intolerable. These were terrible days, as smiling and smooth as of old
to all beholders, but with complete change within. Kate was as brave as
a lion in carrying out the _rôle_ she had marked out for herself. Even
when her heart failed her, she hid it, and went on stoutly in the almost
impossible way.

‘I will not interfere with them--I will not ask anything; but otherwise
there shall be no change,’ she said to herself, with something of the
arrogance of youth, ready to give all, and to believe that it could be
accepted without the return of anything. But sometimes it was very hard
for her to keep it up; sometimes the peculiar aspect of the scene would
fill her with sudden compunctions, sudden longings. Everything looked so
like the old, happy days, and yet it was all so different! Sometimes a
tone of her aunt’s voice, a movement or a look of Ombra, would bring
some old tender recollection back to her mind, and she would feel driven
to the last extremity to prevent herself from bursting into tears, or
making a wild appeal to them to let things be as they were again. But
she resisted all these impulses, saying to herself, with forlorn pride,
that the old love had never existed, that it had been but a delirium of
her own, and that consequently there was nothing to appeal to. She
resumed her German, and worked at it with tremendous zeal in the library
by herself. German is an admirable thing when one has been crossed in
love, or mortified in friendship. How often has it been resorted to in
such circumstances--and has always afforded a certain consolation! And
Kate plunged into parish business, to the great delight and relief of
Minnie Hardwick, and showed all her old love of the ‘human interest’ of
the village, the poor folk’s stories and their difficulties. She tired
herself out, and went back and put off her grey frock, and arrayed
herself, and sat down at the table with Ombra, languid and heavy-eyed,
and Mrs. Anderson, who greeted her with faint smiles. There was little
conversation at the table; and it grew less and less as the days went
on. These dinners were not amusing; and yet they had some interest too,
for each watched the other, wondering what she would next do or say.

I cannot tell exactly how long this lasted. It seemed to all three an
eternity. But one afternoon, when Kate came in from a long walk to the
other side of the parish, she found a letter conspicuously placed on the
hall-table, where she could not fail to see it. She trembled a little
when she saw her aunt’s handwriting. And there were fresh
carriage-wheels marking the way down the avenue; she had noticed this as
she came up. She sat down on the settle in the hall, where Mrs. Anderson
had placed herself on the day of their return, and read the following
letter with surprise, and yet without surprise. It gave her a shock as
of suddenness and strangeness; and yet she had known that it must happen
all along.

‘MY DEAREST KATE,

     ‘If you can think, when you read this, that I do not mean what I
     say, you will be very, very wrong. All these years I have loved
     you as if you were my own child. I could not have done
     otherwise--it is not in nature. But this is not what I want to say.
     We are going away. It is not with my will, and yet it is not
     against my will; for even to leave you alone in the house is better
     than forcing you to live this unnatural life. Good-bye, my dear,
     dear child! I cannot tell you--more’s the pity!--the circumstances
     that have made my poor Ombra bitter with everything, including her
     best friends; but she is very, very sorry, always, after she has
     said those dreadful words which she does not mean, but which seem
     to give a little relief to her suffering and bitterness. This is
     all I can tell you now. Some time or other you will know
     everything; and then, though you may blame us, you will pity us
     too. I want to tell you that it never was my wish to keep the
     secret from you--nor even Ombra’s. At least, she would have
     yielded, but the other party to the secret would not. Dearest
     child, forgive me! I go away from you, however, with a very sore
     heart, and I don’t know where we shall go, or what we shall do.
     Ever your most affectionate

‘A. ANDERSON.

     ‘P.S.--I have written to your uncle, that unavoidable
     circumstances, over which I have no control, compelled my leaving.
     I should prefer that you did not say anything to him about what
     these circumstances were.’

Kate sat still for some time after she had read her letter. She had
expected it--it was inevitable; but, oh! with what loneliness the house
began to fill behind her! She sat and gazed into the fire, dumb, bearing
the blow as she best could. She had expected it, and yet she never
believed it possible. She had felt sure that something would turn up to
reconcile them--that one day or another, sooner or later, they would all
fall upon each other’s necks, and be at one again. She was seized
suddenly by that fatal doubt of herself which always comes too late. Had
she done right, after all? People must be very confident of doing right
who have such important matters in hand. Had she sufficient reason? Was
it not mean and paltry of her, in her own house, to have resented a few
unconsidered words so bitterly? In her own house! And then she had been
the means of turning these two, whom she loved, whether they loved her
or not, out upon the world. Kate sat without stirring while the early
darkness fell. It crept about her imperceptibly, dimness, and silence,
and solitude. The whole great house was a vast desert of silence--not a
sound, not a voice, nothing audible but the fall of the ashes on the
hearth. The servants’ rooms were far away, shut off by double doors,
that no noises might disturb their mistress. Oh! what would not Kate
have given for the cheerful sound of the kitchen, that used to be too
audible at Shanklin, which her aunt always complained of. Her aunt! who
had been like her mother! And where was she now? She began to gasp and
sob hysterically, but could not cry. And there was nobody to take any
notice. She heard her own voice, but nobody else heard it. They were
gone! Servants, new servants, filled the house, noiseless creatures,
decorous and well-bred, shut in with double doors, that nobody might
hear any sound of them. And she alone!--a girl not twenty!--alone in a
house which could put up fifty people!--in a house where there was no
sound, no light, no warmth, no fire, no love!

She sat there till it was dark, and never moved. Why should she move?
There was no fireside to go to, no one whose presence made home. She was
as well on the settle in the hall as anywhere else. The darkness closed
over her. What did she care? She sat stupefied, with the letter in her
hand.

And there she was found when Mr. Spigot, the butler, came to light the
lamp. He gave a jump when he saw something in the corner of the settle.
And that something started too, and drew itself together, and said, ‘Is
it so late? I did not know!’ and put her hands across her dazzled eyes.

‘I beg you a thousand pardons, miss,’ said Spigot, confused, for he had
been whistling under his breath. ‘I didn’t know as no one wasn’t there.’

‘Never mind,’ said Kate. ‘Give me a candle, please. I suppose I must
have dropped asleep.’

Had she dropped asleep really ‘for sorrow?’--had she fainted and come to
again, nobody being the wiser? Kate could not tell--but there had been a
moment of unconsciousness one way or the other; and when she crept
upstairs with her candle, a solitary twinkle like a glow-worm in the big
staircase, she felt chilled to the bone, aching and miserable. She crept
upstairs into the warmth of her room, and, looking in the glass, saw
that her face was as the face of a ghost. Her hair had dropped down on
one side, and the dampness of the evening had taken all the curl out of
it. It fell straight and limp upon her colourless cheek. She went and
kneeled down before the fire and warmed herself, which seemed the first
necessity of all. ‘How cold one gets when one is unhappy!’ she said,
half aloud; and the murmur of her own voice sounded strange in her ear.
Was it the only voice that she was now to hear?

When Maryanne came with the candles, it was a comfort to Kate. She
started up from the fire. She had to keep up appearances--to look as if
nothing had happened. Maryanne, for her part, was running over with the
news.

‘Have you heard, miss, as Mrs. Anderson and Miss Ombra is gone?’ she
asked, as soon as decency would permit. The whole house had been moved
by this extraordinary departure, and the entire servants’ hall hung upon
Maryanne for news.

‘Yes,’ said Kate, calmly. ‘I thought I should be back in time, but I was
too late. I hope my aunt had everything comfortable. Maryanne, as I am
all alone, you can bring me up some tea here--I can’t take the trouble
to dine--alone.’

‘Very well, miss,’ said Maryanne; ‘it will be a deal comfortabler. If
Mrs. Spigot had known as the ladies was going, she would have changed
the dinner--but it was so sudden-like.’

‘Yes, it was very sudden,’ said Kate. And thus Maryanne carried no news
downstairs.

CHAPTER LIX.

Kate’s life seemed to stop at this point. For a few days she did not
know what she did. She would have liked to give in, and be ill, but
dared not, lest her aunt (who did not love her) should be compromised.
Therefore she kept up, and walked and went to the parish and chattered
with Minnie Hardwick, and even tried her German, though this latter
attempt was not very successful.

‘My aunt was called away suddenly on business,’ she explained to Mrs.
Hardwick.

‘What! and left you alone--quite alone in that great house?’ cried Mrs.
Hardwick. ‘It is not possible! How lonely for you! But I suppose she
will only be gone for a few days?’

‘I scarcely know. It is business that has taken her away, and nobody can
answer for business,’ said Kate, with an attempt at a laugh. ‘But the
servants are very good, and I shall do very well. I am not afraid of
being alone.’

‘Not afraid, I daresay, but dreadfully solitary. It ought not to be,’
said Mrs. Hardwick, in a tone of reproof. And the thought passed through
her mind that she had never quite approved of Mrs. Anderson, who seemed
to know much more of Bertie than was at all desirable, and, no doubt,
had attempted to secure him for that pale girl of hers. ‘Though what any
gentleman could see in her, or how anyone could so much as look at her
while Kate Courtenay was by, I don’t understand,’ she said, after
discussing the question in private.

‘Oh, mamma! I think she is so sweet and pretty,’ said Edith. ‘But I am
sure Bertie does not like her. Bertie avoided her--he was scarcely
civil. I am sure if there is anyone that Bertie admires it is Kate.’

Mrs. Hardwick shook her head.

‘Bertie knows very well,’ she said, ‘that Miss Courtenay is out of his
reach--delightful as she is, and everything we could desire--except that
she is rather too rich; but that is no reason why he should go and throw
himself away on some girl without a penny. I don’t put any faith in his
avoiding Miss Anderson. When a young man _avoids_ a young woman it is
much the same as when he seeks her society. But, Minnie, run away and
look after your club books; you are too young yet to hear such matters
discussed.’

‘Edith is only a year older than I am,’ said Minnie, within herself,
‘but then she is almost a married lady.’ And with this she comforted her
heart, which was not without its private flutters too.

And Kate kept on her way, very bravely holding up her little flag of
resolution. She sat in the room which they had all occupied together,
and had coals heaped upon the two fires, and could not get warm. The
silence of the place made her sick and faint. She got up and walked
about, in the hope of hearing at least her own step, and could not on
the soft carpet. When she coughed, it seemed to ring all through the
house. She got frightened when she caught a glimpse of herself in the
great mirror, and thought it was a ghost. She sent to Westerton for all
the novels that were to be had, and these were a help to her; but still,
to sit in a quiet room, with yourself now and then seen passing through
the glass like a thief, and nothing audible but the ashes falling from
the grate, is a terrible experience for a girl. She heard herself
breathing; she heard her cough echo down all the long galleries. She had
her stable dog washed and brushed, and made fit for good society, in the
hope that he would take to the drawing-room, and live with her, and give
her some one to speak to. But, after all, he preferred the stables,
being only a mongrel, without birth or breeding. This rather overcame
Kate’s bravery; but only once did she thoroughly break down. It was the
day after her aunt left, and, with a sudden recollection of
companionship and solace still remaining, she had said to Maryanne, ‘Go
and call old Francesca.’ ‘Francesca, miss!--oh! bless you, she’s gone
with her lady,’ said Maryanne; and Kate, who had not expected this,
broke down all at once, and had a fit of crying.

‘Never mind--it is nothing. I thought they meant to leave Francesca,’
she said, incoherently. Thus it became evident to her that they were
gone, and gone for ever. And Kate went back to her melancholy solitude,
and took up her novel; but when she had read the first page, she
stopped, and began to think. She had done no wrong to anyone. If there
was wrong, it had been done to her. She had tried even to resist all
feelings of resentment, and to look as if she had forgotten the wrong
done her. Yet it was she who was being punished, as if she were the
criminal. Nobody anywhere, whatever harm they might have done, had been
punished so sorely. Solitary confinement!--was not that the worst of
all--the thing that drives people mad?

Then Mr. Courtenay wrote in a state of great fret and annoyance. What
did Mrs. Anderson mean by leaving him in the lurch just then, she and
her daughter? She had not even given him an address, that he might write
to her and remonstrate (he had intended to supersede her in Spring, to
be sure, but he did not think it necessary to mention that); and here he
was in town, shut up with a threatening of bronchitis, and it was as
much as his life was worth to travel now. Couldn’t she get some one to
stay with her, or get along somehow until Lady Caryisfort came home?

Kate wrote him a brave little letter, saying that of course she could
get on--that he need not be at all troubled about her--that she was
quite happy, and should prefer being left as she was. When she had
written it, she lay down on the rug before the fire, and had a cry, and
then came to herself, and sent to ask if Minnie Hardwick might spend the
evening with her. Minnie’s report brought her mother up next morning,
who found that Kate had a bad cold, and sent for the doctor, and kept
her in bed; and all the fuss of this little illness--though Kate
believed she hated fuss--did her good. Her own room was pleasanter than
the drawing-room. It was natural to be alone there; and as she lay on
the sofa, and was read to by Minnie, there seemed at times a possibility
that life might mend. And next day and the next, though she recovered,
this companionship went on. Minnie was not very wise, but she chattered
about everything in heaven and earth. She talked of her brother--a
subject in which Kate could not help taking an interest, which was half
anger, half something else. She asked a hundred questions about
Florence--

‘Did you really see a great deal of Bertie? How funny that he should not
have told us! Men are so odd!’ cried Minnie. ‘If it had been I, I should
have raved about you for ever and ever!’

‘Because you are silly and--warm-hearted,’ said Kate, with a sigh. ‘Yes,
I think we saw them pretty often.’

‘Why do you say _them_?’

‘Why?--because the two were always together! We never expected to see
one without the other.’

‘Like your cousin and you,’ said innocent Minnie. And then she laughed.

‘Why do you laugh?’ said Kate.

‘Oh! nothing--an idea that came into my head. I have heard of two
sisters marrying two brothers, but never of two pair of cousins--it
would be funny.’

‘But altogether out of the question, as it happens,’ said Kate, growing
stately all at once.

‘Oh! don’t be angry. I did not mean anything. Was Bertie very attentive
to Miss Anderson in Florence? We wonder sometimes. For I am sure he
avoided her here; and mamma says she puts no faith in a gentleman
avoiding a lady. It is as bad as--what do _you_ think?--unless you would
rather not say,’ added Minnie, shyly; ‘or if you think I oughtn’t to
ask----’

‘I don’t know anything about Mr. Bertie Hardwick’s feelings,’ said Kate.
And then she added, with a little sadness which she could not quite
conceal, ‘Nor about anybody, Minnie. Don’t ask me, please. I am not
clever enough to find things out; and nobody ever confides in me.’

‘I am sure I should confide in you first of all!’ cried Minnie, with
enthusiasm. ‘Oh! when I recollect how much we used to be frightened for
you, and what a funny girl we thought you; and then to think I should
know you so well now, and have got so--fond of you--may I say so?’ said
the little girl, who was proud of her post.

Kate made no answer for a full minute, and then she said,

‘Minnie, you are younger than I am, a great deal younger----’

‘I am eighteen,’ said Minnie, mortified.

‘But I am nineteen and a half, and very, very old for my age. At your
age one does not know which is the real thing and which is the
shadow--there are so many shadows in this world; and sometimes you take
them for truth, and when you find it out it is hard.’

Minnie followed this dark saying with a puzzled little face.

‘Yes,’ she said, perplexed, ‘like Narcissus, you mean, and the dog that
dropped the bone. No, I don’t mean that--that is too--too--common-place.
Oh! did you ever see Bertie Eldridge’s yacht? I think I heard he had it
at the Isle of Wight. It was called the _Shadow_. Oh! I would give
anything to have a sail in a yacht!’

Ah! that was called the _Shadow_ too. Kate felt for a moment as if she
had found something out; but it was a delusion, an idea which she could
not identify--a Will-o’-the-Wisp, which looked like something, and was
nothing. ‘I have a shadow too,’ she murmured, half to herself. But
before Minnie’s wondering eyes and tongue could ask what it meant,
Spigot came solemnly to the door. He had to peer into the darkness to
see his young mistress on the sofa.

‘If you please, Miss Courtenay,’ he said, ‘there is a gentleman
downstairs wishes to see you; and he won’t take no answer as I can
offer. He says if you hear his name----’

‘What is his name?’ cried Kate. She did not know what she expected, but
it made her heart beat. She sat up, on her sofa, throwing off her wraps,
notwithstanding Minnie’s remonstrances. Who could it be?--or rather,
what?

‘The Reverend Mr. Sugden, Miss,’ said Mr. Spigot.

‘Mr. Sugden!’ She said the name two or three times over before she could
remember. Then she rose, and directed Spigot to light the candles. She
did not know how it was, but new vigour somehow seemed to come into her
veins.

‘Minnie,’ she said, ‘this is a gentleman who knows my aunt. He has come,
I suppose, about her business. I want you to stay just now; but if I put
up my hand so, will you run upstairs and wait for me in my room? Take
the book. You will be a true little friend if you will do this.’

‘Leave you alone!--with a gentleman!’ said Minnie. ‘But then of course
he must be an old gentleman, as he has come about business,’ she said to
herself; and added hastily, ‘Of course I will. And if you don’t put up
your hand--so--must I stay?’

‘I am sure to put it up,’ said Kate.

The room by this time was light and bright, and Spigot’s solemn step was
heard once more approaching. Kate placed herself in a large chair. She
looked as imposing and dignified as she could, poor child!--the solitary
mistress of her own house. But how strange it was to see the tall figure
come in--the watchful, wistful face she remembered so well! He held out
his large hand, in which her little one was drowned, just as he used to
do. He glanced round him in the same way, as if Ombra might be somewhere
about in the corners. His Shadow too! Kate could not doubt that. But
when she gave Minnie her instructions, she had taken it for granted
that there would have been certain preliminaries to the
conversation--inquiries about herself, or information about what she was
doing. But Mr. Sugden was full of excitement and anxiety. He took her
small hand into his big one, which swallowed it up, as we have said, and
he held it, as some men hold a button.

‘I hear they have left you,’ he said. ‘Tell me, is it true?’

‘Yes,’ said Kate, too much startled to give her signal, ‘they have left
me.’

‘And you don’t know where they have gone?’

She remembered now, and Minnie disappeared, curious beyond all
description. Then Kate withdrew her hand from that mighty grasp.

‘I don’t know where they have gone. Have you heard anything of them, Mr.
Sugden? Have you brought me, perhaps, a message?’

He shook his head.

‘I heard it all vaguely, only vaguely; but you know how I used to feel,
Miss Kate. I feel the same still. Though it is not what I should have
wished--I am ready to be a brother to her. Will you tell me all that has
passed since you went away?’

‘All that has passed?’

‘If you will, Miss Kate--as you would be kind to one who does not care
very much what happens to him! You are kind, I know--and you love her!’

The tears came to Kate’s eyes. She grew warm and red all over, throwing
off, as it were, in a moment, the palsy of cold and misery that had come
over her.

‘Yes,’ she said suddenly, ‘I love her,’ and cried. Mr. Sugden looked on,
not knowing why.

Kate felt herself changed as in a moment; she felt--nay, she was herself
again. What did it matter whether they loved her?--she loved them. That
was, after all, what she had most to do with. She dried her tears, and
she told her story, straight off, like a tale she had been taught,
missing nothing. And he drank it all in to the end, not missing a word.
When she had finished he sat silent, with a sombre countenance, and not
a syllable was spoken between them for ten minutes at least. Then he
said aloud, as if not talking, but thinking,

‘The question is which?’ Then he raised his eyes and looked at her.
‘Which?’ he repeated.

Kate grew pale again, and felt a choking in her throat. She bowed her
head, as if she were accepting her fate.

‘Mr. Bertie Hardwick!’ she said.

CHAPTER LX.

This strange little incident, which at the moment it was occurring
seemed to be perfectly natural, but as soon as that moment was over
became inexplicable, dropped into Kate’s life as a stone drops into
water. It made a curious commotion and a bustle for the moment, and
stirred faintly for a little while afterwards, and then disappeared, and
was thought of no more.

Mr. Sugden would not stay, he would not even eat in the house. He had
come down from town to the station six miles off, the nearest station
for Langton-Courtenay, and there he meant to return again as soon as he
had his information. Kate had been much troubled as to how she, in her
unprotected condition, was to ask him to stay; but when she found out he
would not stay, an uncomfortable sensation as of want of hospitality
came over her. But when he was actually gone, and Minnie Hardwick called
back, somehow the entire incident appeared like a dream, and it seemed
impossible that anything important had happened. Minnie was not curious;
business was to her a sacred word, which covered all difficulties. The
Curate was not old, as she had supposed; but otherwise being a friend of
Mrs. Anderson’s, and involved in her affairs, his sudden visit seemed
perfectly natural. Just so men would come down from town, and be shut up
with her father for an hour or two, and then disappear; and Kate as a
great lady, as an heiress and independent person, no doubt must have the
same kind of visitors.

Kate, however, thought a great deal of it that night--could not sleep,
indeed, for thinking of it; but less the next morning, and still less
the day after, till at length the tranquillity settled back into its old
stillness. Mr. Sugden had done her good, so far that he had roused her
to consciousness of a hearty sentiment in herself, independent of
anything from without--the natural affection which was her own
independent possession, and not a reflection of other people’s love.
What though they did not love her even? she loved them; and as soon as
she became conscious of this, she was saved from the mental harm that
might have happened to her. It gave Kate pain when day after day passed
on, and no word came from those who had departed from her so suddenly.
But then she was young, and had been brought up in the persuasion that
everything was likely to turn out right at the end, and that permanent
unhappiness was a very rare thing. She was not alarmed about the safety
of those who had deserted her; they were two, nay, three people
together; they were used to taking care of themselves; so far as she
knew, they had money enough and all that was required. And then her own
life was so strange; it occupied her almost like a fairy-life. She
thought she had never heard of any one so forlorn and solitary. The
singularity of her position did her good. She was half proud, half
amused by it; she smiled when her visitors would remark upon her
singular loneliness--‘Yes, it seems strange to you, I suppose,’ she
said; but I don’t mind it.’ It was a small compensation, but still it
was a kind of compensation, indemnifying her for some at least of her
trouble. The Andersons had disappeared into the great darkness of the
world; but some day they would turn up again and come back to her and
make explanations. And although she had been impressed by Mr. Sugden’s
visit, she was not actually anxious about the future of her aunt and
cousin; some time or other things naturally would put themselves right.

This, however, did not prevent the feeling of her loneliness from being
terrible to her--insupportable; but it removed all complications from
her feelings, and made them simple. And thus she lived on for months
together, as if in a dream, always assuring Mr. Courtenay that she did
very well, that she wanted nothing, getting a little society in the
Rectory with the Hardwicks, and with some of her county neighbours who
had called upon her. Minnie got used to the carriage, and to making
expeditions into Westerton, the nearest town, and liked it. And
strangely and stilly as ever Châtelaine lived in an old castle, in such
a strange maiden seclusion lived Kate.

Where had the others gone? She ascertained before long that they were
not at Shanklin--the Cottage was still let to ‘very nice people,’ about
whom Lucy Eldridge wrote very enthusiastic letters to her
cousin--letters which Kate would sometimes draw her innocent moral from,
not without a little faint pain, which surprised her in the midst of all
graver troubles. She pointed out to Minnie how Lucy Eldridge had
rejected the very idea of being friendly with the new comers, much less
admitting them to a share in the place Kate held in her heart. ‘Whereas
now you see I am forgotten altogether,’ Kate said, with a conscious
melancholy that was not disagreeable to her. Minnie protested that with
her such a thing could never happen--it was impossible; and Kate smiled
sadly, and shook her head in her superior knowledge. She took Minnie
into her intimacy with a sense of condescension. But the friendship did
her good. And Mrs. Hardwick was very kind to her. They were all anxious
to ‘be of use’ to the heiress, to help her through her melancholy hours.

When Bertie came down for his next flying visit, she manœuvred so
that she succeeded in avoiding him, though he showed no desire this time
to avoid her. But, Kate said to herself, this was something that she
could not bear. She could not see him as if he were an indifferent
stranger, when she knew well that he could reveal to her everything she
wanted to know, and set the tangle right at last. He knew where they
were without doubt--he knew everything. She could not meet him calmly,
and shake hands with him, and pretend she did not remember the past. She
was offended with him, both for their sake and her own--for Ombra’s
sake, because of the secret; and for her own, because of certain little
words and looks which were an insult to her from Ombra’s lover. No, she
could not see him. She had a bad headache when he came with his mother
to call; she was not able to go out when she was asked to the Rectory.
She saw him only at church, and did nothing but bow when he hurried to
speak to her in the churchyard. No, that she would not put up with.
There was even a certain contempt mingled with her soreness. Mrs.
Anderson had put all the blame upon him--the ‘other party to the
secret;’ while he, poor creature, would not even take the responsibility
upon his own shoulders bravely, but blamed Ombra. Well! well! Kate
resolved that she would keep her solitude unbroken, that she would allow
no intrusion upon her of all the old agitations that once had made her
unhappy. She would not consent to allow herself to be made unhappy any
longer, or even to think of those who had given her so much pain.

Unfortunately, however, after she had made this good resolution, she
thought of nothing else, and puzzled herself over the whole business,
and especially Bertie’s share in it, night and day. He would suddenly
start up into her mind when she was thinking of something else, with a
glow over his face, and anxious gleam in his eyes, as she had seen him
at the church door. Perhaps, then, though so late, he had meant to
explain. Perhaps he intended to lay before her what excuses there might
be--to tell her how one thing followed another, how they had been led
into clandestine ways.

Kate would make out an entire narrative to herself and then would stop
short suddenly, and ask herself what she meant by it? It was not for her
to explain for them, but for them to explain to her. But she did not
want to think badly of them. Even when her wounds had been deepest, she
did not wish to think unkindly; and it would have given her a kind of
forlorn pleasure to be able to find out their excuses beforehand. This
occupied her many an hour when she sat alone in the stillness, to which
she gradually became accustomed. After awhile her own reflection in the
glass no longer struck her as looking like a ghost or a thief; she grew
used to it. And then the way in which she threw herself into the parish
did one good to see. Minnie Hardwick felt that Kate’s activity and
Kate’s beneficence took away her breath. She filled the cottages with
what Mrs. Hardwick felt to be luxuries, and disapproved of. She rushed
into Westerton continually, to buy things for the old women. One had an
easy-chair, another a carpet, another curtains to keep out the wind from
the draughty cottage room.

‘My dear, you will spoil the people; these luxuries are quite out of
their reach. We ought not to demoralize them,’ said the clergywoman,
thinking of the awful consequences, and of the expectations and
discontents that would follow.

‘If old Widow Morgan belonged to me--if she was my grandmother, for
instance,’ said revolutionary Kate, ‘would there be anything in the
world too good for her? We should hunt the draughts out of every corner,
and pad everything with velvet. And I suppose an old woman of eighty in
a cottage feels it just as much.’

Mrs. Hardwick was silenced, but not convinced; she was, indeed, shocked
beyond measure at the idea of Widow Morgan requiring as many comforts as
Kate’s grandmother. ‘The girl has no discrimination whatever; she does
not see the difference; it is of no use trying to explain to her,’ she
said, with a troubled countenance. But, except these little encounters,
there was no real disagreement between them. Bertie Hardwick’s family,
indeed, took an anxious interest in Kate. They were not worldly-minded
people, but they could not forget that their son had been thrown a great
deal into the society of a great heiress, both in the Isle of Wight and
in Italy. The knowledge that he was in Kate’s vicinity had indeed made
them much more tolerant, though nobody said so, of his wanderings. They
had not the heart, they said, to separate him from his cousin, to whom
he was so much attached; but behind this there was perhaps lurking
another reason. Not that they would ever have forced their son’s
affections, or advised, under any circumstances, a mercenary marriage;
but only, all other things being so suitable--Mrs. Hardwick, who liked
to manage everybody, and did it very well, on the whole, took Kate into
her hands with a glow of satisfaction. She would have liked to form her
and mould her, and make her all that a woman in her important position
ought to be; and, of course, no one could tell what might happen in the
future. It was well to be prepared for all.

Mr. Courtenay, for his part, though not quite so happy about his niece,
and troubled by disagreeable pricks of conscience in respect to her,
made all right by promises. He would come in a week or two--as soon as
his cold was better--when he had got rid of the threatening of the gout,
which rather frightened his doctor. Finally, he promised without doubt
that he would come in the Easter recess, and make everything
comfortable. But in the Easter recess it became absolutely necessary for
him, for important private affairs, to go down to the Duke of
Dorchester’s marine palace, where there were some people going whom it
was absolutely essential that he should meet. And thus it came to pass
that Kate spent her twentieth birthday all alone at Langton-Courtenay.
Nobody knew or remembered that it was her birthday. There was not so
much as an old servant about the place to think of it. Maryanne, to be
sure, might have remembered, but did not until next morning, when she
broke forth with, ‘La, Miss Kate!’ into good wishes and regrets, which
Kate, with a flushed face and sore heart, put a stop to at once. No, no
one knew. It is a hard thing, even when one is old, to feel that such
domestic anniversaries have fallen into oblivion, and no one cares any
longer for the milestones of our life; but when one is young--!

Kate went about all day long with this secret bursting in her heart. She
would not tell it for pride, though, if she had, all the Hardwick
family, at least, would have been ready enough with kisses and
congratulations. She carried it about with her like a pain that she was
hiding. ‘It is my birthday,’ she said to herself, when she paused before
the big glass, and looked at her own solitary figure, and tried to make
a little forlorn fun of herself; ‘good morning, Kate, I will give you a
present. It will be the only one you will get to-day,’ she said,
laughing, and nodding at her representative in the glass, whose eyes
were rather red; ‘but I will not wish you many returns, for I am sure
you don’t want them. Oh! you poor, poor girl!’ she cried, after a
moment--‘I am so sorry for you! I don’t think there is anyone so
solitary in all the world.’ And then Kate and her image both sat down
upon the floor and cried.

But in the afternoon she went to Westerton, with Minnie Hardwick all
unconscious beside her in the carriage, and bought herself the present
she had promised. It was a tiny little cross, with the date upon it,
which Minnie marvelled at much, wondering if it was to herself that this
memento was to be presented. Kate had a strong inclination to place the
words ‘_Infelicissimo giorno_’ over the date, but stopped, feeling that
it might look romantic; but it was the unhappiest day to her--the worst,
she thought, she had ever yet had to bear.

When she came home, however, a letter was put into her hands. It was
from Mrs. Anderson at last.

CHAPTER LXI.

Kate’s existence, however, was too monotonous to be dwelt upon for ever,
and though all that can be afforded to the reader is a glimpse of other
scenes, yet there are one or two such glimpses which may help him to
understand how other people were affected by this complication of
affairs. Bertie Hardwick went up to London after that second brief visit
at the Rectory, when Miss Courtenay had so successfully eluded seeing
him, with anything but comfortable feelings. He had never quite known
how she looked upon himself, but now it became apparent to him that
whatever might be the amount of knowledge which she had acquired, it had
been anything but favourable to him. How far he had a right to Kate’s
esteem, or whether, indeed, it was a right thing for him to be anxious
about it, is quite a different question. He was anxious about it. He
wanted to stand well in the girl’s eyes. He had known her all his life,
he said to himself. Of course they could only be acquaintances, not even
friends, in all probability, so different must their lines of life be;
but still it was hard to feel that Kate disliked him, that she thought
badly of him. He had no right to care, but he did care. He stopped in
his work many and many a day to think of it. And then he would lay down
his book or his pen, and gnaw his nails (a bad habit, which his mother
vainly hoped she had cured him of), and think--till all the law went out
of his head which he was studying.

This was very wrong, and he did not do it any more than he could help;
but sometimes the tide of rising thought was too much for him. Bertie
was settling to work, as he had great occasion to do. He had lost much
time, and there was not a moment to be lost in making up for it. Within
the last three months, indeed, his careless life had sustained a change
which filled all his friends with satisfaction. It was but a short time
to judge by, but yet, if ever man had seen the evil of his ways, and set
himself, with true energy, to mend them, it was Bertie, everybody
allowed. He had left his fashionable and expensive cousin the moment
they had arrived in London. Instead of Bertie Eldridge’s fashionable
quarters, in one of the streets off Piccadilly, which hitherto he had
shared, he had established himself in chambers in the Temple, up two
pair of stairs, where he was working, it was reported, night and day.
Bertie Eldridge, indeed, had so frightened all his people by his
laughing accounts of the wet towels which bound the other Bertie’s head
of nights, while he laboured at his law books, that the student received
three several letters on the subject--one from each of his aunts, and
one from his mother.

‘My dear, it goes to my heart to hear how you are working,’ the latter
said. ‘I thank God that my own boy is beginning to see what is necessary
to hold his place in life. But not too much, dearest Bertie, not too
much. What would it avail me if my son came to be Lord Chancellor, and
lost his health, or even his life, on the way?’

This confusing sentence did not make Bertie ridicule the writer, for he
was, strange to say, very fond of his mother, but he wrote her a merry
explanation, and set her fears at rest. However, though he did not
indulge in wet towels, he had begun to work with an energy no one
expected of him. He had a motive. He had seen the necessity, as his
mother said. To wander all over the world with Bertie Eldridge, whose
purse was carelessly free, but whose way it was, unconsciously, while
intending to save his friends from expense, to draw them into greater
and ever greater outlay, was not a thing which could be done, or which
it would be at all satisfactory to do for life. And many very grave
thoughts had come to Bertie on the journey home. Perhaps he had grown
just a little disgusted with his cousin, who saw everything from his own
point of view, and could not enter into the feelings and anxieties of a
poorer man.

‘Oh! bother! All will come right in the end,’ he would say, when his
cousin pointed out to him the impossibility for himself of the
situation, so far as he himself was concerned.

‘How can it come right for me?’ Hardwick had asked.

‘How you do worry!’ said Bertie Eldridge. ‘Haven’t we always shared
everything? And why shouldn’t we go on doing so? I may be kept out of
it, of course, for years and years, but not for ever. Hang it, Bertie,
you know all must come right in the end; and haven’t we shared
everything all our lives?’

This is a sort of speech which it is very difficult to answer. It is so
much easier for the richer man to feel benevolent and liberal than for
the poorer man to understand his ground of gratitude in such a
partnership. Bertie Eldridge, had, no doubt, shared many of his luxuries
with his cousin. He had shared his yacht for instance--a delight which
Bertie Hardwick could by no means have procured himself--but, while
doing this, he had drawn the other into such waste of time and money as
he never could have been tempted to otherwise. Bertie Hardwick knew
that had he not ‘shared everything’ with his cousin he would have been a
wealthier man: and how then could he be grateful for that community of
goods which the other Bertie was so lavishly conscious of?

‘He can have spent nothing while we were together,’ the latter was
always saying. ‘He must have saved, in short, out of the allowance my
uncle gives him.’

Bertie Hardwick knew that the case was very different, but he could not
be so ungenerous as to insist upon this in face of his cousin’s
delightful sense of liberality. He held his tongue, and this silence did
not make him more amiable. In short, the partnership had been broken, as
partnerships of the kind are generally broken, with a little discomfort
on both sides.

Bertie Eldridge continued his pleasant, idle life--did what he liked,
and went where he liked, though, perhaps, with less freedom than of old;
while Bertie Hardwick retired to Pump Court and worked--as the other
said--night and day. He was hard at work one of those Spring afternoons
which Kate spent down at Langton. His impulse towards labour was new,
and, as yet, it had many things to struggle against. He had not been
brought up to work; he had been an out-of-door lad, fond of any pursuit
that implied open air and exercise. Most young men are so brought up
now-a-days, whether it is the best training for them or not; and since
he took his degree, which had not been accompanied by any distinction,
he had been yachting, travelling, amusing himself--none of which things
are favourable to work in Pump Court, upon a bright April afternoon. His
window was open, and the very air coming in tantalized and tempted him.
It plucked at his hair; it disordered his papers; it even blew the book
close which he was bending over. ‘Confound the wind!’ said Bertie. But,
somehow, he could not shut the window. How fresh it blew! even off the
questionable Thames, reminding the solitary student of walks and rides
through the budding woods; of the first days of the boating season; of
all the delights of the opening year; confound the wind! He opened his
book, and went at it again with a valorous and manful heart, a heart
full of anxieties, yet with hope in it too, and, what is almost better
than hope--determination. The book was very dry, but Bertie applied to
it that rule which is so good in war--so good in play--capital for
cricket and football, in the hunting-field, and wherever daring and
patience are alike necessary--_he would not be beat_! It is, perhaps,
rather a novel doctrine to apply to a book about conveyancing--or, at
least, such a use of it was novel to Bertie. But it answered all the
same.

And it was just as he was getting the mastery of his own mind, and
forgetting, for the moment, the fascinations of the sunshine and the
errant breeze, that some one came upstairs with a resounding hasty
footstep and knocked at his door. ‘It’s Bertie,’ he said to himself,
with a sigh, and opened to the new-comer. Now he was beat, but not by
the book--by fate, and the evil angels--not by any fault of his own.

Bertie Eldridge came in, bringing a gust of fresh air with him. He
seated himself on his cousin’s table, scorning the chairs. His brow was
a little clouded, though he was like one of the butterflies who toil
not, neither do they spin.

‘By Jove! to see you there grinding night and day, makes a man open his
eyes--you that were no better than other people. What do you think
you’ll ever make of it, old fellow? Not the Woolsack, mind you--I give
in to you a great deal, but you’re not clever enough for that.’

‘I never thought I was,’ said the other, laughing, but not with
pleasure; and then there was a pause, and I leave it to the reader to
judge which were the different interlocutors in the dialogue which
follows, for to continue writing ‘Bertie,’ and ‘the other Bertie,’ is
more than human patience can bear.

‘You said you had something to say to me--out with it! I have a hundred
things to do. You never were so busy in your life as I am. Indeed, I
don’t suppose you know what being occupied means.’

‘Of course it is the old subject I want to talk of. What could it be
else! What is to be done? You know everything that has happened as well
as I do. Busy! If you knew what my reflections are early and late,
waking and sleeping----’

‘I think I can form an idea. Has something new occurred--or is it the
old question, the eternal old business, which you never thought of,
unfortunately, till it was too late?’

‘It is no business of yours to taunt me, nor is it a friend’s office. I
am driven to my wit’s ends. For anything I can see, things may go on as
they are for a dozen years.’

‘Everybody must have felt so from the beginning. How you could be so
mad, both she and you; you most, in one way, for you knew the world
better; she most, in another, for it is of more importance to a woman.’

‘Shut up, Bertie. I won’t have any re-discussion of that question. The
thing is, what is to be done now? I was such a fool as to write to her
about going down to Langton, at my father’s desire; and now I dare not
go, or she will go frantic. Besides, she says it must be acknowledged
before long: she must do it, if I can’t.’

‘Good God!’

‘What is there to be horrified about? It was all natural. The thing is,
what is to be done? If she would keep quiet, all would be right. I am
sure her mother could manage everything. One place is as good as
another to live in. Don’t look at me like that. I am distracted--going
mad--and you won’t give me any help.’

‘The question is, what help can I give?’

‘It is easy enough--as easy as daylight. If I were to go, it would only
make us both miserable, and lead to imprudences. I know it would. But if
you will do it for me----’

‘Do you love her, Bertie?’

‘Love her! Good heavens! after all the sacrifices I have made! Look at
me, as I am, and ask me if I love her! But what can I do? If I speak now
we are all ruined; but if she could only be persuaded to wait--only to
wait, perhaps for a few days, or a few months----’

‘Or a few years! And to wait for what? How can you expect any good to
come to you, when you build everything upon your----’

‘Shut up, I tell you! Is it my fault? He ought to treat me differently.
I never would have entertained such a thought, but for---- Bertie,
listen to me. Will you go? They will hear reason from you.’

‘They ought not to hear reason. It is a cowardly shame! Yes, I don’t
mind your angry looks--it is a shame! You and I have been too long
together to mince matters between ourselves. I tell you I never knew
anything more cowardly and wretched. It is a shame--a----’

‘The question is, not what you think of it,’ said the other sullenly,
‘but will you go?’

‘I suppose I must,’ was the reply.

When the visitor left, half an hour later, after more conversation of
this same strain, can it be wondered at if Bertie Hardwick’s studies
were no longer so steady as they had been? He shut up his books at last,
and went out and walked towards the river. It was black and glistening,
and very full with the Spring rains. The tide was coming up--the river
was crowded with vessels of all kinds. Bertie walked to Chelsea, and got
a boat there, and went up to Richmond with the tide. But he did not go
to the ‘Star and Garter,’ where his cousin was dining with a brilliant
party. He walked back again to his chambers, turning over in his tired
brain a hundred anxieties. And that night he did sit up at work, and for
half an hour had recourse to the wet towel. Not because he was working
day and night, but because these anxieties had eaten the very heart out
of his working day.

CHAPTER LXII.

From Pump Court, in the Temple, it is a long way to the banks of a
little loch in Scotland, surrounded by hills, covered with heather, and
populous with grouse--that is, of course, in the season. The grouse in
this early Summer were but babies, chirping among the big roots of the
ling, like barndoor chickens; the heather was not purple but only
greening over through the grey husks of last year’s bloom. The gorse
blossoms were forming; the birch-trees shaking out their folded leaves a
little more and more day by day against the sky, which was sometimes so
blue, and sometimes so leaden. At that time of the year, or at any
other, it is lovely at Loch Arroch. Seated on the high bank behind the
little inn, on the soft grass, which is as green as emeralds, but soft
as velvet, you can count ten different slopes of hills surrounding the
gleaming water, which receives them all impartially; ten distinct
ridges, all as various as so many sportsmen, distinct in stature and
character--from the kindly birch-crowned heads in front here, away to
the solemn distant altitudes, folded in snow-plaids or cloud-mantles,
and sometimes in glorious sheen of sunset robes, that dazzle you--which
fill up the circle far away. The distant giants are cleft into three
peaks, and stand still to have their crowns and garments changed, with a
benign patience, greeting you across the loch. There are no tourists,
and few strangers, except the fishermen, who spend their days not
thinking of you or of the beauties of nature, tossed in heavy cobbles
upon the stormy loch, or wading up to their waist in ice-cold pools of
the river. The river dashes along its wild channel through the glen,
working through rocks, and leaping precipitous corners, shrouding
itself, like a coy girl, with the birchen tresses which stream over it,
till it comes to another loch--a big silvery clasp upon its foaming
chain. Among these woods and waters man is still enough; but Nature is
full of commotion. She sings about all the hillsides in a hundred burns,
with delicatest treble; she makes her own bass under the riven rocks,
among the foam of the greater streams; she mutters over your head with
deep, sonorous melancholy utterance in the great pine-trees, and
twitters in the leaflets of the birch. Lovely birks!--sweetest of all
the trees of the mountains! Never were such haunts for fairies, or for
mountain girls as agile and as fair as those sweet birchen woods. ‘Stern
and wild,’ do you say? And surely we say it, for so Sir Walter said
before us. But what an exquisite idea was that of Nature--what a sweet,
fantastic conceit, just like her wayward wealth of resource, to clothe
the slopes of those rude hills with the Lady of the Woods! She must have
laughed with pleasure, like a child, but with tears of exquisite poet
satisfaction in her eyes, when she first saw the wonderful result. And
as for you poor people who have never seen Highland loch or river shine
through the airy foliage, the white-stemmed grace and lightness of a
birch-wood, we are sorry for you, but we will not insult your ignorance;
for, soft in your ear, the celebrated Mr. Cook, and all his satellites
who make up tours in the holiday season, have never, Heaven be praised!
heard of Loch Arroch; and long may it be before the British tourist
finds out that tranquil spot.

I cannot tell how Mrs. Anderson and her daughter found it out. The last
Consul, it is true, had been from Perthshire, but that of itself gave
them little information. They had gone to Edinburgh first, and then,
feeling that scarcely sufficiently out of the way, had gone further
north, until at last Kinloch-Arroch received them; and they stayed
there, they could not tell why, partly because the people looked so
kind. The note which Kate received on her birthday had no date, and the
post-mark on it was of a distant place, that no distinct clue might be
given to their retreat; but Ombra always believed, though without the
slightest ground for it, that this note of her mother’s, like all her
other injudicious kindnesses to Kate, had done harm, and been the means
of betraying them. For it was true that they were now in a kind of
hiding, these two women, fearing to be recognised, not wishing to see
any one, for reasons which need not be dwelt upon here. They had left
Langton-Courtenay with a miserable sense of friendlessness and
loneliness, and yet it had been in some respects a relief to them to get
away; and the stillness of Loch Arroch, its absolute seclusion, and the
kind faces of the people they found there, all concurred in making them
decide upon this as their resting-place. They were to stay all the
summer, and already they were known to everybody round. Old Francesca
had already achieved a great _succès_ in the Perthshire village. The
people declared that they understood her much better than if she had
been ‘ane o’ thae mincing English.’ She was supposed to be French, and
Scotland still remembers that France was once her auld and kind alley.
The women in their white mutches wondered a little, it is true, at the
little old Italian’s capless head, and knot of scanty hair; but her
kind little brown face, and her clever rapid ways, took them by storm.
When she spoke Italian to her mistress they gathered round her in
admiration. ‘Losh! did you ever hear the like o’ that?’ they cried, with
hearty laughs, half restrained by politeness--though half of them spoke
Gaelic, and saw nothing wonderful in that achievement.

Ombra, the discontented and unhappy, had never in her life before been
so gentle and so sweet. She was not happy still, but for the moment she
was penitent, and subdued and at peace, and the admiration and the
interest of their humble neighbours pleased her. Mrs. Anderson had given
a description of her daughter to the kind landlady of the little inn,
which did not tally with the circumstances which the reader knows; but
probably she had her own reasons for that, and the tale was such as
filled everybody with sympathy. ‘You maunna be doon-hearted, my bonnie
lamb,’ the old woman would say to her; and Ombra would blush with
painful emotion, and yet would be in her heart touched and consoled by
the homely sympathy. Ah! if those kind people had but known how much
harder her burden really was! But yet to know how kindly all these poor
stranger folk felt towards them was pleasant to the two women, and they
clung together closer than ever in the enforced quiet. They were very
anxious, restless, and miserable, and yet for a little while they were
as nearly happy as two women could be. This is a paradox which some
women will understand, but which I cannot pause to explain.

Things were going on in this quiet way, and it was the end of May, a
season when as yet few even of the fishers who frequent that spot by
nature, and none of the wise wanderers who have discovered Loch Arroch
had begun to arrive, when one evening a very tall man, strong and heavy,
trudged round the corner into the village, with his knapsack over his
shoulders. He was walking through the Highlands alone at this early
period of the year. He put his knapsack down on the bench outside the
door, and came into the little hall, decorated with glazed cases, in
which stuffed trout of gigantic proportions still seemed to swim among
the green, green river weeds, to ask kind Mrs. Macdonald, the landlady,
if she could put him up. He was ‘a soft-spoken gentleman,’ courteous,
such as Highlanders love, and there was a look of sadness about him
which moved the mistress of the ‘Macdonald Arms.’ But all at once, while
he was talking to her, he started wildly, made a dart at the stair,
which Francesca at that moment was leisurely ascending, and upset, as he
passed, little Duncan, Mrs. Macdonald’s favourite grandchild.

‘The man’s gane gyte!’ said the landlady.

Francesca for her part took no notice of the stranger. If she saw him,
she either did not recognise him, or thought it expedient to ignore him.
She went on, carrying high in front of her a tray full of newly-ironed
fine linen, her own work, which she was carrying from the kitchen. The
stranger stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her, with his face
lifted to the light, which streamed from a long window opposite. There
was an expression in his countenance (Mrs. Macdonald said afterwards)
which was like a picture. He had found what he sought!

‘That is old Francesca,’ he said, coming back to her, ‘Mrs. Anderson’s
maid. Then, of course, Mrs. Anderson is here.’

‘Ou ay, sir, the leddies are here,’ said Mrs. Macdonald--‘maybe they are
expecting you? There was something said a while ago about a gentleman--a
brother, or some near friend to the young goodman.’

‘The young goodman?’

‘Ou ay, sir--him that’s in India, puir gentleman!--at sic a time, too,
when he would far rather be at hame. But ye’ll gang up the stair?
Kath’rin, take the gentleman up the stair--he’s come to visit the
leddies--and put him into No. 10 next door. Being so near the leddies, I
never put no man there that I dinna ken something aboot. You’ll find
Loch Arroch air, sir, has done the young mistress good.’

The stranger followed upstairs, with a startled sense of other wonders
to come; and thus it happened that, without warning, Mr. Sugden suddenly
walked into the room where Ombra lay on a sofa by the fireside, with her
mother sitting by. Both the ladies started up in dismay. They were so
bewildered that neither could speak for a moment. The blood rushed to
Ombra’s face in an overpowering blush. He thought he had never seen her
look so beautiful, so strange--he did not know how; and her look of
bewildered inquiry and suspicion suddenly showed him what he had never
thought of till that moment--that he had no right to pry into their
privacy--to hunt her, as it were, into a corner--to pursue her here.

‘Mr. Sugden!’ Mrs. Anderson cried in dismay; and then she recovered her
prudence, and held out her hand to him, coming between him and Ombra.
‘What a very curious meeting this is!--what an unexpected pleasure! Of
all places in the world, to meet a Shanklin friend at Loch Arroch!
Ombra, do not disturb yourself, dear; we need not stand on ceremony with
such an old friend as Mr. Sugden. My poor child has a dreadful cold.’

And then he took her hand into his own--Ombra’s hand--which he used to
sit and watch as she worked--the whitest, softest hand. It felt so small
now, like a shadow, and the flush, had gone from her face. He seemed to
see nothing but those eyes, watching him with fear and suspicion--eyes
which distrusted him, and reminded him that he had no business here.

And he sat down by the sofa, and talked ordinary talk, and told them of
Shanklin, which he had left. He had been making a pedestrian tour in
Scotland. Yes, it was early, but he did not mind the weather, and the
time suited him. It was a surprise to him to see Francesca, but he had
heard that Mrs. Anderson had left Langton-Courtenay----

‘Yes,’ she said, briefly, without explanation; and added--‘We were
travelling, like you, when Ombra fell in love with this place. You must
have seen it to perfection if you walked down the glen to-day--the
Glencoe Hills were glorious to-day. Which is your next stage? I am
afraid Mrs. Macdonald has scarcely room----’

‘Oh! yes, she has given me a room for to-night,’ he said; and he saw the
mother and daughter look at each other, and said to himself, in an agony
of humiliation, what a fool he had been--what an intrusive, impertinent
fool!

When he took his leave, Mrs. Anderson went after him to the door; she
asked, with trepidation in her voice, how long he meant to stay. This
was too much for the poor fellow; he led the way along the passage to
the staircase window, lest Ombra should hear through the half-open door.

‘Mrs. Anderson,’ he said hoarsely, ‘once you promised me if she should
ever want a brother’s help or a brother’s care--not that it is what I
could have wished----’

‘Mr. Sugden, this is ridiculous; I can take care of my own child. You
have no right to come and hunt us out, when you know--when you can see
that we wish--to be private.’ Then, with a sudden change, she
added--‘Oh, you are very good--I am sure you are very good, but she
wants for nothing. Dear Mr. Sugden, if you care for her or me, go away.

‘I will go away to-morrow,’ he said, with a deep sigh of disappointment
and resignation.

She looked out anxiously at the sky. It was clouding over; night was
coming on--there was no possibility of sending him away that night.

‘Mr. Sugden,’ she said, wringing her hands, ‘when a gentleman thrusts
himself into anyone’s secrets he is bound not to betray them. You will
hear news here, which I did not wish to be known at present--Ombra is
married.’

‘Married!’ he said, with a groan, which he could not restrain.

‘Yes, her husband is not able to be with her. We are waiting till he can
join us--till he can make it public. You have found this out against our
will; you must give me your word not to betray us.’

‘Why should I betray you?’ he said; ‘to whom? I came, not knowing. Since
ever I knew her I have been her slave, you know. I will be so now. Is
she--happy, at least?’

‘She is very happy,’ said Mrs. Anderson; and then her courage failed
her, and she cried. She did not burst into tears--such an expression
does not apply to women of her age. The tears which were, somehow, near
the surface, fell suddenly, leaving no traces. ‘Everything is not
so--comfortable as might be wished,’ she said, ‘but, so far as _that_
goes, she is happy.’

‘May I come again?’ he said. His face had grown very long and pale; he
looked like a man who had just come back from a funeral. ‘Or would you
rather I went away at once?’

She gave another look at the sky, which had cleared; night was more
distant than it had seemed ten minutes ago. And Mrs. Anderson did not
think that it was selfishness on her part to think of her daughter
first. She gave him her hand and pressed his, and said--

‘You are the kindest, the best friend. Oh, for her sake, go!’

And he went away with a heavy heart, striding over the dark unknown
hills. It was long past midnight before he got shelter--but what did
that matter? He would have done much more joyfully for her sake. But his
last hope seemed gone as he went along that mountain way. He had hoped
always to serve her sometime or other, and now he could serve her no
more!

CHAPTER LXIII.

This was the reason why Kate heard no more from Mr. Sugden. He knew, and
yet he did not know. That which had been told him was very different
from what he had expected to hear. He had gone to seek a deserted
maiden, and he had found a wife. He had gone with some wild hope of
being able to interpose on her behalf, ‘as her brother would have done,’
and bring her false lover back to her--when, lo! he found that he was
intruding upon sacred domestic ground, upon the retreat of a wife whose
husband was somewhere ready, no doubt, to defend her from all intrusion.
This confounded him for the first moment. He went away, as we have said,
without a word, asking no explanation. What right had he to any
explanation? Probably Ombra herself, had she known what his mission and
what his thoughts were, would have been furious at the impertinence. But
her mother judged him more gently, and he, poor fellow, knew in his own
soul how different his motives were from those of intrusion or
impertinence.

When he came to the homely, lonely little house, where he found shelter
in the midst of the night, he stopped there in utter languor, still
confused by his discovery and his failure. But when he came to himself
he was not satisfied. Next day, in the silence and loneliness of the
mountains, he mused and pondered on this subject, which was never absent
from his mind ten minutes together. He walked on and on upon the road he
had traversed in the dark the night before, till he came to the point
where it commanded the glen below, and where the descent to Loch Arroch
began. He saw at his feet the silvery water gleaming, the loch, the far
lines of the withdrawing village roofs, and that one under which she
was. At the sight the Curate’s mournful heart yearned over the woman he
loved. Why was she there alone, with only her mother, and she a wife?
What was there that was not ‘exactly comfortable,’ as Mrs. Anderson had
said?

The result of his musing was that he stayed in the little mountain
change-house for some time. There was a desolate little loch near,
lying, as in a nook, up at the foot of great Schehallion. And there he
pretended to fish, and in the intervals of his sport, which was dreary
enough, took long walks about the country, and, without being seen by
them, found out a great deal about the two ladies. They were alone. The
young lady’s husband was said to be ‘in foreign pairts.’ The good people
had not heard what he was, but that business detained him somewhere,
though it was hoped he would be back before the Autumn. ‘And I wish he
may, for yon bonnie young creature’s sake!’ the friendly wife added, who
told him this tale.

The name they told him she was called by was not a name he knew, which
perplexed him. But when he remembered his own observations, and Kate’s
story, he could not believe that any other lover could have come in.
When Mr. Sugden had fully satisfied himself, and discovered all that was
discoverable, he went back to England with the heat of a sudden purpose.
He went to London, and he sought out Bertie Hardwick’s rooms. Bertie
himself was whistling audibly as Mr. Sugden knocked at his door. He was
packing his portmanteau, and stopped now and then to utter a mild oath
over the things which would not pack in as they ought. He was going on a
journey. Perhaps to her, Mr. Sugden thought; and, as he heard his
whistle, and saw his levity, his blood boiled in his veins.

‘What, Sugden!’ cried Bertie. ‘Come in, old fellow, I am glad to see
you. Why, you’ve been and left Shanklin! What did you do that for? The
old place will not look like itself without you.’

‘There are other vacant places that will be felt more than mine,’ said
the Curate, in a funereal voice, putting himself sadly on the nearest
chair.

‘Oh! the ladies at the Cottage! To be sure, you are quite right. They
must be a dreadful loss,’ said Bertie.

Mr. Sugden felt that he flushed and faltered, and these signs of guilt
made it doubly clear.

‘It is odd enough,’ he said, with double meaning, ‘that we should talk
of that, for I have just come from Scotland, from the Highlands, where,
of all people in the world, I met suddenly with Miss Anderson and her
mother.’

Bertie faced round upon him in the middle of his packing, which he had
resumed, and said, ‘Well!’ in a querulous voice--a voice which already
sounded like that of a man put on his defence.

‘Well!’ said the Curate--‘I don’t think it is well. She is not Miss
Anderson now. But I see you know that. Mr. Hardwick, if you know
anything of her husband, I think you should urge him not to leave her
alone there. She looks--not very well. Poor Ombra!’ cried the Curate,
warming into eloquence. ‘I have no right to call her by her name, but
that I--I was fond of her too. I would have given my life for her! And
she is like her name--she is like a shadow, that is ready to flit away.’

Bertie Hardwick listened with an agitated countenance--he grew red and
pale, and began to pace about the room; but he made no answer--he was
confused and startled by what his visitor said.

‘I daresay my confession does not interest you much,’ Mr. Sugden
resumed. ‘I make it to show I have some right--to take an interest, at
least. That woman for whom I would give my life, Mr. Hardwick, is pining
there for a man who leaves her to pine--a man who must be neglecting her
shamefully, for it cannot be long since he married her--a man who----’

‘And pray, Mr. Sugden,’ said Bertie, choking with apparent anger and
agitation, ‘where did you obtain your knowledge of this man?’

‘Not from her,’ said the Curate; ‘but by chance--by the inquiries I made
in my surprise. Mr. Hardwick, if you know who it is who is so happy, and
so negligent of his happiness----’

‘Well?’

‘He has no right to stay away from her after this warning,’ cried the
Curate, rising to his feet. ‘Do you understand what a thing it is for me
to come and say so?--to one who is throwing away what I would give my
life for? But she is above all. If he stays away from her, he will
reproach himself for it all his life!’

And with these words he turned to go. He had said enough--his own eyes
were beginning to burn and blaze. He felt that he might seize this false
lover by the throat if he stayed longer. And he had at least done all he
could for Ombra. He had said enough to move any man who was a man. He
made a stride towards the door in his indignation; but Bertie Hardwick
interrupted him, with his hand on his arm.

‘Sugden,’ he said, with a voice full of emotion, ‘I am not so bad as you
think me; but I am not so good as you are. The man you speak of shall
hear your warning. But there is one thing I have a right to ask. What
you learnt by chance, you will not make any use of--not to her cousin,
for instance, who knows nothing. You will respect her secret there?’

‘I do not know that I ought to do so, but I promised her mother,’ said
the Curate, sternly. ‘Good morning, Mr. Hardwick. I hope you will act at
once on what you have heard.’

‘Won’t you shake hands?’ said Bertie.

The Curate was deeply prejudiced against him--hated him in his levity
and carelessness, amusing himself while she was suffering. But when he
looked into Bertie’s face, his enmity melted. Was this the man who had
done her--and him--so much wrong? He put out his hand with reluctance,
moved against his will.

‘Do you deserve it?’ he said, in his deep voice.

‘Yes--so far as honesty goes,’ said the young man, with a broken,
agitated laugh.

The Curate went away, wondering and unhappy. Was he so guilty, that
open-faced youth, who seemed yet too near boyhood to be an accomplished
deceiver?--or was there still more in the mystery than met the eye?

This was how Kate got no news. She looked for it for many a day. As the
Summer ripened and went on, a hungry thirst for information of one kind
or another possessed her. Her aunt’s birthday letter had been a few
tender words only--words which were humble, too, and sad. ‘Poor Ombra,’
she had said, ‘was pretty well.’ Poor Ombra!--why _poor_ Ombra? Kate
asked herself the question with sudden fits of anxiety, which she could
not explain to herself; and she began to watch for the post with almost
feverish eagerness. But the suspense lasted so long, that the keenness
of the edge wore off again, and no news ever came.

In July, however, Lady Caryisfort came, having lingered on her way from
Italy till it became too late to keep the engagement she had made with
Mr. Courtenay for Kate’s first season in town. She was so kind as to go
to Langton-Courtenay instead, on what she called a long visit.

‘Your uncle has to find out, like other people, that he will only find
aid ready made to his hand when he doesn’t want it,’ she said--‘that is
the moment when everything becomes easy. I might have been of use to
him, I know, two months ago, and accordingly my private affairs detained
me, and it is only now, you see, that I am here.’

‘I don’t see why you should have hurried for my uncle,’ said Kate; ‘he
has never come to see me, though he has promised twenty times. But you
are welcome always, whenever you please.’

‘Thanks, dear,’ said Lady Caryisfort, who was languid after her journey.
‘He will come now, when you don’t want him. And so the aunt and the
cousin are gone, Kate? You must tell me why. I heard, after you left
Florence, that Miss Anderson had flirted abominably with both these
young men--behind your back, my poor darling, when you were with me, I
suppose; though I always thought that young Eldridge would have suited
you precisely--two nice properties, nice families--everything that was
nice. But an ideal match like that never comes to pass. They tell me she
was called _la demoiselle à deux cavaliers_. Don’t look shocked. Of
course, it could only be a flirtation; there could be nothing wrong in
it. But, you dear little innocent, is this all new to you?’

‘Mr. Hardwick and Mr. Eldridge used to go with us to a great many
places; they were old friends,’ said Kate, with her cheeks and forehead
dyed crimson in a moment; ‘but why people should say such disagreeable
things--’

‘People always say disagreeable things,’ said Lady Caryisfort; ‘it is
the only occupation which is pursued anywhere. But as you did not hear
about your cousin, I am glad to think you cannot have heard of me.’

‘Of you!’ Kate’s consternation was extreme.

‘They were so good as to say I was going to marry Antonio Buoncompagni,’
said Lady Caryisfort, calmly, smoothing away an invisible wrinkle from
her glove. But she did not look up, and Kate’s renewed blush and start
were lost upon her--or perhaps not quite lost. There was a silence for a
minute after; for the tone, as well as the announcement, took Kate
altogether by surprise.

‘And are you?’ she asked, in a low tone, after that pause.

‘I don’t think it,’ said Lady Caryisfort, slowly. ‘The worst is, that he
took it into his head himself--why, heaven knows! for I am--let me
see--three, four, five years, at least, older than he is. I think he
felt that you had jilted him, Kate. No, it would be too much of a bore.
He is very good-natured, to be sure, and too polite to interfere; but
still, I don’t think--Besides, you know, it would be utterly ridiculous.
How could I call Elena Strozzi aunt? In the meantime, my Kate--my little
heiress--I think I had better stay here and marry you.’

‘But I don’t want to be married,’ cried Kate.

‘The very reason why you will be,’ said her new guardian, laughing. But
the girl stole shyly away, and got a book, and prepared to read to Lady
Caryisfort. She was fond of being read to, and Kate shrank with a
repugnance shared by many girls from this sort of talk; and, indeed, I
am not sure that she was pleased with the news. It helped to reproduce
that impression in her mind which so many other incidents had led to.
She had always remembered with a certain amount of gratitude poor
Antonio’s last appearance at the railway, with the violets in his coat,
and the tender, respectful farewell he waved to her. And all the time he
had been thinking of Lady Caryisfort! What a strange world it was, in
which everything went on in this bewildering, treacherous way! Was there
nobody living who was quite true, quite real, meaning all he or she
said? She began to think not, and her very brain reeled under the
discovery. Her path was full of shadows, which threatened and circled
round her. Oh! Ombra, shadow of shadows, where was she? and where had
disappeared with her all that tender, bright life, in which Kate
believed everybody, and dreamt of nothing but sincerity and truth? It
seemed to have gone for ever, to return no more.

CHAPTER LXIV.

All that Summer Mr. Sugden wandered about the world like a soul in pain.
He went everywhere, unable to settle in one place. Some obliging friend
had died, and left him a little money, and this was how he disposed of
it. His people at home disapproved much. They thought he ought to have
been happy in the other curacy which they had found him quite close to
his own parish, and should have invested his legacy, and perhaps looked
out for some nice girl with money, and married as soon as a handy living
fell vacant. This routine, however, did not commend itself to his mind.
He tore himself away from mothers’-meetings, and clothing-clubs, and
daily services; he went wandering, dissatisfied and unhappy, through the
world. He had been crossed in love. It is a thing people do not own to
readily, but still it is nothing to be ashamed of. And not only was it
the restlessness of unhappiness that moved him; a lingering hope was yet
in his mind that he might be of use to Ombra still. He went over the
route which the party had taken only a year before; he went to the Swiss
village where they had passed so long, and was easily able to glean some
information about the English ladies, and the one who was fond of the
Church. He went there after her, and knelt upon the white flags and
wondered what she had been thinking of, and prayed for her with his face
towards Madonna on the altar, with her gilt crown, and all her tall
artificial lilies.

Poor honest, broken-hearted lover! If she had been happy he would have
been half cured by this time; but she was not happy--or, at least, he
thought so, and his heart burned over her with regretful love and
anguish. Oh, if Providence had but given her to him, though unworthy,
how he would have shielded and kept her from all evil! He wandered on to
Florence, where he stayed for some time, with the same vain
idol-worship. He remained until the Autumn flood of tourists began to
arrive, and the English Church was opened. And it was here he acquired
the information which changed all his plans. The same young clergyman
who was a friend of Bertie Eldridge’s, and had known the party in
Florence, returned again that Winter, and officiated once more in the
Conventicle of the English visitors. And Mr. Sugden had known him, too,
at school or college; the two young clergymen grew intimate, and, one
day, all at once, without warning, the Curate had a secret confided to
him, which thrilled him through and through from head to heel. His
friend told him of all the importunities he had been subjected to, to
induce him to celebrate a marriage, and how he had consented, and how
his conscience had been uneasy ever since. ‘Was I wrong?’ he asked his
friend. ‘The young lady’s mother was there and consenting, and the
man--you know him--was of full age, and able to judge for himself; the
only thing was the secrecy--do you think I was wrong?’

Mr. Sugden gave no answer. He scarcely heard the words that were
addressed to him; a revolution had taken place in all his ideas. He had
not spent more than half his legacy, and he had half the Winter before
him, yet immediately he made up his mind to go home.

Two days after he started, and in a week was making his way down to
Langton-Courtenay, for no very intelligible reason. What his plea would
have been, had he been forced to give it, we cannot tell, but he did not
explain himself even to himself; he had a vague feeling that something
new had come into the story, and that Kate ought to be informed--an idea
quite vague, but obstinate. He went down, as he had gone before, to
Westerton, and there engaged a fly to take him to Langton. But, when he
arrived, he was startled to find the house lighted up, and all the
appearance of company. He did not know what to do. There was a
dinner-party, he was told, and he felt that he and his news, such as
they were, could not be obtruded into the midst of it. He was possessed
by his mission as by incipient madness. It seemed to him like a divine
message, which he was bound to deliver. He went back to the little inn
in the village, and dressed himself in evening clothes--for he had
brought his portmanteau on with him all the way, not having wits enough
left to leave it behind. And when it was late, he walked up the long
avenue to the Hall. He knew Kate well enough, he thought, to take so
much liberty with her--and then his news! What was it that made his news
seem so important to him? He could not tell.

Mr. Courtenay was at Langton, and so was Lady Caryisfort. The lady, who
should have been mentioned first, had stayed with Kate for a fortnight
on her first visit, and then, leaving her alone all the Summer, had gone
off upon other visits, promising a return in Autumn. It was October now,
and Mr. Courtenay too had at last found it convenient to pay his niece a
visit. He had brought with him some people for the shooting, men,
chiefly, of respectable age, with wives and daughters. The party was
highly respectable, but not very amusing, and, indeed, Lady Caryisfort
found it tedious; but such as it was, it was the first party of guests
which had ever been gathered under Kate’s roof, and she was excited and
anxious that everything should go off well. In six months more she would
be her own mistress, and the undue delays which had taken place in her
life were then to be all remedied.

‘You ought to have been introduced to the world at least two years ago,’
said Lady Caryisfort. ‘But never mind, my dear; it does not matter for
you, and next season will make up for everything. You have the bloom of
sixteen still, and you have Langton-Courtenay,’ the lady added, kissing
her.

To Kate there was little pleasure in this speech; but she swallowed it,
as she had learned to swallow a great many things.

‘I have Langton-Courtenay,’ she said to herself, with a smile of bitter
indignation--‘that makes up for everything. That I have nobody who cares
for me does not matter in comparison.’

But yet she was excited about her first party, and hoped with all her
heart it would go off well. There were several girls beside herself; but
there were only two young men--one a wealthy and formal young
diplomatist, the other a penniless cousin of Lady Caryisfort’s--‘too
penniless and too foolish even to try for an heiress,’ she had assured
Mr. Courtenay. The rest were old bachelors--Mr. Courtenay’s own
contemporaries, or the respectable married men above described. A most
safe party to surround an heiress, and not amusing, but still, as the
first means of exercising her hospitality in her own house, exciting to
Kate.

The dinner had gone off well enough. It was a good dinner, and even
Uncle Courtenay had been tolerably satisfied. The only thing that had
happened to discompose Kate was that she had seen Lady Caryisfort yawn
twice. But that was a thing scarcely to be guarded against. When the
ladies got back to the drawing-room she felt that the worst of her
labours were over, and that she might rest; but her surprise was great
when, half an hour later, she suddenly saw Mr. Sugden standing in a
corner behind her. He had come there as if by magic--like a ghost
starting up out of nothing. Kate rose to her feet suddenly with a little
cry, and went to him. What a good thing that it was a dull, steady-going
party, not curious, as livelier society is! She went up to him
hurriedly, holding out her hand.

‘Mr. Sugden! When did you come? I never saw you. Have you dropped
through from the skies?’

‘I ought to apologise,’ said the Curate, growing red.

‘Oh, never mind apologising! I know you have something to tell me!’
cried Kate.

‘But how can I tell you here? Yes, it is something--not bad news--oh,
not bad news--don’t think so. I came off at once without thinking. A
letter might have done as well; but I get confused, and don’t think till
too late----’

‘I am so sorry for you!’ cried Kate impulsively, holding out her hand to
him once more.

He took it, and then he dropped it, poor fellow! not knowing what else
to do. Kate’s hand was nothing to him, nor any woman’s, except the one
which was given into another man’s keeping. He was still dazed with his
journey, and all that had happened. His theory was that, as he had found
it out another way, he was clear of his promise to Mrs. Anderson; and
then he had to set a mistake right. How could he tell what harm that
mistake might do?

‘Your cousin--is married,’ he said.

‘Married!’ cried Kate. A slight shiver ran over her, a thrill that went
through her frame, and then died out, and left her quite steady and
calm. But, somehow, in that moment her colour, the bloom of sixteen, as
Lady Caryisfort called it, died away from her cheek. She stood with her
hands clasped, and her face raised, looking up to him. Of course it was
only what she felt must happen some day; she said to herself that she
had known it. There was nothing to be surprised about.

‘She was married last year, in Florence,’ the Curate resumed. And then
the thrill came back again, and so strongly that Kate shook as if with
cold. In a moment there rose up before her the group which she had met
at the doorway on the Lung-Arno, the group which moved so quickly, and
kept so close together, Ombra leaning on her husband’s arm. Yes, how
blind she had been! That was the explanation--at a glance she saw it
all. Oh! heaven and earth, how the universe reeled under her! He had
looked at herself, spoken to her, touched her hand as only he had ever
touched, and looked, and spoken--after that! The blood ebbed away from
Kate’s heart; but though the world spun and swam so in the uncertainty
of space, that she feared every moment to fall, or rather to be dashed
down by its swaying, she kept standing, to all appearance immovable,
before the tall Curate, with her hands clasped, and a smile upon her
pale face.

‘Kate!’ said some one behind her--‘Kate!’

She turned round. It was Lady Caryisfort who had called her. And what
was there more to be told? Now she knew all. Spigot was standing behind
her, with a yellow envelope upon a silver tray. A telegram--the first
one she had ever got in her life! No civility could hesitate before
such a letter as that. But for the news which she had just heard she
would have been frightened; but that preparation had steeled her. She
tore it open and read it eagerly. Then she raised a bewildered look to
Lady Caryisfort and Mr. Sugden, who were both close by her.

‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. She held it up to him, because he was
nearest. And then suddenly put up her hand to stop him, as he began to
read aloud. ‘Hush! Hush! Mrs. Hardwick is here,’ she said.

‘What is the matter?’ said Lady Caryisfort, rising to shield this group,
which began to attract the eyes of the party. ‘Kate, what is your
telegram about?’

Kate held it out to her without a word. The message it contained was
this: “_Sir Herbert Eldridge died here last night_.’”

‘Sir Herbert Eldridge?’ repeated Lady Caryisfort. ‘What is he to you,
Kate? What does it mean? Child, are you ill? You are like a ghost!’

‘He is nothing in the world to me,’ said Kate, rousing herself. ‘If I am
like a ghost it is because--oh! I am so cold!--because--it is so
strange! I never saw Sir Herbert Eldridge in my life. Mr. Sugden, what
do you think it means?’

She looked up and looked round for the Curate. He was gone. She gazed
all round her in consternation.

‘Where is he?’ she cried.

‘The gentleman you were talking to went out a minute ago. Who is he?
Kate, dear, don’t look so strange. Who was this man, and what did he
come to tell you about?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the girl, faintly, her eyes still seeking for him
round the room. ‘I don’t know where he came from, or where he has gone
to. I think he must have been a ghost.’

‘What was he telling you--you must know that at least?’

Kate made no reply. She pushed a chair towards the fireplace, and warmed
her trembling fingers. She crushed up the big yellow envelope in her
hand, under her laced handkerchief.

’“Sir Robert Eldridge died last night.” What is that to me! What have I
to do with it?’ she said.

CHAPTER LXV.

The reason of Kate’s strange paleness and agitation was afterwards
explained to be the fact that she had suddenly heard, no one knew how,
of the death of Mrs. Hardwick’s brother; while that lady was sitting by
her, happy and undisturbed, and knowing nothing. This was the reason
Lady Caryisfort gave to several of the ladies in the house, who remarked
next morning on Miss Courtenay’s looks.

‘Poor Kate did not know what to do; and the feelings are strong at her
age. I daresay Mrs. Hardwick, when she heard of it, took the news with
perfect composure, said Lady Caryisfort; ‘but then at twenty it is
difficult to realise that.’

‘Ah! now I understand,’ said one of the ladies. ‘It was told her, no
doubt, by that tall young man, like a clergyman, who appeared in the
drawing-room all of a sudden, after the gentlemen came downstairs, and
disappeared again directly after.’

‘Yes, you are quite right,’ said Lady Caryisfort. She said so because
she was aware that to have any appearance of mystery about Kate would be
fatal to that brilliant _début_ which she intended her to make; but in
her own mind she was much disturbed about this tall young man like a
clergyman. She had questioned Kate about him in vain.

‘He is an old friend, from where we lived in the Isle of Wight,’ the
girl explained.

‘But old friends from the Isle of Wight don’t turn up everywhere like
this. Did he come about Sir Herbert Eldridge?’

‘He knows nothing about Sir Herbert Eldridge. He came to tell me
about--my cousin.’

‘Oh! your cousin! _La demoiselle aux deux chevaliers_,’ said Lady
Caryisfort. ‘And did he bring you news of her?’

‘A little,’ said Kate, faintly, driven to her wit’s end; but she was not
a weak-minded young woman, to be driven to despair; and here she drew up
and resisted. ‘So little, that it is not worth repeating,’ she added,
firmly. ‘I knew it almost all before, but he was not aware of that. He
meant it very kindly.’

‘Did he come on purpose, dear?’

‘Yes, I suppose so, the good fellow,’ said Kate, gracefully.

‘My dear, he may be a very good fellow; but curates are like other men,
and don’t do such things without hope of reward,’ said Lady Caryisfort,
doubtfully. ‘So I would not encourage him to go on secret
missions--unless I meant to reward him,’ she added.

‘He does not want any of my rewards,’ said Kate, with that half
bitterness of still resentment which she occasionally showed at the
suspicions which were so very ready to enter the minds of all about her.
‘I at least have no occasion to think as they do,’ she added to herself,
with a feeling of sore humility. ‘Of all the people I have ever known,
no one has given me this experience--they have all preferred her,
without thinking of me.’

It was with this thought in her mind that she withdrew herself from Lady
Caryisfort’s examination. She had nothing more to say, and she would not
be made to say any more. But when she was in the sanctuary of her own
room, she went over and over, with a heart which beat heavily within her
breast, Mr. Sugden’s information. That Ombra should have married Bertie
did not surprise her--_that_ she had foreseen, she said to herself. But
that they should have married so long ago, under her very eyes, as it
were, gave her a strange thrill of pain through and through her. They
had not told her even a thing so important as that. Her aunt and Ombra,
her dearest friends, had lived with her afterwards, and kissed her night
and morning, and at last had broken away from her, and given her up, and
yet had never told her. The one seemed to Kate as wonderful as the
other. Not in their constant companionship, not when that companionship
came to a breach--neither at one time nor the other did they do her so
much justice. And Bertie!--that was worst of all. Had his look of
gladness to see her at the brook in the park, when they last met, been
all simulation?--or had it been worse than simulation?--a horrible
disrespect, a feeling that she did not deserve the same observance as
men were forced to show to other girls! When she came to this question
her brain swam so with wrath and a sense of wrong that she became unable
to discriminate. Poor Kate!--and nothing of this did she dare to confide
to a creature round her. She who had been so outspoken, so ready to
disclose her thoughts--she had to lock them up in her own bosom, and
never breathe a word.

Unconnected with this, but still somehow connected with it, was the
extraordinary message she had received. On examining it afterwards in
her own room, she found it was sent to her by ‘Bertie.’ What did it
mean? How did he dare to send such a message to her, and what had she to
do with it? Had it been a mistake? Could it have been sent to her,
instead of to the Rectory? But Kate ascertained that a similar telegram
had been received by the Hardwicks the same night when they went home
from her dinner-party. Minnie Hardwick stole up two days later to tell
her about it. Minnie was very anxious to do her duty, and to feel sad,
as a girl ought whose uncle has just died; but though the blinds were
all down in the Rectory, and the village dress-maker and Mrs. Hardwick’s
maid were labouring night and day at ‘the mourning,’ Minnie found it
hard to be so heart-broken as she thought necessary.

‘It is so strange to think that one of one’s own relations has gone away
to--to the Better Land,’ said Minnie, with a very solemn face. ‘I know I
ought not to have come out, but I wanted so to see you; and when we are
sorrowful, it is then our friends are dearest to us. Don’t you think so,
dear Kate?’

‘Were you very fond of your uncle, Minnie?’

‘I--I never saw much of him. He has been thought to be going to die for
ever so long,’ said Minnie. ‘He was very stout, and had not a very good
temper. Oh! how wicked it is to remember that now! And he did not like
girls; so that we never met. Mamma is very, very unhappy, of course.’

‘Yes, it is of course,’ Kate said to herself, with again that tinge of
bitterness which was beginning to rise in her mind; ‘even when a man
dies, it is of course that people are sorry. If I were to die they would
try how sorrowful they could look, and say how sad it was, and care as
little about me as they do now.’ This thought crossed her mind as she
sat and talked to Minnie, who was turning her innocent little
countenance as near as possible into the expression of a mute at a
funeral, but who, no doubt, in reality, cared much more for her new
mourning than for her old uncle--a man who had neither kindness to
herself nor general goodness to commend him. It was she who told Kate of
the telegram which had been found waiting at the Rectory when they went
home, and how she had remembered that Kate had got one too, and how
strange such a coincidence was (but Minnie knew nothing of the news
contained in Kate’s), and how frightened she always was at telegrams.

‘They always bring bad news,’ said Minnie, squeezing one innocent little
tear into the corner of her eye. Her father had gone off immediately,
and Bertie was already with his cousin. ‘It is he who will be Sir
Herbert now,’ Minnie said, with awe; ‘and oh! Kate, I am so much afraid
he will not be very sorry! His father was not very kind to him. They
used to quarrel sometimes--I ought not to say so, but I am sure you will
never, never tell anyone. Uncle Herbert used to get into dreadful
passions whenever Bertie was silly, and did anything wrong. Uncle
Herbert used to storm so; and then it would bring on fits. Oh! Kate,
shouldn’t we be thankful to Providence that we have such a dear, kind
papa!’

Thus this incident, which she had no connection with, affected Kate’s
life, and gave a certain colour to her thoughts. She lived, as it were,
for several days within the shadow of the blinds, which were drawn down
at the Rectory, and the new mourning that was being made, and her own
private trouble, which was kept carefully hidden in her heart of hearts.
This gave her such abundant food for thought, that the society of her
guests was too much for her, and especially Lady Caryisfort’s lively
observations. She had to attend to them, and to look as cheerful as she
could in the evenings; but they all remarked what depression had stolen
over her. ‘She does not look the same creature,’ the other ladies said
to Lady Caryisfort; and that lively person, who had thought Kate’s
amusing company her only indemnification for putting up with all this
respectability, yawned half her time away, and felt furious with Mr.
Courtenay for having deluded her into paying this visit at this
particular time. It does not do, she reflected, to put off one’s
engagements. Had she kept her tryst in Spring, and brought Kate out, and
done all she had promised to do for her, probably she would have been
married by this time, and the trouble of taking care of her thrown on
other shoulders. Whereas, if she went and threw away her good looks, and
settled into pale quietness and dulness, as she seemed about to do,
there was no telling what a burden she might be on her friends. With
these feelings in her mind, she told Mr. Courtenay that she thought that
he had been very unwise in letting the Andersons slip through his
fingers. ‘They were exactly what she wanted; people who were amenable to
advice; who would do what you wished, and would take themselves off when
you were done with them--they were the very people for Kate, with her
variable temper. It was a weakness which I did not expect in you, Mr.
Courtenay, who know the world.’

‘I never saw any signs of variable temper in Kate,’ said Mr. Courtenay,
who felt it necessary to keep his temper when he was talking to Lady
Caryisfort.

‘Look at me now!’ said that dissatisfied woman. And she added to herself
that it was vain to tell her that Kate knew nothing about Sir Herbert
Eldridge, or that the strange appearance for half an hour, in the
drawing-room, of the young man who was like a clergyman had no
connection with the change of demeanour which followed it. This was an
absurd attempt to hoodwink her, a woman who had much experience in
society and was not easily deceived. And, by way of showing her sense of
the importance of the subject, she began to talk to Kate of Bertie
Eldridge, who had always been her favourite of the two cousins.

‘Now his father is dead, he is worth your consideration,’ she said. ‘His
father was an ill-tempered wretch, I have always heard; but the young
man is very well, as young men go, and has a very nice estate. I have
always thought nothing could be more suitable. For my own part, I always
liked him best--why? I don’t know, except, perhaps, because most people
preferred his cousin. I should think, by the way, that after knocking
about the world with Bertie Eldridge, that young man will hardly be very
much disposed to drop into the Rectory here, like his father before him,
which, I suppose, is his natural fate.’

At that moment there came over Kate’s mind a recollection of the time
when she had gravely decided to oppose Mr. Hardwick in the parish, and
not to give his son the living. The idea brought an uneasy blush to her
cheek.

‘Mr. Bertie Hardwick is not going into the Church; he is reading for the
bar,’ she said.

‘Well, I suppose the one will need as much work as the other,’ said Lady
Caryisfort. ‘Reading for the bar!--that sounds profitable; but, Kate, if
I were you, I would seriously consider the question about Bertie
Eldridge. He is not bad-looking, and, unless that old tyrant has been
wicked as well as disagreeable, he ought to be very well off. The title
is not much, but still it is something; and it is a thoroughly good old
family--as good as your own. I would not throw such a chance away.’

‘But I never had the chance, as you call it, Lady Caryisfort,’ said
Kate, with indignation, ‘and I don’t want to have it; and I would not
accept it, if it was offered to me. Bertie Eldridge is nothing to me. I
don’t even care for him as an acquaintance, and never did.’

‘Well, my love, you know what a good authority has said--“that a little
aversion is a very good thing to begin upon,”’ said Lady Caryisfort,
laughing; but in her heart she did not believe these protestations. Why
should Kate have got that telegram if Sir Herbert was nothing to her?
Thus, over-wisdom led the woman of the world astray.

Before long, Kate had forgotten all about Sir Herbert Eldridge. It was
not half so important to her as the other news which nobody knew
of--indeed, it was simply of no interest at all in comparison. Where was
Ombra now?--and how must Bertie have deceived his family, who trusted in
him; as much as his--wife--was that the word?--his wife had deceived
herself. Where were they living? or were they together, or what had
become of these two women? Then Kate’s heart melted, and she cried
within herself--What had become of them? An unacknowledged wife!--a
woman who had to hide herself, and bear a name and assume a character
which was not hers! In all the multitude of her thoughts, she at last
stopped short upon the ground of deep pity for her cousin, who had so
sinned against her. Where was she?--under what name?--in what
appearance? The thought of her position, after all this long interval,
with no attempt made to own her or set her right with the world, made
Kate’s heart sick with compassion in the midst of her anger. And how was
she to find Ombra out?--and when she had found her out, what was she to
do?

CHAPTER LXVI.

It is hard to be oppressed with private anxiety and care in the midst of
a great house full of people, who expect to be amused, and to have all
their different wants attended to, both as regards personal comfort and
social gratification. Kate had entered upon the undertaking with great
zeal and pleasure, but had been suddenly chilled in the midst of her
labours by the strange accidents which disturbed her first dinner-party.
She had been so excited and confused at the moment, that it had not
occurred to her to remember that Mr. Sugden’s information was quite
fragmentary, and that he did not tell her where to find her cousin, or
give her any real aid in the matter. His appearance, and disappearance
too, were equally sudden and mysterious. She ascertained from Spigot
when he had come, and it was sufficiently easy to comprehend the
noiseless way he had chosen to appear before her, and convey his news;
but why had he disappeared when he saw the telegram? Why had he said so
little? Why, oh! why had they all conspired to leave her thus, with
painful scraps of information, but no real knowledge--alone among
strangers, who took no interest in her perplexities, and, indeed, had
never learned Ombra’s name? She could not confide in Mrs. Hardwick, for
many reasons, and there was no one else whom she could possibly confide
in.

She got so unhappy at last that the idea of consulting Lady Caryisfort
entered her mind more and more strongly. Lady Caryisfort was a woman of
the world. She would not be so shocked as good Mrs. Hardwick would be;
and then she could have no prejudice in the matter, and no temptation to
betray poor Ombra’s secret. Poor Ombra! Kate was not one of those people
who can dismiss an offender out of their mind as soon as his sin is
proved. All kinds of relentings, and movements of pity, and impulses to
help, came whispering about her after the first shock. To be sure Ombra
had her mother to protect and care for her, and how could Kate
interfere, a young girl? What could she do in the matter? But yet she
felt that if she were known to stand by her cousin, it would be more
difficult for the husband to keep her in obscurity. And there was in her
mind a longing that Bertie should learn that she knew, and know what her
opinion was, of the concealment and secresy. She did as women, people
say, are not apt to do. She threw all the blame on him. Her cousin had
concealed it from her--but nothing more than that. He had done something
more--he had insulted herself in the midst of the concealment. If Kate
had followed her own first impulse, she would have rushed forth to find
Ombra, she would have brought her home, she would have done what her
husband had failed to do--acknowledged, and put her in her right place.
All these things Kate pondered and mused over, till sometimes the
impulse to action was almost too much for her; and it was in these
moments that she felt a longing and a necessity to consult some one, to
relieve the pent-up anxieties in her own heart.

It happened one afternoon that she was alone with Lady Caryisfort, in
that room which had been her sitting-room under Mrs. Anderson’s sway.
That very fact always filled her with recollections. Now that the great
drawing-room and all the house was open, this had become a refuge for
people who had ‘headaches,’ or any of the ethereal ailments common in
highly-refined circles. The ladies of the party were almost all out on
this particular afternoon. Some had gone into Westerton on a shopping
expedition; some had driven to see a ruined abbey, one of the sights of
the neighbourhood; and some had gone to the covert-side, with luncheon
for the sportsmen, and had not yet returned. Kate had excused herself
under the pretext of a cold, to remedy which she was seated close by the
fire, in a very low and comfortable easy-chair. Lady Caryisfort reclined
upon a sofa opposite. She had made no pretence at all to get rid of the
rest of the party. She was very pettish and discontented, reading a
French novel, and wishing herself anywhere but there. There had been at
least half an hour of profound silence. Kate was doing nothing but
thinking; her head ached with it, and so did her heart. And when a girl
of twenty, with a secret on her mind, is thus shut up with an elder
woman whom she likes, with no one else within hearing, and after half an
hour’s profound silence, that is the very moment in which a confidential
disclosure is sure to come.

‘Lady Caryisfort,’ said Kate, faltering, ‘I wonder if I might tell you
something which I have very much at heart?’

‘Certainly you may,’ said Lady Caryisfort, yawning, and closing her
book. ‘To tell you the truth, Kate, I was just going to put a similar
question.’

‘You have something on your mind too!’ cried Kate, clasping her hands.

‘Naturally--a great deal more than you can possibly have,’ said her
friend, laughing. ‘But, come, Kate, you have the _pas_. Proceed--your
secret has the right of priority; and then I will tell you
mine--perhaps--if it is not too great a bore.’

‘Mine is not about myself,’ said Kate. ‘If it had been about myself, I
should have told you long ago--it is about--Ombra.’

‘Oh! about Ombra!’ Lady Caryisfort shrugged her shoulders, and the
languid interest which she had been preparing to show suddenly failed
her. ‘You think a great deal more about Ombra than she deserves.’

‘You will not think so when you have heard her story,’ said Kate, with
some timidity, for she was quickly discouraged on this point. While they
were speaking, a carriage was heard to roll up the avenue. ‘Oh!’ she
exclaimed, ‘I thought we were safe. I thought I was sure of you for an
hour. And here are those tiresome people come back!’

‘An hour--all about Ombra!’ Lady Caryisfort ejaculated, half within
herself; and then she added aloud, ‘Perhaps somebody has come to call.
Heaven send us some one amusing! for I think you and I, Kate, must go
and hang ourselves if this lasts.’

‘Oh! no; it must be the Wedderburns come back from Westerton,’ said
Kate, disconsolate. There were sounds of an arrival, without doubt.
‘They will come straight up here,’ she said, in despair. ‘Since that day
when we had afternoon tea here, we have never been safe.’

It was a terrible reward for her hospitality; but certainly the visitors
were coming up. The sound of the great hall-door rang through the house;
and then Spigot’s voice, advancing, made it certain that there had been
an arrival. The new-comers must be strangers, then, as Spigot was
conducting them; and what stranger would take the liberty to come here?

Kate turned herself round in the chair. She was a little flushed with
the fire, and she was in that state of mind when people think that
anything may happen--nay, that it is contrary to the order of Nature
when something does not happen, to change the aspect of the world. Lady
Caryisfort turned away with a little shrug, which was half impatience,
half admiration of the girl’s readiness to be moved by anything new. She
opened her book again, and went nearer the window. The light was
beginning to fade, for it was now late in October, and Winter might
almost be said to have begun. The door opened slowly. The young mistress
of the house stood like one spell-bound. Already her heart forecasted
who her visitors were. And it was not Spigot’s hand which opened that
door. There was a hesitation, a fumbling and doubtfulness--and then----

How dim the evening was! Who were the two people who were standing there
looking at her? Kate’s heart gave a leap, and then seemed to stand
still.

‘Come in,’ she said, doubtful, and faltering. And just then the fire
gave a sudden blaze up, and threw a ruddy light upon the new-comers. Of
course, she had known who it must be all along. But they did not
advance; and she stood in an icy stupor, feeling as if she were not able
to move.

‘Kate,’ said Ombra, from the door, ‘I have been like an evil spirit to
you. I will not come in again, unless you will give me your hand and say
I am to come.’

She put herself in motion then, languidly. How different a real moment
of excitement always is from the visionary one which you go over and
over in your own mind, and to which you get used in all its details!
Somehow all at once she bethought herself of Geraldine lifted over the
threshold by innocent Christabel. She went and held out her hand. Her
heart was beating fast, but dull, as if at a long distance off. There
stood the husband and wife--two against one. She quickened her steps,
and resolved to spare herself as much as she could.

‘Ombra,’ she said, as well as her quick breath would let her, ‘come in.
I know. I have heard about it. I am glad to receive you, and--and your
husband.’

‘Thanks, Kate,’ said Ombra, with strange confusion. She had thought--I
don’t know why--that she would be received with enthusiasm corresponding
to her own feelings. She came into the room, leaning upon him, as was
natural, with her hand within his arm. He had the grace to be
modest--not to put himself forward--or so, at least, Kate thought. But
how much worse this moment was than she had supposed it would be! She
felt herself tremble and tingle from head to heel. She forgot Lady
Caryisfort, who was standing up against the light of the window, roused
and inquisitive; she turned her back upon the new-comers, even, and
poked the fire violently, making the room full of light. The ruddy blaze
shot up into the twilight; it sprang up, quivering and burning into the
big mirror. Kate saw the whole scene reflected there--the two figures
standing behind her, and Ombra’s black dress; black!--why was she in
black, and she a bride? And, good heaven!----

She turned round breathless; she was pricked to the quick with anger and
shame. ‘Ombra,’ she said, facing round upon her cousin, ‘I told you I
knew everything. Why do you come here thus with anybody but your
husband? This is Mr. Eldridge. Did anyone dare to suppose---- Why is it
Mr. Eldridge, and not _him_, who has brought you here?’

Ombra’s ice melted as when a flood comes in Spring. She rushed to the
reluctant, angry girl, and kissed her, and clung to her, and wept over
her. ‘Oh! Kate don’t turn from me!--Bertie Eldridge is my husband--no one
else--and who else should bring me back?’

No one but Ombra ever knew that Kate would have fallen but for the
strenuous grasp that held her up--no one but Ombra guessed what the
convulsion of the moment meant. Ombra felt her cousin’s arms clutch at
her with the instinct of self-preservation--she felt Kate’s head drop
quite passive on her shoulder, and, with a new-born sympathy, she
concealed the crisis which she dimly guessed. She kept whispering into
her cousin’s ear, holding her fast, kissing her, terrified at the extent
of the emotion which had been so carefully and so long concealed.

‘Now let Kate shake hands at least with me,’ said Bertie, behind, ‘and
forgive me, if she can. It was all my fault. Ombra yielded to me because
I would not give her any peace, and we dared not make it known. Kate,
she has been breaking her heart over it, thinking you could never
forgive her. Won’t you forgive me too?’

Bertie Eldridge was a careless, light-hearted soul--one of the men who
run all kind of risks of ruin, and whom other people suffer for, but who
always come out safe at the end. At the sound of his ordinary easy,
untragical voice, Kate roused herself in a moment. What had all this
exaggerated feeling to do with him?

‘Yes,’ she said, holding out her hand, ‘Bertie, I will forgive you; but
I would not have done so half an hour ago, if I had known. Oh! and here
is Lady Caryisfort in the dark, while we are all making fools of
ourselves. Ombra, keep here; don’t go away from me,’ she whispered. ‘I
feel as if I could not stand.’

‘Kate, mamma is in your room: and one secret more,’ whispered Ombra.
‘Oh! Kate, it is not half told!--Lady Caryisfort will forgive us--I
could not stay away a day--an hour longer than I could help.’

‘I will forgive you with all my heart, and I will take myself out of the
way,’ said Lady Caryisfort. ‘I daresay you have a great deal to say to
each other, and I congratulate you, at the same time, Lady Eldridge; one
must take time for that.’

‘Lady Eldridge!’ cried Kate. Oh! how thankful she was to drop out of
Ombra’s supporting arm into a seat, and to laugh, in order that she
might not cry. ‘Then that was why I had the telegram, and that was why
poor Mr. Sugden disappeared, that you might tell me yourself? Oh! Ombra,
are you sure it is true, and not a dream? Are you back again, and all
the shadows flown away, and things come right?’

‘Except the one shadow, which must never flee away,’ said Bertie,
putting his arm round his wife’s waist. He was the fondest, the most
demonstrative of husbands, though only a fortnight ago---- But it is
needless to enlarge on what was past.

‘But, Kate, come to your room,’ said Ombra, ‘where mamma is waiting;
and one secret more----’

CHAPTER LXVII.

Mrs. Anderson was waiting in Kate’s room, when Maryanne, sympathetic,
weeping, and delighted, introduced her carefully. ‘Oh, mayn’t I carry
it, ma’am?’ she cried, longing; and when that might not be, drew a chair
to the fire--the most comfortable chair--and placed a footstool, and
lingered by in adoring admiration. What was it that this foolish maiden
wanted so much to go down upon her knees before and do fetish worship
to? Mrs. Anderson sat and pondered over this one remaining secret, with
a heart that was partly joyful and partly heavy. This woman was a
compound of worldliness and of something better. In her worldly part she
was happy and triumphant, but in her higher part she was more humbled,
almost more sad, than when she went away in what she had felt to be
shame from Langton-Courtenay. She felt for the shock that this discovery
would give to Kate’s spotless maiden imagination, unaware of the
possibility of such mysteries. She felt more for Kate than for her own
child, who was happy and victorious. She sent Maryanne away to watch,
and waited very nervously, with a tremble in her frame. How would Kate
take it? How would she take _this_, which lay upon Mrs. Anderson’s knee?
She would not have the candles lighted. The dark, which half concealed
and half revealed her, was kinder, and would keep her secret best. A
film seemed to come over her eyes when she saw the two young women come
into the room together. The first thing she was sure of was Kate’s arms,
which crept round her, and Kate’s voice in her ear crying, ‘Oh! auntie,
how could you leave me--oh! how could you leave me? I have wanted you
so!’

‘Take it!’ cried Mrs. Anderson, with sudden energy; and when the white
bundle had been removed from her knee, she clasped her second child in
her arms. It is not often that a mother gets to love an adopted child in
competition with her own; but during all this past year, Kate had
appeared before her many a day, in the sweet docility and submission of
her youth, when Ombra was fretful, and exacting, and dissatisfied. The
poor mother had not acknowledged it to herself but she wanted those arms
round her--she wanted her other child.

‘Oh!’ she said, but in a whisper, ‘my darling! I can never, never tell
you how I have wanted you!’

‘Here it is!’ cried Ombra, gaily. ‘Mamma, let her look at him; you can
kiss her after. Kate, here is my other secret. Light the candles,
Maryanne--quick, that your mistress may see my boy.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ cried Maryanne, full of awe.

A little laugh of unbounded happiness and exultation came from Ombra’s
lips. To come back thus triumphant, vindicated from all reproaches; to
have the delight of showing her child; to be reconciled, and at last at
liberty to love her cousin without any jealousy or painful sense of
contrast; and, finally, to hear herself called my lady--all combined to
fill up the measure of her content.

Up to this moment it had not occurred to Kate what the other secret was.
Mrs. Anderson felt the girl’s arms tighten round her, felt the sudden
leap of her heart. Who will not understand what that movement of shame
meant? It silenced Kate’s very heart for the moment. This shock was
greater than the first shock. She blushed crimson on her aunt’s
shoulder, where happily no one saw her. Her thoughts wandered back over
the past, and she felt as if there was something shameful in it. This
was absurd, of course; but it was some moments before she could so far
overcome herself as to raise her head in answer to her cousin’s repeated
demands.

‘Look at him, Kate!--look at him! Mamma will keep--you can have her
afterwards. Look at my boy!’

Ombra was disinterring the baby out of cloaks and veils and shawls, in
which it was lost. Her cheeks were sparkling, her eyes glowing with
happiness. In her heart there was no sense of shame.

But we need not linger over this scene. Kate was glad, very glad, to get
free from her duties that evening--to escape from the dinner and the
people, as well as from the baby, and get time to think of it all. What
were her feelings when she sat down alone, after all this flood of new
emotions, and realised what had happened? The shock was over. The
tingling of wonder, of pleasure, of pain, and even of shame, which had
confused her senses, was over. She could look at everything, and see it
as it was. And as the past rose out of the mists elucidated by the
present, of course it became apparent to her that she ought to have seen
the true state of affairs all the time. She ought to have seen that
there was no affinity between Bertie Hardwick and her cousin, no natural
fitness, no likelihood, even, that they could choose each other. Of
course she ought to have seen that he had been made a victim of, as she
herself had been made a victim of, though in a less degree. She ought to
have known that Bertie, he whom she had once called her Bertie, in
girlish, innocent freedom (though she blushed to recall it), could not
have been disrespectful to herself, nor treacherous, nor anything but
what he was. She owed him an apology, she said to herself, with cheeks
which glowed with generous shame. She owed him an apology, and she would
make it, whenever it should be in her power.

As for all the other wonderful events, they gradually stole off into the
background, compared with this central fact that she owed an apology to
Bertie. She fell asleep with this thought in her mind, and, waking in
the morning, felt so happy that she asked herself instinctively what it
was. And the answer was, ‘I must make an apology to Bertie!’ Ombra and
her mysteries, and her new grandeur, and even her baby, faded off into
nothing in comparison with this. Somehow that double secret seemed to be
almost a hundred years old. The revelation of Bertie Hardwick’s
blamelessness, and the wrong she had done him, was the only thing that
was new.

Sir Herbert and Lady Eldridge stayed at Langton-Courtenay for about a
week before they went home, and all the minor steps in the matter were
explained by degrees. He had rushed down to Loch Arroch, where she had
been all this time, to fetch his wife, as soon as his father’s death set
him free. With so much depending on that event, Bertie Eldridge could
scarcely, with a good grace, pretend to be sorry for his father; but the
fact that Sir Herbert’s death had been a triumph, and not a sorrow to
him, was chiefly known away from home, and when he went back he went in
full pomp of mourning. The baby even wore a black ribbon round its
unconscious waist, for the grandpapa who would have disinherited it had
he known of its existence. Probably nobody made much comment upon ‘the
Eldridges.’ They were accepted, all things having come right, without
much censure, if with a great deal of surprise. It was bitter for Mrs.
Hardwick to realise that ‘that insignificant Miss Anderson’ was the wife
of the head of her house, the mistress of all the honours and riches of
the Eldridges; but she had to swallow it, as bitter pills must always be
swallowed.

‘Heaven be praised, my Bertie did not fall into her snares! Though I
always said his taste was too good for such a piece of folly!’ she said,
taking the best piece of comfort which remained to her.

Bertie Hardwick came down to spend Christmas with his family, and it was
not an uncheerful one, though they were all in mourning. It was not he,
but his cousin, who had sent the telegram to Kate, in the confusion of
the moment, not remembering that to her it would convey no information.
But when the little party who had been together in Florence met again
now, they talked of every subject on earth but that. Instinctively they
avoided the recollection of these confused months, which had brought so
much suffering in their train. The true history came to Kate in
confidential interviews with her aunt, and was revealed little by
little. It was to shield Bertie Eldridge from the possibility of
discovery that Bertie Hardwick had been forced to make one of their
party continually, and to devote himself, in appearance, to Ombra as
much as her real lover did. He had yielded to his cousin’s pleadings,
having up to that time had no thought nor desire which the other Bertie
had not shared. But this service which had been exacted from him had
broken his bonds. He had separated from his cousin immediately on their
return, and begun his independent life, though he had still continued to
be, when it was not safe for them to meet, the mode of communication
between Ombra and her husband.

All this Kate learned, partly from Mrs. Anderson, partly at a later
period. She did not learn, however, what a dreary time had passed
between the flight of the two ladies from Langton-Courtenay and their
return. Her aunt did not tell her what wretched doubts had beset them,
what sense of neglect, what terrors for the future. Bertie Eldridge had
not been so anxious to shield his wife from the consequences of their
imprudence as he ought to have been. But all is well that ends well. His
father had died in the nick of time, and in Ombra’s society he was the
best of young husbands--proud, and fond, and happy. There was no fault
to be found in him _now_.

When ‘the Eldridges’ went to their house, in great pomp and state, they
left Mrs. Anderson with Kate; and to Kate, after they were gone, the
whole seemed like a dream. She could scarcely believe that they had been
there--that all the strange story was true. But she had perfectly
recovered of her cold, and of her despondency, and was in such bloom,
when she took leave of her departing guests, that all sorts of
compliments were paid to her.

‘Your niece has blossomed into absolute beauty,’ said one of the old
fogies to Mr. Courtenay. ‘You have shut her up a great deal too long.
What a sensation she will make with her fortune, and with that face!’

Mr. Courtenay shrugged his shoulders, and made a grimace.

‘I don’t see what good that face can do her,’ he said, gruffly. He was
suspicious, though he scarcely knew what he was suspicious of. There
seemed to him something more than met the eye in this Eldridge business.
Why the deuce had not that girl with the ridiculous name married young
Hardwick, as she ought to have done? He was the first who had troubled
Mr. Courtenay’s mind with previsions of annoyance respecting his niece.
And, lo! the fellow was coming back again, within reach, and Kate was
almost her own mistress, qualified to execute any folly that might come
into her head.

There was, however, a lull in all proceedings till Christmas, when, as
we have prematurely announced, but as was very natural, Bertie Hardwick
came home. Mr. Courtenay, too, being suspicious, came again to
Langton-Courtenay, feeling it necessary to be on the spot. It was a very
quiet Christmas, and nothing occurred to alarm anyone until the evening
of Twelfth Day, when there was a Christmas-tree in the school-room for
the school-children. It had been all planned before Sir Herbert’s death;
and Mrs. Hardwick decided that it was not right the children should
suffer ‘for our affliction--with such an object in view I hope I can
keep my feelings in check,’ she said. And indeed the affliction of the
Rectory was kept very properly in check, and did not appear at all in
the school-room. Kate enjoyed this humble festivity, with the most
thorough relish. She was a child among the children. Her spirits were
overflowing. To be sure, she was not even in mourning; and when all was
over, she declared her intention of walking home up the avenue, which,
all in its Winter leaflessness, was beautiful in the moonlight. It was a
very clear, still Winter night--hard frost and moonlight, and air which
was sharp and keen as ice, and a great deal more exhilarating than
champagne to those whose lungs were sound, and their hearts light.
Bertie walked with her, after she had been wrapped up by his sisters.
Her heart beat fast, but she was glad of the opportunity. No appropriate
moment had occurred before; she would make her apology now.

They had gone through the village side by side, talking of the
school-children and their delight; but as they entered the avenue they
grew more silent. ‘Now is my time!’ cried Kate to herself; and, though
her heart leaped to her mouth, she began bravely.

‘Mr. Bertie, there is something I have wished to say to you ever since
Ombra came back. I did you a great deal of injustice. I want to make an
apology.’

‘An apology!--to me!’

‘Yes, to you. I don’t know that I ever did anybody so much wrong. I do
not want to blame Bertie Eldridge. It is all right now, I suppose; but I
thought once that you were her----’

Bertie Hardwick turned quickly round upon her, as if in resentment; his
gesture felt like a moral blow. Wounded surprise and resentment--was it
resentment? And somehow, though the white moonlight did not show it,
Kate felt that she blushed.

‘Please don’t be angry. I am confessing that I was wrong; and I never
felt that you could have done it,’ said Kate, in a low voice. ‘I
believed it, and yet I did not believe it. That was the sting. To think
you could have so little faith in me--could have deceived me, when we
are such old friends!’

‘And was that all?’ he said. ‘Was it only the concealment you thought me
incapable of?’

‘The concealment was the only thing wicked about it, I suppose,’ said
Kate, ‘now that it has turned out all right.’

Bertie took no notice of the unconscious humour of this definition. He
turned to her again with a certain vehemence, which seemed to have some
anger in it.

‘Nay,’ he said, almost sharply, ‘there was more than that. You knew I
did not love Ombra--you knew she was nothing to me.’

‘I did not--know--anything about it,’ faltered Kate.