Barbara Rebell

"Mon pauvre c?ur maladroit, mon c?ur plein de révolte et d'espérance...."

"The past is death's, the future is thine own."

Shelley.

Fifteen years had gone by since the eventful birthday and meeting at St. Germains.

As Barbara Rebell, still Barbara Rebell, though she had been a wife, a most unhappy wife, for six years, stepped from the small dark vestibule into the dimly-lighted hall of Chancton Priory, her foot slipped on the floor; and she would have fallen had not a man's hand, small but curiously bony and fleshless, grasped her right arm, while, at the same moment, a deep voice from out the darkness exclaimed, "A good omen! So stumbled the Conqueror!"

The accent in which the odd words were uttered would have told a tale as to the speaker's hard-bitten nationality to most English-speaking folk: not so to the woman to whom they were addressed. Yet they smote on her ear as though laden with welcome, for they recalled the voice of a certain Andrew Johnstone, the Scotch Governor of the West Indian island of Santa Maria, whose brotherly kindness and unobtrusive sympathy had been more comfortable to her, in a moment of great humiliation and distress, than his English wife's more openly expressed concern and more eagerly offered friendship.

And then, as the stranger advanced, hesitatingly, into the hall, she found herself confronted by an odd, indeed an amazing figure, which yet also brought a quick sense of being at last in a dear familiar place offering both welcome and shelter. For she was at once aware that this must be the notable Jane Turke, Madame Sampiero's housekeeper, one to whom Barbara's own mother had often referred when telling her little daughter of the delights of Chancton Priory-of the Sussex country house to which, when dying, the thoughts of Richard Rebell's wife seemed ever turning with sick longing and regret.

Mrs. Turke wore a travesty of the conventional housekeeper's costume. There, to be sure, were the black apron and lace cap and the bunch of jingling keys, but the watered silk of which the gown was made was of bright yellow, and across its wearer's ample bosom was spread an elaborate parure of topazes set in filigree gold, a barbaric ornament which, however, did not seem out of place on the remarkable-looking old lady. Two earrings, evidently belonging to the same set, had been mounted as pins, and gleamed on the black lace partly covering Mrs. Turke's grey hair, which was cut in a straight fringe above the shrewd, twinkling eyes, Roman nose, and firm, well-shaped mouth and chin.

For a few moments the housekeeper held, as it were, the field to herself: she curtsied twice, but there was nothing servile or menial about the salutation, and each time the yellow gown swept the stone-flagged floor she uttered the words, "Welcome, Ma'am, to Chancton," running her eyes quickly the while over the slender stranger whose coming might bring such amazing changes to the Priory.

Then, as Mrs. Rebell, half smiling, put out her hand, the old woman-for, in spite of her look of massive strength Mrs. Turke was by now an old woman-said more naturally, "You don't remember Jane Turke, Ma'am, but Jane Turke remembers you, when you was little Missy, and your dear Mamma used to bring you here as a babby."

Mrs. Turke's voice was quite amazingly unlike that which had uttered, close to the door, the few words of what Barbara had felt to be a far sincerer welcome. It was essentially a made-up, artificial voice,-one to which only the old-fashioned but expressive word "genteel" could possibly apply: an intelligent listener could not but feel certain that Mrs. Turke would be bound to speak, if under stress of emotion, in quite other accents.

A muttered exclamation, a growl from that other presence who still stood apart, hidden in the deep shadows cast by the music gallery which stretched across the hall just above the head of the little group, seemed to nerve the housekeeper to a fresh effort: "This gentleman, Ma'am," she cried, waving a fat be-ringed hand towards the darkness, "is Doctor McKirdy. He also knew your dear Mamma, and is very pleased to see you once more at Chancton Priory."

From behind Barbara Rebell lumbered forth into the light another strange figure, a man this time, clad in evening dress. But he also seemed oddly familiar, and Mrs. Rebell knew him for a certain Alexander McKirdy, of whom, again, she had often heard from her mother. "I'll just thank ye," he said harshly, "to let me utter my own welcome to this lady. My words, no doubt, will be poor things, Mrs. Turke, compared to yours, but they will have the advantage of being my own!"

Alexander McKirdy was singularly ugly,-so much had to be conceded to his enemies and critics, and at Chancton there were many who felt themselves at enmity with him, and few who were capable of realising either the Scotchman's intellectual ability or his entire disinterestedness. Of fair height, he yet gave the impression of being short and ungainly, owing to the huge size of his head and the disproportionate breadth of his shoulders. His features were rough-hewn and irregular, only redeemed by a delicate, well-shaped mouth, and penetrating, not unkindly pale blue eyes. His hair, once bright red, now sandy grey streaked with white, was always kept short, bristling round a high intelligent forehead, and he was supposed to gratify Scotch economy by cutting it himself. He was clean-shaven, and his dress was habitually that of a man quite indifferent to his outward appearance; like most ugly and eccentric-looking men, Doctor McKirdy appeared at his best on the rare occasions when he was compelled to wear his ancient dress clothes.

Such was the man who now turned and cast a long searching look at Barbara Rebell. "I shall know if you are welcome-welcome to me, that is-better an hour hence than now, and better still to-morrow than to-day"-but a twinkle in his small bright eyes softened the ungraciousness of his words: "Now," he said, "be off, Mrs. Turke! You've had your innings, and said your say, and now comes my turn."

"You're never going to take Mrs. Rebell up to Madam now,-this very minute?-before she has taken off her bonnet?-or seen her room?-or had her dinner?" but the man whom she addressed with such fussy zeal made no reply. Instead, he jerked his right shoulder, that as to which Barbara wondered if it could be higher than the other, towards the shadows from which he had himself emerged, and Mrs. Turke meekly turned away, her yellow silk gown rustling, and her barbaric ornaments jingling, as she passed through the swing door which shut off the hall, where they had all three been standing, from the commons of the Priory.

Doctor McKirdy lifted one of the high lamps, which seemed to make the darkness of the hall more visible, in his strong, steady hands. Then he turned abruptly to Mrs. Rebell. "Now," said he, "just a word with you, in your private ear."

Without waiting for an answer, he started walking down the hall, Barbara following obediently, while yet finding time to gaze, half fearfully, as she went, at the quivering grotesque shadows flung by herself and her companion across the bare spaces of flagged floor, and over the high-backed armchairs, the Chinese screen, and the Indian cabinets which lined the walls on either side of the huge fire-place.

At last they stopped before a closed door-one curiously ornate, and heavy with gilding. Doctor McKirdy motioned to his companion to open it, and as she did so they passed through into what was evidently the rarely-used drawing-room of the Priory.

Then, putting the lamp down on the top of a china cabinet, the Scotchman turned and faced his companion, and with a certain surprise Mrs. Rebell realised that he was much taller than herself, and that as he spoke she had to look up into his face.

"I should tell you," he said, with no preamble, "that it was I who wrote you the letter bidding you come."

Barbara shrank back: of course she had been aware,-painfully aware,-that the letter which had indeed bidden her, not unkindly, to leave the West Indian island where she had spent her wretched married life, and make Chancton Priory her home, had not been written by her godmother's own hand. The knowledge had troubled her, for it implied that her letter of appeal, that to which this was an answer, had also been read by alien eyes.

"Yes," the doctor repeated, as though unwilling to spare her, "I wrote it-of course at Madam's dictation: but it was my notion that when going through London you should see Goodchild. He's an honest man,-that is, honest as lawyers go! I thought may-be he might explain how matters are here-Well, did you see him?"

"Yes, I went there this morning. Mr. Goodchild told me that my godmother was paralysed,-but that, of course, I knew already. Perhaps you have forgotten that you yourself long ago wrote and told me of her illness? Mr. Goodchild also explained to me that Madame Sampiero sees very few people. He seemed to doubt"-Barbara's soft, steady voice suddenly trembled-"whether she would consent to see me; but I do hope"-she fixed her dark eyes on his face with a rather piteous expression-"I do hope, Doctor McKirdy, that she will see me?"

"Don't fash yourself! She is going to see you,-that is, if I just wish it!"

He looked down at the delicate, sensitive face of the young woman standing before him, with an intent, scrutinising gaze, allowed it to travel slowly downwards till it seemed wholly to envelop her, and yet Barbara felt no offence: she realised that this strange being only so far examined her outward shape, inasmuch as he believed it would help him to probe her character and nature.

In very truth the doctor's mind was filled at the present moment with the thought of one in every way differing from Mrs. Rebell. How would this still young creature-Barbara's look of fragility and youth gave him something of a shock-affect Madame Sampiero? That was the question he had set himself to solve in the next few moments.

"Are you one of those," he said suddenly, and rather hoarsely, "who shrink from the sight of suffering?-who abhor distortion?-who only sympathise with pain when they themselves are in the way to require sympathy?"

Barbara hesitated. His questions, flung at her with quick short words, compelled true answers.

"No," she said, looking at him with steady eyes, "I have not-I have never had-the feelings you describe. I believe many people shrink from seeing suffering, and that it is not to their discredit that they do so shrink--" There was a defiant note in her voice, and quickly her companion registered the challenge, but he knew that this was no time to wage battle.

Mrs. Rebell continued: "I have never felt any horror of the sick and maimed, and I am not given to notice, with any repugnance, physical deformity." Then she stopped, for the strong lined face of her companion had become, as it were, convulsed with some deep feeling, to which she had no clue.

"Perhaps I will just tell you," he said, "why I believe Madame Sampiero may see you, apart from the fact that she desires to do so. Mrs. Turke was quite right," he went on with apparent irrelevancy, "I did know your mother. I had a sincere respect for her, and--" Again his thoughts seemed to take an abrupt turn. "I suppose you realise that I am Madame Sampiero's medical attendant,-I have no other standing in this house,-oh no, none in the world!"

Barbara divined the feeling which had prompted the last words to be bitter, bitter.

"I know," she said gently, "that you have been here a long time, and that my mother"-a very charming smile lighted up her sad face-"fully returned the feeling you seem to have had for her."

But Doctor McKirdy hardly seemed to hear the words, for he hurried on,

"One day, many years ago-I think before you were born-your mother and I went for a walk. It was about this time of the year-that is the time when keepers and vermin are busy. We were walking, I say, and I-young fool!-was full of pride, for it was the first walk a lady had ever deigned to take with me. I was uglier, yes, and I think even more repulsive-looking than I am now!" he gave Barbara a quick glance from under his shaggy eyebrows, but she made no sign of dissent, and he smiled, wryly.

"Well, as I say, I was pleased and proud, for I thought even more ill of women than I think now; but Mrs. Richard,-that's what we call her here, you know,-was so beautiful, such a contrast to myself: just a pretty doll, I took her to be, and as thoughts are free, looking at her there walking along, I was glad to know that I had all the sweets of her company and none of the bitter!"

And still Barbara Rebell, staring at him, astonished at his words, felt no offence.

"At last," he went on, "we reached the edge of the first down. I'll take you there some day. And we heard suddenly a piteous squeal: it was a puppy, a miserable little beastie, caught in a rabbit trap. You've never seen such a thing? Ay, that's well, I hope you never will: since that day you run no risk of doing so in Chancton Woods! 'Twas a sickening sight, one of the doggie's paws nearly off, and I felt sick-wanted to get away, to fetch someone along from the village. But Mrs. Richard-she was the tenderest creature alive, remember-never flinched. Those were not the days of gun ladies, but there, with me standing by, foolish, helpless, she put an end to the poor beastie-she put it out of its misery-with my knife too. Now that deserved the Humane Society's medal, eh? I never go by there without thinking of it. It's a pity," he said, in abrupt irrelevant conclusion, "that you're not more like her. I mean, as regards the outer woman"-he added hastily-"you are dark, like your father. Well now, I'll be calling Mrs. Turke, and she shall show you your rooms. We thought you would like those Mrs. Richard used to have when she came here. She preferred them to those below, to those grander apartments on Madam's floor."

"And when shall I see my godmother?"

Doctor McKirdy looked at her consideringly:

"Time enough when you've had a rest and a good supper. Never fear, she's as eager to see you as you are to see her," then, as he watched her walking back into the hall, he muttered under his breath, "There's something of Mrs. Richard there after all!"

* * *

A few moments later Barbara was following the stout housekeeper up the small winding stair which occupied, opposite the porch and vestibule, one of the four corners of the great hall, for those who had designed and built the newer portion of Chancton Priory had had no wish to sacrifice any portion of the space at their disposal to the exigencies of a grand staircase.

Mrs. Turke, on the first landing, called a halt, and Barbara looked about her with languid curiosity. To the right stretched a dark recess, evidently the music gallery which overlooked the hall; to the left a broad well-lighted corridor led, as Mrs. Rebell at once divined, if only because of the sudden silence which had fallen on her companion, to the apartments of the paralysed mistress of the Priory, to those of her godmother, Madame Sampiero.

Then Mrs. Turke, her loquacity stilled, laboured on up more narrow winding stairs till they reached the third storey, and, groping her way down many winding turnings, she finally ushered Mrs. Rebell with some ceremony-for every incident connected with daily life was to Mrs. Turke a matter of ritual-into a suite of low-ceilinged, plainly furnished rooms, of which the windows opened on to the Tudor stone balcony which was so distinctive and so beautiful a feature of the great house, as seen from the spreading lawns below.

* * *

Till Barbara found herself left solitary-she had declared herself well able, nay, desirous to unpack and dress alone-all that had taken place during the last hour had seemed hardly real.

It is said that the first feeling of those who, after being buffeted in the storm, tossed to and fro by the waves, are finally cast up on dry land, is not always one of relief. Barbara was no longer struggling in deep water, but she still felt terribly bruised and sore, and the smart of the injuries which had befallen her was still with her. Standing there, in the peaceful rooms which had been those of her own mother, a keen, almost a physical, longing for that same dear tender mother came suddenly over her.

Slowly she put on her one evening dress, a white gown which had been hurriedly made during the hours which had elapsed between the arrival of the Johnstones' invitation to Government House, and the leaving by her of her husband's plantation. Then she looked at herself in the glass, rather pitifully anxious to make a good impression on her godmother-on this paralysed woman, who, if the London lawyer said truly, was yet mentally so intensely and vividly alive.

To give herself courage, Barbara tried to remember that her hostess was not only of her own blood, but that she had been the one dear, intimate, and loyal friend of her mother-the only human being whom Richard Rebell's wife had refused to give up at his bidding, and even after Madame Sampiero and her kinsman had broken off all epistolary relationship. Why had they done so? Out of the past came the memory of sharp bitter words uttered by Barbara's father concerning Madame Sampiero and a certain Lord Bosworth. Then, more recently, when she was perhaps about thirteen, had come news of a child's death-the child had been called Julia-and Barbara's mother had wept long and bitterly, though admitting, in answer to her young daughter's frightened questions, that she had not known the little Julia.

Mrs. Rebell wrapped a shawl, one of Grace Johnstone's many thoughtful gifts, round her white gown, and so stepped through her window on to the stone balcony. Standing there, looking down on the great dark spaces below, she suddenly felt, for the first time, a deep sense of peace and of protection from past sorrows and indignities. For the first time also she felt that she had been justified in coming, and in leaving the man who,-alas! that it should be so, he being kinsman as well as husband,-had treated her so ill.

During the long, solitary journey home-if, indeed, England was home-there had been time for deep misgiving, for that quick examination of conscience which, in a sensitive, over-wrought nature, leads to self-accusation, to a fear of duty neglected. Barbara Rebell was but now emerging from what had been, and that over years, the imprisonment of both body and soul. Physically she had become free, but mentally she still had often during the last five weeks felt herself to be a bondswoman. During the voyage-aye, even during the two days spent by her in London-she had seemed to suffer more sentiently than when actually crushed under the heel of Pedro Rebell, the half-Spanish planter whose name seemed the only English thing about him. Since she had escaped from him, Barbara had felt increasingly the degradation of her hasty marriage to one whose kinship to herself, distant though it was, had seemed to her girlish inexperience an ample guarantee. That she had once loved the man,-if, indeed, the romantic, high-strung fancy which had swept over the newly-orphaned girl could be dignified by the name of love,-served but to increase her feeling of shame.

To-night, leaning over the stone balcony of Chancton Priory, Barbara remembered an incident which had of late receded in her mind: once more she seemed to feel the thrill of indignation and impotent anger which had overwhelmed her when she had found out, a few weeks after her wedding day, that the sum of money paid yearly by Madame Sampiero to Richard Rebell's account, and untouched by him for some ten years before his death, had been discovered and appropriated by her bridegroom, with, if she remembered rightly, the scornful assent of Madame Sampiero.

Again she turned hot, as though the episode had happened but yesterday instead of six long years before; and she asked herself, with sudden misgiving, how she had ever found the courage to petition her godmother for the shelter of her roof. She could never have brought herself to do so but for the kindly letter, accompanied by a gift of a hundred pounds, which had reached her once a year ever since her ill-fated marriage. These letters seemed to tell her that the old link which had bound her mother and Barbara Sampiero so closely had not snapped with death, with absence, or even, on the part of the writer of them, with physical disablement.

At last Barbara turned back into the room, and, taking up a candle, made her way slowly and noiselessly down the old house.

* * *

"Et voilà que vieillie et qu'infirme avant l'heure

Ta main tremble à jamais qui n'a jamais tremblé,

Voilà qu'encore plus haute et que toujours meilleure

L'ame seule est debout dans ton être accablé...."

P. D.

"Who ever rigged fair ships to lie in harbours?"

Donne.

Mrs. Rebell was surprised to note the state and decorum with which the meal to which she sat down in the dining-room was served. She looked with some curiosity at the elderly impassive butler and the young footman-where had they been at the moment of her arrival?

Barbara had yet to learn that implicit obedience to the wills of Doctor McKirdy and of Mrs. Turke was the rule of life in Chancton Priory, but that even they, who when apart were formidable, and when united irresistible, had to give way when any of their fancies controverted a desire, however lightly expressed, of their mistress.

Doctor McKirdy would long ago have abolished the office of butler, and even more that of footman; it irked him that two human beings,-even though one, that selected by himself, was a Scotchman,-should be eating almost incessantly the bread of idleness. But Madame Sampiero had made it clear that she wished the entertainment of her infrequent guests to be carried on exactly as if she herself were still coming and going with fleet, graceful steps about the house of which she had been for so many years the proud and happy mistress. She liked to feel that she was still dispensing hospitality in the stately dining-room, from the walls of which looked down an odd collection of family portraits, belonging to every period of English history and of English art; some, indeed the majority, so little worthy from the artistic point of view, that they had been considered unfit to take their places on the cedarwood panels of the great reception rooms.

* * *

Barbara found the doctor waiting for her in the hall, walking impatiently up and down, his big head thrust forward, his hands clasped behind his back. He was in high good humour, well pleased with the new inmate of the Priory, and impressed more than he knew by Barbara's fragile beauty and air of high breeding. In theory no living man was less amenable to the influence of feminine charm or of outward appearance, but in actual day-to-day life Alexander McKirdy, doubtless owing to the old law of opposites, had a keen feeling for physical perfection, and all unconsciously he abhorred ugliness.

As Mrs. Rebell came silently towards him from behind the Chinese screen which concealed the door leading from the great hall to the dining-room, he shot but at her a quick approving glance. Her white gown, made more plainly than was the fashion of that hour, fell in austere folds about her upright slender figure; the knowledge that she was about to see Madame Sampiero had brought a flush to her pale cheeks and a light to her dark eyes. Without a word the doctor turned and led the way up the winding stair with which Barbara was already feeling a pleasant sense of familiarity; an old staircase is the last of household strongholds which surrenders to a stranger.

When they reached the landing opposite the music gallery, the doctor turned down the wide corridor, and Barbara, with a sudden feeling of surprise, realised that this upper floor had become the real centre,-the heart, as it were,-of Chancton Priory. The great hall, the drawing-room in which she had received Doctor McKirdy's odd confidences, even the dining-room where a huge fire blazed in her honour, had about them a strangely unlived-in and deserted air; but up here were light and brightness, indeed, even some of the modern prettinesses of life,-huge pots of fragrant hothouse flowers, soft rugs under-foot.

When opposite to the high door with which the corridor terminated, Doctor McKirdy turned and looked for a moment at his companion; and, as he did so, it seemed to Barbara that he was deliberately smoothing out the deep lines carved by ever-present watchfulness and anxiety on the rugged surface of his face. Then he knocked twice, sharp quick knocks, signal-like in their precision; and, scarcely waiting for an answer, he walked straight through, saying as he did so, "Just wait here a moment-I will make you a sign when to come forward."

And then, standing just within the door, and gazing with almost painful eagerness before her, Mrs. Rebell saw as in a vision that which recalled, and to a startling degree, a great Roman lying-in-state to which she had been taken, as a very young girl, during a winter spent by her with her parents in Italy.

Between the door and the four curtainless windows, through one of which now gleamed the young October moon, Barbara became aware that on a long narrow couch, placed catafalque fashion, in the centre of the room, an absolutely immobile figure lay stretched out. The light shed from candles set in branching candlesticks about the room threw every detail of the still figure, and especially of the head supported on high pillows, into prominent relief.

From the black satin cushion on which rested two upright slippered feet, the gazer's fascinated eyes travelled up-past the purple velvet gown arranged straightly and stiffly from waist to hem, past the cross-over lace shawl which almost wholly concealed the velvet bodice, and so to the still beautiful oval face, and the elaborately dressed, thickly powdered hair. On the mittened hands, stiffly folded together, gleamed a diamond and a ruby. There was present no distortion-the whole figure, only looking unnaturally long, was simply set in trembling immobility.

Madame Sampiero-the Barbara Rebell of another day-was still made up for the part she chose to play to the restricted audience which represented the great band of former adorers and friends, some of whom would fain have been about her still had she been willing to admit them to her presence in this, her time of humiliation.

As the door had opened, her large, wide open deep blue eyes, still full of the pride of life, and capable of expressing an extraordinary amount of feeling, turned with a flash of inquiry to the left, and a touch of real colour-a sign of how deeply she was moved-came into the delicately moulded, slightly rouged cheeks. The maid who stood by,-a gaunt Scotchwoman who, by dint of Doctor McKirdy's fierceness of manner, and the foreknowledge of constantly increased wages, had been turned into little more than a trained automaton,-retreated noiselessly through a door giving access to a room beyond, leaving the doctor, his patient, and Mrs. Rebell alone.

Tears started to Barbara's eyes, but they were brought there, not so much by the sight she saw before her, as by the sudden change which that same sight seemed to produce in the elderly man who now stood by her. Doctor McKirdy's whole manner had altered. He had become quite gentle, and his face was even twisted into a wry smile as he put his small strong hands over the trembling fingers of Madame Sampiero.

"Well, here's Mrs. Barbara Rebell at last!" he said, "and I'm minded to think that Chancton Priory will find her a decided acquisition!"

Barbara was amazed, indescribably moved and touched, to see the light which came over the stiff face, as the dark blue eyes met and became fixed on her own. Words, nay, not words, but strange sounds signifying-what did they signify?-came from the trembling lips. Mrs. Rebell herself soon learned to interpret Madame Sampiero's muffled utterances, but on this first occasion she thought Doctor McKirdy's quick understanding and translating of her godmother's meaning almost uncanny.

"Madam trusts you enjoyed a good journey," he said; and then, after apparently listening intently for a moment to the hoarse muttered sounds, "Ay, I've told her that already,-Madam wants you to understand that the rooms prepared for you were those preferred by Mrs. Richard." He bent forward, and put his hand to his ear, for even he had difficulty in understanding the now whispered mutterings, "Ay, ay, I will tell her, never fear-Madam wishes you to understand that there are some letters of your mother's,-she thinks you would like to see them and she will give them to you to-morrow. And now if you please she will say good-night."

Following a sudden impulse, Mrs. Rebell bent down and kissed the trembling mittened hands. "I do thank you," she said, almost inaudibly, "very very gratefully for having allowed me to come here."

The words seemed, to the woman who uttered them, poor and inadequate, for her heart was very full, but Doctor McKirdy, glancing sharply at their still listener, saw that Madame Sampiero was content, and that his experiment-for so the old Scotchman regarded the coming of Barbara Rebell to Chancton-was likely to be successful.

* * *

Had Mrs. Rebell, as child and girl, lived the ordinary life of a young Englishwoman, she would have realised, from the first moment of her arrival at Chancton Priory, how strange, how abnormal were the conditions of existence there; but the quiet solitude brooding over the great house suited her mood, and soothed her sore humiliation of spirit.

As she moved about, that first morning, making acquaintance with each of the stately deserted rooms lying to the right and left of the great hall, and seeking to find likenesses to her father-ay, even to herself-in the portraits of those dead and gone men and women whose eyes seemed to follow her as she came and went among them, she felt a deep voiceless regret in the knowledge that, but for so slight a chain of accidents, here she might have come six years ago.

In fancy she saw herself, as in that case she would have been by now, a woman perhaps in years-for Barbara, brought up entirely on the Continent, thought girlhood ended at twenty-but a joyous single-hearted creature, her only past a not unhappy girlhood, and six long peaceful years spent in this beautiful place, well spent too in tending the stricken woman to whom she already felt so close a tie of inherited love and duty.

Ah! how much more vividly that which might have been came before her when she heard the words with which Mrs. Turke greeted her-Mrs. Turke resplendent in a black satin gown, much flounced and gathered, trimmed with bright red bows, and set off by a coral necklace.

"I do hope and trust, Miss Barbara"--and then she stopped, laughing shrilly at herself, "What am I saying?-well to be sure!-I am a silly old woman, but it's Madam's fault,-she's said it to me and the doctor a dozen times this fortnight, 'When Miss Barbara's come home so-and-so will have to be done,'-And now that you are come home, Ma'am (don't you be afraid that I'll be 'Missing' you again), I'll have the holland covers taken off the furniture!"

For they were standing in the first of the two great drawing-rooms, and Mrs. Turke looked round her ruefully: "I did want to have it done yesterday, but the doctor he said, 'Let them be.' Of course I know there'll be company kept now, and a good thing too! If it wasn't for the coming here so constant of my own young gentleman-of Mr. James Berwick, I mean-we would be perished with dulness. 'The more the merrier'-you'll hardly believe, Ma'am, that such was used to be the motto of Chancton Priory. That was long ago, in the days of Madam's good father, and of her lady mother. I can remember them merry times well enough, for I was born here, dear only daughter to the butler and to Lady Barbara's own woman-that's what they called ladies' maids in those days. Folk were born, married, and died in the same service."

"Then I suppose you have never left Chancton Priory?" Mrs. Rebell was looking at the old woman with some curiosity.

"Oh! Lord bless you yes, Ma'am! I've seen a deal of the world. There was an interlude, a most romantic affair, Miss Barbara-there I go again-well, Ma'am, I'll tell you all about it some day. It's quite as interesting as any printed tale. In fact there's one story that reminds me very much indeed of my own romantic affair,-no doubt you've read it,-Mr. James Berwick, he knows it quite well,-that of the Primrose family. Olivia her name was, and she was deceived just as I was,-but there, I made the best of it, and it all came to pass most providentially. Why, they would never have reared Mr. Berwick if it hadn't been for me and my being able to suckle the dear lamb, and there would have been a misfortune for our dear country!"

A half shuffling step coming across the hall checked, as if by magic, Mrs. Turke's flow of reminiscence. She looked deprecatingly into Barbara's face. "You won't be mentioning what I've been telling you to the doctor, will you, Ma'am? He hates anything romantic, that he do, and as for love and poetry,-well, he don't even know the meaning of those expressions! I've often had to say that right out to his face!"

"And then what does he say?"

"It just depends on the mood he's in: sometimes-I'm sorry to say it of him, that I am-he uses most coarse expressions,-quite rude ones! Only yesterday, he said to me, 'If you will talk about spades, Mrs. Turke, then talk about spades, don't call them silver spoons,'-as if I would do such a silly thing! But there, he do lead such a horrid life, all alone in that little house of his, it's small wonder he don't quite know how to converse with a refined person. But he's wonderfully educated-Madam's always thought a deal of him."

As Doctor McKirdy opened the door Mrs. Turke slipped quickly past him, and silently he watched her go, with no jibe ready. He was looking straight at Mrs. Rebell, hesitating, even reddening dully, an odd expression in his light eyes.

Barbara's heart sank,-what was he going to tell her?-what painful thing had he to say? Then he came close to her, and thrust a large open envelope into her hand. "Madam bid me give you these," he said; "when you are wanting anything, just send one or more along by post,-duly registered, of course,"-and under her hand Barbara felt the crinkle of bank notes. "She would like you to get your things, your clothes and a' that, from Paris. Old Léonie, Madam's French maid,-I don't think you've seen her yet,-will give you the addresses. Madam likes those about her to look well. I'm the only one that has any licence that way-oh! and something considerably more valuable she has also sent you," he fumbled in his pocket and held out a small gilt key. "Madam desires you to take her writing-table, here, for your own use. Inside you'll find the letters she spoke of yesterday night-those written by Mrs. Richard,-the other packets, you will please, she says, not disturb."

He waited a moment, then walked across to the Louis XV. escritoire which was so placed at right angles to one of the windows that it commanded the whole wide view of woods, sea, and sky. "Now," he said, "be pleased to place that envelope in there, and turn the key yourself." As Barbara obeyed him, her hand fumbling with the lock, he added with a look of relief, "After business, let's come to pleasure. Would you be feeling inclined for a walk? Madam will be expecting you to tell her what you think of the place. She's interested in every little thing about it."

Doctor McKirdy hurried her through into the hall, and Barbara was grateful indeed that he took no notice and seemed oblivious of the tears-tears of oppressed, moved gratitude-which were trickling slowly down her cheeks. "Don't go upstairs to your room,-no bonneting is wanted here!" he said quickly, "just put this on." He brought her the long white yachting cloak, yet another gift, this time disguised as a loan, of Grace Johnstone, and after he had folded it round her with kindly clumsy hands, and when she had drawn the white hood over her dark hair,-"You look very well in that," he observed, in the tone in which he might have spoken to a pretty child, "I'm minded to take you up to Madam and let her see you so-and yet-no, we've not so long a time before your dinner will be coming," and so they passed through the porch into the open air.

* * *

Alexander McKirdy had come to have something of the pride of ownership in Chancton Priory, and as he walked his companion quickly this way and that,-making no attempt to suit his pace to hers,-he told her much that she remembered afterwards, and which amused and interested her at the time, of the people who had lived in the splendid old house. The life-stories of some of Barbara's forbears had struck the Scotchman's whimsical fancy, and he had burrowed much in the muniment room where were kept many curious manuscripts, for the Rebells had ever been cultivated beyond the usual degree of Sussex squiredom.

When they had skirted the wide lawns, the doctor hurried her through a small plantation of high elms to the stables. In this large quadrangular building of red brick, wholly encompassed by trees, reigned a great air of desolation: there were three horses stabled where there had once been forty, and as they passed out from the courtyard where grass grew between each stone, Barbara asked rather timidly, for her liking for the doctor was still tempered by something very like fear, "Why are there no flowers? I thought in England there were always flowers."

Now Doctor McKirdy was unaccustomed to hear even the smallest word of criticism of Chancton Priory. "What do ye want flowers for?" he growled out, "grass and trees are much less perishable. Is not this prospect more grand and more permanently pleasing than that which would be produced by flowers? Besides, you've got the borders close to the house."

He had brought her to an opening in the high trees which formed a rampart to the lawn in front of the Priory, and, with his lean arm stretched out, he was pointing down a broad grass drive, now flecked with long shafts of golden October sunlight. On one side of this grassy way rose a holly hedge, and on the other, under the trees, was a drift of beech leaves.

Turning round, Barbara suddenly gave a cry of delight; set in an arch, cut out of the dense wall of holly, was a small iron gate, and through the aperture so made could be seen a rose garden, the ancient rosery of Chancton Priory, now a tangle of exquisite colouring, a spot evidently jealously guarded and hidden away even from those few to whom the familiar beauties of the place were free.

Doctor McKirdy followed her gaze with softened melancholy eyes. He had not meant to bring Mrs. Rebell to this spot, but silently he opened the little iron gate, and stood holding it back for her to pass through into the narrow rose-bordered way.

Surrounded by beech trees and high hedges, the rosery had evidently been designed long before the days of scientific gardening, but in the shadowed enclosure many of the summer roses were still blooming. And yet a feeling of oppression came over Barbara as she walked slowly down the mossy path: this lovely garden, whose very formality of arrangement was an added grace, looked not so much neglected as abandoned, uncared for.

As the two walked slowly on side by side, they came at last to a fantastic fountain, set in the centre of the rosery, stone cupids shaking slender jets of water from rose-laden cornucopias, and so to the very end of the garden-that furthest from the Priory. It was bounded by a high red brick wall, probably all that remained of some building older than the rosery, for it had been cleverly utilised to serve as a background and shelter to the earliest spring roses, and was now bare of blossom, almost of leaves. In the centre of this wall, built into the old brick surface, was an elaborate black and white marble tablet or monument, on which was engraved the following inscription:-

"Hic, ubi ludebas vagula olim et blandula virgo,

Julia, defendunt membra foventque ros?.

Laetius ah quid te tenuit, quid purius, orbis?-

Nunc solum mater quod fueris meminit"

"What is it? What is written there?" Barbara asked with some eagerness. "How strange a thing to find in a rose garden!"

She had turned to her companion, but for a while he made no answer. Then at last, speaking with an even stronger burr than usual, Doctor McKirdy translated, in a quiet emotionless voice, the inscription which had been composed by Lord Bosworth, at the bidding of Madame Sampiero, to the memory of their beloved child.

"Here, where thou wert wont once to play, a little sweet wandering maid, Julia, the roses protect and cherish thy limbs. Ah, what happier or purer thing than thee did the world contain?"

"Do ye wish to hear the rest?" he said, rather sharply, "'Twas put in against my will and conscience, for 'tis false-false!"

She bent her head, and he read on,

"Now, only thy mother remembers that thou wast."

Barbara looked up, questions trembling on her lips, but her eyes dropped as they met his. "Madam would have her put here," he said; "Julia's garden,-that's what we used to call it, and that is what it still is, for here she lies,-coffinless."

Again he pointed to the last line, "Madam ought not to have had that added when there's not a man or woman about the place who's forgotten the child! But beyond the walls,-ah! well, who knows what is remembered beyond the walls?"

"What do you mean?" asked Barbara in a low tone; out of the past she was remembering a June day at St. Germains. What had she been promised?-ah, yes! "the sweetest of playfellows."

"Well, I was just meaning that Madam, when she made us put in those words, was thinking may-be of some who do not belong to the Priory, who live beyond the walls. I make no doubt that those folk have no time to cast their minds back so far as to remember little Julia."

He turned sharply round and walked as if in haste through the garden, his head thrust forward, his hands clasped behind his back, in what Barbara already knew to be his favourite attitude.

Once outside the gate, Doctor McKirdy looked long, first towards the Priory, then down the broad grass drive. "And now," he said briskly, "let's get away to the downs,-there's more air out there than here!"

* * *

The road leading from the Priory gates to the open downs lay along a western curve of country-side, and was over-arched by great elms. To the west Mrs. Rebell caught glimpses of a wide plain verging towards the sea, and in the clear autumn air every tree and bush flamed with glory of gold and russet.

As they walked along the white chalky ridged cart track, the doctor looked kindly enough at the woman by his side. She was not beautiful as had been her mother, and yet he saw that her features were very perfect, and that health,-perfect recovery from what had evidently been a bad illness,-might give her the bloom, the radiance, which were now lacking. The old Scotchman also told himself with satisfaction that she was intelligent-probably cultivated. With the one supreme exception of Madame Sampiero, Doctor McKirdy had had very little to do with intelligent women; but Barbara, from her way of listening to his stories of Chancton Priory, from her questions and her answers, had proved-or so thought the doctor-that she was one of the very few members of her sex who take the trouble to think for themselves.

"I suppose Mr. Sampiero is dead?"

Never was man more unpleasantly roused from an agreeable train of thought.

"He was dead last time we heard of him, but that happened once before, and then he came to life again-and most inopportunely."

There was a pause, and Doctor McKirdy added, in a tone which from him was new to Barbara, "I wonder if you are one to take offence, even if the offensive thing be said for your own exclusive benefit?" He did not wait for her reply, "I think you should just be informed that the man-that individual to whom you referred-is never to be mentioned. Here at Chancton he is forgotten, completely obliterated-wiped out." He made a fierce gesture as though his strong hands were destroying, crushing the life out of, some vile thing.

"Since I came here, thirty years ago, no one has dared to speak of him to me, and the only time that Madam had to communicate with me about him she wrote what she had to say-I, making answer to her, followed the same course. I thought, may-be, I'd better let you know how he is felt about in this place."

"I am sorry," faltered Barbara. "I did not know-My father and mother told me so little--"

"They're a fearsome gossiping lot in Chancton," Doctor McKirdy was still speaking in an angry ruffled voice; "I don't suppose you'll have much call to see any of them, but Madam may just mean you to do so, and you may as well be put on your guard. And then you'll be having your own friends here, I'm thinking"-he shot a quick look at her-"Madam bid me tell you that she has no idea of your shutting yourself up, and having no company but Mrs. Turke and,"-he turned and made her an odd, ungainly little bow-"your most humble servant here!"

"I have no friends," said Barbara, in a very low tone. "Nay, I should not say that, for I have two very good friends, a Mr. Johnstone, the Governor of Santa Maria, and his wife-also, since yesterday, a third,-if he will take me on trust for my mother's sake." She smiled on her companion with a touch of very innocent coquetry. Doctor McKirdy's good humour came back.

"Ay," he said, "there's no doubt about that third friend," but his brow clouded as Barbara added, "There is one person in Chancton I'm very anxious to see,-a Mrs. Boringdon. She is the mother of my friend Mrs. Johnstone."

The mention of this lady's name found Doctor McKirdy quite prepared, and ready with an answer. "Well, I'm not saying you'll like her, and I'm not saying you'll dislike her."

"If she's at all like her daughter I know I shall like her."

"May-be you will prefer the son, Mr. Oliver Boringdon-I do so myself, though I've no love to waste on him."

How the doctor longed to tell Mrs. Rebell what he really thought of this Mrs. Boringdon, the mother of Madame Sampiero's estate agent, and of how badly from his point of view this same young gentleman, Oliver Boringdon, sometimes behaved to him! But native caution, a shrewd knowledge that such warnings often bring about the exact opposite to what is intended by those who utter them, kept him silent.

Barbara's next words annoyed him keenly.

"Oliver!" she cried, "of course I shall like him!"

"Oliver? Then you're already acquainted with him?" The doctor felt beside himself with vexation. He was a man of feuds, and to him the land agent, all the more so that he was a highly educated man, who had been a civil servant, and later, for a brief period of glory, a member of Parliament, was a very real thorn in the flesh.

But Barbara was laughing, really laughing, and for the first time since her arrival at Chancton. "If I were acquainted with him," she cried, "surely I should not be calling him by his Christian name! But of course his sister, Mrs. Johnstone, has talked to me of him: he is her only brother, and she thinks him quite perfect."

"It's well there are two to think him so! I refer, o' course, Ma'am, to the youth himself, and to this lady who is a friend of yours."

"Is he conceited? Oh! what a pity!"

"Conceited?" Doctor McKirdy prided himself on his sense of strict justice and probity: "Nay, nay, that's no' the word for it. Mr. Oliver Boringdon just considers that he is always right, and that such a good thinker as himself can never be wrong. He's encouraged in his ideas by the silly women about here."

"Does my godmother like him?-he's her land-agent, isn't he?"

"Madam!" cried Doctor McKirdy indignantly, "Madam has never wasted a thought upon him,-why should she?"

He looked quite angrily at his companion. Barbara was still smiling: a delicate colour, the effect of walking against the wind, had come into her face.

"They're all alike," growled the doctor to himself, "just mention a young man to a young woman and smiling begins," but the harsh judgment, like most harsh judgments, was singularly at fault. Poor Barbara was waking up to life again, ready to take pleasure in the slightest matter which touched her sense of humour. The doctor, however, had become seriously uneasy. Why this strange interest in the Boringdons? Mrs. Rebell now belonged to the Priory, and so was surely bound to adopt without question all his, Alexander McKirdy's, views and prejudices. Her next words fortunately gave him the opening he sought.

"I suppose there are many young ladies at Chancton?"

"There is just one," he said, brightening, "a fine upstanding lass. The father of her is General Thomas Kemp. May-be you've heard of him, for he's quite a hero, Victoria Cross and a' that, though the fools about here don't recognise him as such."

"No," said Barbara, "I never heard of the heroic General Kemp."

Her eyes were brimming over with soft laughter. Living with her parents first in one and then in another continental town, she had had as a young girl many long solitary hours at her disposal, and she had then read, with keen zest, numberless old-fashioned novels of English life. This talk seemed to bring back to her mind many a favourite story, out of which she had tried in the long ago to reconstruct the England she had then so longed to know. Ah! now she must begin novel-reading again! And so she said, "I suppose that Oliver Boringdon is in love with the General's daughter."

Doctor McKirdy turned and looked at her, amazed and rather suspicious; "you show great prescience-really remarkable prescience, Ma'am. I was just about explaining to you that there is no doubt something like a kindness betwixt them. There's another one likes her, a Captain Laxton, but they say she won't have aught to say to him."

"Oh no! she must be true to Mr. Boringdon, and then, after a long engagement,-oh! how wise to have a long engagement,"-Barbara sighed instinctively-"they will be married in the little church which I look down upon from my stone balcony? and then-why then they will live happy ever after!"

"No, no, I cannot promise you that," said Doctor McKirdy gruffly, "that would be forecasting a great deal too much!"

Even as he spoke the deeply rutted path was emerging abruptly on a vast expanse of rolling uplands. They were now on the open down; Barbara laid a detaining hand on the old Scotchman's arm, and looked about her with enraptured eyes. Before her, to the east, lay a dark oasis, a black-green stretch of fir plantation, redeemed a hundred years ago from the close cropped turf, and a large white house looked out from thence up the distant sea. To the north, some three miles away, rose the high sky-line. A dense wood, said to be part of the primeval forest, crept upwards on a parallel line. There, so says tradition, Boadicea made her last stand, and across this down a Roman road still asserts the final supremacy of the imperial force.

A sound of voices, of steady tramping feet, broke the exquisite stillness. Towards them, on the path which at a certain point sharply converged from that on which Doctor McKirdy and Barbara stood, advanced Fate, coming in the shape of two men who were in sharp contrast the one to the other.

Oliver Boringdon-dark, upright, steady-eyed-had still something of the Londoner and of the Government official about his appearance. His dark, close-cropped hair was covered by a neat cap which matched his serge coat and knickerbockers. His companion, James Berwick, looked-as indeed he was-far more a citizen of the world. He was bare-headed, his fair hair ruffled and lifted from his lined forehead by the wind; his shooting clothes, of rough tweed and ugly yellow check colouring, were more or less out of shape. He was smoking a huge pipe, and as he walked along, with rather ungainly steps-the gait of a man more at home in the saddle than on foot-he swung an oak stick this way and that, now and again throwing it in the air and catching it again-a trick which sorely tried the patience of his staider companion.

When they reached the nearest point to Doctor McKirdy and Mrs. Rebell, the one took off his cap and the other waved his stick vigorously by way of greeting. Indeed Berwick, as Doctor McKirdy very well saw, would have soon lessened the ten yards space between the two groups, but Boringdon, looking before him rather more straightly than before, was already walking on.

"Well," said the doctor, "you have now had your wish, Ma'am: that was Mr. Oliver Boringdon, and the other is his fidus Achates, Mr. James Berwick: he's a conceited loon if you like. But then he's more reason to be so! Now what d'ye think they reminded me of as they walked along there?"

"I don't know," faltered Barbara. She was still feeling as if a sudden blast of wind had beaten across her face-such had been the effect of the piercing, measuring glance of the man whom she took to be Oliver Boringdon. No doubt the over-bold look was excused by the fact that he recognised in her his sister's friend. Barbara flushed deeply; she was wondering, with acute discomfort, what account of her, and of her affairs, Grace Johnstone-impetuous, indiscreet Grace-had written to her mother and brother? Oh! surely she could be trusted to have kept secret certain things she knew-things which had been discovered by the Johnstones, and admitted by Barbara in her first moments of agonised relief from Pedro Rebell's half-crazy ill-usage.

"Well, I'll tell you what the sight of the two of them suggested to me," went on Doctor McKirdy, "and in fact what they exactly appeared like, just now,--" he hesitated a moment, and then with manifest enjoyment added, "The policeman and the poacher! That's what any stranger might well ha' taken them for, eh?" But Barbara had given no heed to the bold gazer's more drab companion.

* * *

"Mates are chosen marketwise

Coolest bargainer best buys,

Leap not, nor let leap the heart;

Trot your track and drag your cart,

So your end may be in wool

Honoured and with manger full."

George Meredith.

Mrs. Boringdon, sitting in the drawing-room at Chancton Cottage, looked, in spite of her handsome dress and her manner and appearance of refinement, strangely unsuited to the place in which she found herself. Even the Indian tea-table-one of the few pieces of furniture added to the room by its present occupant, and now laden with substantial silver tea-pot, cream-jug, and sugar-basin burnished to their highest point of brilliancy-was out of keeping with its fragile charm. The room, indeed, had been scarcely altered since it had been furnished, some sixty years before, as a maiden retreat for one of Madame Sampiero's aunts, the Miss Lavinia Rebell of whom tradition still lingered in the village, and whose lover had been killed in the Peninsular War.

On her arrival at Chancton Mrs. Boringdon would have dearly liked to consign the shabby old furniture, the faded water-colours and colour prints, to some unhonoured lumber-room of the Priory, but even had such desecration been otherwise possible, the new mistress of Chancton Cottage was only too well aware that she lacked the means to make the old-fashioned house what she would have considered habitable. Indeed, she had been thankful to learn that the estate agency offered to her son through the intermediary of his friend, James Berwick, carried with it the use of a fully furnished house of any sort.

Whenever Mrs. Boringdon felt more than usually dissatisfied and critical of the furnishings of the rooms where she was fated to spend so much of her time-for she had no love of the open air-she tried to remind herself that this phase of her life was only temporary; that soon-her son thought in two or three years, but Berwick laughed at so prudent a forecast-the present Government would go out, and then "something" must surely be found for her clever Oliver.

To-day, her son had brought his friend back to lunch, and the two young men had stayed on in the dining-room and in the little smoking-room beyond, talking eagerly the one with the other. As the mother sat in her drawing-room patiently longing for her cup of tea, but content to wait Oliver's good pleasure-or rather that of James Berwick-she could hear the voices rising and falling, and she rejoiced to think of the intimacy which those sounds betokened.

Mrs. Boringdon was one of the many in whom the mere possession of wealth in others excites an almost hypnotic feeling of interest and goodwill. When in his presence-nay, when simply even in his neighbourhood-she never forgot that her son's intimate friend and one-time chief, James Berwick, was an enormously rich man. That fact impressed her far more, and was ever more present to her mind, than the considerable political position which his personality and his wealth together had known how to win for him. When with Berwick Mrs. Boringdon was never wholly at ease, never entirely her cool, collected self. And now this afternoon, sitting there waiting for them to come in and join her, she wondered for the thousandth time why Oliver was not more amenable to his important friend-why he had not known how to make himself indispensable to James Berwick. Had there only been about him something of the sycophant-but Mrs. Boringdon did not use the ugly word-he would never have been allowed to slip into this backwater. She was one of the few remaining human beings who believe that everything is done by "influence," and she had never credited her son's assurance that no "job" was in the least likely to be found for him.

His mother's love for Oliver was tempered by fear; she was keenly desirous of keeping his good opinion, but of late, seeing how almost intolerable to him was the position he had accepted, she had been sorely tempted to speak-to point out to him that men in the position of James Berwick come to expect from those about them something like subserviency, and that then they often repay in lavish measure those who yield it them.

At last the dining-room door opened and the two men came in.

"Well," cried Berwick, "we've thrashed out the whole plan of campaign! There's never anything like a good talk with Oliver to confirm me in my own opinion! It's really absurd he should stick on here looking after the Chancton cabbages, dead and alive-but he's positively incorruptible! I'm thinking of starting a newspaper, Mrs. Boringdon, and to coax him into approval-also, I must say, to secure him a little freedom-I offered him the editorship, but he won't hear of it."

Berwick had thrown himself as he spoke into a low chair, which creaked ominously under his weight. How indignant would Mrs. Boringdon have felt had any other young man, looking as James Berwick now looked, his fair hair tossed and rumpled with the constant ruffling of his fingers, come and thrown himself down in this free and easy attitude on one of the few comfortable chairs in Chancton Cottage! But his hostess smiled at him very indulgently, and turned a look of gentle reproach at her son's stern dark face.

"An editorship," she said, vaguely, "that sounds very nice. I suppose it would mean going and living in London?" Her quick mind, darting this way and that, saw herself settled in a small house in Mayfair, entertaining important people, acting perhaps as hostess to Berwick's friends and supporters! She had once been able to render him a slight service-in fact, on two occasions he had been able to meet a friend, a lady, in her drawing-room. In doing what she had done Mrs. Boringdon had lowered herself in her own eyes, and she had had the uncomfortable sensation that she had lost in his some of the prestige naturally attaching to his friend's mother, and yet, for all she knew, these interviews might have been of a political nature. Women now played a great part in politics. Mrs. Boringdon preferred to think that the fair stranger, concerning whose coming to her house there had been so much mystery, had been one of these.

Her son's next words rudely interrupted her pleasant dream.

"The ownership of a newspaper," Oliver was saying abruptly, "has never yet been of any use to a politician or statesman, and has certainly prevented some from getting into the Cabinet," and he named two well-known members of Parliament who were believed to be financially interested in certain important journals. "It isn't as if you wanted what the Americans call a platform," he went on. "No man is more sure of a hearing than you are yourself. But just now, the less you say the more you will be listened to when the moment comes for saying it!"

The speaker was walking up and down the narrow room, looking restless and impatient, with Berwick smiling lazily up at him, though evidently rather nettled at the frank, unasked-for advice.

Mrs. Boringdon judged the moment had come to intervene. "I hear that Lord Bosworth and your sister are back at Fletchings, and that they are expecting a good many people down-" She added, in a tone of apology, "Chancton, as you know, has half-a-dozen Court newsmen of its own."

"To me"-Berwick had jumped up and was helping himself to sugar, to cake, with the eager insouciance of an intimate-"to me Chancton always has been, what it is now more than ever, the most delightful spot on earth! I know that Oliver doesn't agree with me, but even he, Mrs. Boringdon, ought to enjoy the humours of the place. What other village can offer such a range of odd-come-shorts, of eccentrics? Where else in these prosaic days can one see gathered together in one spot our McKirdys, our Vipens--"

"Our Mrs. Turkes," said Oliver slily. He came forward smiling, good humour restored, and took his share of the good things his mother had provided.

"Oh! yes," said Berwick, rather hastily, "of course we must throw in my foster-mother-in fact, I'm sure she would be deeply offended at being left out! And then, there's another thing I think I can claim for Chancton. Here one may always expect to come across the unexpected! To-day whom should we meet, Mrs. Boringdon, but McKirdy, wrapped in his historic plaid and snuff-coloured hat, and accompanied by a nymph, and an uncommonly attractive nymph too!"

Mrs. Boringdon looked gently bewildered. "A nymph!" she exclaimed, "do you mean a lady? What an extraordinary thing!"

Berwick looked across at his hostess and grinned. Now and again Oliver's mother actually reminded this whimsical young man of Mistress Quickly, and it was an added delight to picture to himself her surprise and horror if only she had known what was in his mind.

But Boringdon was frowning. "Nonsense!" he said, irritably, "From what I could see, she was simply a very oddly dressed young woman! McKirdy has always been fond of making friends with the summer visitors, and he always prefers strangers to acquaintances. I must say the doctor is one of the Chancton characters with whom I, for one, could well dispense! He was really insolent to me yesterday, but there is no redress possible with an old man like that. His latest notion is that I must only communicate with Madame Sampiero through him!"

James Berwick turned round, and Mrs. Boringdon thought he looked annoyed; he always chose to regard everything and everybody connected with the Priory as his very particular concern. "I must be off now," he said, "Arabella has several people arriving this afternoon, and I ought to be there to look after them. Walk with me as far as the great gates, old fellow?"

But Boringdon shook his head. "Sorry I can't," he said, shortly, "but I'm expecting one of the village boys to come in any minute. Kemp promised me to talk to him, to try and persuade him to enlist, and he's coming up to tell me the result."

"Then you're not returning to the Priory to-night, Mr. Berwick?" a note of delicate reserve had come into Mrs. Boringdon's voice; she never, if she could help it, referred to the Priory or to the Priory's mistress.

"No, I'm still at Chillingworth. But I expect to be over just for the night to-morrow. Then I'm off for a month's yachting."

* * *

Oliver came back from the hall door and sat down. His mother saw with a pang how tired and how discouraged he looked. "I think," she said, "that you might have done, dear, what Mr. Berwick asked you to do-I mean, as to seeing him back part of the way to Fletchings. That village lad could have waited for you-and-I suppose it was all a joke about the new paper and the editorship?"

"Oh! no, he's thinking of it," he said. "I suppose, mother, you never heard of the Craftsman, the paper in which the great Duke of Berwick's friend, Lord Bolingbroke, wrote. Some fellow has been talking to him about it, and now he thinks he would like to resuscitate it. Incredible that so shrewd a man should sometimes choose to do such foolish things, actuated, too, by the silliest of sentimental motives! If I were he, I should feel anything but proud of my descent from the Stuarts. However, I hope I've choked him off the whole idea."

As he caught her look of fresh disappointment, he added, with a certain effort, "I'm afraid, mother, that you've as little reason to like Chancton as I have. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't do better to throw it all up and go to London. I certainly don't want to edit any paper for Berwick, but I dare say I could get work, literary work of sorts; and, after all, I should be far more in touch there with the things I really care about."

His tone of dejection went to her heart, but she answered, not the last, but the first sentence he had uttered. "You are right," she said, rather slowly, "I do not like Chancton any better than you do, but I shall always be glad we came here, if only because it has brought us in contact with the Kemps-or perhaps I should say with their daughter."

Oliver looked up at his mother uneasily; he was aware that with her a confidence was rarely spontaneous.

"I wonder," she said, and turning she fixed her eyes on the fire, away from his face, "I have often been tempted to wonder lately, my dear boy, what you really think of Lucy-how you regard her? Pray do not answer me if you would rather not do so."

Boringdon hesitated. His mother's words, her extreme frankness, took him completely by surprise; for a moment he felt nearer to her than he had done for years. Still, he was glad that she went on staring into the fire, and that he was safe from meeting the acute, probing glance he knew so well.

"You've asked me a very difficult question," he said at last-"one I find almost impossible to answer truly."

Mrs. Boringdon's hands trembled. She also felt unwontedly moved. She had not expected so honest a confession.

But Oliver was again speaking, in a low, preoccupied voice. "Perhaps we have not been wise, you and I, in having so-so"-his lips sought to frame suitable words-"so charming a girl," he said at last, "constantly about the house. I have certainly become fond of Lucy-in fact, I think I may acknowledge to you, mother, that she is my ideal of what a girl should be." How odd, how inadequate, how priggish his words sounded to himself! Still he went on, with gathering courage, "But no one knows better than you do how I am situated. For what I am pleased to call my political ambitions, you have already made sacrifices. If I am to do what I wish with my life, such a marriage-indeed, any marriage, for years to come-would be for me quite out of the question. It would mean the condemnation of myself to such a life as that I am now leading, and I do not feel-perhaps I ought to be ashamed of not feeling-that my attraction to Miss Kemp is so strong as to make me desirous of giving up all I have striven for."

Mrs. Boringdon made no reply. She still stared on into the fire; a curious look, one of perplexity and hesitation, had come over her face.

"Mother!" he cried, and the tone forced her to look round at him, "surely you don't think-it is not your impression that Lucy--"

"I think she has become very fond of you," said Mrs. Boringdon deliberately. "But I confess that I have sometimes thought that she seemed fonder of me than of you." She smiled as she spoke, but to Boringdon this was no smiling matter-indeed, it was one which to his mind could scarcely be discussed with decency by himself and his mother. Then a vision of Lucy Kemp, steady, clear-eyed Lucy, almost too sensible-so the people at Chancton, he knew, regarded her to be-came to his help. "No, no," he said, with a sudden sense of relief, "I'm quite sure, mother, that any feeling-I mean the kind of feeling of which we are speaking-has been entirely on my side! We will be more careful. I am willing to admit that I have been foolish."

But Mrs. Boringdon scarcely heard what he was saying. She who so seldom doubted as to her course of action, was now weighing the pros and cons of what had become to her a matter for immediate decision. Unfortunately her son's next words seemed to give her the opening she sought.

"Sometimes I am tempted to think"-Oliver had got up, he was leaning against the mantel-piece, looking down into his mother's face-"Sometimes, I say, I am tempted to think that after all money is the one important thing in life! When I look back to how I regarded James Berwick's marriage-he once accused me of condemning what he did, and I could not deny that I had done so-I see how much more wise he was than I. Why, to him that marriage which so shocked me was the turning point-ay, more, that money, together, perhaps, with his wife's death, steadied him-amazingly-I refer of course to his intellectual standpoint, and to his outlook on life! And you, mother-you've always thought more of money than I've ever done. But even you once thought that it could be too dearly purchased."

Mrs. Boringdon reddened. Her son's words gratified her. She was aware that he was alluding to an offer of marriage which she herself had unhesitatingly rejected at a time when her daughter was still in the schoolroom, and her son at Charterhouse. Her middle-aged wooer had been a man of some commercial standing and much wealth, but "not a gentleman," so the two pitiless young people had decided, and Mrs. Boringdon, her children believed, had not hesitated for a moment between a life of poor gentility and one of rather vulgar plenty.

"Oh! yes," she said slowly, "money can certainly be too dearly purchased. But still, you on your side, you and your sister Grace, have always thought far too little of it. Of late I have sometimes wondered, Oliver, if you knew-whether you are aware"-for the life of her she could not help the sudden alteration in her measured voice-"that our dear little friend, Lucy Kemp, is something of an heiress-that in four years time, when she is five-and-twenty, that is, there will be handed over to her ￡25,000?"

And then, while her son listened to her in complete silence, giving no clue as to how he regarded the information, she explained her knowledge as having come to her from an absolutely sure source, from a certain Miss Vipen, the chartered gossip of Chancton, whose information could be trusted when actual facts were in question.

Even after Mrs. Boringdon had done speaking, Oliver still sat on, resting his head on his hands. "I wonder if Laxton knows of this?" he said at last. "What a brute I should think him if he does!" and Mrs. Boringdon felt keenly, perhaps not unreasonably, irritated. Her son's words also took her by surprise-complete silence would have satisfied her, but this odd comment on the fact she had chosen to reveal was very different from what she had expected.

But when, some three hours later, the mother and son had finished their simple dinner, and Oliver announced to his mother that he must now go down to the Grange for half an hour in order to consult General Kemp over that village lad whose conduct was giving Oliver so much trouble, Mrs. Boringdon smiled. Her son caught the smile and it angered him. How utterly his mother misunderstood him, how curiously little they were in sympathy the one with the other!

As he left the house she heard the door bang, and sitting in the drawing-room knitting him a pair of silk socks, she allowed her smile to broaden till it transformed her face almost to that likeness which Berwick sometimes saw in her, to that of a prim Mistress Quickly.

* * *

Boringdon did not go straight down to the Grange. Instead, after having groped his way through the laurel hedges and so into the moonlit road, he turned to the left, and struck out, making a long round before seeking the house for which he was bound.

Both his long talk with Berwick, and the short, strange conversation with his mother, had disturbed and excited him, bringing on a sudden nostalgia for the life he had left, and to which he longed so much to get back. During his eager discussion with the man whom he regarded as being at once his political chief and his political pupil, Chancton and its petty affairs had been forgotten, and yet now, to-night, he told himself with something like dismay that even when talking to Berwick he had more than once thought of Lucy Kemp. The girl had become his friend, his only confidante: into her eager ears he had poured out his views, his aspirations, his hopes, his ambitions, sure always of sympathy, if not of complete understanding. A bitter smile came over his face-no wonder Mrs. Boringdon had so often left them together! Her attitude was now explained.

Boringdon had no wish to pose, even to himself, as a Don Quixote, but, in his views as to the fitting relationship of the sexes, he was most punctilious and old-fashioned, perhaps lacking the essential nobility which would have been required in such a man as himself to accept a fortune, even from a beloved hand. What, take Lucy's ￡20,000-or was it ￡25,000-in order to start his bark once more on the perilous political sea? How little his mother understood him if she seriously thought he could bring himself to do such a thing, and in cold blood!

As he strode along in the darkness, there came back to his mind the circumstances connected with an experience in his life which he had striven not unsuccessfully to forget,-the passion of feeling he had wasted, when little more than a boy, on James Berwick's sister.

Those men and women who jeer at first love have surely never felt its potent spell. Twelve years had gone by since Boringdon had dreamed the dream which had to a certain extent embittered and injured the whole of his youth. What a fool he had been! But, on the other hand, so he remembered now, how little he had thought-if indeed he had thought at all-as to any question connected with Arabella Berwick's fortune or lack of it!

Miss Berwick had been mistress of her uncle's house, that Lord Bosworth who was a noted statesman as well as a man of rank: of course she must have money, so Boringdon in his young simplicity had thought, and certainly that belief had been no bar to what he had brought himself tremblingly to believe might come to pass. The beautiful girl, secure in her superior altitude of twenty-five years of life, and an already considerable knowledge of the world, had taken up the clever boy, her brother's Oxford friend, with pretty enthusiasm. She had liked him quite well enough to accept smilingly his adoration, to allow that he should amuse her (so he had realised ever since) in the intervals of a more serious love affair. Well, as he reminded himself to-night, they had been quits! Small wonder indeed that even now, after twelve years had gone by, the recollection of certain bitter moments caused Boringdon to quicken his footsteps!

To-night it all came back to him, in a flood of intolerable memories. It had been late in the season, on the eve-or so he had thought-of his dream's fruition, during the last days of his first spring and summer in London after he had gone down from Oxford. Some merciful angel or some malicious devil-he had never quite known which-had caused him, one Sunday afternoon, while actually on the way to Bosworth House, to turn into Kensington Gardens.

There, in a lonely grassy by-way among the trees, where he had turned aside to think in solitude of his beautiful lady, he had suddenly come on her face to face,-on Arabella Berwick, on his goddess, on the woman whose every glance and careless word had been weighed by him with anxious thought,-finding her in such a guise that for a moment he had believed that his mind, his eyes, were playing him some evil trick.

Miss Berwick, her eyes streaming with tears, was clinging to a man's arm; and, what made the scene the more unreal, the more incredible, to the amazed onlooker, Boringdon knew the man quite well, and had often, in his young importance, looked down on him as being so much less intimate at Bosworth House than he was himself. The man into whose plain, powerful face Arabella Berwick was gazing with such agonised intensity was Daniel O'Flaherty, an Irish barrister, but lately come to practise at the English Bar, a Paddy whose brogue-so Berwick had assured his friend Boringdon-you could cut with a knife, but who was, he had added good-naturedly, said by many people to be a clever fellow!

And now Oliver was walking straight upon them,-on O'Flaherty and Arabella Berwick. He stopped short, staring with fascinated, horror-stricken eyes, making no effort to pass by, to show the decent hypocrisy he should have shown; and what he heard made it only too easy to reconstitute the story. Miss Berwick had also dreamed her dream, and she was now engaged in deliberately putting it from her.

At last the man had cut the painful scene short, but not before Boringdon had seen the woman, whom he had himself set on so high a pedestal, fling her arms round her companion's neck in one last agonised attempt to say good-bye. It was the Irishman, of whom Boringdon had made such small account in his own mind, who at last-with the measured dignity born of measureless grief and loss-led her towards the spectator whom he vaguely recognised as one of James Berwick's younger friends. "Perhaps you will kindly take Miss Berwick home?" and then he had turned and gone, and she who had renounced him, taking no heed of Boringdon, had stood and gazed after him as long as he remained in sight.

During the walk back to Bosworth House it had been Boringdon's lot to listen while his companion told him, with a sort of bald simplicity, the truth.

"I love him, Mr. Boringdon, with all my heart-with all my body-with all my soul! But certain things are impossible in this world,-apart from everything else, there is the fact that for the present we are both penniless. He admits that often years go by before a man situated as he is makes any real way at the Bar. I ought not to have allowed it to come to this! I have been a fool,-a fool!" She had tried to smile at him. "Take example by me, Mr. Boringdon, never allow yourself to really care. It's not worth it!"

She had gone on, taking very little notice of him, talking as if to herself-"Of course I shall never marry, why should I? I have James,-till now I have never cared for anything but James." Then at last had come a word he had felt sorely. Arabella Berwick had looked at him with something like fear in her eyes,-"You will not say anything of this to my brother, Mr. Boringdon? I trust to your honour,"-much as she might have spoken to a schoolboy, instead of to a man-a man, as he angrily reminded himself, of one-and-twenty!

How well he remembered it all still, and yet what a long time ago all that happened! He himself had altered, incredibly, in these short years. O'Flaherty was no longer an unknown, uncouth Irishman: he had won a place even in the Berwicks' high little world: steady, moderate adherence to his country's unpopular cause had made him something of a personage even in the House of Commons, and he was known to be now earning a large,-nay, a huge,-income at the Bar. Of the two men who at one and the same moment had loved Arabella Berwick, it was he who had forged ahead, Oliver Boringdon who had lagged behind.

And the heroine of the adventure? She was still what all those about her, with the possible exception of these two men, had always thought her to be-the accomplished, rather cold, brilliant woman of the world, content to subordinate exceptional intellectual gifts to the exigencies of her position as mistress of her uncle's house; bending her fine mind to the problem of how to stretch Lord Bosworth's always uncertain and encumbered income to its furthest possible limit, for one of Miss Berwick's virtues had always been a great horror of debt. More, she had so fashioned her life during the last ten years that she was regarded by many shrewd observers as being quite as remarkable a person as her brother-in fact, where he was concerned, the power behind the throne. She loved, too, to exercise her power, to obtain good places for her favourites, to cause some humble climber of the ladder of fame to leap at one bound several of the hard intervening bars. It was admitted that the only strong feeling finding place in her heart was love of her brother, James Berwick, and for him, in a worldly sense, she had indeed done well.

Since that afternoon, twelve years before, Miss Berwick and Oliver Boringdon had never been on really cordial terms. She had at first tried, foolishly, to make a friend of him, a confidant, but he had not been possessed of the requisite amount of philosophy, and she had drawn back mortified at the condemnation, even at the dislike, which she had read in his eyes.

Very early Berwick had said to his friend, "I don't know what has happened to my sister and yourself, old fellow, but it will not make any difference to us, will it?" But, as Boringdon was well aware, it had made a difference. The sister's influence was on the whole always thrown in against that of the friend. It had certainly not been with Miss Berwick's goodwill that Boringdon had been offered, through her brother's intermediary, work which would bring him within two miles of Lord Bosworth's country house; but Oliver Boringdon was very rarely at Fletchings, and never without a direct invitation from its mistress.

* * *

As so often happens, the stirring of heart depths brings up to the surface of the mind more than one emotion. Had it not been for his mother's smile, Boringdon would not now have turned into the Grange gate, but it was his great wish that what had been said this day should make no difference to his relations with the Kemps-save, of course, that of making him personally more prudent in the one matter of his indulging in Lucy's society.

Alas for Boringdon's good resolutions! He had meant that this evening call at the Grange should be of a purely business character, and at the door he asked only for General Kemp.

"The master's upstairs with Mrs. Kemp. She's got a chill, but I'll tell him you're here, sir," and Oliver had been shown as a matter of course into the panelled parlour where Lucy sat reading alone. The very sight of the girl seemed to bring with it peace-restored in subtle measure the young man's good opinion of himself. And then she seemed so simply, so unaffectedly glad to see him! Within the next hour, he was gradually brought to tell her, both of the long talk with Berwick-Lucy had proved an apt student of political economy within the last year-even of the proposed newspaper and the editorship, of which the offer, coming from anyone else, would, he said, "have tempted me."

"Ah! but you think Mr. Berwick ought not to start such a paper-that it might do him harm?" Lucy looked up with quick intelligent eyes.

Boringdon had scarcely said so,-in so many words,-yet, yet-certainly yes, that was what he had meant, and so, "Exactly!" he exclaimed; "and if I don't join in, the scheme will probably come to nothing." Lucy allowed her softened gaze to linger on the face of the man who had gradually made his way into her steadfast heart. How good, how noble he was, she thought, and, how unconscious of his own goodness and nobility!

The girl was in that stage of her mental development when the creature worshipped must necessarily appear heroic. Two men now fulfilled Lucy's ideal-the one was her father, the other Oliver Boringdon. Poor Laxton, with his humble passion for herself, his half-pretended indifference to the pleasures and duties of the British officer's life in time of profound peace, his love of hunting and rough out-door games,-all seemed to make him most unheroic in Lucy's eyes. She was dimly aware that Captain Laxton's love for her was instinctive, that he was attracted in spite of himself; and the knowledge perplexed and angered her. She knew well, or thought she knew well, the sort of woman with whom the young soldier ought to have fallen in love,-the well-dressed, amusing, "smart" (odious word, just then coming into fashion!) type of girl, whom he undoubtedly, even as it was, much admired. But Oliver Boringdon-oh! how different would be the natural ideal of such a man.

Lucy was only now beginning to see into her own heart, and she still believed that her regard for Boringdon was "friendship." Who could hesitate as to which was the better part-friendship with Boringdon, or marriage with Laxton?

"I-I want to ask you something." Lucy's heart was beating fast.

"Yes, what is it?" He turned sharply round.

"I've been reading the life of Edmund Burke."

He bent forward eagerly. "It's interesting, isn't it?"

"Yes, yes, indeed it is! But I want to ask you why a hundred years have made such a change? Why it is that now a young man who has every aptitude for political life--" Lucy hesitated, the words were not really her own, they had been suggested-almost put into her mouth-by Oliver's mother.

"Yes?" he said again, as if to encourage her.

"Why such a person cannot now accept money from-from-a friend, if it will help him to be useful to his country?"

"You mean"-he went straight to the point-"why cannot I take money from James Berwick?" He was looking at her rather grimly. He had not thought that Mrs. Boringdon would find the girl so apt a pupil.

Poor Lucy shrank back. "Forgive me," she said, in a low tone, "I should not have asked you such a question."

"You have every right," he said, impulsively. "Are we not friends, you and I? Perhaps you did not know that this was an old quarrel between my mother and myself. Berwick did once make me such an offer, but I think you will see-that you will feel-with me that I could not have accepted it."

General Kemp, coming down half an hour later, found them still eagerly discussing Edmund Burke, and so finding, told himself, and a little later told his wife, that the world had indeed changed in the last thirty years, and that he, for his part, thought the old ways of love were better than the new.

* * *