No Name
by Wilkie Collins
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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by Wilkie Collins

PREFACE.

THE main purpose of this story is to appeal to the reader's
interest in a subject which has been the theme of some of the
greatest writers, living and dead -- but which has never been,
and can never be, exhausted, because it is a subject eternally
interesting to all mankind. Here is one more book that depicts
the struggle of a human creature, under those opposing influences
of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, which we have all
known. It has been my aim to make the character of "Magdalen,"
which personifies this struggle, a pathetic character even in its
perversity and its error; and I have tried hard to attain this
result by the least obtrusive and the least artificial of all
means -- by a resolute adherence throughout to the truth as it is
in Nature. This design was no easy one to accomplish; and it has
been a great encouragement to me (during the publication of my
story in its periodical form) to know, on the authority of many
readers, that the object which I had proposed to myself, I might,
in some degree, consider as an object achieved.

Round the central figure in the narrative other characters will
be found grouped, in sharp contrast -- contrast, for the most
part, in which I have endeavored to make the element of humor
mainly predominant. I have sought to impart this relief to the
more serious passages in the book, not only because I believe
myself to be justified in doing so by the laws of Art -- but
because experience has taught me (what the experience of my
readers will doubtless confirm) that there is no such moral
phenomenon as unmixed tragedy to be found in the world around us.
Look where we may, the dark threads and the light cross each
other perpetually in the texture of human life.

To pass from the Characters to the Story, it will be seen that
the narrative related in these pages has been constructed on a
plan which differs from the plan followed in my last novel, and
in some other of my works published at an earlier date. The only
Secret contained in this book is revealed midway in the first
volume. From that point, all the main events of the story are
purposely foreshadowed before they take place -- my present
design being to rouse the reader's interest in following the
train of circumstances by which these foreseen events are brought
about. In trying this new ground, I am not turning my back in
doubt on the ground which I have passed over already. My one
object in following a new course is to enlarge the range of my
studies in the art of writing fiction, and to vary the form in
which I make my appeal to the reader, as attractively as I can.

There is no need for me to add more to these few prefatory words
than is here written. What I might otherwise have wished to say
in this place, I have endeavored to make the book itself say for
me.

TO

FRANCIS CARR BEARD

(FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND),

IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE TIME WHEN

THE CLOSING SCENES OF THIS STORY WERE WRITTEN.

NO NAME.

THE FIRST SCENE.

COMBE-RAVEN, SOMERSETSHIRE.

CHAPTER I.

THE hands on the hall-clock pointed to half-past six in the
morning. The house was a country residence in West Somersetshire,
called Combe-Raven. The day was the fourth of March, and the year
was eighteen hundred and forty-six.

No sounds but the steady ticking of the clock, and the lumpish
snoring of a large dog stretched on a mat outside the dining-room
door, disturbed the mysterious morning stillness of hall and
staircase. Who were the sleepers hidden in the upper regions? Let
the house reveal its own secrets; and, one by one, as they
descend the stairs from their beds, let the sleepers disclose
themselves.

As the clock pointed to a quarter to seven, the dog woke and
shook himself. After waiting in vain for the footman, who was
accustomed to let him out, the animal wandered restlessly from
one closed door to another on the ground-floor; and, returning to
his mat in great perplexity, appealed to the sleeping family with
a long and melancholy howl.

Before the last notes of the dog's remonstrance had died away,
the oaken stairs in the higher regions of the house creaked under
slowly-descending footsteps. In a minute more the first of the
female servants made her appearance, with a dingy woolen shawl
over her shoulders -- for the March morning was bleak; and
rheumatism and the cook were old acquaintances.

Receiving the dog's first cordial advances with the worst
possible grace, the cook slowly opened the hall door and let the
animal out. It was a wild morning. Over a spacious lawn, and
behind a black plantation of firs, the rising sun rent its way
upward through piles of ragged gray cloud; heavy drops of rain
fell few and far between; the March wind shuddered round the
corners of the house, and the wet trees swayed wearily.

Seven o'clock struck; and the signs of domestic life began to
show themselves in more rapid succession.

The housemaid came down -- tall and slim, with the state of the
spring temperature written redly on her nose. The lady's-maid
followed -- young, smart, plump, and sleepy. The kitchen-maid
came next -- afflicted with the face-ache, and making no secret
of her sufferings. Last of all, the footman appeared, yawning
disconsolately; the living picture of a man who felt that he had
been defrauded of his fair night's rest.

The conversation of the servants, when they assembled before the
slowly lighting kitchen fire, referred to a recent family event,
and turned at starting on this question: Had Thomas, the footman,
seen anything of the concert at Clifton, at which his master and
the two young ladies had been present on the previous night? Yes;
Thomas had heard the concert; he had been paid for to go in at
the back; it was a loud concert; it was a hot concert; it was
described at the top of the bills as Grand; whether it was worth
traveling sixteen miles to hear by railway, with the additional
hardship of going back nineteen miles by road, at half-past one
in the morning -- was a question which he would leave his master
and the young ladies to decide; his own opinion, in the meantime,
being unhesitatingly, No. Further inquiries, on the part of all
the female servants in succession, elicited no additional
information of any sort. Thomas could hum none of the songs, and
could describe none of the ladies' dresses. His audience,
accordingly, gave him up in despair; and the kitchen small-talk
flowed back into its ordinary channels, until the clock struck
eight and startled the assembled servants into separating for
their morning's work.

A quarter past eight, and nothing happened. Half-past -- and more
signs of life appeared from the bedroom regions. The next member
of the family who came downstairs was Mr. Andrew Vanstone, the
master of the house.

Tall, stout, and upright -- with bright blue eyes, and healthy,
florid complexion -- his brown plush shooting-jacket carelessly
buttoned awry; his vixenish little Scotch terrier barking
unrebuked at his heels; one hand thrust into his waistcoat
pocket, and the other smacking the banisters cheerfully as he
came downstairs humming a tune -- Mr. Vanstone showed his
character on the surface of him freely to all men. An easy,
hearty, handsome, good-humored gentleman, who walked on the sunny
side of the way of life, and who asked nothing better than to
meet all his fellow-passengers in this world on the sunny side,
too. Estimating him by years, he had turned fifty. Judging him by
lightness of heart, strength of constitution, and capacity for
enjoyment, he was no older than most men who have only turned
thirty.

"Thomas!" cried Mr. Vanstone, taking up his old felt hat and his
thick walking stick from the hall table. "Breakfast, this
morning, at ten. The young ladies are not likely to be down
earlier after the concert last night. -- By-the-by, how did you
like the concert yourself, eh? You thought it was grand? Quite
right; so it was. Nothing but crash-ban
g, varied now and then by bang-crash; all the women dressed
within an inch of their lives; smothering heat, blazing gas, and
no room for anybody -- yes, yes, Thomas; grand's the word for it,
and comfortable isn't." With that expression of opinion, Mr.
Vanstone whistled to his vixenish terrier; flourished his stick
at the hall door in cheerful defiance of the rain; and set off
through wind and weather for his morning walk.

The hands, stealing their steady way round the dial of the clock,
pointed to ten minutes to nine. Another member of the family
appeared on the stairs -- Miss Garth, the governess.

No observant eyes could have surveyed Miss Garth without seeing
at once that she was a north-countrywoman. Her hard featured
face; her masculine readiness and decision of movement; her
obstinate honesty of look and manner, all proclaimed her border
birth and border training. Though little more than forty years of
age, her hair was quite gray; and she wore over it the plain cap
of an old woman. Neither hair nor head-dress was out of harmony
with her face -- it looked older than her years: the hard
handwriting of trouble had scored it heavily at some past time.
The self-possession of her progress downstairs, and the air of
habitual authority with which she looked about her, spoke well
for her position in Mr. Vanstone's family. This was evidently not
one of the forlorn, persecuted, pitiably dependent order of
governesses. Here was a woman who lived on ascertained and
honorable terms with her employers -- a woman who looked capable
of sending any parents in England to the right-about, if they
failed to rate her at her proper value.

"Breakfast at ten?" repeated Miss Garth, when the footman had
answered the bell, and had mentioned his master's orders. "Ha! I
thought what would come of that concert last night. When people
who live in the country patronize public amusements, public
amusements return the compliment by upsetting the family
afterward for days together. _You're_ upset, Thomas, I can see --
your eyes are as red as a ferret's, and your cravat looks as if
you had slept in it. Bring the kettle at a quarter to ten -- and
if you don't get better in the course of the day, come to me, and
I'll give you a dose of physic. That's a well-meaning lad, if you
only let him alone," continued Miss Garth, in soliloquy, when
Thomas had retired; "but he's not strong enough for concerts
twenty miles off. They wanted _me_ to go with them last night.
Yes: catch me!"

Nine o'clock struck; and the minute-hand stole on to twenty
minutes past the hour, before any more footsteps were heard on
the stairs. At the end of that time, two ladies appeared,
descending to the breakfast-room together -- Mrs. Vanstone and
her eldest daughter.

If the personal attractions of Mrs. Vanstone, at an earlier
period of life, had depended solely on her native English charms
of complexion and freshness, she must have long since lost the
last relics of her fairer self. But her beauty as a young woman
had passed beyond the average national limits; and she still
preserved the advantage of her more exceptional personal gifts.
Although she was now in her forty-fourth year; although she had
been tried, in bygone times, by the premature loss of more than
one of her children, and by long attacks of illness which had
followed those bereavements of former years -- she still
preserved the fair proportion and subtle delicacy of feature,
once associated with the all-adorning brightness and freshness of
beauty, which had left her never to return. Her eldest child, now
descending the stairs by her side, was the mirror in which she
could look back and see again the reflection of her own youth.
There, folded thick on the daughter's head, lay the massive dark
hair, which, on the mother's, was fast turning gray. There, in
the daughter's cheek, glowed the lovely dusky red which had faded
from the mother's to bloom again no more. Miss Vanstone had
already reached the first maturity of womanhood; she had
completed her six-and-twentieth year. Inheriting the dark
majestic character of her mother's beauty, she had yet hardly
inherited all its charms. Though the shape of her face was the
same, the features were scarcely so delicate, their proportion
was scarcely so true. She was not so tall. She had the dark-brown
eyes of her mother -- full and soft, with the steady luster in
them which Mrs. Vanstone's eyes had lost -- and yet there was
less interest, less refinement and depth of feeling in her
expression: it was gentle and feminine, but clouded by a certain
quiet reserve, from which her mother's face was free. If we dare
to look closely enough, may we not observe that the moral force
of character and the higher intellectual capacities in parents
seem often to wear out mysteriously in the course of transmission
to children? In these days of insidious nervous exhaustion and
subtly-spreading nervous malady, is it not possible that the same
rule may apply, less rarely than we are willing to admit, to the
bodily gifts as well?

The mother and daughter slowly descended the stairs together --
the first dressed in dark brown, with an Indian shawl thrown over
her shoulders; the second more simply attired in black, with a
plain collar and cuffs, and a dark orange-colored ribbon over the
bosom of her dress. As they crossed the hall and entered the
breakfast-room, Miss Vanstone was full of the all-absorbing
subject of the last night's concert.

"I am so sorry, mamma, you were not with us," she said. "You have
been so strong and so well ever since last summer -- you have
felt so many years younger, as you said yourself -- that I am
sure the exertion would not have been too much for you."

"Perhaps not, my love -- but it was as well to keep on the safe
side."

"Quite as well," remarked Miss Garth, appearing at the
breakfast-room door. "Look at Norah (good-morning, my dear) --
look, I say, at Norah. A perfect wreck; a living proof of your
wisdom and mine in staying at home. The vile gas, the foul air,
the late hours -- what can you expect? She's not made of iron,
and she suffers accordingly. No, my dear, you needn't deny it. I
see you've got a headache."

Norah's dark, handsome face brightened into a smile -- then
lightly clouded again with its accustomed quiet reserve.

"A very little headache; not half enough to make me regret the
concert," she said, and walked away by herself to the window.

On the far side of a garden and paddock the view overlooked a
stream, some farm buildings which lay beyond, and the opening of
a wooded, rocky pass (called, in Somersetshire, a Combe), which
here cleft its way through the hills that closed the prospect. A
winding strip of road was visible, at no great distance, amid the
undulations of the open ground; and along this strip the stalwart
figure of Mr. Vanstone was now easily recognizable, returning to
the house from his morning walk. He flourished his stick gayly,
as he observed his eldest daughter at the window. She nodded and
waved her hand in return, very gracefully and prettily -- but
with something of old-fashioned formality in her manner, which
looked strangely in so young a woman, and which seemed out of
harmony with a salutation addressed to her father.

The hall-clock struck the adjourned breakfast-hour. When the
minute hand had recorded the lapse of five minutes more a door
banged in the bedroom regions -a clear young voice was heard
singing blithely -- light, rapid footsteps pattered on the upper
stairs, descended with a jump to the landing, and pattered again,
faster than ever, down the lower flight. In another moment the
youngest of Mr. Vanstone's two daughters (and two only surviving
children) dashed into view on the dingy old oaken stairs, with
the suddenness of a flash of light; and clearing the last three
steps into the hall at a jump, presented herself breathless in
the breakfast-room to make the family circle complete.

By one of those strange caprices of Nature, which science leaves
still unexplained, the youngest of Mr. Vanstone's children
presented no recognizable resemblance to either of her parents.
How had she come by her hair? how had she come by her eyes ? Even
her father and mother had asked themselves those questions, as
she grew up to girlhood, and had been sorely perplexed to answer
them. Her hair was of that purely light-brown hue, unmixed with
flaxen, or yellow, or red -- which is oftener seen on the plumage
of a bird than on the head of a human being. It was soft and
plentiful, and waved downward from her low forehead in regular
folds -- but, to some tastes, it was dull and dead, in its
absolute want of glossiness, in its monotonous purity of plain
light color. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were just a shade darker
than her hair, and seemed made expressly for those violet-blue
eyes, which assert their most irresistible charm when associated
with a fair complexion. But it was here exactly that the promise
of her face failed of performance in the most startling manner.
The eyes, which should have been dark, were incomprehensibly and
discordantly light; they were of that nearly colorless gray
which, though little attractive in itself, possesses the rare
compensating merit of interpreting the finest gradations of
thought, the gentlest changes of feeling, the deepest trouble of
passion, with a subtle transparency of expression which no darker
eyes can rival. Thus quaintly self-contradictory in the upper
part of her face, she was hardly less at variance with
established ideas of harmony in the lower. Her lips had the true
feminine delicacy of form, her cheeks the lovely roundness and
smoothness of youth -- but the mouth was too large and firm, the
chin too square and massive for her sex and age. Her complexion
partook of the pure monotony of tint which characterized her hair
-- it was of the same soft, warm, creamy fairness all over,
without a tinge of color in the cheeks, except on occasions of
unusual bodily exertion or sudden mental disturbance. The whole
countenance -- so remarkable in its strongly opposed
characteristics -- was rendered additionally striking by its
extraordinary mobility. The large, electric, light-gray eyes were
hardly ever in repose; all varieties of expression followed each
other over the plastic, ever-changing face, with a giddy rapidity
which left sober analysis far behind in the race. The girl's
exuberant vitality asserted itself all over her, from head to
foot. Her figure -- taller than her sister's, taller than the
average of woman's height; instinct with such a seductive,
serpentine suppleness, so lightly and playfully graceful, that
its movements suggested, not unnaturally, the movements of a
young cat -- her figure was so perfectly developed already that
no one who saw her could have supposed that she was only
eighteen. She bloomed in the full physical maturity of twenty
years or more -- bloomed naturally and irresistibly, in right of
her matchless health and strength. Here, in truth, lay the
mainspring of this strangely-constituted organization. Her
headlong course down the house stairs; the brisk activity of all
her movements; the incessant sparkle of expression in her face;
the enticing gayety which took the hearts of the quietest people
by storm -- even the reckless delight in bright colors which
showed itself in her brilliantly-striped morning dress, in her
fluttering ribbons, in the large scarlet rosettes on her smart
little shoes -- all sprang alike from the same source; from the
overflowing physical health which strengthened every muscle,
braced every nerve, and set the warm young blood tingling through
her veins, like the blood of a growing child.

On her entry into the breakfast-room, she was saluted with the
customary remonstrance which her flighty disregard of all
punctuality habitually provoked from the long-suffering household
authorities. In Miss Garth's favorite phrase, "Magdalen was born
with all the senses -- except a sense of order."

Magdalen! It was a strange name to have given her? Strange,
indeed; and yet, chosen under no extraordinary circumstances. The
name had been borne by one of Mr. Vanstone's sisters, who had
died in early youth; and, in affectionate remembrance of her, he
had called his second daughter by it -- just as he had called his
eldest daughter Norah, for his wife's sake. Magdalen! Surely, the
grand old Bible name -- suggestive of a sad and somber dignity;
recalling, in its first association, mournful ideas of penitence
and seclusion -- had been here, as events had turned out,
inappropriately bestowed? Surely, this self-contradictory girl
had perversely accomplished one contradiction more, by developing
into a character which was out of all harmony with her own
Christian name!

"Late again!" said Mrs. Vanstone, as Magdalen breathlessly kissed
her.

"Late again!" chimed in Miss Garth, when Magdalen came her way
next. "Well?" she went on, taking the girl's chin familiarly in
her hand, with a half-satirical, half-fond attention which
betrayed that the youngest daughter, with all her faults, was the
governess's favorite -- "Well? and what has the concert done for
_you?_ What form of suffering has dissipation inflicted on _your_
system this morning?"

"Suffering!" repeated Magdalen, recovering her breath, and the
use of her tongue with it. "I don't know the meaning of the word:
if there's anything the matter with me, I'm too well. Suffering!
I'm ready for another concert to-night, and a ball to-morrow, and
a play the day after. Oh," cried Magdalen, dropping into a chair
and crossing her hands rapturously on the table, "how I do like
pleasure!"

"Come! that's explicit at any rate," said Miss Garth. "I think
Pope must have had you in his mind when he wrote his famous
lines:

"'Men some to business, some to pleasure take,   But every woman
is at heart a rake.'"

"The deuce she is!" cried Mr. Vanstone, entering the room while
Miss Garth was making her quotation, with the dogs at his heels.
"Well; live and learn. If you're all rakes, Miss Garth, the sexes
are turned topsy-turvy with a vengeance; and the men will have
nothing left for it but to stop at home and darn the stockings.
-- Let's have some breakfast."

"How-d'ye-do, papa?" said Magdalen, taking Mr. Vanstone as
boisterously round the neck as if he belonged to some larger
order of Newfoundland dog, and was made to be romped with at his
daughter's convenience. "I'm the rake Miss Garth means; and I
want to go to another concert -- or a play, if you like -- or a
ball, if you prefer it -- or anything else in the way of
amusement that puts me into a new dress, and plunges me into a
crowd of people, and illuminates me with plenty of light, and
sets me in a tingle of excitement all over, from head to foot.
Anything will do, as long as it doesn't send us to bed at eleven
o'clock."

Mr. Vanstone sat down composedly under his daughter's flow of
language, like a man who was well used to verbal inundation from
that quarter. "If I am to be allowed my choice of amusements next
time," said the worthy gentleman, "I think a play will suit me
better than a concert. The girls enjoyed themselves amazingly, my
dear," he continued, addressing his wife. "More than I did, I
must say. It was altogether above my mark. They played one piece
of music which lasted forty minutes. It stopped three times,
by-the-way; and we all thought it was done each time, and clapped
our hands, rejoiced to be rid of it. But on it went again, to our
great surprise and mortification, till we gave it up in despair,
and all wished ourselves at Jericho. Norah, my dear! when we had
crash-bang for forty minutes, with three stoppages by-the-way,
what did they call it?"

"A symphony, papa," replied Norah.

"Yes, you darling old Goth, a symphony by the great Beethoven!"
added Magdalen. "How can you say you were not amused? Have you
forgotten the yellow-looking foreign woman, with the
unpronounceable name? Don't you remember the faces she made when
she sang? and the way she courtesied and courtesied, till she
cheated the foolish people into crying encore? Look here, mamma
-- look here, Miss Garth!"

She snatched up an empty plate from the table, to represent a
sheet of music, held it before her in the established
concert-room position, and produced an imitation of the
unfortunate singer's grimaces and courtesyings, so accur  a tely
and quaintly true to the original, that her father roared with
laughter; and even the footman (who came in at that moment with
the post-bag) rushed out of the room again, and committed the
indecorum of echoing his master audibly on the other side of the
door.

"Letters, papa. I want the key," said Magdalen, passing from the
imitation at the breakfast-table to the post-bag on the sideboard
with the easy abruptness which characterized all her actions.

Mr. Vanstone searched his pockets and shook his head. Though his
youngest daughter might resemble him in nothing else, it was easy
to see where Magdalen's unmethodical habits came from.

"I dare say I have left it in the library, along with my other
keys," said Mr. Vanstone. "Go and look for it, my dear."

"You really should check Magdalen," pleaded Mrs. Vanstone,
addressing her husband when her daughter had left the room.
"Those habits of mimicry are growing on her; and she speaks to
you with a levity which it is positively shocking to hear."

"Exactly what I have said myself, till I am tired of repeating
it," remarked Miss Garth. "She treats Mr. Vanstone as if he was a
kind of younger brother of hers."

"You are kind to us in everything else, papa; and you make kind
allowances for Magdalen's high spirits -- don't you?" said the
quiet Norah, taking her father's part and her sister's with so
little show of resolution on the surface that few observers would
have been sharp enough to detect the genuine substance beneath
it.

"Thank you, my dear," said good-natured Mr. Vanstone. "Thank you
for a very pretty speech. As for Magdalen," he continued,
addressing his wife and Miss Garth, "she's an unbroken filly. Let
her caper and kick in the paddock to her heart's content. Time
enough to break her to harness when she gets a little older."

The door opened, and Magdalen returned with the key. She unlocked
the post-bag at the sideboard and poured out the letters in a
heap. Sorting them gayly in less than a minute, she approached
the breakfast-table with both hands full, and delivered the
letters all round with the business-like rapidity of a London
postman.

"Two for Norah," she announced, beginning with her sister. "Three
for Miss Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the other six all
for papa. You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, don't
you?" pursued Magdalen, dropping the postman's character and
assuming the daughter's. "How you will grumble and fidget in the
study! and how you will wish there were no such things as letters
in the world! and how red your nice old bald head will get at the
top with the worry of writing the answers; and how many of the
answers you will leave until tomorrow after all! _The Bristol
Theater's open, papa,_" she whispered, slyly and suddenly, in her
father's ear; "I saw it in the newspaper when I went to the
library to get the key. Let's go to-morrow night!"

While his daughter was chattering, Mr. Vanstone was mechanically
sorting his letters. He turned over the first four in succession
and looked carelessly at the addresses. When he came to the fifth
his attention, which had hitherto wandered toward Magdalen,
suddenly became fixed on the post-mark of the letter.

Stooping over him, with her head on his shoulder, Magdalen could
see the post-mark as plainly as her father saw it -- NEW ORLEANS.

"An American letter, papa!" she said. "Who do you know at New
Orleans?"

Mrs. Vanstone started, and looked eagerly at her husband the
moment Magdalen spoke those words.

Mr. Vanstone said nothing. He quietly removed his daughter's arm
from his neck, as if he wished to be free from all interruption.
She returned, accordingly, to her place at the breakfast-table.
Her father, with the letter in his hand, waited a little before
he opened it; her mother looking at him, the while, with an
eager, expectant attention which attracted Miss Garth's notice,
and Norah's, as well as Magdalen's.

After a minute or more of hesitation Mr. Vanstone opened the
letter.

His face changed color the instant he read the first lines; his
cheeks fading to a dull, yellow-brown hue, which would have been
ashy paleness in a less florid man; and his expression becoming
saddened and overclouded in a moment. Norah and Magdalen,
watching anxiously, saw nothing but the change that passed over
their father. Miss Garth alone observed the effect which that
change produced on the attentive mistress of the house.

It was not the effect which she, or any one, could have
anticipated. Mrs. Vanstone looked excited rather than alarmed. A
faint flush rose on her cheeks -her eyes brightened -- she
stirred the tea round and round in her cup in a restless,
impatient manner which was not natural to her.

Magdalen, in her capacity of spoiled child, was, as usual, the
first to break the silence.

"What _is_ the matter, papa?" she asked.

"Nothing," said Mr. Vanstone, sharply, without looking up at her.

"I'm sure there must be something," persisted Magdalen. "I'm sure
there is bad news, papa, in that American letter."

"There is nothing in the letter that concerns _you_," said Mr.
Vanstone.

It was the first direct rebuff that Magdalen had ever received
from her father. She looked at him with an incredulous surprise,
which would have been irresistibly absurd under less serious
circumstances.

Nothing more was said. For the first time, perhaps, in their
lives, the family sat round the breakfast-table in painful
silence. Mr. Vanstone's hearty morning appetite, like his hearty
morning spirits, was gone. He absently broke off some morsels of
dry toast from the rack near him, absently finished his first cup
of tea -- then asked for a second, which he left before him
untouched.

"Norah," he said, after an interval, "you needn't wait for me.
Magdalen, my dear, you can go when you like."

His daughters rose immediately; and Miss Garth considerately
followed their example. When an easy-tempered man does assert
himself in his family, the rarity of the demonstration invariably
has its effect; and the will of that easy-tempered man is Law.

"What can have happened?" whispered Norah, as they closed the
breakfast-room door and crossed the hall.

"What does papa mean by being cross with Me?" exclaimed Magdalen,
chafing under a sense of her own injuries.

"May I ask -- what right you had to pry into your father's
private affairs?" retorted Miss Garth.

"Right?" repeated Magdalen. "I have no secrets from papa -- what
business has papa to have secrets from me! I consider myself
insulted."

"If you considered yourself properly reproved for not minding
your own business," said the plain-spoken Miss Garth, "you would
be a trifle nearer the truth. Ah! you are like all the rest of
the girls in the present day. Not one in a hundred of you knows
which end of her's uppermost."

The three ladies entered the morning-room; and Magdalen
acknowledged Miss Garth's reproof by banging the door.

Half an hour passed, and neither Mr. Vanstone nor his wife left
the breakfast-room. The servant, ignorant of what had happened,
went in to clear the table -- found his master and mistress
seated close together in deep consultation -- and immediately
went out again. Another quarter of an hour elapsed before the
breakfast-room door was opened, and the private conference of the
husband and wife came to an end.

"I hear mamma in the hall," said Norah. "Perhaps she is coming to
tell us something."

Mrs. Vanstone entered the morning-room as her daughter spoke. The
color was deeper on her cheeks, and the brightness of half-dried
tears glistened in her eyes; her step was more hasty, all her
movements were quicker than usual.

"I bring news, my dears, which will surprise you," she said,
addressing her daughters. "Your father and I are going to London
to-morrow."

Magdalen caught her mother by the arm in speechless astonishment.
Miss Garth dropped her work on her lap; even the sedate Norah
started to her feet, and amazedly repeated the words, "Going to
London!"

"Without us?" added Magdalen.

"Your father and I are going alone," said Mrs. Vanstone.
"Perhaps, for as long as three weeks -- but not longer. We are
going" -- she hesitated -- "we are going on imp ortant family
business. Don't hold me, Magdalen. This is a sudden necessity --
I have a great deal to do to-day -- many things to set in order
before tomorrow. There, there, my love, let me go."

She drew her arm away; hastily kissed her youngest daughter on
the forehead; and at once left the room again. Even Magdalen saw
that her mother was not to be coaxed into hearing or answering
any more questions.

The morning wore on, and nothing was seen of Mr. Vanstone. With
the reckless curiosity of her age and character, Magdalen, in
defiance of Miss Garth's prohibition and her sister's
remonstrances, determined to go to the, study and look for her
father there. When she tried the door, it was locked on the
inside. She said, "It's only me, papa;" and waited for the
answer. "I'm busy now, my dear," was the answer. "Don't disturb
me."

Mrs. Vanstone was, in another way, equally inaccessible. She
remained in her own room, with the female servants about her,
immersed in endless preparations for the approaching departure.
The servants, little used in that family to sudden resolutions
and unexpected orders, were awkward and confused in obeying
directions. They ran from room to room unnecessarily, and lost
time and patience in jostling each other on the stairs. If a
stranger had entered the house that day, he might have imagined
that an unexpected disaster had happened in it, instead of an
unexpected necessity for a journey to London. Nothing proceeded
in its ordinary routine. Magdalen, who was accustomed to pass the
morning at the piano, wandered restlessly about the staircases
and passages, and in and out of doors when there were glimpses of
fine weather. Norah, whose fondness for reading had passed into a
family proverb, took up book after book from table and shelf, and
laid them down again, in despair of fixing her attention. Even
Miss Garth felt the all-pervading influence of the household
disorganization, and sat alone by the morning-room fire, with her
head shaking ominously, and her work laid aside.

"Family affairs?" thought Miss Garth, pondering over Mrs.
Vanstone's vague explanatory words. "I have lived twelve years at
Combe-Raven; and these are the first family affairs which have
got between the parents and the children, in all my experience.
What does it mean? Change? I suppose I'm getting old. I don't
like change."

CHAPTER II.

AT ten o'clock the next morning Norah and Magdalen stood alone in
the hall at Combe-Raven watching the departure of the carriage
which took their father and mother to the London train.

Up to the last moment, both the sisters had hoped for some
explanation of that mysterious "family business" to which Mrs.
Vanstone had so briefly alluded on the previous day. No such
explanation had been offered. Even the agitation of the
leave-taking, under circumstances entirely new in the home
experience of the parents and children, had not shaken the
resolute discretion of Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone. They had gone --
with the warmest testimonies of affection, with farewell embraces
fervently reiterated again and again -- but without dropping one
word, from first to last, of the nature of their errand.

As the grating sound of the carriage-wheels ceased suddenly at a
turn in the road, the sisters looked one another in the face;
each feeling, and each betraying in her own way, the dreary sense
that she was openly excluded, for the first time, from the
confidence of her parents. Norah's customary reserve strengthened
into sullen silence -- she sat down in one of the hall chairs and
looked out frowningly through the open house door. Magdalen, as
usual when her temper was ruffled, expressed her dissatisfaction
in the plainest terms. "I don't care who knows it -- I think we
are both of us shamefully ill-used!" With those words, the young
lady followed her sister's example by seating herself on a hall
chair and looking aimlessly out through the open house door.

Almost at the same moment Miss Garth entered the hall from the
morning-room. Her quick observation showed her the necessity for
interfering to some practical purpose; and her ready good sense
at once pointed the way.

"Look up, both of you, if you please, and listen to me," said
Miss Garth. "If we are all three to be comfortable and happy
together, now we are alone, we must stick to our usual habits and
go on in our regular way. There is the state of things in plain
words. Accept the situation -- as the French say. Here am I to
set you the example. I have just ordered an excellent dinner at
the customary hour. I am going to the medicine-chest next, to
physic the kitchen-maid -- an unwholesome girl, whose face-ache
is all stomach. In the meantime, Norah, my dear, you will find
your work and your books, as usual, in the library. Magdalen,
suppose you leave off tying your handkerchief into knots and use
your fingers on the keys of the piano instead? We'll lunch at
one, and take the dogs out afterward. Be as brisk and cheerful
both of you as I am. Come, rouse up directly. If I see those
gloomy faces any longer, as sure as my name's Garth, I'll give
your mother written warning and go back to my friends by the
mixed train at twelve forty."

Concluding her address of expostulation in those terms, Miss
Garth led Norah to the library door, pushed Magdalen into the
morning-room, and went on her own way sternly to the regions of
the medicine-chest.

In this half-jesting, half-earnest manner she was accustomed to
maintain a sort of friendly authority over Mr. Vanstone's
daughters, after her proper functions as governess had
necessarily come to an end. Norah, it is needless to say, had
long since ceased to be her pupil; and Magdalen had, by this
time, completed her education. But Miss Garth had lived too long
and too intimately under Mr. Vanstone's roof to be parted with
for any purely formal considerations; and the first hint at going
away which she had thought it her duty to drop was dismissed with
such affectionate warmth of protest that she never repeated it
again, except in jest. The entire management of the household
was, from that time forth, left in her hands; and to those duties
she was free to add what companionable assistance she could
render to Norah's reading, and what friendly superintendence she
could still exercise over Magdalen's music. Such were the terms
on which Miss Garth was now a resident in Mr. Vanstone's family.

Toward the afternoon the weather improved. At half-past one the
sun was shining brightly; and the ladies left the house,
accompanied by the dogs, to set forth on their walk.

They crossed the stream, and ascended by the little rocky pass to
the hills beyond; then diverged to the left, and returned by a
cross-road which led through the village of Combe-Raven.

As they came in sight of the first cottages, they passed a man,
hanging about the road, who looked attentively, first at
Magdalen, then at Norah. They merely observed that he was short,
that he was dressed in black, and that he was a total stranger to
them -- and continued their homeward walk, without thinking more
about the loitering foot-passenger whom they had met on their way
back.

After they had left the village, and had entered the road which
led straight to the house, Magdalen surprised Miss Garth by
announcing that the stranger in black had turned, after they had
passed him, and was now following them. "He keeps on Norah's side
of the road," she said, mischievously. "I'm not the attraction --
don't blame _me_."

Whether the man was really following them, or not, made little
difference, for they were now close to the house. As they passed
through the lodge-gates, Miss Garth looked round, and saw that
the stranger was quickening his pace, apparently with the purpose
of entering into conversation. Seeing this, she at once directed
the young ladies to go on to the house with the dogs, while she
herself waited for events at the gate.

There was just time to complete this discreet arrangement, before
the stranger reached the lodge. He took off his hat to Miss Garth
politely, as she turned round. What did he look like, on the face
of him? He looked like a clergyman in difficulties.

Taking his port rait, f rom top to toe, the picture of him began
with a tall hat, broadly encircled by a mourning band of crumpled
crape. Below the hat was a lean, long, sallow face, deeply pitted
with the smallpox, and characterized, very remarkably, by eyes of
two different colors -- one bilious green, one bilious brown,
both sharply intelligent. His hair was iron-gray, carefully
brushed round at the temples. His cheeks and chin were in the
bluest bloom of smooth shaving; his nose was short Roman; his
lips long, thin, and supple, curled up at the corners with a
mildly-humorous smile. His white cravat was high, stiff, and
dingy; the collar, higher, stiffer, and dingier, projected its
rigid points on either side beyond his chin. Lower down, the
lithe little figure of the man was arrayed throughout in
sober-shabby black. His frock-coat was buttoned tight round the
waist, and left to bulge open majestically at the chest. His
hands were covered with black cotton gloves neatly darned at the
fingers; his umbrella, worn down at the ferule to the last
quarter of an inch, was carefully preserved, nevertheless, in an
oilskin case. The front view of him was the view in which he
looked oldest; meeting him face to face, he might have been
estimated at fifty or more. Walking behind him, his back and
shoulders were almost young enough to have passed for
five-and-thirty. His manners were distinguished by a grave
serenity. When he opened his lips, he spoke in a rich bass voice,
with an easy flow of language, and a strict attention to the
elocutionary claims of words in more than one syllable.
Persuasion distilled from his mildly-curling lips; and, shabby as
he was, perennial flowers of courtesy bloomed all over him from
head to foot.

"This is the residence of Mr. Vanstone, I believe?" he began,
with a circular wave of his hand in the direction of the house.
"Have I the honor of addressing a member of Mr. Vanstone's
family?"

"Yes," said the plain-spoken Miss Garth. "You are addressing Mr.
Vanstone's governess."

The persuasive man fell back a step -- admired Mr. Vanstone's
governess -advanced a step again -- and continued the
conversation.

"And the two young ladies," he went on, "the two young ladies who
were walking with you are doubtless Mr. Vanstone's daughters? I
recognized the darker of the two, and the elder as I apprehend,
by her likeness to her handsome mother. The younger lady -- "

"You are acquainted with Mrs. Vanstone, I suppose?" said Miss
Garth, interrupting the stranger's flow of language, which, all
things considered, was beginning, in her opinion, to flow rather
freely. The stranger acknowledged the interruption by one of his
polite bows, and submerged Miss Garth in his next sentence as if
nothing had happened.

"The younger lady," he proceeded, "takes after her father, I
presume? I assure you, her face struck me. Looking at it with my
friendly interest in the family, I thought it very remarkable. I
said to myself -- Charming, Characteristic, Memorable. Not like
her sister, not like her mother. No doubt, the image of her
father?"

Once more Miss Garth attempted to stem the man's flow of words.
It was plain that he did not know Mr. Vanstone, even by sight --
otherwise he would never have committed the error of supposing
that Magdalen took after her father. Did he know Mrs. Vanstone
any better? He had left Miss Garth's question on that point
unanswered. In the name of wonder, who was he? Powers of
impudence! what did he want?

"You may be a friend of the family, though I don't remember your
face," said Miss Garth. "What may your commands be, if you
please? Did you come here to pay Mrs. Vanstone a visit?"

"I had anticipated the pleasure of communicating with Mrs.
Vanstone," answered this inveterately evasive and inveterately
civil man. "How is she?"

"Much as usual," said Miss Garth, feeling her resources of
politeness fast failing her.

"Is she at home?"

"No."

"Out for long?"

"Gone to London with Mr. Vanstone."

The man's long face suddenly grew longer. His bilious brown eye
looked disconcerted, and his bilious green eye followed its
example. His manner became palpably anxious; and his choice of
words was more carefully selected than ever.

"Is Mrs. Vanstone's absence likely to extend over any very
lengthened period?" he inquired.

"It will extend over three weeks," replied Miss Garth. "I think
you have now asked me questions enough," she went on, beginning
to let her temper get the better of her at last. "Be so good, if
you please, as to mention your business and your name. If you
have any message to leave for Mrs. Vanstone, I shall be writing
to her by to-night's post, and I can take charge of it."

"A thousand thanks! A most valuable suggestion. Permit me to take
advantage of it immediately."

He was not in the least affected by the severity of Miss Garth's
looks and language -- he was simply relieved by her proposal, and
he showed it with the most engaging sincerity. This time his
bilious green eye took the initiative, and set his bilious brown
eye the example of recovered serenity. His curling lips took a
new twist upward; he tucked his umbrella briskly under his arm;
and produced from the breast of his coat a large old-fashioned
black pocketbook. From this he took a pencil and a card --
hesitated and considered for a moment -- wrote rapidly on the
card -- and placed it, with the politest alacrity, in Miss
Garth's hand.

"I shall feel personally obliged if you will honor me by
inclosing that card in your letter," he said. There is no
necessity for my troubling you additionally with a message. My
name will be quite sufficient to recall a little family matter to
Mrs. Vanstone, which has no doubt escaped her memory. Accept my
best thanks. This has been a day of agreeable surprises to me. I
have found the country hereabouts remarkably pretty; I have seen
Mrs. Vanstone's two charming daughters; I have become acquainted
with an honored preceptress in Mr. Vanstone's family. I
congratulate myself -- I apologize for occupying your valuable
time -- I beg my renewed acknowledgments -- I wish you
good-morning."

He raised his tall hat. His brown eye twinkled, his green eye
twinkled, his curly lips smiled sweetly. In a moment he turned on
his heel. His youthful back appeared to the best advantage; his
active little legs took him away trippingly in the direction of
the village. One, two, three -- and he reached the turn in the
road. Four, five, six -- and he was gone.

Miss Garth looked down at the card in her hand, and looked up
again in blank astonishment. The name and address of the
clerical-looking stranger (both written in pencil) ran as
follows:

_Captain Wragge. Post-office, Bristol._

CHAPTER III.

WHEN she returned to the house, Miss Garth made no attempt to
conceal her unfavorable opinion of the stranger in black. His
object was, no doubt, to obtain pecuniary assistance from Mrs.
Vanstone. What the nature of his claim on her might be seemed
less intelligible -- unless it was the claim of a poor relation.
Had Mrs. Vanstone ever mentioned, in the presence of her
daughters, the name of Captain Wragge? Neither of them
recollected to have heard it before. Had Mrs. Vanstone ever
referred to any poor relations who were dependent on her? On the
contrary she had mentioned of late years that she doubted having
any relations at all who were still living. And yet Captain
Wragge had plainly declared that the name on his card would
recall "a family matter" to Mrs. Vanstone's memory. What did it
mean? A false statement, on the stranger's part, without any
intelligible reason for making it? Or a second mystery, following
close on the heels of the mysterious journey to London?

All the probabilities seemed to point to some hidden connection
between the "family affairs" which had taken Mr. and Mrs.
Vanstone so suddenly from home and the "family matter" associated
with the name of Captain Wragge. Miss Garth's doubts thronged
back irresistibly on her mind as she sealed her letter to Mrs.
Vanstone, with the captain's card added by way of inclosure.

By return of post the answer arrived.

Always the earliest riser among the ladies of the house, Miss
Garth was alo ne in the breakfast-room when the letter was
brought in. Her first glance at its contents convinced her of the
necessity of reading it carefully through in retirement, before
any embarrassing questions could be put to her. Leaving a message
with the servant requesting Norah to make the tea that morning,
she went upstairs at once to the solitude and security of her own
room.

Mrs. Vanstone's letter extended to some length. The first part of
it referred to Captain Wragge, and entered unreservedly into all
necessary explanations relating to the man himself and to the
motive which had brought him to Combe-Raven.

It appeared from Mrs. Vanstone's statement that her mother had
been twice married. Her mother's first husband had been a certain
Doctor Wragge -- a widower with young children; and one of those
children was now the unmilitary-looking captain, whose address
was "Post-office, Bristol." Mrs. Wragge had left no family by her
first husband; and had afterward married Mrs. Vanstone's father.
Of that second marriage Mrs. Vanstone herself was the only issue.
She had lost both her parents while she was still a young woman;
and, in course of years, her mother's family connections (who
were then her nearest surviving relatives) had been one after
another removed by death. She was left, at the present writing,
without a relation in the world -- excepting, perhaps, certain
cousins whom she had never seen, and of whose existence even, at
the present moment, she possessed no positive knowledge.

Under these circumstances, what family claim had Captain Wragge
on Mrs. Vanstone?

None whatever. As the son of her mother's first husband, by that
husband's first wife, not even the widest stretch of courtesy
could have included him at any time in the list of Mrs.
Vanstone's most distant relations. Well knowing this (the letter
proceeded to say), he had nevertheless persisted in forcing
himself upon her as a species of family connection: and she had
weakly sanctioned the intrusion, solely from the dread that he
would otherwise introduce himself to Mr. Vanstone's notice, and
take unblushing advantage of Mr. Vanstone's generosity.
Shrinking, naturally, from allowing her husband to be annoyed,
and probably cheated as well, by any person who claimed, however
preposterously, a family connection with herself, it had been her
practice, for many years past, to assist the captain from her own
purse, on the condition that he should never come near the house,
and that he should not presume to make any application whatever
to Mr. Vanstone.

Readily admitting the imprudence of this course, Mrs. Vanstone
further explained that she had perhaps been the more inclined to
adopt it through having been always accustomed, in her early
days, to see the captain living now upon one member, and now upon
another, of her mother's family. Possessed of abilities which
might have raised him to distinction in almost any career that he
could have chosen, he had nevertheless, from his youth upward,
been a disgrace to all his relatives. He had been expelled the
militia regiment in which he once held a commission. He had tried
one employment after another, and had discreditably failed in
all. He had lived on his wits, in the lowest and basest meaning
of the phrase. He had married a poor ignorant woman, who had
served as a waitress at some low eating-house, who had
unexpectedly come into a little money, and whose small
inheritance he had mercilessly squandered to the last farthing.
In plain terms, he was an incorrigible scoundrel; and he had now
added one more to the list of his many misdemeanors by impudently
breaking the conditions on which Mrs. Vanstone had hitherto
assisted him. She had written at once to the address indicated on
his card, in such terms and to such purpose as would prevent him,
she hoped and believed, from ever venturing near the house again.
Such were the terms in which Mrs. Vanstone concluded that first
part of her letter which referred exclusively to Captain Wragge.

Although the statement thus presented implied a weakness in Mrs.
Vanstone's character which Miss Garth, after many years of
intimate experience, had never detected, she accepted the
explanation as a matter of course; receiving it all the more
readily inasmuch as it might, without impropriety, be
communicated in substance to appease the irritated curiosity of
the two young ladies. For this reason especially she perused the
first half of the letter with an agreeable sense of relief. Far
different was the impression produced on her when she advanced to
the second half, and when she had read it to the end.

The second part of the letter was devoted to the subject of the
journey to London.

Mrs. Vanstone began by referring to the long and intimate
friendship which had existed between Miss Garth and herself. She
now felt it due to that friendship to explain confidentially the
motive which had induced her to leave home with her husband. Miss
Garth had delicately refrained from showing it, but she must
naturally have felt, and must still be feeling, great surprise at
the mystery in which their departure had been involved; and she
must doubtless have asked herself why Mrs. Vanstone should have
been associated with family affairs which (in her independent
position as to relatives) must necessarily concern Mr. Vanstone
alone.

Without touching on those affairs, which it was neither desirable
nor necessary to do, Mrs. Vanstone then proceeded to say that she
would at once set all Miss Garth's doubts at rest, so far as they
related to herself, by one plain acknowledgment. Her object in
accompanying her husband to London was to see a certain
celebrated physician, and to consult him privately on a very
delicate and anxious matter connected with the state of her
health. In plainer terms still, this anxious matter meant nothing
less than the possibility that she might again become a mother.

When the doubt had first suggested itself she had treated it as a
mere delusion. The long interval that had elapsed since the birth
of her last child; the serious illness which had afflicted her
after the death of that child in infancy; the time of life at
which she had now arrived -- all inclined her to dismiss the idea
as soon as it arose in her mind. It had returned again and again
in spite of her. She had felt the necessity of consulting the
highest medical authority; and had shrunk, at the same time, from
alarming her daughters by summoning a London physician to the
house. The medical opinion, sought under the circumstances
already mentioned, had now been obtained. Her doubt was confirmed
as a certainty; and the result, which might be expected to take
place toward the end of the summer, was, at her age and with her
constitutional peculiarities, a subject for serious future
anxiety, to say the least of it. The physician had done his best
to encourage her; but she had understood the drift of his
questions more clearly than he supposed, and she knew that he
looked to the future with more than ordinary doubt.

Having disclosed these particulars, Mrs. Vanstone requested that
they might be kept a secret between her correspondent and
herself. She had felt unwilling to mention her suspicions to Miss
Garth, until those suspicions had been confirmed -- and she now
recoiled, with even greater reluctance, from allowing her
daughters to be in any way alarmed about her. It would be best to
dismiss the subject for the present, and to wait hopefully till
the summer came. In the meantime they would all, she trusted, be
happily reunited on the twenty-third of the month, which Mr.
Vanstone had fixed on as the day for their return. With this
intimation, and with the customary messages, the letter, abruptly
and confusedly, came to an end.

For the first few minutes, a natural sympathy for Mrs. Vanstone
was the only feeling of which Miss Garth was conscious after she
had laid the letter down. Ere long, however, there rose obscurely
on her mind a doubt which perplexed and distressed her. Was the
explanation which she had just read really as satisfactory and as
complete as it professed to be? Testing it plainly by facts,
surely not.

On the morning of her  depar ture, Mrs. Vanstone had
unquestionably left the house in good spirits. At her age, and in
her state of health, were good spirits compatible with such an
errand to a physician as the errand on which she was bent? Then,
again, had that letter from New Orleans, which had necessitated
Mr. Vanstone's departure, no share in occasioning his wife's
departure as well? Why, otherwise, had she looked up so eagerly
the moment her daughter mentioned the postmark. Granting the
avowed motive for her journey -- did not her manner, on the
morning when the letter was opened, and again on the morning of
departure, suggest the existence of some other motive which her
letter kept concealed?

If it was so, the conclusion that followed was a very distressing
one. Mrs. Vanstone, feeling what was due to her long friendship
with Miss Garth, had apparently placed the fullest confidence in
her, on one subject, by way of unsuspiciously maintaining the
strictest reserve toward her on another. Naturally frank and
straightforward in all her own dealings, Miss Garth shrank from
plainly pursuing her doubts to this result: a want of loyalty
toward her tried and valued friend seemed implied in the mere
dawning of it on her mind.

She locked up the letter in her desk; roused herself resolutely
to attend to the passing interests of the day; and went
downstairs again to the breakfast-room. Amid many uncertainties,
this at least was clear, Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone were coming back
on the twenty-third of the month. Who could say what new
revelations might not come back with them?

CHAPTER IV.

No new revelations came back with them: no anticipations
associated with their return were realized. On the one forbidden
subject of their errand in London, there was no moving either the
master or the mistress of the house. Whatever their object might
have been, they had to all appearance successfully accomplished
it -- for they both returned in perfect possession of their
every-day looks and manners. Mrs. Vanstone's spirits had subsided
to their natural quiet level; Mr. Vanstone's imperturbable
cheerfulness sat as easily and indolently on him as usual. This
was the one noticeable result of their journey -- this, and no
more. Had the household revolution run its course already? Was
the secret thus far hidden impenetrably, hidden forever?

Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain
for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day
on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that
has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the
body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in
ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its
prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes;
and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we
will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of
nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which
the world has never yet seen.

How was the secret now hidden in the household at Combe-Raven
doomed to disclose itself? Through what coming event in the daily
lives of the father, the mother, and the daughters, was the law
of revelation destined to break the fatal way to discovery? The
way opened (unseen by the parents, and unsuspected by the
children) through the first event that happened after Mr. and
Mrs. Vanstone's return -- an event which presented, on the
surface of it, no interest of greater importance than the trivial
social ceremony of a morning call.

Three days after the master and mistress of Combe-Raven had come
back, the female members of the family happened to be assembled
together in the morning-room. The view from the windows looked
over the flower-garden and shrubbery; this last being protected
at its outward extremity by a fence, and approached from the lane
beyond by a wicket-gate. During an interval in the conversation,
the attention of the ladies was suddenly attracted to this gate,
by the sharp sound of the iron latch falling in its socket. Some
one had entered the shrubbery from the lane; and Magdalen at once
placed herself at the window to catch the first sight of the
visitor through the trees.

After a few minutes, the figure of a gentleman became visible, at
the point where the shrubbery path joined the winding garden-walk
which led to the house. Magdalen looked at him attentively,
without appearing, at first, to know who he was. As he came
nearer, however, she started in astonishment; and, turning
quickly to her mother and sister, proclaimed the gentleman in the
garden to be no other than "Mr. Francis Clare."

The visitor thus announced was the son of Mr. Vanstone's oldest
associate and nearest neighbor.

Mr. Clare the elder inhabited an unpretending little cottage,
situated just outside the shrubbery fence which marked the limit
of the Combe-Raven grounds. Belonging to the younger branch of a
family of great antiquity, the one inheritance of importance that
he had derived from his ancestors was the possession of a
magnificent library, which not only filled all the rooms in his
modest little dwelling, but lined the staircases and passages as
well. Mr. Clare's books represented the one important interest of
Mr. Clare's life. He had been a widower for many years past, and
made no secret of his philosophical resignation to the loss of
his wife. As a father, he regarded his family of three sons in
the light of a necessary domestic evil, which perpetually
threatened the sanctity of his study and the safety of his books.
When the boys went to school, Mr. Clare said "good-by" to them --
and "thank God" to himself. As for his small income, and his
still smaller domestic establishment, he looked at them both from
the same satirically indifferent point of view. He called himself
a pauper with a pedigree. He abandoned the entire direction of
his household to the slatternly old woman who was his only
servant, on the condition that she was never to venture near his
books, with a duster in her hand, from one year's end to the
other. His favorite poets were Horace and Pope; his chosen
philosophers, Hobbes and Voltaire. He took his exercise and his
fresh air under protest; and always walked the same distance to a
yard, on the ugliest high-road in the neighborhood. He was
crooked of back, and quick of temper. He could digest radishes,
and sleep after green tea. His views of human nature were the
views of Diogenes, tempered by Rochefoucauld; his personal habits
were slovenly in the last degree; and his favorite boast was that
he had outlived all human prejudices.

Such was this singular man, in his more superficial aspects. What
nobler qualities he might possess below the surface, no one had
ever discovered. Mr. Vanstone, it is true, stoutly asserted that
"Mr. Clare's worst side was his outside" -- but in this
expression of opinion he stood alone among his neighbors. The
association between these two widely-dissimilar men had lasted
for many years, and was almost close enough to be called a
friendship. They had acquired a habit of meeting to smoke
together on certain evenings in the week, in the
cynic-philosopher's study, and of there disputing on every
imaginable subject -- Mr. Vanstone flourishing the stout cudgels
of assertion, and Mr. Clare meeting him with the keen edged-tools
of sophistry. They generally quarreled at night, and met on the
neutral ground of the shrubbery to be reconciled together the
next morning. The bond of intercourse thus curiously established
between them was strengthened on Mr. Vanstone's side by a hearty
interest in his neighbor's three sons -- an interest by which
those sons benefited all the more importantly, seeing that one of
the prejudices which their father had outlived was a prejudice in
favor of his own children.

"I look at those boys," the philosopher was accustomed to say,
"with a perfectly impartial eye; I dismiss the unimportant
accident of their birth from all consideration; and I find them
below the average in every respect. The only excuse which a poor
gentleman has for presuming to exist in the nineteenth century,
is the excuse of extraordinary ability. My boys ha ve been a
ddle-headed from infancy. If I had any capital to give them, I
should make Frank a butcher, Cecil a baker, and Arthur a grocer
-- those being the only human vocations I know of which are
certain to be always in request. As it is, I have no money to
help them with; and they have no brains to help themselves. They
appear to me to be three human superfluities in dirty jackets and
noisy boots; and, unless they clear themselves off the community
by running away, I don't myself profess to see what is to be done
with them."

Fortunately for the boys, Mr. Vanstone's views were still fast
imprisoned in the ordinary prejudices. At his intercession, and
through his influence, Frank, Cecil, and Arthur were received on
the foundation of a well-reputed grammar-school. In holiday-time
they were mercifully allowed the run of Mr. Vanstone's paddock;
and were humanized and refined by association, indoors, with Mrs.
Vanstone and her daughters. On these occasions, Mr. Clare used
sometimes to walk across from his cottage (in his dressing-gown
and slippers), and look at the boys disparagingly, through the
window or over the fence, as if they were three wild animals whom
his neighbor was attempting to tame. "You and your wife are
excellent people," he used to say to Mr. Vanstone. "I respect
your honest prejudices in favor of those boys of mine with all my
heart. But you are _so_ wrong about them -- you are indeed! I
wish to give no offense; I speak quite impartially -- but mark my
words, Vanstone: they'll all three turn out ill, in spite of
everything you can do to prevent it."

In later years, when Frank had reached the age of seventeen, the
same curious shifting of the relative positions of parent and
friend between the two neighbors was exemplified more absurdly
than ever. A civil engineer in the north of England, who owed
certain obligations to Mr. Vanstone, expressed his willingness to
take Frank under superintendence, on terms of the most favorable
kind. When this proposal was received, Mr. Clare, as usual, first
shifted his own character as Frank's father on Mr. Vanstone's
shoulders -- and then moderated his neighbor's parental
enthusiasm from the point of view of an impartial spectator.

"It's the finest chance for Frank that could possibly have
happened," cried Mr. Vanstone, in a glow of fatherly enthusiasm.

"My good fellow, he won't take it," retorted Mr. Clare, with the
icy composure of a disinterested friend.

"But he _shall_ take it," persisted Mr. Vanstone.

"Say he shall have a mathematical head," rejoined Mr. Clare; "say
he shall possess industry, ambition, and firmness of purpose.
Pooh! pooh! you don't look at him with my impartial eyes. I say,
No mathematics, no industry, no ambition, no firmness of purpose.
Frank is a compound of negatives -- and there they are."

"Hang your negatives!" shouted Mr. Vanstone. "I don't care a rush
for negatives, or affirmatives either. Frank shall have this
splendid chance; and I'll lay you any wager you like he makes the
best of it."

"I am not rich enough to lay wagers, usually," replied Mr. Clare;
"but I think I have got a guinea about the house somewhere; and
I'll lay you that guinea Frank comes back on our hands like a bad
shilling."

"Done!" said Mr. Vanstone. "No: stop a minute! I won't do the
lad's character the injustice of backing it at even money. I'll
lay you five to one Frank turns up trumps in this business! You
ought to be ashamed of yourself for talking of him as you do.
What sort of hocus-pocus you bring it about by, I don't pretend
to know; but you always end in making me take his part, as if I
was his father instead of you. Ah yes! give you time, and you'll
defend yourself. I won't give you time; I won't have any of your
special pleading. Black's white according to you. I don't care:
it's black for all that. You may talk nineteen to the dozen -- I
shall write to my friend and say Yes, in Frank's interests, by
to-day's post."

Such were the circumstances under which Mr. Francis Clare
departed for the north of England, at the age of seventeen, to
start in life as a civil engineer.

From time to time, Mr. Vanstone's friend communicated with him on
the subject of the new pupil. Frank was praised, as a quiet,
gentleman-like, interesting lad -but he was also reported to be
rather slow at acquiring the rudiments of engineering science.
Other letters, later in date, described him as a little too ready
to despond about himself; as having been sent away, on that
account, to some new railway works, to see if change of scene
would rouse him; and as having benefited in every respect by the
experiment -- except perhaps in regard to his professional
studies, which still advanced but slowly. Subsequent
communications announced his departure, under care of a
trustworthy foreman, for some public works in Belgium; touched on
the general benefit he appeared to derive from this new change;
praised his excellent manners and address, which were of great
assistance in facilitating business communications with the
foreigners -- and passed over in ominous silence the main
question of his actual progress in the acquirement of knowledge.
These reports, and many others which resembled them, were all
conscientiously presented by Frank's friend to the attention of
Frank's father. On each occasion, Mr. Clare exulted over Mr.
Vanstone, and Mr. Vanstone quarreled with Mr. Clare. "One of
these days you'll wish you hadn't laid that wager," said the
cynic philosopher. "One of these days I shall have the blessed
satisfaction of pocketing your guinea," cried the sanguine
friend. Two years had then passed since Frank's departure. In one
year more results asserted themselves, and settled the question.

Two days after Mr. Vanstone's return from London, he was called
away from the breakfast-table before he had found time enough to
look over his letters, delivered by the morning's post. Thrusting
them into one of the pockets of his shooting-jacket, he took the
letters out again, at one grasp, to read them when occasion
served, later in the day. The grasp included the whole
correspondence, with one exception -- that exception being a
final report from the civil engineer, which notified the
termination of the connection between his pupil and himself, and
the immediate return of Frank to his father's house.

While this important announcement lay unsuspected in Mr.
Vanstone's pocket, the object of it was traveling home, as fast
as railways could take him. At half-past ten at night, while Mr.
Clare was sitting in studious solitude over his books and his
green tea, with his favorite black cat to keep him company, he
heard footsteps in the passage -- the door opened -- and Frank
stood before him.

Ordinary men would have been astonished. But the philosopher's
composure was not to be shaken by any such trifle as the
unexpected return of his eldest son. He could not have looked up
more calmly from his learned volume if Frank had been absent for
three minutes instead of three years.

"Exactly what I predicted," said Mr. Clare. "Don't interrupt me
by making explanations; and don't frighten the cat. If there is
anything to eat in the kitchen, get it and go to bed. You can
walk over to Combe-Raven tomorrow and give this message from me
to Mr. Vanstone: 'Father's compliments, sir, and I have come back
upon your hands like a bad shilling, as he always said I should.
He keeps his own guinea, and takes your five; and he hopes you'll
mind what he says to you another time.' That is the message. Shut
the door after you. Good-night."

Under these unfavorable auspices, Mr. Francis Clare made his
appearance the next morning in the grounds at Combe-Raven; and,
something doubtful of the reception that might await him, slowly
approached the precincts of the house.

It was not wonderful that Magdalen should have failed to
recognize him when he first appeared in view. He had gone away a
backward lad of seventeen; he returned a young man of twenty. His
slim figure had now acquired strength and grace, and had
increased in stature to the medium height. The small regular
features, which he was supposed to have inherited from his
mother, were rounded an d filled ou t, without having lost their
remarkable delicacy of form. His beard was still in its infancy;
and nascent lines of whisker traced their modest way sparely down
his cheeks. His gentle, wandering brown eyes would have looked to
better advantage in a woman's face -- they wanted spirit and
firmness to fit them for the face of a man. His hands had the
same wandering habit as his eyes; they were constantly changing
from one position to another, constantly twisting and turning any
little stray thing they could pick up. He was undeniably
handsome, graceful, well-bred -- but no close observer could look
at him without suspecting that the stout old family stock had
begun to wear out in the later generations, and that Mr. Francis
Clare had more in him of the shadow of his ancestors than of the
substance.

When the astonishment caused by his appearance had partially
subsided, a search was instituted for the missing report. It was
found in the remotest recesses of Mr. Vanstone's capacious
pocket, and was read by that gentleman on the spot.

The plain facts, as stated by the engineer, were briefly these:
Frank was not possessed of the necessary abilities to fit him for
his new calling; and it was useless to waste time by keeping him
any longer in an employment for which he had no vocation. This,
after three years' trial, being the conviction on both sides, the
master had thought it the most straightforward course for the
pupil to go home and candidly place results before his father and
his friends. In some other pursuit, for which he was more fit,
and in which he could feel an interest, he would no doubt display
the industry and perseverance which he had been too much
discouraged to practice in the profession that he had now
abandoned. Personally, he was liked by all who knew him; and his
future prosperity was heartily desired by the many friends whom
he had made in the North. Such was the substance of the report,
and so it came to an end.

Many men would have thought the engineer's statement rather too
carefully worded; and, suspecting him of trying to make the best
of a bad case, would have entertained serious doubts on the
subject of Frank's future. Mr. Vanstone was too easy-tempered and
sanguine -- and too anxious, as well, not to yield his old
antagonist an inch more ground than he could help -- to look at
the letter from any such unfavorable point of view. Was it
Frank's fault if he had not got the stuff in him that engineers
were made of? Did no other young men ever begin life with a false
start? Plenty began in that way, and got over it, and did wonders
afterward. With these commentaries on the letter, the
kind-hearted gentleman patted Frank on the shoulder. "Cheer up,
my lad!" said Mr. Vanstone. "We will be even with your father one
of these days, though he _has_ won the wager this time!"

The example thus set by the master of the house was followed at
once by the family -- with the solitary exception of Norah, whose
incurable formality and reserve expressed themselves, not too
graciously, in her distant manner toward the visitor. The rest,
led by Magdalen (who had been Frank's favorite playfellow in past
times) glided back into their old easy habits with him without an
effort. He was "Frank" with all of them but Norah, who persisted
in addressing him as "Mr. Clare." Even the account he was now
encouraged to give of the reception accorded to him by his
father, on the previous night, failed to disturb Norah's gravity.
She sat with her dark, handsome face steadily averted, her eyes
cast down, and the rich color in her cheeks warmer and deeper
than usual. All the rest, Miss Garth included, found old Mr.
Clare's speech of welcome to his son quite irresistible. The
noise and merriment were at their height when the servant came
in, and struck the whole party dumb by the announcement of
visitors in the drawing-room. "Mr. Marrable, Mrs. Marrable, and
Miss Marrable; Evergreen Lodge, Clifton."

Norah rose as readily as if the new arrivals had been a relief to
her mind. Mrs. Vanstone was the next to leave her chair. These
two went away first, to receive the visitors. Magdalen, who
preferred the society of her father and Frank, pleaded hard to be
left behind; but Miss Garth, after granting five minutes' grace,
took her into custody and marched her out of the room. Frank rose
to take his leave.

"No, no," said Mr. Vanstone, detaining him. "Don't go. These
people won't stop long. Mr. Marrable's a merchant at Bristol.
I've met him once or twice, when the girls forced me to take them
to parties at Clifton. Mere acquaintances, nothing more. Come and
smoke a cigar in the greenhouse. Hang all visitors -- they worry
one's life out. I'll appear at the last moment with an apology;
and you shall follow me at a safe distance, and be a proof that I
was really engaged."

Proposing this ingenious stratagem in a confidential whisper, Mr.
Vanstone took Frank's arm and led him round the house by the back
way. The first ten minutes of seclusion in the conservatory
passed without events of any kind. At the end of that time, a
flying figure in bright garments flashed upon the two gentlemen
through the glass -- the door was flung open -- flower-pots fell
in homage to passing petticoats -- and Mr. Vanstone's youngest
daughter ran up to him at headlong speed, with every external
appearance of having suddenly taken leave of her senses.

"Papa! the dream of my whole life is realized," she said, as soon
as she could speak. "I shall fly through the roof of the
greenhouse if somebody doesn't hold me down. The Marrables have
come here with an invitation. Guess, you darling -guess what
they're going to give at Evergreen Lodge!"

"A ball!" said Mr. Vanstone, without a moment's hesitation.

"Private Theatricals!!!" cried Magdalen, her clear young voice
ringing through the conservatory like a bell; her loose sleeves
falling back and showing her round white arms to the dimpled
elbows, as she clapped her hands ecstatically in the air. "'The
Rivals' is the play, papa -- 'The Rivals,' by the famous
what's-his-name -- and they want ME to act! The one thing in the
whole universe that I long to do most. It all depends on you.
Mamma shakes her head; and Miss Garth looks daggers; and Norah's
as sulky as usual -- but if you say Yes, they must all three give
way and let me do as I like. Say Yes," she pleaded, nestling
softly up to her father, and pressing her lips with a fond
gentleness to his ear, as she whispered the next words. "Say Yes,
and I'll be a good girl for the rest of my life."

"A good girl?" repeated Mr. Vanstone -- "a mad girl, I think you
must mean. Hang these people and their theatricals! I shall have
to go indoors and see about this matter. You needn't throw away
your cigar, Frank. You're well out of the business, and you can
stop here."

"No, he can't," said Magdalen. "He's in the business, too."

Mr. Francis Clare had hitherto remained modestly in the
background. He now came forward with a face expressive of
speechless amazement.

"Yes," continued Magdalen, answering his blank look of inquiry
with perfect composure. "You are to act. Miss Marrable and I have
a turn for business, and we settled it all in five minutes. There
are two parts in the play left to be filled. One is Lucy, the
waiting-maid; which is the character I have undertaken -- with
papa's permission," she added, slyly pinching her father's arm;
"and he won't say No, will he? First, because he's a darling;
secondly, because I love him, and he loves me; thirdly, because
there is never any difference of opinion between us (is there?);
fourthly, because I give him a kiss, which naturally stops his
mouth and settles the whole question. Dear me, I'm wandering.
Where was I just now? Oh yes! explaining myself to Frank -- "

"I beg your pardon," began Frank, attempting, at this point, to
enter his protest.

"The second character in the play," pursued Magdalen, without
taking the smallest notice of the protest, "is Falkland -- a
jealous lover, with a fine flow of language. Miss Marrable and I
discussed Falkland privately on the window-seat while the rest
were talking. She is a delightful girl -- so impulsive , so
sensible, s o entirely unaffected. She confided in me. She said:
'One of our miseries is that we can't find a gentleman who will
grapple with the hideous difficulties of Falkland.' Of course I
soothed her. Of course I said: 'I've got the gentleman, and he
shall grapple immediately.' -- 'Oh heavens! who is he?' -- 'Mr.
Francis Clare.' -- 'And where is he?' -- 'In the house at this
moment.' -- 'Will you be so very charming, Miss Vanstone, as to
fetch him?' -'I'll fetch him, Miss Marrable, with the greatest
pleasure.' I left the window-seat -- I rushed into the
morning-room -- I smelled cigars -- I followed the smell -- and
here I am."

"It's a compliment, I know, to be asked to act," said Frank, in
great embarrassment. "But I hope you and Miss Marrable will
excuse me -- "

"Certainly not. Miss Marrable and I are both remarkable for the
firmness of our characters. When we say Mr. So-and-So is
positively to act the part of Falkland, we positively mean it.
Come in and be introduced."

"But I never tried to act. I don't know how."

"Not of the slightest consequence. If you don't know how, come to
me and I'll teach you."

"You!" exclaimed Mr. Vanstone. "What do you know about it?"

"Pray, papa, be serious! I have the strongest internal conviction
that I could act every character in the play -- Falkland
included. Don't let me have to speak a second time, Frank. Come
and be introduced."

She took her father's arm, and moved on with him to the door of
the greenhouse. At the steps, she turned and looked round to see
if Frank was following her. It was only the action of a moment;
but in that moment her natural firmness of will rallied all its
resources -- strengthened itself with the influence of her beauty
-- commanded -- and conquered. She looked lovely: the flush was
tenderly bright in her cheeks; the radiant pleasure shone and
sparkled in her eyes; the position of her figure, turned suddenly
from the waist upward, disclosed its delicate strength, its
supple firmness, its seductive, serpentine grace. "Come!" she
said, with a coquettish beckoning action of her head. "Come,
Frank!"

Few men of forty would have resisted her at that moment. Frank
was twenty last birthday. In other words, he threw aside his
cigar, and followed her out of the greenhouse.

As he turned and closed the door -- in the instant when he lost
sight of her -his disinclination to be associated with the
private theatricals revived. At the foot of the house-steps he
stopped again; plucked a twig from a plant near him; broke it in
his hand; and looked about him uneasily, on this side and on
that. The path to the left led back to his father's cottage --
the way of escape lay open. Why not take it?

While he still hesitated, Mr. Vanstone and his daughter reached
the top of the steps. Once more, Magdalen looked round -- looked
with her resistless beauty, with her all-conquering smile. She
beckoned again; and again he followed her -up the steps, and over
the threshold. The door closed on them.

So, with a trifling gesture of invitation on one side, with a
trifling act of compliance on the other: so -- with no knowledge
in his mind, with no thought in hers, of the secret still hidden
under the journey to London -- they took the way which led to
that secret's discovery, through many a darker winding that was
yet to come.

CHAPTER V.

MR. VANSTONE'S inquiries into the proposed theatrical
entertainment at Evergreen Lodge were answered by a narrative of
dramatic disasters; of which Miss Marrable impersonated the
innocent cause, and in which her father and mother played the
parts of chief victims.

Miss Marrable was that hardest of all born tyrants -- an only
child. She had never granted a constitutional privilege to her
oppressed father and mother since the time when she cut her first
tooth. Her seventeenth birthday was now near at hand; she had
decided on celebrating it by acting a play; had issued her orders
accordingly; and had been obeyed by her docile parents as
implicitly as usual. Mrs. Marrable gave up the drawing-room to be
laid waste for a stage and a theater. Mr. Marrable secured the
services of a respectable professional person to drill the young
ladies and gentlemen, and to accept all the other
responsibilities incidental to creating a dramatic world out of a
domestic chaos. Having further accustomed themselves to the
breaking of furniture and the staining of walls -- to thumping,
tumbling, hammering, and screaming; to doors always banging, and
to footsteps perpetually running up and down stairs -- the
nominal master and mistress of the house fondly believed that
their chief troubles were over. Innocent and fatal delusion! It
is one thing in private society to set up the stage and choose
the play -- it is another thing altogether to find the actors.
Hitherto, only the small preliminary annoyances proper to the
occasion had shown themselves at Evergreen Lodge. The sound and
serious troubles were all to come.

"The Rivals" having been chosen as the play, Miss Marrable, as a
matter of course, appropriated to herself the part of "Lydia
Languish." One of her favored swains next secured "Captain
Absolute," and another laid violent hands on "Sir Lucius
O'Trigger." These two were followed by an accommodating spinster
relative, who accepted the heavy dramatic responsibility of "Mrs.
Malaprop" -and there the theatrical proceedings came to a pause.
Nine more speaking characters were left to be fitted with
representatives; and with that unavoidable necessity the serious
troubles began.

All the friends of the family suddenly became unreliable people,
for the first time in their lives. After encouraging the idea of
the play, they declined the personal sacrifice of acting in it --
or, they accepted characters, and then broke down in the effort
to study them -- or they volunteered to take the parts which they
knew were already engaged, and declined the parts which were
waiting to be acted -- or they were afflicted with weak
constitutions, and mischievously fell ill when they were wanted
at rehearsal -- or they had Puritan relatives in the background,
and, after slipping into their parts cheerfully at the week's
beginning, oozed out of them penitently, under serious family
pressure, at the week's end. Meanwhile, the carpenters hammered
and the scenes rose. Miss Marrable, whose temperament was
sensitive, became hysterical under the strain of perpetual
anxiety; the family doctor declined to answer for the nervous
consequences if something was not done. Renewed efforts were made
in every direction. Actors and actresses were sought with a
desperate disregard of all considerations of personal fitness.
Necessity, which knows no law, either in the drama or out of it,
accepted a lad of eighteen as the representative of "Sir Anthony
Absolute"; the stage-manager undertaking to supply the necessary
wrinkles from the illimitable resources of theatrical art. A lady
whose age was unknown, and whose personal appearance was stout --
but whose heart was in the right place -- volunteered to act the
part of the sentimental "Julia," and brought with her the
dramatic qualification of habitually wearing a wig in private
life. Thanks to these vigorous measures, the play was at last
supplied with representatives -- always excepting the two
unmanageable characters of "Lucy" the waiting-maid, and
"Falkland," Julia's jealous lover. Gentlemen came; saw Julia at
rehearsal; observed her stoutness and her wig; omitted to notice
that her heart was in the right place; quailed at the prospect,
apologized, and retired. Ladies read the part of "Lucy"; remarked
that she appeared to great advantage in the first half of the
play, and faded out of it altogether in the latter half; objected
to pass from the notice of the audience in that manner, when all
the rest had a chance of distinguishing themselves to the end;
shut up the book, apologized, and retired. In eight days more the
night of performance would arrive; a phalanx of social martyrs
two hundred strong had been convened to witness it; three full
rehearsals were absolutely necessary; and two characters in the
play were not filled yet. With this lamentable story , and with
the humblest apologies for presuming on a slight acquaintance,
the Marrables appeared at Combe-Raven, to appeal to the young
ladies for a "Lucy," and to the universe for a "Falkland," with
the mendicant pertinacity of a family in despair.

This statement of circumstances -- addressed to an audience which
included a father of Mr. Vanstone's disposition, and a daughter
of Magdalen's temperament -- produced the result which might have
been anticipated from the first.

Either misinterpreting, or disregarding, the ominous silence
preserved by his wife and Miss Garth, Mr. Vanstone not only gave
Magdalen permission to assist the forlorn dramatic company, but
accepted an invitation to witness the performance for Norah and
himself. Mrs. Vanstone declined accompanying them on account of
her health; and Miss Garth only engaged to make one among the
audience conditionally on not being wanted at home. The "parts"
of "Lucy" and "Falkland" (which the distressed family carried
about with them everywhere, like incidental maladies) were handed
to their representatives on the spot. Frank's faint remonstrances
were rejected without a hearing; the days and hours of rehearsal
were carefully noted down on the covers of the parts; and the
Marrables took their leave, with a perfect explosion of thanks --
father, mother, and daughter sowing their expressions of
gratitude broadcast, from the drawing-room door to the
garden-gates.

As soon as the carriage had driven away, Magdalen presented
herself to the general observation under an entirely new aspect.

"If any more visitors call to-day," she said, with the
profoundest gravity of look and manner, "I am not at home. This
is a far more serious matter than any of you suppose. Go
somewhere by yourself, Frank, and read over your part, and don't
let your attention wander if you can possibly help it. I shall
not be accessible before the evening. If you will come here --
with papa's permission -- after tea, my views on the subject of
Falkland will be at your disposal. Thomas! whatever else the
gardener does, he is not to make any floricultural noises under
my window. For the rest of the afternoon I shall be immersed in
study -- and the quieter the house is, the more obliged I shall
feel to everybody."

Before Miss Garth's battery of reproof could open fire, before
the first outburst of Mr. Vanstone's hearty laughter could escape
his lips, she bowed to them with imperturbable gravity; ascended
the house-steps, for the first time in her life, at a walk
instead of a run, and retired then and there to the bedroom
regions. Frank's helpless astonishment at her disappearance added
a new element of absurdity to the scene. He stood first on one
leg and then on the other; rolling and unrolling his part, and
looking piteously in the faces of the friends about him. "I know
I can't do it," he said. "May I come in after tea, and hear
Magdalen's views? Thank you -- I'll look in about eight. Don't
tell my father about this acting, please; I should never hear the
last of it." Those were the only words he had spirit enough to
utter. He drifted away aimlessly in the direction of the
shrubbery, with the part hanging open in his hand -- the most
incapable of Falklands, and the most helpless of mankind.

Frank's departure left the family by themselves, and was the
signal accordingly for an attack on Mr. Vanstone's inveterate
carelessness in the exercise of his paternal authority.

"What could you possibly be thinking of, Andrew, when you gave
your consent?" said Mrs. Vanstone. "Surely my silence was a
sufficient warning to you to say No?"

"A mistake, Mr. Vanstone," chimed in Miss Garth. "Made with the
best intentions -- but a mistake for all that."

"It may be a mistake," said Norah, taking her father's part, as
usual. "But I really don't see how papa, or any one else, could
have declined, under the circumstances."

"Quite right, my dear," observed Mr. Vanstone. "The
circumstances, as you say, were dead against me. Here were these
unfortunate people in a scrape on one side; and Magdalen, on the
other, mad to act. I couldn't say I had methodistical objections
-- I've nothing methodistical about me. What other excuse could I
make? The Marrables are respectable people, and keep the best
company in Clifton. What harm can she get in their house? If you
come to prudence and that sort of thing -- why shouldn't Magdalen
do what Miss Marrable does? There! there! let the poor things
act, and amuse themselves. We were their age once -and it's no
use making a fuss -- and that's all I've got to say about it."

With that characteristic defense of his own conduct, Mr. Vanstone
sauntered back to the greenhouse to smoke another cigar.

"I didn't say so to papa," said Norah, taking her mother's arm on
the way back to the house, "but the bad result of the acting, in
my opinion, will be the familiarity it is sure to encourage
between Magdalen and Francis Clare."

"You are prejudiced against Frank, my love," said Mrs. Vanstone.

Norah's soft, secret, hazel eyes sank to the ground; she said no
more. Her opinions were unchangeable -- but she never disputed
with anybody. She had the great failing of a reserved nature --
the failing of obstinacy; and the great merit -- the merit of
silence. "What is your head running on now?" thought Miss Garth,
casting a sharp look at Norah's dark, downcast face. "You're one
of the impenetrable sort. Give me Magdalen, with all her
perversities; I can see daylight through her. You're as dark as
night."

The hours of the afternoon passed away, and still Magdalen
remained shut up in her own room. No restless footsteps pattered
on the stairs; no nimble tongue was heard chattering here, there,
and everywhere, from the garret to the kitchen -the house seemed
hardly like itself, with the one ever-disturbing element in the
family serenity suddenly withdrawn from it. Anxious to witness
with her own eyes the reality of a transformation in which past
experience still inclined her to disbelieve, Miss Garth ascended
to Magdalen's room, knocked twice at the door, received no
answer, opened it and looked in.

There sat Magdalen, in an arm-chair before the long
looking-glass, with all her hair let down over her shoulders;
absorbed in the study of her part and comfortably arrayed in her
morning wrapper, until it was time to dress for dinner. And there
behind her sat the lady's-maid, slowly combing out the long heavy
locks of her young mistress's hair, with the sleepy resignation
of a woman who had been engaged in that employment for some hours
past. The sun was shining; and the green shutters outside the
window were closed. The dim light fell tenderly on the two quiet
seated figures; on the little white bed, with the knots of
rose-colored ribbon which looped up its curtains, and the bright
dress for dinner laid ready across it; on the gayly painted bath,
with its pure lining of white enamel; on the toilet-table with
its sparkling trinkets, its crystal bottles, its silver bell with
Cupid for a handle, its litter of little luxuries that adorn the
shrine of a woman's bed-chamber. The luxurious tranquillity of
the scene; the cool fragrance of flowers and perfumes in the
atmosphere; the rapt attitude of Magdalen, absorbed over her
reading; the monotonous regularity of movement in the maid's hand
and arm, as she drew the comb smoothly through and through her
mistress's hair -- all conveyed the same soothing impression of
drowsy, delicious quiet. On one side of the door were the broad
daylight and the familiar realities of life. On the other was the
dream-land of Elysian serenity -- the sanctuary of unruffled
repose.

Miss Garth paused on the threshold, and looked into the room in
silence.

Magdalen's curious fancy for having her hair combed at all times
and seasons was among the peculiarities of her character which
were notorious to everybody in the house. It was one of her
father's favorite jokes that she reminded him, on such occasions,
of a cat having her back stroked, and that he always expected, if
the combing were only continued long enough, to hear her _purr_.
Extravagant as it may seem, the comparison was not altogether
inappropri ate. The girl's fervid temp erament intensified the
essentially feminine pleasure that most women feel in the passage
of the comb through their hair, to a luxury of sensation which
absorbed her in enjoyment, so serenely self-demonstrative, so
drowsily deep that it did irresistibly suggest a pet cat's
enjoyment under a caressing hand. Intimately as Miss Garth was
acquainted with this peculiarity in her pupil, she now saw it
asserting itself for the first time, in association with mental
exertion of any kind on Magdalen's part. Feeling, therefore, some
curiosity to know how long the combing and the studying had gone
on together, she ventured on putting the question, first to the
mistress; and (receiving no answer in that quarter) secondly to
the maid.

"All the afternoon, miss, off and on," was the weary answer.
"Miss Magdalen says it soothes her feelings and clears her mind."

Knowing by experience that interference would be hopeless, under
these circumstances, Miss Garth turned sharply and left the room.
She smiled when she was outside on the landing. The female mind
does occasionally -- though not often -- project itself into the
future. Miss Garth was prophetically pitying Magdalen's
unfortunate husband.

Dinner-time presented the fair student to the family eye in the
same mentally absorbed aspect. On all ordinary occasions
Magdalen's appetite would have terrified those feeble
sentimentalists who affect to ignore the all-important influence
which female feeding exerts in the production of female beauty.
On this occasion she refused one dish after another with a
resolution which implied the rarest of all modern martyrdoms --
gastric martyrdom. "I have conceived the part of Lucy," she
observed, with the demurest gravity. "The next difficulty is to
make Frank conceive the part of Falkland. I see nothing to laugh
at -- you would all be serious enough if you had my
responsibilities. No, papa -- no wine to-day, thank you. I must
keep my intelligence clear. Water, Thomas -- and a little more
jelly, I think, before you take it away."

When Frank presented himself in the evening, ignorant of the
first elements of his part, she took him in hand, as a
middle-aged schoolmistress might have taken in hand a backward
little boy. The few attempts he made to vary the sternly
practical nature of the evening's occupation by slipping in
compliments sidelong she put away from her with the contemptuous
self-possession of a woman of twice her age. She literally forced
him into his part. Her father fell asleep in his chair. Mrs.
Vanstone and Miss Garth lost their interest in the proceedings,
retired to the further end of the room, and spoke together in
whispers. It grew later and later; and still Magdalen never
flinched from her task -- still, with equal perseverance, Norah,
who had been on the watch all through the evening, kept on the
watch to the end. The distrust darkened and darkened on her face
as she looked at her sister and Frank; as she saw how close they
sat together, devoted to the same interest and working to the
same end. The clock on the mantel-piece pointed to half-past
eleven before Lucy the resolute permitted Falkland the helpless
to shut up his task-book for the night. "She's wonderfully
clever, isn't she?" said Frank, taking leave of Mr. Vanstone at
the hall door. "I'm to come to-morrow, and hear more of her views
-- if you have no objection. I shall never do it; don't tell her
I said so. As fast as she teaches me one speech, the other goes
out of my head. Discouraging, isn't it? Goodnight."

The next day but one was the day of the first full rehearsal. On
the previous evening Mrs. Vanstone's spirits had been sadly
depressed. At a private interview with Miss Garth she had
referred again, of her own accord, to the subject of her letter
from London -- had spoken self-reproachfully of her weakness in
admitting Captain Wragge's impudent claim to a family connection
with her -- and had then reverted to the state of her health and
to the doubtful prospect that awaited her in the coming summer in
a tone of despondency which it was very distressing to hear.
Anxious to cheer her spirits, Miss Garth had changed the
conversation as soon as possible -- had referred to the
approaching theatrical performance -and had relieved Mrs.
Vanstone's mind of all anxiety in that direction, by announcing
her intention of accompanying Magdalen to each rehearsal, and of
not losing sight of her until she was safely back again in her
father's house. Accordingly, when Frank presented himself at
Combe-Raven on the eventful morning, there stood Miss Garth,
prepared -- in the interpolated character of Argus -- to
accompany Lucy and Falkland to the scene of trial. The railway
conveyed the three, in excellent time, to Evergreen Lodge; and at
one o'clock the rehearsal began.

CHAPTER VI.

"I HOPE Miss Vanstone knows her part?" whispered Mrs. Marrable,
anxiously addressing herself to Miss Garth, in a corner of the
theater.

"If airs and graces make an actress, ma'am, Magdalen's
performance will astonish us all." With that reply, Miss Garth
took out her work, and seated herself, on guard, in the center of
the pit.

The manager perched himself, book in hand, on a stool close in
front of the stage. He was an active little man, of a sweet and
cheerful temper; and he gave the signal to begin with as patient
an interest in the proceedings as if they had caused him no
trouble in the past and promised him no difficulty in the future.
The two characters which opened the comedy of The Rivals, "Fag"
and "The Coachman," appeared on the scene -- looked many sizes
too tall for their canvas background, which represented a "Street
in Bath" -- exhibited the customary inability to manage their own
arms, legs, and voices -- went out severally at the wrong exits
-- and expressed their perfect approval of results, so far, by
laughing heartily behind the scenes. "Silence, gentlemen, if you
please," remonstrated the cheerful manager. "As loud as you like
_on_ the stage, but the audience mustn't hear you _off_ it. Miss
Marrable ready? Miss Vanstone ready? Easy there with the 'Street
in Bath'; it's going up crooked! Face this way, Miss Marrable;
full face, if you please. Miss Vanstone -- " he checked himself
suddenly. "Curious," he said, under his breath -- "she fronts the
audience of her own accord!" Lucy opened the scene in these
words: "Indeed, ma'am, I traversed half the town in search of it:
I don't believe there's a circulating library in Bath I haven't
been at." The manager started in his chair. "My heart alive! she
speaks out without telling!" The dialogue went on. Lucy produced
the novels for Miss Lydia Languish's private reading from under
her cloak. The manager rose excitably to his feet. Marvelous! No
hurry with the books; no dropping them. She looked at the titles
before she announced them to her mistress; she set down "Humphrey
Clinker" on "The Tears of Sensibility" with a smart little smack
which pointed the antithesis. One moment -- and she announced
Julia's visit; another -- and she dropped the brisk
waiting-maid's courtesy; a third -- and she was off the stage on
the side set down for her in the book. The manager wheeled round
on his stool, and looked hard at Miss Garth. "I beg your pardon,
ma'am," he said. "Miss Marrable told me, before we began, that
this was the young lady's first attempt. It can't be, surely!"

"It is," replied Miss Garth, reflecting the manager's look of
amazement on her own face. Was it possible that Magdalen's
unintelligible industry in the study of her part really sprang
from a serious interest in her occupation -- an interest which
implied a natural fitness for it.

The rehearsal went on. The stout lady with the wig (and the
excellent heart) personated the sentimental Julia from an
inveterately tragic point of view, and used her handkerchief
distractedly in the first scene. The spinster relative felt Mrs.
Malaprop's mistakes in language so seriously, and took such
extraordinary pains with her blunders, that they sounded more
like exercises in elocution than anything else. The unhappy lad
who led the forlorn hope of the company, in the person of "Sir
Anth ony Absolute," expressed the
age and irascibility of his character by tottering incessantly
at the knees, and thumping the stage perpetually with his stick.
Slowly and clumsily, with constant interruptions and interminable
mistakes, the first act dragged on, until Lucy appeared again to
end it in soliloquy, with the confession of her assumed
simplicity and the praise of her own cunning.

Here the stage artifice of the situation presented difficulties
which Magdalen had not encountered in the first scene -- and
here, her total want of experience led her into more than one
palpable mistake. The stage-manager, with an eagerness which he
had not shown in the case of any other member of the company,
interfered immediately, and set her right. At one point she was
to pause, and take a turn on the stage -- she did it. At another,
she was to stop, toss her head, and look pertly at the audience
-- she did it. When she took out the paper to read the list of
the presents she had received, could she give it a tap with her
finger (Yes)? And lead off with a little laugh (Yes -- after
twice trying)? Could she read the different items with a sly look
at the end of each sentence, straight at the pit (Yes, straight
at the pit, and as sly as you please)? The manager's cheerful
face beamed with approval. He tucked the play under his arm, and
clapped his hands gayly; the gentlemen, clustered together behind
the scenes, followed his example; the ladies looked at each other
with dawning doubts whether they had not better have left the new
recruit in the retirement of private life. Too deeply absorbed in
the business of the stage to heed any of them, Magdalen asked
leave to repeat the soliloquy, and make quite sure of her own
improvement. She went all through it again without a mistake,
this time, from beginning to end; the manager celebrating her
attention to his directions by an outburst of professional
approbation, which escaped him in spite of himself. "She can take
a hint!" cried the little man, with a hearty smack of his hand on
the prompt-book. "She's a born actress, if ever there was one
yet!"

"I hope not," said Miss Garth to herself, taking up the work
which had dropped into her lap, and looking down at it in some
perplexity. Her worst apprehension of results in connection with
the theatrical enterprise had foreboded levity of conduct with
some of the gentlemen -- she had not bargained for this.
Magdalen, in the capacity of a thoughtless girl, was
comparatively easy to deal with. Magdalen, in the character of a
born actress, threatened serious future difficulties.

The rehearsal proceeded. Lucy returned to the stage for her
scenes in the second act (the last in which she appears) with Sir
Lucius and Fag. Here, again, Magdalen's inexperience betrayed
itself -- and here once more her resolution in attacking and
conquering her own mistakes astonished everybody. "Bravo!" cried
the gentlemen behind the scenes, as she steadily trampled down
one blunder after another. "Ridiculous!" said the ladies, "with
such a small part as hers." "Heaven forgive me!" thought Miss.
Garth, coming round unwillingly to the general opinion. "I almost
wish we were Papists, and I had a convent to put her in
to-morrow." One of Mr. Marrable's servants entered the theater as
that desperate aspiration escaped the governess. She instantly
sent the man behind the scene with a message: "Miss Vanstone has
done her part in the rehearsal; request her to come here and sit
by me." The servant returned with a polite apology: "Miss
Vanstone's kind love, and she begs to be excused -- she's
prompting Mr. Clare." She prompted him to such purpose that he
actually got through his part. The performances of the other
gentlemen were obtrusively imbecile. Frank was just one degree
better -- he was modestly incapable; and he gained by comparison.
"Thanks to Miss Vanstone," observed the manager, who had heard
the prompting. "She pulled him through. We shall be flat enough
at night, when the drop falls on the second act, and the audience
have seen the last of her. It's a thousand pities she hasn't got
a better part!"

"It's a thousand mercies she's no more to do than she has,"
muttered Miss Garth, overhearing him. "As things are, the people
can't well turn her head with applause. She's out of the play in
the second act -- that's one comfort!"

No well-regulated mind ever draws its inferences in a hurry; Miss
Garth's mind was well regulated; therefore, logically speaking,
Miss Garth ought to have been superior to the weakness of rushing
at conclusions. She had committed that error, nevertheless, under
present circumstances. In plainer terms, the consoling reflection
which had just occurred to her assumed that the play had by this
time survived all its disasters, and entered on its long-deferred
career of success. The play had done nothing of the sort.
Misfortune and the Marrable family had not parted company yet.

When the rehearsal was over, nobody observed that the stout lady
with the wig privately withdrew herself from the company; and
when she was afterward missed from the table of refreshments,
which Mr. Marrable's hospitality kept ready spread in a room near
the theater, nobody imagined that there was any serious reason
for her absence. It was not till the ladies and gentlemen
assembled for the next rehearsal that the true state of the case
was impressed on the minds of the company. At the appointed hour
no Julia appeared. In her stead, Mrs. Marrable portentously
approached the stage, with an open letter in her hand. She was
naturally a lady of the mildest good breeding: she was mistress
of every bland conventionality in the English language -- but
disasters and dramatic influences combined, threw even this
harmless matron off her balance at last. For the first time in
her life Mrs. Marrable indulged in vehement gesture, and used
strong language. She handed the letter sternly, at arms-length,
to her daughter. "My dear," she said, with an aspect of awful
composure, "we are under a Curse." Before the amazed dramatic
company could petition for an explanation, she turned and left
the room. The manager's professional eye followed her out
respectfully -- he looked as if he approved of the exit, from a
theatrical point of view.

What new misfortune had befallen the play? The last and worst of
all misfortunes had assailed it. The stout lady had resigned her
part.

Not maliciously. Her heart, which had been in the right place
throughout, remained inflexibly in the right place still. Her
explanation of the circumstances proved this, if nothing else
did. The letter began with a statement: She had overheard, at the
last rehearsal (quite unintentionally), personal remarks of which
she was the subject. They might, or might not, have had reference
to her -- Hair; and her -- Figure. She would not distress Mrs.
Marrable by repeating them. Neither would she mention names,
because it was foreign to her nature to make bad worse. The only
course at all consistent with her own self-respect was to resign
her part. She inclosed it, accordingly, to Mrs. Marrable, with
many apologies for her presumption in undertaking a youthful
character, at -- what a gentleman was pleased to term -- her Age;
and with what two ladies were rude enough to characterize as her
disadvantages of -- Hair, and -- Figure. A younger and more
attractive representative of Julia would no doubt be easily
found. In the meantime, all persons concerned had her full
forgiveness, to which she would only beg leave to add her best
and kindest wishes for the success of the play.

In four nights more the play was to be performed. If ever any
human enterprise stood in need of good wishes to help it, that
enterprise was unquestionably the theatrical entertainment at
Evergreen Lodge!

One arm-chair was allowed on the stage; and into that arm-chair
Miss Marrable sank, preparatory to a fit of hysterics. Magdalen
stepped forward at the first convulsion; snatched the letter from
Miss Marrable's hand; and stopped the threatened catastrophe.

"She's an ugly, bald-headed, malicious, middle-aged wretch!" said
Magdalen, tearing the letter into fragments, and tossing them
over  the heads of the  company. "But I can tell her one thing --
she shan't spoil the play. I'll act Julia."

"Bravo!" cried the chorus of gentlemen -- the anonymous gentleman
who had helped to do the mischief (otherwise Mr. Francis Clare)
loudest of all.

"If you want the truth, I don't shrink from owning it," continued
Magdalen. "I'm one of the ladies she means. I said she had a head
like a mop, and a waist like a bolster. So she has."

"I am the other lady," added the spinster relative. "But I only
said she was too stout for the part."

"I am the gentleman," chimed in Frank, stimulated by the force of
example. "I said nothing -- I only agreed with the ladies."

Here Miss Garth seized her opportunity, and addressed the stage
loudly from the pit.

"Stop! Stop!" she said. "You can't settle the difficulty that
way. If Magdalen plays Julia, who is to play Lucy?"

Miss Marrable sank back in the arm-chair, and gave way to the
second convulsion.

"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Magdalen, "the thing's simple enough,
I'll act Julia and Lucy both together."

The manager was consulted on the spot. Suppressing Lucy's first
entrance, and turning the short dialogue about the novels into a
soliloquy for Lydia Languish, appeared to be the only changes of
importance necessary to the accomplishment of Magdalen's project.
Lucy's two telling scenes, at the end of the first and second
acts, were sufficiently removed from the scenes in which Julia
appeared to give time for the necessary transformations in dress.
Even Miss Garth, though she tried hard to find them, could put no
fresh obstacles in the way. The question was settled in five
minutes, and the rehearsal went on; Magdalen learning Julia's
stage situations with the book in her hand, and announcing
afterward, on the journey home, that she proposed sitting up all
night to study the new part. Frank thereupon expressed his fears
that she would have no time left to help him through his
theatrical difficulties. She tapped him on the shoulder
coquettishly with her part. "You foolish fellow, how am I to do
without you? You're Julia's jealous lover; you're always making
Julia cry. Come to-night, and make me cry at tea-time. You
haven't got a venomous old woman in a wig to act with now. It's
_my_ heart you're to break -- and of course I shall teach you how
to do it."

The four days' interval passed busily in perpetual rehearsals,
public and private. The night of performance arrived; the guests
assembled; the great dramatic experiment stood on its trial.
Magdalen had made the most of her opportunities; she had learned
all that the manager could teach her in the time. Miss Garth left
her when the overture began, sitting apart in a corner behind the
scenes, serious and silent, with her smelling-bottle in one hand,
and her book in the other, resolutely training herself for the
coming ordeal, to the very last.

The play began, with all the proper accompaniments of a
theatrical performance in private life; with a crowded audience,
an African temperature, a bursting of heated lamp-glasses, and a
difficulty in drawing up the curtain. "Fag" and "the Coachman,"
who opened the scene, took leave of their memories as soon as
they stepped on the stage; left half their dialogue unspoken;
came to a dead pause; were audibly entreated by the invisible
manager to "come off"; and went off accordingly, in every respect
sadder and wiser men than when they went on. The next scene
disclosed Miss Marrable as "Lydia Languish," gracefully seated,
very pretty, beautifully dressed, accurately mistress of the
smallest words in her part; possessed, in short, of every
personal resource -- except her voice. The ladies admired, the
gentlemen applauded. Nobody heard anything but the words "Speak
up, miss," whispered by the same voice which had already
entreated "Fag" and "the Coachman" to "come off." A responsive
titter rose among the younger spectators; checked immediately by
magnanimous applause. The temperature of the audience was rising
to Blood Heat -- but the national sense of fair play was not
boiled out of them yet.

In the midst of the demonstration, Magdalen quietly made her
first entrance, as "Julia." She was dressed very plainly in dark
colors, and wore her own hair; all stage adjuncts and alterations
(excepting the slightest possible touch of rouge on her cheeks)
having been kept in reserve to disguise her the more effectually
in her second part. The grace and simplicity of her costume, the
steady self-possession with which she looked out over the eager
rows of faces before her, raised a low hum of approval and
expectation. She spoke -- after suppressing a momentary tremor --
with a quiet distinctness of utterance which reached all ears,
and which at once confirmed the favorable impression that her
appearance had produced. The one member of the audience who
looked at her and listened to her coldly, was her elder sister.
Before the actress of the evening had been five minutes on the
stage, Norah detected, to her own indescribable astonishment,
that Magdalen had audaciously individualized the feeble
amiability of "Julia's" character, by seizing no less a person
than herself as the model to act it by. She saw all her own
little formal peculiarities of manner and movement unblushingly
reproduced -- and even the very tone of her voice so accurately
mimicked from time to time, that the accents startled her as if
she was speaking herself, with an echo on the stage. The effect
of this cool appropriation of Norah's identity to theatrical
purposes on the audience -- who only saw results -- asserted
itself in a storm of applause on Magdalen's exit. She had won two
incontestable triumphs in her first scene. By a dexterous piece
of mimicry, she had made a living reality of one of the most
insipid characters in the English drama; and she had roused to
enthusiasm an audience of two hundred exiles from the blessings
of ventilation, all simmering together in their own animal heat.
Under the circumstances, where is the actress by profession who
could have done much more?

But the event of the evening was still to come. Magdalen's
disguised re-appearance at the end of the act, in the character
of "Lucy" -- with false hair and false eyebrows, with a
bright-red complexion and patches on her cheeks, with the gayest
colors flaunting in her dress, and the shrillest vivacity of
voice and manner -- fairly staggered the audience. They looked
down at their programmes, in which the representative of Lucy
figured under an assumed name; looked up again at the stage;
penetrated the disguise; and vented their astonishment in another
round of applause, louder and heartier even than the last. Norah
herself could not deny this time that the tribute of approbation
had been well deserved. There, forcing its way steadily through
all the faults of inexperience -- there, plainly visible to the
dullest of the spectators, was the rare faculty of dramatic
impersonation, expressing itself in every look and action of this
girl of eighteen, who now stood on a stage for the first time in
her life. Failing in many minor requisites of the double task
which she had undertaken, she succeeded in the one important
necessity of keeping the main distinctions of the two characters
thoroughly apart. Everybody felt that the difficulty lay here --
everybody saw the difficulty conquered -- everybody echoed the
manager's enthusiasm at rehearsal, which had hailed her as a born
actress.

When the drop-scene descended for the first time, Magdalen had
concentrated in herself the whole interest and attraction of the
play. The audience politely applauded Miss Marrable, as became
the guests assembled in her father's house: and good-humoredly
encouraged the remainder of the company, to help them through a
task for which they were all, more or less, palpably unfit. But,
as the play proceeded, nothing roused them to any genuine
expression of interest when Magdalen was absent from the scene.
There was no disguising it: Miss Marrable and her bosom friends
had been all hopelessly cast in the shade by the new recruit whom
they had summoned to assist them, in the capacity of forlorn
hope. And this on Miss Marrabl e's own birthday! and this
in her father's house! and this after the unutterable sacrifices
of six weeks past! Of all the domestic disasters which the
thankless theatrical enterprise had inflicted on the Marrable
family, the crowning misfortune was now consummated by Magdalen's
success.

Leaving Mr. Vanstone and Norah, on the conclusion of the play,
among the guests in the supper-room, Miss Garth went behind the
scenes; ostensibly anxious to see if she could be of any use;
really bent on ascertaining whether Magdalen's head had been
turned by the triumphs of the evening. It would not have
surprised Miss Garth if she had discovered her pupil in the act
of making terms with the manager for her forthcoming appearance
in a public theater. As events really turned out, she found
Magdalen on the stage, receiving, with gracious smiles, a card
which the manager presented to her with a professional bow.
Noticing Miss Garth's mute look of inquiry, the civil little man
hastened to explain that the card was his own, and that he was
merely asking the favor of Miss Vanstone's recommendation at any
future opportunity.

"This is not the last time the young lady will be concerned in
private theatricals, I'll answer for it," said the manager. "And
if a superintendent is wanted on the next occasion, she has
kindly promised to say a good word for me. I am always to be
heard of, miss, at that address." Saying those words, he bowed
again, and discreetly disappeared.

Vague suspicions beset the mind of Miss Garth, and urged her to
insist on looking at the card. No more harmless morsel of
pasteboard was ever passed from one hand to another. The card
contained nothing but the manager's name, and, under it, the name
and address of a theatrical agent in London.

"It is not worth the trouble of keeping," said Miss Garth.

Magdalen caught her hand before she could throw the card away --
possessed herself of it the next instant -- and put it in her
pocket.

"I promised to recommend him," she said -- "and that's one reason
for keeping his card. If it does nothing else, it will remind me
of the happiest evening of my life -- and that's another. Come!"
she cried, throwing her arms round Miss Garth with a feverish
gayety -- "congratulate me on my success!"

"I will congratulate you when you have got over it," said Miss
Garth.

In half an hour more Magdalen had changed her dress; had joined
the guests; and had soared into an atmosphere of congratulation
high above the reach of any controlling influence that Miss Garth
could exercise. Frank, dilatory in all his proceedings, was the
last of the dramatic company who left the precincts of the stage.
He made no attempt to join Magdalen in the supper-room -- but he
was ready in the hall with her cloak when the carriages were
called and the party broke up.

"Oh, Frank!" she said, looking round at him as he put the cloak
on her shoulders, "I am so sorry it's all over! Come to-morrow
morning, and let's talk about it by ourselves."

"In the shrubbery at ten?" asked Frank, in a whisper.

She drew up the hood of her cloak and nodded to him gayly. Miss
Garth, standing near, noticed the looks that passed between them,
though the disturbance made by the parting guests prevented her
from hearing the words. There was a soft, underlying tenderness
in Magdalen's assumed gayety of manner -- there was a sudden
thoughtfulness in her face, a confidential readiness in her hand,
as she took Frank's arm and went out to the carriage. What did it
mean? Had her passing interest in him as her stage-pupil
treacherously sown the seeds of any deeper interest in him, as a
man? Had the idle theatrical scheme, now that it was all over,
graver results to answer for than a mischievous waste of time?

The lines on Miss Garth's face deepened and hardened: she stood
lost among the fluttering crowd around her. Norah's warning
words, addressed to Mrs. Vanstone in the garden, recurred to her
memory -- and now, for the first time, the idea dawned on her
that Norah had seen the consequences in their true light.

CHAPTER VII.

EARLY the next morning Miss Garth and Norah met in the garden and
spoke together privately. The only noticeable result of the
interview, when they presented themselves at the breakfast-table,
appeared in the marked silence which they both maintained on the
topic of the theatrical performance. Mrs. Vanstone was entirely
indebted to her husband and to her youngest daughter for all that
she heard of the evening's entertainment. The governess and the
elder daughter had evidently determined on letting the subject
drop.

After breakfast was over Magdalen proved to be missing, when the
ladies assembled as usual in the morning-room. Her habits were so
little regular that Mrs. Vanstone felt neither surprise nor
uneasiness at her absence. Miss Garth and Norah looked at one
another significantly, and waited in silence. Two hours passed --
and there were no signs of Magdalen. Norah rose, as the clock
struck twelve, and quietly left the room to look for her.

She was not upstairs dusting her jewelry and disarranging her
dresses. She was not in the conservatory, not in the
flower-garden; not in the kitchen teasing the cook; not in the
yard playing with the dogs. Had she, by any chance, gone out with
her father? Mr. Vanstone had announced his intention, at the
breakfast-table, of paying a morning visit to his old ally, Mr.
Clare, and of rousing the philosopher's sarcastic indignation by
an account of the dramatic performance. None of the other ladies
at Combe-Raven ever ventured themselves inside the cottage. But
Magdalen was reckless enough for anything -- and Magdalen might
have gone there. As the idea occurred to her, Norah entered the
shrubbery.

At the second turning, where the path among the trees wound away
out of sight of the house, she came suddenly face to face with
Magdalen and Frank: they were sauntering toward her, arm in arm,
their heads close together, their conversation apparently
proceeding in whispers. They looked suspiciously handsome and
happy. At the sight of Norah both started, and both stopped.
Frank confusedly raised his hat, and turned back in the direction
of his father's cottage. Magdalen advanced to meet her sister,
carelessly swinging her closed parasol from side to side,
carelessly humming an air from the overture which had preceded
the rising of the curtain on the previous night.

"Luncheon-time already!" she said, looking at her watch. "Surely
not?"

"Have you and Mr. Francis Clare been alone in the shrubbery since
ten o'clock?" asked Norah.

"_Mr._ Francis Clare! How ridiculously formal you are. Why don't
you call him Frank?"

"I asked you a question, Magdalen."

"Dear me, how black you look this morning! I'm in disgrace, I
suppose. Haven't you forgiven me yet for my acting last night? I
couldn't help it, love; I should have made nothing of Julia, if I
hadn't taken you for my model. It's quite a question of Art. In
your place, I should have felt flattered by the selection."

"In _your_ place, Magdalen, I should have thought twice before I
mimicked my sister to an audience of strangers."

"That's exactly why I did it -- an audience of strangers. How
were they to know? Come! come! don't be angry. You are eight
years older than I am -- you ought to set me an example of
good-humor."

"I will set you an example of plain-speaking. I am more sorry
than I can say, Magdalen, to meet you as I met you here just
now!"

"What next, I wonder? You meet me in the shrubbery at home,
talking over the private theatricals with my old playfellow, whom
I knew when I was no taller than this parasol. And that is a
glaring impropriety, is it? 'Honi soit qui mal y pense.' You
wanted an answer a minute ago -- there it is for you, my dear, in
the choicest Norman-French."

"I am in earnest about this, Magdalen -- "

"Not a doubt of it. Nobody can accuse you of ever making jokes."

"I am seriously sorry -- "

"Oh, dear!"

"It is quite useless to interrupt me. I have it on my conscience
to tell you -and I _will_ tell you -- that I am sorry to see how
this intimacy is growing. I am sorry to see a secret
understanding established already between you and Mr. Francis
Clare."

"Poor Fra nk! How you do hate him, to be sure. What on earth has
he done to offend you?"

Norah's self-control began to show signs of failing her. Her dark
cheeks glowed, her delicate lips trembled, before she spoke
again. Magdalen paid more attention to her parasol than to her
sister. She tossed it high in the air and caught it. "Once!" she
said -- and tossed it up again. "Twice!" -- and she tossed it
higher. "Thrice -- " Before she could catch it for the third
time, Norah seized her passionately by the arm, and the parasol
dropped to the ground between them.

"You are treating me heartlessly," she said. "For shame, Magdalen
-- for shame!"

The irrepressible outburst of a reserved nature, forced into open
self-assertion in its own despite, is of all moral forces the
hardest to resist. Magdalen was startled into silence. For a
moment, the two sisters -- so strangely dissimilar in person and
character -- faced one another, without a word passing between
them. For a moment the deep brown eyes of the elder and the light
gray eyes of the younger looked into each other with steady,
unyielding scrutiny on either side. Norah's face was the first to
change; Norah's head was the first to turn away. She dropped her
sister's arm in silence. Magdalen stooped and picked up her
parasol.

"I try to keep my temper," she said, "and you call me heartless
for doing it. You always were hard on me, and you always will
be."

Norah clasped her trembling hands fast in each other. "Hard on
you!" she said, in low, mournful tones -- and sighed bitterly.

Magdalen drew back a little, and mechanically dusted the parasol
with the end of her garden cloak.

"Yes!" she resumed, doggedly. "Hard on me and hard on Frank."

"Frank!" repeated Norah, advancing on her sister and turning pale
as suddenly as she had turned red. "Do you talk of yourself and
Frank as if your interests were One already? Magdalen! if I hurt
_you_, do I hurt _him_? Is he so near and so dear to you as
that?"

Magdalen drew further and further back. A twig from a tree near
caught her cloak; she turned petulantly, broke it off, and threw
it on the ground. "What right have you to question me?" she broke
out on a sudden. "Whether I like Frank, or whether I don't, what
interest is it of yours?" As she said the words, she abruptly
stepped forward to pass her sister and return to the house.

Norah, turning paler and paler, barred the way to her. "If I hold
you by main force," she said, "you shall stop and hear me. I have
watched this Francis Clare; I know him better than you do. He is
unworthy of a moment's serious feeling on your part; he is
unworthy of our dear, good, kind-hearted father's interest in
him. A man with any principle, any honor, any gratitude, would
not have come back as he has come back, disgraced -- yes!
disgraced by his spiritless neglect of his own duty. I watched
his face while the friend who has been better than a father to
him was comforting and forgiving him with a kindness he had not
deserved: I watched his face, and I saw no shame and no distress
in it -- I saw nothing but a look of thankless, heartless relief.
He is selfish, he is ungrateful, he is ungenerous -- he is only
twenty, and he has the worst failings of a mean old age already.
And this is the man I find you meeting in secret -- the man who
has taken such a place in your favor that you are deaf to the
truth about him, even from _my_ lips! Magdalen! this will end
ill. For God's sake, think of what I have said to you, and
control yourself before it is too late!" She stopped, vehement
and breathless, and caught her sister anxiously by the hand.

Magdalen looked at her in unconcealed astonishment.

"You are so violent," she said, "and so unlike yourself, that I
hardly know you. The more patient I am, the more hard words I get
for my pains. You have taken a perverse hatred to Frank; and you
are unreasonably angry with me because I won't hate him, too.
Don't, Norah! you hurt my hand."

Norah pushed the hand from her contemptuously. "I shall never
hurt your heart," she said; and suddenly turned her back on
Magdalen as she spoke the words.

There was a momentary pause. Norah kept her position. Magdalen
looked at her perplexedly -- hesitated -- then walked away by
herself toward the house.

At the turn in the shrubbery path she stopped and looked back
uneasily. "Oh, dear, dear!" she thought to herself, "why didn't
Frank go when I told him?" She hesitated, and went back a few
steps. "There's Norah standing on her dignity, as obstinate as
ever." She stopped again. "What had I better do? I hate
quarreling: I think I'll make up." She ventured close to her
sister and touched her on the shoulder. Norah never moved. "It's
not often she flies into a passion," thought Magdalen, touching
her again; "but when she does, what a time it lasts her! -Come!"
she said, "give me a kiss, Norah, and make it up. Won't you let
me get at any part of you, my dear, but the back of your neck?
Well, it's a very nice neck -- it's better worth kissing than
mine -- and there the kiss is, in spite of you!"

She caught fast hold of Norah from behind, and suited the action
to the word, with a total disregard of all that had just passed,
which her sister was far from emulating. Hardly a minute since
the warm outpouring of Norah's heart had burst through all
obstacles. Had the icy reserve frozen her up again already! It
was hard to say. She never spoke; she never changed her position
-- she only searched hurriedly for her handkerchief. As she drew
it out, there was a sound of approaching footsteps in the inner
recesses of the shrubbery. A Scotch terrier scampered into view;
and a cheerful voice sang the first lines of the glee in "As You
Like It." "It's papa!" cried Magdalen. "Come, Norah -- come and
meet him."

Instead of following her sister, Norah pulled down the veil of
her garden hat, turned in the opposite direction, and hurried
back to the house. She ran up to her own room and locked herself
in. She was crying bitterly.

CHAPTER VIII.

WHEN Magdalen and her father met in the shrubbery Mr. Vanstone's
face showed plainly that something had happened to please him
since he had left home in the morning. He answered the question
which his daughter's curiosity at once addressed to him by
informing her that he had just come from Mr. Clare's cottage; and
that he had picked up, in that unpromising locality, a startling
piece of news for the family at Combe-Raven.

On entering the philosopher's study that morning, Mr. Vanstone
had found him still dawdling over his late breakfast, with an
open letter by his side, in place of the book which, on other
occasions, lay ready to his hand at meal-times. He held up the
letter the moment his visitor came into the room, and abruptly
opened the conversation by asking Mr. Vanstone if his nerves were
in good order, and if he felt himself strong enough for the shock
of an overwhelming surprise.

"Nerves!" repeated Mr. Vanstone. "Thank God, I know nothing about
my nerves. If you have got anything to tell me, shock or no
shock, out with it on the spot."

Mr. Clare held the letter a little higher, and frowned at his
visitor across the breakfast-table. "What have I always told
you?" he asked, with his sourest solemnity of look and manner.

"A great deal more than I could ever keep in my head," answered
Mr. Vanstone.

"In your presence and out of it," continued Mr. Clare, "I have
always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by
modern society is -- the enormous prosperity of Fools. Show me an
individual Fool, and I will show you an aggregate Society which
gives that highly-favored personage nine chances out of ten --
and grudges the tenth to the wisest man in existence. Look where
you will, in every high place there sits an Ass, settled beyond
the reach of all the greatest intellects in this world to pull
him down. Over our whole social system, complacent Imbecility
rules supreme -- snuffs out the searching light of Intelligence
with total impunity -- and hoots, owl-like, in answer to every
form of protest, See how well we all do in the dark! One of these
days that audacious assertion will be practicall y contradicted,
and the whol e rotten system of modern society will come down
with a crash."

"God forbid!" cried Mr. Vanstone, looking about him as if the
crash was coming already.

"With a crash!" repeated Mr. Clare. "There is my theory, in few
words. Now for the remarkable application of it which this letter
suggests. Here is my lout of a boy -- "

"You don't mean that Frank has got another chance?" exclaimed Mr.
Vanstone.

"Here is this perfectly hopeless booby, Frank," pursued the
philosopher. "He has never done anything in his life to help
himself, and, as a necessary consequence, Society is in a
conspiracy to carry him to the top of the tree. He has hardly had
time to throw away that chance you gave him before this letter
comes, and puts the ball at his foot for the second time. My rich
cousin (who is intellectually fit to be at the tail of the
family, and who is, therefore, as a matter of course, at the head
of it) has been good enough to remember my existence; and has
offered his influence to serve my eldest boy. Read his letter,
and then observe the sequence of events. My rich cousin is a
booby who thrives on landed property; he has done something for
another booby who thrives on Politics, who knows a third booby
who thrives on Commerce, who can do something for a fourth booby,
thriving at present on nothing, whose name is Frank. So the mill
goes. So the cream of all human rewards is sipped in endless
succession by the Fools. I shall pack Frank off to-morrow. In
course of time he'll come back again on our hands, like a bad
shilling; more chances will fall in his way, as a necessary
consequence of his meritorious imbecility. Years will go on -- I
may not live to see it, no more may you -- it doesn't matter;
Frank's future is equally certain either way -- put him into the
army, the Church, politics, what you please, and let him drift:
he'll end in being a general, a bishop, or a minister of State,
by dint of the great modern qualification of doing nothing
whatever to deserve his place." With this summary of his son's
worldly prospects, Mr. Clare tossed the letter contemptuously
across the table and poured himself out another cup of tea.

Mr. Vanstone read the letter with eager interest and pleasure. It
was written in a tone of somewhat elaborate cordiality; but the
practical advantages which it placed at Frank's disposal were
beyond all doubt. The writer had the means of using a friend's
interest -- interest of no ordinary kind -- with a great
Mercantile Firm in the City; and he had at once exerted this
influence in favor of Mr. Clare's eldest boy. Frank would be
received in the office on a very different footing from the
footing of an ordinary clerk; he would be "pushed on" at every
available opportunity; and the first "good thing" the House had
to offer, either at home or abroad, would be placed at his
disposal. If he possessed fair abilities and showed common
diligence in exercising them, his fortune was made; and the
sooner he was sent to London to begin the better for his own
interests it would be.

"Wonderful news!" cried Mr. Vanstone, returning the letter. "I'm
delighted -- I must go back and tell them at home. This is fifty
times the chance that mine was. What the deuce do you mean by
abusing Society? Society has behaved uncommonly well, in my
opinion. Where's Frank?"

"Lurking," said Mr. Clare. "It is one of the intolerable
peculiarities of louts that they always lurk. I haven't seen _my_
lout this morning. It you meet with him anywhere, give him a
kick, and say I want him."

Mr. Clare's opinion of his son's habits might have been expressed
more politely as to form; but, as to substance, it happened, on
that particular morning, to be perfectly correct. After leaving
Magdalen, Frank had waited in the shrubbery, at a safe distance,
on the chance that she might detach herself from her sister's
company, and join him again. Mr. Vanstone's appearance
immediately on Norah's departure, instead of encouraging him to
show himself, had determined him on returning to the cottage. He
walked back discontentedly; and so fell into his father's
clutches, totally unprepared for the pending announcement, in
that formidable quarter, of his departure for London.

In the meantime, Mr. Vanstone had communicated his news -- in the
first place, to Magdalen, and afterward, on getting back to the
house, to his wife and Miss Garth. He was too unobservant a man
to notice that Magdalen looked unaccountably startled, and Miss
Garth unaccountably relieved, by his announcement of Frank's good
fortune. He talked on about it, quite unsuspiciously, until the
luncheon-bell rang -- and then, for the first time, he noticed
Norah's absence. She sent a message downstairs, after they had
assembled at the table, to say that a headache was keeping her in
her own room. When Miss Garth went up shortly afterward to
communicate the news about Frank, Norah appeared, strangely
enough, to feel very little relieved by hearing it. Mr. Francis
Clare had gone away on a former occasion (she remarked), and had
come back. He might come back again, and sooner than they any of
them thought for. She said no more on the subject than this: she
made no reference to what had taken place in the shrubbery. Her
unconquerable reserve seemed to have strengthened its hold on her
since the outburst of the morning. She met Magdalen, later in the
day, as if nothing had happened: no formal reconciliation took
place between them. It was one of Norah's peculiarities to shrink
from all reconciliations that were openly ratified, and to take
her shy refuge in reconciliations that were silently implied.
Magdalen saw plainly, in her look and manner, that she had made
her first and last protest. Whether the motive was pride, or
sullenness, or distrust of herself, or despair of doing good, the
result was not to be mistaken -- Norah had resolved on remaining
passive for the future.

Later in the afternoon, Mr. Vanstone suggested a drive to his
eldest daughter, as the best remedy for her headache. She readily
consented to accompany her father; who thereupon proposed, as
usual, that Magdalen should join them. Magdalen was nowhere to be
found. For the second time that day she had wandered into the
grounds by herself. On this occasion, Miss Garth -- who, after
adopting Norah's opinions, had passed from the one extreme of
over-looking Frank altogether, to the other extreme of believing
him capable of planning an elopement at five minutes' notice --
volunteered to set forth immediately, and do her best to find the
missing young lady. After a prolonged absence, she returned
unsuccessful -- with the strongest persuasion in her own mind
that Magdalen and Frank had secretly met one another somewhere,
but without having discovered the smallest fragment of evidence
to confirm her suspicions. By this time the carriage was at the
door, and Mr. Vanstone was unwilling to wait any longer. He and
Norah drove away together; and Mrs. Vanstone and Miss Garth sat
at home over their work.

In half an hour more, Magdalen composedly walked into the room.
She was pale and depressed. She received Miss Garth's
remonstrances with a weary inattention; explained carelessly that
she had been wandering in the wood; took up some books, and put
them down again; sighed impatiently, and went away upstairs to
her own room.

"I think Magdalen is feeling the reaction, after yesterday," said
Mrs. Vanstone, quietly. "It is just as we thought. Now the
theatrical amusements are all over, she is fretting for more."

Here was an opportunity of letting in the light of truth on Mrs.
Vanstone's mind, which was too favorable to be missed. Miss Garth
questioned her conscience, saw her chance, and took it on the
spot.

"You forget," she rejoined, "that a certain neighbor of ours is
going away to-morrow. Shall I tell you the truth? Magdalen is
fretting over the departure of Francis Clare."

Mrs. Vanstone looked up from her work with a gentle, smiling
surprise.

"Surely not?" she said. "It is natural enough that Frank should
be attracted by Magdalen; but I can't think that Magdalen returns
the feeling. Frank is so very unlike her; so quiet and
undemonstrat  ive; so dull and helpless,
poor fellow, in some things. He is handsome, I know, but he is
so singularly unlike Magdalen, that I can't think it possible --
I can't indeed."

"My dear good lady!" cried Miss Garth, in great amazement; "do
you really suppose that people fall in love with each other on
account of similarities in their characters? In the vast majority
of cases, they do just the reverse. Men marry the very last
women, and women the very last men, whom their friends would
think it possible they could care about. Is there any phrase that
is oftener on all our lips than 'What can have made Mr. So-and-So
marry that woman?' -- or 'How could Mrs. So-and-So throw herself
away on that man?' Has all your experience of the world never yet
shown you that girls take perverse fancies for men who are
totally unworthy of them?"

"Very true," said Mrs. Vanstone, composedly. "I forgot that.
Still it seems unaccountable, doesn't it?"

"Unaccountable, because it happens every day!" retorted Miss
Garth, good-humoredly. "I know a great many excellent people who
reason against plain experience in the same way -- who read the
newspapers in the morning, and deny in the evening that there is
any romance for writers or painters to work upon in modern life.
Seriously, Mrs. Vanstone, you may take my word for it -- thanks
to those wretched theatricals, Magdalen is going the way with
Frank that a great many young ladies have gone before her. He is
quite unworthy of her; he is, in almost every respect, her exact
opposite -- and, without knowing it herself, she has fallen in
love with him on that very account. She is resolute and
impetuous, clever and domineering; she is not one of those model
women who want a man to look up to, and to protect them -- her
beau-ideal (though she may not think it herself) is a man she can
henpeck. Well! one comfort is, there are far better men, even of
that sort, to be had than Frank. It's a mercy he is going away,
before we have more trouble with them, and before any serious
mischief is done."

"Poor Frank!" said Mrs. Vanstone, smiling compassionately. "We
have known him since he was in jackets, and Magdalen in short
frocks. Don't let us give him up yet. He may do better this
second time."

Miss Garth looked up in astonishment.

"And suppose he does better?" she asked. "What then?"

Mrs. Vanstone cut off a loose thread in her work, and laughed
outright.

"My good friend," she said, "there is an old farmyard proverb
which warns us not to count our chickens before they are hatched.
Let us wait a little before we count ours."

It was not easy to silence Miss Garth, when she was speaking
under the influence of a strong conviction; but this reply closed
her lips. She resumed her work, and looked, and thought,
unutterable things.

Mrs. Vanstone's behavior was certainly remarkable under the
circumstances. Here, on one side, was a girl -- with great
personal attractions, with rare pecuniary prospects, with a
social position which might have justified the best gentleman in
the neighborhood in making her an offer of marriage -- perversely
casting herself away on a penniless idle young fellow, who had
failed at his first start in life, and who even if he succeeded
in his second attempt, must be for years to come in no position
to marry a young lady of fortune on equal terms. And there, on
the other side, was that girl's mother, by no means dismayed at
the prospect of a connection which was, to say the least of it,
far from desirable; by no means certain, judging her by her own
words and looks, that a marriage between Mr. Vanstone's daughter
and Mr. Clare's son might not prove to be as satisfactory a
result of the intimacy between the two young people as the
parents on both sides could possibly wish for!

It was perplexing in the extreme. It was almost as unintelligible
as that past mystery -- that forgotten mystery now -- of the
journey to London.

In the evening, Frank made his appearance, and announced that his
father had mercilessly sentenced him to leave Combe-Raven by the
parliamentary train the next morning. He mentioned this
circumstance with an air of sentimental resignation; and listened
to Mr. Vanstone's boisterous rejoicings over his new prospects
with a mild and mute surprise. His gentle melancholy of look and
manner greatly assisted his personal advantages. In his own
effeminate way he was more handsome than ever that evening. His
soft brown eyes wandered about the room with a melting
tenderness; his hair was beautifully brushed; his delicate hands
hung over the arms of his chair with a languid grace. He looked
like a convalescent Apollo. Never, on any previous occasion, had
he practiced more successfully the social art which he habitually
cultivated -- the art of casting himself on society in the
character of a well-bred Incubus, and conferring an obligation on
his fellow-creatures by allowing them to sit under him. It was
undeniably a dull evening. All the talking fell to the share of
Mr. Vanstone and Miss Garth. Mrs. Vanstone was habitually silent;
Norah kept herself obstinately in the background; Magdalen was
quiet and undemonstrative beyond all former precedent. From first
to last, she kept rigidly on her guard. The few meaning looks
that she cast on Frank flashed at him like lightning, and were
gone before any one else could see them. Even when she brought
him his tea; and when, in doing so, her self-control gave way
under the temptation which no woman can resist -- the temptation
of touching the man she loves -- even then, she held the saucer
so dexterously that it screened her hand. Frank's self-possession
was far less steadily disciplined: it only lasted as long as he
remained passive. When he rose to go; when he felt the warm,
clinging pressure of Magdalen's fingers round his hand, and the
lock of her hair which she slipped into it at the same moment, he
became awkward and confused. He might have betrayed Magdalen and
betrayed himself, but for Mr. Vanstone, who innocently covered
his retreat by following him out, and patting him on the shoulder
all the way. "God bless you, Frank!" cried the friendly voice
that never had a harsh note in it for anybody. "Your fortune's
waiting for you. Go in, my boy -- go in and win."

"Yes," said Frank. "Thank you. It will be rather difficult to go
in and win, at first. Of course, as you have always told me, a
man's business is to conquer his difficulties, and not to talk
about them. At the same time, I wish I didn't feel quite so loose
as I do in my figures. It's discouraging to feel loose in one's
figures. -- Oh, yes; I'll write and tell you how I get on. I'm
very much obliged by your kindness, and very sorry I couldn't
succeed with the engineering. I think I should have liked
engineering better than trade. It can't be helped now, can it?
Thank you, again. Good-by."

So he drifted away into the misty commercial future -- as
aimless, as helpless, as gentleman-like as ever.

CHAPTER IX.

THREE months passed. During that time Frank remained in London;
pursuing his new duties, and writing occasionally to report
himself to Mr. Vanstone, as he had promised.

His letters were not enthusiastic on the subject of mercantile
occupations. He described himself as being still painfully loose
in his figures. He was also more firmly persuaded than ever --
now when it was unfortunately too late -that he preferred
engineering to trade. In spite of this conviction; in spite of
headaches caused by sitting on a high stool and stooping over
ledgers in unwholesome air; in spite of want of society, and
hasty breakfasts, and bad dinners at chop-houses, his attendance
at the office was regular, and his diligence at the desk
unremitting. The head of the department in which he was working
might be referred to if any corroboration of this statement was
desired. Such was the general tenor of the letters; and Frank's
correspondent and Frank's father differed over them as widely as
usual. Mr. Vanstone accepted them as proofs of the steady
development of industrious principles in the writer. Mr. Clare
took his own characteristically opposite view. "These London
men," said the philosopher, "are not to be tri fled with by
louts. They ha ve got Frank by the scruff of the neck -- he can't
wriggle himself free -- and he makes a merit of yielding to sheer
necessity."

The three months' interval of Frank's probation in London passed
less cheerfully than usual in the household at Combe-Raven.

As the summer came nearer and nearer, Mrs. Vanstone's spirits, in
spite of her resolute efforts to control them, became more and
more depressed.

"I do my best," she said to Miss Garth; "I set an example of
cheerfulness to my husband and my children -- but I dread July."
Norah's secret misgivings on her sister's account rendered her
more than usually serious and uncommunicative, as the year
advanced. Even Mr. Vanstone, when July drew nearer, lost
something of his elasticity of spirit. He kept up appearances in
his wife's presence -- but on all other occasions there was now a
perceptible shade of sadness in his look and manner. Magdalen was
so changed since Frank's departure that she helped the general
depression, instead of relieving it. All her movements had grown
languid; all her usual occupations were pursued with the same
weary indifference; she spent hours alone in her own room; she
lost her interest in being brightly and prettily dressed; her
eyes were heavy, her nerves were irritable, her complexion was
altered visibly for the worse -- in one word, she had become an
oppression and a weariness to herself and to all about her.
Stoutly as Miss Garth contended with these growing domestic
difficulties, her own spirits suffered in the effort. Her memory
reverted, oftener and oftener, to the March morning when the
master and mistress of the house had departed for London, and
then the first serious change, for many a year past, had stolen
over the family atmosphere. When was that atmosphere to be clear
again? When were the clouds of change to pass off before the
returning sunshine of past and happier times?

The spring and the early summer wore away. The dreaded month of
July came, with its airless nights, its cloudless mornings, and
its sultry days.

On the fifteenth of the month, an event happened which took every
one but Norah by surprise. For the second time, without the
slightest apparent reason -- for the second time, without a word
of warning beforehand -- Frank suddenly re-appeared at his
father's cottage.

Mr. Clare's lips opened to hail his son's return, in the old
character of the "bad shilling"; and closed again without
uttering a word. There was a portentous composure in Frank's
manner which showed that he had other news to communicate than
the news of his dismissal. He answered his father's sardonic look
of inquiry by at once explaining that a very important proposal
for his future benefit had been made to him, that morning, at the
office. His first idea had been to communicate the details in
writing; but the partners had, on reflection, thought that the
necessary decision might be more readily obtained by a personal
interview with his father and his friends. He had laid aside the
pen accordingly, and had resigned himself to the railway on the
spot.

After this preliminary statement, Frank proceeded to describe the
proposal which his employers had addressed to him, with every
external appearance of viewing it in the light of an intolerable
hardship.

The great firm in the City had obviously made a discovery in
relation to their clerk, exactly similar to the discovery which
had formerly forced itself on the engineer in relation to his
pupil. The young man, as they politely phrased it, stood in need
of some special stimulant to stir him up. His employers (acting
under a sense of their obligation to the gentleman by whom Frank
had been recommended) had considered the question carefully, and
had decided that the one promising use to which they could put
Mr. Francis Clare was to send him forthwith into another quarter
of the globe.

As a consequence of this decision, it was now. therefore,
proposed that he should enter the house of their correspondents
in China; that he should remain there, familiarizing himself
thoroughly on the spot with the tea trade and the silk trade for
five years; and that he should return, at the expiration of this
period, to the central establishment in London. If he made a fair
use of his opportunities in China, he would come back, while
still a young man, fit for a position of trust and emolument, and
justified in looking forward, at no distant date, to a time when
the House would assist him to start in business for himself. Such
were the new prospects which -- to adopt Mr. Clare's theory --
now forced themselves on the ever-reluctant, ever-helpless and
ever-ungrateful Frank. There was no time to be lost. The final
answer was to be at the office on "Monday, the twentieth": the
correspondents in China were to be written to by the mail on that
day; and Frank was to follow the letter by the next opportunity,
or to resign his chance in favor of some more enterprising young
man.

Mr. Clare's reception of this extraordinary news was startling in
the extreme. The glorious prospect of his son's banishment to
China appeared to turn his brain. The firm pedestal of his
philosophy sank under him; the prejudices of society recovered
their hold on his mind. He seized Frank by the arm, and actually
accompanied him to Combe-Raven, in the amazing character of
visitor to the house!

"Here I am with my lout," said Mr. Clare, before a word could be
uttered by the astonished family. "Hear his story, all of you. It
has reconciled me, for the first time in my life, to the anomaly
of his existence." Frank ruefully narrated the Chinese proposal
for the second time, and attempted to attach to it his own
supplementary statement of objections and difficulties. His
father stopped him at the first word, pointed peremptorily
southeastward (from Somersetshire to China); and said, without an
instant's hesitation: "Go!" Mr. Vanstone, basking in golden
visions of his young friend's future, echoed that monosyllabic
decision with all his heart. Mrs. Vanstone, Miss Garth, even
Norah herself, spoke to the same purpose. Frank was petrified by
an absolute unanimity of opinion which he had not anticipated;
and Magdalen was caught, for once in her life, at the end of all
her resources.

So far as practical results were concerned, the sitting of the
family council began and ended with the general opinion that
Frank must go. Mr. Vanstone's faculties were so bewildered by the
son's sudden arrival, the father's unexpected visit, and the news
they both brought with them, that he petitioned for an
adjournment before the necessary arrangements connected with his
young friend's departure were considered in detail. "Suppose we
all sleep upon it?" he said. "Tomorrow our heads will feel a
little steadier; and to-morrow will be time enough to decide all
uncertainties." This suggestion was readily adopted; and all
further proceedings stood adjourned until the next day.

That next day was destined to decide more uncertainties than Mr.
Vanstone dreamed of.

Early in the morning, after making tea by herself as usual, Miss
Garth took her parasol and strolled into the garden. She had
slept ill; and ten minutes in the open air before the family
assembled at breakfast might help to compensate her, as she
thought, for the loss of her night's rest.

She wandered to the outermost boundary of the flower-garden, and
then returned by another path, which led back, past the side of
an ornamental summer-house commanding a view over the fields from
a corner of the lawn. A slight noise -like, and yet not like, the
chirruping of a bird -- caught her ear as she approached the
summer-house. She stepped round to the entrance; looked in; and
discovered Magdalen and Frank seated close together. To Miss
Garth's horror, Magdalen's arm was unmistakably round Frank's
neck; and, worse still, the position of her face, at the moment
of discovery, showed beyond all doubt that she had just been
offering to the victim of Chinese commerce the first and foremost
of all the consolations which a woman can bestow on a man. In
plainer words, she had just given Frank a kiss.

In the presence of such an emergency as now confronted  her, Miss
Gart h felt instinctively that all ordinary phrases of reproof
would be phrases thrown away.

"I presume," she remarked, addressing Magdalen with the merciless
self-possession of a middle-aged lady, unprovided for the
occasion with any kissing remembrances of her own -- "I presume
(whatever excuses your effrontery may suggest) you will not deny
that my duty compels me to mention what I have just seen to your
father?"

"I will save you the trouble," replied Magdalen, composedly. "I
will mention it to him myself."

With those words, she looked round at Frank, standing trebly
helpless in a corner of the summer-house. "You shall hear what
happens," she said, with her bright smile. "And so shall you,"
she added for Miss Garth's especial benefit, as she sauntered
past the governess on her way back to the breakfast-table. The
eyes of Miss Garth followed her indignantly; and Frank slipped
out on his side at that favorable opportunity.

Under these circumstances, there was but one course that any
respectable woman could take -- she could only shudder. Miss
Garth registered her protest in that form, and returned to the
house.

When breakfast was over, and when Mr. Vanstone's hand descended
to his pocket in search of his cigar-case, Magdalen rose; looked
significantly at Miss Garth; and followed her father into the
hall.

"Papa," she said, "I want to speak to you this morning -- in
private."

"Ay! ay!" returned Mr. Vanstone. "What about, my dear!"

"About -- " Magdalen hesitated, searching for a satisfactory form
of expression, and found it. "About business, papa," she said.

Mr. Vanstone took his garden hat from the hall table -- opened
his eyes in mute perplexity -- attempted to associate in his mind
the two extravagantly dissimilar ideas of Magdalen and "business"
-- failed -- and led the way resignedly into the garden.

His daughter took his arm, and walked with him to a shady seat at
a convenient distance from the house. She dusted the seat with
her smart silk apron before her father occupied it. Mr. Vanstone
was not accustomed to such an extraordinary act of attention as
this. He sat down, looking more puzzled than ever. Magdalen
immediately placed herself on his knee, and rested her head
comfortably on his shoulder.

"Am I heavy, papa?" she asked.

"Yes, my dear, you are," said Mr. Vanstone -- "but not too heavy
for _me_. Stop on your perch, if you like it. Well? And what may
this business happen to be?"

"It begins with a question."

"Ah, indeed? That doesn't surprise me. Business with your sex, my
dear, always begins with questions. Go on."

"Papa! do you ever intend allowing me to be married?"

Mr. Vanstone's eyes opened wider and wider. The question, to use
his own phrase, completely staggered him.

"This is business with a vengeance!" he said. "Why, Magdalen!
what have you got in that harum-scarum head of yours now?"

"I don't exactly know, papa. Will you answer my question?"

"I will if I can, my dear; you rather stagger me. Well, I don't
know. Yes; I suppose I must let you be married one of these days
-- if we can find a good husband for you. How hot your face is!
Lift it up, and let the air blow over it. You won't? Well -- have
your own way. If talking of business means tickling your cheek
against my whisker I've nothing to say against it. Go on, my
dear. What's the next question? Come to the point."

She was far too genuine a woman to do anything of the sort. She
skirted round the point and calculated her distance to the nicety
of a hair-breadth.

"We were all very much surprised yesterday -- were we not, papa?
Frank is wonderfully lucky, isn't he?"

"He's the luckiest dog I ever came across," said Mr. Vanstone
"But what has that got to do with this business of yours? I dare
say you see your way, Magdalen. Hang me if I can see mine!"

She skirted a little nearer.

"I suppose he will make his fortune in China?" she said. "It's a
long way off, isn't it? Did you observe, papa, that Frank looked
sadly out of spirits yesterday?"

"I was so surprised by the news," said Mr. Vanstone, "and so
staggered by the sight of old Clare's sharp nose in my house,
that I didn't much notice. Now you remind me of it -- yes. I
don't think Frank took kindly to his own good luck; not kindly at
all."

"Do you wonder at that, papa?"

"Yes, my dear; I do, rather."

"Don't you think it's hard to be sent away for five years, to
make your fortune among hateful savages, and lose sight of your
friends at home for all that long time? Don't you think Frank
will miss _us_ sadly? Don't you, papa? -- don't you?"

"Gently, Magdalen! I'm a little too old for those long arms of
yours to throttle me in fun. -- You're right, my love. Nothing in
this world without a drawback. Frank _will_ miss his friends in
England: there's no denying that."

"You always liked Frank. And Frank always liked you."

"Yes, yes -- a good fellow; a quiet, good fellow. Frank and I
have always got on smoothly together."

"You have got on like father and son, haven't you?"

"Certainly, my dear."

"Perhaps you will think it harder on him when he has gone than
you think it now?"

"Likely enough, Magdalen; I don't say no."

"Perhaps you will wish he had stopped in England? Why shouldn't
he stop in England, and do as well as if he went to China?"

"My dear! he has no prospects in England. I wish he had, for his
own sake. I wish the lad well, with all my heart."

"May I wish him well too, papa -- with all _my_ heart?"

"Certainly, my love -- your old playfellow -- why not? What's the
matter? God bless my soul, what is the girl crying about? One
would think Frank was transported for life. You goose! You know,
as well as I do, he is going to China to make his fortune."

"He doesn't want to make his fortune -- he might do much better."

"The deuce he might! How, I should like to know?"

"I'm afraid to tell you. I'm afraid you'll laugh at me. Will you
promise not to laugh at me?"

"Anything to please you, my dear. Yes: I promise. Now, then, out
with it! How might Frank do better?"

"He might marry Me."

If the summer scene which then spread before Mr. Vanstone's eyes
had suddenly changed to a dreary winter view -- if the trees had
lost all their leaves, and the green fields had turned white with
snow in an instant -- his face could hardly have expressed
greater amazement than it displayed when his daughter's faltering
voice spoke those four last words. He tried to look at her -- but
she steadily refused him the opportunity: she kept her face
hidden over his shoulder. Was she in earnest? His cheek, still
wet with her tears, answered for her. There was a long pause of
silence; she waited -- with unaccustomed patience, she waited for
him to speak. He roused himself, and spoke these words only: "You
surprise me, Magdalen; you surprise me more than I can say."

At the altered tone of his voice -- altered to a quiet, fatherly
seriousness -Magdalen's arms clung round him closer than before.

"Have I disappointed you, papa?" she asked, faintly. "Don't say I
have disappointed you! Who am I to tell my secret to, if not to
you? Don't let him go -- don't! don't! You will break his heart.
He is afraid to tell his father; he is even afraid _you_ might be
angry with him. There is nobody to speak for us, except -- except
me. Oh, don't let him go! Don't for his sake -- " she whispered
the next words in a kiss -- "Don't for Mine!"

Her father's kind face saddened; he sighed, and patted her fair
head tenderly. "Hush, my love," he said, almost in a whisper;
"hush!" She little knew what a revelation every word, every
action that escaped her, now opened before him. She had made him
her grown-up playfellow, from her childhood to that day. She had
romped with him in her frocks, she had gone on romping with him
in her gowns. He had never been long enough separated from her to
have the external changes in his daughter forced on his
attention. His artless, fatherly experience of her had taught him
that she was a taller child in later years -- and had taught him
little more. And now, in one breathless instant, the conviction
that she was a woman rushed over his mind. He felt it in the
trouble of her bosom pre ssed against his; in the nervo us thrill
of her arms clasped around his neck. The Magdalen of his innocent
experience, a woman -- with the master-passion of her sex in
possession of her heart already!

"Have you thought long of this, my dear?" he asked, as soon as he
could speak composedly. "Are you sure -- ?"

She answered the question before he could finish it.

"Sure I love him?" she said. "Oh, what words can say Yes for me,
as I want to say it? I love him -- !" Her voice faltered softly;
and her answer ended in a sigh.

"You are very young. You and Frank, my love, are both very
young."

She raised her head from his shoulder for the first time. The
thought and its expression flashed from her at the same moment.

"Are we much younger than you and mamma were?" she asked, smiling
through her tears.

She tried to lay her head back in its old position; but as she
spoke those words, her father caught her round the waist, forced
her, before she was aware of it, to look him in the face -- and
kissed her, with a sudden outburst of tenderness which brought
the tears thronging back thickly into her eyes. "Not much
younger, my child," he said, in low, broken tones -- "not much
younger than your mother and I were." He put her away from him,
and rose from the seat, and turned his head aside quickly. "Wait
here, and compose yourself; I will go indoors and speak to your
mother." His voice trembled over those parting words; and he left
her without once looking round again.

She waited -- waited a weary time; and he never came back. At
last her growing anxiety urged her to follow him into the house.
A new timidity throbbed in her heart as she doubtingly approached
the door. Never had she seen the depths of her father's simple
nature stirred as they had been stirred by her confession. She
almost dreaded her next meeting with him. She wandered softly to
and fro in the hall, with a shyness unaccountable to herself;
with a terror of being discovered and spoken to by her sister or
Miss Garth, which made her nervously susceptible to the slightest
noises in the house. The door of the morning-room opened while
her back was turned toward it. She started violently, as she
looked round and saw her father in the hall: her heart beat
faster and faster, and she felt herself turning pale. A second
look at him, as he came nearer, re-assured her. He was composed
again, though not so cheerful as usual. She noticed that he
advanced and spoke to her with a forbearing gentleness, which was
more like his manner to her mother than his ordinary manner to
herself.

"Go in, my love," he said, opening the door for her which he had
just closed. "Tell your mother all you have told me -- and more,
if you have more to say. She is better prepared for you than I
was. We will take to-day to think of it, Magdalen; and to-morrow
you shall know, and Frank shall know, what we decide."

Her eyes brightened, as they looked into his face and saw the
decision there already, with the double penetration of her
womanhood and her love. Happy, and beautiful in her happiness,
she put his hand to her lips, and went, without hesitation, into
the morning-room. There, her father's words had smoothed the way
for her; there, the first shock of the surprise was past and
over, and only the pleasure of it remained. Her mother had been
her age once; her mother would know how fond she was of Frank. So
the coming interview was anticipated in her thoughts; and --
except that there was an unaccountable appearance of restraint in
Mrs. Vanstone's first reception of her -- was anticipated aright.
After a little, the mother's questions came more and more
unreservedly from the sweet, unforgotten experience of the
mother's heart. She lived again through her own young days of
hope and love in Magdalen's replies.

The next morning the all-important decision was announced in
words. Mr. Vanstone took his daughter upstairs into her mother's
room, and there placed before her the result of the yesterday's
consultation, and of the night's reflection which had followed
it. He spoke with perfect kindness and self-possession of manner
-but in fewer and more serious words than usual; and he held his
wife's hand tenderly in his own all through the interview.

He informed Magdalen that neither he nor her mother felt
themselves justified in blaming her attachment to Frank. It had
been in part, perhaps, the natural consequence of her childish
familiarity with him; in part, also, the result of the closer
intimacy between them which the theatrical entertainment had
necessarily produced. At the same time, it was now the duty of
her parents to put that attachment, on both sides, to a proper
test -- for her sake, because her happy future was their dearest
care; for Frank's sake, because they were bound to give him the
opportunity of showing himself worthy of the trust confided in
him. They were both conscious of being strongly prejudiced in
Frank's favor. His father's eccentric conduct had made the lad
the object of their compassion and their care from his earliest
years. He (and his younger brothers) had almost filled the places
to them of those other children of their own whom they had lost.
Although they firmly believed their good opinion of Frank to be
well founded -- still, in the interest of their daughter's
happiness, it was necessary to put that opinion firmly to the
proof, by fixing certain conditions, and by interposing a year of
delay between the contemplated marriage and the present time.

During that year, Frank was to remain at the office in London;
his employers being informed beforehand that family circumstances
prevented his accepting their offer of employment in China. He
was to consider this concession as a recognition of the
attachment between Magdalen and himself, on certain terms only.
If, during the year of probation, he failed to justify the
confidence placed in him -- a confidence which had led Mr.
Vanstone to take unreservedly upon himself the whole
responsibility of Frank's future prospects -- the marriage scheme
was to be considered, from that moment, as at an end. If, on the
other hand, the result to which Mr. Vanstone confidently looked
forward really occurred -- if Frank's probationary year proved
his claim to the most precious trust that could be placed in his
hands -- then Magdalen herself should reward him with all that a
woman can bestow; and the future, which his present employers had
placed before him as the result of a five years' residence in
China, should be realized in one year's time, by the dowry of his
young wife.

As her father drew that picture of the future, the outburst of
Magdalen's gratitude could no longer be restrained. She was
deeply touched -- she spoke from her inmost heart. Mr. Vanstone
waited until his daughter and his wife were composed again; and
then added the last words of explanation which were now left for
him to speak.

"You understand, my love," he said, "that I am not anticipating
Frank's living in idleness on his wife's means? My plan for him
is that he should still profit by the interest which his present
employers take in him. Their knowledge of affairs in the City
will soon place a good partnership at his disposal, and you will
give him the money to buy it out of hand. I shall limit the sum,
my dear, to half your fortune; and the other half I shall have
settled upon yourself. We shall all be alive and hearty, I hope"
-- he looked tenderly at his wife as he said those words -- "all
alive and hearty at the year's end. But if I am gone, Magdalen,
it will make no difference. My will -- made long before I ever
thought of having a son-in-law divides my fortune into two equal
parts. One part goes to your mother; and the other part is fairly
divided between my children. You will have your share on your
wedding-day (and Norah will have hers when she marries) from my
own hand, if I live; and under my will if I die. There! there! no
gloomy faces," he said, with a momentary return of his every-day
good spirits. "Your mother and I mean to live and see Frank a
great merchant. I shall leave you, my dear, to enlighten the son
on our new projects, while I walk over to the cottage -  "

He stopped; his eyebrows contra cted a little; and he looked
aside hesitatingly at Mrs. Vanstone.

"What must you do at the cottage, papa?" asked Magdalen, after
having vainly waited for him to finish the sentence of his own
accord.

"I must consult Frank's father," he replied. "We must not forget
that Mr. Clare's consent is still wanting to settle this matter.
And as time presses, and we don't know what difficulties he may
not raise, the sooner I see him the better."

He gave that answer in low, altered tones; and rose from his
chair in a half-reluctant, half-resigned manner, which Magdalen
observed with secret alarm.

She glanced inquiringly at her mother. To all appearance, Mrs.
Vanstone had been alarmed by the change in him also. She looked
anxious and uneasy; she turned her face away on the sofa pillow
-- turned it suddenly, as if she was in pain.

"Are you not well, mamma?" asked Magdalen.

"Quite well, my love," said Mrs. Vanstone, shortly and sharply,
without turning round. "Leave me a little -- I only want rest."

Magdalen went out with her father.

"Papa!" she whispered anxiously, as they descended the stairs;
"you don't think Mr. Clare will say No?"

"I can't tell beforehand," answered Mr. Vanstone. "I hope he will
say Yes."

"There is no reason why he should say anything else -- is there?"

She put the question faintly, while he was getting his hat and
stick; and he did not appear to hear her. Doubting whether she
should repeat it or not, she accompanied him as far as the
garden, on his way to Mr. Clare's cottage. He stopped her on the
lawn, and sent her back to the house

"You have nothing on your head, my dear," he said. "If you want
to be in the garden, don't forget how hot the sun is -- don't
come out without your hat."

He walked on toward the cottage.

She waited a moment, and looked after him. She missed the
customary flourish of his stick; she saw his little Scotch
terrier, who had run out at his heels, barking and capering about
him unnoticed. He was out of spirits: he was strangely out of
spirits. What did it mean?

CHAPTER X.

ON returning to the house, Magdalen felt her shoulder suddenly
touched from behind as she crossed the hall. She turned and
confronted her sister. Before she could ask any questions, Norah
confusedly addressed her, in these words: "I beg your pardon; I
beg you to forgive me."

Magdalen looked at her sister in astonishment. All memory, on her
side, of the sharp words which had passed between them in the
shrubbery was lost in the new interests that now absorbed her;
lost as completely as if the angry interview had never taken
place. "Forgive you!" she repeated, amazedly. "What for?"

"I have heard of your new prospects," pursued Norah, speaking
with a mechanical submissiveness of manner which seemed almost
ungracious; "I wished to set things right between us; I wished to
say I was sorry for what happened. Will you forget it? Will you
forget and forgive what happened in the shrubbery?" She tried to
proceed; but her inveterate reserve -- or, perhaps, her obstinate
reliance on her own opinions -- silenced her at those last words.
Her face clouded over on a sudden. Before her sister could answer
her, she turned away abruptly and ran upstairs.

The door of the library opened, before Magdalen could follow her;
and Miss Garth advanced to express the sentiments proper to the
occasion.

They were not the mechanically-submissive sentiments which
Magdalen had just heard. Norah had struggled against her rooted
distrust of Frank, in deference to the unanswerable decision of
both her parents in his favor; and had suppressed the open
expression of her antipathy, though the feeling itself remained
unconquered. Miss Garth had made no such concession to the master
and mistress of the house. She had hitherto held the position of
a high authority on all domestic questions; and she flatly
declined to get off her pedestal in deference to any change in
the family circumstances, no matter how amazing or how unexpected
that change might be.

"Pray accept my congratulations," said Miss Garth, bristling all
over with implied objections to Frank -- "my congratulations,
_and_ my apologies. When I caught you kissing Mr. Francis Clare
in the summer-house, I had no idea you were engaged in carrying
out the intentions of your parents. I offer no opinion on the
subject. I merely regret my own accidental appearance in the
character of an Obstacle to the course of true-love -- which
appears to run smooth in summer-houses, whatever Shakespeare may
say to the contrary. Consider me for the future, if you please,
as an Obstacle removed. May you be happy!" Miss Garth's lips
closed on that last sentence like a trap, and Miss Garth's eyes
looked ominously prophetic into the matrimonial future.

If Magdalen's anxieties had not been far too serious to allow her
the customary free use of her tongue, she would have been ready
on the instant with an appropriately satirical answer. As it was,
Miss Garth simply irritated her. "Pooh!" she said -- and ran
upstairs to her sister's room.

She knocked at the door, and there was no answer. She tried the
door, and it resisted her from the inside. The sullen,
unmanageable Norah was locked in.

Under other circumstances, Magdalen would not have been satisfied
with knocking -- she would have called through the door loudly
and more loudly, till the house was disturbed and she had carried
her point. But the doubts and fears of the morning had unnerved
her already. She went downstairs again softly, and took her hat
from the stand in the hall. "He told me to put my hat on," she
said to herself, with a meek filial docility which was totally
out of her character.

She went into the garden, on the shrubbery side; and waited there
to catch the first sight of her father on his return. Half an
hour passed; forty minutes passed -- and then his voice reached
her from among the distant trees. "Come in to heel!" she heard
him call out loudly to the dog. Her face turned pale. "He's angry
with Snap!" she exclaimed to herself in a whisper. The next
minute he appeared in view; walking rapidly, with his head down
and Snap at his heels in disgrace. The sudden excess of her alarm
as she observed those ominous signs of something wrong rallied
her natural energy, and determined her desperately on knowing the
worst. She walked straight forward to meet her father.

"Your face tells your news," she said faintly. "Mr. Clare has
been as heartless as usual -- Mr. Clare has said No?"

Her father turned on her with a sudden severity, so entirely
unparalleled in her experience of him that she started back in
downright terror.

"Magdalen!" he said; "whenever you speak of my old friend and
neighbor again, bear this in mind: Mr. Clare has just laid me
under an obligation which I shall remember gratefully to the end
of my life."

He stopped suddenly after saying those remarkable words. Seeing
that he had startled her, his natural kindness prompted him
instantly to soften the reproof, and to end the suspense from
which she was plainly suffering. "Give me a kiss, my love," he
resumed; "and I'll tell you in return that Mr. Clare has said
-YES."

She attempted to thank him; but the sudden luxury of relief was
too much for her. She could only cling round his neck in silence.
He felt her trembling from head to foot, and said a few words to
calm her. At the altered tones of his master's voice, Snap's meek
tail re-appeared fiercely from between his legs; and Snap's lungs
modestly tested his position with a brief, experimental bark. The
dog's quaintly appropriate assertion of himself on his old
footing was the interruption of all others which was best fitted
to restore Magdalen to herself. She caught the shaggy little
terrier up in her arms and kissed _him_ next. "You darling," she
exclaimed, "you're almost as glad as I am!" She turned again to
her father, with a look of tender reproach. "You frightened me,
papa," she said. "You were so unlike yourself."

"I shall be right again to-morrow, my dear. I am a little upset
to-day."

"Not by me?"

"No, no."

"By something you have heard at Mr. Clare's?"

"Yes -- nothing you need alarm yourself about ; nothing that
won't wear off by to-morrow. Let me go now, my dear; I have a
letter to write; and I want to speak to your mother."

He left her and went on to the house. Magdalen lingered a little
on the lawn, to feel all the happiness of her new sensations --
then turned away toward the shrubbery to enjoy the higher luxury
of communicating them. The dog followed her. She whistled, and
clapped her hands. "Find him!" she said, with beaming eyes. "Find
Frank!" Snap scampered into the shrubbery, with a bloodthirsty
snarl at starting. Perhaps he had mistaken his young mistress and
considered himself her emissary in search of a rat?

Meanwhile, Mr. Vanstone entered the house. He met his wife slowly
descending the stairs, and advanced to give her his arm. "How has
it ended?" she asked, anxiously, as he led her to the sofa.

"Happily -- as we hoped it would," answered her husband. "My old
friend has justified my opinion of him."

"Thank God!" said Mrs. Vanstone, fervently. "Did you feel it,
love?" she asked, as her husband arranged the sofa pillows --
"did you feel it as painfully as I feared you would?"

"I had a duty to do, my dear -- and I did it."

After replying in those terms, he hesitated. Apparently, he had
something more to say -- something, perhaps, on the subject of
that passing uneasiness of mind which had been produced by his
interview with Mr. Clare, and which Magdalen's questions had
obliged him to acknowledge. A look at his wife decided his doubts
in the negative. He only asked if she felt comfortable; and then
turned away to leave the room.

"Must you go?" she asked.

"I have a letter to write, my dear."

"Anything about Frank?"

"No: to-morrow will do for that. A letter to Mr. Pendril. I want
him here immediately."

"Business, I suppose?"

"Yes, my dear -- business."

He went out, and shut himself into the little front room, close
to the hall door, which was called his study. By nature and habit
the most procrastinating of letter-writers, he now inconsistently
opened his desk and took up the pen without a moment's delay. His
letter was long enough to occupy three pages of note-paper; it
was written with a readiness of expression and a rapidity of hand
which seldom characterized his proceedings when engaged over his
ordinary correspondence. He wrote the address as follows:
"Immediate -- William Pendril, Esq., Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn,
London" -- then pushed the letter away from him, and sat at the
table, drawing lines on the blotting-paper with his pen, lost in
thought. "No," he said to himself; "I can do nothing more till
Pendril comes." He rose; his face brightened as he put the stamp
on the envelope. The writing of the letter had sensibly relieved
him, and his whole bearing showed it as he left the room.

On the doorstep he found Norah and Miss Garth, setting forth
together for a walk.

"Which way are you going?" he asked. "Anywhere near the
post-office? I wish you would post this letter for me, Norah. It
is very important -- so important that I hardly like to trust it
to Thomas, as usual."

Norah at once took charge of the letter.

"If you look, my dear," continued her father, "you will see that
I am writing to Mr. Pendril. I expect him here to-morrow
afternoon. Will you give the necessary directions, Miss Garth?
Mr. Pendril will sleep here to-morrow night, and stay over
Sunday. -- Wait a minute! Today is Friday. Surely I had an
engagement for Saturday afternoon?" He consulted his pocketbook
and read over one of the entries, with a look of annoyance.
"Grailsea Mill, three o'clock, Saturday. Just the time when
Pendril will be here; and I _must_ be at home to see him. How can
I manage it? Monday will be too late for my business at Grailsea.
I'll go to-day, instead; and take my chance of catching the
miller at his dinner-time." He looked at his watch. "No time for
driving; I must do it by railway. If I go at once, I shall catch
the down train at our station, and get on to Grailsea. Take care
of the letter, Norah. I won't keep dinner waiting; if the return
train doesn't suit, I'll borrow a gig and get back in that way."

As he took up his hat, Magdalen appeared at the door, returning
from her interview with Frank. The hurry of her father's
movements attracted her attention; and she asked him where he was
going.

"To Grailsea," replied Mr. Vanstone. "Your business, Miss
Magdalen, has got in the way of mine -- and mine must give way to
it."

He spoke those parting words in his old hearty manner; and left
them, with the old characteristic flourish of his trusty stick.

"My business!" said Magdalen. "I thought my business was done."

Miss Garth pointed significantly to the letter in Norah's hand.
"Your business, beyond all doubt," she said. "Mr. Pendril is
coming tomorrow; and Mr. Vanstone seems remarkably anxious about
it. Law, and its attendant troubles already! Governesses who look
in at summer-house doors are not the only obstacles to the course
of true-love. Parchment is sometimes an obstacle. I hope you may
find Parchment as pliable as I am -- I wish you well through it.
Now, Norah!"

Miss Garth's second shaft struck as harmless as the first.
Magdalen had returned to the house, a little vexed; her interview
with Frank having been interrupted by a messenger from Mr. Clare,
sent to summon the son into the father's presence. Although it
had been agreed at the private interview between Mr. Vanstone and
Mr. Clare that the questions discussed that morning should not be
communicated to the children until the year of probation was at
an end -- -and although under these circumstances Mr. Clare had
nothing to tell Frank which Magdalen could not communicate to him
much more agreeably -- the philosopher was not the less resolved
on personally informing his son of the parental concession which
rescued him from Chinese exile. The result was a sudden summons
to the cottage, which startled Magdalen, but which did not appear
to take Frank by surprise. His filial experience penetrated the
mystery of Mr. Clare's motives easily enough. "When my father's
in spirits," he said, sulkily, "he likes to bully me about my
good luck. This message means that he's going to bully me now."

"Don't go," suggested Magdalen.

"I must," rejoined Frank. "I shall never hear the last of it if I
don't. He's primed and loaded, and he means to go off. He went
off, once, when the engineer took me; he went off, twice, when
the office in the City took me; and he's going off, thrice, now
_you've_ taken me. If it wasn't for you, I should wish I had
never been born. Yes; your father's been kind to me, I know --
and I should have gone to China, if it hadn't been for him. I'm
sure I'm very much obliged. Of course, we have no right to expect
anything else -- still it's discouraging to keep us waiting a
year, isn't it?"

Magdalen stopped his mouth by a summary process, to which even
Frank submitted gratefully. At the same time, she did not forget
to set down his discontent to the right side. "How fond he is of
me!" she thought. "A year's waiting is quite a hardship to him."
She returned to the house, secretly regretting that she had not
heard more of Frank's complimentary complaints. Miss Garth's
elaborate satire, addressed to her while she was in this frame of
mind, was a purely gratuitous waste of Miss Garth's breath. What
did Magdalen care for satire? What do Youth and Love ever care
for except themselves? She never even said as much as "Pooh!"
this time. She laid aside her hat in serene silence, and
sauntered languidly into the morning-room to keep her mother
company. She lunched on dire forebodings of a quarrel between
Frank and his father, with accidental interruptions in the shape
of cold chicken and cheese-cakes. She trifled away half an hour
at the piano; and played, in that time, selections from the Songs
of Mendelssohn, the Mazurkas of Chopin, the Operas of Verdi, and
the Sonatas of Mozart -- all of whom had combined together on
this occasion and produced one immortal work, entitled "Frank."
She closed the piano and went up to her room, to dream away the
hours luxuriously in visions of her married future. The green
shutters were closed, the easy-chair was pushed in front of the
glass, the maid w as summoned as usual; and the comb assisted the
mistress's reflections, through the medium of the mistress's
hair, till heat and idleness asserted their narcotic influences
together, and Magdalen fell asleep.

It was past three o'clock when she woke. On going downstairs
again she found her mother, Norah and Miss Garth all sitting
together enjoying the shade and the coolness under the open
portico in front of the house.

Norah had the railway time-table in her hand. They had been
discussing the chances of Mr. Vanstone's catching the return
train and getting back in good time. That topic had led them,
next, to his business errand at Grailsea -- an errand of
kindness, as usual; undertaken for the benefit of the miller, who
had been his old farm-servant, and who was now hard pressed by
serious pecuniary difficulties. From this they had glided
insensibly into a subject often repeated among them, and never
exhausted by repetition -- the praise of Mr. Vanstone himself.
Each one of the three had some experience of her own to relate of
his simple, generous nature. The conversation seemed to be almost
painfully interesting to his wife. She was too near the time of
her trial now not to feel nervously sensitive to the one subject
which always held the foremost place in her heart. Her eyes
overflowed as Magdalen joined the little group under the portico;
her frail hand trembled as it signed to her youngest daughter to
take the vacant chair by her side. "We were talking of your
father," she said, softly. "Oh, my love, if your married life is
only as happy -- " Her voice failed her; she put her handkerchief
hurriedly over her face and rested her head on Magdalen's
shoulder. Norah looked appealingly to Miss Garth, who at once led
the conversation back to the more trivial subject of Mr.
Vanstone's return. "We have all been wondering," she said, with a
significant look at Magdalen, "whether your father will leave
Grailsea in time to catch the train -- or whether he will miss it
and be obliged to drive back. What do you say?"

"I say, papa will miss the train," replied Magdalen, taking Miss
Garth's hint with her customary quickness. "The last thing he
attends to at Grailsea will be the business that brings him
there. Whenever he has business to do, he always puts it off to
the last moment, doesn't he, mamma?"

The question roused her mother exactly as Magdalen had intended
it should. "Not when his errand is an errand of kindness," said
Mrs. Vanstone. "He has gone to help the miller in a very pressing
difficulty -- "

"And don't you know what he'll do?" persisted Magdalen. "He'll
romp with the miller's children, and gossip with the mother, and
hob-and-nob with the father. At the last moment when he has got
five minutes left to catch the train, he'll say: 'Let's go into
the counting-house and look at the books.' He'll find the books
dreadfully complicated; he'll suggest sending for an accountant;
he'll settle the business off hand, by lending the money in the
meantime; he'll jog back comfortably in the miller's gig; and
he'll tell us all how pleasant the lanes were in the cool of the
evening."

The little character-sketch which these words drew was too
faithful a likeness not to be recognized. Mrs. Vanstone showed
her appreciation of it by a smile. "When your father returns,"
she said, "we will put your account of his proceedings to the
test. I think," she continued, rising languidly from her chair,
"I had better go indoors again now and rest on the sofa till he
comes back."

The little group under the portico broke up. Magdalen slipped
away into the garden to hear Frank's account of the interview
with his father. The other three ladies entered the house
together. When Mrs. Vanstone was comfortably established on the
sofa, Norah and Miss Garth left her to repose, and withdrew to
the library to look over the last parcel of books from London.

It was a quiet, cloudless summer's day. The heat was tempered by
a light western breeze; the voices of laborers at work in a field
near reached the house cheerfully; the clock-bell of the village
church as it struck the quarters floated down the wind with a
clearer ring, a louder melody than usual. Sweet odors from field
and flower-garden, stealing in at the open windows, filled the
house with their fragrance; and the birds in Norah's aviary
upstairs sang the song of their happiness exultingly in the sun.

As the church clock struck the quarter past four, the
morning-room door opened; and Mrs. Vanstone crossed the hall
alone. She had tried vainly to compose herself. She was too
restless to lie still and sleep. For a moment she directed her
steps toward the portico -- then turned, and looked about her,
doubtful where to go, or what to do next. While she was still
hesitating, the half-open door of her husband's study attracted
her attention. The room seemed to be in sad confusion. Drawers
were left open; coats and hats, account-books and papers, pipes
and fishing-rods were all scattered about together. She went in,
and pushed the door to -- but so gently that she still left it
ajar. "It will amuse me to put his room to rights," she thought
to herself. "I should like to do something for him before I am
down on my bed, helpless." She began to arrange his drawers, and
found his banker's book lying open in one of them. "My poor dear,
how careless he is! The servants might have seen all his affairs,
if I had not happened to have looked in." She set the drawers
right; and then turned to the multifarious litter on a
side-table. A little old-fashioned music-book appeared among the
scattered papers, with her name written in it, in faded ink. She
blushed like a young girl in the first happiness of the
discovery. "How good he is to me! He remembers my poor old
music-book, and keeps it for my sake." As she sat down by the
table and opened the book, the bygone time came back to her in
all its tenderness. The clock struck the half-hour, struck the
three-quarters -- and still she sat there, with the music-book on
her lap, dreaming happily over the old songs; thinking gratefully
of the golden days when his hand had turned the pages for her,
when his voice had whispered the words which no woman's memory
ever forgets.

Norah roused herself from the volume she was reading, and glanced
at the clock on the library mantel-piece.

"If papa comes back by the railway," she said, "he will be here
in ten minutes."

Miss Garth started, and looked up drowsily from the book which
was just dropping out of her hand.

"I don't think he will come by train," she replied. "He will jog
back -- as Magdalen flippantly expressed it -- in the miller's
gig."

As she said the words, there was a knock at the library door. The
footman appeared, and addressed himself to Miss Garth.

"A person wishes to see you, ma'am."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know, ma'am. A stranger to me -- a respectable-looking
man -- and he said he particularly wished to see you."

Miss Garth went out into the hall. The footman closed the library
door after her, and withdrew down the kitchen stairs.

The man stood just inside the door, on the mat. His eyes
wandered, his face was pale -- he looked ill; he looked
frightened. He trifled nervously with his cap, and shifted it
backward and forward, from one hand to the other.

"You wanted to see me?" said Miss Garth.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am. -- You are not Mrs. Vanstone, are
you?"

"Certainly not. I am Miss Garth. Why do you ask the question?"

"I am employed in the clerk's office at Grailsea Station -- "

"Yes?"

"I am sent here -- "

He stopped again. His wandering eyes looked down at the mat, and
his restless hands wrung his cap harder and harder. He moistened
his dry lips, and tried once more.

"I am sent here on a very serious errand."

"Serious to _me_?"

"Serious to all in this house."

Miss Garth took one step nearer to him -- took one steady look at
his face. She turned cold in the summer heat. "Stop!" she said,
with a sudden distrust, and glanced aside anxiously at the door
of the morning-room. It was safely closed. "Tell me the worst;
and don't speak loud. There has been an accident. Where?"

"On the  rai lway. Close to Grailsea Station ."

"The up-train to London?"

"No: the down-train at one-fifty -- "

"God Almighty help us! The train Mr. Vanstone traveled by to
Grailsea?"

"The same. I was sent here by the up-train; the line was just
cleared in time for it. They wouldn't write -- they said I must
see 'Miss Garth,' and tell her. There are seven passengers badly
hurt; and two -- "

The next word failed on his lips; he raised his hand in the dead
silence. With eyes that opened wide in horror, he raised his hand
and pointed over Miss Garth's shoulder.

She turned a little, and looked back.

Face to face with her, on the threshold of the study door, stood
the mistress of the house. She held her old music-book clutched
fast mechanically in both hands. She stood, the specter of
herself. With a dreadful vacancy in her eyes, with a dreadful
stillness in her voice, she repeated the man's last words:

"Seven passengers badly hurt; and two -- "

Her tortured fingers relaxed their hold; the book dropped from
them; she sank forward heavily. Miss Garth caught her before she
fell -- caught her, and turned upon the man, with the wife's
swooning body in her arms, to hear the husband's fate.

"The harm is done," she said; "you may speak out. Is he wounded,
or dead?"

"Dead."

CHAPTER XI.

THE sun sank lower; the western breeze floated cool and fresh
into the house. As the evening advanced, the cheerful ring of the
village clock came nearer and nearer. Field and flower-garden
felt the influence of the hour, and shed their sweetest
fragrance. The birds in Norah's aviary sunned themselves in the
evening stillness, and sang their farewell gratitude to the dying
day.

Staggered in its progress for a time only, the pitiless routine
of the house went horribly on its daily way. The panic-stricken
servants took their blind refuge in the duties proper to the
hour. The footman softly laid the table for dinner. The maid sat
waiting in senseless doubt, with the hot-water jugs for the
bedrooms ranged near her in their customary row. The gardener,
who had been ordered to come to his master, with vouchers for
money that he had paid in excess of his instructions, said his
character was dear to him, and left the vouchers at his appointed
time. Custom that never yields, and Death that never spares, met
on the wreck of human happiness -- and Death gave way.

Heavily the thunder-clouds of Affliction had gathered over the
house -- heavily, but not at their darkest yet. At five, that
evening, the shock of the calamity had struck its blow. Before
another hour had passed, the disclosure of the husband's sudden
death was followed by the suspense of the wife's mortal peril.
She lay helpless on her widowed bed; her own life, and the life
of her unborn child, trembling in the balance.

But one mind still held possession of its resources -- but one
guiding spirit now moved helpfully in the house of mourning.

If Miss Garth's early days had been passed as calmly and as
happily as her later life at Combe-Raven, she might have sunk
under the cruel necessities of the time. But the governess's
youth had been tried in the ordeal of family affliction; and she
met her terrible duties with the steady courage of a woman who
had learned to suffer. Alone, she had faced the trial of telling
the daughters that they were fatherless. Alone, she now struggled
to sustain them, when the dreadful certainty of their bereavement
was at last impressed on their minds.

Her least anxiety was for the elder sister. The agony of Norah's
grief had forced its way outward to the natural relief of tears.
It was not so with Magdalen. Tearless and speechless, she sat in
the room where the revelation of her father's death had first
reached her; her face, unnaturally petrified by the sterile
sorrow of old age -- a white, changeless blank, fearful to look
at. Nothing roused, nothing melted her. She only said, "Don't
speak to me; don't touch me. Let me bear it by myself" -- and
fell silent again. The first great grief which had darkened the
sisters' lives had, as it seemed, changed their everyday
characters already.

The twilight fell, and faded; and the summer night came brightly.
As the first carefully shaded light was kindled in the sick-room,
the physician, who had been summoned from Bristol, arrived to
consult with the medical attendant of the family. He could give
no comfort: he could only say, "We must try, and hope. The shock
which struck her, when she overheard the news of her husband's
death, has prostrated her strength at the time when she needed it
most. No effort to preserve her shall be neglected. I will stay
here for the night."

He opened one of the windows to admit more air as he spoke. The
view overlooked the drive in front of the house and the road
outside. Little groups of people were standing before the
lodge-gates, looking in. "If those persons make any noise," said
the doctor, "they must be warned away." There was no need to warn
them: they were only the laborers who had worked on the dead
man's property, and here and there some women and children from
the village. They were all thinking of him -- some talking of him
-- and it quickened their sluggish minds to look at his house.
The gentlefolks thereabouts were mostly kind to them (the men
said), but none like _him_. The women whispered to each other of
his comforting ways when he came into their cottages. "He was a
cheerful man, poor soul; and thoughtful of us, too: he never came
in and stared at meal-times; the rest of 'em help us, and scold
us -- all _he_ ever said was, better luck next time." So they
stood and talked of him, and looked at his house and grounds and
moved off clumsily by twos and threes, with the dim sense that
the sight of his pleasant face would never comfort them again.
The dullest head among them knew, that night, that the hard ways
of poverty would be all the harder to walk on, now he was gone.

A little later, news was brought to the bed-chamber door that old
Mr. Clare had come alone to the house, and was waiting in the
hall below, to hear what the physician said. Miss Garth was not
able to go down to him herself: she sent a message. He said to
the servant, "I'll come and ask again, in two hours' time" -- and
went out slowly. Unlike other men in all things else, the sudden
death of his old friend had produced no discernible change in
him. The feeling implied in the errand of inquiry that had
brought him to the house was the one betrayal of human sympathy
which escaped the rugged, impenetrable old man.

He came again, when the two hours had expired; and this time Miss
Garth saw him.

They shook hands in silence. She waited; she nerved herself to
hear him speak of his lost friend. No: he never mentioned the
dreadful accident, he never alluded to the dreadful death. He
said these words, "Is she better, or worse?" and said no more.
Was the tribute of his grief for the husband sternly suppressed
under the expression of his anxiety for the wife? The nature of
the man, unpliably antagonistic to the world and the world's
customs, might justify some such interpretation of his conduct as
this. He repeated his question, "Is she better, or worse?"

Miss Garth answered him:

"No better; if there is any change, it is a change for the
worse."

They spoke those words at the window of the morning-room which
opened on the garden. Mr. Clare paused, after hearing the reply
to his inquiry, stepped out on to the walk, then turned on a
sudden, and spoke again:

"Has the doctor given her up?" he asked.

"He has not concealed from us that she is in danger. We can only
pray for her."

The old man laid his hand on Miss Garth's arm as she answered
him, and looked her attentively in the face.

"You believe in prayer?" he said.

Miss Garth drew sorrowfully back from him.

"You might have spared me that question sir, at such a time as
this."

He took no notice of her answer; his eyes were still fastened on
her face.

"Pray!" he said. "Pray as you never prayed before, for the
preservation of Mrs. Vanstone's life."

He left her. His voice and manner implied some unutterable dread
of the future, which his words had not confessed. Miss Garth
followed  him into the garden, and called to
him. He heard her, but he never turned back: he quickened his
pace, as if he desired to avoid her. She watched him across the
lawn in the warm summer moonlight. She saw his white, withered
hands, saw them suddenly against the black background of the
shrubbery, raised and wrung above his head. They dropped -- the
trees shrouded him in darkness -- he was gone.

Miss Garth went back to the suffering woman, with the burden on
her mind of one anxiety more.

It was then past eleven o'clock. Some little time had elapsed
since she had seen the sisters and spoken to them. The inquiries
she addressed to one of the female servants only elicited the
information that they were both in their rooms. She delayed her
return to the mother's bedside to say her parting words of
comfort to the daughters, before she left them for the night.
Norah's room was the nearest. She softly opened the door and
looked in. The kneeling figure by the bedside told her that God's
help had found the fatherless daughter in her affliction.
Grateful tears gathered in her eyes as she looked: she softly
closed the door, and went on to Magdalen's room. There doubt
stayed her feet at the threshold, and she waited for a moment
before going in.

A sound in the room caught her ear -- the monotonous rustling of
a woman's dress, now distant, now near; passing without cessation
from end to end over the floor -- a sound which told her that
Magdalen was pacing to and fro in the secrecy of her own chamber.
Miss Garth knocked. The rustling ceased; the door was opened, and
the sad young face confronted her, locked in its cold despair;
the large light eyes looked mechanically into hers, as vacant and
as tearless as ever.

That look wrung the heart of the faithful woman, who had trained
her and loved her from a child. She took Magdalen tenderly in her
arms.

"Oh, my love " she said, "no tears yet! Oh, if I could see you as
I have seen Norah! Speak to me, Magdalen -- try if you can speak
to me."

She tried, and spoke:

"Norah," she said, "feels no remorse. He was not serving Norah's
interests when he went to his death: he was serving mine."

With that terrible answer, she put her cold lips to Miss Garth's
cheek.

"Let me bear it by myself," she said, and gently closed the door.

Again Miss Garth waited at the threshold, and again the sound of
the rustling dress passed to and fro -- now far, now near -- to
and fro with a cruel, mechanical regularity, that chilled the
warmest sympathy, and daunted the boldest hope.

The night passed. It had been agreed, if no change for the better
showed itself by the morning, that the London physician whom Mrs.
Vanstone had consulted some months since should be summoned to
the house on the next day. No change for the better appeared, and
the physician was sent for.

As the morning advanced, Frank came to make inquiries from the
cottage. Had Mr. Clare intrusted to his son the duty which he had
personally performed on the previous day through reluctance to
meet Miss Garth again after what he had said to her? It might be
so. Frank could throw no light on the subject; he was not in his
father's confidence. He looked pale and bewildered. His first
inquiries after Magdalen showed how his weak nature had been
shaken by the catastrophe. He was not capable of framing his own
questions: the words faltered on his lips, and the ready tears
came into his eyes. Miss Garth's heart warmed to him for the
first time. Grief has this that is noble in it -- it accepts all
sympathy, come whence it may. She encouraged the lad by a few
kind words, and took his hand at parting.

Before noon Frank returned with a second message. His father
desired to know whether Mr. Pendril was not expected at
Combe-Raven on that day. If the lawyer's arrival was looked for,
Frank was directed to be in attendance at the station, and to
take him to the cottage, where a bed would be placed at his
disposal. This message took Miss Garth by surprise. It showed
that Mr. Clare had been made acquainted with his dead friend's
purpose of sending for Mr. Pendril. Was the old man's thoughtful
offer of hospitality another indirect expression of the natural
human distress which he perversely concealed? or was he aware of
some secret necessity for Mr. Pendril's presence, of which the
bereaved family had been kept in total ignorance? Miss Garth was
too heart-sick and hopeless to dwell on either question. She told
Frank that Mr. Pendril had been expected at three o'clock, and
sent him back with her thanks.

Shortly after his departure, such anxieties on Magdalen's account
as her mind was now able to feel were relieved by better news
than her last night's experience had inclined her to hope for.
Norah's influence had been exerted to rouse her sister; and
Norah's patient sympathy had set the prisoned grief free.
Magdalen had suffered severely -- suffered inevitably, with such
a nature as hers -- in the effort that relieved her. The healing
tears had not come gently; they had burst from her with a
torturing, passionate vehemence -- but Norah had never left her
till the struggle was over, and the calm had come. These better
tidings encouraged Miss Garth to withdraw to her own room, and to
take the rest which she needed sorely. Worn out in body and mind,
she slept from sheer exhaustion -- slept heavily and dreamless
for some hours. It was between three and four in the afternoon
when she was roused by one of the female servants. The woman had
a note in her hand -- a note left by Mr. Clare the younger, with
a message desiring that it might be delivered to Miss Garth
immediately. The name written in the lower corner of the envelope
was "William Pendril." The lawyer had arrived.

Miss Garth opened the note. After a few first sentences of
sympathy and condolence, the writer announced his arrival at Mr.
Clare's; and then proceeded, apparently in his professional
capacity, to make a very startling request.

"If," he wrote, "any change for the better in Mrs. Vanstone
should take place -whether it is only an improvement for the
time, or whether it is the permanent improvement for which we all
hope -- in either case I entreat you to let me know of it
immediately. It is of the last importance that I should see her,
in the event of her gaining strength enough to give me her
attention for five minutes, and of her being able at the
expiration of that time to sign her name. May I beg that you will
communicate my request, in the strictest confidence, to the
medical men in attendance? They will understand, and you will
understand, the vital importance I attach to this interview when
I tell you that I have arranged to defer to it all other business
claims on me; and that I hold myself in readiness to obey your
summons at any hour of the day or night."

In those terms the letter ended. Miss Garth read it twice over.
At the second reading the request which the lawyer now addressed
to her, and the farewell words which had escaped Mr. Clare's lips
the day before, connected themselves vaguely in her mind. There
was some other serious interest in suspense, known to Mr. Pendril
and known to Mr. Clare, besides the first and foremost interest
of Mrs. Vanstone's recovery. Whom did it affect? The children?
Were they threatened by some new calamity which their mother's
signature might avert? What did it mean? Did it mean that Mr.
Vanstone had died without leaving a will?

In her distress and confusion of mind Miss Garth was incapable of
reasoning with herself, as she might have reasoned at a happier
time. She hastened to the antechamber of Mrs. Vanstone's room;
and, after explaining Mr. Pendril's position toward the family,
placed his letter in the hands of the medical men. They both
answered, without hesitation, to the same purpose. Mrs.
Vanstone's condition rendered any such interview as the lawyer
desired a total impossibility. If she rallied from her present
prostration, Miss Garth should be at once informed of the
improvement. In the meantime, the answer to Mr. Pendril might be
conveyed in one word -- Impossible.

"You see what importance Mr. Pendril attaches to the interview?"
said Miss Garth.

Yes: both the doctors saw it.

"My mind is lost and co nfused, gentlemen, in this dreadful
suspense. Can you either of you guess why the signature is
wanted? or what the object of the interview may be? I have only
seen Mr. Pendril when he has come here on former visits: I have
no claim to justify me in questioning him. Will you look at the
letter again? Do you think it implies that Mr. Vanstone has never
made a will?"

"I think it can hardly imply that," said one of the doctors.
"But, even supposing Mr. Vanstone to have died intestate, the law
takes due care of the interests of his widow and his children --
"

"Would it do so," interposed the other medical man, "if the
property happened to be in land?"

"I am not sure in that case. Do you happen to know, Miss Garth,
whether Mr. Vanstone's property was in money or in land?"

"In money," replied Miss Garth. "I have heard him say so on more
than one occasion."

"Then I can relieve your mind by speaking from my own experience.
The law, if he has died intestate, gives a third of his property
to his widow, and divides the rest equally among his children."

"But if Mrs. Vanstone -- "

"If Mrs. Vanstone should die," pursued the doctor, completing the
question which Miss Garth had not the heart to conclude for
herself, "I believe I am right in telling you that the property
would, as a matter of legal course, go to the children. Whatever
necessity there may be for the interview which Mr. Pendril
requests, I can see no reason for connecting it with the question
of Mr. Vanstone's presumed intestacy. But, by all means, put the
question, for the satisfaction of your own mind, to Mr. Pendril
himself."

Miss Garth withdrew to take the course which the doctor advised.
After communicating to Mr. Pendril the medical decision which,
thus far, refused him the interview that he sought, she added a
brief statement of the legal question she had put to the doctors;
and hinted delicately at her natural anxiety to be informed of
the motives which had led the lawyer to make his request. The
answer she received was guarded in the extreme: it did not
impress her with a favorable opinion of Mr. Pendril. He confirmed
the doctors' interpretation of the law in general terms only;
expressed his intention of waiting at the cottage in the hope
that a change for the better might yet enable Mrs. Vanstone to
see him; and closed his letter without the slightest explanation
of his motives, and without a word of reference to the question
of the existence, or the non-existence, of Mr. Vanstone's will.

The marked caution of the lawyer's reply dwelt uneasily on Miss
Garth's mind, until the long-expected event of the day recalled
all her thoughts to her one absorbing anxiety on Mrs. Vanstone's
account.

Early in the evening the physician from London arrived. He
watched long by the bedside of the suffering woman; he remained
longer still in consultation with his medical brethren; he went
back again to the sick-room, before Miss Garth could prevail on
him to communicate to her the opinion at which he had arrived.

When he called out into the antechamber for the second time, he
silently took a chair by her side. She looked in his face; and
the last faint hope died in her before he opened his lips.

"I must speak the hard truth," he said, gently. "All that _can_
be done _has_ been done. The next four-and-twenty hours, at most,
will end your suspense. If Nature makes no effort in that time --
I grieve to say it -- you must prepare yourself for the worst."

Those words said all: they were prophetic of the end.

The night passed; and she lived through it. The next day came;
and she lingered on till the clock pointed to five. At that hour
the tidings of her husband's death had dealt the mortal blow.
When the hour came round again, the mercy of God let her go to
him in the better world. Her daughters were kneeling at the
bedside as her spirit passed away. She left them unconscious of
their presence; mercifully and happily insensible to the pang of
the last farewell.

Her child survived her till the evening was on the wane and the
sunset was dim in the quiet western heaven. As the darkness came,
the light of the frail little life -- faint and feeble from the
first -- flickered and went out. All that was earthly of mother
and child lay, that night, on the same bed. The Angel of Death
had done his awful bidding; and the two Sisters were left alone
in the world.

CHAPTER XII.

EARLIER than usual on the morning of Thursday, the twenty-third
of July, Mr. Clare appeared at the door of his cottage, and
stepped out into the little strip of garden attached to his
residence.

After he had taken a few turns backward and forward, alone, he
was joined by a spare, quiet, gray-haired man, whose personal
appearance was totally devoid of marked character of any kind;
whose inexpressive face and conventionally-quiet manner presented
nothing that attracted approval and nothing that inspired
dislike. This was Mr. Pendril -- this was the man on whose lips
hung the future of the orphans at Combe-Raven.

"The time is getting on," he said, looking toward the shrubbery,
as he joined Mr. Clare.

"My appointment with Miss Garth is for eleven o'clock: it only
wants ten minutes of the hour."

"Are you to see her alone?" asked Mr. Clare.

"I left Miss Garth to decide -- after warning her, first of all,
that the circumstances I am compelled to disclose are of a very
serious nature."

"And _has_ she decided?"

"She writes me word that she mentioned my appointment, and
repeated the warning I had given her to both the daughters. The
elder of the two shrinks -- and who can wonder at it? -- from any
discussion connected with the future which requires her presence
so soon as the day after the funeral. The younger one appears to
have expressed no opinion on the subject. As I understand it, she
suffers herself to be passively guided by her sister's example.
My interview, therefore, will take place with Miss Garth alone --
and it is a very great relief to me to know it."

He spoke the last words with more emphasis and energy than seemed
habitual to him. Mr. Clare stopped, and looked at his guest
attentively.

"You are almost as old as I am, sir," he said. "Has all your long
experience as a lawyer not hardened you yet?"

"I never knew how little it had hardened me," replied Mr.
Pendril, quietly, "until I returned from London yesterday to
attend the funeral. I was not warned that the daughters had
resolved on following their parents to the grave. I think their
presence made the closing scene of this dreadful calamity doubly
painful, and doubly touching. You saw how the great concourse of
people were moved by it -- and _they_ were in ignorance of the
truth; _they_ knew nothing of the cruel necessity which takes me
to the house this morning. The sense of that necessity -- and the
sight of those poor girls at the time when I felt my hard duty
toward them most painfully -- shook me, as a man of my years and
my way of life is not often shaken by any distress in the present
or any suspense in the future. I have not recovered it this
morning: I hardly feel sure of myself yet."

"A man's composure -- when he is a man like you -- comes with the
necessity for it," said Mr. Clare. "You must have had duties to
perform as trying in their way as the duty that lies before you
this morning."

Mr. Pendril shook his head. "Many duties as serious; many stories
more romantic. No duty so trying, no story so hopeless, as this."

With those words they parted. Mr. Pendril left the garden for the
shrubbery path which led to Combe-Raven. Mr. Clare returned to
the cottage.

On reaching the passage, he looked through the open door of his
little parlor and saw Frank sitting there in idle wretchedness,
with his head resting wearily on his hand.

"I have had an answer from your employers in London," said Mr.
Clare. "In consideration of what has happened, they will allow
the offer they made you to stand over for another month."

Frank changed color, and rose nervously from his chair.

"Are my prospects altered?" he asked. "Are Mr. Vanstone's plans
for me not to be carried out? He told Magdalen his will had
provided for her. She repeate d his words to me; she said I o
ught to know all that his goodness and generosity had done for
both of us. How can his death make a change? Has anything
happened?"

"Wait till Mr. Pendril comes back from Combe-Raven," said his
father. "Question him -- don't question me."

The ready tears rose in Frank's eyes.

"You won't be hard on me?" he pleaded, faintly. "You won't expect
me to go back to London without seeing Magdalen first?"

Mr. Clare looked thoughtfully at his son, and considered a little
before he replied.

"You may dry your eyes," he said. "You shall see Magdalen before
you go back."

He left the room, after making that reply, and withdrew to his
study. The books lay ready to his hand as usual. He opened one of
them and set himself to read in the customary manner. But his
attention wandered; and his eyes strayed away, from time to time,
to the empty chair opposite -- the chair in which his old friend
and gossip had sat and wrangled with him good-humoredly for many
and many a year past. After a struggle with himself he closed the
book. "D -- n the chair!" he said: "it _will_ talk of him; and I
must listen." He reached down his pipe from the wall and
mechanically filled it with tobacco. His hand shook, his eyes
wandered back to the old place; and a heavy sigh came from him
unwillingly. That empty chair was the only earthly argument for
which he had no answer: his heart owned its defeat and moistened
his eyes in spite of him. "He has got the better of me at last,"
said the rugged old man. "There is one weak place left in me
still -- and _he_ has found it."

Meanwhile, Mr. Pendril entered the shrubbery, and followed the
path which led to the lonely garden and the desolate house. He
was met at the door by the man-servant, who was apparently
waiting in expectation of his arrival.

"I have an appointment with Miss Garth. Is she ready to see me?"

"Quite ready, sir."

"Is she alone?"

"Yes, sir."

"In the room which was Mr. Vanstone's study?"

"In that room, sir."

The servant opened the door and Mr. Pendril went in.

The governess stood alone at the study window. The morning was
oppressively hot, and she threw up the lower sash to admit more
air into the room, as Mr. Pendril entered it.

They bowed to each other with a formal politeness, which betrayed
on either side an uneasy sense of restraint. Mr. Pendril was one
of the many men who appear superficially to the worst advantage,
under the influence of strong mental agitation which it is
necessary for them to control. Miss Garth, on her side, had not
forgotten the ungraciously guarded terms in which the lawyer had
replied to her letter; and the natural anxiety which she had felt
on the subject of the interview was not relieved by any favorable
opinion of the man who sought it. As they confronted each other
in the silence of the summer's morning -- both dressed in black;
Miss Garth's hard features, gaunt and haggard with grief; the
lawyer's cold, colorless face, void of all marked expression,
suggestive of a business embarrassment and of nothing more -- it
would have been hard to find two persons less attractive
externally to any ordinary sympathies than the two who had now
met together, the one to tell, the other to hear, the secrets of
the dead.

"I am sincerely sorry, Miss Garth, to intrude on you at such a
time as this. But circumstances, as I have already explained,
leave me no other choice."

"Will you take a seat, Mr. Pendril? You wished to see me in this
room, I believe?"

"Only in this room, because Mr. Vanstone's papers are kept here,
and I may find it necessary to refer to some of them."

After that formal interchange of question and answer, they sat
down on either side of a table placed close under the window. One
waited to speak, the other waited to bear. There was a momentary
silence. Mr. Pendril broke it by referring to the young ladies,
with the customary expressions of sympathy. Miss Garth answered
him with the same ceremony, in the same conventional tone. There
was a second pause of silence. The humming of flies among the
evergreen shrubs under the window penetrated drowsily into the
room; and the tramp of a heavy-footed cart-horse, plodding along
the high-road beyond the garden, was as plainly audible in the
stillness as if it had been night.

The lawyer roused his flagging resolution, and spoke to the
purpose when he spoke next.

"You have some reason, Miss Garth," he began, "to feel not quite
satisfied with my past conduct toward you, in one particular.
During Mrs. Vanstone's fatal illness, you addressed a letter to
me, making certain inquiries; which, while she lived, it was
impossible for me to answer. Her deplorable death releases me
from the restraint which I had imposed on myself, and permits --
or, more properly, obliges me to speak. You shall know what
serious reasons I had for waiting day and night in the hope of
obtaining that interview which unhappily never took place; and in
justice to Mr. Vanstone's memory, your own eyes shall inform you
that he made his will."

He rose; unlocked a little iron safe in the corner of the room;
and returned to the table with some folded sheets of paper, which
he spread open under Miss Garth's eyes. When she had read the
first words, "In the name of God, Amen," he turned the sheet, and
pointed to the end of the next page. She saw the well-known
signature: "Andrew Vanstone." She saw the customary attestations
of the two witnesses; and the date of the document, reverting to
a period of more than five years since. Having thus convinced her
of the formality of the will, the lawyer interposed before she
could question him, and addressed her in these words:

"I must not deceive you," he said. "I have my own reasons for
producing this document."

"What reasons, sir?"

"You shall hear them. When you are in possession of the truth,
these pages may help to preserve your respect for Mr. Vanstone's
memory -- "

Miss Garth started back in her chair.

"What do you mean?" she asked, with a stern straightforwardness.

He took no heed of the question; he went on as if she had not
interrupted him.

"I have a second reason," he continued, "for showing you the
will. If I can prevail on you to read certain clauses in it,
under my superintendence, you will make your own discovery of the
circumstances which I am here to disclose -circumstances so
painful that I hardly know how to communicate them to you with my
own lips."

Miss Garth looked him steadfastly in the face.

"Circumstances, sir, which affect the dead parents, or the living
children?"

"Which affect the dead and the living both," answered the lawyer.
"Circumstances, I grieve to say, which involve the future of Mr.
Vanstone's unhappy daughters."

"Wait," said Miss Garth, "wait a little." She pushed her gray
hair back from her temples, and struggled with the sickness of
heart, the dreadful faintness of terror, which would have
overpowered a younger or a less resolute woman. Her eyes, dim
with watching, weary with grief, searched the lawyer's
unfathomable face. "His unhappy daughters?" she repeated to
herself, vacantly. "He talks as if there was some worse calamity
than the calamity which has made them orphans." She paused once
more; and rallied her sinking courage. "I will not make your hard
duty, sir, more painful to you than I can help," she resumed.
"Show me the place in the will. Let me read it, and know the
worst."

Mr. Pendril turned back to the first page, and pointed to a
certain place in the cramped lines of writing. "Begin here," he
said.

She tried to begin; she tried to follow his finger, as she had
followed it already to the signatures and the dates. But her
senses seemed to share the confusion of her mind -- the words
mingled together, and the lines swam before her eyes.

"I can't follow you," she said. "You must tell it, or read it to
me." She pushed her chair back from the table, and tried to
collect herself. "Stop!" she exclaimed, as the lawyer, with
visible hesitation and reluctance, took the papers in his own
hand. "One question, first. Does his will provide for his
children?"

"His will provided for them, when he made it."

"When he made it!" (Something of her natura l bluntness broke out
in her man ner as she repeated the answer.) "Does it provide for
them now?"

"It does not."

She snatched the will from his hand, and threw it into a corner
of the room. "You mean well," she said; "you wish to spare me --
but you are wasting your time, and my strength. If the will is
useless, there let it lie. Tell me the truth, Mr. Pendril -- tell
it plainly, tell it instantly, in your own words!"

He felt that it would be useless cruelty to resist that appeal.
There was no merciful alternative but to answer it on the spot.

"I must refer you to the spring of the present year, Miss Garth.
Do you remember the fourth of March?"

Her attention wandered again; a thought seemed to have struck her
at the moment when he spoke. Instead of answering his inquiry,
she put a question of her own.

"Let me break the news to myself," she said -- "let me anticipate
you, if I can. His useless will, the terms in which you speak of
his daughters, the doubt you seem to feel of my continued respect
for his memory, have opened a new view to me. Mr. Vanstone has
died a ruined man -- is that what you had to tell me?"

"Far from it. Mr. Vanstone has died, leaving a fortune of more
than eighty thousand pounds -- a fortune invested in excellent
securities. He lived up to his income, but never beyond it; and
all his debts added together would not reach two hundred pounds.
If he had died a ruined man, I should have felt deeply for his
children: but I should not have hesitated to tell you the truth,
as I am hesitating now. Let me repeat a question which escaped
you, I think, when I first put it. Carry your mind back to the
spring of this year. Do you remember the fourth of March?"

Miss Garth shook her head. "My memory for dates is bad at the
best of times," she said. "I am too confused to exert it at a
moment's notice. Can you put your question in no other form?"

He put it in this form:

"Do you remember any domestic event in the spring of the present
year which appeared to affect Mr. Vanstone more seriously than
usual?"

Miss Garth leaned forward in her chair, and looked eagerly at Mr.
Pendril across the table. "The journey to London!" she exclaimed.
"I distrusted the journey to London from the first! Yes! I
remember Mr. Vanstone receiving a letter -- I remember his
reading it, and looking so altered from himself that he startled
us all."

"Did you notice any apparent understanding between Mr. and Mrs.
Vanstone on the subject of that letter?"

"Yes: I did. One of the girls -- it was Magdalen -- mentioned the
post-mark; some place in America. It all comes back to me, Mr.
Pendril. Mrs. Vanstone looked excited and anxious, the moment she
heard the place named. They went to London together the next day;
they explained nothing to their daughters, nothing to me. Mrs.
Vanstone said the journey was for family affairs. I suspected
something wrong; I couldn't tell what. Mrs. Vanstone wrote to me
from London, saying that her object was to consult a physician on
the state of her health, and not to alarm her daughters by
telling them. Something in the letter rather hurt me at the time.
I thought there might be some other motive that she was keeping
from me. Did I do her wrong?"

"You did her no wrong. There was a motive which she was keeping
from you. In revealing that motive, I reveal the painful secret
which brings me to this house. All that I could do to prepare
you, I have done. Let me now tell the truth in the plainest and
fewest words. When Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone left Combe-Raven, in the
March of the present year -- "

Before he could complete the sentence, a sudden movement of Miss
Garth's interrupted him. She started violently, and looked round
toward the window. "Only the wind among the leaves," she said,
faintly. "My nerves are so shaken, the least thing startles me.
Speak out, for God's sake! When Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone left this
house, tell me in plain words, why did they go to London?"

In plain words, Mr. Pendril told her:

"They went to London to be married."

With that answer he placed a slip of paper on the table. It was
the marriage certificate of the dead parents, and the date it
bore was March the twentieth, eighteen hundred and forty-six.

Miss Garth neither moved nor spoke. The certificate lay beneath
her unnoticed. She sat with her eyes rooted on the lawyer's face;
her mind stunned, her senses helpless. He saw that all his
efforts to break the shock of the discovery had been efforts made
in vain; he felt the vital importance of rousing her, and firmly
and distinctly repeated the fatal words.

"They went to London to be married," he said. "Try to rouse
yourself: try to realize the plain fact first: the explanation
shall come afterward. Miss Garth, I speak the miserable truth! In
the spring of this year they left home; they lived in London for
a fortnight, in the strictest retirement; they were married by
license at the end of that time. There is a copy of the
certificate, which I myself obtained on Monday last. Read the
date of the marriage for yourself. It is Friday, the twentieth of
March -- the March of this present year."

As he pointed to the certificate, that faint breath of air among
the shrubs beneath the window, which had startled Miss Garth,
stirred the leaves once more. He heard it himself this time, and
turned his face, so as to let the breeze play upon it. No breeze
came; no breath of air that was strong enough for him to feel,
floated into the room.

Miss Garth roused herself mechanically, and read the certificate.
It seemed to produce no distinct impression on her: she laid it
on one side in a lost, bewildered manner. "Twelve years," she
said, in low, hopeless tones -- "twelve quiet, happy years I
lived with this family. Mrs. Vanstone was my friend; my dear,
valued friend -- my sister, I might almost say. I can't believe
it. Bear with me a little, sir, I can't believe it yet."

"I shall help you to believe it when I tell you more," said Mr.
Pendril -- "you will understand me better when I take you back to
the time of Mr. Vanstone's early life. I won't ask for your
attention just yet. Let us wait a little, until you recover
yourself."

They waited a few minutes. The lawyer took some letters from his
pocket, referred to them attentively, and put them back again.
"Can you listen to me, now?" he asked, kindly. She bowed her head
in answer. Mr. Pendril considered with himself for a moment, "I
must caution you on one point," he said. "If the aspect of Mr.
Vanstone's character which I am now about to present to you seems
in some respects at variance with your later experience, bear in
mind that, when you first knew him twelve years since, he was a
man of forty; and that, when I first knew him, he was a lad of
nineteen."

His next words raised the veil, and showed the irrevocable Past.

CHAPTER XIII.

"THE fortune which Mr. Vanstone possessed when you knew him" (the
lawyer began) "was part, and part only, of the inheritance which
fell to him on his father's death. Mr. Vanstone the elder was a
manufacturer in the North of England. He married early in life;
and the children of the marriage were either six or seven in
number -- I am not certain which. First, Michael, the eldest son,
still living, and now an old man turned seventy. Secondly,
Selina, the eldest daughter, who married in after-life, and who
died ten or eleven years ago. After those two came other sons and
daughters, whose early deaths make it unnecessary to mention them
particularly. The last and by many years the youngest of the
children was Andrew, whom I first knew, as I told you, at the age
of nineteen. My father was then on the point of retiring from the
active pursuit of his profession; and in succeeding to his
business, I also succeeded to his connection with the Vanstones
as the family solicitor.

"At that time, Andrew had just started in life by entering the
army. After little more than a year of home-service, he was
ordered out with his regiment to Canada. When he quitted England,
he left his father and his elder brother Michael seriously at
variance. I need not detain you by entering into the cause of the
quarrel. I need only tell you that the elder Mr. V anstone, with
many excellent qu alities, was a man of fierce and intractable
temper. His eldest son had set him at defiance, under
circumstances which might have justly irritated a father of far
milder character; and he declared, in the most positive terms,
that he would never see Michael's face again. In defiance of my
entreaties, and of the entreaties of his wife, he tore up, in our
presence, the will which provided for Michael's share in the
paternal inheritance. Such was the family position, when the
younger son left home for Canada.

"Some months after Andrew's arrival with his regiment at Quebec,
he became acquainted with a woman of great personal attractions,
who came, or said she came, from one of the Southern States of
America. She obtained an immediate influence over him; and she
used it to the basest purpose. You knew the easy, affectionate,
trusting nature of the man in later life -- you can imagine how
thoughtlessly he acted on the impulse of his youth. It is useless
to dwell on this lamentable part of the story. He was just
twenty-one: he was blindly devoted to a worthless woman; and she
led him on, with merciless cunning, till it was too late to draw
back. In one word, he committed the fatal error of his life: he
married her.

"She had been wise enough in her own interests to dread the
influence of his brother-officers, and to persuade him, up to the
period of the marriage ceremony, to keep the proposed union
between them a secret. She could do this; but she could not
provide against the results of accident. Hardly three months had
passed, when a chance disclosure exposed the life she had led
before her marriage. But one alternative was left to her husband
-- the alternative of instantly separating from her.

"The effect of the discovery on the unhappy boy -- for a boy in
disposition he still was -- may be judged by the event which
followed the exposure. One of Andrew's superior officers -- a
certain Major Kirke, if I remember right -found him in his
quarters, writing to his father a confession of the disgraceful
truth, with a loaded pistol by his side. That officer saved the
lad's life from his own hand, and hushed up the scandalous affair
by a compromise. The marriage being a perfectly legal one, and
the wife's misconduct prior to the ceremony giving her husband no
claim to his release from her by divorce, it was only possible to
appeal to her sense of her own interests. A handsome annual
allowance was secured to her, on condition that she returned to
the place from which she had come; that she never appeared in
England; and that she ceased to use her husband's name. Other
stipulations were added to these. She accepted them all; and
measures were privately taken to have her well looked after in
the place of her retreat. What life she led there, and whether
she performed all the conditions imposed on her, I cannot say. I
can only tell you that she never, to my knowledge, came to
England; that she never annoyed Mr. Vanstone; and that the annual
allowance was paid her, through a local agent in America, to the
day of her death. All that she wanted in marrying him was money;
and money she got.

"In the meantime, Andrew had left the regiment. Nothing would
induce him to face his brother-officers after what had happened.
He sold out and returned to England. The first intelligence which
reached him on his return was the intelligence of his father's
death. He came to my office in London, before going home, and
there learned from my lips how the family quarrel had ended.

"The will which Mr. Vanstone the elder had destroyed in my
presence had not been, so far as I know, replaced by another.
When I was sent for, in the usual course, on his death, I fully
expected that the law would be left to make the customary
division among his widow and his children. To my surprise, a will
appeared among his papers, correctly drawn and executed, and
dated about a week after the period when the first will had been
destroyed. He had maintained his vindictive purpose against his
eldest son, and had applied to a stranger for the professional
assistance which I honestly believe he was ashamed to ask for at
my hands.

"It is needless to trouble you with the provisions of the will in
detail. There were the widow and three surviving children to be
provided for. The widow received a life-interest only in a
portion of the testator's property. The remaining portion was
divided between Andrew and Selina -- two-thirds to the brother;
one-third to the sister. On the mother's death, the money from
which her income had been derived was to go to Andrew and Selina,
in the same relative proportions as before -- five thousand
pounds having been first deducted from the sum and paid to
Michael, as the sole legacy left by the implacable father to his
eldest son.

"Speaking in round numbers, the division of property, as settled
by the will, stood thus. Before the mother's death, Andrew had
seventy thousand pounds; Selina had thirty-five thousand pounds;
Michael -- had nothing. After the mother's death, Michael had
five thousand pounds, to set against Andrew's inheritance
augmented to one hundred thousand, and Selina's inheritance
increased to fifty thousand. -- Do not suppose that I am dwelling
unnecessarily on this part of the subject. Every word I now speak
bears on interests still in suspense, which vitally concern Mr.
Vanstone's daughters. As we get on from past to present, keep in
mind the terrible inequality of Michael's inheritance and
Andrew's inheritance. The harm done by that vindictive will is, I
greatly fear, not over yet.

"Andrew's first impulse, when he heard the news which I had to
tell him, was worthy of the open, generous nature of the man. He
at once proposed to divide his inheritance with his elder
brother. But there was one serious obstacle in the way. A letter
from Michael was waiting for him at my office when he came there,
and that letter charged him with being the original cause of
estrangement between his father and his elder brother. The
efforts which he had made -bluntly and incautiously, I own, but
with the purest and kindest intentions, as I know -- to compose
the quarrel before leaving home, were perverted, by the vilest
misconstruction, to support an accusation of treachery and
falsehood which would have stung any man to the quick. Andrew
felt, what I felt, that if these imputations were not withdrawn
before his generous intentions toward his brother took effect,
the mere fact of their execution would amount to a practical
acknowledgment of the justice of Michael's charge against him. He
wrote to his brother in the most forbearing terms. The answer
received was as offensive as words could make it. Michael had
inherited his father's temper, unredeemed by his father's better
qualities: his second letter reiterated the charges contained in
the first, and declared that he would only accept the offered
division as an act of atonement and restitution on Andrew's part.
I next wrote to the mother to use her influence. She was herself
aggrieved at being left with nothing more than a life interest in
her husband's property; she sided resolutely with Michael; and
she stigmatized Andrew's proposal as an attempt to bribe her
eldest son into withdrawing a charge against his brother which
that brother knew to be true. After this last repulse, nothing
more could be done. Michael withdrew to the Continent; and his
mother followed him there. She lived long enough, and saved money
enough out of her income, to add considerably, at her death, to
her elder son's five thousand pounds. He had previously still
further improved his pecuniary position by an advantageous
marriage; and he is now passing the close of his days either in
France or Switzerland -- a widower, with one son. We shall return
to him shortly. In the meantime, I need only tell you that Andrew
and Michael never again met -- never again communicated, even by
writing. To all intents and purposes they were dead to each
other, from those early days to the present time.

"You can now estimate what Andrew's position was when he left his
profession and returned to England. Possessed of a fortune, h e
was alone in the world; his futu re destroyed at the fair outset
of life; his mother and brother estranged from him; his sister
lately married, with interests and hopes in which he had no
share. Men of firmer mental caliber might have found refuge from
such a situation as this in an absorbing intellectual pursuit. He
was not capable of the effort; all the strength of his character
lay in the affections he had wasted. His place in the world was
that quiet place at home, with wife and children to make his life
happy, which he had lost forever. To look back was more than he
dare. To look forward was more than he could. In sheer despair,
he let his own impetuous youth drive him on; and cast himself
into the lowest dissipations of a London life.

"A woman's falsehood had driven him to his ruin. A woman's love
saved him at the outset of his downward career. Let us not speak
of her harshly -- for we laid her with him yesterday in the
grave.

"You, who only knew Mrs. Vanstone in later life, when illness and
sorrow and secret care had altered and saddened her, can form no
adequate idea of her attractions of person and character when she
was a girl of seventeen. I was with Andrew when he first met her.
I had tried to rescue him, for one night at least, from degrading
associates and degrading pleasures, by persuading him to go with
me to a ball given by one of the great City Companies. There they
met. She produced a strong impression on him the moment he saw
her. To me, as to him, she was a total stranger. An introduction
to her, obtained in the customary manner, informed him that she
was the daughter of one Mr. Blake. The rest he discovered from
herself. They were partners in the dance (unobserved in that
crowded ball-room) all through the evening.

"Circumstances were against her from the first. She was unhappy
at home. Her family and friends occupied no recognized station in
life: they were mean, underhand people, in every way unworthy of
her. It was her first ball -- it was the first time she had ever
met with a man who had the breeding, the manners and the
conversation of a gentleman. Are these excuses for her, which I
have no right to make? If we have any human feeling for human
weakness, surely not!

"The meeting of that night decided their future. When other
meetings had followed, when the confession of her love had
escaped her, he took the one course of all others (took it
innocently and unconsciously), which was most dangerous to them
both. His frankness and his sense of honor forbade him to deceive
her: he opened his heart and told her the truth. She was a
generous, impulsive girl; she had no home ties strong enough to
plead with her; she was passionately fond of him -- and he had
made that appeal to her pity which, to the eternal honor of
women, is the hardest of all appeals for them to resist. She saw,
and saw truly, that she alone stood between him and his ruin. The
last chance of his rescue hung on her decision. She decided; and
saved him.

"Let me not be misunderstood; let me not be accused of trifling
with the serious social question on which my narrative forces me
to touch. I will defend her memory by no false reasoning -- I
will only speak the truth. It is the truth that she snatched him
from mad excesses which must have ended in his early death. It is
the truth that she restored him to that happy home existence
which you remember so tenderly -- which _he_ remembered so
gratefully that, on the day when he was free, he made her his
wife. Let strict morality claim its right, and condemn her early
fault. I have read my New Testament to little purpose, indeed, if
Christian mercy may not soften the hard sentence against her --
if Christian charity may not find a plea for her memory in the
love and fidelity, the suffering and the sacrifice, of her whole
life.

"A few words more will bring us to a later time, and to events
which have happened within your own experience.

"I need not remind you that the position in which Mr. Vanstone
was now placed could lead in the end to but one result -- to a
disclosure, more or less inevitable, of the truth. Attempts were
made to keep the hopeless misfortune of his life a secret from
Miss Blake's family; and, as a matter of course, those attempts
failed before the relentless scrutiny of her father and her
friends. What might have happened if her relatives had been what
is termed 'respectable' I cannot pretend to say. As it was, they
were people who could (in the common phrase) be conveniently
treated with. The only survivor of the family at the present time
is a scoundrel calling himself Captain Wragge. When I tell you
that he privately extorted the price of his silence from Mrs.
Vanstone to the last; and when I add that his conduct presents no
extraordinary exception to the conduct, in their lifetime, of the
other relatives -- you will understand what sort of people I had
to deal with in my client's interests, and how their assumed
indignation was appeased.

"Having, in the first instance, left England for Ireland, Mr.
Vanstone and Miss Blake remained there afterward for some years.
Girl as she was, she faced her position and its necessities
without flinching. Having once resolved to sacrifice her life to
the man she loved; having quieted her conscience by persuading
herself that his marriage was a legal mockery, and that she was
'his wife in the sight of Heaven,' she set herself from the first
to accomplish the one foremost purpose of so living with him, in
the world's eye, as never to raise the suspicion that she was not
his lawful wife. The women are few, indeed, who cannot resolve
firmly, scheme patiently, and act promptly where the dearest
interests of their lives are concerned. Mrs. Vanstone -- she has
a right now, remember, to that name -- Mrs. Vanstone had more
than the average share of a woman's tenacity and a woman's tact;
and she took all the needful precautions, in those early days,
which her husband's less ready capacity had not the art to devise
-- precautions to which they were largely indebted for the
preservation of their secret in later times.

"Thanks to these safeguards, not a shadow of suspicion followed
them when they returned to England. They first settled in
Devonshire, merely because they were far removed there from that
northern county in which Mr. Vanstone's family and connections
had been known. On the part of his surviving relatives, they had
no curious investigations to dread. He was totally estranged from
his mother and his elder brother. His married sister had been
forbidden by her husband (who was a clergyman) to hold any
communication with him, from the period when he had fallen into
the deplorable way of life which I have described as following
his return from Canada. Other relations he had none. When he and
Miss Blake left Devonshire, their next change of residence was to
this house. Neither courting nor avoiding notice; simply happy in
themselves, in their children, and in their quiet rural life;
unsuspected by the few neighbors who formed their modest circle
of acquaintance to be other than what they seemed -- the truth in
their case, as in the cases of many others, remained undiscovered
until accident forced it into the light of day.

"If, in your close intimacy with them, it seems strange that they
should never have betrayed themselves, let me ask you to consider
the circumstances and you will understand the apparent anomaly.
Remember that they had been living as husband and wife, to all
intents and purposes (except that the marriage-service had not
been read over them), for fifteen years before you came into the
house; and bear in mind, at the same time, that no event occurred
to disturb Mr. Vanstone's happiness in the present, to remind him
of the past, or to warn him of the future, until the announcement
of his wife's death reached him, in that letter from America
which you saw placed in his hand. From that day forth -when a
past which _he_ abhorred was forced back to his memory; when a
future which _she_ had never dared to anticipate was placed
within her reach -- you will soon perceive, if you have not
perceived already, that they both betrayed themse lves, time
after time; and that you r innocence of all suspicion, and their
children's innocence of all suspicion, alone prevented you from
discovering the truth.

"The sad story of the past is now as well known to you as to me.
I have had hard words to speak. God knows I have spoken them with
true sympathy for the living, with true tenderness for the memory
of the dead."

He paused, turned his face a little away, and rested his head on
his hand, in the quiet, undemonstrative manner which was natural
to him. Thus far, Miss Garth had only interrupted his narrative
by an occasional word or by a mute token of her attention. She
made no effort to conceal her tears; they fell fast and silently
over her wasted cheeks, as she looked up and spoke to him. "I
have done you some injury, sir, in my thoughts," she said, with a
noble simplicity. "I know you better now. Let me ask your
forgiveness; let me take your hand."

Those words, and the action which accompanied them, touched him
deeply. He took her hand in silence. She was the first to speak,
the first to set the example of self-control. It is one of the
noble instincts of women that nothing more powerfully rouses them
to struggle with their own sorrow than the sight of a man's
distress. She quietly dried her tears; she quietly drew her chair
round the table, so as to sit nearer to him when she spoke again.

"I have been sadly broken, Mr. Pendril, by what has happened in
this house," she said, "or I should have borne what you have told
me better than I have borne it to-day. Will you let me ask one
question before you go on? My heart aches for the children of my
love -- more than ever my children now. Is there no hope for
their future? Are they left with no prospect but poverty before
them?"

The lawyer hesitated before he answered the question.

"They are left dependent," he said, at last, "on the justice and
the mercy of a stranger."

"Through the misfortune of their birth?"

"Through the misfortunes which have followed the marriage of
their parents."

With that startling answer he rose, took up the will from the
floor, and restored it to its former position on the table
between them.

"I can only place the truth before you," he resumed, "in one
plain form of words. The marriage has destroyed this will, and
has left Mr. Vanstone's daughters dependent on their uncle."

As he spoke, the breeze stirred again among the shrubs under the
window.

"On their uncle?" repeated Miss Garth. She considered for a
moment, and laid her hand suddenly on Mr. Pendril's arm. "Not on
Michael Vanstone!"

"Yes: on Michael Vanstone."

Miss Garth's hand still mechanically grasped the lawyer's arm.
Her whole mind was absorbed in the effort to realize the
discovery which had now burst on her.

"Dependent on Michael Vanstone!" she said to herself. "Dependent
on their father's bitterest enemy? How can it be?"

"Give me your attention for a few minutes more," said Mr.
Pendril, "and you shall hear. The sooner we can bring this
painful interview to a close, the sooner I can open
communications with Mr. Michael Vanstone, and the sooner you will
know what he decides on doing for his brother's orphan daughters.
I repeat to you that they are absolutely dependent on him. You
will most readily understand how and why, if we take up the chain
of events where we last left it -- at the period of Mr. and Mrs.
Vanstone's marriage."

"One moment, sir," said Miss Garth. "Were you in the secret of
that marriage at the time when it took place?"

"Unhappily, I was not. I was away from London -- away from
England at the time. If Mr. Vanstone had been able to communicate
with me when the letter from America announced the death of his
wife, the fortunes of his daughters would not have been now at
stake."

He paused, and, before proceeding further, looked once more at
the letters which he had consulted at an earlier period of the
interview. He took one letter from the rest, and put it on the
table by his side.

"At the beginning of the present year," he resumed, "a very
serious business necessity, in connection with some West Indian
property possessed by an old client and friend of mine, required
the presence either of myself, or of one of my two partners, in
Jamaica. One of the two could not be spared; the other was not in
health to undertake the voyage. There was no choice left but for
me to go. I wrote to Mr. Vanstone, telling him that I should
leave England at the end of February, and that the nature of the
business which took me away afforded little hope of my getting
back from the West Indies before June. My letter was not written
with any special motive. I merely thought it right -- seeing that
my partners were not admitted to my knowledge of Mr. Vanstone's
private affairs -to warn him of my absence, as a measure of
formal precaution which it was right to take. At the end of
February I left England, without having heard from him. I was on
the sea when the news of his wife's death reached him, on the
fourth of March: and I did not return until the middle of last
June."

"You warned him of your departure," interposed Miss Garth. "Did
you not warn him of your return?"

"Not personally. My head-clerk sent him one of the circulars
which were dispatched from my office, in various directions, to
announce my return. It was the first substitute I thought of for
the personal letter which the pressure of innumerable
occupations, all crowding on me together after my long absence,
did not allow me leisure to write. Barely a month later, the
first information of his marriage reached me in a letter from
himself, written on the day of the fatal accident. The
circumstances which induced him to write arose out of an event in
which you must have taken some interest -- I mean the attachment
between Mr. Clare's son and Mr. Vanstone's youngest daughter."

"I cannot say that I was favorably disposed toward that
attachment at the time," replied Miss Garth. "I was ignorant then
of the family secret: I know better now."

"Exactly. The motive which you can now appreciate is the motive
that leads us to the point. The young lady herself (as I have
heard from the elder Mr. Clare, to whom I am indebted for my
knowledge of the circumstances in detail) confessed her
attachment to her father, and innocently touched him to the quick
by a chance reference to his own early life. He had a long
conversation with Mrs. Vanstone, at which they both agreed that
Mr. Clare must be privately informed of the truth, before the
attachment between the two young people was allowed to proceed
further. It was painful in the last degree, both to husband and
wife, to be reduced to this alternative. But they were resolute,
honorably resolute, in making the sacrifice of their own
feelings; and Mr. Vanstone betook himself on the spot to Mr.
Clare's cottage. -- You no doubt observed a remarkable change in
Mr. Vanstone's manner on that day; and you can now account for
it?"

Miss Garth bowed her head, and Mr. Pendril went on.

"You are sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Clare's contempt for
all social prejudices," he continued, "to anticipate his
reception of the confession which his neighbor addressed to him.
Five minutes after the interview had begun, the two old friends
were as easy and unrestrained together as usual. In the course of
conversation, Mr. Vanstone mentioned the pecuniary arrangement
which he had made for the benefit of his daughter and of her
future husband -- and, in doing so, he naturally referred to his
will here, on the table between us. Mr. Clare, remembering that
his friend had been married in the March of that year, at once
asked when the will had been executed: receiving the reply that
it had been made five years since; and, thereupon, astounded Mr.
Vanstone by telling him bluntly that the document was waste paper
in the eye of the law. Up to that moment he, like many other
persons, had been absolutely ignorant that a man's marriage is,
legally as well as socially, considered to be the most important
event in his life; that it destroys the validity of any will
which he may have made as a single man; and that it renders
absolutely necessary the entire re-assertion of his tes tamentary
intentions in the characte r of a husband. The statement of this
plain fact appeared to overwhelm Mr. Vanstone. Declaring that his
friend had laid him under an obligation which he should remember
to his dying day, he at once left the cottage, at once returned
home, and wrote me this letter."

He handed the letter open to Miss Garth. In tearless, speechless
grief, she read these words:

"MY DEAR PENDRIL -- Since we last wrote to each other an
extraordinary change has taken place in my life. About a week
after you went away, I received news from America which told me
that I was free. Need I say what use I made of that freedom? Need
I say that the mother of my children is now my Wife?

"If you are surprised at not having heard from me the moment you
got back, attribute my silence, in great part -- if not
altogether -- to my own total ignorance of the legal necessity
for making another will. Not half an hour since, I was
enlightened for the first time (under circumstances which I will
mention when me meet) by my old friend, Mr. Clare. Family
anxieties have had something to do with my silence as well. My
wife's confinement is close at hand; and, besides this serious
anxiety, my second daughter is just engaged to be married. Until
I saw Mr. Clare to-day, these matters so filled my mind that I
never thought of writing to you during the one short month which
is all that has passed since I got news of your return. Now I
know that my will must be made again, I write instantly. For
God's sake, come on the day when you receive this -- come and
relieve me from the dreadful thought that my two darling girls
are at this moment unprovided for. If anything happened to me,
and if my desire to do their mother justice, ended (through my
miserable ignorance of the law) in leaving Norah and Magdalen
disinherited, I should not rest in my grave! Come at any cost, to
yours ever,

"A. V."

"On the Saturday morning," Mr. Pendril resumed, "those lines
reached me. I instantly set aside all other business, and drove
to the railway. At the London terminus, I heard the first news of
the Friday's accident; heard it, with conflicting accounts of the
numbers and names of the passengers killed. At Bristol, they were
better informed; and the dreadful truth about Mr. Vanstone was
confirmed. I had time to recover myself before I reached your
station here, and found Mr. Clare's son waiting for me. He took
me to his father's cottage; and there, without losing a moment, I
drew out Mrs. Vanstone's will. My object was to secure the only
provision for her daughters which it was now possible to make.
Mr. Vanstone having died intestate, a third of his fortune would
go to his widow; and the rest would be divided among his next of
kin. As children born out of wedlock, Mr. Vanstone's daughters,
under the circumstances of their father's death, had no more
claim to a share in his property than the daughters of one of his
laborers in the village. The one chance left was that their
mother might sufficiently recover to leave her third share to
them, by will, in the event of her decease. Now you know why I
wrote to you to ask for that interview -- why I waited day and
night, in the hope of receiving a summons to the house. I was
sincerely sorry to send back such an answer to your note of
inquiry as I was compelled to write. But while there was a chance
of the preservation of Mrs. Vanstone's life, the secret of the
marriage was hers, not mine; and every consideration of delicacy
forbade me to disclose it."

"You did right, sir," said Miss Garth; "I understand your
motives, and respect them."

"My last attempt to provide for the daughters," continued Mr.
Pendril, "was, as you know, rendered unavailing by the dangerous
nature of Mrs. Vanstone's illness. Her death left the infant who
survived her by a few hours (the infant born, you will remember,
in lawful wedlock) possessed, in due legal course, of the whole
of Mr. Vanstone's fortune. On the child's death -- if it had only
outlived the mother by a few seconds, instead of a few hours, the
result would have been the same -- the next of kin to the
legitimate offspring took the money; and that next of kin is the
infant's paternal uncle, Michael Vanstone. The whole fortune of
eighty thousand pounds has virtually passed into his possession
already."

"Are there no other relations?" asked Miss Garth. "Is there no
hope from any one else?"

"There are no other relations with Michael Vanstone's claim,"
said the lawyer. "There are no grandfathers or grandmothers of
the dead child (on the side of either of the parents) now alive.
It was not likely there should be, considering the ages of Mr.
and Mrs. Vanstone when they died. But it is a misfortune to be
reasonably lamented that no other uncles or aunts survive. There
are cousins alive; a son and two daughters of that elder sister
of Mr. Vanstone's, who married Archdeacon Bartram, and who died,
as I told you, some years since. But their interest is superseded
by the interest of the nearer blood. No, Miss Garth, we must look
facts as they are resolutely in the face. Mr. Vanstone's
daughters are Nobody's Children; and the law leaves them helpless
at their uncle's mercy."

"A cruel law, Mr. Pendril -- a cruel law in a Christian country."

"Cruel as it is, Miss Garth, it stands excused by a shocking
peculiarity in this case. I am far from defending the law of
England as it affects illegitimate offspring. On the contrary, I
think it a disgrace to the nation. It visits the sins of the
parents on the children; it encourages vice by depriving fathers
and mothers of the strongest of all motives for making the
atonement of marriage; and it claims to produce these two
abominable results in the names of morality and religion. But it
has no extraordinary oppression to answer for in the case of
these unhappy girls. The more merciful and Christian law of other
countries, which allows the marriage of the parents to make the
children legitimate, has no mercy on _these_ children. The
accident of their father having been married, when he first met
with their mother, has made them the outcasts of the whole social
community; it has placed them out of the pale of the Civil Law of
Europe. I tell you the hard truth -- it is useless to disguise
it. There is no hope, if we look back at the past: there may be
hope, if we look on to the future. The best service which I can
now render you is to shorten the period of your suspense. In less
than an hour I shall be on my way back to London. Immediately on
my arrival, I will ascertain the speediest means of communicating
with Mr. Michael Vanstone; and will let you know the result. Sad
as the position of the two sisters now is, we must look at it on
its best side; we must not lose hope."

"Hope?" repeated Miss Garth. "Hope from Michael Vanstone!"

"Yes; hope from the influence on him of time, if not from the
influence of mercy. As I have already told you, he is now an old
man; he cannot, in the course of nature, expect to live much
longer. If he looks back to the period when he and his brother
were first at variance, he must look back through thirty years.
Surely, these are softening influences which must affect any man?
Surely, his own knowledge of the shocking circumstances under
which he has become possessed of this money will plead with him,
if nothing else does?"

"I will try to think as you do, Mr. Pendril -- I will try to hope
for the best. Shall we be left long in suspense before the
decision reaches us?"

"I trust not. The only delay on my side will be caused by the
necessity of discovering the place of Michael Vanstone's
residence on the Continent. I think I have the means of meeting
this difficulty successfully; and the moment I reach London,
those means shall be tried."

He took up his hat; and then returned to the table on which the
father's last letter, and the father's useless will, were lying
side by side. After a moment's consideration, he placed them both
in Miss Garth's hands.

"It may help you in breaking the hard truth to the orphan
sisters," he said, in his quiet, self-repressed way, "if they can
see how their father refers to them in his will --  if they ca n
read  his letter to me, the last he ever wrote. Let these tokens
tell them that the one idea of their father's life was the idea
of making atonement to his children. 'They may think bitterly of
their birth,' he said to me, at the time when I drew this useless
will; 'but they shall never think bitterly of me. I will cross
them in nothing: they shall never know a sorrow that I can spare
them, or a want which I will not satisfy.' He made me put those
words in his will, to plead for him when the truth which he had
concealed from his children in his lifetime was revealed to them
after his death. No law can deprive his daughters of the legacy
of his repentance and his love. I leave the will and the letter
to help you: I give them both into your care."

He saw how his parting kindness touched her and thoughtfully
hastened the farewell. She took his hand in both her own and
murmured a few broken words of gratitude. "Trust me to do my
best," he said -- and, turning away with a merciful abruptness,
left her. In the broad, cheerful sunshine he had come in to
reveal the fatal truth. In the broad, cheerful sunshine -- that
truth disclosed -- he went out.

CHAPTER XIV.

IT was nearly an hour past noon when Mr. Pendril left the house.
Miss Garth sat down again at the table alone, and tried to face
the necessity which the event of the morning now forced on her.

Her mind was not equal to the effort. She tried to lessen the
strain on it -- to lose the sense of her own position -- to
escape from her thoughts for a few minutes only. After a little,
she opened Mr. Vanstone's letter, and mechanically set herself to
read it through once more.

One by one, the last words of the dead man fastened themselves
more and more firmly on her attention. The unrelieved solitude,
the unbroken silence, helped their influence on her mind and
opened it to those very impressions of past and present which she
was most anxious to shun. As she reached the melancholy lines
which closed the letter, she found herself -- insensibly, almost
unconsciously, at first -- tracing the fatal chain of events,
link by link backward, until she reached its beginning in the
contemplated marriage between Magdalen and Francis Clare.

That marriage had taken Mr. Vanstone to his old friend, with the
confession on his lips which would otherwise never have escaped
them. Thence came the discovery which had sent him home to summon
the lawyer to the house. That summons, again, had produced the
inevitable acceleration of the Saturday's journey to Friday; the
Friday of the fatal accident, the Friday when he went to his
death. From his death followed the second bereavement which had
made the house desolate; the helpless position of the daughters
whose prosperous future had been his dearest care; the revelation
of the secret which had overwhelmed her that morning; the
disclosure, more terrible still, which she now stood committed to
make to the orphan sisters. For the first time she saw the whole
sequence of events -- saw it as plainly as the cloudless blue of
the sky and the green glow of the trees in the sunlight outside.

How -- when could she tell them? Who could approach them with the
disclosure of their own illegitimacy before their father and
mother had been dead a week? Who could speak the dreadful words,
while the first tears were wet on their cheeks, while the first
pang of separation was at its keenest in their hearts, while the
memory of the funeral was not a day old yet? Not their last
friend left; not the faithful woman whose heart bled for them.
No! silence for the present time, at all risks -- merciful
silence, for many days to come!

She left the room, with the will and the letter in her hand --
with the natural, human pity at her heart which sealed her lips
and shut her eyes resolutely to the future. In the hall she
stopped and listened. Not a sound was audible. She softly
ascended the stairs, on her way to her own room, and passed the
door of Norah's bed-chamber. Voices inside, the voices of the two
sisters, caught her ear. After a moment's consideration, she
checked herself, turned back, and quickly descended the stairs
again. Both Norah and Magdalen knew of the interview between Mr.
Pendril and herself; she had felt it her duty to show them his
letter making the appointment. Could she excite their suspicion
by locking herself up from them in her room as soon as the lawyer
had left the house? Her hand trembled on the banister; she felt
that her face might betray her. The self-forgetful fortitude,
which had never failed her until that day, had been tried once
too often -- had been tasked beyond its powers at last.

At the hall door she reflected for a moment again, and went into
the garden; directing her steps to a rustic bench and table
placed out of sight of the house among the trees. In past times
she had often sat there, with Mrs. Vanstone on one side, with
Norah on the other, with Magdalen and the dogs romping on the
grass. Alone she sat there now -- the will and the letter which
she dared not trust out of her own possession, laid on the table
-- her head bowed over them; her face hidden in her hands. Alone
she sat there and tried to rouse her sinking courage.

Doubts thronged on her of the dark days to come; dread beset her
of the hidden danger which her own silence toward Norah and
Magdalen might store up in the near future. The accident of a
moment might suddenly reveal the truth. Mr. Pendril might write,
might personally address himself to the sisters, in the natural
conviction that she had enlightened them. Complications might
gather round them at a moment's notice; unforeseen necessities
might arise for immediately leaving the house. She saw all these
perils -- and still the cruel courage to face the worst, and
speak, was as far from her as ever. Ere long the thickening
conflict of her thoughts forced its way outward for relief, in
words and actions. She raised her head and beat her hand
helplessly on the table.

"God help me, what am I to do?" she broke out. "How am I to tell
them?"

"There is no need to tell them," said a voice behind her. "They
know it already."

She started to her feet and looked round. It was Magdalen who
stood before her -- Magdalen who had spoken those words.

Yes, there was the graceful figure, in its mourning garments,
standing out tall and black and motionless against the leafy
background. There was Magdalen herself, with a changeless
stillness on her white face; with an icy resignation in her
steady gray eyes.

"We know it already," she repeated, in clear, measured tones.
"Mr. Vanstone's daughters are Nobody's Children; and the law
leaves them helpless at their uncle's mercy."

So, without a tear on her cheeks, without a faltering tone in her
voice, she repeated the lawyer's own words, exactly as he had
spoken them. Miss Garth staggered back a step and caught at the
bench to support herself. Her head swam; she closed her eyes in a
momentary faintness. When they opened again, Magdalen's arm was
supporting her, Magdalen's breath fanned her cheek, Magdalen's
cold lips kissed her. She drew back from the kiss; the touch of
the girl's lips thrilled her with terror.

As soon as she could speak she put the inevitable question. "You
heard us," she said. "Where?"

"Under the open window."

"All the time?"

"From beginning to end."

She had listened -- this girl of eighteen, in the first week of
her orphanage, had listened to the whole terrible revelation,
word by word, as it fell from the lawyer's lips; and had never
once betrayed herself! From first to last, the only movements
which had escaped her had been movements guarded enough and
slight enough to be mistaken for the passage of the summer breeze
through the leaves!

"Don't try to speak yet," she said, in softer and gentler tones.
"Don't look at me with those doubting eyes. What wrong have I
done? When Mr. Pendril wished to speak to you about Norah and me,
his letter gave us our choice to be present at the interview, or
to keep away. If my elder sister decided to keep away, how could
I come? How could I hear my own story except as I did? My
listening has done no harm. It has done good -- it has saved you
the distress of speaking to us . You have suffered enough for us
already; it is time we learned to suffer for ourselves. I have
learned. And Norah is learning."

"Norah!"

"Yes. I have done all I could to spare you. I have told Norah."

She had told Norah! Was this girl, whose courage had faced the
terrible necessity from which a woman old enough to be her mother
had recoiled, the girl Miss Garth had brought up? the girl whose
nature she had believed to be as well known to her as her own?

"Magdalen!" she cried out, passionately, "you frighten me!"

Magdalen only sighed, and turned wearily away.

"Try not to think worse of me than I deserve," she said. "I can't
cry. My heart is numbed."

She moved away slowly over the grass. Miss Garth watched the tall
black figure gliding away alone until it was lost among the
trees. While it was in sight she could think of nothing else. The
moment it was gone, she thought of Norah. For the first time in
her experience of the sisters her heart led her instinctively to
the elder of the two.

Norah was still in her own room. She was sitting on the couch by
the window, with her mother's old music-book -- the keepsake
which Mrs. Vanstone had found in her husband's study on the day
of her husband's death -- spread open on her lap. She looked up
from it with such quiet sorrow, and pointed with such ready
kindness to the vacant place at her side, that Miss Garth doubted
for the moment whether Magdalen had spoken the truth. "See," said
Norah, simply, turning to the first leaf in the music-book -- "my
mother's name written in it, and some verses to my father on the
next page. We may keep this for ourselves, if we keep nothing
else." She put her arm round Miss Garth's neck, and a faint tinge
of color stole over her cheeks. "I see anxious thoughts in your
face," she whispered. "Are you anxious about me? Are you doubting
whether I have heard it? I have heard the whole truth. I might
have felt it bitterly, later; it is too soon to feel it now. You
have seen Magdalen? She went out to find you -- where did you
leave her?"

"In the garden. I couldn't speak to her; I couldn't look at her.
Magdalen has frightened me."

Norah rose hurriedly; rose, startled and distressed by Miss
Garth's reply.

"Don't think ill of Magdalen," she said. "Magdalen suffers in
secret more than I do. Try not to grieve over what you have heard
about us this morning. Does it matter who we are, or what we keep
or lose? What loss is there for us after the loss of our father
and mother? Oh, Miss Garth, _there_ is the only bitterness! What
did we remember of them when we laid them in the grave yesterday?
Nothing but the love they gave us -- the love we must never hope
for again. What else can we remember to-day? What change can the
world, and the world's cruel laws make in _our_ memory of the
kindest father, the kindest mother, that children ever had!" She
stopped: struggled with her rising grief; and quietly,
resolutely, kept it down. "Will you wait here," she said, "while
I go and bring Magdalen back? Magdalen was always your favorite:
I want her to be your favorite still." She laid the music-book
gently on Miss Garth's lap -- and left the room.

"Magdalen was always your favorite."

Tenderly as they had been spoken, those words fell reproachfully
on Miss Garth's ear. For the first time in the long companionship
of her pupils and herself a doubt whether she, and all those
about her, had not been fatally mistaken in their relative
estimate of the sisters, now forced itself on her mind.

She had studied the natures of her two pupils in the daily
intimacy of twelve years. Those natures, which she believed
herself to have sounded through all their depths, had been
suddenly tried in the sharp ordeal of affliction. How had they
come out from the test? As her previous experience had prepared
her to see them? No: in flat contradiction to it.

What did such a result as this imply?

Thoughts came to her, as she asked herself that question, which
have startled and saddened us all.

Does there exist in every human being, beneath that outward and
visible character which is shaped into form by the social
influences surrounding us, an inward, invisible disposition,
which is part of ourselves, which education may indirectly
modify, but can never hope to change? Is the philosophy which
denies this and asserts that we are born with dispositions like
blank sheets of paper a philosophy which has failed to remark
that we are not born with blank faces -- a philosophy which has
never compared together two infants of a few days old, and has
never observed that those infants are not born with blank tempers
for mothers and nurses to fill up at will? Are there, infinitely
varying with each individual, inbred forces of Good and Evil in
all of us, deep down below the reach of mortal encouragement and
mortal repression -- hidden Good and hidden Evil, both alike at
the mercy of the liberating opportunity and the sufficient
temptation? Within these earthly limits, is earthly Circumstance
ever the key; and can no human vigilance warn us beforehand of
the forces imprisoned in ourselves which that key _may_ unlock?

For the first time, thoughts such as these rose darkly -- as
shadowy and terrible possibilities -- in Miss Garth's mind. For
the first time, she associated those possibilities with the past
conduct and characters, with the future lives and fortunes of the
orphan sisters.

Searching, as in a glass darkly, into the two natures, she felt
her way, doubt by doubt, from one possible truth to another. It
might be that the upper surface of their characters was all that
she had, thus far, plainly seen in Norah and Magdalen. It might
be that the unalluring secrecy and reserve of one sister, the
all-attractive openness and high spirits of the other, were more
or less referable, in each case, to those physical causes which
work toward the production of moral results. It might be, that
under the surface so formed -- a surface which there had been
nothing, hitherto, in the happy, prosperous, uneventful lives of
the sisters to disturb -- forces of inborn and inbred disposition
had remained concealed, which the shock of the first serious
calamity in their lives had now thrown up into view. Was this so?
Was the promise of the future shining with prophetic light
through the surface-shadow of Norah's reserve, and darkening with
prophetic gloom, under the surface-glitter of Magdalen's bright
spirits? If the life of the elder sister was destined henceforth
to be the ripening ground of the undeveloped Good that was in her
-was the life of the younger doomed to be the battle-field of
mortal conflict with the roused forces of Evil in herself?

On the brink of that terrible conclusion, Miss Garth shrank back
in dismay. Her heart was the heart of a true woman. It accepted
the conviction which raised Norah higher in her love: it rejected
the doubt which threatened to place Magdalen lower. She rose and
paced the room impatiently; she recoiled with an angry suddenness
from the whole train of thought in which her mind had been
engaged but the moment before. What if there were dangerous
elements in the strength of Magdalen's character -- was it not
her duty to help the girl against herself? How had she performed
that duty? She had let herself be governed by first fears and
first impressions; she had never waited to consider whether
Magdalen's openly acknowledged action of that morning might not
imply a self-sacrificing fortitude, which promised, in
after-life, the noblest and the most enduring results. She had
let Norah go and speak those words of tender remonstrance, which
she should first have spoken herself. "Oh!" she thought,
bitterly, "how long I have lived in the world, and how little I
have known of my own weakness and wickedness until to-day!"

The door of the room opened. Norah came in, as she had gone out,
alone.

"Do you remember leaving anything on the little table by the
garden-seat?" she asked, quietly.

Before Miss Garth could answer the question, she held out her
father's will and her father's letter.

"Magdalen came back after you went away," she said, "and found
these last re lics. She heard Mr. Pendril say the y were her
legacy and mine. When I went into the garden she was reading the
letter. There was no need for me to speak to her; our father had
spoken to her from his grave. See how she has listened to him!"

She pointed to the letter. The traces of heavy tear-drops lay
thick over the last lines of the dead man's writing.

"_Her_ tears," said Norah, softly.

Miss Garth's head drooped low over the mute revelation of
Magdalen's return to her better self.

"Oh, never doubt her again!" pleaded Norah. "We are alone now --
we have our hard way through the world to walk on as patiently as
we can. If Magdalen ever falters and turns back, help her for the
love of old times; help her against herself."

"With all my heart and strength -- as God shall judge me, with
the devotion of my whole life!" In those fervent words Miss Garth
answered. She took the hand which Norah held out to her, and put
it, in sorrow and humility, to her lips. "Oh, my love, forgive
me! I have been miserably blind -- I have never valued you as I
ought!"

Norah gently checked her before she could say more; gently
whispered, "Come with me into the garden -- come, and help
Magdalen to look patiently to the future."

The future! Who could see the faintest glimmer of it? Who could
see anything but the ill-omened figure of Michael Vanstone,
posted darkly on the verge of the present time -- and closing all
the prospect that lay beyond him?

CHAPTER XV.

ON the next morning but one, news was received from Mr. Pendril.
The place of Michael Vanstone's residence on the Continent had
been discovered. He was living at Zurich; and a letter had been
dispatched to him, at that place, on the day when the information
was obtained. In the course of the coming week an answer might be
expected, and the purport of it should be communicated forthwith
to the ladies at Combe-Raven.

Short as it was, the interval of delay passed wearily. Ten days
elapsed before the expected answer was received; and when it came
at last, it proved to be, strictly speaking, no answer at all.
Mr. Pendril had been merely referred to an agent in London who
was in possession of Michael Vanstone's instructions. Certain
difficulties had been discovered in connection with those
instructions, which had produced the necessity of once more
writing to Zurich. And there "the negotiations" rested again for
the present.

A second paragraph in Mr. Pendril's letter contained another
piece of intelligence entirely new. Mr. Michael Vanstone's son
(and only child), Mr. Noel Vanstone, had recently arrived in
London, and was then staying in lodgings occupied by his cousin,
Mr. George Bartram. Professional considerations had induced Mr.
Pendril to pay a visit to the lodgings. He had been very kindly
received by Mr. Bartram; but had been informed by that gentleman
that his cousin was not then in a condition to receive visitors.
Mr. Noel Vanstone had been suffering, for some years past, from a
wearing and obstinate malady; he had come to England expressly to
obtain the best medical advice, and he still felt the fatigue of
the journey so severely as to be confined to his bed. Under these
circumstances, Mr. Pendril had no alternative but to take his
leave. An interview with Mr. Noel Vanstone might have cleared up
some of the difficulties in connection with his father's
instructions. As events had turned out, there was no help for it
but to wait for a few days more.

The days passed, the empty days of solitude and suspense. At
last, a third letter from the lawyer announced the long delayed
conclusion of the correspondence. The final answer had been
received from Zurich, and Mr. Pendril would personally
communicate it at Combe-Raven on the afternoon of the next day.

That next day was Wednesday, the twelfth of August. The weather
had changed in the night; and the sun rose watery through mist
and cloud. By noon the sky was overcast at all points; the
temperature was sensibly colder; and the rain poured down,
straight and soft and steady, on the thirsty earth. Toward three
o'clock, Miss Garth and Norah entered the morning-room, to await
Mr. Pendril's arrival. They were joined shortly afterward by
Magdalen. In half an hour more the familiar fall of the iron
latch in the socket reached their ears from the fence beyond the
shrubbery. Mr. Pendril and Mr. Clare advanced into view along the
garden-path, walking arm-in-arm through the rain, sheltered by
the same umbrella. The lawyer bowed as they passed the windows;
Mr. Clare walked straight on, deep in his own thoughts --
noticing nothing.

After a delay which seemed interminable; after a weary scraping
of wet feet on the hall mat; after a mysterious, muttered
interchange of question and answer outside the door, the two came
in -- Mr. Clare leading the way. The old man walked straight up
to the table, without any preliminary greeting, and looked across
it at the three women, with a stern pity for them in his ragged,
wrinkled face.

"Bad news," he said. "I am an enemy to all unnecessary suspense.
Plainness is kindness in such a case as this. I mean to be kind
-- and I tell you plainly -bad news."

Mr. Pendril followed him. He shook hands, in silence, with Miss
Garth and the two sisters, and took a seat near them. Mr. Clare
placed himself apart on a chair by the window. The gray rainy
light fell soft and sad on the faces of Norah and Magdalen, who
sat together opposite to him. Miss Garth had placed herself a
little behind them, in partial shadow; and the lawyer's quiet
face was seen in profile, close beside her. So the four occupants
of the room appeared to Mr. Clare, as he sat apart in his corner;
his long claw-like fingers interlaced on his knee; his dark
vigilant eyes fixed searchingly now on one face, now on another.
The dripping rustle of the rain among the leaves, and the clear,
ceaseless tick of the clock on the mantel-piece, made the minute
of silence which followed the settling of the persons present in
their places indescribably oppressive. It was a relief to every
one when Mr. Pendril spoke.

"Mr. Clare has told you already," he began, "that I am the bearer
of bad news. I am grieved to say, Miss Garth, that your doubts,
when I last saw you, were better founded than my hopes. What that
heartless elder brother was in his youth, he is still in his old
age. In all my unhappy experience of the worst side of human
nature, I have never met with a man so utterly dead to every
consideration of mercy as Michael Vanstone."

"Do you mean that he takes the whole of his brother's fortune,
and makes no provision whatever for his brother's children?"
asked Miss Garth.

"He offers a sum of money for present emergencies," replied Mr.
Pendril, "so meanly and disgracefully insufficient that I am
ashamed to mention it."

"And nothing for the future?"

"Absolutely nothing."

As that answer was given, the same thought passed, at the same
moment, through Miss Garth's mind and through Norah's. The
decision, which deprived both the sisters alike of the resources
of fortune, did not end there for the younger of the two. Michael
Vanstone's merciless resolution had virtually pronounced the
sentence which dismissed Frank to China, and which destroyed all
present hope of Magdalen's marriage. As the words passed the
lawyer's lips, Miss Garth and Norah looked at Magdalen anxiously.
Her face turned a shade paler -- but not a feature of it moved;
not a word escaped her. Norah, who held her sister's hand in her
own, felt it tremble for a moment, and then turn cold -- and that
was all.

"Let me mention plainly what I have done," resumed Mr. Pendril;
"I am very desirous you should not think that I have left any
effort untried. When I wrote to Michael Vanstone, in the first
instance, I did not confine myself to the usual formal statement.
I put before him, plainly and earnestly, every one of the
circumstances under which he has become possessed of his
brother's fortune. When I received the answer, referring me to
his written instructions to his lawyer in London -- and when a
copy of those instructions was placed in my hands -- I positively
declined, on becoming acquainted with them, to  receive the
writer's decision as final. I induce d the solicitor, on the
other side, to accord us a further term of delay; I attempted to
see Mr. Noel Vanstone in London for the purpose of obtaining his
intercession; and, failing in that, I myself wrote to his father
for the second time. The answer referred me, in insolently curt
terms, to the instructions already communicated; declared those
instructions to be final; and declined any further correspondence
with me. There is the beginning and the end of the negotiation.
If I have overlooked any means of touching this heartless man --
tell me, and those means shall be tried."

He looked at Norah. She pressed her sister's hand encouragingly,
and answered for both of them.

"I speak for my sister, as well as for myself," she said, with
her color a little heightened, with her natural gentleness of
manner just touched by a quiet, uncomplaining sadness. "You have
done all that could be done, Mr. Pendril. We have tried to
restrain ourselves from hoping too confidently; and we are deeply
grateful for your kindness, at a time when kindness is sorely
needed by both of us."

Magdalen's hand returned the pressure of her sister's -- withdrew
itself -trifled for a moment impatiently with the arrangement of
her dress -- then suddenly moved the chair closer to the table.
Leaning one arm on it (with the hand fast clinched), she looked
across at Mr. Pendril. Her face, always remarkable for its want
of color, was now startling to contemplate, in its blank,
bloodless pallor. But the light in her large gray eyes was bright
and steady as ever; and her voice, though low in tone, was clear
and resolute in accent as she addressed the lawyer in these
terms:

"I understood you to say, Mr. Pendril, that my father's brother
had sent his written orders to London, and that you had a copy.
Have you preserved it?"

"Certainly."

"Have you got it about you?"

"I have."

"May I see it?"

Mr. Pendril hesitated, and looked uneasily from Magdalen to Miss
Garth, and from Miss Garth back again to Magdalen.

"Pray oblige me by not pressing your request," he said. "It is
surely enough that you know the result of the instructions. Why
should you agitate yourself to no purpose by reading them? They
are expressed so cruelly; they show such abominable want of
feeling, that I really cannot prevail upon myself to let you see
them."

"I am sensible of your kindness, Mr. Pendril, in wishing to spare
me pain. But I can bear pain; I promise to distress nobody. Will
you excuse me if I repeat my request?"

She held out her hand -- the soft, white, virgin hand that had
touched nothing to soil it or harden it yet.

"Oh, Magdalen, think again!" said Norah.

"You distress Mr. Pendril," added Miss Garth; "you distress us
all."

"There can be no end gained," pleaded the lawyer -- "forgive me
for saying so -there can really be no useful end gained by my
showing you the instructions."

("Fools!" said Mr. Clare to himself . "Have they no eyes to see
that she means to have her own way?")

"Something tells me there is an end to be gained," persisted
Magdalen. "This decision is a very serious one. It is more
serious to me -- " She looked round at Mr. Clare, who sat closely
watching her, and instantly looked back again, with the first
outward betrayal of emotion which had escaped her yet. "It is
even more serious to me," she resumed, "for private reasons --
than it is to my sister. I know nothing yet but that our father's
brother has taken our fortunes from us. He must have some motives
of his own for such conduct as that. It is not fair to him, or
fair to us, to keep those motives concealed. He has deliberately
robbed Norah, and robbed me; and I think we have a right, if we
wish it, to know why?"

"I don't wish it," said Norah.

"I do," said Magdalen; and once more she held out her hand.

At this point Mr. Clare roused himself and interfered for the
first time.

"You have relieved your conscience," he said, addressing the
lawyer. "Give her the right she claims. It _is_ her right -- if
she will have it."

Mr. Pendril quietly took the written instructions from his
pocket. "I have warned you," he said -- and handed the papers
across the table without another word. One of the pages of
writing -- was folded down at the corner; and at that folded page
the manuscript opened, when Magdalen first turned the leaves. "Is
this the place which refers to my sister and myself?" she
inquired. Mr. Pendril bowed; and Magdalen smoothed out the
manuscript before her on the table.

"Will you decide, Norah?" she asked, turning to her sister.
"Shall I read this aloud, or shall I read it to myself?"

"To yourself," said Miss Garth; answering for Norah, who looked
at her in mute perplexity and distress.

"It shall be as you wish," said Magdalen. With that reply, she
turned again to the manuscript and read these lines:

". . . . You are now in possession of my wishes in relation to
the property in money, and to the sale of the furniture,
carriages, horses, and so forth. The last point left on which it
is necessary for me to instruct you refers to the persons
inhabiting the house, and to certain preposterous claims on their
behalf set up by a solicitor named Pendril; who has, no doubt,
interested reasons of his own for making application to me.

"I understand that my late brother has left two illegitimate
children; both of them young women, who are of an age to earn
their own livelihood. Various considerations, all equally
irregular, have been urged in respect to these persons by the
solicitor representing them. Be so good as to tell him that
neither you nor I have anything to do with questions of mere
sentiment; and then state plainly, for his better information,
what the motives are which regulate my conduct, and what the
provision is which I feel myself justified in making for the two
young women. Your instructions on both these points you will find
detailed in the next paragraph.

"I wish the persons concerned to know, once for all, how I regard
the circumstances which have placed my late brother's property at
my disposal. Let them understand that I consider those
circumstances to be a Providential interposition which has
restored to me the inheritance that ought always to have been
mine. I receive the money, not only as my right, but also as a
proper compensation for the injustice which I suffered from my
father, and a proper penalty paid by my younger brother for the
vile intrigue by which he succeeded in disinheriting me. His
conduct, when a young man, was uniformly discreditable in all the
relations of life; and what it then was it continued to be (on
the showing of his own legal representative) after the time when
I ceased to hold any communication with him. He appears to have
systematically imposed a woman on Society as his wife who was not
his wife, and to have completed the outrage on morality by
afterward marrying her. Such conduct as this has called down a
Judgment on himself and his children. I will not invite
retribution on my own head by assisting those children to
continue the imposition which their parents practiced, and by
helping them to take a place in the world to which they are not
entitled. Let them, as becomes their birth, gain their bread in
situations. If they show themselves disposed to accept their
proper position I will assist them to start virtuously in life by
a present of one hundred pounds each. This sum I authorize you to
pay them, on their personal application, with the necessary
acknowledgment of receipt; and on the express understanding that
the transaction, so completed, is to be the beginning and the end
of my connection with them. The arrangements under which they
quit the house I leave to your discretion; and I have only to add
that my decision on this matter, as on all other matters, is
positive and final."

Line by line -- without once looking up from the pages before her
-- Magdalen read those atrocious sentences through, from
beginning to end. The other persons assembled in the room, all
eagerly looking at her together, saw the dress rising and falling
faster and faster over her bosom -- saw the hand in which she
lightly held  the manuscri pt at the outset close unconsciously o
n the paper and crush it, as she advanced nearer and nearer to
the end -- but detected no other outward signs of what was
passing within her. As soon as she had done, she silently pushed
the manuscript away, and put her hands on a sudden over her face.
When she withdrew them, all the four persons in the room noticed
a change in her. Something in her expression had altered, subtly
and silently; something which made the familiar features suddenly
look strange, even to her sister and Miss Garth; something,
through all after years, never to be forgotten in connection with
that day -- and never to be described.

The first words she spoke were addressed to Mr. Pendril.

"May I ask one more favor," she said, "before you enter on your
business arrangements?"

Mr. Pendril replied ceremoniously by a gesture of assent.
Magdalen's resolution to possess herself of the Instructions did
not appear to have produced a favorable impression on the
lawyer's mind.

"You mentioned what you were so kind as to do, in our interests,
when you first wrote to Mr. Michael Vanstone," she continued.
"You said you had told him all the circumstances. I want -- if
you will allow me -- to be made quite sure of what he really knew
about us -- when he sent these orders to his lawyer. Did he know
that my father had made a will, and that he had left our fortunes
to my sister and myself?"

"He did know it," said Mr. Pendril.

"Did you tell him how it happened that we are left in this
helpless position?"

"I told him that your father was entirely unaware, when he
married, of the necessity for making another will."

"And that another will would have been made, after he saw Mr.
Clare, but for the dreadful misfortune of his death?"

"He knew that also."

"Did he know that my father's untiring goodness and kindness to
both of us -- "

Her voice faltered for the first time: she sighed, and put her
hand to her head wearily. Norah spoke entreatingly to her; Miss
Garth spoke entreatingly to her; Mr. Clare sat silent, watching
her more and more earnestly. She answered her sister's
remonstrance with a faint smile. "I will keep my promise," she
said; "I will distress nobody." With that reply, she turned again
to Mr. Pendril; and steadily reiterated the question -- but in
another form of words.

"Did Mr. Michael Vanstone know that my father's great anxiety was
to make sure of providing for my sister and myself?"

"He knew it in your father's own words. I sent him an extract
from your father's last letter to me."

"The letter which asked you to come for God's sake, and relieve
him from the dreadful thought that his daughters were unprovided
for? The letter which said he should not rest in his grave if he
left us disinherited?"

"That letter and those words."

She paused, still keeping her eyes steadily fixed on the lawyer's
face.

"I want to fasten it all in my mind," she said "before I go on.
Mr. Michael Vanstone knew of the first will; he knew what
prevented the making of the second will; he knew of the letter
and he read the words. What did he know of besides? Did you tell
him of my mother's last illness? Did you say that her share in
the money would have been left to us, if she could have lifted
her dying hand in your presence? Did you try to make him ashamed
of the cruel law which calls girls in our situation Nobody's
Children, and which allows him to use us as he is using us now?"

"I put all those considerations to him. I left none of them
doubtful; I left none of them out."

She slowly reached her hand to the copy of the Instructions, and
slowly folded it up again, in the shape in which it had been
presented to her. "I am much obliged to you, Mr. Pendril." With
those words, she bowed, and gently pushed the manuscript back
across the table; then turned to her sister.

"Norah," she said, "if we both of us live to grow old, and if you
ever forget all that we owe to Michael Vanstone -- come to me,
and I will remind you."

She rose and walked across the room by herself to the window. As
she passed Mr. Clare, the old man stretched out his claw-like
fingers and caught her fast by the arm before she was aware of
him.

"What is this mask of yours hiding?" he asked, forcing her to
bend to him, and looking close into her face. "Which of the
extremes of human temperature does your courage start from -- the
dead cold or the white hot?"

She shrank back from him and turned away her head in silence. She
would have resented that unscrupulous intrusion on her own
thoughts from any man alive but Frank's father. He dropped her
arm as suddenly as he had taken it, and let her go on to the
window. "No," he said to himself, "not the cold extreme, whatever
else it may be. So much the worse for her, and for all belonging
to her."

There was a momentary pause. Once more the dripping rustle of the
rain and the steady ticking of the clock filled up the gap of
silence. Mr. Pendril put the Instructions back in his pocket,
considered a little, and, turning toward Norah and Miss Garth,
recalled their attention to the present and pressing necessities
of the time.

"Our consultation has been needlessly prolonged," he sail, "by
painful references to the past. We shall be better employed in
settling our arrangements for the future. I am obliged to return
to town this evening. Pray let me hear how I can best assist you;
pray tell me what trouble and what responsibility I can take off
your hands."

For the moment, neither Norah nor Miss Garth seemed to be capable
of answering him. Magdalen's reception of the news which
annihilated the marriage prospect that her father's own lips had
placed before her not a month since, had bewildered and dismayed
them alike. They had summoned their courage to meet the shock of
her passionate grief, or to face the harder trial of witnessing
her speechless despair. But they were not prepared for her
invincible resolution to read the Instructions; for the terrible
questions which she had put to the lawyer; for her immovable
determination to fix all the circumstances in her mind, under
which Michael Vanstone's decision had been pronounced. There she
stood at the window, an unfathomable mystery to the sister who
had never been parted from her, to the governess who had trained
her from a child. Miss Garth remembered the dark doubts which had
crossed her mind on the day when she and Magdalen had met in the
garden. Norah looked forward to the coming time, with the first
serious dread of it on her sister's account which she had felt
yet. Both had hitherto remained passive, in despair of knowing
what to do. Both were now silent, in despair of knowing what to
say.

Mr. Pendril patiently and kindly helped them, by returning to the
subject of their future plans for the second time.

"I am sorry to press any business matters on your attention," he
said, "when you are necessarily unfitted to deal with them. But I
must take my instructions back to London with me to night. With
reference, in the first place, to the disgraceful pecuniary
offer, to which I have already alluded. The younger Miss Vanstone
having read the Instructions, needs no further information from
my lips. The elder will, I hope, excuse me if I tell her (what I
should be ashamed to tell her, but that it is a matter of
necessity), that Mr. Michael Vanstone's provision for his
brother's children begins and ends with an offer to each of them
of one hundred pounds."

Norah's face crimsoned with indignation. She started to her feet,
as if Michael Vanstone had been present in the room, and had
personally insulted her.

"I see," said the lawyer, wishing to spare her; "I may tell Mr.
Michael Vanstone you refuse the money."

"Tell him," she broke out passionately, "if I was starving by the
roadside, I wouldn't touch a farthing of it!"

"Shall I notify your refusal also?" asked Mr. Pendril, speaking
to Magdalen next.

She turned round from the window -- but kept her face in shadow,
by standing close against it with her back to the light.

"Tell him, on my part," she said, "to think again before he
starts me in life with a hundred pounds. I will give him time to
think." She spoke those strange words with a ma rked emphasis;
and turning back quick ly to the window, hid her face from the
observation of every one in the room.

"You both refuse the offer," said Mr. Pendril, taking out his
pencil, and making his professional note of the decision. As he
shut up his pocketbook, he glanced toward Magdalen doubtfully.
She had roused in him the latent distrust which is a lawyer's
second nature: he had his suspicions of her looks; he had his
suspicions of her language. Her sister seemed to have mere
influence over her than Miss Garth. He resolved to speak
privately to her sister before he went away.

While the idea was passing through his mind, his attention was
claimed by another question from Magdalen.

"Is he an old man?" she asked, suddenly, without turning round
from the window.

"If you mean Mr. Michael Vanstone, he is seventy-five or
seventy-six years of age."

"You spoke of his son a little while since. Has he any other sons
-- or daughters?"

"None."

"Do you know anything of his wife?"

"She has been dead for many years."

There was a pause. "Why do you ask these questions?" said Norah.

"I beg your pardon," replied Magdalen, quietly; "I won't ask any
more."

For the third time, Mr. Pendril returned to the business of the
interview.

"The servants must not he forgotten," he said. "They must be
settled with and discharged: I will give them the necessary
explanation before I leave. As for the house, no questions
connected with it need trouble you. The carriages and horses, the
furniture and plate, and so on, must simply be left on the
premises to await Mr. Michael Vanstone's further orders. But any
possessions, Miss Vanstone, personally belonging to you or to
your sister -- jewelry and dresses, and any little presents which
may have been made to you -- are entirely at your disposal. With
regard to the time of your departure, I understand that a month
or more will elapse before Mr. Michael Vanstone can leave Zurich;
and I am sure I only do his solicitor justice in saying -- "

"Excuse me, Mr. Pendril," interposed Norah; "I think I
understand, from what you have just said, that our house and
everything in it belongs to -- ?" She stopped, as if the mere
utterance of the man's name was abhorrent to her.

"To Michael Vanstone," said Mr. Pendril. "The house goes to him
with the rest of the property."

"Then I, for one, am ready to leave it tomorrow!"

Magdalen started at the window, as her sister spoke, and looked
at Mr. Clare, with the first open signs of anxiety and alarm
which she had shown yet.

"Don't be angry with me," she whispered, stooping over the old
man with a sudden humility of look, and a sudden nervousness of
manner. "I can't go without seeing Frank first!"

"You shall see him," replied Mr. Clare. "I am here to speak to
you about it, when the business is done."

"It is quite unnecessary to hurry your departure, as you
propose," continued Mr. Pendril, addressing Norah. "I can safely
assure you that a week hence will be time enough."

"If this is Mr. Michael Vanstone's house," repeated Norah; "I am
ready to leave it tomorrow."

She impatiently quitted her chair and seated herself further away
on the sofa. As she laid her hand on the back of it, her face
changed. There, at the head of the sofa, were the cushions which
had supported her mother when she lay down for the last time to
repose. There, at the foot of the sofa, was the clumsy,
old-fashioned arm-chair, which had been her father's favorite
seat on rainy days, when she and her sister used to amuse him at
the piano opposite, by playing his favorite tunes. A heavy sigh,
which she tried vainly to repress, burst from her lips. "Oh," she
thought, "I had forgotten these old friends! How shall we part
from them when the time comes!"

"May I inquire, Miss Vanstone, whether you and your sister have
formed any definite plans for the future?" asked Mr. Pendril.
"Have you thought of any place of residence?"

"I may take it on myself, sir," said Miss Garth, "to answer your
question for them. When they leave this house, they leave it with
me. My home is their home, and my bread is their bread. Their
parents honored me, trusted me, and loved me. For twelve happy
years they never let me remember that I was their governess; they
only let me know myself as their companion and their friend. My
memory of them is the memory of unvarying gentleness and
generosity; and my life shall pay the debt of my gratitude to
their orphan children."

Norah rose hastily from the sofa; Magdalen impetuously left the
window. For once, there was no contrast in the conduct of the
sisters. For once, the same impulse moved their hearts, the same
earnest feeling inspired their words. Miss Garth waited until the
first outburst of emotion had passed away; then rose, and, taking
Norah and Magdalen each by the hand, addressed herself to Mr.
Pendril and Mr. Clare. She spoke with perfect self-possession;
strong in her artless unconsciousness of her own good action.

"Even such a trifle as my own story," she said, "is of some
importance at such a moment as this. I wish you both, gentlemen,
to understand that I am not promising more to the daughters of
your old friend than I can perform. When I first came to this
house, I entered it under such independent circumstances as are
not common in the lives of governesses. In my younger days, I was
associated in teaching with my elder sister: we established a
school in London, which grew to be a large and prosperous one. I
only left it, and became a private governess, because the heavy
responsibility of the school was more than my strength could
bear. I left my share in the profits untouched, and I possess a
pecuniary interest in our establishment to this day. That is my
story, in few words. When we leave this house, I propose that we
shall go back to the school in London, which is still
prosperously directed by my elder sister. We can live there as
quietly as we please, until time has helped us to bear our
affliction better than we can bear it now. If Norah's and
Magdalen's altered prospects oblige them to earn their own
independence, I can help them to earn it, as a gentleman's
daughters should. The best families in this land are glad to ask
my sister's advice where the interests of their children's
home-training are concerned; and I answer, beforehand, for her
hearty desire to serve Mr. Vanstone's daughters, as I answer for
my own. That is the future which my gratitude to their father and
mother, and my love for themselves, now offers to them. If you
think my proposal, gentlemen, a fit and fair proposal -- and I
see in your faces that you do -- let us not make the hard
necessities of our position harder still, by any useless delay in
meeting them at once. Let us do what we must do; let us act on
Norah's decision, and leave this house to-morrow. You mentioned
the servants just now, Mr. Pendril: I am ready to call them
together in the next room, and to assist you in the settlement of
their claims, whenever you please."

Without waiting for the lawyer's answer, without leaving the
sisters time to realize their own terrible situation, she moved
at once toward the door. It was her wise resolution to meet the
coming trial by doing much and saying little. Before she could
leave the room, Mr. Clare followed, and stopped her on the
threshold.

"I never envied a woman's feelings before," said the old man. "It
may surprise you to hear it; but I envy yours. Wait! I have
something more to say. There is an obstacle still left -- the
everlasting obstacle of Frank. Help me to sweep him off. Take the
elder sister along with you and the lawyer, and leave me here to
have it out with the younger. I want to see what metal she's
really made of."

While Mr. Clare was addressing these words to Miss Garth, Mr.
Pendril had taken the opportunity of speaking to Norah. "Before I
go back to town," he said, "I should like to have a word with you
in private. From what has passed today, Miss Vanstone, I have
formed a very high opinion of your discretion; and, as an old
friend of your father's, I want to take the freedom of speaking
to you about your sister."

Before Norah could answer, she was summoned, in compliance with
Mr. Clare's request, to the confere nce with the servants. Mr.
Pendril followed Miss Garth, as a matter of course. When the
three were out in the hall, Mr. Clare re-entered the room, closed
the door, and signed peremptorily to Magdalen to take a chair.

She obeyed him in silence. He took a turn up and down the room,
with his hands in the side-pockets of the long, loose, shapeless
coat which he habitually wore.

"How old are you?" he said, stopping suddenly, and speaking to
her with the whole breadth of the room between them.

"I was eighteen last birthday," she answered, humbly, without
looking up at him.

"You have shown extraordinary courage for a girl of eighteen.
Have you got any of that courage left?"

She clasped her hands together, and wrung them hard. A few tears
gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly over her cheeks.

"I can't give Frank up," she said, faintly. "You don't care for
me, I know; but you used to care for my father. Will you try to
be kind to me for my father's sake?"

The last words died away in a whisper; she could say no more.
Never had she felt the illimitable power which a woman's love
possesses of absorbing into itself every other event, every other
joy or sorrow of her life, as she felt it then. Never had she so
tenderly associated Frank with the memory of her lost parents, as
at that moment. Never had the impenetrable atmosphere of illusion
through which women behold the man of their choice -- the
atmosphere which had blinded her to all that was weak, selfish,
and mean in Frank's nature -- surrounded him with a brighter halo
than now, when she was pleading with the father for the
possession of the son. "Oh, don't ask me to give him up!" she
said, trying to take courage, and shuddering from head to foot.
In the next instant, she flew to the opposite extreme, with the
suddenness of a flash of lightning. "I won't give him up!" she
burst out violently. "No! not if a thousand fathers ask me!"

"I am one father," said Mr. Clare. "And I don't ask you."

In the first astonishment and delight of hearing those unexpected
words, she started to her feet, crossed the room, and tried to
throw her arms round his neck. She might as well have attempted
to move the house from its foundations. He took her by the
shoulders and put her back in her chair. His inexorable eyes
looked her into submission; and his lean forefinger shook at her
warningly, as if he was quieting a fractious child.

"Hug Frank," he said; "don't hug me. I haven't done with you yet;
when I have, you may shake hands with me, if you like. Wait, and
compose yourself."

He left her. His hands went back into his pockets, and his
monotonous march up and down the room began again.

"Ready?" he asked, stopping short after a while. She tried to
answer. "Take two minutes more," he said, and resumed his walk
with the regularity of clock-work. "These are the creatures," he
thought to himself, "into whose keeping men otherwise sensible
give the happiness of their lives. Is there any other object in
creation, I wonder, which answers its end as badly as a woman
does?"

He stopped before her once more. Her breathing was easier; the
dark flush on her face was dying out again.

"Ready?" he repeated. "Yes; ready at last. Listen to me; and
let's get it over. I don't ask you to give Frank up. I ask you to
wait."

"I will wait," she said. "Patiently, willingly."

"Will you make Frank wait?"

"Yes."

"Will you send him to China?"

Her head drooped upon her bosom, and she clasped her hands again,
in silence. Mr. Clare saw where the difficulty lay, and marched
straight up to it on the spot.

"I don't pretend to enter into your feelings for Frank, or
Frank's for you," he said. "The subject doesn't interest me. But
I _do_ pretend to state two plain truths. It is one plain truth
that you can't be married till you have money enough to pay for
the roof that shelters you, the clothes that cover you, and the
victuals you eat. It is another plain truth that you can't find
the money; that I can't find the money; and that Frank's only
chance of finding it, is going to China. If I tell him to go,
he'll sit in a corner and cry. If I insist, he'll say Yes, and
deceive me. If I go a step further, and see him on board ship
with my own eyes, he'll slip off in the pilot's boat, and sneak
back secretly to you. That's his disposition."

"No!" said Magdalen. "It's not his disposition; it's his love for
Me."

"Call it what you like," retorted Mr. Clare. "Sneak or Sweetheart
-- he's too slippery, in either capacity, for my fingers to hold
him. My shutting the door won't keep him from coming back. Your
shutting the door will. Have you the courage to shut it? Are you
fond enough of him not to stand in his light?"

"Fond! I would die for him!"

"Will you send him to China?"

She sighed bitterly.

"Have a little pity for me," she said. "I have lost my father; I
have lost my mother; I have lost my fortune -- and now I am to
lose Frank. You don't like women, I know; but try to help me with
a little pity. I don't say it's not for his own interests to send
him to China; I only say it's hard -- very, very hard on _me_."

Mr. Clare had been deaf to her violence, insensible to her
caresses, blind to her tears; but under the tough integument of
his philosophy he had a heart -and it answered that hopeless
appeal; it felt those touching words.

"I don't deny that your case is a hard one," he said. "I don't
want to make it harder. I only ask you to do in Frank's interests
what Frank is too weak to do for himself. It's no fault of yours;
it's no fault of mine -- but it's not the less true that the
fortune you were to have brought him has changed owners."

She suddenly looked up, with a furtive light in her eyes, with a
threatening smile on her lips.

"It may change owners again," she said.

Mr. Clare saw the alteration in her expression, and heard the
tones of her voice. But the words were spoken low; spoken as if
to herself -- they failed to reach him across the breadth of the
room. He stopped instantly in his walk and asked what she had
said.

"Nothing," she answered, turning her head away toward the window,
and looking out mechanically at the falling rain. "Only my own
thoughts."

Mr. Clare resumed his walk, and returned to his subject.

"It's your interest," he went on, "as well as Frank's interest,
that he should go. He may make money enough to marry you in
China; he can't make it here. If he stops at home, he'll be the
ruin of both of you. He'll shut his eyes to every consideration
of prudence, and pester you to marry him; and when he has carried
his point, he will be the first to turn round afterward and
complain that you're a burden on him. Hear me out! You're in love
with Frank -- I'm not, and I know him. Put you two together often
enough; give him time enough to hug, cry, pester, and plead; and
I'll tell you what the end will be -- you'll marry him."

He had touched the right string at last. It rung back in answer
before he could add another word.

"You don't know me," she said, firmly. "You don't know what I can
suffer for Frank's sake. He shall never marry me till I can be
what my father said I should be -- the making of his fortune. He
shall take no burden, when he takes me; I promise you that! I'll
be the good angel of Frank's life; I'll not go a penniless girl
to him, and drag him down." She abruptly left her seat, advanced
a few steps toward Mr. Clare, and stopped in the middle of the
room. Her arms fell helpless on either side of her, and she burst
into tears. "He shall go," she said. "If my heart breaks in doing
it, I'll tell him to-morrow that we must say Good-by!"

Mr. Clare at once advanced to meet her, and held out his hand.

"I'll help you," he said. "Frank shall hear every word that has
passed between us. When he comes to-morrow he shall know,
beforehand, that he comes to say Good-by."

She took his hand in both her own -- hesitated -- looked at him
-- and pressed it to her bosom. "May I ask a favor of you, before
you go?" she said, timidly. He tried to take his hand from her;
but she knew her advantage, and held it fast. "Suppose there
should be some change for the better?" she went on. "Sup pose  I
could come to Frank, as my fat her said I should come to him --
?"

Before she could complete the question, Mr. Clare made a second
effort and withdrew his hand. "As your father said you should
come to him?" he repeated, looking at her attentively.

"Yes," she replied. "Strange things happen sometimes. If strange
things happen to me will you let Frank come back before the five
years are out?"

What did she mean? Was she clinging desperately to the hope of
melting Michael Vanstone's heart? Mr. Clare could draw no other
conclusion from what she had just said to him. At the beginning
of the interview he would have roughly dispelled her delusion. At
the end of the interview he left her compassionately in
possession of it.

"You are hoping against all hope," he said; "but if it gives you
courage, hope on. If this impossible good fortune of yours ever
happens, tell me, and Frank shall come back. In the meantime -- "

"In the meantime," she interposed sadly, "you have my promise."

Once more Mr. Clare's sharp eyes searched her face attentively.

"I will trust your promise," he said. "You shall see Frank
to-morrow."

She went back thoughtfully to her chair, and sat down again in
silence. Mr. Clare made for the door before any formal
leave-taking could pass between them. "Deep!" he thought to
himself, as he looked back at her before he went out; "only
eighteen; and too deep for my sounding!"

In the hall he found Norah, waiting anxiously to hear what had
happened.

"Is it all over?" she asked. "Does Frank go to China?"

"Be careful how you manage that sister of yours," said Mr. Clare,
without noticing the question. "She has one great misfortune to
contend with: she's not made for the ordinary jog-trot of a
woman's life. I don't say I can see straight to the end of the
good or evil in her -- I only warn you, her future will be no
common one."

An hour later, Mr. Pendril left the house; and, by that night's
post, Miss Garth dispatched a letter to her sister in London.

THE END OF THE FIRST SCENE.

BETWEEN THE SCENES.

PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.

I.

_From Norah Vanstone to Mr. Pendril._

"Westmoreland House, Kensington, "August 14th, 1846.

"DEAR MR. PENDRIL -- The date of this letter will show you that
the last of many hard partings is over. We have left Combe-Raven;
we have said farewell to home.

"I have been thinking seriously of what you said to me on
Wednesday, before you went back to town. I entirely agree with
you that Miss Garth is more shaken by all she has gone through
for our sakes than she is herself willing to admit; and that it
is my duty, for the future, to spare her all the anxiety that I
can on the subject of my sister and myself. This is very little
to do for our dearest friend, for our second mother. Such as it
is, I will do it with all my heart.

"But, forgive me for saying that I am as far as ever from
agreeing with you about Magdalen. I am so sensible, in our
helpless position, of the importance of your assistance; so
anxious to be worthy of the interest of my father's trusted
adviser and oldest friend, that I feel really and truly
disappointed with myself for differing with you -- and yet I do
differ. Magdalen is very strange, very unaccountable, to those
who don't know her intimately. I can understand that she has
innocently misled you; and that she has presented herself,
perhaps, under her least favorable aspect. But that the clew to
her language and her conduct on Wednesday last is to be found in
such a feeling toward the man who has ruined us, as the feeling
at which you hinted, is what I can not and will not believe of my
sister. If you knew, as I do, what a noble nature she has, you
would not be surprised at this obstinate resistance of mine to
your opinion. Will you try to alter it? I don't mind what Mr.
Clare says; he believes in nothing. But I attach a very serious
importance to what _you_ say; and, kind as I know your motives to
be, it distresses me to think you are doing Magdalen an
injustice.

"Having relieved my mind of this confession, I may now come to
the proper object of my letter. I promised, if you could not find
leisure time to visit us to-day, to write and tell you all that
happened after you left us. The day has passed without our seeing
you. So I open my writing-case and perform my promise.

"I am sorry to say that three of the women-servants -- the
house-maid, the kitchen-maid, and even our own maid (to whom I am
sure we have always been kind) -- took advantage of your having
paid them their wages to pack up and go as soon as your back was
turned. They came to say good-by with as much ceremony and as
little feeling as if they were leaving the house under ordinary
circumstances. The cook, for all her violent temper, behaved very
differently: she sent up a message to say that she would stop and
help us to the last. And Thomas (who has never yet been in any
other place than ours) spoke so gratefully of my dear father's
unvarying kindness to him, and asked so anxiously to be allowed
to go on serving us while his little savings lasted, that
Magdalen and I forgot all formal considerations and both shook
hands with him. The poor lad went out of the room crying. I wish
him well; I hope he will find a kind master and a good place.

"The long, quiet, rainy evening out-of-doors -- our last evening
at Combe-Raven -- was a sad trial to us. I think winter-time
would have weighed less on our spirits; the drawn curtains and
the bright lamps, and the companionable fires would have helped
us. We were only five in the house altogether -- after having
once been so many! I can't tell you how dreary the gray daylight
looked, toward seven o'clock, in the lonely rooms, and on the
noiseless staircase. Surely, the prejudice in favor of long
summer evenings is the prejudice of happy people? We did our
best. We kept ourselves employed, and Miss Garth helped us. The
prospect of preparing for our departure, which had seemed so
dreadful earlier in the day, altered into the prospect of a
refuge from ourselves as the evening came on. We each tried at
first to pack up in our own rooms -- but the loneliness was more
than we could bear. We carried all our possessions downstairs,
and heaped them on the large dining-table, and so made our
preparations together in the same room. I am sure we have taken
nothing away which does not properly belong to us.

"Having already mentioned to you my own conviction that Magdalen
was not herself when you saw her on Wednesday, I feel tempted to
stop here and give you an instance in proof of what I say. The
little circumstance happened on Wednesday night, just before we
went up to our rooms.

"After we had packed our dresses and our birthday presents, our
books and our music, we began to sort our letters, which had got
confused from being placed on the table together. Some of my
letters were mixed with Magdalen's, and some of hers with mine.
Among these last I found a card, which had been given to my
sister early in the year by an actor who managed an amateur
theatrical performance in which she took a part. The man had
given her the card, containing his name and address, in the
belief that she would be invited to many more amusements of the
same kind, and in the hope that she would recommend him as a
superintendent on future occasions. I only relate these trifling
particulars to show you how little worth keeping such a card
could be, in such circumstances as ours. Naturally enough, I
threw it away from me across the table, meaning to throw it on
the floor. It fell short, close to the place in which Magdalen
was sitting. She took it up, looked at it, and immediately
declared that she would not have had this perfectly worthless
thing destroyed for the world. She was almost angry with me for
having thrown it away; almost angry with Miss Garth for asking
what she could possibly want with it! Could there be any plainer
proof than this that our misfortunes -- falling so much more
heavily on her than on me -- have quite unhinged her, and worn
her out? Surely her words and looks are not to be interpreted
against her, when she is not sufficiently mistress of herself to
exert her natural jud gment -- when she shows the unreason able
petulance of a child on a question which is not of the slightest
importance.

"A little after eleven we went upstairs to try if we could get
some rest.

"I drew aside the curtain of my window and looked out. Oh, what a
cruel last night it was: no moon, no stars; such deep darkness
that not one of the dear familiar objects in the garden was
visible when I looked for them; such deep stillness that even my
own movements about the room almost frightened me! I tried to lie
down and sleep, but the sense of loneliness came again and quite
overpowered me. You will say I am old enough, at six-and-twenty,
to have exerted more control over myself. I hardly know how it
happened, but I stole into Magdalen's room, just as I used to
steal into it years and years ago, when we were children. She was
not in bed; she was sitting with her writing materials before
her, thinking. I said I wanted to be with her the last night; and
she kissed me, and told me to lie down, and promised soon to
follow me. My mind was a little quieted and I fell asleep. It was
daylight when I woke -- and the first sight I saw was Magdalen,
still sitting in the chair, and still thinking. She had never
been to bed; she had not slept all through the night.

"'I shall sleep when we have left Combe-Raven,' she said. 'I
shall be better when it is all over, and I have bid Frank
good-by.' She had in her hand our father's will, and the letter
he wrote to you; and when she had done speaking, she gave them
into my possession. I was the eldest (she said), and those last
precious relics ought to be in my keeping. I tried to propose to
her that we should divide them; but she shook her head. 'I have
copied for myself,' was her answer, 'all that he says of us in
the will, and all that he says in the letter.' She told me this,
and took from her bosom a tiny white silk bag, which she had made
in the night, and in which she had put the extracts, so as to
keep them always about her. 'This tells me in his own words what
his last wishes were for both of us,' she said; 'and this is all
I want for the future.'

"These are trifles to dwell on; and I am almost surprised at
myself for not feeling ashamed to trouble you with them. But,
since I have known what your early connection was with my father
and mother, I have learned to think of you (and, I suppose, to
write to you) as an old friend. And, besides, I have it so much
at heart to change your opinion of Magdalen, that I can't help
telling you the smallest things about her which may, in my
judgment, end in making you think of her as I do.

"When breakfast-time came (on Thursday morning), we were
surprised to find a strange letter on the table. Perhaps I ought
to mention it to you, in case of any future necessity for your
interference. It was addressed to Miss Garth, on paper with the
deepest mourning-border round it; and the writer was the same man
who followed us on our way home from a walk one day last spring
-- Captain Wragge. His object appears to be to assert once more
his audacious claim to a family connection with my poor mother,
under cover of a letter of condolence; which it is an insolence
in such a person to have written at all. He expresses as much
sympathy -- on his discovery of our affliction in the newspaper
-- as if he had been really intimate with us; and he begs to
know, in a postscript (being evidently in total ignorance of all
that has really happened), whether it is thought desirable that
he should be present, among the other relatives, at the reading
of the will! The address he gives, at which letters will reach
him for the next fortnight, is, 'Post-office, Birmingham.' This
is all I have to tell you on the subject. Both the letter and the
writer seem to me to be equally unworthy of the slightest notice,
on our part or on yours.

"After breakfast Magdalen left us, and went by herself into the
morning-room. The weather being still showery, we had arranged
that Francis Clare should see her in that room, when he presented
himself to take his leave. I was upstairs when he came; and I
remained upstairs for more than half an hour afterward, sadly
anxious, as you may well believe, on Magdalen's account.

"At the end of the half-hour or more, I came downstairs. As I
reached the landing I suddenly heard her voice, raised
entreatingly, and calling on him by his name -- then loud sobs --
then a frightful laughing and screaming, both together, that rang
through the house. I instantly ran into the room, and found
Magdalen on the sofa in violent hysterics, and Frank standing
staring at her, with a lowering, angry face, biting his nails.