginald.
They had the Strangway temper, all three of them; and a fiery temper
it was when it was roused, a temper that led to family quarrels and
all sorts of unhappiness; but murder is a different kind of thing.”

“That is the question,” said Theodore, gravely. “Is there such a
wide gulf between the temper that makes family quarrels, sets father
against son, and brother against brother, and the temper that pulls
a trigger or uses a bowie-knife? I thought they were one and the
same thing in actual quality, and that the result was dependent upon
circumstances.”

“Oh, don’t talk like that, please. Murder is something exceptional—a
hideous solecism in nature—and in this case why murder? What had
Sir Godfrey Carmichael done that any member of the Strangway family
should want to kill him?”

“I tell you that the idea is a wild one, the morbid growth of my
cousin’s sorrow.”

“Of course it is. I am very sorry for her, poor soul. I don’t suppose
any woman could suffer more than she must have suffered. It is a
dreadful story. And she was very fond of her husband, I dare say.”

“She adored him. They had been lovers almost from her childhood.
There never were a more devoted bride and bridegroom. Their honeymoon
was not even beginning to wane. They were still lovers, still in a
state of sweet surprise at finding themselves husband and wife. Poor
girl, I saw her the day before the murder, a brilliant creature,
the very spirit of joy. I saw her the morning after, a spectre,
with awful eyes and marble face—more dreadful to look upon than her
murdered husband.”

“It is all too sad,” sighed Miss Newton. “I begin to think that
Cheriton is a fatal house, and that no one can be happy there.
However, you can tell this poor lady that the Strangways are
exonerated from any part in her misery.”

“I shall write to her to-night to that effect. And now, Miss Newton,
let me thank you once more for your friendly frankness, and wish you
a good night.”

“Don’t be in such a hurry, Mr. Dalbrook. I like your face, and I
should like to see you again some day, if you can find time to waste
an hour upon an old maid in such a God-forsaken place as Wedgewood
Street.”

“I shall think an hour so spent most delightfully employed,” answered
Theodore, who was quite subjugated by the charm of this little person
and her surroundings.

He did not remember having ever sat in a room he liked better than
this first-floor front in Wedgewood Street, with its terra-cotta
walls, prettily-bound books, curious oddments of old china, and
comfortable curtains of creamy workhouse-sheeting, with a bold
vermilion border worked by Sarah Newton’s indefatigable fingers.

“I should very much like to hear all about your life in this—strange
neighbourhood,” he said.

“There is not much to tell. When my little fortune—left by my uncle,
the drysalter—fell in to me I was a lonely old woman, without one
surviving relative for whom I cared twopence. I was pretty tired of
teaching French and German—God knows how many hundred times I must
have gone through Ollendorff in both languages—and I’ve done him a
good many times in Italian, _par dessus le marché_. Perhaps I might
have held on for a year or two longer, as I was very fond of those
nice girls and boys at Kettisford Vicarage, if it hadn’t been for
Ollendorff. _He_ decided me. Leila, the youngest girl, had only just
begun that accursed book. She was blundering over ‘the baker’s golden
candlestick’ the very morning I got the lawyer’s letter to tell me of
my uncle’s death, and the will, and the legacy. I snatched the book
out of her hand, and shut it with a bang. ‘Ain’t I to do any more
Ollendorff, Sally?’ she asked. ‘You may do as much as you like, my
love,’ I said, ‘but you’ll do no more with me. I’m a millionaire, or
at least I feel as rich and independent as if I were a Rothschild.’
Well, I lay awake all that night making plans for my life, and trying
to think out how I could get the most comfort out of my little
fortune, enjoy my declining years, have everything I wanted, and yet
be of some use to my fellow-creatures; and the end of it was that
I made up my mind to take a roomy lodging in a poor neighbourhood,
where I should not be tempted to spend a penny upon appearances,
furnish it after my own heart, and make myself happy in just my own
way, without caring a straw what anybody thought about me. I knew
that I was plain as well as elderly, that I could never be admired,
or cut a figure in the genteel world, so I determined to renounce the
gentilities altogether and to be looked up to in a little world of my
own.”

“And you have found your plan answer——”

“It has answered beyond my hopes. Ever since I was thirty years of
age and had finished with all young ideas and day-dreams, I had one
particular ideal of earthly bliss, and that was the position of a
country squire’s wife—an energetic, active, well-meaning woman, the
central figure in a rural village, having her model cottages and her
allotment gardens, her infirmary, her mission-house—the good genius
of her little community, a queen in miniature, and without political
entanglements, or menace of foreign war. Now it could never be my lot
to reign on a landed estate, to build cottages, or cut up fertile
meadows for cottagers’ gardens; but I thought by taking up my abode
in a poor neighbourhood, and visiting in a friendly, familiar way—no
tracts or preachings—among the most respectable of the inhabitants,
and slowly feeling my way among the difficult subjects, I might
gradually acquire an influence just as strong as that of the Lady
Bountiful in a country parish, and might come to be as useful in my
small way as the squire’s wife with her larger means. And I have
done it,” added Miss Newton, triumphantly. “There are rooms in this
street and in other streets that are to me my model cottages. There
are overworked, underfed women who look up to me as their Providence.
There are children who come and hang to my skirts as I pass along the
streets. There are great hulking men who ask my advice and get me to
write their letters for them. What could a squire’s wife have more
than that? And yet I have only a hundred and fifty pounds a year to
spend upon my people.”

“You give them something more than money. You give them sympathy—the
magnetism of your strong and generous nature.”

“Ah, there is something in that. Magnetism is a good word. There
must be some reason why people attach themselves so ardently to Mr.
Gladstone, don’t you know,—some charm in him that holds them almost
in spite of themselves, and makes them think as he thinks, and veer
as he veers. Yes, they swing round with him like the boats going
round with the tide, and they can’t help it any more than the boats
can. And I think, to compare small things with great, there must be
some touch of that magnetic power in _me_,” concluded Miss Newton.

“I am sure of it,” said Theodore, “and I am sure, too, that you must
be like a spot of light in this dark little world of yours.”

“I live among my friends. That is the point,” explained Miss
Newton. “I don’t come from Belgravia, or from a fashionable terrace
in Kensington, and tell them they ought to keep their wretched
rooms cleaner, and open their windows and put flower-pots on their
window-sills. I live here, and they can come and see how I keep _my_
rooms, and judge for themselves. Their landlord is my landlord; and
a nice life I lead him about water, and whitewash, and drains. He is
thoroughly afraid of me, I am happy to say, and generally bolts round
a corner when he sees me in the street; but I am too quick for his
over-fed legs. I tackle him about all his shortcomings, and he finds
it easier to spend a few pounds upon his property now and then than
to have _me_ upon his heels at every turn; so now Crook’s tenements
have quite a reputation in Lambeth. If you were to see the old dragon
you would wonder at my pluck in attacking him, I can assure you.”

“Your whole life is wonderful to me, Miss Newton; and I only wish
there were hundreds of women in this big city living just as you
live. Tell me, please, what kind of people your neighbours are.”

“Oh, there are people of all kinds, some of course who are quite
impracticable, for whom I can do nothing; but there are many more
who are glad of my friendship, and who receive me with open arms.
The single women and widows are my chief friends, and some of those
I know as well as if we had been brought up and educated upon the
same social level. They are workwomen of all kinds, tailoresses,
shirt-makers, girls who work for military outfitters, extra hands
for Court dressmakers, shop-girls at the humbler class of shops,
shoe-binders, artificial-flower-makers. I wonder whether you would
like to see some of them.”

“I should like it very much indeed.”

“Then perhaps you will come to one of my tea-parties. I give two
tea-parties a week all through the winter, to just as many of my
women friends as this room will hold. It holds about twenty very
comfortably, so I make twenty-five the outside limit. We rather
enjoy a little bit of a crush—and I give my invitations so that they
all have such pleasure as I can give them, fairly, turn and turn
about. We do not begin our evening too early, for the working hours
are precious to my poor things. We take tea at eight o’clock, and
we seldom separate before half-past eleven—just as if we were at a
theatre. We have a little music, a little reading and recitation, and
sometimes a round game at cards. When we are in a wild humour we play
dumb-crambo, or even puss-in-the-corner; and we have always a great
deal of talk. We sit round this fireplace in a double semi-circle,
the younger ones sitting on the rug in front of us elders, and we
talk, and talk, and talk—about ourselves mostly, and you can’t think
what good it does us. Surely God gave man speech as the universal
safety-valve. It lets off half our troubles, and half our sense of
the world’s injustice.”

“Please let me come to your very next party,” said Theodore, smiling
at the little woman’s ardour.

“That will be to-morrow evening,” replied Miss Newton. “I shall have
to make an excuse for your appearance, as we very seldom invite a
man. You will have to read or recite something, as a reason for your
being asked, don’t you know.”

“I will not recoil even from that test. I have distinguished myself
occasionally at a Penny Reading. Am I to be tragic—or comic?”

“Be both if you can. We like to laugh; but we revel in something that
makes us cry desperately. If you could give us something creepy into
the bargain, freeze our blood with a ghost or two, it would be all
the more enjoyable.”

“I will satiate you with my talents; I shall feel like Pentheus
when he intruded upon his mother and her crew, and shall be humbly
grateful for not being torn to pieces. I dare say I shall be torn to
pieces morally, in the way of criticism. Good night, and a thousand
thanks.”

“Wait,” said Miss Newton. “I’m afraid it is much foggier than when
you came. I have smelt the fog coming on while we have been talking.
Wouldn’t you like a cab?”

“I should very much, but I doubt if I shall succeed in finding one.”

“_You_ wouldn’t, but I dare say I can get you one,” replied Miss
Newton, decisively.

She had an unobtrusive little chatelaine at her side, and from the
bunch of implements, scissors, penknife, thimble, she selected a
small whistle. Then she pulled back one of the cream-white curtains,
opened the window, and whistled loud and shrill into the fog. Two
minutes afterwards there came a small treble voice out of the
darkness.

“What is it, Miss Newton?”

“Who’s that?”

“Tommy Meadows.”

“All right, Tommy. Do you think you could find a hansom without
getting yourself run over?”

“Rather! Do you want it bringed to your door, miss?”

“If you please, Tommy.”

“I’m off,” cried the shrill voice, and in less than ten minutes a
two-wheeler rattled along the street, and drew up sharply at Tommy’s
treble command, with Tommy himself seated inside, enjoying the drive
and the uncertainty of the driver.

His spirits were still further exalted by the gift of sixpence from
Theodore as he stepped into the cab, to be taken back to the Temple
at a foot pace.

Even that sitting-room of his, which he had taken pains to make
comfortable and home-like, had a gloomy look after that bright room
in Lambeth, with its terra-cotta walls and cream-coloured curtains,
its gaily-bound books and vivid Vallauris vases perched in every
available corner. He was more interested in that quaint interior, and
in the woman who had created it, than he had been in any one except
that one woman who filled the chief place in all his thoughts. The
Vicar of Kettisford had not over-estimated Sarah Newton’s power of
fascination.

He was in Wedgewood Street at a few minutes before eight on the
following evening. The sky above Lambeth was no longer obscured;
there were wintry stars shining over that forest of chimney pots and
everlasting monotony of slated roofs; and even Lambeth looked lively
with its costers’ barrows and bustle of eventide marketing. Theodore
found the door open, as it had been yesterday, and he found an extra
lamp upon the first floor landing, and the door of Miss Newton’s room
ajar, while from within came the sound of many voices, moderated to a
subdued tone, but still lively.

His modest knock was answered by Miss Newton herself, who was
standing close to the door, ready to greet every fresh arrival.

“How do you do? We are nearly all here,” she said, cheerily.

“I hope you have not just been dining, for with us tea means a hearty
meal, and if you can’t eat anything we shall feel as if you were
Banquo’s ghost. How do you do, Mrs. Kirby?” to another arrival. “Baby
better, I hope? Yes, that’s right. How are you, Clara? and you, Rose?
You’ve had that wretched tooth out—I can see it in your face. Such a
relief, isn’t it? So glad to see you, Susan Dale, and you, Maria,
and you, Jenny. Why, we are all here, I do believe.”

“Yes, Miss Newton,” said a bright-looking girl by the fireplace, who
had been making toast indefatigably for twenty minutes, and whose
complexion had suffered accordingly. “There are two and twenty of us,
four and twenty, counting the gentleman and you. I think that’s as
many as you expected.”

“Yes, everybody’s here. So we may as well begin tea.”

In most such assemblies, where the intention was to benefit a humble
class of guests, the proceedings would have begun with a hymn; but
at Miss Newton’s parties there were neither hymns nor prayers—and
yet Miss Newton loved her hymn-book, and delighted in the pathos
and the sweetness of the music with which those familiar words are
interwoven; nor would she yield to anybody in her belief in the
efficacy of prayer; but she had made up her mind from the beginning
that her tea-parties were to be pure and simple recreation, and that
any good which should come out of them was to come incidentally. The
women and girls who came at her bidding were to feel they came to be
entertained, came as her guests, just as, had they been duchesses,
they might have gone to visit other duchesses in Park Lane or Carlton
Gardens. They were not asked in order that they should be taught, or
preached to, or wheedled into the praying of prayers or the singing
of hymns. They went as equals to visit a friend who relished their
society.

And did not everybody relish the tea! which might be described as
a Yorkshire tea of a humble order; not the Yorkshire tea which may
mean mayonnaise and perigord pie, chicken and champagne—but tea
as understood in the Potteries of Hull, or the humbler alleys and
streets of Leeds or Bradford. Three moderate-sized tables had been
put together to make one capacious board, spread with snowy damask,
upon which appeared two large plum loaves, two tall towers of bread
and butter, a glass bowl of marmalade, a bowl of jam, two dishes of
thinly-sliced German sausage set off with sprigs of parsley—German
sausage bought at the most respectable ham and beef shop in the
Borough, and as trustworthy as German sausage can be; and for
crowning glory of the feast a plentiful supply of shrimps, freshly
boiled, savouring of the unseen sea. The hot buttered toast was
frizzling on a brass footman in front of the fire, ready to be handed
round piping hot, as required. There were two tea-trays, one at each
end of the table, and there were two bright copper kettles, which had
never been defiled by the smoke of the fire, filled with admirable
tea.

Miss Newton took her place at the head of the table, with Theodore
on her right hand, and a pale and fragile looking young woman on her
left. These two assisted the hostess in the administration of the
tea-tray, handing cups and saucers, sugar-basin and cream-jug; and in
so doing they had frequent occasion to look at each other.

Having gone there prepared to be interested, Theodore soon began to
interest himself in this young woman, whom Miss Newton addressed
as Marian. She was by no means beautiful now, but Theodore fancied
that she had once been very handsome, and he occupied himself in
reconstructing the beauty of the past from the wreck of the present.

The lines of the face were classic in their regularity, but the
hollow cheeks and pallid complexion told of care and toil, and the
face was aged untimely by a hard and joyless life. The eyes were
darkest grey, large and pathetic-looking, the eyes of a woman who
had suffered much and thought much. The beauty of those eyes gave a
mournful charm to the pale pinched face, and the light auburn hair
was still luxuriant. Theodore noted the delicate hands and taper
fingers, which differed curiously from the other hands which were
busy around the hospitable board.

He could see that this young woman was a favourite with Sarah Newton,
and he told himself that she was of a race apart from the rest; but
he was agreeably surprised in finding that, except for the prevailing
Cockney accent, and a few slight lapses in grammar and pronunciation,
Miss Newton’s guests were quite as refined as those ladies of
Dorchester with whom it had been his privilege to associate; indeed,
he was not sure that he did not prefer the Cockney twang and the
faulty grammar to the second-hand smartness and slang of the young
ladies whose “Awfully jolly,” “Ain’t it,” and “Don’t you know,” had
so often irritated his ear on tennis lawn or at afternoon tea. Here
at least there was the unstudied speech of people who knew not the
caprices of fashion or the latest catch word that had descended from
Belgravia to Brompton, and from Brompton to the provinces.

There was a great deal of talk, as Miss Newton had told him there
would be; and as she encouraged all her guests to talk about
themselves, he gathered a good deal of interesting information
about the state of the different trades and the ways and manners
of various employers, most of whom seemed to be of a despotic and
grasping temper. The widows talked of their children’s ailments or
their progress at the Board School; the girls talked a little, and
with all modesty, of their sweethearts. Sarah Newton was interested
in every detail of those humble lives, and seemed to remember every
fact bearing upon the joys or the sorrows of her guests. It was a
wonder to Theodore, to see how the careworn faces lighted up round
the cheerful table in the lamplight. Yes, it was surely a good thing
to live among these daughters of toil, and to lighten their burdens
by this quick sympathy, this cheerful hospitality. Vast Pleasure
Halls and People’s Palaces may do much for the million; but here was
one little spinster with her small income making an atmosphere of
friendliness and comfort for the few, and able to get a great deal
nearer to them than Philanthropy on a gigantic scale can ever get to
the many.

Theodore noticed that while most other tongues babbled freely, the
girl called Marian sat silent, after her task of distributing the
tea was over, with hands folded in her lap, listening to the voices
round her, and with a soft slow smile lighting her face now and
then. In repose her countenance was deeply sad, and he found himself
speculating upon the history that had left those melancholy lines
upon a face that was still young.

“I am much interested in your next neighbour,” he said to Miss
Newton, presently, while Marian was helping another girl to clear
the table. “I feel sure there must be something very sad in her
experience of life, and that she has sunk from a higher level.”

“So do I,” answered Miss Newton, “but I know very little more about
her than you do, except that she is a most exquisite worker with
those taper fingers of hers, and that she has worked for the same
baby-linen house for the last three years, and has lived in the same
second-floor back in Hercules’ Buildings. I think she is as fond of
me as she can be, yet she has never told me where she was born, or
who her people were, or what her life has been like. Once she went so
far as to tell me that it had been a very commonplace life, and that
her troubles had been in nowise extraordinary—except the fact of her
having had a very severe attack of typhus fever, which left her a
wreck. Once, from some chance allusion, I learnt that it was in Italy
she caught the fever, and that it was badly treated by a foreign
doctor; but that one fact is all she ever let slip in her talk, so
carefully does she avoid every mention of the past. I need hardly
tell you that I have never questioned her. I have reason to know that
her life for the last three years has been spotless—an industrious,
temperate, Christian life—and that she is charitable and kind to
those who are poorer than herself. That is quite enough for me, and I
have encouraged her to make a friend of me in every way in my power.”

“She is happy in having found such a friend, an invaluable friend to
a woman who has sunk from happier surroundings.”

“Yes, I think I have been a comfort to her. She comes to me for
books, and we meet nearly every day at the Free Library, and compare
notes about our reading. My only regret is that I cannot induce her
to take enough air and exercise. She spends all the time that she can
spare from her needlework in reading. But I take her for a walk now
and then, and I think she enjoys that. A penn’orth of the tramcar
carries us to Battersea Park, and we can stroll about amongst grass
and trees, and in sight of the river. She is better off than most of
the girls in the way of getting a little rest after toil, for that
fine, delicate needlework of hers pays better than the common run of
work, and she is the quickest worker I know.”

The tables were cleared by this time, and space had been made for
that half-circle round the fire of which Miss Newton had spoken on
the previous night. The younger girls brought hassocks and cushions,
and seated themselves in the front rank, while their elders sat in
the outer row of chairs.

Theodore was now called upon to contribute his share to the
entertainment, and thereupon took a book from his pocket.

“You told me you and your friends were fond of creepy stories, Miss
Newton,” he said. “Is that really so?”

“Really and truly.”

“And you are none of you afflicted with weak nerves—you are not
afraid of being made uncomfortable by the memory of a ghastly story?”

“No. I think that with most of us the cares of life are too real and
too absorbing to leave any room in our minds for imaginary horrors.
Isn’t it so, now, friends?”

“Lor, yes, Miss Newton,” answered one of the girls briskly: “we’re
all of us too busy to worry about ghosts; but I love a ghost tale for
all that.”

A chorus of voices echoed this assertion.

“Then, ladies, I shall have the honour of reading the ‘Haunters and
the Haunted,’ by Bulwer Lytton.”

The very title of the story thrilled them, and the whole party, just
now so noisy with eager talk and frequent laughter, sat breathless,
looking at the reader with awe-stricken eyes as that wonderful story
slowly unwound itself.

Theodore read well, in that subdued and semi-dramatic style which is
best adapted to chamber-reading. He felt what he read, and the horror
of the imaginary scene was vividly before his eyes as he got deeper
into the story.

The reading lasted nearly two hours, but it was not one moment too
long for Theodore’s audience, and there was a sigh of regret when the
last words of the story had been spoken.

“Well,” exclaimed one young lady, “I do call that a first-class tale,
don’t you, Miss Newton?”

“You may go a long way without getting such a ghost tale as that,”
said another; “and don’t the gentleman read beautifully, and don’t he
make one feel as if it was all going on in this very room? And the
dog too! There, I never see such a thing! A poor dog to drop down
dead, like that.”

“I did hope that there dog would come to life again at the end,” said
one damsel.

By way of diversion after the story, Miss Newton opened her piano,
beckoned three of the girls over to her, and played the symphony
of “Blow, Gentle Gales,” which old-fashioned glee the three girls
sang with taste and discretion, the bass part being altered to suit
a female voice. Then came some songs, all of which Miss Newton
accompanied; and then at her request Theodore read again, this time
selecting Holmes’ “Wonderful One-Horse Shay,” which caused much
laughter; after which, the little clock on the chimney-piece having
struck eleven, he wished his hostess good night, selected his coat
and hat from among the heap of jackets and hats on a table on the
landing, and went downstairs.

He was still in Wedgewood Street when he heard light footsteps
coming quickly behind him. It seemed to him that they were trying to
overtake him, so he turned and met the owner of the feet.

“I beg your pardon, sir; forgive me for following you,” said a very
gentle voice, which he recognized as belonging to the girl called
Marian—“I wanted so much to speak to you—alone.”

“And I am glad of the opportunity of speaking to you,” he answered.
“I felt particularly interested in you this evening—there are some
faces, you know, which interest us in spite of ourselves almost, and
I felt that I should like to know more of you.”

This was so gravely said that there was no possibility of an
offensive construction being given to the words.

“You are very good, sir. It was your name that struck me,” she
answered, falteringly; “it is a Dorsetshire name, I think.”

“Yes, it is a Dorsetshire name, and I am a Dorchester man.”

“Dorchester,” she repeated slowly. “I wonder whether you know a place
called Cheriton?”

“I know it very well indeed. A kinsman of mine lives there. Lord
Cheriton is my cousin.”

“I thought as much, directly I heard your name. You must know all
about that dreadful murder, then—last summer?”

“Yes, I know about as much of it as any one knows, and that is very
little.”

“They have not found the murderer?” she asked, with a faint shudder.

“No, nor are they ever likely to find him, I believe. But tell me why
you are interested in Cheriton. Do you come from that part of the
country?”

“Yes.”

“Were you born in Cheriton village?”

“I was brought up not far from there,” she answered, hesitatingly.

He remembered what Miss Newton had told him of her own forbearance in
asking questions, and he pursued the inquiry no further.

“May I see you as far as your lodgings?” he said, kindly. “It will be
very little out of my way.”

“No, thank you, Mr. Dalbrook. I am too much accustomed to going
about alone ever to want any escort. Good night, and thank you for
having answered my questions.”

Her manner showed a disinclination to prolong the interview, and she
walked away with hurried steps which carried her swiftly into the
darkness.

“Poor lonely soul!” he said to himself. “Now, whose lost sheep
is she, I wonder? She is certainly of a rank above a cottager’s
daughter, and with those hands of hers it is clear she has never
been in domestic service. Not far from Cheriton! What may that mean?
Not far is a vague description of locality. I must ask Lady Cheriton
about her the next time I am at the Chase.”

CHAPTER XVII.

    “A mind not to be changed by place or time.”

Christmas at Dorchester was not a period of festivity to which
Theodore Dalbrook had hitherto looked forward with ardent
expectations, but in this particular December he found himself
longing for that holiday season even as a schoolboy might long for
release from Latin Grammar and suet pudding, and for the plenteous
fare and idle days of home. He longed for the grave old town with its
Roman relics and leafless avenues; longed for it, alas! not so much
because his father, brother, and sisters dwelt there, as because it
was within a possible drive of Milbrook Priory, and once being at
Dorchester he had a fair excuse for going to see his cousin. Many and
many a time in his chambers at the Temple he had felt the fever-fit
so strongly upon him that he was tempted to put on his hat, rush out
of those quiet courts and stony quadrangles to the bustle of the
Embankment, spring into the first hansom that came within hail, and
so to Waterloo, and by any train that would carry him to Wareham
Station, and thence to the Priory, only to look upon Juanita’s face
for a little while, only to hold her hand in his, once at greeting
and once at parting, and then back into the night and the loneliness
of his life, and law books and precedents, and Justinian and Chitty,
and all that is commonplace and dry-as-dust in man’s existence.

He had refrained from such foolishness, and now Christmas was at
hand, his sisters were making the house odious with holly and laurel,
the old cook was chopping suet for the traditional pudding which
he had loathed for the last ten years, and he had a fair excuse for
driving along the frosty roads to visit his widowed cousin. He had a
pressing invitation from Lord Cheriton to spend two or three days of
his holiday time at the Chase, an invitation which he had promptly
accepted; but his first visit was to Lady Carmichael.

He found the house in all things unlike what it had been when last
he saw it. The dear Grenvilles had been persuaded to spend their
Christmas in Dorsetshire, and the Priory was full of children’s
voices, and the traces of children’s occupation. Theodore had known
Jessica Grenville before her marriage, yet it was not the less a
shock to find himself confronted by a portly matron and a brood of
children in that room where he had seen Juanita’s sad face bent
over her embroidery. There was no trace of Juanita in the spacious
drawing-room to-day, and the fact of her absence almost unhinged
him, and put him at a disadvantage in his conversation with Mrs.
Grenville, who received him with gracious loquacity, and insisted
upon his giving an immediate opinion upon the different degrees of
family likeness to be seen in her four children there present.

“Those two are decided Carmichaels,” she said, putting forward a
rather flabby boy and a pudding-faced girl, “and the other two are
thorough Grenvilles,” indicating the latter and younger pair, who
were seated on the floor building a Tower of Babel with a lately
received present of bricks, and carrying out the idea by their own
confusion of tongues.

Theodore felt glad he was not a Grenville if that was the type. He
murmured some vague civility about the children, while he shook hands
with Lady Jane, who had come forward shyly to welcome him, almost
obliterated by her more loquacious daughter.

“Don’t you think Johnnie the very image of his poor dear uncle?”
asked Mrs. Grenville urgently, a question which always agonized Lady
Jane, who could not see the faintest likeness between her snub-nosed
and bilious-looking grandchild and her handsome son.

Theodore was too nervous to be conscious of his own untruthfulness
in replying in the affirmative. He was anxious to have done with the
children, and to hear about his cousin.

“I hope Juanita is not ill?” he said.

“Oh, no, she is pretty well,” replied Lady Jane, “but we keep her as
quiet as we can, and of course the children are rather trying for
her——”

“Nobody can say that they are noisy children,” interjected the happy
mother.

“So she seldom leaves her own rooms till the evening,” continued Lady
Jane. “You would like to see her at once, I dare say, Mr. Dalbrook?
And I know she will be pleased to see you.”

She rang, and told the footman to inquire if Lady Carmichael was
ready to see Mr. Dalbrook, and Theodore had to occupy the interval
until the footman’s return with polite attentions to the four
children. He asked Lucy whence she had obtained those delightful
bricks, thereby eliciting the information that the bricks were not
Lucy’s, but Godolphin’s, only he “let her play with them,” as he
observed magnanimously. He was gratified with the further information
that the tower now in process of elevation was not a church, but
the Tower of Babel; and he was then treated to the history of that
remarkable building as related in Holy Writ.

“_You_ didn’t know that, did you?” remarked Godolphin, boastfully,
when he had finished his narration in a harsh bawl, being one of
those coarse brats whom their parents boast of as after the pattern
of the infant Hercules.

The footman returned before Godolphin had wrung a confession of
ignorance from the nervous visitor, and Theodore darted up to follow
him out of the room.

He found Juanita reclining on a low couch near the fire in a
dimly-lighted room, that room which he remembered having entered
only once before, on the occasion of an afternoon party at the
Priory, when Sir Godfrey had taken him to his den to show him a
newly acquired folio copy of Thomson’s “Seasons,” with the famous
Bartolozzi mezzotints. It was a good old room, especially at this
wintry season, when the dulness of the outlook was of little
consequence. The firelight gleamed cheerily on the rich bindings of
the books, and on the dark woodwork, and fondly touched Juanita’s
reclining figure and the rich folds of her dark plush tea-gown.

“How good of you to come to see me so soon, Theodore!” she said,
giving him her hand. “I know you only came to Dorchester yesterday.
The girls were here the day before, and told me they expected you.”

“You did not think I should be in the county very long without
finding my way here, did you, Juanita?”

“Well, no, perhaps not. I know what a true friend you are. And now
tell me, have you made any further discoveries?”

“One more discovery, Juanita, as I told you briefly in my last
letter. I have traced the Squire’s daughter to the sad close of a
most unhappy life—and so ends the Strangway family as you know of
their existence—that is to say, those three Strangways who had some
right to feel themselves aggrieved by the loss of the land upon which
they were born.”

“Tell me all you heard from Miss Newton. Your letter was brief and
vague, but as I knew I was to see you at Christmas I waited for
fuller details. Tell me everything, Theodore.”

He obeyed her, and related the bitter, commonplace story of Evelyn
Strangway’s life, as told him by her old governess. There were no
elements of romance in the story. It was as common as the Divorce
Court or the daily papers.

“Poor creature! Well, there ends my theory, at least about her,” said
Juanita, gloomily. “Her brothers were dead, and she was dead, long
before that fatal night. Did they bequeath their vengeance to any
one else, I wonder? Who else is there in this world who had reason
to hate my father or me? And I know that no creature upon this earth
could have cause to hate my husband.”

“In your father’s calling there is always a possibility of a deadly
hate, inexplicable, unknown to the subject. Remember the fate of Lord
Mayo. A judge who holds the keys of life and death must make many
enemies.”

“Yes,” she sighed, “there is that to be thought of. Oh, my dearest
and best, why did you ever link your life with that of a Judge’s
daughter? I feel as if I had lured him to his doom. I might have
foreseen the danger. I ought never to have married. What right
had I? Some discharged felon lay in wait for him—some relentless,
Godless, hopeless wretch—whom my father had condemned to long
imprisonment—whose angry heart my father had scorched with his
scathing speech. I have read some of his summings up, and they have
seemed cruel, cruel, cruel—so cold, so deliberate, so like a god
making light of the sins of men. Some wretch, coming maddened out of
his silent cell, and seeing my husband—that white, pure life, that
brave, strong youth—prosperous, honoured, happy—seeing what a good
man’s life can be—lay in wait like a tiger, to destroy that happy
life. If it was not one of the Strangways who killed him, it must
have been such a man.”

Her eyes shone, and her cheeks flushed with a feverish red. Theodore
took her hand, held it in both his own, and bent to kiss the cold
fingers—not with a lover’s ardour, fondly as he loved; but with a
calm and brotherly affection which soothed her agitated heart. He
loved her well enough to be able to subjugate himself for her sake.

“My dear Juanita, if you would only withdraw your thoughts from
this ghastly subject! I will not ask you to forget. That may
be impossible. I entreat you only to be patient, to leave the
chastisement of crime to Providence, which works in the dark, works
silently, inevitably, to the end for which we can only grope in a
lame and helpless fashion. Be sure the murderer will stand revealed
sooner or later. That cruel murder will not be his last crime, and in
his next act of violence he may be less fortunate in escaping every
human eye. Or if that act is to be the one solitary crime of his life
something will happen to betray him—some oversight of his own, or
some irrepressible movement of a guilty conscience will give his life
to the net, as a bird flies into a trap. I beseech you, dear, let
your thoughts dwell upon less painful subjects—for your own sake—for
the sake——”

He faltered, and left his sentence unfinished, and Juanita knew that
his sisters had told him something. She knew that the one hope of
her blighted life, hope which she had hardly recognized as hope yet
awhile, was known to him.

“I can never cease to think of that night, or to pray that God
will avenge that crime,” she said, firmly. “You think that is an
unchristian prayer perhaps, but what does the Scripture say? ‘Whoso
sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ Christ came to
confirm that righteous law. Oh! it is well to be a humanitarian—to
sign petitions against capital punishment,—but let your nearest and
dearest be murdered, and you will be quick to recognize the justice
of that old inexorable law—a life for a life. That is what _I_ want,
Theodore—the life of the man who killed my husband.”

“If I can help to bring about that end, Juanita, believe me that I
will not shrink from the task; but at present I must own that I am
off the track, and see no likelihood of succeeding where a trained
detective has failed. Could I but find a shred of evidence to put me
on the trail, I would pursue that clue to the bitter end; but so far
all is dark.”

“Yes, all is dark!” she answered, dejectedly; and then, after a
pause, she said, “You are going to stay at Cheriton, I hear?”

“I am to spend three days there at the turn of the year, just before
I go back to London. I have chambers in Ferret-court, over the rooms
in which your father spent the golden years of his youth, the years
that made him a great man. It will be very interesting to me to hear
him talk over those years, if I can beguile him into talking of
himself, a subject which he so seldom dwells upon.”

“Ask him if he ever made a bitter enemy. Ask him for his experience
as a Judge at Assizes—find out, if you can, whether he ever provoked
the hatred of a bad vindictive man.”

“I will question your father, Juanita.”

“Do! He will not let me talk to him about the one subject that
occupies my mind. He always stops me on the threshold of any
inquiries. He might surely help me to find the murderer, with his
highly trained intellect, with his experience of the darkest side of
human nature. But he will not help me. He would talk more freely to
you, no doubt.”

“I will sound him,” answered Theodore, and then he tried to beguile
her into talking of other things—her home, her surroundings.

“It must be a comfort to you to have Lady Jane.”

“A comfort! She is all that I have of happiness—all that reminds
me of Godfrey. My mother and father are very dear to me—I hope you
believe that, Theodore?—but our lives are parted now. My mother is
wrapped up in her husband. Neither of them can sympathize with me as
_his_ mother can. Their loss is not the same as ours. We two are one
in our grief.”

“And she is a buffer between you and the outer world, I see. She
bears the burdens that would weigh you down. Those children, for
instance—no doubt they are charming, as children go; but I fancy they
would worry you if you had too much of them.”

“They would kill me,” said Juanita, smiling at him for the first
time in their interview. “I am not very fond of children. It sounds
unwomanly to say so, but I often find myself wishing they could be
born grown up. Fortunately, Lady Jane adores them. And I am glad to
have the Grenvilles at Christmas time. I want all things to be as
they would have been were my dearest here. I lie here and look round
this room, which was his, and think and think, and think of him till
I almost fancy he is here. Idle fancy! Mocking dream! Oh! if you knew
how often I dream that he is living still, and that I am still his
happy wife. I dream that he has been dead—or at least that we have
all believed that he was dead—but that it was a mistake. He is alive;
our own for long years to come. The wild rapture of that dream wakes
me, and I know that I am alone. God keep you, Theodore, from such a
loss as mine!”

“I must gain something before I can lose it,” he answered, with a
shade of bitterness. “I see myself, as the years go on, hardening
into a lonely old bachelor, outliving the capacity for human
affection.”

“That is nonsense-talk. You think so just now, perhaps. There is no
one beyond your own family you care for, and you fancy yourself shut
out from the romance of life—but your day will come, very suddenly,
perhaps. You will see some one whom you can care for. Love will
enter your life unawares, and will fill your heart and mind, and the
ambition that absorbs you now will seem a small thing.”

“Never, Juanita. I don’t mean to plague you with any trouble of mine.
You have given me your friendship, and I hope to be worthy of it;
but pray do not talk to me of the chances of the future. My future
is bounded by the hope of getting on at the Bar. If I fail in that I
fail in everything.”

“You will not fail. There is no reason you should not prosper in your
profession as my father prospered. I often think that you are like
him—more like him than you are like your own father.”

Their talk touched on various subjects after this—on the great events
of the world, the events that make history—on books and theatres, and
then upon Sarah Newton, whose plan of life interested Juanita.

He told her of the girl called Marian, and her inquiries about
Cheriton.

“I wonder if you ever knew her among your villagers,” he said. “I
should much like to know who she is. She interests me more than I
can say. There is a refinement in her manners and appearance that
convinces me she must have belonged to superior people. She was never
born in a labourer’s cottage, or amidst a small shopkeeper’s shabby
surroundings. She was never taught at a National School, or broken
into domestic service.”

“And she was once very handsome, you say?”

“Yes, she must have been beautiful, before illness and trouble set
their marks upon her face. She is only a wreck now, but there is
beauty in the wreck.”

“How old do you suppose her to be?”

“Eight or nine and twenty. It is difficult to guess a woman’s age
within two or three years, and this woman’s face is evidently aged by
trouble; but I don’t think she can be thirty.”

“There is only one person I can think of who would in any manner
answer your description,” said Juanita, thoughtfully.

“Who is that?”

“Mercy Porter. You must have heard about Mercy Porter, the daughter
of the woman at the West Lodge.”

“Yes, yes, I remember. She ran away with a middle-aged man—an army
man—one of your father’s visitors.”

“I was a child at the time, and of course I heard very little about
it. I only knew that Mercy Porter who used to come to tea with
mother, and who played the piano better than my governess, suddenly
vanished out of our lives, and that I never saw her again. My mother
was quite fond of her, and I remember hearing of her beauty, though
I was too young myself to know what beauty meant. I could not think
any one pretty who wore such plain frocks, and such stout useful
boots as Mercy wore. Her mother certainly did nothing to set off her
good looks, or to instil vanity. Years after, my mother told me how
the girl disappeared one summer evening, and how Mrs. Porter came
distracted to the house, and saw my father, and stormed and raved at
him in her agony, saying it was _his_ friend who had blighted her
daughter’s youth—_his_ work that she had gone to her ruin. He was
very patient and forbearing with her, my mother said, for he pitied
her despair, and he felt that he was in some wise to blame for having
brought such an unprincipled man as Colonel Tremaine to Cheriton,
a man who had carried ruin into many homes. Mercy had been seen to
leave Wareham Station with him by the night mail. He had a yacht at
Weymouth. She wrote to her mother from London a fortnight afterwards,
and Mrs. Porter brought the letter to my mother and father one
morning, as they sat at breakfast. It was a heart-broken letter—the
letter of a poor foolish girl who flings away her good name and
her hope of Heaven, with her eyes open, and knows the cost of her
sacrifice, and yet can’t help making it. I was engaged to Godfrey
when I first heard Mercy’s story, and I felt so sorry for her, so
sorry, in the midst of my happy love. What had I done to deserve
happiness more than she, that life should be so bright for me and so
dark for her. I did not know that my day of agony was to come.”

“Did you ever hear how Colonel Tremaine treated her?”

“No; I believe my father wrote him a very severe letter, and called
upon him to repair the wrong he had done; but I don’t think he even
took so much trouble as to answer that letter. His regiment was
ordered off to India two or three years afterwards, and he was killed
in Afghanistan about six years ago.”

“And has nothing been heard of Mercy since her flight?”

“Nothing.”

“I wonder her mother has sat at home quietly all these years instead
of making strenuous efforts to find her lost lamb,” said Theodore.

“Ah, that is almost exactly what Godfrey said of her. He seemed to
think her heartless for taking things so quietly. She is a curious
woman—self-contained, and silent. I sometimes fancy she was more
angry than grieved at Mercy’s fate. Mother says she turns to ice at
the slightest mention of the girl’s name. Don’t you think love would
show itself differently?”

“One can never be sure about other people’s sentiments. Love has many
languages.”

Their talk drifted to more commonplace subjects. And then Theodore
rose to take leave.

“You must dine at the Priory before your holiday is over, Theo,”
said his cousin, as they shook hands. “Let me see—to-morrow will be
Christmas Day—will you come the day after, and bring the sisters? It
is too long a drive for a winter night, so you must stay; there is
plenty of room.”

“Are you sure we shall not bore you?”

“I am sure you will cheer me. My sister-in-law is very good—but
Lady Jane is the only person in this house of whom I do not get
desperately tired, including myself,” she added, with a sigh. “Please
say you will come, and I will order your rooms.”

“We will come then. Good night, Juanita.”

The shadows were falling as he drove away, after refusing tea in the
drawing-room and a further acquaintance with the wonderful children.

He looked forward to that evening at the Priory with an eager
expectancy that he knew to be supreme foolishness, and when the
evening came, it brought some measure of disappointment with it.
Juanita was not so well as she had been upon Christmas Eve. She was
not able to dine downstairs, and the family dinner, at which the
Etonian Tom, Johnnie, and Lucy were allowed to take their places in
virtue of Christmas time, was a dull business for Theodore. His only
pleasure was in the fact that he sat on Lady Jane’s right hand, and
was able to talk with her of Juanita. Even that pleasure was alloyed
with keenest pain; for Lady Jane’s talk was of that dead love which
cast its shadow over Juanita’s youth, or of that dim and dawning hope
which might brighten the coming days—and neither in the love of the
past nor in the love of the future had Theodore any part. Juanita was
on her sofa by the drawing-room fire when he and Mr. Grenville left
the dining-room, after a single glass of claret, and a brief review
of the political situation. Theodore’s sisters were established
on each side of her. There was no chance for him while they were
absorbing her attention, and he retired disconsolately to the group
in the middle of the room, where Mrs. Grenville and Lady Jane were
seated on a capacious ottoman with the children about them.

Johnnie and Lucy, who had over-eaten themselves, were disposed to be
quiet, the little girl leaning her fair curls and fat shining cheek
against her grandmother’s shoulder with an air that looked touching,
but which really indicated repletion; Johnnie sprawling on the carpet
at his mother’s feet, and wishing he had not eaten _that_ mince-pie,
telling himself that, on the whole, he hated mince-pie, and envying
his brother Tom, who had stolen off to the saddle-room to talk to
the grooms. Godolphin and Mabel having dined early, were full of
exuberance, waiting to be “jumped,” which entertainment Theodore had
to provide without intermission for nearly half an hour, upheaving
first one and then another towards the ceiling, first a rosy bundle
in ruby velvet, and then a rosy bundle in white muslin, laughing,
screaming, enraptured, to be caught in his arms, and set carefully
on the ground, there to await the next turn. Theodore slaved at this
recreation until his arms ached, casting a furtive glance every
now and then at the corner by the fireplace where his sisters were
treating Juanita to the result of their latest heavy reading.

At last, to his delight, Lucy recovered from her comatose condition,
and began to thirst for amusement.

“Let’s have magic music,” she said; “we can all play at that, Granny
and all. You know you love magic music, Granny. Who’ll play the
piano? Not mother, she plays so badly,” added the darling, with
childlike candour.

“Sophy shall play for you,” cried Theodore; “she’s a capital hand at
it.”

He went over to his sister.

“Go and play for the children, Sophy,” he said. “I’ve been doing my
duty. Go and do yours.”

Sophy looked agonized, but complied; and he slipped into her vacant
seat.

He sat by his cousin’s side for nearly an hour, while the children,
mother, and grandmother played their nursery game to the sound of
dance-music, now low, now loud, neatly executed by Sophy’s accurate
fingers. Their talk was of indifferent subjects, and the lion’s
share of the conversation was enjoyed by Janet; but to Theodore it
was bliss to be there, by his cousin’s side, within sound of her
low melodious voice, within touch of her tapering hand. Just to sit
there, and watch her face, and drink in the tones of her voice, was
enough. He asked no more from Fate, yet awhile.

He had a long talk with her in her own room next morning, before he
went back to Dorchester, and the talk was of that old subject which
absorbed her thoughts.

“Be sure you find out all you can from my father,” she said at
parting.

Life at Cheriton Chase bore no impress of the tragedy that had
blighted Juanita’s honeymoon. There were no festivities this winter;
there was no large house-party. There had been a few quiet elderly or
middle-aged visitors during the shooting season, and there had been
some slaughter of those pheasants which were wont to sit, ponderous
and sleepy as barn-door fowls, upon the five-barred gates, and
post-and-rail fences of the Chase. But even those sober guests—old
friends of husband and wife—had all departed, and the house was empty
of strangers when Theodore arrived there, in time for dinner on New
Year’s Eve. Nothing could have suited him better than this. He wanted
to be _tête-à-tête_ with Lord Cheriton; to glean all in the way of
counsel or reminiscence that might fall from those wise lips.

“If there is a man living who can teach me how to get on in my
profession it is James Dalbrook,” he said to himself, thinking of his
cousin by that name which he had so often heard his father use when
talking of old days.

Lady Cheriton greeted him affectionately, made him sit by her in
the library, where a richly embroidered Japanese screen made a cosy
corner by the fireplace, during the twenty minutes before dinner. She
was a handsome woman still, with that grand-looking Spanish beauty
which does not fade with youth, and she was dressed to perfection in
lustreless black silk, relieved by the glitter of jet here and there,
and by the soft white crape kerchief, worn _à la_ Marie-Antoinette.
There was not one thread of grey in the rich black hair, piled in
massive plaits upon the prettily shaped head. Theodore contemplated
her with an almost worshipping admiration. It was Juanita’s face he
saw in those classic lines.

“I want to have a good talk with you, Theo,” she said; “there is no
one else to whom I can talk so freely now my poor Godfrey is gone. We
sit here of an evening, now, you see. The drawing-room is only used
when there are people in the house, and even then I feel miserable
there. I cannot get his image out of my mind. Cheriton insists that
the room shall be used, that it shall not be made a haunted room—and
no doubt it is best so,—but one cannot forget such a tragedy as that.”

“I hope Juanita will forget some day.”

“Ah, that is what I try to hope. She is so young, at the very
beginning of life, and it does seem hard that all those hopes for
which other women live should be over and done with for her. I wish
I could believe in the power of Time to cure her. I wish I could
believe that she will be able to love somebody else as she loved
Godfrey. If she does, I dare say it will be some new person who has
had nothing to do with her past life. I had been in and out of love
before I met James Dalbrook, but the sight of him seemed like the
beginning of a new life. I felt as if it had been preordained that I
was to love him, and only him—that nothing else had been real. Yes,
Theodore,”—with a sigh,—“you may depend, if ever she should care for
anybody, it will be a new person.”

“Very lucky for the new person, and rather hard upon any one who
happens to have loved her all his life.”

“Is there any one—like that?”

“I think you know there is, Lady Cheriton.”

“Yes, yes, my dear boy, I know,” she answered kindly, laying her
soft hand upon his. “I won’t pretend not to know. I wish, with all
my heart, you could make her care for you, Theodore, a year or two
hence. You would be a good and true husband to her, a kind father to
Godfrey’s child—that fatherless child. Oh, Theodore, is it not sad
to think of the child who will never—not for one brief hour—feel the
touch of a father’s hand, or know the blessing of a father’s love?
Such a dead blank where there should be warmth and life and joy! We
must wait, Theo. Who can dispose of the future? I shall be a happy
woman if ever you can tell me you have won the reward of a life’s
devotion.”

“God bless you for your goodness to me,” he faltered, kissing the
soft white hand, so like in form and outline to Juanita’s hand, only
plumper and more matronly.

They dined snugly, a cosy trio, in a small room hung with genuine old
Cordovan leather, and adorned with Moorish crockery, a room which
was called her Ladyship’s parlour, and which had been one of Lord
Cheriton’s birthday gifts to his wife, furnished and decorated during
her absence at a German spa. When Lady Cheriton left them, the two
men turned their chairs towards the fire, lighted their cigars, and
settled themselves for an evening’s talk.

The great lawyer was in one of his pleasantest moods. He gave
Theodore the benefit of his experience as a stuff-gown, and did all
that the advice of a wise senior can do towards putting a tyre on the
right track.

“You will have to bide your time,” he said in conclusion; “it is
a tedious business. You must just sit in your chambers and read
till your chance comes. Always be there, that’s the grand point.
Don’t be out when Fortune knocks at your door. She will come in a
very insignificant shape on her earlier visits—with a shabby little
two-guinea brief in her hand; but don’t you let that shabby little
brief be carried to somebody else just because you are out of the
way. I suppose you are really fond of the law.”

“Yes, I am very fond of my profession. It is meat and drink to me.”

“Then you will get on. Any man of moderate abilities is bound to
succeed in any profession which he loves with a heart-whole love; and
your abilities are much better than moderate.”

There was a little pause in the talk while Lord Cheriton threw on a
fresh log and lighted a second cigar.

“I have been meditating a good deal upon Sir Godfrey’s murder,” said
Theodore, “and I am perplexed by the utter darkness which surrounds
the murderer and his motive. No doubt you have some theory upon the
subject.”

“No, I have no theory. There is really nothing upon which to build
a theory. Churton, the detective, talked about a vendetta—suggested
poacher, tenant, tramp, gipsy, any member of the dangerous classes
who might happen to consider himself aggrieved by poor Godfrey. He
even went so far as to make a very unpleasant suggestion, and urged
that there might be a woman at the bottom of the business, speculated
upon some youthful intrigue of Godfrey’s. Now, from all I know of
that young man, I believe his life had been blameless. He was the
soul of honour. He would never have dealt cruelly with any woman.”

“And you, Lord Cheriton,” said Theodore, hardly following the latter
part of his cousin’s speech in his self-absorption.

His kinsman started and looked at him indignantly.

“And you—in your capacity of judge, for instance—have you never made
a deadly foe?”

“Well, I suppose the men and women I have sentenced have hardly loved
me; but I doubt if the worst of them ever had any strong personal
feeling about me. They have taken me as a part of the machinery of
the law—of no more account than the iron door of a cell or a beam of
the scaffold.”

“Yet there have been instances of active malignity—the assassination
of Lord Mayo, for instance.”

“Oh, the assassin in that case was an Indian, and a maniac. We live
in a different latitude. Besides, it is rather too far-fetched an
idea to suppose that a man would shoot my son-in-law in order to
avenge himself upon me.”

“The shot may have been fired under a misapprehension. The figure
seated reading in the lamplight may have been mistaken for you.”

“The assassin must have been uncommonly short-sighted to make such a
mistake. I won’t say such a thing would be impossible, for experience
has taught me that there is nothing in this life too strange to be
true; but it is too unlikely a notion to dwell upon. Indeed, I think,
Theodore, we must dismiss this painful business from our minds. If
the mystery is ever to be cleared up, it will be by a fluke; but even
that seems to me a very remote contingency. Have you not observed
that if a murderer is not caught within three months of his crime he
is hardly ever caught at all? I might almost say if he is not caught
within one month. Once let the scent cool and the chances are a
hundred to one in his favour.”

“Yet Juanita has set her heart upon seeing her husband avenged.”

“Ah, that is where her Spanish blood shows itself. An Englishwoman,
pure and simple, would think only of her sorrow. My poor girl hungers
for revenge. Providence may favour her, perhaps, but I doubt it.
The best thing that can happen to her will be to forget her first
husband, fine young fellow as he was, and choose a second. It is
horrible to think that the rest of her life is to be a blank. With
her beauty and position she may look high. I am obliged to be
ambitious for my daughter, you see, Theodore, since Heaven has not
spared me a son.”

Theodore saw only too plainly that, whatever favour his hopes
might have from soft-hearted Lady Cheriton, his own kinsman, James
Dalbrook, would be against him. This mattered very little to him at
present, in the face of the lady’s indifference. One gleam of hope
from Juanita herself would have seemed more to him than all the
favour of parents or kindred. It was her hand that held his fate: it
was she alone who could make his life blessed.

New Year’s Day was fine but frosty, a sharp, clear day on which
Cheriton Park looked loveliest, the trees made fairy-like by the
light rime, the long stretches of turf touched with a silvery
whiteness, the distant copses and boundary of pine-trees half hidden
in a pale grey mist.

Theodore walked across the park with Lady Cheriton to the eleven
o’clock service in the church at the end of Cheriton village. It was
nearly a mile from the great house to the fine old fifteenth-century
church, but Lady Cheriton always walked to church in decent weather,
albeit her servants were conveyed there luxuriously in a capacious
omnibus specially retained for their use. On the way along the
silent avenue Theodore told her of his meeting with Miss Newton’s
_protégée_, and of Juanita’s idea that the woman called Marian might
be no other than Mercy Porter.

“I certainly remember no other case of a girl about here leaving her
home under disgraceful circumstances—that is to say, any girl of
refinement and education,” said Lady Cheriton. “There have been cases
among the villagers, no doubt; but if this girl of yours is really a
superior person, and really comes from Cheriton, I think Juanita is
right, and that you must have stumbled upon Mercy Porter. Her mother
ought to be told about it, without delay.”

“Will you tell her, or will you put me in the way of doing so?”

“Would you like to see Mrs. Porter?”

“Yes. I feel interested in her, chiefly because she may be Marian’s
mother. I shall have to go to work very carefully, so as not to cause
her too keen a disappointment in the event of Juanita’s guess being
wrong.”

“I do not know that you will find her very soft-hearted where her
daughter is concerned,” replied Lady Cheriton, thoughtfully. “I
sometimes fear that she has hardened herself against that unhappy
girl. The troubles of her own early life may have hardened her,
perhaps. It is not easy to bear a long series of troubles with
patience and gentleness.”

“Do you know much of her history?”

“Only that she lost her husband when she was still a young woman,
and that she was left to face the world penniless with her
young daughter. If my husband had not happened to hear of her
circumstances, Heaven knows what would have become of her. He had
been intimate with her husband when he was a young man in London, and
it seemed to him a duty to do what he could for her; so he pensioned
off an old gardener who used to live in that pretty cottage, and
he had the cottage thoroughly renovated for Mrs. Porter. She had a
little furniture of a rather superior kind warehoused in London, and
with this she was able to make a snug and pretty home for herself, as
you will see, if you call upon her after the service. You are sure to
see her at church.”

“Was she very fond of her little girl in those days?”

“I hardly know. People have different ways of showing affection.
She was very strict with poor Mercy. She educated her at home, and
never allowed her to associate with any of the village children.
She kept the child entirely under her own wing, so that the poor
little thing had actually no companion but her mother, a middle-aged
woman, saddened by trouble. I felt very sorry for the child, and
I used to have her up at the house for an afternoon now and then,
just to introduce some variety into her life. When she grew up into
a beautiful young woman, her mother seemed to dislike these visits,
and stipulated that Mercy should only come to see me when there were
no visitors in the house. She did not want her head turned by any
of those foolish compliments which frivolous people are so fond of
paying to a girl of that age, never thinking of the mischief they
may do. I told her that I thought she was over-careful, and that as
Mercy must discover that she was handsome sooner or later, it was
just as well she should gain some experience of life at once. Her
instinctive self-respect would teach her how to take care of herself;
and if she could be safe anywhere, she would be safe with me. Mrs.
Porter is a rather obstinate person, and she took her own way. She
kept Mercy as close as if she had been an Oriental slave; and yet,
somehow, Colonel Tremaine contrived to make love to her, and tempted
her away from her home. Perhaps, if that home had been a little less
dismal, the girl might not have been so easily tempted.”

They had left the park by this time and were nearing the church.
A scanty congregation came slowly in after Lady Cheriton and her
companion had taken their seats in the chancel pew. The congregation
was chiefly feminine. Middle-aged women in every-day bonnets and
fur-trimmed cloaks, with their shoulders up to their ears. Girls in
felt hats and smart, tight-fitting jackets. A few pious villagers of
advanced years, spectacled, feeble, with wrinkled faces half hidden
under poke bonnets: two representative old men with long white hair
and quavering voices, whose shrill treble was distinguishable above
the rustic choir.

Amidst this sparse congregation Theodore had no difficulty in
discovering Mrs. Porter.

She sat in one of the front benches on the left side of the aisle,
which side was reserved for the tradespeople and humbler inhabitants
of Cheriton; while the benches on the right were occupied by the
county people, and some small fry who ranked with those elect of
the earth—with them, but not of them—a retired banker and his wife,
the village doctor, the village lawyer, and two or three female
annuitants of good family.

A noticeable woman, this Mrs. Porter, anywhere. She was tall and
thin, straight as a dart, with strongly marked features and white
hair. Her complexion was pale and sallow, the kind of skin which is
generally described as sickly. If she had ever been handsome, all
traces of that former beauty had disappeared. It was a hard face,
without womanly charm, yet with an unmistakable air of refinement.
She wore her neat little black straw bonnet and black cloth mantle
like a lady, and she walked like a lady, as Theodore saw presently,
when that portion of the little band of worshippers which did not
remain for the celebration dribbled slowly out of church.

He left Lady Cheriton kneeling in her pew, and followed Mrs. Porter
out of the porch and along the village street, and thence into that
rustic lane which led to the West Lodge. He had spoken to her only
once in his life, on a summer morning, when he had happened to find
her standing at her garden gate, and when it had been impossible for
her to avoid him. He knew that she must have seen him going in and
out of the park gates often enough for his appearance to be familiar
to her, so he had no scruple in introducing himself.

“Good morning, Mrs. Porter,” he said, overtaking her in the deeply
sunk lane, between those rocky banks where hart’s-tongue and
polypodium grew so luxuriantly in summer, and where even in this
wintry season the lichens and mosses spread their rich colouring over
grey stone and brown earth, and above which the snow-laden boughs
showed white against the blue brightness of the sky.

She turned and bowed stiffly.

“Good morning, sir.”

“You haven’t forgotten me, I hope. I am Theodore Dalbrook, of
Dorchester. I think you must have seen me pass your window too often
to forget me easily?”

“I am not much given to watching the people who pass in and out, sir.
When his Lordship gave me the cottage, he was good enough to allow
me a servant to open the park gate, as he knew that I was not strong
enough to bear exposure to all kinds of weather. I am free to live my
own life therefore, without thinking of his Lordship’s visitors.”

“I am sorry to intrude myself upon your notice, Mrs. Porter, but I
want to speak to you upon a very delicate subject, and I must ask
your forgiveness in advance if I should touch upon an old wound.”

She looked at him curiously, shrinkingly even, with a latent anger
in her pale eyes, eyes that had been lovely once, perhaps, but which
time or tears had faded to a glassy dulness.

“I have no desire to discuss old wounds with any one,” she said
coldly. “My troubles at least are my own.”

“Not altogether your own, Mrs. Porter. The sorrow of which I am
thinking involves another life—the life of one who has been dear to
you.”

“I have nothing to do with any other life.”

“Not even with the life of your only child?”

“Not even with the life of my only child,” she answered doggedly.
“She left me of her own accord, and I have done with her for ever. I
stand utterly alone in this world—utterly alone,” she repeated.

“And if I tell you that I think and believe I have found your
daughter in London—very poor—working for her living, very sad and
lonely, her beauty faded, her life joyless—would you not wish to know
more—would not your heart yearn towards her?”

“No! I tell you I have done with her. She has passed out of my life.
I stand alone.”

There was a tone of finality in these words which left no room for
argument.

Theodore lifted his hat, and walked on.

CHAPTER XVIII.

    “O sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm!
     All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
     And shadowy, through the mist of passed years.”

Harrington Dalbrook, having in a manner given hostages to Fortune,
entered upon his new career with a strength of purpose and a resolute
industry which took his father by surprise.

“Upon my word, Harry, I did not think there was so much grit in you,”
said Mr. Dalbrook. “I thought you and your sisters were too much
stuffed with modern culture to be capable of old-fashioned work.”

“I hope, my dear father, you don’t think education and intellect out
of place in a lawyer?”

“Far from it. We have had too many examples to the contrary, from
Bacon to Brougham, from Hale to Cockburn; but I was afraid of the
dilettante spirit, the talk about books which you had only half
read, the smattering of subjects that need the work of a lifetime
to be properly understood. I was afraid of our modern electro-plate
culture—the process which throws a brilliant film of education over a
foundation of ignorance. However, you have surprised me, Harry. I own
that I was disappointed by your want of purpose at the University;
but I begin to respect you now I find you attack your work in the
right spirit.”

“I want to get on,” answered Harrington, gravely, hanging his head a
little in shame at his own reticence.

From so good a father he felt it was a kind of dishonour to keep
a secret; but Juliet Baldwin had insisted upon secrecy, and the
name of every _fiancée_ in the early stages of an engagement is
She-who-must-be-obeyed.

Harrington said not a word, therefore, as to that mighty prime-mover
which was urging him to dogged perseverance in a profession for which
he had as yet no real inclination. He put aside Darwin and Spencer,
Max Müller and Seeley, Schopenhauer and Hartmann, all those true or
false lights which he had followed through the mazes of free thought;
and he set himself to master the stern actualities of the law. He
had not done well at the University; not because he was wanting in
brains, but because he was wanting in concentration and doggedness.
The prime-mover being supplied, and of a prodigious power, Harrington
brought his intellectual forces to bear upon a given point, and
made a rapid advance in legal knowledge and acumen. The old
cook-housekeeper complained of the coals and candles which “Master
Harry” consumed during his after-midnight studies, and wondered that
the household were not all burnt in their beds by reason of the
young gentleman dropping off to sleep over Coke upon Littleton. The
sisters complained that they had now practically no brother, since
Harrington, who had a pretty tenor voice, and had hitherto been a
star at afternoon teas and evening parties, refused to go anywhere,
except to those few houses—county—where Miss Baldwin might be met.

Scarcely had the New Year begun when Miss Baldwin went off upon a
visit to one of the largest houses in Wiltshire, and one of the
smartest, a house under the dominion of a childless widow, gifted
with a large income and a sympathetic temperament, a lady who allowed
her life to be influenced and directed by a family of nephews and
nieces, and whose house was declared by the advanced section of
society to be “quite the most perfect house to stay in, don’t you
know.”

Miss Baldwin did not leave the neighbourhood of Dorchester and her
lover without protestations of regret. The thing was a bore, a
sacrifice on her part, but it must be done. She had promised dear old
Lady Burdenshaw ages ago, and to Lady Burdenshaw’s she must go.

“You needn’t worry about it,” she said, with her off-hand air,
lolling on the billiard-room settee in the grey winter afternoon, on
the second Sunday of the year; “if you are at all keen upon being at
Medlow Court while I am there, I’ll make dear old Lady Burdenshaw
send you an invitation.”

“You are very good,” replied Harrington, “and I should like staying
in the same house with you; but I couldn’t think of visiting a lady I
don’t know, or of cadging for an invitation.”

Sir Henry had asked his friend to luncheon, and now, after a somewhat
Spartan meal of roast mutton and rice pudding, the lovers were alone
in the billiard-room, Sir Henry having crept off to the stables. The
table was kept rigorously covered on Sundays, in deference to the
Dowager’s Sabbatarian leanings; and there was nothing for her son to
do in the billiard-room, except to walk listlessly up and down and
stare at some very dingy examples of the early Italian school, or to
take the cues out of the rack one by one to see which of them wanted
topping.

“Oh, but you needn’t mind. You would be capital friends with Lady B.
We all call her Lady B., because a three-syllable name is too much
for anybody’s patience. I tell her she ought to drop a syllable. Lady
Bur’shaw would do just as well. I suppose, though, if I were to get
an invitation you could hardly be spared from—the shop,” concluded
Juliet, with a laugh.

“Hardly. I have to stick very close to—the shop,” replied Harrington,
blushing a little at the word. “Remember what I am working for—a
family practice in London and a house that you need not be ashamed to
inhabit. To me that means as much as the red ribbon of the Bath means
to a soldier or sailor. My ambition goes no further, unless it were
to a seat in Parliament later on.”

“You are a good earnest soul. Yes, of course, you must go into
Parliament. In spite of all the riff-raff that has got into the House
of late years, boys, Home Rulers, city-men, there is a faint flavour
of distinction in the letters M.P. after a man’s name. It helps him
just a little in society to be able to talk about ‘my constituents,’
and to contemplate European politics from the standpoint of the town
that has elected him. Yes, you must be in the House, by-and-by,
Harry.”

“You told me you were tired of country house visiting,” said
Harrington, who for the first time since his betrothal felt somewhat
inclined to quarrel with his divinity.

“So I am, heartily sick of it; and I shall rejoice when I have a snug
little nest of my own in Clarges or Hertford Street. But you must
admit that Medlow Court is better than this house. Behold our average
Sunday! Roast mutton—rice pudding—and invincible dulness; all the
servants except an under-footman gone to afternoon church, and no
possibility of a cup of tea till nearly six o’clock. A cold dinner at
eight, and family prayers at ten.”

“What kind of a Sunday do you have at Medlow?”

“_Il y’en a pour tous les goûts._ Medlow is liberty hall. If we
were even to take it into our heads to have family prayers Lady
Burdenshaw would send for her chaplain—pluck him out of the bosom of
his family—and order him to read them. She doesn’t _like_ cards on
a Sunday, because of the servants; but after the clock has struck
eleven we may do what we please—play poker, nap, euchre, baccarat,
till daylight, if we are in the humour. The billiard and smoke rooms,
and the ball-room are at one end of the house, ever so far from the
servants’ quarters. We can have as much fun as we like while those
rustic souls are snoring.”

Harrington sighed ever so faintly. This picture of a fashionable
interior was perfectly innocent, and his betrothed’s way of looking
at things meant nothing worse than girlish exuberance, fine animal
spirits: but the _sans gêne_ of Medlow Court was hardly the kind of
training he would have chosen for his future wife. And then he looked
at the handsome profile, the piled-up mass of ruddy-brown hair on
the top of the haughtily poised head, the perfectly fitting tailor
gown, with its aristocratic simplicity, costing so much more than
plebeian silks and satins; and he told himself that he was privileged
in having won such exalted beauty to ally itself with his humble
fortunes. Such a girl would shine as a duchess; and if marriageable
dukes had eyes to see with, and judgment to guide their choice, that
lovely auburn head would ere now have been crowned with a tiara of
family diamonds instead of waiting for the poor sprigs of orange
blossom which alone may adorn the brow of the solicitor’s bride.

“Shall we go for a stroll in the grounds?” asked Juliet, with a
restless air and an impatient shiver. “Perhaps it will be warmer out
of doors than it is here. We keep such miserable fires in this house.
I believe the grates were chosen with a view to burning the minimum
of coal.”

“I shall be delighted.”

Laura was absent on a visit to Yorkshire cousins, strong-minded like
herself, and with no pretensions to fashion. Lady Baldwin had retired
for her afternoon siesta. On Sundays she always read herself to