The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thorpe Regis, by Frances Peard

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Title: Thorpe Regis

Author: Frances Peard

Release Date: July 8, 2013 [EBook #43155]

Language: English

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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THORPE REGIS ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Thorpe Regis
By Frances Peard
Published by Roberts Brothers, Boston.
This edition dated 1874.

Thorpe Regis, by Frances Peard.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
THORPE REGIS, BY FRANCES PEARD.

CHAPTER ONE.

Nowadays the word "change," when applied to a place, seems so naturally
to carry in itself the ideas of growth, enlargement, and progress, that
we find a certain difficulty in adopting the word in its retrograde
sense, or of recognising other steps than those which we are in the
habit of looking upon as advancement.  And yet, if it be true that,
under the pressure of an ever-increasing population, hamlets have become
towns and fishing-villages seaports, it is no less certain that the
great march leaves behind it, or pushes out of its way, many stragglers
too sick, too feeble, or too weary for its ranks.  Thorpe Regis was such
a straggler.  Not to speak of those ancient days, the glories of which
only its name now kept in faint remembrance, there had been a time when
the great high road to London ran through its length.  Twice a week the
London coach lumbered up to the door of the Red Lion, changed horses,
let out its stiff and cramped passengers to stretch their limbs in the
paved space before the door, or refresh themselves with a tankard of
foaming ale in the stuffy little bar; and then lumbered off again out of
the midst of a gaping knot of ostlers and stable-men.  Twice a week came
the London coach back, bringing with it a stir of life and importance,
the latest messenger from the great world unknown to Thorpe except
through its medium,--more peremptory, more consequential, and more
exacting.  There was not a boy or man about the place but felt a sense
of interested proprietorship in the Defiance and the Highflyer, and a
pride in their respective performances.  From the tiny hamlets round,
lying in their green seclusions of elm-trees and apple orchards, the
rustics used to make muddy pilgrimages to Thorpe, to carry an occasional
letter to its post-office, and to watch the coach with steaming leaders
swinging down the hill.  That was the moment of triumph.  A few little
half-fledged boys, who were sure to be on the lookout, would hurrah
feebly and set off running as fast as their legs could carry them, and a
woman or two was generally at hand to cast up her eyes and exclaim at
the pace; but the majority preserved a stolid, satisfied silence.  That
Thorpe Regis was theirs and the London coach must stop there were facts
as undeniable as the Church, the Squire's house, and the Red lion
itself, and needed no comment.

Even facts, however, come to an end sometimes.  There arrived a day when
the railway, which had gradually been drawing nearer and nearer, reached
Underham, a little out-of-the-world village about five miles west of
Thorpe, which had hitherto looked humbly up to its more important
neighbour, and without a murmur had carried its little tribute of weekly
budgets to deposit at the door of the Red Lion.  So readily does human
nature accommodate itself to added greatness, that Underham was the
first to claim from Thorpe the homage which all these years it had
yielded ungrudgingly, and beyond a doubt it gave additional sharpness to
the stings of humiliation endured by the fallen village, to know that
its sudden depression had been caused by the prosperity of its rival.

For a short time the two coaches continued to run.  The Highflyer was
the first to succumb, while the Defiance, acting in accordance with its
name, struggled on for another six months as best it could.  But--
although there might be something heroic in so unequal a warfare, and a
certain dogged obstinacy in the refusal to accept defeat, which appeals
forcibly to our English sympathies--the result could not possibly be
averted.  The old people who held railway travelling to be a tempting of
Providence, and would fain have clung to the old ways to the end of
their days, were too few in number, and too seldom travellers at the
best, to support any means of conveyance whatever.  Their journeys were
rare events, and the last journey of all was not far off.  So gradually
the struggle came to an end.  Underham built, paved, started a High
Street, and gathered into itself all the traffic of the district.  A
company was formed to cut a canal and unite the railway with the river;
and there were timber-yards, black coal-wharves, and all the busy tokens
of prosperity, where, in former times, thatched cottages stood in the
midst of their gardens, and bees sucked the wild blossoms of the
honeysuckle.

Thorpe had long ago given up competing with its neighbouring rival.  The
old generation which resented the passing of its glories had passed away
itself; only here and there an old man, leaning against his gate, would
point with trembling finger up the hill, and in a cracked and feeble
voice would tell his grandchildren how the London coach once brought the
news that Nelson had beaten Bony at Trafalgar, and he, as a little lad,
had clipped his hands and cheered with the rest.  "They doan't get news
like that thyur down to Under'm, not they," he would end, shaking his
head scornfully.  But, as a rule, it was only the old people whose
memories pertinaciously resented the fallen fortunes of Thorpe.  To
others it was, as it had always been, a pretty old-fashioned village,
set in the midst of green pastures at the foot of a tolerably steep
hill, with a tangled network of lanes about it, and glimpses above the
high hedges of a distant purple moorland.  The cottages--broken by great
outer chimneys running up like buttresses--were whitewashed, with many
stages of descent between the first dazzling glaze of cleanliness and
the last tumble-down exposure of the red-brown cob; while the thatch,
beautiful in one season of its existence, presented as many gradations
as the plaster, from its crude freshness to the time when withies were
bound on it to prevent the wind from ripping it off, or the rain from
dropping, as it often dropped, into the low bedroom of the family.
Other houses there were of a more ambitious class.  A few shops kept up
a struggling existence, for although, except Weeks the butcher, no
Thorpe person was rash enough to depend upon a single trade, there were
combinations which developed a by no means contemptible ingenuity.
Draperies and groceries were disposed from the same counter, with only
an occasional inconvenience resulting from homely odours of tea or
candles clinging to the materials with which they had long rested in
closest neighbourhood.  And a triple establishment at the corner,
opposite the Red Lion, where the shoemaker kept the post-office and his
wife instructed the Thorpe children in a back kitchen, was sometimes
treated as the centre round which the village revolved.

Looking towards the hill which had been both the glory and the ruin of
Thorpe Regis, since the flatter ground about Underham had led the
surveyors for the railway to report more favourably upon its situation,
the church with its red stone tower lay to the right, a little way up a
lane, which in the hottest weather was hardly ever known to be dry; and
the Vicarage might be entered either through the churchyard, or more
directly from the village by an iron gate and drive.  At the time of
which I am writing, the vicar was the Rev William Miles, whose family
consisted of his wife, his son, and his daughter; and the squire of the
place was old Mr Chester of Hardlands.

Returning through the village and walking straight forward, instead of
taking the road to Underham, a tall, ugly brick house, with a gravel
sweep before it and a delightful old garden at the back, would soon be
reached.  It was inhabited by two brothers called Mannering, who had
once been well-known London lawyers.  Entering the house by three steps,
a low and old-fashioned hall presented itself in singular contrast to
the tastes of the day; a staircase with oak banisters fronted the door,
to the left was the dining-room, and a door beyond led you into the
study, where, about the hour of noon, it was very probable that the two
brothers would be found together.  At any rate it was so on the morning
on which my story opens.

The room was one of those comfortable dens which man, without the aid of
feminine taste and adornments, is occasionally so fortunate as to
construct for himself.  It was low and square, and had neither chintz
nor flowers to relieve the dark furniture; but the Turkey carpet,
although somewhat faded, had lost little of the richness of its finely
blended colours; the books which lined the walls were bound with a care
and finish which hinted at something approaching to bibliomania on the
part of their owners; the pictures, though few, were choice, and the
chairs were deep and inviting.  Moreover, a summer noonday brightened
whatever sombreness remained: sunshine came broadly in through a deep
oriel-window, and the scent of flowers and newly mown grass mingled
pleasantly with that of Russia leather and old morocco.  The room was a
cheerful room, although the cheerfulness might be of a subdued and
old-world character; and the writing-table, while conveying certain
suspicions of business transactions in the form of sundry bundles of
papers docketed and tied with red tape, bore also a proof of more
voluntary studies in a magnificently bound edition of Homer lying open
upon the blotting-pad.

Mr Mannering, who had but just pushed his chair away from the table,
was standing upon some low steps in the act of drawing another volume
from his amply filled book-shelves, and turning round as he did so to
answer a remark of his brother Robert's.  His slim figure was dressed
with scrupulous neatness; he had slender hands,--one of which now rested
on the top step, straight from the wrist, and, if one might draw an
illustration from another member, as it were on tiptoe; his shoulders
were a little stooping, his head bent and turned inquiringly; and his
quiet voice and smile contained something of quaint humour, and were
noticeable at once.

"My dear Robert," he was saying, "can there be any use in my giving an
opinion?  So far as I understand the matter, you are blaming Stokes for
not understanding the different natures of Gesnera elliptica and Gesnera
elongata.  How can I, who until this moment was ignorant of the
existence in the world of any Gesnera at all, be an equitable arbiter?"

"Wrong, Charles, wrong.  That is not the question; in fact, that has
nothing whatever to do with the question," said Mr Robert, resuming his
hasty march up and down the room.  "Stokes is a fool, and, as he never
was anything else, I suppose he can't help himself.  I don't complain of
that.  What I complain of is, that he should attempt to be more than a
fool.  Haven't I told you fifty times," he continued, stopping suddenly
before the delinquent, "that your business is to mind my orders, and not
to think that or think this, as if you were setting up for having a head
on your shoulders?  Haven't I told you that, eh?--answer me, sir."

"'Tain't no fault of mine," rejoined the gardener, slowly and doggedly.
"If this here Gehesnear had had a quiet time and no worriting of
charcoal and korkynit and such itemy nonsense, you wouldn't ha' seen a
mossel of dry-rot in the bulb.  That's what I says, and what Mr Anthony
says, too."

"Confound your impudence, and Mr Anthony's with it.  So you have been
taking him into consultation?  No wonder my Gesnera has come to a bad
end between your two wise heads.  Charles, do you hear?"

"Mr Anthony has mastered horticulture, has he?" said Mr Mannering,
turning his back upon the combatants, whose wrath was rapidly subsiding.
"If the boy goes on in this fashion there must be a new science created
for his benefit ere long.  Well, Robert, science has always had its
martyrs, and you should submit with a good grace to your Gesnera being
among them.  When did Mr Anthony come back?"

"Tuesday night, sir.  He comed up here yesterday, but you was to
Under'am."

"I forbid his going within ten yards of the stove plants," cried Mr
Robert, hastily.  "If I find him trying experiments in my hot-houses,
you shall be packed off, Stokes, as surely as I have put up with your
inconceivable ignorance for seven years.  I've not forgotten what
Anthony Miles's experiments are like.  Didn't he nearly blow up Underham
with the chemicals he got hold of when that idiot Salter's back was
turned?  Didn't he bribe the doctor's assistant, and half poison poor
old Miss Philippa with learning how to mix medicines, forsooth?  Didn't
he upset his mother, and frighten her out of the few wits she possesses,
by trying a new fashion of harnessing?  And now, as if all this were not
enough, my poor plants are to be the victims.  I forbid his coming
within the great gate,--I forbid your speaking to him while he is
possessed with this mania,--I forbid his looking at my Farleyense--"

"He've a seen that, sir," said Stokes, with his stolid features relaxing
into a grin.

"O, he has seen that, has he?" said Mr Robert, struggling between
indignation and gratified pride.  "Do you hear that, Charles?  Actually,
before I've had time to give my orders.  And, pray, what had Mr Anthony
to say of my Farleyense?"

"He said," replied the gardener, doling out the sentences to his
impatient master with irritating slowness, "as how he had comed through
Lunnon, and been to one o' they big flower-shows they talk so much
about.  And he said as there were a Farlyensy there--"

"Well, well?"

"As belonged to a dook--"

"Yes,--well, what did he say?  Can't you speak?"

"As warn't fit to hold a candle to owers," burst out Stokes
triumphantly, slapping his leg with an emphasis which made Mr
Mannering, who had returned to his seat at the writing-table, start and
look round in, mild expostulation.  His brother was rubbing his hands,
and beaming in every feature of his round face.

"To be sure, to be sure," he said in a tone of supreme satisfaction.
"Just what one would have expected.  But I am glad Anthony happened to
be up there just at this time, and I will say for the lad that he makes
better use of his eyes than three parts of the young fellows one meets
with.  So it was an inferior sort of article, was it?--with fronds half
the size, I'll lay a wager.  You hear, Charles, don't you?  Well,
Stokes, you have been exceedingly careful to treat that Farleyense in
the manner I showed you,--I knew it would answer,--here, man, here's
half a sovereign for you, and mind the earth doesn't get too dry."

"Thank ye, sir, thank ye," said Stokes, prudently abstaining from the
contradiction in which at another time he might have indulged.

"And, Stokes--"

"Yes, Mr Robert."

"If Mr Anthony comes up again, just let me know.  I should wish him to
see one or two of the other things in the house, but I prefer showing
them to him myself."

"It's most likely he'll be up again to-day, sir.  He wants Miss Winifred
to have a look at the plant."

"Certainly, certainly.  You can send in word when they come.  And,
Stokes--"

Stokes, who by this time had his hand upon the door, having tucked the
luckless Gesnera out of sight, turned obediently.

"No experiments, mind, no experiments."

"No, Mr Robert 'Specially korkynit," added the gardener in an audible
whisper, as he went out.  Whether or not Mr Robert heard him, it is
impossible to say.  Something like a red flush rose in his face, and he
looked hurriedly at his brother; but Mr Mannering was sitting back in
his deep chair, his elbows on its arms, his fingers joined at the tips,
his eyes fixed upon the volume before him, and if the shadow of a smile
just hovered about his lips, it might have been excited by some touch of
subtile humour in the pages which apparently absorbed his attention.
The younger brother fidgeted, went to the window, altered a slight
crookedness about the blind, stood there in his favourite attitude, with
his hands behind his back, and at length returned to the writing-table,
and took up one of the bundles of papers which were lying upon it.

"You have written to Thompson about the mortgage, I suppose?" he said in
a business-like tone which contrasted oddly with his previous bustling
excitement.

"Really, Robert," said Mr Mannering, looking up, and speaking
apologetically, "I believe I have done nothing of the kind.  Upon my
word, I do not know where my memory is going.  I had the pen in my hand
to begin the letter, and something must have put the matter out of my
head."

"Never mind.  If you can make room I'll sit down at once, and give the
fellow a summary of what he has to do."

But Mr Mannering was evidently annoyed with himself.

"I am growing old, that is the truth," he said despondingly.

"Old?--pooh!  Go and look in the glass, Charles, before you talk of
getting old to a man that is but three years your junior.  Old?--why,
there isn't a Mannering that comes to his prime before seventy.  I
expect to grow younger every day, and to have a game of leap-frog with
you before many years are past;--do you recollect the leap-frog in the
play-ground of the Grammar school?--why, it seems but yesterday that
great lout of a fellow, Hunt, went flying over my head, and struck out
with his hob-nailed shoes, and caught me just across the knuckles.  I
can feel the sting yet.  There, glance over this, and see if it will do
for Thompson.  I wonder where old Hunt is now."

"I met him in the city the other day with a grandson on either side."

"I dare say.  He was always too much of a blundering blockhead to
understand that the way to grow old is to have a tribe of children
treading on your heels.  You and I know better.  Here we live, as snug a
pair of cronies as is to be met with for twenty miles round, without any
such sharp contrasts disturbing our equanimity."

In answer to his brother's cheery words, and the hand which grasped his
as they were spoken, Mr Mannering shook his head a little sadly.

"Things might have been different--for you, Robert, especially.  Do you
think I have forgotten Margaret Hare?"

"Why should you forget, or I either?  Things might have been different,
as you say, but it does not follow they would have been better.  Look
here, Charles; we have not spoken much of Margaret Hare of late years.
I don't forget her, though I am an old blustering fellow, I don't forget
her, but I can look back and say God bless her, and thank him, too, that
things are as they are.  I don't want any change, and I have never
repented."

"It does my heart good to hear you say that, Robert."

"Well, there, it's said and done with.  Are you going to Underham
to-day?"

"I promised Bennett to look in.  He wants me to dine with him
to-morrow."

"That's very well for young fellows like you, but don't accept for me.
If I go off the premises we shall be having Anthony Miles up here with
an infallible compound for destroying caterpillars and all the plants
into the bargain.  I shall administer a lecture to-day, when he brings
Miss Winifred."

"Get her to do it."

"I'm half afraid she does it too much already.  It seems to me that
love-making is more altered than leap-frog since our day, Charles,--
Well, well, some things don't change, and luckily luncheon is a
permanent institution.  Come, and spare Mrs Jones's feelings."

"I am losing my appetite," said Mr Mannering, sighing.

"Come in, at all events."  And, with a little show of reluctance on the
part of the elder, the brothers walked off to the long dining-room lying
on one side of the library, and looking out upon the cheerful and sunny
garden which had somehow caught the spirit of Robert Mannering's
kindliness.

CHAPTER TWO.

  "So many worlds, so much to do,
  So little done, such things to be."

  _In Memoriam_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The path from Thorpe Regis to Hardlands lay across two or three of those
green fields which ran in and out of the village and gave it the air of
deep retirement remarked by the few visitors who jogged in a fly from
the nearest town to see the thatched cottages, the red church, the apple
orchards, and the great myrtles which grew boldly up to the very eaves
of the houses.  You might reach Hardlands in a more dignified and
deliberate fashion by driving along the old London road, and turning
into a short lane, when the iron gate would soon appear in sight; but
the most sociable and habitual means of approach was that which led
through the fields to a narrow shrubbery path, emerging from which the
long white house, with a green veranda stretching half-way across its
front, became pleasantly visible at once.

Between Hardlands and the Vicarage a very brisk communication was kept
up.  The Squire and the Vicar had not indeed been friends beyond the
term of Mr Miles's residence at Thorpe, but that had now reached a
period of fifteen years; and although fifteen years at their time of
life will not balance an earlier friendship of but five, and although
there was neither similarity nor natural sympathy between the two men,
yet neighbourhood and a certain amount of isolation had formed a bond
which either of the two would have found it painful to break.  Mr
Chester, moreover, had lost his wife while the Mileses were yet fresh
comers, and with two motherless girls left upon his hands it became a
natural thing to apply in his perplexity to Mrs Miles, a woman in whom,
whatever else might lack strength, it was not the sweet tenderness of
motherly instincts.  Winifred and little Bessie were at least as much in
the Vicarage nursery as their own, sharing all things with Marion and
Anthony; and if, as they grew older, a half-unconscious change took
place in their relationships, it had not been the means of loosening the
intimacy, or diminishing the number of mutual visits.  Bessie and her
father had that morning looked in at the Vicarage, and in the late
afternoon Marion and Anthony walked across the fields by the familiar
path along which they could have gone blindfold, towards Hardlands.

The day was one of those exhilarating days of early summer, before any
languor of great beat has stolen into its heart, and while the freshness
of spring still leaps up in breezy flutterings of leaf and bough.
Hay-making was going on vigorously, and the air was laden with the
grateful scent.  There were fields yet green with cool depths of waving
grass, and others where keen shadows fell upon the smoothly shaven turf.
Here and there a foxglove reared itself upwards in the hedges, here and
there dog-roses unfolded innocent little pink and white buds.  Without
any striking beauty in the landscape about Thorpe, a certain pastoral
and homely charm in the thatched cottages, the fields, the blossoming
orchards, and even in such unromantic details as the shallow duck-pond
under Widow Andrews's wall, made a more exacting demand upon the
affections of those who lived among them than could altogether be
understood by such as only looked upon them from the outside.  Anthony
Miles, as he walked along with his head a little thrown back, switching
the grass with a laurel rod confiscated from Widow Andrews's little
grandson, who had been caught by the brother and sister, as they passed,
using it as an instrument of torture upon a smaller and weaker
companion, was not thinking of the familiar objects with any conscious
sense of admiration, and yet they were affecting him pleasantly; so
that, although he might have said many other places were filling his
heart at this time,--for there is an age with both men and women when
place has even more power than people,--it is likely that, had he known
the truth about himself, he would, after all, have found Thorpe in the
warmest corner; old sleepy stupid Thorpe with its hay-ricks, its bad
farming, and its broad hedges cumbering the land, against which he was
at this moment inveighing to Marion.

"Did you ever see anything cut up like these half-dozen acres?  There's
one slice taken out, and here's another; a hedge six foot across at the
bottom if it's an inch, and a row of useless elms sucking all the
goodness out of the ground.  I don't believe there's a richer bit of
soil in all England, and they can do no more than get a three-cornered
mouthful of pasture out of it for one old cow."

"O Anthony, why can't you let things alone, when they don't concern you?
My father has allowed you to have your own way about the paddock, and
you surely need not tease Mr Chester to death over his hedges."

"That is so like a woman, who can never see anything beyond her own
shadow.  Can't you understand that it would be for the good of Thorpe if
the ground that feeds people's mouths were better drained and if there
were more of it?"

"So this is to be the next hobby, is it?"

"Farming?  Hum, I don't know.  If I could induce old Chester to go in
for a few experiments, it might be worth while, perhaps, to get up the
subject.  But everything is on such an absurdly small scale here, that
it would be hardly possible to do anything satisfactory."

"And you really mean that you would be willing for all your schemes to
resolve themselves into the miserable mediocrity of settling down at
Thorpe and improving the hedges of the district!" said Marion
indignantly.

"One might do a good deal in that way," Anthony answered, with a
mischievous twinkle in his eyes as he looked at his sister.  Any one who
had seen him at that moment must have been struck with the extreme
boyishness of his appearance.  It might have been the curly light brown
hair, or, more likely, the slight figure and sloping shoulders, but
something there was which had changed but little for the last ten years,
and kept him a boy still.  Marion looked years older.  He was always
irritating her by his quick changes, his enthusiasm, his projects for
the good of other people.  So long as he might have his own way in the
doing, there was nothing that he would not have done.

Marion had small sympathy for such notions; she clung to what was her
own with a passion and a wilfulness which made her blind to what she
would not see, but she did not care to go out of that circle.  Yet
people said that the brother and sister were alike, and to a certain
extent the world's judgments were correct, as the world's judgments
often are, only that a hundred little things too subtile for so large a
beholder made a gulf between the two.  He provoked her constantly as he
was provoking her now.

"I sometimes think you will end in doing nothing," she said, walking on
quickly.

"So do I, a dozen times a day.  Who's this coming?--isn't it that fellow
Stephens?  I've a bone to pick with him, I can tell him.  What do you
suppose he's after now?  He wants Maddox to let him have that bit of
ground close by the school to build a chapel upon.  I think I see it!
Stokes gave me a hint of it, and I've been bullying Maddox all the
morning, and pretty well got his word for it at last.  The canting
methodistical rascal!  I wish I could see him kicked out of the place."

Anthony was speaking with great energy.  He and Marion were walking
through the cool meadows, beyond which lay the softly swelling hills.
To the left, a little in front of them, the Hardlands shrubbery gate led
into a thin belt of fir-trees, but the path continued through the
meadows, until it crossed a small stream, and reached a lane branching
from the high road.  People liked to turn away from the hard dust and
get into these pretty fields, where soft shadows fell gently and the
delicate cuckoo flowers grew; and Mr Chester had tacitly suffered a
right of way to be established, though he inveighed against it on every
occasion.  It was a grievance with which he would not have parted for
the world, even if his own natural kind-heartedness had not been
entirely on the side of the tired wayfarers, and nobody took any notice
of it.  So that even Anthony's indignation did not extend itself to the
fact that David Stephens was coming towards them along the narrow track.

"I shall go on: Winifred will be wondering what has become of us," said
Marion, who had not sufficiently forgiven her brother to be ready to
take his side in the contest.  He stood still with his hand on the gate,
waiting for Stephens to pass, so determinedly, that the man as he
reached the spot stopped at once.

He was much shorter than Anthony, as short, indeed, as an ordinary-sized
boy of fourteen, and there was an actual though not very prominent
deformity of figure.  Yet this warp of nature seldom struck those who
fronted him, for the head and face were so powerful and remarkable that
they irresistibly seized the attention.  Even Anthony, who was as
enthusiastic in his prejudices as in his other feelings, was conscious
of something in the eyes which checked his first flow of resentment.  He
would have preferred beginning with a more trenchant opening than--

"Hallo, Stephens, you're the person I wanted to see."

"Did you, sir?  Well, this is the second time I've been to Thorpe
to-day."

"Yes, I know that," said Anthony, recovering himself, and feeling the
words come to him.  "I've seen Maddox, he's just been at our house, and
what you're after won't do at all.  Do you suppose my father would stand
one of your ranting places stuck up just under his nose?  You'd better
take yourself off a few miles, for, let me tell you, Thorpe doesn't want
to see you, and you may find it a little hotter residence than you have
any fancy for."

"I am not afraid of threats, sir," said Stephens quietly.

Anthony had been speaking in an authoritative tone, as if his decision
quite set the matter at rest, and opposition irritated him as usual.

"I simply tell you what will happen if you come where you're not
wanted," he said, raising his voice.  "And as to the chapel, we'll take
care that is never built.  You may call it a threat if you please, but
it's one that will find itself a fact."

"Mr Miles, the word of God has borne down fiercer things than you are
like to hold over me, and it will do so yet again.  I am sorry to go
against you, but I must either do that or against the inward
conviction."

"Cant," muttered Anthony wrathfully.  "And so you suppose you're to have
that field?"

"Mr Maddox has as good as promised it, sir."

"You'll find him in a different mind now."

"He'll not go against his word!"

For the first time during the interview Stephens's quietness was broken
by a touch of passion.  His eyes, lit up by a sudden fire, fastened
themselves anxiously upon Anthony.  Anthony, who had hitherto been the
angry one of the two, felt a contemptuous satisfaction at having raised
this wrath.

"His word!  Things are not done quite so easily as all that.  You had
better turn and go back again, for all the good you'll get by going on."

"I should be glad of a direct answer, sir," said David, restraining
himself with an effort.  "Has Mr Maddox told you downright that he will
not let us have the field?"

"Yes, he has."

Stephens's face had lost its red flush, but his eyes still held their
deep fire.

"Then God forgive you!" he said in a low passionate voice, opening out
his hands slightly, and walking away with quick steps.  Anthony did not
look after him; he turned into the little path, and began to whistle
with a certain sense of pleasure in his victory which was not checked by
any pitiful misgivings.

CHAPTER THREE.

  "God Almighty first planted a garden; and indeed it is the purest of
  human pleasures."

  Bacon's _Essays_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

As Anthony emerged from the little path under the fir-trees, he saw that
Winifred and Marion were in the garden, and that Winifred was gardening,
her gown drawn up, gauntleted gloves on her hands, and a trowel held
with which she was at work.

"We shall be ready in a minute," she called out, nodding to him.  "I am
so glad you are come, for I thought you might have forgotten our walk."

"It was too hot before," said Anthony, strolling towards them, and
stretching himself lazily upon the grass.

"And I have done no end of work.  You see those bare places in the beds,
over which you were so unmerciful, are quite filled.  Luckily Thomas had
a great many surplus plants this year."

As she stood up, a great clump of flowering shrubs--guelder roses, pink
thorn, azaleas--made a pretty and variegated background.  She had drawn
off her big gloves, and was beating the earth from them as she spoke,
and smiling down upon him with bright pleasantness.  Anthony looked at
her, and a satisfied expression deepened in his eyes.  He had hold of
one of the ribbons of her dress, and was fingering it.

"Why don't you always wear lilac?" was his somewhat irrelevant answer.

"You don't attend to what I am saying," said Winifred, a little
impatiently.  "I want to know what you think of the flowers, and not of
my dress."

"Why should I not talk about that as well?  You have at least as much to
do with the one as the other."

"It is not what I have to do with it, but how it looks when it is done.
Marion, can't you prevent Anthony from being frivolous?"

"Don't ask Marion," said Anthony, biting a bit of grass.  "She has been
falling foul of me all the way here, though neither of us can exactly
say what it has been about.  My ruffled feathers want smoothing down, if
you please, Winifred."

"You don't look ruffled a bit."

"That is my extraordinary amiability."

"Marion did very well to scold you, I am sure."

"And that is the way women jump at conclusions."

"I shall jump at the conclusion presently that you mean to go to sleep
on the grass, and leave us to walk to the Red House alone."

"I?  I am ready to start this moment, and the time you have supposed to
be wasted I have spent in making up my mind that a mass of amaranthus
ought to replace the verbenas in that bed."

"Amaranthus!  O Anthony, they would be so gloomy."

"Just the effect you want, when everything is too flaming."

"No, no," said Winifred, resolutely holding her ground.  "You must find
your relief at the back, for the flowers themselves can't be too
bright."

"Now, Winifred, there are certain principles," began Anthony, sitting
upright and speaking energetically, "principles of contrast, by means of
which you get a great deal more out of your brilliancy than when you run
one colour into the other.  I wish you would let me explain them to
you."

"Understanding the principles would never make me doubt my eyes.  No,
indeed, I am very sorry, but I could not sacrifice those splendid
verbenas after watering them for so many evenings."

"You should not water at all."

Winifred looked at him, laughed, and shook her head.

"I don't mean to give way to these horrible new theories.  To begin
with, they would break Thomas's heart."

"O, very well," said Anthony, getting up, affronted.  "Did you say you
were ready to start?  Marion!  We are waiting."

He marched before them in evident displeasure; Winifred, who knew that
his discontent would not last long, looking at him with a little
amusement.  They skirted the field where the haymakers had been at work
all day, and the sweet dry grass lay tossed about in fragrant swathes as
the forks had dropped it.  Across, between the elm-trees, the sun shone
upon the canal and the Underham houses, while, beyond again, lay meadows
and wooded hills, and the soft western moorland.  On the other side of
the nearest field was a figure on an old bay cob, with a dog standing by
his side, and a man pointing.  This was the Squire, too deep in
consultation over some boundary annoyances to notice the little party
scrambling over their stiles, and waving every now and then to attract
his attention.

"Which of you are going to dine at the Bennetts' to-morrow?"

"Papa, Anthony, and I."

"And is Marmaduke to be there?"

"I suppose so.  It depends on the trains."

"And Mr Mannering, of course.  Marion, did you ever hear that there is
a romantic story about those brothers?"

"What's that?" said Anthony, stopping and looking round.

"It was Miss Philippa who told me," Winifred explained, "and she was not
at all clear about it; but it seems that one of them was engaged to a
lady, when his brother fell into a bad state of health, requiring great
care for a long while, and the other gave up everything, devoted
himself, nursed, prevented people from finding out how incapable he had
become, and was really the means of saving his life, or his reason, or
whatever was in danger.  But then comes the sad part.  The lady grew
tired of waiting, and married some one else."

"It is rather a complicated story.  And which is the hero?"

"Mr Mannering," Marion said, promptly.

"I believe it to have been Mr Robert," said Anthony, in a tone of
decision.

"So do I," said Winifred, looking brightly at him, happy in fulfilling a
longing against which she not infrequently fought more steadily, from
thinking that it was not well for him to carry matters altogether as he
liked.

Anthony smiled, and fell back a little with his good-humour restored.
After all, it was a pleasant thing to be walking through the Thorpe
fields with Winifred, who had a certain charm about her, harmonising
with what surrounded them.  In a crowded room she might have passed with
little notice; but here, in the open air, with an evening breeze
sweeping up from the sea, six miles distant, and fresh cool scents just
touching it, the buoyancy of her step, the clearness of her voice, and
the frank honesty of her eyes, were all in agreement with the country
life in which she had grown to womanhood, and the outer influences of
which work in proportion as we admit them.  That day, also, had been
full of light-hearted happiness.  Anthony had returned from an absence
of some months, which he had spent in travelling.  He and she were in
excellent accord in spite of their little passage at arms, and they were
just in an easy social position towards each other, which made it seem
scarcely possible that they should not always go on as smoothly.  It was
when they were together in what is called society that little storms
arose, that Winifred's eyes would suddenly flash, and some quick speech
descend upon Anthony, in abrupt contrast to the sugared politeness which
had been flowing in pleasant streams.  It was natural that he should
resent it.  With an older experience she might have treated him
differently; but her very eager longing that he should rise above what
she herself despised made her impatient that he did not rise at once.
It is no untrue assertion that too close knowledge is an obstacle to
love.  When a boy and girl grow up together, the light beats too
strongly for those delicate and shadowy enchantments, those delicious
surprises, those tender awakenings, by which others are led on all
unconsciously.  It may, now and then, lose no particle of strength
because of this, but such cases are at least rare.  Winifred had a
hundred misgivings for Anthony, who had none for himself.  It seemed to
him as if nothing were out of his reach, as if neither time, nor
opportunity, nor success could fail.  Was he not twenty-four, with a
lifetime before him?  Had he not gained the Chancellor's gold medal?  He
had, moreover, that sense of fellowship, which more than any other gift
heartens a man for work among his kind; he was full of enthusiasm for
doing good, for upholding right, for beating down wrong,--he would be an
author, a reformer, a politician,--he would raise Thorpe by penny
readings,--he would improve the Hardlands property by inducing the
Squire to sweep away his hedges,--the church singing should be converted
into harmony, ignorance into intelligence, wrong into right,--are there
any limits or misgivings which trouble these young champions who leap
into the arena, and believe a hundred eyes are upon them?  It was
Winifred who looked at him and trembled.

Mr Robert Mannering met them inside the gates.

"I saw you coming," he said.  "Well, Anthony, and so you are back from
your travels, and your father says you have not yet made up your mind
what new worlds you shall conquer.  I congratulate you.  Only, my dear
boy, don't make Stokes your prime minister.  Leave pottering about
amongst leaf-mould and bell-glasses to superannuated old fellows like
me.  Miss Winifred, I am proud to hear that you are come to see my
Farleyense."

"Anthony says it is such a fine plant."

"It is a fine plant.  It might be almost anything," said Anthony.  "I
told Stokes that if I were he I should treat it differently.  I wish he
would let me have a turn at it for a fortnight."  Mr Mannering gave a
quick gasp, and stood still to look at the speaker.

"I shall keep the key in my pocket until he is out of the place.  Miss
Winifred, Miss Marion,--we are old friends,--detain him at the Vicarage,
at Hardlands, find some innocent occupation for him which shall not
harrow old gentlemen's pet hobbies.  Set him to cure Miss Philippa's
rheumatism,--I don't wish to be uncharitable, but by her own account it
can't be worse than it is, whereas my Farleyense--Good Heavens, I shall
not sleep for a week for thinking of the peril it is in."

"Of course, there must be a certain amount of risk," said Anthony
coolly; "but, after all, the experience gained for others is worth more
than the thing itself.  That always seems to me the only object in
gardening.  However, if you don't care about it, sir,--that's enough.
I'm going to hunt up the tortoise."

"Do, do, by all means.  The fellow's shell is thick enough to protect
him.  This way, Miss Winifred.  I hope you don't mind a few steps.  You
are judicious in your time, for I always think this soft late light is
more becoming than any other to the plants.  There,--a picture, isn't
it?  I almost wish Anthony had come down after all."

"He is too full of projects to be a safe visitor just at present," said
Winifred, shaking her head, but secretly proud in her heart.

"I'll defy him to find a finer Farleyense anywhere, at any rate," said
Mr Mannering valiantly.  He was looking at Winifred as he spoke, and
thinking that Thorpe had other pretty things to show Anthony.  There was
a soft gloom in the house, out of which seemed to spring the delicate
green feathery ferns full of still strange life, and Winifred, standing
among them, had a sweet light in her eyes and a half-smile on her lips.
It was not very often that people agreed she was pretty, and then they
were probably thinking of the fresh colouring, the bright hair, and that
indescribable fairness of youth which, even without other claim to
beauty, carries with it so great a charm; but the true attraction in her
face consisted in a certain nobility of expression, of which the delight
would but deepen as the more fleeting fairness departed.

"Here is an exquisite little Cystopteris, Miss Marion," said Mr Robert,
beginning to bustle about, "and that is the finest hare's-foot in the
county.  I want to have a look at your oak fern, but I must go into
Underham to-morrow.  Miss Philippa has a quarterly paper which requires
signing at least five times every year."

"Marmaduke comes to-morrow," said Marion, who had been silent.  "Can't
he sign his aunt's papers?"

"No, I am sorry to tell you that the law makes a distinction between a
man and a magistrate.  So Marmaduke comes to-morrow?  And he and
Anthony, I have no doubt, will chalk out a fresh career for every day in
the week when they get together."

"There is not much room for what you call a career in poor Marmaduke's
case," said Marion, drawing her gloves tightly through her hands, and
keeping her head turned away, so that only a sharply cut profile could
be seen.  "A clerk in a merchant's office does not look forward to
anything very brilliant."

"Unless he wins the heart of the daughter of the principal partner, and
you have been so hardhearted as to cut that chance of promotion from
under his feet.  Well, these are the contrarieties of life, but they
tumble into shape somehow at the end, so keep a good heart, my dear."

He said it with an odd quaver in the cheery voice, although neither of
the two noticed it.  They were thinking of themselves with the
unconscious egotism of youth.  There were all sorts of tender visions
flitting about among the soft shadowy ferns, and some not less tender
than the rest that they were dim with age and years.  Marion went on
after a momentary pause:--

"I suppose his best chance lies with Mr Tregennas."

"Yes and no, and no more than yes, I take it.  If Marmaduke will stick
to his business and not allow imaginary prospects to unsettle him, they
may do him no harm.  But it's ill waiting for dead men's shoes,
especially if you do not step into them at the last.  There is nothing
so likely to sour a man's life."

"There cannot be doubt when he has promised," Marion said, turning
towards him with a movement which was abrupt enough to betray a little
anxiety in the words.

"He has, has he?"

"Yes, indeed.  Marmaduke has often told me how much Mr Tregennas said,
and no one, no one could be so cruel as not to keep to his word in such
a matter!"

"Not intentionally,--at least, not many men.  But, my dear Miss Marion,
you never will be an old lawyer, and so I don't promise that you will
ever find out how much of what we hear depends upon what we think, or
how much of what we say depends upon what we believe we ought to have
said.  Now, you have not gone into such ecstasies as I expected over my
Farleyense, but by to-morrow my imagination will have supplied all your
deficiencies, and yours will make you ready to swear that you were as
prettily enthusiastic as the occasion demanded."

"I beg your pardon," said Marion, smiling.

"Don't do that.  Have I not just explained to you the recipe for
harmonising the minor discords of one's life?  There is some happy stuff
in our composition--vanity, if you will--which fills up what is
wanting."

"Are you there?  Shall I come down?" said Anthony's voice from the top
of the steps.

"No, no, wait a moment; we are coming, we are coming this instant," said
Mr Mannering, hurriedly.  "Take care of the wet, Miss Winifred,--here
we are; thank you, yes, I prefer to lock the house for the night.  And
how did you find the tortoise, and what did you do to him, Anthony?"

"Do to him?  I did nothing,--at least, I only moved him to the sunny
side of the wall, where he will be a good deal better off."

They were strolling towards the road, Mr Mannering with his hands
locked behind his back, and a twinkle of amusement about eyes and mouth.

"Thank you, my dear boy, thank you," he said, gravely.  "But I should be
a good fourteen stone to carry, and, to tell the truth, I would rather
stay where I am."

"What do you mean?" said Anthony, puzzled.  "Was I talking to myself?  I
beg your pardon,--it was the oddest idea,--do you know, just for a
moment I had a feeling at the back of my neck as if I were the
tortoise."

CHAPTER FOUR.

  "I did but chide in jest: the best loves use it
  Sometimes; it sets an edge upon affection:
  When we invite our best friends to a feast,
  'Tis not all sweetmeat that we set before 'em;
  There's something sharp and salt, both to whet appetite
  And make 'em taste their wine well."

  Middleton.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

From what has been said of the resources of Thorpe Regis, it will be
easily understood that it did not possess any public vehicle capable of
conveying its inhabitants to dinner-parties or other solemnities.  When
such a conveyance became an absolute necessity, there was sent from
Underham a fly which had a remarkable capacity for adapting itself to
different occasions.  A pair of white gloves for the driver and a grey
horse presented at once the festive appearance considered desirable for
a wedding, while the lugubrious respectability demanded by an English
funeral was attained by the substitution of black for white, and by a
flowing hat-band which almost enveloped the little driver.  Its natural
appearance, divested of any special grandeur, was that of a roomy,
heavily built, and some what battered vehicle, which upon pressure would
hold one or two beyond the conventional four, and carry the Thorpe world
to the evening gayeties of the neighbourhood with no greater amount of
shaking and bumping than habit had led them to consider an almost
indispensable preparation to a dinner with their friends.

On the evening of Mr Bennett's party, the Underham fly might have been
seen drawn up in front of the Vicarage porch, a snug little excrescence
on the south side of the house, and scarcely a dozen yards from the
church.  The dinner-hour was half past six, and it was a three quarters
of an hour's drive to Underham, so that the sun was still slanting
brightly upon the old house, green with creepers of long years' growth;
upon the narrow border of sweet, old-fashioned flowers that ran along
the front, edged with box, and separated from the grass-plot by a little
gravel walk; upon the fine young cedar half-way between the house and
the road, the tall tritonias, and the cluster rose that had clambered
until it festooned two ilex-trees with its pure white blossoms.  Some
charm of summer made the homeliness beautiful,--the repose of the last
daylight hours, the cheerfulness of children's laughter in the village,
the midges dancing in the quiet air, the shadows on the grass where
pink-tipped daisies folded themselves serenely.  Even the wrinkled face
of Job White, the one-eyed driver, had caught something of glow from the
sunshine, as he sat and conversed affably from his box with Faith, the
parlour-maid at the Vicarage, a rosy-faced girl, not disposed, as Job
expressed it, "to turn agin her mate because it warn't pudden."  Job
himself was one of the characters of the neighbourhood, a good-humoured
patron of such of the gentry round as he considered respectable, and
intensely conservative in his opinions.  He had begun life as a Thorpe
baby, and, although professional exigencies afterwards led to his
settling at Underham, he did not attempt to disguise his contempt for
the new-fangled notions prevalent in that place.  One of his
peculiarities led him to decline accepting as correct all time which
could not be proved to agree with the church clock at Thorpe.  The
country alteration to what was called railway time which took place some
twenty or five-and-twenty years ago he could not speak of except in
terms of contemptuous bitterness; and, had it been practicable, he would
have insisted upon remaining twenty minutes behind the rest of the world
to the end of his days; but as his calling rendered this an
impossibility, he contented himself with utterly ignoring the station
clock, and obliging all those he drove to accommodate their hours to
those of Thorpe.  "He've been up thaes foorty years, and he ain't likely
to be wrong now," was his invariable answer to remonstrances; and
perhaps there could be no stronger testimony to the old west-world
prejudices that, in spite of changes, yet clung about Underham, than the
fact that with these opinions for his guide Job White still drove the
Milman Arms fly.

At the moment when Faith, shading her eyes from the sun, was looking
brightly up with instinctive coquetry, Job was settling in his waistcoat
fob the globular silver watch which he had duly compared with his oracle
in the tower.  It was so bulky that it required a peculiar twist of his
body to get it into the pocket at all, and wheft that difficulty was
surmounted it formed an odd sort of protuberance, apt to impress
beholders with a sympathetic sense of discomfort Faith, however,
regarded it with due respect.

"True to a minit," Job said in a tone of contented self-satisfaction.
"Now, Faith, my dear, suppose you wos just to step in and tell Miss
Marion that, without she's pretty sharp, we sha'n't get to Under'm by
half past six, nor nothing like it."

"She's on the stairs now," said Faith, reconnoitring, "and if there
isn't Sarah come out of the kitchen to see her drest!  I'm sure it is a
wonder if she can stand there for a minute and not say something sharp.
It wants the patience of a saint to live with Sarah."

"And that doesn't come to everybody as it do to me,--with their name,"
said Job.  "She's a woman who isn't tried with a hitch in her tongue,
but she's a neat figure for a cook."

"Well, I'm sure!" said Faith, pouting a little.  "I never could see
nothing in Sarah's figure,--but you'd better get down and open the door,
Mr White."

With so great a scarcity of conveyances, combinations were matters of
necessity in Thorpe, and the fly had already driven to the Red House in
order to pick up Mr Mannering.  The delay in starting had been caused
at least as much by the Vicar's desire to hear his opinion upon a
certain pamphlet which, when sought for, turned out to be missing, as by
Marion's lingering doubts between the respective merits of two white
muslins; but the truth was that punctuality did not exist at the
Vicarage, and the church bell on Sundays stretched itself indefinitely,
until the Vicar himself looked out from the vestry door and nodded for
it to stop.  Mr Mannering, having, on the contrary, a lawyer's respect
for time, had for the last ten minutes been sitting upon thorns, taking
out his watch, and regarding the door with as much uneasiness as a
courteous attention to Mrs Miles's household difficulties would permit.
Anthony had walked into Underham to meet Marmaduke Lee, and Mr
Mannering fell uninterruptedly to Mrs Miles's care, until the Vicar
opened the door and informed him that they were ready, with the really
serious conviction common to unpunctual people that his visitor was the
person for whom they had all been waiting.

They were in the hall and out in the little porch at last: the Vicar
with his broad shoulders and plain face, Mrs Miles coming softly down
to see them off, and pulling out Marion's skirts with a little motherly
anxiety.  They were all talking and laughing, and the sun still shone
bravely on Marion's pretty gown and the roses she had twisted into her
dark hair, and the jessamine which clambered to the topmost windows.
Sniff, the Skye terrier, was dancing round the old grey horse, and
barking wildly.  Outside, in the little wet lane, brown sweet-breathed
cows were plodding slowly back to their farm, and stopping now and then
to contemplate the green lawn of the Vicarage, until Sniff, catching
sight of an intruding head, became frantic with a new excitement, and,
scrambling to the top of the hedge, was last seen as the fly turned out
of the gate, a ball of flying hair in pursuit of a retreating enemy.

It was through a curious tangle of lanes that Job jolted his load, a
little more unmercifully than usual, lest the time which had been lost
should be laid to the account of the Thorpe clock by unbelievers at
Underham.  The hedge-rows were so high that the sun at this hour of the
day shone only upon the tops of the blackthorn and nut bushes which
crowned them, shone with a keen yellow light contrasting strongly with
the dim shadows falling underneath upon the long grass and moss.  But
every now and then a break in the hedge, or a gate leading into the
fields, revealed a sweet homelike view,--with no bold glory of form or
colour, but tender with subtle harmonies of tints melting one into the
other, a haze of blue, white smoke curling upwards, straw-thatched
barns, with quiet apple orchards lying round them, where the grass grew
long and cool about the stalks of the old trees, and the young fruit
mellowed through the kindly summer nights.  By and by the lanes widened,
they passed an old mill, half hidden by ash-trees, drove between flat
meadows, crossed a bridge, and reached the outskirts of Underham.  Mr
Mannering and the Vicar had fallen into a discussion upon a new edition
of Sophocles, and Marion looked out of the window with a happy glow upon
her face, not understanding how the two men should bury themselves in
those old-world interests, when life was rushing on, full of charm, of
pain, of wonderment.  After all, it is but a world of new editions.
Sophocles was no further removed from them than the hundred hopes and
fears with which she and Marmaduke beguiled the time until they should
meet again, touch each other's hands, look into each other's eyes.  But
Marion had not learnt this yet.

The Bennetts' house stood directly against the road, and the wall along
which for some distance the footpath ran was the wall of their garden;
the Underham boys holding fabulous views of the fruit that ripened on
its innermost side, where green geometrical lines were marked out upon
the warm brick.  Mr Bennett was a lawyer, and having no children, he
and his wife had adopted the daughter of a sister of Mrs Bennett's,
treating her in every respect as though she were their own child.  Miss
Lovell was smiling up at Anthony when the Vicarage party arrived, and
Mr Chester, who was always a little loud and peremptory in his voice,
was holding forth to Mr Bennett upon a local election.

"I should be the last person in the world to wish to influence anybody,"
he was saying, "but you'll not deny, I suppose, that the other men are a
pair of fools."

"Still, one doesn't altogether like to go against North,--he as good as
belongs to Underham."

"Don't see the value of that," said the Squire, with a little roughness;
and then dinner was announced, and they all trooped down.  Anthony sat
between an elderly lady and Miss Lovell, the Bennetts' niece, Marmaduke
had Marion, and Winifred's neighbour was the son of Sir James Milman,
the member.  Anthony was always popular in society, so that to secure
him was almost a pledge to the host and hostess that things would go
brightly; moreover, he had but just returned from his travels, and an
added charm of novelty hung about him.  Even Mrs Featherly, next to
whom he was sitting, the wife of the rector of Underham, and one of
those excellent women whom people all blamed themselves for disliking,
began to look as if the fault-finding on which she rested as the moral
backbone of her character was yielding to Anthony's pleasantness.

"You have seen a great deal since you left home, Mr Anthony, of one
kind and another, and I hope you will make good use of it," she said
graciously.

"He earned his holiday," said Mr Bennett, nodding his head.  "After
such great things at Cambridge, a man can't do better than take a run
and let his brain have a little rest.  I'm never for overwork."

"Only I do hope you have written some more beautiful poetry," Miss
Lovell put in on the other side.  She was a pretty girl, fair, with a
long soft curl falling on her shoulder, and a voice which had a little
imploring emphasis in it.  "And not in Latin this time, or you really
must send us a translation."

There was a good deal said in the same strain, to which Anthony made
laughing disclaimers, liking the incense all the while.  He was
conscious of exaggerations, but it is not difficult to forgive
exaggerations which lead along so pleasant a path, and his was a nature
to grow warmly responsive under kindly treatment, so that his
conversation became brighter and more entertaining, until even Mrs
Bennett, who was contentedly eating strawberries, made the effort of
inquiring at what they were laughing.

"Mr Miles is telling us such amusing things," said Miss Lovell, with
unmistakable admiration in her tone.

"Amusing things!" repeated the Squire; "I never hear anything worth
listening to of any sort.  Bless you, they talk nineteen to the dozen in
these days, but there's no making head nor tail of it when all's said.
It's speechifying and argufying, and nothing done.  That's what made
half the mischief in the Crimea.  We sha'n't get anything again like the
old times, when there were no railways, nor confounded telegraphs
pulling up the generals for every step they took, or making them believe
there'd be a pack of men at their heels to pull them out of any holes
they were fools enough to blunder into."

In his youth the Squire had been in the Dragoons, and no one at Underham
was bold enough to question his authority as a military man.  Mrs
Bennett only said placidly,--

"Dear me, was it not a little inconvenient?"

"It's a good deal more inconvenient, ma'am, to have a heap of lies
talked by people who don't know what they're talking about.  Letters
were letters in those days, and you didn't get pestered by every
tradesman who wants to puff off his twopenny halfpenny foolery.  When
they came they had something in them.  My mother, now.  I've heard my
father say that when news from Spain came in, and the old Highflyer was
so hung about and set at, all the way down from London, that it was
twelve o'clock at night before she got into Thorpe, as soon as my mother
heard the wheels far off on the road, no matter what the weather was,
rain or shine, moon or no moon, she would go out into the hall and put
on her hood and cloak, and away she would trudge across the fields to
the Red Lion to see if there might be a letter from poor Jack.  My
father was crippled at the time, and there wasn't one she'd let go in
her stead.  Poor old mother!" said the Squire, with an involuntary
softening.

"I remember your mother, Squire," said old Mr Featherly.

"Then you remember as good a woman as ever breathed," said Mr Chester,
strongly again.

"Well, she was, she was.  People called her a little high, but no one
found her so when they were in trouble.  And a fine woman, too, as
upright as a dart, going straight to her point, whatever it was, with as
pretty an ankle and as clean a heel as any one in the country.  Miss
Winifred reminds me of her in many ways."

The Squire had pushed his chair a little back, and was looking at the
glass of port he was fingering on the table with a pleased smile.  But
he shook his head at the old clergyman's last remark.

"Winifred's not so tall by half an inch or more as my mother was when
she died."

"She carries her head in the same fashion, though," persisted Mr
Featherly.  "And there's something that reminds me."

It was certainly true that Winifred was at this moment holding her head
with a little touch of stateliness.  She had heard a good many of the
flattering words which had been poured upon Anthony, and perhaps valued
them at even less than they were worth, and it vexed her to see their
effect upon him.  Something in his nature courted the pleasant
popularity and the spoiling.  Is it women only who care for such pretty
things?  He might have told you that he despised them, but the truth was
that they made a sunshine in which he liked to bask, a delight which was
not without its influence.  Winifred, who saw the weakness, was not
merciful: she was a woman, with, perhaps, a grain of jealousy sharpening
her perceptions, and rendering them sufficiently keen to probe the
feminine flatteries which fell so sweetly upon him, and it is probable
that, although a woman who loves--even unconsciously--sets herself,
often unconsciously too, to study the character of the man she loves
with a closeness of purpose, and an almost unerring instinct, swift to
unravel its inmost workings, Winifred did not at this time rightly
understand him.  What she condemned as vanity was rather an almost
womanish sensitiveness, to which the sunshine of applause might be said
to have been needful.  If it was withdrawn, he might either shrink or
become bitter and morose.  Perhaps there are two sides even to faults,
and the people who love us best are sometimes our most severe judges: no
one there thought hardly of Anthony, except Winifred, who would have had
none of these little flaws, and sat, carrying her shapely head a little
scornfully, as Mr Featherly had noticed.  Anthony, on his part, was not
long in discovering her displeasure, although unconscious of the cause.
It provoked him, and he would not look in her face when the ladies went
out of the dining-room.

Marion had drawn her into the balcony to pour out some of her hopes and
fears about Marmaduke, and the two were talking eagerly when Ada Lovell
came out, followed by such of the gentlemen as had come up stairs.

"I have been envying your good fortune to Mr Miles," she said, with an
innocent air of admiration.  "Of course you can see all his poetry
whenever you like.  It must be so delightful."

"Only I never do," said Winifred, standing upright.  "I don't care for
poetry unless it is the very best."

Woman like, she felt a pang in her own heart the instant she had sent
forth her shaft.  She glanced quickly and almost imploringly at Anthony,
to see how sharply he was hit.  If he had looked at her he might have
known that she had flung down her weapons, and was waiting to make
amends.  But he would not look.  He saw nothing of the involuntary grace
of her attitude, as she stood in the glow of the sweet evening light, a
little shamefaced and sorry, with a tender rosy softness in her face.
He only felt that she had tried to wound him, and was angry with her for
the second time that evening.  Ada Lovell, looking up at him with
admiring awe, had no such pricks with which to make him wince, and,
perhaps, it was to be expected that he should devote himself to her for
the remainder of the time.  Winifred made no more advances.  She stood
leaning against the railing, looking gravely down upon the tall white
lilies that by degrees grew and glimmered out of the dusk, until Mr
Milman joined her.  Marion and Marmaduke talked in a low voice at one
end.  People came out now and then, declared the dew was falling, and
made a little compromise by sitting round the window, past which the
bats flitted softly.  Mr Mannering was telling clever stories, and
making every one laugh.  The Squire called his daughter at last.  He
disliked being kept waiting, and she went hurriedly, but as she passed
Anthony she made a little pause to say gently,--

"Good-night, Anthony."

"Good-night."

There are some things which rest in our minds with quite a
disproportionate sense of heaviness.  Winifred knew that she should see
Anthony the next day, by which time he would have forgotten her offence,
but she seemed to have lost some of the confidence which ordinarily grew
out of such a knowledge, for she could neither forgive herself nor
forget the sound of his cold good-night.

CHAPTER FIVE.

  "`Yet what is love, good shepherd, sayn?'
  `It is a sunshine mixt with rain.'"

  Sir Walter Raleigh.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Places like Underham offer peculiar attractions to maiden ladies, who
find in them equal protection from the solitude of the country and
relief from the somewhat dreary desolateness of a great town.  It might
have been an old friendship for Mrs Miles which first brought Miss
Philippa Lee into the neighbourhood, but she firmly resisted all
attempts to decoy her nearer to Thorpe.  She took a small house not far
from the Featherlys, and there devoted herself to the care of her orphan
nephew with that pathetic self-renunciation which we see in not a few
women's lives.  She pinched herself to send him to a public school, and
would gladly have supported him at college, but even had this been
practicable for such straitened means, there were circumstances which
prevented more than a secret sighing on her part.  Marmaduke had, on his
mother's side, a great-uncle who was the one rich man in a poor family,
and who if not actually childless was so by his own assertion to all
intents and purposes, his daughter having mortally offended him by a
marriage against his will.  She was the Margaret Hare of whom we have
heard Mr Mannering speak, for it was not until after her marriage that
her father, upon an access of fortune, changed his name to "Tregennas,"
and a little later, perhaps in a fit of desolation, took for his second
wife and made miserable until her death an aunt of Mr Miles, the Vicar
of Thorpe.  The connection, although scarcely deserving of the name, was
sufficient to form an additional link between the families, and
Marmaduke read with the Vicar, and won Marion's love while they were
little more than girl or boy.

To Mr Tregennas--who, it must be allowed, took a certain interest in
his great-nephew, if interest is proved by occasional gifts of
sovereigns and somewhat arbitrary advice on the subject of his
education--Marmaduke meanwhile looked as the maker of his fortunes.  He
was careful from the first to withhold Miss Philippa from contradicting
him, as, to tell the truth, she was not disinclined to do.  Odd little
shoots of jealousy crop up even in the most loving.  Add to this that
Mr Tregennas strongly opposed her favourite college scheme, and it will
not be surprising that more than once Miss Philippa would very
willingly, as she expressed it, have put her foot to the ground, if only
Marmaduke had not knocked that very ground from under her, by adopting
his uncle's views.  And he was possessed of a certain languid self-will
with which he invariably carried his point, even at the time when he
appeared to yield, so that people were sometimes puzzled to reconcile
cause and effect.  Nevertheless, it was no doubt a severe disappointment
when Mr Tregennas, instead of assisting him to enter a profession,
advised his seeking employment in one of the great manufacturing firms
of the north, and indeed actually applied to the heads before he had
received an answer to his suggestion.  Whether his will was the
strongest, or his nephew's philosophy overcame dislike, his plan was
carried out, and Marmaduke had been for two years engaged in the most
distasteful occupation that could have been provided for him.  It was,
perhaps, this very sense of ill-usage which rooted the more firmly his
belief that he was to be his uncle's heir.  A grievance quickly excites
the idea of compensation, and Marmaduke welded the two together so
persistently that the one stood on nearly the same level as the other.
The force, however, which prevented his throwing up his work had never
proved sufficient to conquer his repugnance towards it, and the fact of
feeling himself a victim, while it seemed to give him a right to feed
upon future hopes, made it also a duty to seek alleviations in the
present; so that a trifling vexation, or other change of mood, not
infrequently brought about a flying visit to Thorpe and a drain upon
Miss Lee's slender resources.

He had told Marion at the dinner-party that he must see her alone the
next day, and, accordingly, when he walked to the Vicarage, at a time
when Mr Miles and John were likely to be absent, Marion was waiting
eagerly for him.  Mrs Miles, who was in the room, was made more uneasy
by his increasing thinness than by her daughter's determination to go
out with him, for although no open engagement existed between the two,
it was one of those events which might be expected to fell into shape at
some future time, and which, if it were connected with Marion's will, it
was hopeless for her mother to resist, even had she been disinclined
towards it.  But Marmaduke had a gentle ease of manner pleasant to those
with whom he was thrown into contact, and Mrs Miles really loved and
pitied him, and was grieved at his looks.

"Does your Aunt Philippa give you porter jelly, Marmaduke?" she asked
anxiously.  "I wish she would.  I am sure it is the very best thing.
Sarah shall heat some beef-tea for you in a moment, if you will only
take it."

"Nothing will do me good while I have to work in that hole," said
Marmaduke, with a dreary intonation in his voice.  "Life is simply
existence.  And to think that I have had two years of it already!"

Marion, who had looked at him as he spoke, did not say a word until they
were out of the house, and in the deep lane, fresh with a cool beauty of
water and shining cresses.  Then, as they walked on, Sniff paddling
beside them, she asked quietly,--"Is anything the matter?"

There was noticeable in her manner to him--at all times--a difference
from her usual fashion of speaking.  The abruptness, something even of
the brightness, was gone, and in its place seemed to have grown a soft
care, a tenderness almost like protection.  And at this moment their
natures might have been transposed, for Marmaduke turned upon her with
an impetuosity unlike himself.

"Anything!  I tell you, Marion, that what I go through is unendurable.
You might know better than to ask such a question as that."

"But why--what is it?" she persisted, with a vague trouble lest
something more than she had heard was to be unfolded to her.  Her
loyalty to Marmaduke made her always ready to feed his self-pity, but
she was afraid that he had taken some rash step.

"What good can a man do with work that he loathes?"

"You must remember to what the work will lead," she said, relieved.

"When?--how?  It is absolute folly to dream that matters going on as
they are going now can ever lead to anything satisfactory.  How much do
you suppose that I can squeeze out of a paltry hundred and fifty a year?
Even Anthony acknowledges it to be absurd, and Anthony is Utopian
enough to believe that everything grows out of nothing.  That may do
very well for him, who will never need to prove it," added Marmaduke,
bitterly.

They were both leaning against a stile, and looking towards the cloudy
distance of the moors.  Marion slipped her hand softly into his.

"Surely we all heard when you went there that it would bring better
things in a few years?"

"You talk of years as if they were days," he said in the same tone.
"Nobody denies it.  When I have drudged at that disgustingly low
business for half a dozen years, I shall probably be fifty pounds a year
better off than I am now, and by the time we are both too old to take
pleasure in life we shall be able to marry, and this seems to content
you perfectly."

Marion caught away her hand with a sudden movement.  It made him turn to
look at her, and the hurt anger in her eyes brought back his usual
gentleness of manner at once.  He was desirous to bind all her feelings
on his side, and he knew her well enough to be aware that his shortest
means of doing this was to revert to the wretchedness of his position.

"Forgive me, dearest," he said; "you don't know what a poor wretch a man
becomes when he grinds along in one eternal round of small miseries.  It
is such a horrible separation from you all.  And what is the good of
being old Tregennas's heir, if he can't put his hand into his pocket and
let me live like a gentleman?"

"He promised that, did he not, Marmaduke?"

"It depends upon what you call promising.  He is not the man to say out
honestly, `Marmaduke Lee, you're my heir, and I'll give you a fit
allowance till you come into the property.'  If he had, I should not be
as I am.  But he said quite enough.  Of course I am his heir.  There
isn't a Jew in the country but would lend me a few thousands on the
chance.  Of course I am his heir.  I wish you would make your father
understand, and then he might allow us to consider ourselves engaged; at
present it's like dropping a poor wretch into a pit, and blocking up his
one glimpse of blue sky.  I tell you, Marion, again, I cannot endure
this state of things any longer.  I've not got it in me to toil on in
that dirty hole without so much as an atom of hope to cheer one."

They were both silent for an instant, and then Marion cried out
passionately, "Toil!  I would toil day and night for the joy of earning
a sixpence which I could lay aside and say, `This is ours.'"  There was
such a swift leaping out of the love of her heart in word and eyes, that
it seemed fire which must needs kindle whatever it touched, if only for
a moment.  But no answering glow passed across his pale face.  He looked
away again as if what she said had not any relation to his thoughts, and
she presently continued more timidly.  "Surely it would be the height of
imprudence to give up your work?  And you know that if you did so my
father would be less than ever likely to consent to our engagement, than
now when you are at least on the road to independence."

"I can't go on as I am," he said, a little doggedly.  "Mr Miles must
give me something to hold by, or I shall throw up the whole concern.  I
have nearly done so a dozen times already."

"Is there no way of influencing Mr Tregennas?" asked Marion, after a
minute's troubled thought.

"That's what I wanted to speak to you about.  As I said before, it isn't
fair that he should leave me in such a position.  It's not as if I
should have to work for my bread all the days of my life, like some poor
devils.  By and by I shall step into as pretty a place as you'll find
anywhere, and why I should have to do compensation now by sitting on a
high stool and addling my brain over ledgers is more than I can see.  If
he'd only say something definite one would know what one had to go upon.
But--"

"But what?"

"O, you must understand, Marion, that I can't very well go to him and
say this sort of thing!"

"Why not?"

"Why not?  Well, women are queer about such matters, but I should think
you might guess it's not the way to make yourself agreeable to an old
fellow who has you in his power."

"It is only justice," said Marion, whose cheek had flushed under the
presence of an absorbing pity for Marmaduke which swept her away like a
flood.  "I wish I could tell him what I think."

"You can do something better," said Marmaduke, seeing she had reached
the point to which he had been leading.

"What?  Only tell me."

"Get your father to interfere."

She shook her head, moving her hands nervously.  "You know he will not.
He is so scrupulous about such matters.  Over and over again I have
heard him say he would never ask a favour of his uncle."

"A favour!  But I am not demanding an allowance of a thousand a year.
All I want to know is how I stand.  And if Mr Miles sees in black and
white that I am his heir, he will no longer object to an engagement.  I
tell you plainly, I can't work unless I see some end before me.
Besides, one must go step by step, and if he would acknowledge my
position straightforwardly, by and by other things would follow.  No one
is so well entitled to ask as your father.  Marion, you don't want to
keep me in this misery?"

She was at no time insensible to these appeals, and perhaps less than
ever on such a morning as this, when things about her were shining,
dancing, singing in a burst of happy life, could she endure any weight
of gloom for the man she loved best in the world.  To some of us every
echo of a happiness which does not at the same time fill our own souls
with its music seems only discord.  We cry out against it with voices
that clash and jar and sadden themselves with the dissonance, when if we
would be but content to listen in patience, some tender vibrations of an
eternal harmony should reach us from afar, and satisfy us with their
beauty.  To Marion it was a positive wrong that the skylark high in the
air was singing joyously; that the fresh breeze stirred into brightness
the little stream which ran along the meadows; that the sound of the
scythe and the chatter of the hay-making folk rose now and then with
cheerful distinctness above lesser summer sounds; that Sniff was yelping
with delight after the birds he was vainly chasing.  Marion told him
sharply to be quiet, but he only stopped for a moment, and looked at her
with his head on one side at an angle of consideration, before he was
off again, his little red tongue hanging out, his brown eyes on fire
with excitement.  Marmaduke, who was leaning moodily against the gate,
waiting for Marion to speak, said at last,--

"Anthony is a lucky dog, with the world before him, and no one to please
but himself.  But I don't know that such sharp contrasts are the most
encouraging reflections in the world."

The languor and depression of his voice pierced the girl's heart like a
thorn.  She exclaimed impetuously,--

"Something must be done,--my father shall write,--nothing can be so bad
as that you should suffer in this way."

She put out her hand again, and he took it in his, and began to thank
her in the gently caressing tones which fell easily from his lips.  Her
resolution, indeed, carried a greater relief to him than seemed to be
contained in it.  It was not only that he wanted to escape from the
irksomeness of his duly toil, and believed the acknowledgment of his
position the first step towards it, but he was also fretted by a wearing
anxiety lest the position might never be his, and the very assumption of
a certain claim on his part by Mr Miles might have a good effect, and
remove a vague uneasiness, for which he could not account, of Anthony as
a possible rival.  Poor Marion thought it to be love for her which urged
him; but although he did love her after a fashion, she was only one of
the pleasant things he wanted to sweep into his net.  He was full of
satisfaction at the promise she had given.

"Who are these--by the watercourse?" he said.  "One of them looks like
Anthony."

"And the other is Mr Chester," said Marion, abstractedly.  "Come."

"Yes, it is the Squire.  I can see his red face, and that little
flourish of his stick which he gives when he is angry.  They see us by
this time, and we may as well hear the battle-royal, if there is one.
Listen."

Mr Chester's loud voice came up well before him.

"I tell you, sir, I tell you your father will live to see you a carping
radical yet.  When a young fellow gets this sort of notions into his
head, we all know what'll be the end of it.  Everything respectable goes
out by the heels, and he makes a fool of himself over balloting and
universal suffrage, and a heap of rascally French republicanisms.  How
d'ye do, Marion, how d'ye do?  Glad to see you, Marmaduke.  Hope you're
not infected with any of this modern rubbish?"

"No, sir, I'm a Conservative.  A Liberal-Conservative," added the young
man under his breath, not expecting to be heard.  But the Squire's quick
ears caught the word.

"Don't be half anything.  There's nothing I think so poorly of as a man
that can't make up his mind.  He says this on one side and that on
another, till he knows no more than a teetotum where his spinning will
lead him.  I should have twice the opinion of Anthony if he could say
straight out what he means, instead of calling himself one thing and
talking himself into another."  There was a good deal of truth in the
Squire's accusation, and the clash was not one for which he had any
sympathy.  Anthony himself was too young not to be sore upon the charge
of inconsistency.  He said hotly,--

"Really, sir, I don't know what hedges and draining have to do with the
ballot.  I have not been the one to say anything about it."

"I'm only showing what these ideas lead to," said Mr Chester, enjoying
his adversary's irritation.  "I'm content to take my land as it came to
me.  That's good theology, ain't it, Marion?  By the way, I forgot to
tell you that young Frank Orde comes to-morrow.  Come up to dinner, all
of you, will you?  I dare say he's as bad as the rest, but you'll not
make me believe my father hadn't as good common-sense as the young
fellows that find fault with his farming."

Sometimes, by talking loudly enough, a man becomes impressed with so
confident a sense of triumph, that the sound of his own voice is like
the salvo of guns over a victory.  It was so now with the Squire, who
remained in high good-humour during the rest of the walk, and gave
Anthony to understand that he looked upon him as crushed and annihilated
by an overwhelming weight of argument.

CHAPTER SIX.

Marion was not the person to delay the doing of anything which she had
made up her mind should be done, nor had she the faculty instinctive in
many women, of approaching a critical subject with that deliberate and
delicate touch of preparation which smooths the way for a more open
attack.  Whatever was uppermost in her mind was apt to take possession
of her with so great an intensity that she had no longer the mastery of
herself required for this method of handling.  She did not trouble
herself to join in the family conversation at luncheon, and when her
father went into his study,--a small room choked with a heterogeneous
collection of books and pamphlets, heaped here and thrown there in utter
carelessness to dust and disorder,--Marion followed him and said
abruptly,--

"Papa, something must be done to improve Marmaduke's position.  Will you
write to Mr Tregennas, and point this out?"

"Write to Mr Tregennas!" said Mr Miles sharply, turning round from the
papers on his table.

"What do you mean?  Is Marmaduke dismissed?  No?  Then there cannot be
anything much amiss."  He said this with a relieved air, going back to
his papers.  "Marion, I wish you'd just see whether that last hospital
report is up stairs.  Mannering tells me I've been down on the committee
for a twelvemonth, but I cannot credit it."

"Marmaduke has been at that hateful place for two years," said Marion,
unheeding.  "It is quite unfit for him, and some one ought to point it
out to his uncle."

"What is the matter with the place?"  Mr Miles asked, still searching.
"Really, your mother must speak to the maids; I cannot allow them to
disturb everything under pretence of tidying.  I am confident I left
that report on this table."

Marion was trembling with impatience.  "Papa," she said, "you might
think a little more about poor Marmaduke's happiness."

"Happiness?  Humph!  He is too young to be talking about happiness.  Let
him take what comes to him, and be thankful for it--" The Vicar turned
suddenly round with a quick, clumsy movement, "He has not been talking
nonsense to you, has he?"

The girl was standing with her back to the door, so that a clear light
fell upon her.  As her father spoke, a soft beautiful change came over
her face, tender brightness shone in the dark eyes, the curve of the
mouth was touched with tremulous joy, a faint glow on her cheek gave an
indescribable look of youth, and her head bent gently with the
perfection of womanly grace.

Mr Miles, who had spoken sharply, could not but be moved by this
strange magic,--this mute answer,--so unlike Marion that it affected him
the more.  He did not know what to say; he wished he had not ceased
speaking, had not looked at her, and so become aware of what--in its
contrast to her usual expression--was almost a revelation.  Hitherto,
although he had vaguely listened to what they told him, it had been but
a feeble attention he paid, considering that the children must
necessarily pass through certain stages of existence, the boys going to
school, running wild over cricket, coming home to snowballing, having
the whooping-cough, every now and then requiring a thrashing, teasing
Marion, quarrelling with her, and at last by the same law, as he
imagined, falling in love with her.  When Miss Philippa solemnly told
him that Marmaduke had confided to her his affection, and Mrs Miles
complained that Marion had lost her appetite, the Vicar half laughed at
himself for so far treating it seriously as to tell Marmaduke that he
was in no position to talk to his daughter of love, and, contenting
himself with this prudent command, dismissed the matter from his
thoughts.  He had, indeed, a mind which did not occupy itself freely
with many subjects at once.  Those which ceased to interest him he would
lay on the shelf, and forget altogether, until they would sometimes
start from their unwatched seclusion in a form so grown, so changed, so
great with life, that the shock gave him a sudden blow.  Such a blow
came now.  For, looking at her so standing, with the sweet flush of
girlish triumph vanquishing for the moment all care and fret, and
softening the harsher lines in her face with its happy touch, the
father's awakening brought sharp remorse for his former blindness.  It
was not possible for him to reproach her when he felt as though reproach
might so justly fall upon himself, and if she had been thinking of him
at that moment she might have noticed a wistfulness in his eyes, a
faltering change in his voice, as strange perhaps as that other
revelation.

"How long has this been?" he said at last, not that he would have chosen
the words, but that they seemed to force themselves out.

"How long have we cared for each other, do you mean?" she answered
directly.  "I think--always."

He shook his head at this.  That which was so new to himself in his own
child must, he believed, be new-born.

"Children like you do not know your own minds," he said, but faintly,
and with a want of confidence which Marion was shrewd enough to note.

"Papa," she said, going closer to him, "we are not children.  We are not
asking for anything foolish.  I would give up all in the world for
Marmaduke.  I would bear anything for him.  I should feel it my richest
joy to be with him, at his side, however poor and struggling he was.
But of course I understand that could not be.  It would not do for him
to be hampered with a wife while he can scarcely make his miserable
means support himself."  As she spoke with a growing impetuosity, her
father, who had been holding her hand in his, and looking into her face,
turned slightly away, still holding her hand, and leaned a little
backwards against the writing-table.

"We know all that," she went on.  "I have not said a word against it.
But now that I have seen him, and understand how miserable he is,
chained to work utterly distasteful to him, and without even the most
meagre of hopes, I cannot bear it any longer, I cannot, indeed.  Why
should we not be engaged?"

Hearing that she paused for a reply, Mr Miles, after pausing also for a
moment, said,--

"You are thinking only of him."

"And of whom should I think?" she asked, vehemently.

"Perhaps I have been in error: I think I have been in error," said Mr
Miles, speaking with a strange humility.  "One has no right to live with
one's eyes shut.  But, Marion, if this be so, I cannot make wrong more
wrong.  Marmaduke has no prospect of being able to marry for a
considerable number of years, unless, indeed, this shadowy hope to which
he clings of Mr Tregennas--"

"It ought not to be shadowy.  It is disgraceful that he should not say
more.  Papa, you must write and press this upon him."

"I!"

"Yes, indeed!  There is no one else."

"This is simply absurd, Marion," said Mr Miles with some anger.

But he had given her an advantage, which she was resolved to use even to
ungenerosity.

"You said you had been unjust to Marmaduke--"

"Not to him, Marion."

"He and I are one in such a matter, papa."

Ah, there was the strangeness of it!  His child's life had seemed to him
no more than an undeveloped bud, some day to expand, but as yet folded
securely within its sheath, and suddenly it had shot apart from, was
almost opposed to them all.  It was a thing so strange that the father,
looking at the woman, thought only of the child, and took to his own
blindness greater blame than it deserved.

"Well," he said, sighing, "it is possible, as you say, that I have not
acted in the best way for Marmaduke, or indeed for any one."

"And you will write?"

"To tell the man he is to make Marmaduke his heir!"

"O, he has said it already.  Tell him that he must be kinder to him,
poor fellow!--that he is thrown away in his present position--"

"I cannot say that," said the Vicar, with a wavering smile at the
childishness of the proposition.  And as the idea struck him, he looked
keenly at her again.  "Child, is this really what you suppose it?  Do
you care so much for Marmaduke that you are prepared to be his wife?
You have been thrown together, you have no experience to guide you, you
have seen nothing of the world.  I ought to take you about and show you
other places," he added in grave bewilderment.

Marion, who had been going to the door, turned round and laughed.

"It is too late now, papa."

Too late!  And he had been thinking of her life as a smooth, untrodden
meadow!

Outside, in a spot of cool shade under the cedar, Mrs Miles was sitting
and working placidly at some little white squares, which never seemed to
grow nearer their completion.  The Vicar, after looking at her for a
moment from his window, went out into the hall, through the porch, and
across the grass-plot to her side.  It was very rarely that he carried
any problems to his wife; but it now appeared to him that there were
certain complications, such as the white intricacies lying upon her lap,
which it might be given only to a feminine understanding to disentangle.
He sat down gravely by her side, looking with abstraction at the
sunshine falling pleasantly on the house and the fine old tower beyond,
and listening, perhaps, to the hum of the bees, or the rough rhythm
which came from a saw-pit in the lane.  Mrs Miles only looked up and
smiled, and went on with her knitting, believing the Vicar to be
absorbed in the Sunday sermons which she held to be the great events of
Thorpe life.  These, although never weak, ran a risk of being considered
by a critic as rather dry and lengthy, but loyal wifehood excited a most
earnest admiration in Mrs Miles.  She knitted softly, therefore, lest
the click of her needles should interfere with the roll of his ideas,
and in the hush of the sweet summer afternoon a pleasant drowsiness was
creeping over her, when her husband startled her by asking abruptly,--

"Wife, how old is Marion?"

"Marion, my dear?" said Mrs Miles, with a perplexed conviction that the
Vicar must have meant some other person more nearly connected with his
sermon,--"Marion was twenty last month.  Don't you remember we had a
junket on her birthday, and it was the first time Sarah quite succeeded
in it?"

"Twenty!" repeated Mr Miles with a little groan.  "I believed her to
have been sixteen."

"My dear!  And dining out as she does, and so admired."

"Well, well," said the Vicar in a moment or two, "it is no fault of
yours or hers.  But tell me whether you understood that Marmaduke was
serious in his attachment to her?"

"Why not?" asked Mrs Miles, a little motherly indignation making itself
heard in her voice.

"Why not?" repeated her husband, standing up and looking down on her,
impatiently.  "They are both children."

"I never could think of Marion as a child at all," said the mother, with
a little sigh.  "She has always been so much older than her years.  And
as for Marmaduke, poor fellow, I am sure he can't have proper food at
his lodgings.  I have told Sarah to make some jelly for him to take away
with him.  Of course it is natural that the separation should be a trial
to him, but I dare say it will all come right by and by."

"But--good heavens, what a marriage for Marion!" cried the Vicar,
beginning to walk hastily up and down under, the cedar, and crushing the
daisies that peeped up through the not too carefully trimmed grass.

"My dear," said Mrs Miles, knitting calmly, "Marion is a girl who would
be miserable unless she had her own way.  With all his strong will,
Anthony would be more likely to listen to reason."

"Anthony!" exclaimed her husband, stopping before her.  "There is
nothing of the sort going on with Anthony?"

"It has not come to the same point, of course, but it is easy to see
that he has a fancy for Winifred.  I am sure I should be very glad if
you could persuade him to make up his mind as to what he will be, and
get him out of the place."

"I don't see why," said the Vicar, amazed at his wife's penetration.  "I
have never thought of what you have just put before me, but it appears
to me that Anthony would be fortunate to secure so good a girl as
Winifred Chester."

"Fortunate, Mr Miles!" said his wife, laying down her work, and
speaking with unusual irritation.  "Why, Anthony, with his good looks,
his cleverness, and his fortune, might marry any girl in the county.  I
have never seen any one good enough for him, that is the worst of it;
and as for Winifred, what you can see in her that you should call him
fortunate, I am sure I cannot conceive.  She will be a very lucky girl
that gets our Anthony."

The Vicar said, "Pooh, pooh!" but he had a humiliating sense of being
baffled by his women.  He went away, without further words, across the
lawn and past the mignonettes and sweet-peas into his study.  There he
pulled down the blind to shut out the sun, in a fit of absence tore up a
carefully arranged table of parish accounts which he had just prepared
for Mr Mannering to audit, flung it into the waste-paper basket, and
sat down to write a letter to old Mr Tregennas.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Sunday was rather a gay day at the Vicarage.  The Hardlands party were
in the habit of spending a good deal of time there, Winifred, indeed,
remaining for the early dinner, so as to be in her place in the school
before the afternoon service; and there were further elements of
friendliness in the two Mr Mannerings, who would drop in for a chat
with the Vicar when his work was over.

On this particular Sunday, the people of Thorpe had undergone one of
those disturbances of routine which they were uncertain whether to
resent as an injury or to hail as a welcome variety.  One of the
neighbouring clergy had been taken ill suddenly the day before, and Mr
Miles had ridden over to supply his place, while Mr and Mrs Featherly
were jolted from Underham by Job White to undertake the services at
Thorpe.  Lest it should be supposed that the plural number has been used
unadvisedly, it must be explained that many persons who had fair means
of forming an opinion held it to be no less than a moral impossibility
that the rector of Underham should accomplish any act in his ministerial
or private life without his wife's support, and believed that if her
head, crowned with marabouts, were withdrawn from the seat immediately
below the pulpit, the sermon would collapse in some fatal and
irretrievable manner.  The influence, whatever it was, was in no way
connected with criticism, since Mrs Featherly, as the rector's wife,
considered herself released from the necessity of seeking benefit from
any preaching whatever, and it probably depended upon that subtile link
of habit by which all persons are in some degree bound, and which, in
her own case, led her almost mechanically to count the heads of the
congregation, and to store in her memory, with unerring acuteness, the
names of those offenders who should have been and were not present.

So powerful in her, indeed, was this almost instinct, that as they drove
painfully between the high hedges of the lanes, Mrs Featherly, with her
head out of the window, reckoned the members of the different families
they passed, and kept up a running commentary upon their numbers.

"I am convinced I have seen that woman in the red shawl at Underham.  I
believe her to be the farmer's wife who supplies Langford's dairy, and
if so, I should like to know where her husband is?  And there are the
Crockers, and the daughter who is home from service not with them.
Really, Mr Featherly, you ought to make a point of giving Mr Miles a
hint.  When people once take to neglecting their parish church I have
the worst possible opinion of them."

The consciousness of so much wrong-doing imparted quite a judicial
severity to Mrs Featherly's countenance, as she descended heavily at
the Vicarage porch, just as the bells were chiming merrily and the
people clustering in knots outside the church.  There had been rain in
the early morning, and large clouds were still coming up, but the sun
was shining after the shower, and the wet on grass and roof only gave a
touch of additional brightness.  The boys who were too big to go to
school lounged up in little companies, too shamefaced to venture alone,
and putting on an appearance of great boldness and explosive mirth, to
cover their actual bashfulness.  The girls generally tossed their heads,
walking on demurely without taking any notice of their contemporaries,
but a ruddy-cheeked young farmer or two, who had come from the outskirts
of the village, received such smiling glances from the same damsels as
to bring down an occasional sharp remark from one of the elder women.

"You'll a lost yere eyes as well as yere bonnet before iver you gets
into choorch, Emma," said one of these matrons, with a satirical look at
the red rose that crowned its wearer's last effort at millinery.

Emma, who was blue-eyed and literal-minded, gave an anxious pull to
assure herself of the safety of the structure, before she answered
good-humouredly,--

"You see, Mrs Anders, Susan gits a new shape for me into Under'm now
and then, and I'm sure, if Polly wanted wan--"

"My Polly!" began Mrs Andrews, in so high a staccato of indignation
that her husband, who was standing nearer the porch, looked round and
said, in a deprecating tone,--

"Stiddy, missus, stiddy.  Hyur's the new parson coming oop to t'
choorch."

"Ees, fay, so it be," said another man.  "Hers so smarl us can sceerce
see un."

"I can find him a tex for his sermond," retorted Mrs Andrews, lowering
her voice a little, but looking at Emma with wrathful contempt, "`The
pompses and vanities of this wicked wordel.'  That's a tex as might
agree with some as is not so far off at this minit, and doan't know how
to be'ave themselves afor their betters."

"That bain't no tex, though," said old Araunah Stokes, slowly shaking
his head.  "That's noa moor than watt godfaythers and godmoothers have
got to doo in t' catechiz.  Noa, noa, thicky thyur bain't noan of the
Scripter texes."

"And I'd be glad to know, Mr Stokes," replied the irate Mrs Andrews,
unfolding her prayer-book from its pocket-handkerchief as if with the
intention of appealing to written authority, "I'd be glad to know
whether Scripter and the catechiz bain't wan?  P'raps you'll be holding
next as the Ten Commandmints bain't in the Bible, becos they'm put down
in the catechiz?--nor the Blief, nor my dooty towaeds my nayber as I was
bound to say wann I wor a little maaed, till it slipped aff my tongue so
faest as pays owt of a barrel, nayther?  If any wan have a right to
spake abeowt the catechiz, it's me, though you doo caest it up to me,
Mr Stokes, as I doan't know texes when I see 'em."

"Cloack's strook, fayther," said Jeremiah Stokes, interposing feebly in
the character of peacemaker.  Old Araunah, however, only hobbled off to
where two or three other old men were standing, looking apathetically
into a little newly dug child's grave.

"Cloack's strook, as you say, lad, but a woman's tongue 'ull diffen
cloacks and bells, and arl t' rest o' um.  Ees, yer moother gived me a
bet o' 'sperience that way.  An' so that's fur little Rose Tucker's
little un?  Whay, I minds her moother wann her warn't noa begger, and us
wor--"

But here an unexpected interruption occurred.  Mr Featherly,
unconscious of the ordinary arrangements by which the Vicar caused the
ringers to accommodate themselves to his own erratic time, had,
punctually as the clock struck, appeared in the reading-desk.  The
ringers, unprepared for such a movement, did not even cast a look in
that direction, and, engaged in cheerful conversation, only became aware
when the exhortation had been with some difficulty concluded, that the
service had actually begun.  The consequence was a sudden stoppage of
the bells, instead of the ordinary change for three minutes to a single
toll, which gave time for the loiterers in the churchyard to present
themselves; and it was not until one of the ringers had come out and
related what had happened, that the men were able to persuade themselves
that the single bell was not yet to be rung.  Mrs Featherly was
terribly scandalised by the unseemly stamping and scuffling that
followed, and the male part of the congregation, naturally incensed at
being placed so unexpectedly in the wrong, looked a little hot and sulky
throughout the remainder of the service.

A larger number than usual turned into the Vicarage garden afterwards.
Frank Orde, the Squire's nephew, had arrived the day before, and old Mr
Wood, of the Grange, had walked over to the Red House, not, certainly,
with the expectation of finding Mrs Featherly installed at Thorpe, nor
with any satisfaction at the fact.

"Why on earth didn't you get rid of the woman?" he growled sharply,
under his breath.  "She says as many disagreeable things as if she were
a relation."

"Charles manages her admirably," said Mr Robert, laughing.  "His
excessive politeness is just what she cannot meet with her usual
weapons.  Not that I believe there's harm in her, except when compassion
for Featherly is too strong for one's justice."

"Compassion!  If a man cuts his throat it's his own doing," said Mr
Wood.  "There! the very dogs have more sense."

Sniff, indeed, showed a rooted dislike to Mrs Featherly, a feeling
which was fully returned; on this occasion, however, she so far unbent
as to call him in a gracious tone, "Dog, dog," an indignity which Sniff
as naturally resented, as we should resent being addressed in the
abstract as "man," and marked his displeasure by turning a deaf ear to
her endearments.

"And there, the Squire is falling foul of Anthony again," said Mr
Robert, hurrying on with a good-humoured design to act as peacemaker.

"Red's red, I suppose," Mr Chester was loudly asserting, "without a
chimney-sweep standing up beside it.  Give me a good old-fashioned
garden, with rose de Meaux and gilliflowers, and that sort.  I hate that
talk about contrasts and backgrounds and rubbish."

"Never mind these young fellows, Squire," said Mr Robert, interposing
before Anthony had time to answer.  "There are a certain set of theories
they are bound to run through before they settle into good sound stuff
like you and me."

The Squire, who was easily propitiated, but unwilling to allow it,
walked away with a grunt.

Since this last home-coming of Anthony's, it seemed as if there were
always some little contest springing up between the Squire and him; the
things were almost too trivial to deserve notice, but there was a
pervading spirit of antagonism Anthony probably enjoyed it, for he
provoked it at least as much as Mr Chester, though there were times, as
on this occasion, when his opponent's bristles rubbed a sore spot, and
when the sense of restraint was galling.  He drew Winifred on one side,
and she went willingly, for there had been a little shadow between them
ever since the dinner at the Bennetts', and she accused herself of
having been in fault, and longed to hold out her little olive-branch.
There was a sweet hush and serenity in the day itself.  The homely
garden, which vexed Mr Robert by its disorder, was fresh and fragrant,
daisies held open their rosy-tipped cups, soft little wafts of air just
rustled the lighter branches, and made tremulous shadows on the grass:
she was glad to move away from the others, and to stroll along a broad
path bordered with stiff hollyhocks, which led towards a mulberry-tree
standing in its own square of turf.

It is one of the privileges of old friendship--at least to us taciturn
island folk--that there may be silence between two people without any
feeling of awkwardness marring its pleasantness.  Under its influence
Anthony's wrath subsided quickly, but there was still a touch of
irritation in the voice in which he said at last,--

"Your father finds fault with everything I do."

"He doesn't mean it,--or he doesn't mean it seriously," said Winifred,
correcting herself.  "He has been accustomed so long to us girls, that
he can't understand anything that seems like contradiction."

"I never contradict him."

"O no, you only disagree.  Only the two things are so dreadfully alike,
Anthony, that no wonder he is puzzled," said Winifred, with a quick look
of fun.

"Living with you ought to have broken him in to difference of opinion."

"O, I can't afford to waste my contradictions on papa.  I keep them for
my friends."

They glanced at each other and laughed, and walked on again silently
side by side.  Both were too easy in their companionship to be thinking
about love, but they were very happy and contented to be together.  Her
influence tightened its hold upon his heart all imperceptibly, like so
many threads which did not let themselves be known for fetters.  There
is a peril in those little threads, woven by habit, by proximity, by
opportunities,--not a peril of their breaking, but of their untried
strength being all unguessed, of some blast of passion, some storm of
resentment, even some petty gust of pique, seeming for the moment to
sweep them off, and free the heart of them forever,--until, as the rush
dies away and the calm comes back, too late, perhaps, we learn that not
a thread has snapt, that the work has been a work of desolation, that
the small cords bind us still, like unyielding links of iron, and that
the freedom we fancied we had gained is no more than a double bondage.
Winifred said presently, in a questioning tone,--

"Anthony, I cannot make out what is the matter with Marion."

"She is uneasy about Marmaduke.  She has persuaded my father to write to
old Tregennas.  It's the last thing I would have done myself; however,
it's his business, not mine."

"I should long so much more for everything to go smoothly with them, if
I felt more sure about Marmaduke.  I wish you would tell me if you
really like him," said Winifred eagerly, "or whether it is the having
been old playfellows that prejudices you towards him."

"Of course I like him," said Anthony, a little indignantly.  "He's the
best fellow in the world.  Talk of prejudices, you women keep fresh
relays which come in every week, and last about as long.  Here's a poor
fellow eating his heart out over work which he detests, and just because
he's down in the world, you must all set your faces against him.  I wish
there were a better chance of things coming right than I see at
present."

The speech ended more mildly than it began, for Anthony was suddenly
struck with the golden threads which the sunshine brought out in
Winifred's hair.  They were standing at this moment close to the
mulberry-tree.  And then he rushed off to point out to her the spot
which David Stephens had intended to appropriate for the chapel.  But he
returned presently to the subject.

"I wonder you do not feel more for him.  It must be horribly hard to
know so much is against one.  I'm not sure that I could stand it
myself."

"I don't know that you could," said Winifred, composedly.

"What makes you say so?  Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Winifred, just
come from church, and going to teach those wretched little victims, with
uncharitableness written on every hair of your head.  Poor Marmaduke!
Well, he gets on with your father better than I do."

"I don't know that, really.  Only you and papa have each your own
hobby-horses, and instead of trotting comfortably along, you must go
full tilt at each other.  I am sure he was very proud when he heard you
had won the Chancellor's medal.  How nice it was of you, Anthony!"

"You could not have cared much about it."

"Why not?" asked Winifred, who knew what was coming.

"You do not care for any poetry but the very best, you know."

"That need not stand in the way," said Winifred, smiling, and holding
out her olive-branch magnanimously, "and besides--"

"Well?"

"I was rather cross that night, Anthony."

"At what?"

"O, I don't know!  How can one know what makes one cross?  I think Mr
Milman bored me.  Were you bored, too?"

"I don't believe I was.  That Miss Lovell is pleasant enough."

"Do you think so?  She worries me by drawling the last word of every
sentence, and it is all so very commonplace."

"Well, perhaps it is commonplace, but one doesn't expect to find
anything else."

"If you like it, there is nothing to be said against it," said Winifred
carelessly, still playing with the mulberry leaves.  "Shall we go back?
There is something I want to tell Bessie."

"Wait a moment," said Anthony, not thinking much of what had been said.
"Tell me, why did you say just now that you did not think I could stand
being down in the world?"

Winifred was silent.

"Tell me," he urged, trying to look in her face.  "I don't mean to go
down.  My belief is that circumstances are much more under our own
control than we allow.  Still, I should like to know why you made the
assertion."

"I suppose it is owing to that very belief you have just stated, and to
your having such terrible faith in your own powers," said Winifred,
speaking with a kind of sweet strength.  "You think you are sure to get
what you aim at because it is good and great.  I have an idea that, the
higher one aims, the less one will be satisfied with what is reached,
and then it is called failure, and that seems to discourage some people
utterly."

"And you think I should be discouraged?" said Anthony.  "It is better
not to dream about failures.  They generally belong to half-heartedness,
so far as I can see."

"Not all," said Winifred softly.

They did not speak again, and she walked along the grass that bordered
the path, smelling a dewy cabbage rose which he had given her, and
humming under her breath one of the old version psalms.  Sometimes, in
the midst of all our familiar knowledge of another, there is a sudden
impression cut deep into our memory.  We can give no definite reason for
it, but it is there, and there forever.  Anthony and Winifred had walked
a hundred times as they were walking then: no change had come over the
old Vicarage, which stood up to their left with fluttering shadows on
the grey stones, and house-martins flashing in and out under the eaves;
no new charm belonged, to the bright freshness of the garden, the quiet
of the day, nor indeed was he conscious of any peculiar force about the
little picture which should so impress it on his mind, and yet--he never
afterwards forgot it, it never faded into dull outline, or lost its
delicacy of colour; there always, not to be cast out, grew into life the
quaint trim hollyhocks, the busy martins, the daisies in the grass, and
brown-haired Winifred walking along with a quiet grace, singing the old
psalm tune, and laying the cool rose against her cheek.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

  "O Life and Love!  O happy throng
  Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!
  O heart of man! canst thou not be
  Blithe as the air is, and as free?"

  Longfellow.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr Tregennas's answer to the Vicar's letter was a little unsatisfactory
and perplexing.  Answer, indeed, it could hardly be called, since it
touched upon no subject which Mr Miles had introduced, but it contained
an unexpected invitation for himself and Anthony to start at once, and
pass a few days at Trenance.

Probably at no other time within the last ten years would such an
invitation have been treated by the Vicar with more consideration than a
hasty reply in the negative, and a speedy forgetfulness that it had been
given.  A man who has all his life hated change, and that uprooting of
habit which even the absence of a day will effect, becomes at last a
positive slave to the feeling.  Nothing could be more distasteful to Mr
Miles than the prospect of leaving behind him his familiar every-day
life, of having the trouble of accommodating himself to new forms, and
of moving, in feet, out of a world in which instinct had grown to serve
him almost as well as the deliberate exercise of will.  When, added to
this, arose a consideration of Mr Tregennas and his uncongenial
society, it was perhaps natural that on ordinary occasions he should
have thrown aside the letter without so much as giving its contents a
second thought.

But now there was a change.  Ever since Marion's appeal in the study, a
close observer might have traced an almost wistful uneasiness in her
father, would have noticed that his eyes followed her, that his voice
was modulated into unusual gentleness in addressing her, and that once
or twice in a discussion with Anthony he had sided with her, taking her
part, indeed, with a sharpness which seemed uncalled for.  His heart
smote him for the blindness which, after all, had caused little or no
mischief.  But we are all inclined to suppose that we might have averted
evil had we only seen it coming.  It seemed to him as if his girl's
determination were something against which he should have watched and
prayed.  Not that he had any cause of complaint to make him object to
Marmaduke personally as her husband, but that his poverty and present
position held out no prospect of marriage, and he keenly felt what the
bitterness of a long waiting would be to her.  It made him long to do
something that should atone for his failure of care.  He called Marion
into the study, put the letter into her hand, and waited silently.

"Of course you will accept, papa," Marion said, looking up.  "To-morrow
will be a very good day."

"He says nothing of Marmaduke," Mr Miles observed slowly.

"But it means that he will listen to you."

"I suppose I must," said the Vicar, looking round his room with a sigh.
"But I don't know about to-morrow.  Anthony may not be able to start so
soon."

"Anthony!  Why should he go?" said Marion, in a tone of dissatisfaction.

"We are asked together; I could not go without him."

No more was said, and it may have been that the greatness of the
sacrifice he was about to make in some measure appeared to the Vicar to
compensate for his mistakes, for he did not attempt to disguise his
misery at the prospect before him, and Marion breathed more freely when
she saw him seated with Anthony in the little pony-carriage, of which
James and a portmanteau shared the back seat.  Even when they had
started, her anxiety was not ended, for twice, to Sniffs extreme
disgust, the fat pony came tugging round the corner again, once to leave
a message for a farmer, and once to say that Tom Lear must wait to be
married until the Vicar's return.  At last they were fairly off.  The
children ran out to courtesy; the women speculated as to the meaning of
the portmanteau.

"Mr Anthony's gwoin' agaen," said old Araunah, shaking his head.
"Thyur's a dale of comin' and gwoin' nowadays.  Us used to think twice
afore us car'd ower legs dree or fowter miles out o' t' pleace, us did,
and 'twarn't wi'out there wor a good rason for't, a peg to sell, or a
bet o' sense like that.  But thyur's a dale of comin' and gwoin'
nowadays."

"I shall never believe they are gone until they are back again, I am
sure," said Mrs Miles, coming into the porch with tearful eyes.  "It is
three years since the Vicar slept out of the house, and that was to
preach, and it does seem so unnatural he should have left his sermon
book behind him.  But there is really one good thing about it, and that
is that we can have the kitchen chimney swept quite comfortably.  Marion
my dear, you'll not mind cold--"

But Marion had escaped.  She wanted some vent for the excitement which
was apt to rise even to the verge of pain in its passionate impetuosity.
The little shrubbery path was as oppressive to her as the four walls of
the house, and almost mechanically she opened the gate and crossed the
road towards the Hardlands meadows.

The Squire and Bessie were just starting for a ride when Marion reached
the house, and Winifred was with them at the door, indulging the pony
and the roan cob with lumps of sugar.  Bessie was a pretty bright-eyed
girl of sixteen, a good deal spoilt by her father, whose special pride
it was that she displayed a keener talent for housekeeping than Winifred
had ever developed, and who, in consequence, aided and abetted her
attempts to gain the upper hand in that department.  The Squire was in
high good-humour over the result of his hay-making, and it was not
lessened by the triumph with which he compared his own success with the
less favourable crop secured on the Vicar's glebe.

"Good morning, Marion, good morning," he began in his loud hearty voice,
"what does your father say now to my waiting a good fortnight after my
neighbours?  Tell him to come up and have a look at the ricks, if he's
not convinced yet.  I suppose he was wanting to jump with Master
Anthony's theories, eh?  He'll lead you all a pretty dance yet, if you
don't look out."

"That's a shame, papa," said Bessie, promptly, "for Anthony was not at
home when they cut their hay at the Vicarage."

"I don't know, I don't know, I'm sure.  Anthony has a finger in every
pie that I can see.  Where's he off now?  Who's this old Tregennas?
Well, Bessie, you and I had better be jogging, or Winifred's fine cook
will be spoiling the luncheon, and swearing it's our fault."

With Marion's feverish longing for the open air, she would not allow
Winifred to go into the house, but insisted upon her walking to the end
of the garden and crossing one of the newly mown fields, which led up to
a crowning circle of firs commanding the widest view in the
neighbourhood.  There she poured out a torrent of hopes and fears, all
Marmaduke's wrongs, and all she had determined Mr Tregennas should do.
It struck Winifred at times as a little strange that Marion could speak
so readily of things which her own instinct, more delicate and more
proud, would have guarded like a treasure in a casket, but she put the
thought aside.  Marion was lying on the grass, rolling the short blades
into balls, while Winifred sat up and looked straight before her over
the gently sloping fields, the apple orchards, Underham with its white
houses and black wharves, the river winding and broadening between red
wooded banks, until it lost itself in a distant dimly glimmering sea.
All the colours blended into each other with a sweet fair freshness.
There was just that subtile charm of warmth which brings life, not
languor.  Sounds reached them, softened, but vigorous.  Vessels were
discernible in the river, coming up with spread sails before the breeze,
and timber or coal on board for those same black wharves.  It might have
been a blank to Marion, whose mind was too self-absorbed to be affected
by the outer world, but Winifred was at all times open to these external
influences, and they contrasted strangely with Marion's impetuous
complaints of misery.

"If I could be only at Trenance!" she ended.

"Dear Marion, Anthony will be there,--he will do his best.  Old Mr
Tregennas is sure to like him."

"Anthony!" said Marion, with a hard little laugh.  "Anthony will fell
into one of his fevers.  He will find the estate at sixes and sevens,
and imagine it to be his mission to set it to rights.  Besides, it is
Marmaduke, not Anthony, whom it is of consequence that Mr Tregennas
should like."

Winifred hardly knew what to say.  Her sympathies were so active that a
strongly expressed idea such as Marion's was apt to carry her away, even
in spite of her better judgment, and yet her mind was healthfully
constituted, and repelled by what was morbid or strained.  Surely there
was no such absence of hope in Marmaduke's lot that it should be
bewailed as unbearable.  Surely Mr Miles had painfully uprooted
himself, and Anthony agreed to a distasteful journey for his sake.  And
meanwhile the sun was shining, and the larks singing, and a sea-breeze
sweeping along the water up to the fir-crowned height.  She must have
sung, too, if it had not been for the risk of hurting Marion's feelings.
As it was, her foot was beating on the short grass, and her eyes danced
in spite of all her efforts to feel concerned.

"What are you thinking about?" asked Marion discontentedly.

"Of what we shall wear as your bridesmaids.  If you don't let me choose
for myself, I will never forgive you."

"How silly you are!  If things go on as they are going now, I shall be
too old to have any bridesmaids at all, by the time we are married."

"Well, I don't know how things could go much faster, but I believe you
would like to be married in a whirlwind.  Now, it seems to me it would
have been quite dreadful if you had not had these little hitches and
impediments.  Why should you be different from other people?"

"I hope you will have them yourself, and then you will know they are not
so agreeable."

"But I did not say they were agreeable," said Winifred, her voice taking
a changed tone.  "Only that they are such small things in comparison--"

"In comparison with what?  I don't understand,--I don't think you
understand yourself," Marion exclaimed impatiently.

"O yes, I do," Winifred said confidently, but without further
explanation.  Marion was not the person to whom she could have breathed
a word of the little visions that trooped up softly as she spoke,--
innocent womanly visions, coming and going with a tender grace.  She
only looked out towards the shining streak of sea and smiled.

Somebody opened the gate at the bottom of the field, waved his hat, and
began to clamber lazily towards the two girls,--a big man, with long
limbs and high shoulders.  Winifred jumped up with a little relief when
she saw him, and nodded and beckoned at once as if he needed to be shown
where they were.

"How did you find us, Frank?" she called out.

"Parker told me you were somewhere about.  Women always give themselves
so much trouble before they can do anything comfortable, that I knew I
should find you at the highest point of the place."

He came straggling up, and stretched himself on the grass with an air of
contentment.  The lark had finished its song, and dropped silently into
the grass; the wind was freshening, blowing back Winifred's hair, and
stirring her face into colour;--everything was full of delicious, strong
beauty.  Winifred looked down at her cousin and smiled, perhaps at the
sight of his brown, good-tempered eyes.

"Now that you are come, you shall tell us what you have been doing," she
said, not sorry to lead Marion's thoughts away from the road of
unavailing regrets.

"Doing?  I have been walking through the mud.  That is what you all do
here always, isn't it?  I met an old woman who told me a great deal more
about cider than I ever knew before, and a man--O, by the way, Winifred,
that is what I wanted to ask you--who is a short man, rather deformed,
with a powerful face, and strong religious opinions?"

"It must have been David Stephens, Anthony's bugbear," said Winifred.

Other people's bugbears often strike one curiously in an opposite light.
Frank repeated the word a little wonderingly.

"He is a dissenter," said Marion, beginning to listen.  "He actually
wanted to build a chapel in Thorpe, and had almost got that stupid old
Maddox to let him have the field by the church.  Luckily Anthony found
it out, and stopped it.  I dare say he hates him for it."

"Poor fellow!" said Frank kindly, while Marion stared at him.  "One can
soon see he is a dissenter.  There is nothing very original in his
opinions, either, so far as they go: he has got hold of the usual
distortion of facts.  But it was the intensity of the man's convictions
which impressed me.  In these days it is something even to be a
fanatic."

"Every one says he is a most mischievous agitator," persisted Marion,
eagerly.  "We are quite unhappy because our maid--Faith Stokes--has
allowed herself to be engaged to him.  Her father is gardener at the Red
House.  All her family dislike it."

"She will stick to him," asserted Captain Orde.  "He is the very man to
get a hold over a woman.  Unless he himself gives her up.  If I don't
mistake him, he would neither let his own happiness nor another person's
stand in the way of what he imagined to be his work,--perhaps not even
his own conscience."

"How could you talk to him?"  Marion said reproachfully.  "He must be
very unsafe."

"Unsafe?  Unsafe as a powder-train.  But I don't know that it is
altogether his fault.  He has been cramped and goaded and sat upon, and
no one has taken the trouble to do anything but run counter to his
opinions."

"Because they are so wrong."

"Not altogether wrong.  They may get mixed up with no end of mistakes,
but there are some which seem to me a little beyond our improving.  He
believes he may help some poor men and women up towards God," said
Captain Orde, speaking with tender reverence.  "There is that, at all
events."

Winifred, who had been listening silently, turned round quickly and
clasped her hands.

"O yes, we cannot judge him," she said earnestly, "when we have never
tried to do anything for him!  I am so glad you have told us, Frank."

All her feelings had been stirred and touched somehow that morning.  We
cannot explain how it is that very often this is so when there seems no
particular reason for it, it may be a chance word that awakens a chain
of ideas, or reaches springs which are sealed at other times when we
take more trouble to get at them.  The happy sunshine about her, the
thoughts which had grown into life, quickened Winifreds sympathies into
generous glow.  Frank was looking at her, at the flush on her cheek, the
eager kindness of her eyes, with a strange thrill in his heart that his
words should have so moved her.  He could have very easily forgotten
David Stephens, if Marion had not said coldly,--

"Anthony will not be much obliged to you, Winifred."

"O, Anthony will understand!" said Winifred, speaking with quick
conviction.  "It was natural that he should be annoyed about the chapel.
That is another thing.  But if Frank convinces him that the poor fellow
is in earnest, Anthony will respect him, however much they may differ.
I am sure he will try to help him."

Frank Orde did not say any more.  His eyes had an odd, wistful look in
them, as if some discord had suddenly jarred; but Winifred was quite
blind to the look.  Perhaps this very want of self-consciousness, which
dulled the perception of things that touched herself, was one secret of
her power of influence.  People who forget themselves seldom fail to
impress others.

CHAPTER NINE.

The Vicar's departure caused a few lively gleams of astonishment among
the Thorpe people, especially as it was not a call to preach that had
taken him away; but no one would have dreamed of finding fault with him
if he had locked up the church, carried the keys with him, and condemned
the village to virtual excommunication until his return.  Tom Lear and
his young woman meekly submitted to the postponement of their bridal.
George Tucker, who had wanted a certificate signed, said the parson was
away, and there was an end of it.  There is often something pathetically
touching in this mute acceptance by the poor of the little hardships for
which we should impatiently seek remedies; but in this case it was Mr
Miles's true kindness of heart and courtesy of manner that made his
people treat with a forbearance at least as refined the inconveniences
to which his absent-mindedness and forgetfulness exposed them.

Then, as events strangely multiply themselves, the village awakened to
another agitation, for an old woman declared that an attempt to rob her
had been made in the night, and Mr Robert Mannering, summoned to the
cottage in his magisterial character, was seen by attentive watchers to
turn towards the Vicarage, and walk briskly up the drive towards the
door.  There also he was observed to knock, two little urchins having
been sent to run down the Church Lane, and report whether or not he
entered the house.

The knock outside was answered by Sniff within by a series of short
sharp barks, which only increased in energy until the door being opened
by Faith disclosed a friend.  A dog of weaker character would at once
have acknowledged his mistake by a sudden change of attitude, and a
hospitable greeting to the new-comer.  Sniff knew better.  With infinite
presence of mind, and without a moment's hesitation, he rushed past Mr
Mannering as if he had nothing in the world to do with the matter, and,
planting himself in the middle of the drive, barked long and loudly at
an imaginary enemy, after which he subsided into an amiable calm,
returned leisurely to the house, went up stairs, scratched open the
drawing-room, door, and advanced to Mr Mannering with the most friendly
of brown eyes.

"Then there was nothing really amiss?"  Mrs Miles was saying.

"Nothing whatever.  When does the Vicar return to put an end to these
panics?" said Mr Robert, patting Sniff.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Mrs Miles, shaking her head.  "I do hope
he will write and tell us how he gets on with old Mr Tregennas.  It
makes me quite uncomfortable to think of their being there, when I
remember how miserable William's poor aunt was."

Mr Mannering looked up quickly, checked himself, and said
hesitatingly,--

"He once lived in Yorkshire, I believe?"

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs Miles, "Yorkshire was just where he did live.
That was before he changed his name.  Do you know about him?  Do tell us
what you know."

"He had daughters, I think."

"One daughter,--Margaret.  But there is quite a sad story about her, for
Mr Tregennas disapproved of her marriage, and never forgave her.  He
must be so terribly unforgiving," concluded Mrs Miles, with a sigh.

"I heard," said Mr Mannering, still slowly, "that her father objected
to her choice, and that she and her husband went to Australia.  But I
heard also,--I hope it is so,"--he went on with a little agitation,
"that Mrs Harford was a happy woman?"

"I don't know, I'm sure.  Poor thing, she is dead now, and as for the
child, of course it is for Marmaduke's interests that Mr Tregennas
should hold out, but still--it does seem hard, doesn't it, Marion?"

"Mamma, what is the use of reviving that old story!" said Marion,
impatiently.  "Mr Tregennas is not likely to change his mind."

"No, my dear, no, to be sure not; indeed, one could not wish it.  Only
it does seem a little hard, for there was nothing against him that we
could ever hear, and it was only that she was too fond of him to give
him up.  Don't you feel sorry for her, Mr Mannering?"

"Sorry!  Good heavens, madam!" he said, jumping up with a sudden
impetuosity which startled Mrs Miles, and made him beg her pardon
hastily.  "I knew Miss Hare in old days," he explained, "and, as you
say, it strikes one as something horrible that her father should never
have softened towards her.  There is a child, isn't there?"

"Yes, a little girl; and how she may be brought up since the poor
mother's death, I am sure nobody knows.  William's poor aunt did all in
her power to make Mr Tregennas think more kindly; but, dear me, she
used to say one might as well talk to a stone-wall, and then Mr Harford
was nearly as bad, so there was really no bringing them together."

"Things can't be forced," Marion put in again.  "I dare say Mr Harford
is a great deal better off staying out there and keeping his daughter to
himself.  His position is not half so trying as Marmaduke's, who is the
last person considered."

"My dear, don't say so.  I am sure I have been quite uncomfortable about
him, poor boy, ever since he was here, and I do wish he had taken a
hamper of vegetables with him.  Still, one may be sorry for two people
as well as one."

"Sixteen--seventeen--the child must be seventeen by this time," said Mr
Robert meditatively.

"Only think of your remembering so well!"

"Yes, only think!" repeated Mr Mannering, with his old cheery voice
returning as he rose to go.  "Miss Marion, I give you warning that I
shall not be able to come to the Vicarage much more if you allow my poor
roses to fall into such a miserable condition.  There's a Devoniensis at
the porch, which it goes to my heart to see.  Good by, Mrs Miles; you
need not trouble your head about the robber, but if you or Marion will
go and sit with her for an hour, I can't conceive any greater enjoyment
to the poor old soul than to tell you the history from beginning to
end."

"I am glad he is gone," said Marion, feverishly, as the door shut him
out.

There were other little strings pulling to the same tune, and setting
hearts throbbing at the Vicarage just then, while the sweet summer days
blossomed and faded.  David Stephens met Faith that very evening, as she
came back from her father's cottage.  Perhaps there could not have been
a more favourable moment for him, for old Araunah, who was the most
inveterate of the family against the preacher, had been inveighing
loudly and angrily upon his granddaughter's infatuation, and her mother
had joined in a weak, irritating sort of way, which had raised Faith's
indignation on behalf of her lover.

"A poor crooked feller like that there David!  It do vex me so to think
o't, Faith, that I can't give my mind to my meat, an' if I doan't kep
abowt an' do my niffles, I doan't know watt iver'll come to the house
nor fayther.  If he wor a fine, hearty young man, now, there'd be
somethin' to say for 'ee."

"Handsome is as handsome does," said Faith, flushing.  She was not very
much in love with David, but this disparagement created a natural desire
to set him a little higher than she might otherwise have done.  "There
was crowds to hear him last Sunday, and the people so taken up with him,
they're ready to cut off their hands if he told them to."

"Likely enough," said old Araunah, with vast acorn.  "You'll find more
fules than wise, my gal, wheriver you goes.  For my peart, I doan't see
as this hyur ground grows much beside."

Faith had come away in the very thick of the battle, and as she suddenly
turned a corner upon David, the feeling of championship excited on his
behalf had not had time to cool.  She showed him more plainly than usual
that she was glad to see him, and the perception of this brought an
immediate change in his pale face.

"You're looking tired, David," she said tenderly.  "You've been tramping
about too much, as you're always doing.  Why can't you take a little
rest?  Nobody works so hard as you, I do believe; there's father at it
all day, but when he comes home, there he sits comfortable, and you're
only off to something else."

"Your father works for time, and I have to work against it, that's the
difference.  If you saw those poor souls looking up at you with hungry
eyes you wouldn't know where to stop.  Not but what the Devil is very
keen in his temptations.  He sets it before me again and again that
there's more thrust on my hands by the Lord than one man can do, and
he's not content with that, without raising up difficulties and
hindrances on either side so as to make the work seem pretty nigh
impossible at times.  But in spite of all, there's a great stirring of
hearts in those that hear."

"John Moore told me you'd more than ever last Sunday."

"Yes, there were plenty that had never been before, and perhaps they
were more moved than those that have had the Gospel put before them
longer.  And many told me they should bring more the next time.  It's
the truth at work."

"And your preaching, David," said Faith, a little jealously.  "They say
they like to listen to you, because you never want for words, and that
you are the finest preacher the Wesleyans have ever had here."

"It isn't that," said David, with a grave earnestness in his voice.  "It
never can be the instruments that do the work.  I couldn't say ten words
if I believed they were my own words that I was speaking.  There's
nothing in it, but that I tell them what the Gospel says to them,
without letting man's devices come in between us."

"I don't know," said Faith, shaking her head incredulously; "I think
it's the way you put it mostly that pleases them.  There's old Mary
Potter wanting to hear you, but she can never get in all the way to
Underham.  And grandfather's that angry when he hears them talk of a
chapel in Thorpe!"

David sighed, but it was at the first part of the girls speech rather
than the latter, which only acted upon him as a challenge to battle acts
upon a brave man.  He loved Faith with an intensity which often pained
him, conscious as he was of a want of agreement between her nature and
his own, conscious also that her theological views were rather adopted
from an interest in himself, than from any firm persuasion on one side
or the other.  The truth lay before him in one narrow groove, out of
which there was no turning a hair's-breadth to the left hand or right.
It followed necessarily that a conviction would force itself upon him,--
when he had the courage to face it,--that Faith had as yet no part or
share in the salvation which he preached as altogether a matter of
faith, and the further conviction which lurked behind the other, but
which he never yet had ventured boldly to drag into the light, would
have forced him to cast away his love, as the eye or hand which needed
to be destroyed.  It does not require the same conclusions to be aware
that what to David Stephens was actually a matter of conscience there
was danger in temporising with.  He told himself that the sin was at
least all his own, and suffered expediency to suggest the hope that
Faith would by and by become other than she was.  The unacknowledged
scourge of anxiety which he felt made him the more zealous for the
building of a chapel in Thorpe: he had then the promise of becoming its
minister, and he was aware that the position held out charms to Faith,
who had some sort of idea that it would raise her almost to a level with
Mrs Miles herself.  David told himself fiercely that once he had Faith
for his own, he should have removed her from the teaching which he held
to be utterly antagonistic to the truth, and that his prayers and his
love must win her to his side for eternity.  He had fully believed
himself to have succeeded with old Maddox,--who, having lived a life of
indifference, was beginning to find it less easy now that death was in
view, and caught at any teaching which held out a promise of security,--
when Anthony Miles had overthrown his hopes.  He did not, however, yet
despair, nor must it be imagined that it was the thought of Faith which
even chiefly incited him in his efforts.  Had she been lost to him that
very day, his convictions were so earnest, his yearning to save souls so
strong, that he would have toiled as perseveringly as ever: but she was
the human spur which, almost unconsciously, gave a feverish anxiety to
his endeavours, and excited at all events a strong personal persuasion
that Anthony, in opposing him, was siding with the great enemy of all
good, against whom David daily wrestled and prayed.

"Your grandfather may think different one day, Faith, but if he doesn't,
we mustn't let the words of those that are dearest to us keep us back
from the plough."  David said this with a throb of anguish in his own
heart, but he contrived to steady his voice, and it only gave it one of
those singular thrills which added not a little to the influence it had
upon his hearers.  Faith was impressed with it just as her own thoughts
had strayed off to picturing herself as minister's wife, sitting in the
chapel arrayed in a silk gown, and she looked hurriedly in his face with
a sensation partly pride and partly discomfort.  The plough was not in
her thoughts, but she acknowledged it to be David's duty to talk about
it, and her little head had an idea that by becoming his wife she might
both be good by proxy, and also share in the admiration which she heard
largely expressed of his talents as a preacher.  On the whole, she had
seldom felt more kindly towards David than at this moment; while he,
poor fellow, took it as a hopeful sign of grace, that she did not urge
any of those arguments against his doctrines which she brought forward
when she fancied they interfered with his advancement.  He held her hand
in his with a strong grasp as they parted, and the colour which rose in
her cheek under his gaze gave him a glad thrill of exultation.  It
seemed to him as if he were borne on the top of an irresistible wave,
which was sweeping triumphant spoil from the very grasp of the enemy.
And now the soul dearer to him than his own was being drawn slowly but
surely towards him, while to come to him must, as he believed, lead it
onwards towards his God.

CHAPTER TEN.

These few days of waiting were intolerable to Marion, who hated all
delays, and from her earliest childhood objected to hear reason, as the
old nurse used to say.  Whatever was hanging over her head, good, bad,
or indifferent, she would have come down at once, and let the crash be
over.  Poor Mrs Miles had too little in common with her daughter to
know what to say or do.  Every morning she was sure that a letter would
come by that post, and as sure when the hour had passed that it was more
natural that it should not arrive until the next day.  Such little
securities win their triumphs at last.  On Saturday morning a few lines
from Anthony announced their intended return in the afternoon.

It struck Marion at once that her father was depressed, although there
was evident gladness at getting back to his home.  After he had kissed
her, and before turning to his letters, he looked for a moment into her
face with a touch of the wistfulness which his talk with her in the
study seemed to have brought into his eyes.  She determined to find
Anthony, who had gone off to the stables to see the pony nibbed down,
and whose whereabouts were easily discoverable through Sniffs bark of
delight.  Hearing his sister's call, he crossed the yard.

"Hallo, Marion, what have you been doing with yourself?  You look as if
you wanted fresh air badly.  Put on your hat, and come up to Hardlands
with me."

"Hardlands!  Anthony, you and papa are as cruel as can be to keep me in
this horrible suspense.  O Anthony, dear, do tell me,--what did he
say?--what is Marmaduke to do?"

"I think it's pretty nearly right, or on the way to be right," said
Anthony, digging his hands into his pockets, "though I don't exactly
know what Marmaduke expects."

"To be his heir," said Marion quickly.  "It was a promise."

"I think Marmaduke must have made a mistake there," began Anthony, but
she interrupted him at once.

"He did not, indeed."

Anthony was silenced, and began to whistle, not knowing in the least
what to say.  His father had begged him to tell Marion no more than was
absolutely necessary, and there was an uncomfortable and unacknowledged
impression upon the two that she would not be satisfied with their
tidings.  Mr Tregennas would not admit anything definite.  "Sha'n't
forget the lad, I tell you.  If you want to know for your daughter's
sake, he'll have enough to live upon, and she, too, unless you've
brought her up in these new-fangled fashions."  This was what he had
said, and of course it was something, Mr Miles would have said it was a
good deal, if there had not been that uneasy consciousness of
Marmaduke's expectations, and it was quite certain that it did not
satisfy Marion.  It was sufficient, however, to give her a further
ground on which to urge her father to admit of their engagement.  If the
Vicar had felt himself as free as usual to follow his own judgment, he
would, probably, for some time yet, have refused his consent; but he was
in the position of a man who, having failed to see what all the time lay
close at hand, feels a nervous distrust of himself, and, moreover, his
life had fallen too completely into a matter of routine for him to meet
an unexpected call for decision as firmly as he would have met it years
ago.  He would have willingly let the matter drift to the shore as the
tide of circumstances carried it.  But Marion was too well aware of the
advantage she had gained not to push it farther; Mr Tregennas had
rather encouraged than opposed the engagement, and Mrs Miles shook her
head over Marion's loss of colour and brightness.  The Vicar was
inclined to believe implicitly in his wife at this moment, Marion had
one of those temperaments which in their many changes act rapidly upon
people's looks, and her father could not meet her heavy eyes and live
his own life any more in peace.

So she had her way; the engagement was allowed, Marmaduke was to spend
his approaching leave at Thorpe, and Anthony and he were to go for a
week to Trenance.

Here again the poor Vicar was aware of perplexity.  Mr Tregennas had
shown an inconveniently strong liking for Anthony, whom nobody wanted
him to like.  His energy and brightness seemed to have such an
attraction for him, that the old man, now with little more left of his
old nigged self-will than a certain feeble captiousness, would sit and
watch him by the hour from under his big eyebrows.  The Vicar, who had
become aware of this, was almost provoked at his son's unconsciousness.
Anthony was at all times disposed to take it for granted that things
would be as he thought best, and it seemed to him that Marmaduke was
really as sure of his inheritance as if it had all been plainly set down
in black and white.  Even if the idea of his becoming his friend's rival
had ever entered his head, the prospect of heirship would have had
little fascination for him.  He had some money of his own, which made
him independent of his father.  Trenance was but a dull country place,
and he was too young and too sanguine to care much for money and
possessions.  He wanted power, but not of that sort, and how to gain it
he had not yet resolved, but there was a swing of energy about the young
fellow which made all things seem possible.  If his self-confidence were
too buoyant, too ready to rush blindfold, it was a danger which he would
be the last to discover for himself; if, later in life, his character
were likely to develop just a touch of arrogance, it was for the present
concealed by his brightness and boyish gaiety of heart.  At any rate he
could never be covetous.  Trenance was nothing to him, and thinking of
Marmaduke it was with a little real compassion for a life which was to
be bounded by so many acres, a mine or two, and the little church town.
His own dreams reached far beyond those limits.

Already he had taken a step in one of the paths which lay before him,
and seemed to invite him into smiling depths.  He had written a pamphlet
upon certain branches of reform, and it had been noticed with some
commendation by an influential paper, to Mrs Miles's great delight.
The notice was a good deal more dear to her than the pamphlet, and she
would go up to her son's room and read out little bits, although with a
sharp criticism of its shortcomings.

"There are only two quotations, and so much that people would have liked
to read!  And why should they say you are a young author?  I am sure
there is nothing your father might not have written so far as age is
concerned."

"They must criticise, you know."

"Well," said Mrs Miles, doubtfully, "if they did not find a little
fault, I suppose others would be jealous.  But they could not deny that
it is excellent."

She got up as she spoke, and went softly about the room, putting some
tidying touches which Faith had neglected.  The summer sun was shining
in and discovering dust in little out-of-the-way corners where things
were heaped.  There was a faded sketch of Hardlands by Winifred stuck
over the chimney-piece.

"It is a pity those people don't know who you are," Mrs Miles
continued.  "I wish you would write and tell them, Anthony; I am sure
they would be pleased.  My dear, you would find a better picture than
this in the portfolio down stairs."

"It does very well," said Anthony sleepily.

Mrs Miles went on with her work, but presently began again.

"My dear, it is a long time since you called at Deanscourt, and Sir
James Milman has always been so civil that it does not seem quite right.
Suppose you were to ride over there this afternoon."

"I don't believe they've come down yet."

"Lady and Miss Milman are at home, I know," asserted Mrs Miles gravely,
"for she wrote the other day to ask for Ellen Harding's character.  Miss
Milman seems a very sweet girl."

"Oh!"

"And very pretty, I'm sure."

"She's not my style," said Anthony, with an air of having disposed of
her.

"My dear, I think you would find her so, if only you knew her better,"
interposed Mrs Miles earnestly, "and Mrs Featherly tells me--"

"What?"

"That all those girls have money."

"Well, mother, I'm too shy to venture there by myself, but, if you like,
I'll drive you over in the pony-carriage."

"Thank you, I'm sure, my dear, it would be very nice," said Mrs Miles,
whose pleasure in driving with her son was mixed with several pet
perturbations of her own; "but are you sure the pony is not too fresh?"

"Fresh?  He wants a little work, of course, but it's nothing on earth
but play that makes him caper.  I'll see he does no harm."

"My dear, I can't help wishing he would play in the stables, where he
really has nothing else to do, but if you think he's quite safe--"

"As safe as any old cart-horse.  Come, mother, if he should upset us,
I'll give you leave to call me all the bad names you can think of."

"O dear, but that will not make it any better," said Mrs Miles, shaking
her head.  "I don't see how you can help it if he takes it into his head
to play, as you call it.  However, my dear, you really ought to go to
Deanscourt, so I will be quite ready by four o'clock, and now I must go
and speak to Faith about the dust in this room."

"You don't mean to say, mother, that you've let Faith engage herself to
that dissenting fellow, Stephens," said Anthony, beginning to speak
energetically.

"I could not prevent it," said Mrs Miles, giving her head a mournful
shake by way of protest.  "I don't know what the world is coming to, but
servants are not at all what they were."

"We ought to have stopped it, though.  How was he ever allowed to hang
about the house?  Faith is too good a little thing for a humbugging
rascal like that.  You wouldn't believe how he has worked upon that old
idiot Maddox; if I hadn't gone into it, my father would have had a
meeting-house stuck under his very nose, ay, and he'll have it still,
unless I keep a sharp lookout.  But, upon my word, it is a great deal
too bad that he should get hold of Faith."

Anthony was handling a tool as he spoke, and punching a hole in a bit of
wood with as much force as if it had been Stephens's head.  Mrs Miles
never liked to see her son "put out;" his face was quick to reflect his
feelings, and he certainly did not look pleasantly upon what galled him.
It was quite true that David was his present bugbear, and that he gave
him credit for no motives except the lowest: his feelings had so much
heat in them, that they deprived him in a great measure of the power of
sympathy with that with which he had no agreement, and were always
easily excited into prejudice.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

  "Like, but unlike, the sun that shone,
  The waves that beat the shore,
  The words we said, the songs we sung,
  Like, unlike, evermore."

  A.F.C.K.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The summer was passing at Thorpe very much as other summers had passed,
and yet with the difference that dogs our footsteps whether we will or
no.  The grass waves, the forget-me-nots look up from the brink of cool
brown streams, the roses are as sweet as ever,--we wonder as we touch
them how there can be a change and what it is, but we know in our hearts
that it has come, and that things can never more be what they once have
been.

As for Anthony, all things considered, he seemed to be leading a
pleasant life enough.  There was bright, settled weather, and the
neighbourhood had taken one of those sudden freaks of gaiety with which
such neighbourhoods are occasionally seized; dinners and picnics and
cricket-matches succeeded one another rapidly, people came to stay with
each other, glad to escape from the heat of London to these pretty
country-places, where they could lie under the shadow of great elms, and
pick dewy fruit in old-fashioned gardens.  It was an easy, charming
existence, with a busy idleness about it, which had an indescribable
delight so long as the sun would shine.  Anthony was wanted for all the
little festivities, he was asked to stay here, to dine there; the
Milmans, the Hunters, the Bennetts, the Davieses, had each some
attraction to offer, and young ladies who were ready to encourage Mr
Miles's attentions.  By and by little echoes of rumours began to be
heard.  At one picnic he had talked to no one but Miss Lovell, at
another dinner-party he had devoted himself for the whole evening to
Miss Milman.  Winifred had been there, and had seen it for herself, and,
indeed, Anthony, when he indulged in these flirtations, generally
contrived to be near Winifred.  Not that a spirit of mischief prompted
him on such occasions, or anything beyond a light-hearted enjoyment of
the present moment.  He liked the pretty flatteries of manner, the
little attentions, which the young girls were not unwilling to lavish
upon him,--liked to feel himself courted and appealed to,--liked also,
or something more than liked, that Winifred should be near him, that he
might look at her, listen to her at the very moment he was turning away,
touch something she had touched, unconsciously compare her with her
companions.  Unconsciously, I repeat, for, although many problems were
puzzling him at this moment, he was thinking least of all about his own
heart.  He did very much what he liked, and if it pleased him to talk to
Miss Milman and to sit near Winifred, he talked and he sat.  That was
all.

That was all, and no one could have said a word against it if it had
been always so.  He had no intention of neglecting Winifred; but to a
girl who loves, unintentional neglect is more cruelly wounding than any
other.  Each day worked with a sort of slow torture upon her, the more
so that her cheeks burnt with shame, when she even acknowledged it to
herself.  She was in high spirits,--or so it seemed.  She fancied
herself that all sweetness and gentleness had died out of her heart,
leaving bitter ashes behind.  When she spoke to Anthony it was
laughingly and lightly, only every now and then there would descend a
sharp cut, or one that she thought sharp, poor child, and would repeat
over to herself with a dreary satisfaction, while she invented other
sayings more terrible, which the time never came for uttering.  After
all, they were not so severe as she intended, for such weapons did not
belong to her by nature, and she used them as tremblingly as a woman
will fire off a gun that she expects to explode in her hands.  As often
as not, Anthony did not notice these little attacks; he noticed more
what she did not say, the pleasant things which fell so trippingly from
others' lips, to Winifred's disdain.  Feeling as if Anthony were
slipping away altogether from the pleasant, familiar intercourse which
had been enough to satisfy her while it lasted, and which, therefore,
she fancied would have satisfied her forever, these sweet summer days,
in which all the world was making holiday, were to her full of restless
misery, to which she dared neither give a name nor a cause, and over
which she shed the bitterest tears that her life as yet had known.

No one saw the struggle.  It would have added tenfold to her suffering
if they had done so, for she had too much of her grandmothers undaunted
spirit not to be at times fierce and impatient with herself, and her
very prayers were not so often that she might be loved again, as that
she might cease to love, and so have done with the pain.  She had no
mother.  The Squire, when he was in his most jovial moods, would strike
Anthony on the back and ask who was the last flame, but his own
daughter's name had never occurred to him.  Mrs Miles was distracted
between hopes and fears, represented by Miss Milman and Miss Davies.
Marion was taken up with Marmaduke, who was at Thorpe, and who for his
part was absorbed in thoughts of Mr Tregennas and Trenance.  After this
one step had been gained, he was greedy for a clearer declaration of the
old man's intentions, and waited restlessly for a repetition of the
invitation to himself and Anthony.  Yet when it arrived, he said
jealously to Marion,--

"Why should Anthony go?  What has he to do with it?  Is he trying to
come over the old man?"

Even she flamed a little.  "You should know him better.  There was never
any one in the world who cared less for money," she said angrily.

One wonders sometimes how many misjudgments will rise up and face us one
day.  Anthony was so far from thinking the thoughts that Marmaduke put
into his head, that he was a good deal vexed at the summons which took
him away from the pleasant little round into which he had fallen.  But
he consoled himself with grumbling, and the Milmans insisted upon
putting off their picnic until his return.

"They'll turn the boy's head between them," said Mr Robert Mannering
wrathfully to himself.  He was in his garden, alternately attending to
some newly budded roses, and doing his utmost to discomfit the
imperturbable Stokes.  The little ugly red-faced man guessed better than
other people what was going on, and perhaps saw more clearly.  "Confound
those women!" he said ungallantly.  "They do their best to spoil any man
they take a fancy to!  Stokes, I presume you suppose these unhappy buds
are to undo their own bandages?  I should like to tie you up for a week,
and see how you'd feel at the end of it.  And those seedling carnations
are in a disgraceful condition."

"There bain't wan o' them worth the soil he grows in," asserted Stokes
with round emphasis.

"Not worth!  Pray do you know where the seed came from, and how much I
gave for it?"

"I shouldn't be surprised but what you might ha' given anything they
asked of you.  I can't help that, Mr Robert.  There's a lot of
impostors in gardining like as there is in anything else, unless you
looks pretty sharp.  And they thyur caernations is rubbish."

"That's your ignorance.  I should like to know how much you knew about
gardening until I taught you."

"I knowed rubbish--always," said Stokes, with an air of decision which
fairly drove Mr Robert off the field.  He walked towards the house
across the short fine turf, all unlike the Vicarage lawn with its
intruding daisies and dandelions, smiling a little to himself over his
own discomfiture.

"They are worthless, I believe," he said, "only I didn't think the
fellow would have the wit to find it out.  Who are these coming in at
the gate?  The Chesters, if I'm not mistaken."  And away hurried Mr
Robert to receive his visitors.

"The girls got hold of me, and would make me walk over with them," said
the Squire, pulling Bessie's hair, and talking loudly.  "What are you
doing in the garden, eh?  Your hobby, ain't it, Mannering?  I'll lay
sixpence, though, you don't show me a finer dish of peas than we had for
dinner yesterday.  What were they called, Bessie?  Bessie's the one for
remembering all the fine names."

"Come and dine with us one day, and I'll see what we can do.  Will you
say Thursday?--unless Miss Winifred has some engagement."

"No," said Winifred, with a little weariness in her voice, which Mr
Mannering detected at once.  "The Milmans were to have had a picnic on
that day, but it is to wait."

"Because Anthony is going away," put in Bessie in an aggrieved tone.

"They want young Miles to marry the girl Milman, and so they can't make
enough of him," said the Squire.  "That's the long and short of it."

"Ah, I don't believe he has any such notion in his head," replied Mr
Robert, manfully.  "He'll not be marrying just yet, though other people
will marry him a dozen times over."

"Perhaps not, perhaps not; I don't know that I should expect to see him
do anything so sensible.  Old Milman isn't over-troubled with brains,
but they carry him along very fairly, and he's as sound a Tory as any
man in the county.  It might be the making of the young fellow to marry
into a good steady holdfast family like that, and get some of his
harebrained notions knocked out of him," said the Squire, who was
becoming very sore with Anthony's arguments.

"O, his notions will come all right by and by!" said Mr Robert
pacifically.  "People can't all think and live in just the same
grooves."

"More's the pity.  I don't see that the new grooves are any the better."

"Well, perhaps sometimes they're not so much worse as we think them.
And how does Bessie get on without Miss Palmer?"

"Why, she plagues us all," said the Squire, with great satisfaction.
"She's always running out into the fields after me, when she ought to be
at her lessons, or her sampler, I tell her.  Winifred's got no end of
trouble with her.  And now she's bothering my life out to go into
Aunecester twice a week, to the School of Art I suppose she must go, but
who's to take her, I should like to know?"

"You, papa, of course," said Bessie decidedly.  "You are always as glad
as you can be to go to Aunecester."

"There, you hear.  That's how she serves her father," said Mr Chester,
chuckling, and pulling her hair again.  "No, thank you, we'll not come
in, Henderson's waiting to speak to me about his farm.  Where's
Mannering?"

"He's driven over to dine at the Hunters'."

"What a man he is for society."

"Yes, he likes it, and it does him good," said Mr Robert quietly.

"That's what people always say about things that please them.  I tried
it for a good bit upon salmon, but it didn't do.  Had to give it up.
Well, girls, now you've had your say, I hope you're satisfied, and will
let me go home in peace.  You're a lucky man, Mannering, to have your
own way without being plagued for it.  Here's Bessie, now: a fellow will
have a pretty handful that gets her,--bless you, she'll not let him say
his soul's his own," added the Squire, in high good-humour, making signs
behind his youngest daughter's back.

"How is the Farleyense, Mr Mannering?" asked Winifred, lingering.

"I really think that, if possible, it is in more perfect condition than
when you did it the honour to come to look at it."

"And Stokes has not tried any experiments?"

"He knows that if he did it would cost him his place.  No, Miss
Winifred, there is a point behind which even the easiest master must
intrench himself."

The girl sighed a little.  Her father and sister were strolling along
the lane outside the gates, and the Squire's loud laugh came to them
scarcely softened by the short distance.  The rich fulness of August
seemed to weigh somewhat heavily in the air; the hedge-row elms stood in
thick unenlightened masses against the sky; the garden was a little
parched and exhausted by its very profusion of flowers, the scent of the
jessamine was almost oppressive in its richness; it was one of those
days in which, without any perceptible change, the knowledge forces
itself upon us that the change is there, and that something is gone from
us.

"And do you still carry the key in your pocket?" said Winifred, with a
faint smile.

"No, no, the house is open.  Will you come and see it again?"

"Winifred!" called the Squire from the other side of the wall.

"Not now, thank you.  I mustn't keep my father."

She spoke hurriedly, but walked lingeringly towards the gate, and Mr
Mannering remained stationary for some moments after she had
disappeared.  "I wonder what is making her take such an interest in the
Farleyense," he said to himself.  "The plant is a picture, to be sure,
but still--when I think of it--and why should I keep the key in my
pocket?--Why--what an old fool I am!--I had forgotten all about Anthony,
and no doubt the poor girl wanted to hear a word or two more about him.
He's off somewhere to-day, I dare say, and going into Cornwall
to-morrow,--the best place for him, too, if he doesn't know what's good
for him; and there she is fretting over all these confounded reports,
and thinking I could have said a word or two to comfort her.  I've a
great mind not to look at the Farleyense for a week.  However, perhaps
I'd better just go and give it a glance, to make sure that Stokes hasn't
been meddling."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

  "Brave spirits are a balsam to themselves:
  There is a nobleness of mind, that heals
  Wounds beyond salves."

  Cartwright.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The two young men found time hang on their hands at Trenance somewhat
heavily.  The old shadowy house stood at the foot of a hill, by the
river's side; the river was there, making silvery gleams between the
trees; it was all cool, green, and dull for these energetic lives, but
Marmaduke looked forward to the sweets of ownership, and found it more
endurable than his companion.  And yet Anthony was the most kind to the
old man.

"Poor old fellow!" he said one day, as they locked the door of the
boat-house, where the water was lapping drearily among the piles, and
climbed the bank towards the house.  "There must be a queer sort of
feeling in looking at the man who is waiting to step into one's shoes.
I am not sure we should stand it so well as he does."

"He has had his day."

"Well, I don't know that having had dinner one day makes one wish to go
without it the next, if that's what you mean."

"You wouldn't care for dinner if you had lost your appetite," said
Marmaduke.

"You mightn't care, though, much to see other people eat."

"Pray do you suggest my starving myself for company?"

"I wasn't thinking of you, I was thinking of him," said Anthony,
stopping to cut down an ungainly bramble.  "Everybody knows it's the
course of nature, and all that.  Still, I say it can't be altogether
easy to be pleasant under those circumstances,--particularly when it's
not your own son that's to follow."

"That's not my fault," said Marmaduke, who seemed to put himself upon
the defensive.

"No, it's your luck, old fellow," said Anthony kindly.  "Don't be
crusty.  Do you suppose I'm not glad from the bottom of my heart there
don't happen to be a Mrs Tregennas and half a dozen young Tregennases
to keep you out of Trenance?  Though, by all the much-abused laws of
justice and equity, I don't know that you ought to be here now."

"Why not?" said Marmaduke, turning hastily.

"Because there's nearer blood."

"Mrs Harford is dead."

"Of course she is.  But her daughter isn't, so far as we know," said
Anthony, finishing his bramble.

"She's well out of the way in Australia, at any rate."

"O, she's far enough off.  And her grandfather seems to care little
enough what becomes of her.  If I were you, Marmaduke, I'd say a good
word for her.  My father tried, but he wouldn't listen."

"Thank you," said Marmaduke, curtly.  They were near the house, and he
turned abruptly into one of the side paths and walked off by himself.
Anthony, whose temper was none of the sweetest, felt a little indignant
at his manner.  Marmaduke was not like the boy he remembered, a change
seemed to have come over him; Anthony, perhaps, had not yet learned how
many-sided we all may be, how as one front and then another comes
forward, it needs a golden cord to draw us into the beauty of harmony,
or a false mask to make pretence of it.  Marmaduke had not either at
this time.  There were things surging up in him which were all at war;
he was torn and distracted between them.  He knew Anthony well, and yet
he had lost faith in his own knowledge.  The idea that had once taken
root grew hatefully into form and haunting prominence, and there was not
a look of old Mr Tregennas, or a word from the young man, but he caught
at greedily, and with it fed the lurking fear.  He was forever watching,
and, as he called it to himself, countermining.  Anthony's natural ease
and brightness of manner became, in his sight, deliberate pitfalls
spread to entrap the old man; so that although he did contrive to
disguise his feelings with a facility which was becoming dangerous, he
was restless and uneasy when Anthony was out of his sight, especially
when he suspected him of being by Mr Tregennas's side.  His disquiet
was the more unaccountable that Mr Tregennas rather fell foul of the
world in a peevishly discontented fashion, which had taken the place of
his former ungracious doggedness, than showed any especial marks of
favour on that side or on this.  He snubbed Anthony quite as much as he
snubbed Marmaduke, on the whole perhaps rather more, Anthony being less
careful not to disagree with him, and having taken up a crusade about
some labourers' cottages on the estate, a suggestion to improve which
was popularly considered to have the same effect upon the master as the
shaking of a red rag has upon a bull.  Anthony used to talk to the men,
and invite them to complain to the steward, and then come back and tell
Mr Tregennas what he had done.

"What d'ye mean by that, sir?" the old man would growl in a rage.  "What
d'ye mean by stirring these rascals up?"

"They're in the right, sir, indeed they are.  You can't get down to see
the place, and White doesn't choose to tell you what the people say, but
it's a shame that any one should have to live in such holes."

"You'll live in them yourself one of these days, if you go on in this
confounded fashion of yours."

"Then I hope you'll have them set in order at once, sir," said Anthony,
with a promptitude over which old Tregennas chuckled.

In about a fortnight he let them go.  Anthony was so conscious of the
sacrifice he had made upon the altar of friendship, that he was the more
irritated at the change which had become perceptible in Marmaduke.  It
seemed at times as if he scarcely cared to conceal his repulsion, and at
other moments as though he were studiously forcing himself to wear the
old dress of pleasant companionship.  Anthony's nature was one which
very quickly took the tone which others exhibited towards him; he was
apt to fall aloof at the first symptom of drawing back, and to feel more
anger than sorrow at the loss of good-will.  In this case, however, the
thought of Marion prevented the alteration in their relations to one
another becoming so marked as it might otherwise have been, and, indeed,
Marmaduke was kept closely at his distasteful duties during the
following autumn and winter months.

Anthony himself was not uninterruptedly at the Vicarage.  He had a
feeling as if this choice of a profession which lay before him were a
crisis in his life; perhaps a little pleasant sense of self-importance
gave it even undue gravity in his eyes.  It was possible to debate upon
it without that goad of necessity behind him by which men are often
driven into the decisions of life, and his mind travelled after many
projects in the paths which stretched to this and that summit in the
horizon of the future.  At one time he would be a barrister,--until he
went to London and was talked out of it by one of the profession; at
another he would travel with a pupil, an idea unconsciously crushed by
Sir James Milman's energy in offering him the charge of a shock-headed
lad whose irreproachable heaviness would have driven Anthony out of his
senses by the end of a week; finally, his longest and favourite dream
was that of literature, the gates of which were to fly open as all gates
are to open before these young knights.  Meanwhile his life was much
what it had been in the summer, energetic in everything, whether
shooting or flirting or dancing or writing, splendidly young, as Mr
Robert once said.  As to his relations with Winifred Chester, the
barrier between them, doubtless, still existed, and caused a fret on
either side, he telling himself that Winifred was changeable and
unsympathetic, and she accusing him of giving up old friendships for
new, yet neither the one nor the other so entirely believing in their
own reproaches as to have lost the idea that some day things would go
back to what once had been.  Meanwhile, if the old familiar life did not
flow on with the pleasant smoothness of former days,--and, indeed, the
Squire's manner with Anthony must be allowed in some measure to have
prevented this,--Winifred was less tired in the winter than in the gay
brightness of the summer days, and it was less sharp to dream of his
sitting by Miss Milman's side than to be actually there to feel herself
neglected.  Moreover, she was struggling with all her might to prove
herself--even to herself--indifferent.  It was balm to her sore heart,
ashamed of its own weakness and attempting to ignore it, to keep away
from the Vicarage when Anthony was there, to avoid the roads in which
she was likely to meet him, to turn the conversation when it drew near
the subject which was dearest, to remain in her own room when he came to
Hardlands.  Every such act was a triumph, but what a triumph!  For
Anthony was not likely to bear his treatment with good-humoured
indifference.  It galled him.  He was inclined to retaliate, and he laid
all the blame of their altered relations at Winifred's door.  Now and
then there came a faint return of what once had been, but there was no
doubt that the last few months had developed a certain easiness to take
offence, which had never before seemed to belong to the girl's nature,
so that often even after a momentary relaxation she pulled herself up
with a sharp and uncomfortable check.  It is indeed a little difficult
for a woman in her position to strike the just balance between
self-respect and pride.

If she could not altogether deceive herself, she unconsciously contrived
to mystify others: the men said she had refused young Miles, the women
that she had tried in vain to marry him, even shrewd Mr Robert was
puzzled.  There was no one so loving, so tender, so observant, that they
weighed the trifles which might have betrayed her, no swiftness of
motherhood to read what was passing.  So far as human sympathy was
concerned, she bore her burden, without a finger being stretched to help
her; but there is a Hand from whose loving touch the sorest heart never
shrinks, and from out of the very depths it draws us gently.

Her self-containing puzzled even herself.  There comes a time in most
strong lives when the mysterious power of repression becomes an
experience to them and grows into a wonder.  It fills the world with a
keener interest than when all things seemed open in the page of the
great book.  Face, heart, nature,--what is hidden beyond our sight?--
what does the mask cover?--of what tremendous powers are we unconscious
that lie beside us and round our very hearth?  Now and then the crust
heaves, and we see a flash, but the very working of our own hearts is
often hidden from us, and it is only by slow degrees that we learn those
forces in ourselves which teach us to reverence our brother's soul.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

  "He that wrongs his friend
  Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about
  A silent court of justice in his breast."

  Tennyson.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marmaduke came down in April, and it was evident enough to any one that
he wanted change, or rest, or some other means of renewing health.  His
face was thin, his eyes unquiet; there was a sort of suspicious
watchfulness in his manner unlike his old languor, which nobody could
make out, but which they all noticed, except the Vicar and Marion.  It
made Winifred so uncomfortable that she could not help asking Marion
whether anything were the matter.

"Everything is the matter," said the girl in her eager way.  She could
not get out of her head that each day that passed was defrauding them of
that perfect bliss for which she waited impatiently.  She looked with a
little contempt at Winifred, who seemed not to understand this impetuous
demand for happiness.  Poor Winifred!  It was impossible for her not to
contrast Marion's position with her own, and to wonder that it should
bring so little contentment.  Once when Marion was pouring forth her
complaints and longings, she said gravely,--"You don't know what worse
than nonsense you are talking;" and yet, as she said it, her eyes were
full of tender depth.  Her moods were not very settled at this time,
sometimes she was resentful, abrupt; but she said these words so
strangely that they startled Marion, who was accustomed on the strength
of her engagement to look down upon her friend as from a height of
experience.  She did not know that there were other springs of
experience of which she could not fathom the depths, nay, that there is
something far more divine and profound than experience itself, out of
the strength of which came Winifred's quiet words.  Yet something in
them made her wonder.  It was a spring afternoon, one of those days in
which sudden surprises of shade and brightness alternate with each
other.  Now and then an intensity of light flashed out from a break in
the grey hurrying clouds, and the young green of the larches and the
tender pink blossoms of the elms grew vivid and sparkling under its
touch; now and then it all faded into sober tints.  A line of heavy blue
marked the distant moorland; between a thinly clothed network of
branches might be traced a crowd of small fields, patches of red soil
crossed by sombre lines of hedges, brown nests in the rookery swaying in
the wind, a pear-tree standing up in ghostly whiteness before the rent
clouds.  Winifred was leaning against a window of the Vicarage
drawing-room, and looking out, her steadfast eyes grave with a sweet
seriousness.  Marion, who was watching her, said suddenly,--

"Winifred, you have grown older!"

She smiled, but gave no answer.

"But it is you who do not know.  Wait until you are engaged yourself,"
continued Marion, falling back upon her old point of superiority, and
yet anxious to induce Winifred to agree.

"It is possible to see, although one is outside,--besides, it has
nothing to do with feelings."

This was said slowly, and Marion cried out at once,--

"Nothing to do with feelings!"

"The right or the wrong can't be affected by them, I mean," Winifred
went on, still slowly, turning her face towards the grey clouds broken
with white depths that were driven from the west.  "There is something
more secure for us to rest upon than even the love you hold to be so
strong, Marion, or else--"

"Else what?" said Marion impatiently.  But Winifred would not answer.
She came from the window, and took up her hat which was lying on the
sofa.

"I must go, or I shall be caught in the rain.  Take care of your cold."

"O, I am taking care!" said Marion discontentedly.  "Marmaduke was
obliged to go into Underham on some stupid business of Miss Philippa's.
Old people are so selfish.  Anthony comes back to-morrow.  Ask Bessie to
bring the last magazines.  But you don't know what you were talking
about, Winifred, really."

Winifred laughed and went away.

Marmaduke had gone to Underham, as she said, doing what he had done a
hundred times before, walking in through the narrow lanes, white with
the blossom of the blackthorn, and past the farm orchards to the little
ugly improving town, with its bustle, its grimy coal-wharves, and its
rows of stiff houses run up quickly by the sides of the street.
Marmaduke transacted Miss Philippa's business, and stood talking for a
while to Mr Featherly.  He particularly disliked meeting Mr Featherly,
because the old clergyman had a fashion of inquiring whether he were
still at work in the north, with an expression which Marmaduke chose to
interpret as astonishment, although his questioner only intended to
prove his interest in the little lad whom he remembered running about
with the Miles children in the days when he was a younger man, and rode
out to Thorpe now and then when ordered forth by Mrs Featherly to take
a constitutional Marmaduke, however, imagined that his words implied
that wonder from which we are inclined to wince when it professes to be
excited in our behalf, a wonder that Mr Tregennas had not done more for
the nephew who was popularly looked upon as his heir, and he was careful
to avoid the old clergyman whenever it was practicable.  On this day his
efforts had been in vain, and Mr Featherly kept him for an unusual
length of time to tell him the story of some local event, which his wife
permitted no one but herself to relate in her presence, and which Mr
Featherly therefore hailed the opportunity of producing.  Afterwards,
Marmaduke, who had not Anthony's many-sided interests, and found time a
wearisome weight, sauntered round by the canal, watched a coal-barge
dragged up to her moorings, and then strolled towards the post-office,
it being the custom at Thorpe for any responsible inhabitant who
happened to be at Underham after the arrival of the mail train, to call
for the letters due by the second delivery to the Vicarage, the Red
House, and Hardlands.  He was not, however, sure whether the train had
come in, and stopped David Stephens, who was passing him, to ask the
question.

His own feelings towards David were rather favourable than otherwise;
not that his nature was sufficiently large to have a more just view of
the real intensity of the man's longings, or, indeed, that he could have
sympathised with any desires which were merely spiritual, and therefore
to his mind unreal, but that he knew that Anthony was opposing David
with all his might, and something within him inclined him to rank
himself in every matter on the side against Anthony.  He had not a very
clear idea of what position David held amongst the dissenters, or of the
points at variance between him and Anthony, and he was not sorry for the
opportunity of putting one or two leading questions, which should at all
events let David see that he was not offending all the family by his
open warfare.  He said in a conciliatory tone,--

"I heard something of your trying to get into the post-office, Stephens.
Have you succeeded?"

"I hardly know as yet, sir.  I have not many friends among those who
have the disposal of the place; a dissenter seems necessarily to bring a
large amount of ill-will about his head."

"Not necessarily, I should suppose.  It is hard to believe that any man
could be persecuted in these days for holding his own religious
opinions."

"There are many hard things that are true," said David bitterly.  "One
would say that it is hard that so much as standing room should be denied
to those who would worship God as they believe right, and yet you know,
Mr Lee, whether that is true or not, and who has done it."

"Mr Anthony does not think much of the feelings of those who oppose
him," said Marmaduke, slowly lighting a cigar.  "I am afraid it is of no
use for me to say anything, Stephens.  You had better give it up, unless
you really see a chance of succeeding in spite of him."

"Until to-day I had hopes, sir, but I find he has been more inveterate
than I could have supposed.  Mr Maddox has gone back from his word
altogether; the fear of man has been too strong for him to battle
against, even with the fear of another world before him.  I thank you,
sir, however, for your kindness."

He went on quickly, as if he were afraid of adding more, and Marmaduke
strolled leisurely after him to the post-office, where the clerk handed
him three letters for Mr Mannering, one for Hardlands, and none for the
Vicarage.  Setting off to walk homewards, however, he heard steps
behind, and Stephens, overtaking him, said,--

"Mr Tucker overlooked one letter, sir."

"Thank you, Stephens.  Are you going this way?"

"I am making haste to a cottage where they want me, and I have to be
back at the office by an hour's time.  Good day, sir."

For the second time they parted, and Marmaduke looked at the letter.  He
saw at a glance that it was for the Vicarage, and for Anthony, but he
saw at the same moment something which brought a red flush into his
face.  The letter was for Anthony, and it came from Mr Tregennas.

To ordinary persons it might have seemed a not unnatural thing for Mr
Tregennas to have written to Anthony, who had once or twice been his
guest; but to Marmaduke the sight of the handwriting broke down the
barriers which had hitherto stemmed in his slowly accumulating
suspicions, and let loose a very torrent.  The thoughts could not have
leapt to life in that moment, but they leapt from their hiding-places.
In those few feebly written words he saw revealed a very network of
treachery, and walked on mechanically, looking at the letter as he
walked with a kind of dumb rage.  What did it conceal from him?  What
plot was weaving round him its web of ruin?  How had Anthony toiled and
dug, and how much had he gained?  Gained away from him,--his own as he
had thought it, and called it, and counted upon it!  How had he been so
blind?  Jealousies that hitherto had been vague and unacknowledged took
shape and rose up in fierce array.  He said to himself that Anthony had
seemed abstracted of late, and called himself a fool as he recollected
that just before he went to London a week ago he had noticed a letter in
his hand, the address upon which stirred him with a half-memory.  As he
walked quickly on, shut in by green lanes, he lashed himself by a
hundred evidences into the conviction that Anthony was a traitor, and
that in his hand he carried the letter which held the key to this
treachery.

In his hand.

It was a strange power.  To his excited imagination the thought dawned
like the beginning of retribution.  How many chances were there not
against its thus coming into his possession!  Had justice so guided it
that he, of all others, should be the one to whose care it was
delivered?  Had Anthony's absence and Miss Philippa's fancies all worked
for this end?  He looked at the letter as if there, hidden only by a
slender cover, lay the means of confounding his enemies, at first with a
kind of angry triumph that so much at least had been gained.  The letter
was in his hands, and that was the first step.

After all, however, he became soon aware that it was only a step.  To
himself it might be conclusive proof, but that was not sufficient, and
he felt irritated and baffled.  In what shape did the danger threaten,
and would it be yet impossible for him to turn its tide?  He had thought
of giving Anthony Miles the letter, and so openly accusing him as to
force from him a confession of his shamelessness; but, with a passionate
impotence, he acknowledged this to be a vain manner of confronting the
blow.  He was not in the position to make good his claim.  He must meet
his enemy with all the subtlety of self-defence.  But what had he to
meet?  How should he know what lay before him, from which side the
thrusts should be parried, in what shape grew the threat?  The questions
beat in his brain with recurrent strokes, as if a hammer were smiting
dull iron.  All the keenness of suspicion could do no more than bring a
shadowy uncertainty before him; nothing could solve the problem except
the letter, with its poor feeble failing writing, which he held in his
hand.

For there, to be sure, lay the certainty; there was hid the proof or the
acquittal, as the case might be.  He began to look at it as though
Anthony were the prisoner on trial before him, while he himself was the
person who possessed the clew, and could determine the guilt.  To his
distorted reasoning it became almost a sin against Anthony not at once
to decide the question, when, after all, he might be innocent, and
surely it would be better that this innocence should be placed beyond
the power of doubt, than that so cruel a suspicion should divide two
friends.  For Anthony's own sake it seemed to Marmaduke a duty to
determine the truth forever.  The letter had been given to him for some
purpose, he argued, as a man will argue, himself clothing the temptation
in the strong armour with which it comes to meet him at last, mighty and
irresistible.  It needed only one look to convince himself, a look which
could not harm Anthony Miles in any way, only put Marmaduke on his
guard, and show him how to defend his rights.  One look--nothing more--
at the letter which was in his hands.

He opened it.  And as he did so, out of some background of old
associations, there rushed upon him such an intolerable loathing for his
own action that for a few moments his eyes refused to see its contents.
The false pleading with which he had covered it was no longer to be
called up, could never any more be called up.  It was with a sense of
desperate degradation that he forced himself to master the writing,
pathetic in its feebleness, confused and indistinct.  "I think it is all
coming to an end at last," it said, with a forlornness which might have
touched him at another time, "and that my successor will soon be free of
my shoes, such as they are.  I don't talk about repenting, but somehow
my girl's face comes before me night and day,--I might have been more
patient with her, though I did no more than I told her to look for.
Your father seems a just man; people call me a hard old fellow, but I
have still a feeble belief in human nature, and I believe in him.  If
you choose you may place a decision in his hands, and if he tells me the
thing should be done, I will make an alteration in my will, half the
money shall go as it is now settled, and half to Ellen Harford,
Margaret's child.  But should he think the change unnecessary, I do not
wish to be pestered by replies or arguments.  Silence will answer me
fully.  I shall understand that he thinks my proposal unadvisable, and I
shall never break it by an allusion."

And this was the letter which Marmaduke must deliver.

For a quarter of an hour he stood motionless with it in his hand.  Over
his head was the sweet changeable April sky, and on either side of the
road a little green copse in which the birds were chirping and
twittering.  He looked up at last, with a fierce gesture of impatience
at their glad piping, at the tender sunshine; a sudden storm, a wild
rending of all these pretty gentle things, would have been more
congenial to him just then than the burden of their joy.  Two men jogged
by him in a cart, and looked at him curiously as he stood by the
roadside.  It raised a quick fear that they might discover his secret,
and he began to walk slowly on again, reading and rereading the letter
in obedience to some mechanical impulse, for the first sight had burned
the words into his brain.  It was remarkable that he had no longer any
fear of Anthony as a rival, probably from his own frame of mind being
such that it was impossible for him to realise a sane man putting such a
choice into the hands of his heir, and conceiving the idea of his
exercising it in any way but one.  It was only a robbery of himself
which was revealed to him; an iniquitous deprival of half of his
inheritance.  For he needed no assurance of what Mr Miles's decision
would be.  He had a half-uncomfortable, half-slighting contempt for the
Vicar's notions, which he classed with other antiquated forms of thought
belonging to the old world.  Anthony's words came back to him with a
sting which they had not at the time they were spoken, when he believed
them to be powerless, and he knew that half of those good things on
which he had so long counted would go out of his grasp forever as soon
as this letter was delivered.  As soon as it was delivered,--but the
question immediately forced itself on his thought of why such a letter
should exist at all to harrow them with its sentence of deprivation.
Was not the Vicar himself concerned, Marion's interests being equally
involved with his own?  And it was for the sake of a girl who knew
nothing, hoped nothing, and whose father was as equally averse to a
reconciliation as Mr Tregennas had been.  Then he thought angrily that
the decision, if there were one, should have been offered to himself.
Indeed, fate said the same thing, and, resenting the injustice, gave him
the needed opportunity.  If he did not embrace it, he was yielding his
own property, and sealing a gross injustice.  The thought grew, it rang
in his brain as he walked along,--alas, no song of birds could drown it!

He tore the letter across and across without a renewal of those accusing
feelings which had rushed upon him when first he opened it, having
wrought himself into a condition in which right and wrong became mere
accidents dependent on his own will.  He set his teeth and tore it into
a hundred fragments, dropping them, as he walked, upon the grass by the
side of the lane, and almost taking a pleasure, as it seemed, in their
symmetrical destruction.  No sense of pity touched him for the failing
life that had there made its last vain effort, and the notion that he
was baffling an act of injustice he was able by a strong and
concentrated pressure of conscience to keep uppermost in the place it
had usurped.

A little farther along the lane he once more met David Stephens, letting
him pass this time without comment, and congratulating himself that the
man had not timed his return earlier.  It was, however, noticeable that,
having delivered himself from his previous haunting suspicions of
Anthony's rivalship, he should, nevertheless, immediately decide that he
would in some hidden manner assist Stephens, thinking that the fortune
which was to come into his hands would enable him to do this, and siding
more strongly than even an hour ago with any attempt to oppose Anthony's
influence.

David himself, accustomed to observe keenly, was aware of some
disturbance in Marmaduke's face as he passed him, wondering, too, at his
having gone so short a distance since they parted.  It is possible that
the surprise made him quick to notice trifles, for the tiny atoms which
had fluttered on the grass would naturally have escaped his observation.
As it was, he stooped and gathered some of them into his hand.  They
were torn so closely as to make it almost a matter of impossibility to
fit one piece with another, unless he had bestowed long attention upon
the work, and no impulse moved him to do this.  But a scrap of the
envelope, which Marmaduke had destroyed with less care, showed enough of
the postmark for Polmear to be distinguishable, and Polmear had been
stamped on the letter which Stephens had handed to Mr Lee.  One or two
other half-words there were, which, his curiosity being a little
excited, he tried to put together as he went along, but for the most
part they were illegible.  Something, however, gave him an uneasy
feeling as he hurried on to the post-office to hear whether his
application had been successful.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

  "Our life is but a chain of many deaths."

  Young.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

For a few days things went on to all outward intents as if the letter
which Marmaduke destroyed had never existed.  Once or twice he had a
feeling as if it were indeed nothing more than a dream through which he
had passed, for the act struck himself as so unlike his usual languid
easy-going nature, that even to him there was an unreality mingled with
it, and he was inclined at all events to compassionate himself for the
crisis which had forced anything so repugnant upon him.  On the sixth
day there arrived a telegram announcing Mr Tregennas's death.

Mr Miles, Anthony, and Marmaduke started at once.  A sort of restraint
had grown up between the two young men, which was, perhaps, although it
began only by reflection, more perceptible in Anthony's manner than in
that of Marmaduke, for the former was at all times quickly conscious of
the feelings of others towards himself, and apt to throw them back.  He
was sensitive, moreover, to external influences; there was heavy rain
falling, a damp chill in the air, and, as they drove down the road
towards Trenance through woods in which the wild garlic was beginning to
scent the air, the mournfully heavy drip of the rain through scantily
clothed trees, the coarse sodden grass, the dreary moss-grown little
paths that led away as it seemed into some dismal wilderness, the house
with its shut and blinded windows lying under a pall of low clouds,
deepened the disturbed expression of his face.  No one spoke after they
left the station.  The carriage that had been sent for them, with its
old moth-eaten cushions, rolled slowly along, the coachman not thinking
very kindly of his load: a probable heir can scarcely expect a welcome
from old servants who have grown fat and masterful under the weakened
hands of age.  The place had always seemed oppressed with a weight of
silence, but now, as they drove up, the very wheels jarred upon the
excessive stillness, broken only by the ceaseless dripping of the rain.
Nevertheless, Marmaduke's spirits rose as soon as he found himself in
the house; and while Anthony, with a pale and troubled face, flung
himself down in the dreary drawing-room, which looked uglier and more
uninviting than ever, he went about from room to room, only avoiding
that which an awful Presence guarded.  It was Mr Miles who went there
first, and when he came down again he held a little miniature in his
hand.

"It was found under his pillow," he said.  "There is Margaret Hare, as
she must have been in the old days before the unhappy quarrel.  It makes
me hope that he may, after all, have remembered her child."

"I shall go up to him," said Anthony, starting up.  He had a shrinking
from the sight of death and all painful things, but at this moment he
could only remember the old man who had been kind to him after his
fashion.  "Marmaduke, will you come?"

"No," said Marmaduke carelessly, "it can do no good now.  You can tell
me if anything has to be arranged, and I will see about it."

He spoke with an easy assumption of authority, which stirred Anthony's
anger.  All that Marmaduke said or did seemed to jar upon him, upon the
time, the quiet, the sadness; for, after all, although there is not so
much to stir our sympathy, perhaps no death can be so sad as that of a
forlorn and unlovely old age.

There were no relations to come to the house; all the orders were given
by Mr Pitt, Mr Tregennas's lawyer, a little withered red-faced man
with shrewd eyes, who was there when they arrived, and who kept himself
in the library, away from them all, until the day of the funeral.
Perhaps a more silent four could hardly have been found than the men who
were gathered in the old damp house, although with Marmaduke the silence
was rather compulsion than choice.  Anthony was very grave and subdued.
When the funeral came they were all together almost for the first time,
rumbling along the desolate overgrown road, with two or three empty
carriages crawling behind them, which had been sent by the neighbours
with a vague belief that it was an easy method of doing honour to the
dead.  The rain was falling still as they all rumbled back again, and
gathered in the library to hear Mr Pitt read the will.  It was soon
done.  A few annuities were bequeathed to the old servants, five
thousand pounds free of legacy duty to his great-nephew, Marmaduke Lee,
and the remainder, half in entail and half unreservedly, to the
great-nephew of his second wife, Anthony Miles.  William Miles, clerk,
was appointed executor.

Mr Pitt's monotonous reading was interrupted by Marmaduke Lee, with a
white, quivering face,--

"I protest against such a will as a fraud.  I can prove it to be a
fraud," he cried, lifting his hand and letting it fall tremulously on
the table.

Anthony neither turned towards him nor moved.  Mr Miles said, a little
hurriedly,--

"When Mr Pitt has finished, my son has something to say."

The lawyer, looking quietly from one to the other, took up his sing-song
again, and went on as if there had been no break.  Marmaduke had shrunk
into his chair like a man who had received a heavy blow, his very
passion was too weak to support him at this crisis, he scarcely heard
the formal words running on in set rounded phrases: what he did hear at
last was Mr Miles asking,--

"Is there no mention whatever of Miss Harford in the will?"

"There is nothing more than you have heard me read," said Mr Pitt, in
his dry voice.

The name seemed to recall Marmaduke's senses, and a rush of rage
stimulated him to burst out again,--

"It is false, and a lie!  Anthony has taken advantage of his dotage.  I
will dispute every word of it."

Anthony looked at him with a contemptuous darkness in his face, which it
was not pleasant to see, but he held his voice under repression as he
bent forward, folding his arms on the table, and saying slowly,--

"Dr Evans is the person to testify whether or not Mr Tregennas was in
the full possession of his senses.  It was only a fortnight before his
death that I received a hint of his intentions, which were as unwelcome
to me as to Lee.  I had fixed this very day for coming here to urge my
objections.  No one could have thought it would all have ended so soon,"
said the young fellow, with his lips quivering.  "All that I can do is
to make over to Lee that part of the property which is at my own
disposal,--not because of his words, but because he has a better right
to it than I."

Sometimes people get small thanks for large acts of generosity, and in
this case it is possible that Marmaduke was too stupefied or too sullen
for gratitude, Mr Pitt might have said something, but he only glanced
at Anthony with his shrewd eyes, and gathered and tied up his packets
silently.  There was a chill about the whole business which struck
keenly on Anthony, who liked to be generous, but who also liked
acknowledgments, warm words, and hearty looks: he got up quickly and
went out of the room, leaving his father to settle what remained.

As for Marmaduke, it was not easy for his mind at that moment to grasp
the fact that things were not so crushing as he had dreaded.  What might
have seemed much to him at another time now seemed nothing, and he hated
Anthony so much that his gift was an intolerable load.  Was it for this
that he had done the wrong?  For, after all, however cunningly a man may
disguise his sin beforehand, the disguise is but a poor helpless thing
that falls off when it has served the Devil's turn, and leaves what it
covered hideous.  It was only before he opened the letter that he had
tried to deceive himself with dreams of fairness to Anthony.  Ever since
it had been scourging him.  And now a fierce rage was uppermost.

He went back to Thorpe the next morning alone, Mr Miles and his son
finding it necessary to remain and set matters in train, and before he
went he forced himself to say some ungracious words to Anthony about his
gift.  Perhaps it would have been better had he gone away in silence,
for the words were not likely to do much towards healing the breach:
they were said, however, and the Vicar and Anthony stood at the door and
watched the carriage toiling away up the drive.  The sky was a soft
dazzle of blue, everything was shooting and sprouting after the rain,
colours seemed full of light, there were young creatures leaping and
running, a spring glory brightening the ugly old house.

"It is almost a pity that it should be let," said Mr Miles, standing on
the steps with his hands behind him.

"I could not live here," Anthony answered, shrugging his shoulders.

There was a little silence.  The Vicar was looking after the carriage,
and not really thinking much about the house.  He said at last,
slowly,--

"I don't much like the spirit he has shown."

"It can't be helped," said Anthony, without much cordiality.  "I don't
suppose he can do me any particular harm."

"Harm!" repeated Mr Miles, startled.  Then, as his son did not reply,
he said, sighing, "I am thinking of poor Marion."

"She can be married now as soon as she likes, I suppose," said Anthony
shortly, turning away and going into the house.  He was not feeling much
of that sweet sense of satisfaction which is held up to us as bringing a
quick reward for our good actions: he had behaved more generously
towards his cousin than ninety-nine men out of a hundred might have
done, but his generosity did not tend to make him ignorant of this fact,
and he had expected a certain reward which had not come.  Mr Pitt's
manner had chilled him as much as Marmaduke's.  He would have resented
the imputation that he was dependent upon external influences, yet there
was a certain side of his character which seemed almost at their mercy,
and a fortress is no stronger than its weakest point.  If he made over
the fortune to Marmaduke as an act of justice, it is certain that his
mode of receiving it should have made no difference in Anthony's
determination; nevertheless, at this moment he half repented, and
perhaps would have undone it if he could.

Mr Miles stood where his son had left him, looking sadly up the road
along which Marmaduke had but now driven.  Something, which was so
indefinable that only a woman might have noticed it, seemed to have
changed his face and his whole bearing ever since the day in which he
had spoken to Marion in his study: the shadow of a shade had now and
then, as it were, just touched him and passed, but during the last few
days it had rested longer.  He was conscious of it himself, yet it was
so little beyond a vague something that he was inclined to smile at his
own fancifulness.  Rousing himself at last, although with another sigh,
he went slowly down the steps and round to the front of the house,
instead of going into the library, where there were papers and accounts
to be looked over.  Anthony was right.  Marion might marry if she
pleased, now that there was enough money to make things easy to them.
And yet with the thought the shadow deepened.

For two days, however, he said nothing.  But one evening when Anthony,
who had cast off some of his vexation, was planning changes in the
estate before it passed into the hands of tenants, his father remarked
slowly,--

"I think I shall go home to-morrow.  Something ails me, and I don't know
what it is.  Perhaps your mother will find out."

"Do you mean that you feel ill?"  Anthony asked, looking up hastily.

"No, I don't mean anything of the sort I have no more to say about it
than just what I have said, so you need not alarm yourself.  But I shall
go, and you can either remain behind or run down again next week."

"My mother will set you to rights, sir," said Anthony cheerfully.

"Yes.  And Marion.  And Marion," repeated the Vicar with a little
absence of manner.

"I'll go back with you, and come down again, as you suggest," his son
went on.  "I should like to put two or three things straight before the
place is let.  There must be a clean sweep of a good deal."

"Yes, yes," said Mr Miles, half impatient, half smiling, "your young
man's idea of a reformer is a Briareus with a broom in each hand.  It's
lucky we don't all get treated in that fashion.  Well, let me see your
plans."

Father and son went home the next day, as the Vicar desired, and the
shadow passed,--or so it seemed.  It might have been Mrs Miles's little
doctorings, or the return to the old routine of habit, which had grown
into a second self; at any rate, the Vicar was apparently as well as he
had been during the long years of his residence at Thorpe Regis, nor was
there anything to distract his wife's interest from Marion's wedding
when that took place a little later.  No one could give any reason for
delay strong enough to weigh down the girl's impetuous demand; that her
father and Anthony felt a vague uneasiness was not sufficient to do more
than perhaps excite her to a determined attitude of defiance.  To
outward eyes there was everything that a wedding should have, youth and
love, sunshine, roses in the old garden, smiles, brightness.  Yet it was
not all smooth.  Marmaduke was restless, and his easy temper every now
and then broke down in fits of irritation, while there was a visible
restraint between himself and Anthony.  Mr Miles was grave and sad
throughout the day.  After it was over, and Anthony had walked up to
Hardlands to dinner, taking with him the few Vicarage guests, his father
stood in the drawing-room in a manner altogether unlike himself, and
looked wistfully at his wife.

"We have been happy together, Hannah," he said slowly.

Mrs Miles's eyes filled with tears at this sudden appeal.

"Very happy, William."

"You have been a good wife,--it would be better perhaps if poor Marion
were more like you.  Somehow, I don't feel so sure about things now,--I
forget--"

"Forget?  I am always forgetting," said Mrs Miles consolingly.  "I am
sure you don't lose your spectacles half so often as I do, and where
they are now is more than I can really say.  But it has all gone off as
well as possible."

"I wish I knew Marmaduke better."

"My dear, when you have seen him since he was no higher than the table!"

"Poor Marion!  Poor child!"

"She is quite happy," said the mother, nodding her head sagaciously.  "I
only warned her to take care that he has plenty of beef-tea, for he is
sadly thin."

The door was pushed open, and Sniff came running in, looking for Marion.
Somebody had tied a white favour round his neck, of which nothing was
left but a little ragged strip of ribbon.  He had followed Anthony to
Hardlands, and not finding Marion there or here, flung himself exhausted
at Mr Miles's feet, with a piteous look of entreaty in his faithful
eyes.  The Vicar stooped and patted him.

"Is she gone, poor fellow--" he said.

What stopped the words?--What spring of life suddenly failed?--Was it
the shadow, after all, no longer shadowy, but a presence, a reality?
Mrs Miles, running to him with a cry, caught him in her faithful arms,
and held him by an almost supernatural strength from falling forward on
his face.

"William, William!"

The servants in the kitchen heard the cry though he did not, and flocked
in, Anthony was sent for, another messenger despatched to Underham for
the doctor.  All the doctors in the world could do him no good, but Mrs
Miles would not believe it as she sat by the bed where he was lying.

"He was so well, Anthony, all the morning.  And I think Marion's wedding
made him remember our own, for do you know what he said just before?
`We have been very happy together, Hannah,' he said.  I must tell him
when he is better that I did not say half enough."

I think the words have been told by this time like so many other of
those unspoken words which wait for our utterance, but he did not hear
them then.  No more sounds apparently reached his ear where he lay
silent and motionless while the days passed slowly by, carrying his
moments with them, until the last came, when they scarcely expected it,
as quiet and gentle as his life had been throughout.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

When death brings other departures besides the one that is greatest, a
hundred pangs may be added to its sadness.  There is the leaving the old
home, the uprooting of old ties,--a shock meets you at every turn.  Mrs
Miles felt so sharply the fear of these added troubles, that she
implored Anthony with a wistful entreaty he could not resist to let her
remain at Thorpe, and to move, at least for the present, into a house
they called "the cottage," about half a mile from the Vicarage.  He
agreed reluctantly, and because it seemed cruelty to his mother to
oppose her at such a time.  He himself disliked staying in the place,
with their home no longer theirs; and his sorrow for his father was so
great that he had almost an impatient longing to escape from a
neighbourhood which was absolutely made up of associations.  The Squire
forgot all his little animosities with Anthony Miles, while the awe of
standing by his old friends grave was fresh in his mind; but Anthony
shrank from his homely attempts at consolation, as a man shrinks from
the reopening of a wound.  Even Winifred, whose sympathy was at once
strong and delicate, found it difficult to show it.  The little barrier
which had reared itself between them did not fall away at her kind,
womanly touch.  Anthony was inclined to reject an attempt to share his
sorrow,--almost to resent it.  He wanted to escape, to try his wings, to
make a career, and Mrs Miles promised to go with him to London; but her
heart failed her, poor thing, whenever the time came, and he gave way to
her wishes, meaning his own to have their way by and by.

So one by one the new things which had seemed so strange subsided into
ordinary life.  Marmaduke and Marion were living in one of the midland
counties.  A new vicar came to Thorpe,--a short, bustling man, in all
respects a contrast to Mr Miles.  But it was a peculiarity of the place
that even change seemed to lose its characteristics in the quiet little
village; a certain dogged custom was too strong for it, or the climate
was too sleepy.  Little by little Mr Brent laid down his arms, accepted
this anomaly, that habit, and things went on in much the same groove as
in Mr Miles's time, although Mr Brent was red-haired and energetic.

In the winter a visitor came to Hardlands, an old friend of the
Squire's, and no less a person than Mr Pitt, Mr Tregennas's lawyer.
It took Anthony by surprise to meet him one day walking with the Squire,
and the young man, who had been chafed by a certain dry, unsympathetic
manner in the old lawyer, was not very cordial in his greeting.

"So you knew Anthony Miles before?" said Mr Chester when they had
parted.  "Oh! ay! to be sure!  I forgot you had to do with that queer
affair of his uncle, or grandfather, or whoever he was, that died the
other day."

"Who told you it was a queer affair?" said Mr Pitt, stopping short.

"Who?  Why, my own common-sense could do so much, I suppose.  I always
thought the boy a romantic young idiot, and it's just the sort of thing
I should have expected him to do," replied the Squire with great pride.

"Humph!"

"I'll say this for him, he hasn't got any of those low mercantile
notions half the young men of the present day bring out of their pockets
cut and dried for use.  They'll be the ruin of the country, sir.  Don't
talk to me about reductions and rotten administrations, and all the rest
of it; the other's the real evil, take my word."

"And you consider young Miles free from the prevailing passion?"

"I consider he hasn't that miserable, pettifogging spirit at his back,
if that's what you mean.  You must have seen it for yourself.  You
haven't many clients, I should say, that would knock off half a fortune
to put things right, have you?"

"No," said Mr Pitt, thrusting his stick into a lump of red mud.
"Certainly not many."

"There, that's what I said.  Generally there is some spur in the
background before they do that sort of thing."

"Squire, you deserve to have been a lawyer."

"Ay, ay," said Mr Chester, rubbing his hands in high glee, "that's the
way with you fellows; you think no one can see an inch before his nose,
except he's one of yourselves.  The worst of your trade is the
confounded low opinion you get of human nature.  I dare say the best you
would say for young Miles was that he was a fool for his pains."

"Certainly not," said Mr Pitt dryly.  "A fool is the last thing I
should have called him."

"Eh, what?" said Mr Chester, stopping suddenly, and looking at his
companion with an expression of bewilderment.  "What do you mean?  Can't
you speak out?  What on earth would you call him?"

"A very prudent--scoundrel would be nearer the mark."

The effect upon the Squire was electrical.  His face became crimson with
anger.

"Do you know what you are talking about, sir?  Anthony Miles a
scoundrel!  Why, you'll be saying I'm a scoundrel next!  Anthony
Miles!--a young fellow I've known since he was that high!  It's an
insult, an insult to us all.--Are you mad, Pitt?" said the Squire,
pulling himself up with a sudden attempt at self-control which nearly
choked him.

"No, I'm not mad, and I know all you have to say against it; but there
are such unfortunate things as facts which outweigh everything else in
the way of evidence.  I've known you longer than you've known him,
remember, and I've spoken out because I've heard a rumour that Mr
Anthony Miles is desirous of marrying your daughter."

Mr Chester stared at him incredulously, and then burst into a laugh.

"O, that's one of your facts too, I suppose!  Anthony many Winifred!
Mercy on us, man, what cock-and-bull stories have you been picking up?
Winifred and Anthony?  They've played like brother and sister pretty
nearly all their lives, and that's enough for the gossips, no doubt.
You'd better ask Winifred, and see what she'll say."

"It is new to you, then?"

"New to me?  Ay, as new as it is to them, I'll be bound.  I'll tell you
what, Pitt, you'd better not let it out, but some sly rascal has been
hocusing you, and done it neatly, too, uncommon neatly.  Come, come,
isn't there a little more as good to tell me?"  And the Squire, with all
his good-humour restored, walked on, nodding to the children who came
running up to make their courtesies.

"Well, if that part of my information isn't true, I'm glad of it," said
Mr Pitt, coolly.  "I told you, if you recollect, that it was no more
than a rumour.  But as to my opinion of young Miles, I am sorry to say
it does not rest upon anything so doubtful."

"You had better speak out," said Mr Chester, fuming again, and striding
on savagely.  It was a very different matter to fall foul of the young
man himself, and to hear this said of him in sober earnest, especially
when he thought of a grave by which they had stood side by side not very
long ago.

"I intend to speak out, now I have said so much.  All my relations with
Mr Anthony Miles date only from one time--"

"When he behaved as few young fellows would have behaved," interrupted
the Squire warmly.

"I hope so, I am sure," said Mr Pitt, pointedly misapplying the words.
"You are acquainted with the external features of the case, the bequest
to the young man and his own subsequent division of the property?"

"I am proud to say I am."

"You are also probably aware that there is a granddaughter of Mr
Tregennas living, or presumed to be living, for whom he had refused to
make any provision whatever?"

"To Anthony's excessive regret," said Mr Chester, marching on bravely.

"Those are your words, not mine."

"Well, are you going to say they are a lie?" broke out the Squire in a
white heat again.  "His father told me with his own lips that they had
done their utmost with the old curmudgeon, and he was the truest-hearted
gentleman that ever breathed, sir!"

"Did his father tell you that, a week before his death, Mr Tregennas
wrote to Anthony Miles, asking whether the Vicar would agree to half the
fortune being made over to the grandchild, and--mark this--desiring him
if he would not consent to take no notice of the letter?"

"Well?" said the Squire, stopping.

"Well."

"Can't you do anything but repeat one's words?" growled Mr Chester with
something else between his teeth.

"That is all."

"What is all?"

"What I say.  Mr Tregennas wrote that letter, and there the matter
ended."

"Ended!  Do you pretend to tell me there was no answer from Anthony?"

"Never a word more.  And that was enough for Mr Tregennas.  It had been
all I could do to work him up so far, and I confess,--though I was a
fool not to know the world better at my time of life,--I confess I hoped
there was a chance for poor Margaret's girl when we had got him to that
point."

"A chance!" stammered Mr Chester, as red and discomfited as if he had
been the person accused.  "Anthony would have jumped to give it to her,
as I've told you already."

"So it seemed," said the lawyer, dryly.

"Confound you, man, but I tell you he would!"

"I can only answer you by the facts of the case."

"But--I'll ask him--you don't know what you're saying--my word for it,
he never had that letter."

"I posted it myself.  Besides, where is it?  If there had been a
non-delivery we should have heard by this time from the Dead-Letter
Office.  Pooh, pooh, Chester, the temptation was a little too strong,
that's the long and short of it, and, after all, no one pretends that
there was any fraud.  Mr Tregennas put the choice into his hands, and
he had no doubt an absolute right to choose."

The Squire, who had thrust his hands into his pockets, was striding on
at a pace with which his friend found it difficult to keep up.  He gave
a sort of groan when Mr Pitt finished his deliberate speech, and then
stopped and turned suddenly upon him.

"I tell you what, Pitt," he said, setting his teeth.  "If you weren't
who you are, I should like to--to--"

"To kick me," said the lawyer, coolly finishing the sentence.  "I should
not wonder.  But considering who I am, and considering that I have
certainly no personal animus against the young man,--what can you make
of the story?"

"Do you want me to say I think my old friend's lad a villain?  Good
heavens, sir, and he was so proud of him!"

Mr Pitt's manner changed a little, losing some of the hard ease with
which he had talked, as he began to understand the pain it cost the
loyal-hearted Squire to receive his impressions.  He said earnestly,--

"You think too harshly of it, Chester, and perhaps I spoke too strongly.
There is no villainy in the matter.  Few young men would have had
strength of moral purpose sufficient to resist such a temptation, and
give up half a valuable property."

"But that is exactly what he has done," broke in Mr Chester, quickly.
"We're forgetting all that.  He has voluntarily disposed of half.  It is
sheer nonsense, Pitt.  How can you account for such an act?"

"Well, it has gone to his sister, which is a different business from
losing it altogether.  But I own to you that my own convictions point to
a certain pressure having been brought to bear.  I suspect that the
secret was scented, and that this was the price of silence,--in fact, I
may say that I put a question or two to young Lee, which proved pretty
decidedly that he was acquainted with the contents of the letter.  No
other theory would explain his manner of receiving the gift, for he
absolutely expressed no gratitude whatever."

It was evident that Mr Pitt's quiet persistence was producing the
effect it usually does produce upon violent people.  The Squire looked
like a man who has received a blow.  He walked on silently for some
time, then stopping at a gate, said,--

"I think I'll go across to Sanders's farm; there's a little business I
want to speak to him about.  You can't miss Mannering's house if you go
straight forward."  He turned away as he spoke, but had not gone many
paces before he strode back.  "The boy's father did not know a word of
the matter, sir; of that I'll stake my existence," he said positively,
and went off again without giving Mr Pitt time to answer.

As the lawyer walked thoughtfully on towards the Red House, he
acknowledged to himself that this conviction of the Squire's was
probably well grounded.  Even to the eyes of a suspicious man, and Mr
Pitt was partly from nature and partly from profession suspicious, the
Vicar had carried that about him which made it very difficult to doubt
his honour.  It was quite possible that the contents of the letter had
been withheld from him.  But the other affair had resolved itself almost
into certainty.  When Mr Tregennas read to him the words he had just
written, Mr Pitt had felt that it was putting human virtue to too
severe a test; he half smiled at himself now for having been such a fool
as to cherish a hope that the young man would be generous to Margaret
Hare's child at his own expense.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

  "A very pitiful lady, very young,
  Exceeding rich in human sympathies."

  Rosetti's _Dante_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Squire was more utterly cast down by Mr Pitt's communication than
those would have thought possible who knew that Anthony Miles had never
been a favourite of his.  Perhaps a little touch of jealousy had given
the first warp when he looked at the Vicar's son and his own daughters,
and had made him always hard upon the young fellow; but it was not a
jealousy which could take pleasure in such a discovery as this.  He was
so cross and miserable throughout the day that Winifred felt sure
something was the matter.  Mr Pitt had left them; the evening was cold
and stormy, a southwest gale was blowing, and the wind tore at the
windows and howled drearily round the house.  Winifred only waited until
Bessie had gone to bed--a concession to years of half an hour against
which that young lady nightly rebelled--before she asked her father what
had happened, and whether Mr Pitt had brought any bad news.

"Yes, he has," said the Squire doggedly; "very bad news.  It's well the
poor old Vicar should be dead and gone."

And then he told her.

As he went bluntly through Mr Pitt's account he once or twice looked
curiously at her, for, in spite of his disclaimer, he could not help
remembering that other hint which the lawyer had let drop, that Winifred
was dear to Anthony.  "If it is so, she'll have hysterics or something;
that's how girls always show it."

To his relief, however, Winifred did not so much as utter an
exclamation.  If he had been quick to notice, he might have observed a
little proud up-drawing of her head, and a sudden light in her eyes; but
we are all apt to read only those signs for which we are on the lookout,
and the Squire drew a long breath of relief.

"What do you think of this?" he said, when he had finished.

"Did Mr Pitt really tell you such an absurd story?" said Winifred,
smiling.

Her treating the matter lightly was unfortunate, for her father had been
made so wretched all day that it irritated him to have it supposed that
he was throwing away his sympathies; and his love of contradiction was
such that every instinct of his nature arrayed him on the side that was
assailed, so that he began at once to adopt Mr Pitt's opinion as his
own, to hasten to its defence, to run his thoughts more keenly over its
possibilities.  He flustered a little directly.

"It's very well for you to laugh, since you don't understand anything at
all about it.  Is Pitt a likely man to concoct a bundle of lies?"

"I don't know, I am sure," she said, looking at him with astonishment.
"But you do not mean that anything he could say would make you believe
such a story of Anthony?"

"Well, explain it, explain it," said the Squire grimly, "that's all."

Winifred sat forward, and began to speak with more impetuosity.

"That Anthony should--" she began, and then suddenly broke off and
laughed outright.  "It is so very ridiculous!" she said.

"I don't see the absurdity," growled Mr Chester.  "I don't see how Pitt
can be mistaken, or how Anthony can get over the thing.  You women run
away with your own opinions, without ever stopping to hear reason; but
other people will put two and two together.  It is a very bad business."

"It is exceedingly wrong of Mr Pitt to have dared to say such a thing,"
said Winifred, standing up quickly, and looking very tall and stately;
"but it can hurt Anthony no more than--than it could hurt you.  He could
explain it, of course, but I hope he will never hear that anything so
cruel and untrue has been suggested.  Good-night, papa.  I am glad there
is nothing really the matter."

She walked out of the room with the smile still on her lips and the
backward curve of her slender throat a little more apparent.  But those
few words of opposition had done Anthony's cause no good with the
Squire.  He repeated to himself that women were so obstinate there was
no dealing with them, and while he fancied himself as grieved as ever,
in his heart, I think there lurked a secret hope that Winifred might be
forced to acknowledge herself in the wrong.  He was not in the least
aware of the petty obstacle which had turned the current, nor indeed
would he have acknowledged that the current had been turned at all, but,
no doubt, as he went over the array of presumptive evidence against
Anthony, he weighted it in a manner which he had not done until this
moment.

As for Winifred, the smile died out of her face before she reached her
own room.  A bright fire was burning; she went to the window, threw back
the shutter, and stood looking out into the wild darkness.  There were
furious gusts, strange depths of blackness, lights gleaming and
vanishing in the direction of Underham, a sawing of branches one against
the other, now and then distant and mysterious sounds, as if the rush
and roar of the great sea itself were swelling the tumult.  Nothing but
fancy could have brought such a sound, but Winifred caught at it, and
would not let it go.  The swoop of the wind upon the water, the jagged
tossed waves hurling themselves against the sandy bar, the wild shrieks
of the night, the blackness, the confusion, here and there, perhaps, a
concentration of the horror, lives going out in a last cry... she
pressed her face against the panes, shuddering and praying for the poor
souls.  All this while there was something nearer to her which she was
shutting out and trying to overwhelm by a more terrible distress.  It
was the strongest of the two, after all.  She softly closed the
shutters, turning away from the window with pitiful compunction in her
heart, as if she were leaving poor drowning men out in the cold, and
came and sat before the fire to think of Anthony.  For, though she might
smile at her father's story, and a little smile again stole over the
sweet grave face as she thought of the accusation, she knew Anthony well
enough to dread the idea of its reaching his ears.  There was no room
now in her heart for pride, or for anything except a kind tenderness.
That he did not care for her any longer, if indeed he had ever cared,
she felt assured, and at this moment it seemed to her that she would not
have had him care in such a sense, so long as they might be friends.
Perhaps the very storm and darkness had something to do with this
persuasion.  When skies were soft, and the sun shining, and things
bright about her, she too might have cried out for some share in the
brightness and softness; but the grim earnestness of the night, a night
for wrecks and disasters, and big with struggle and suffering, utterly
shut out such joy of fair visions.

She could not but reflect what such a report would cost Anthony if it
should reach him, and how he, of all men, would suffer and writhe under
it.  Kindliness, love, and praise seemed so completely his natural food,
that if they were withdrawn it was certain that he would droop and flag.
With the thought, her first impression came strongly back that the
accusation should at any cost be kept from his knowledge, but her own
nature was too brave and high-minded for such an impression to linger.
Better the open wound than the secret calamity; better that he should
taste the sharpness even of disappointment than be dogged by a suspicion
to which he could give no tangible shape; better, a hundred times
better, know, and meet, and repel.

But who should tell him?

As she put the question to herself, she trembled a little with a
perception that the answer was fall of personal pain.  Names floated
before her,--her father, the Mannerings, Mrs Miles,--but each
suggestion carried a negative with it, although she paused longest at
the thought of Mr Robert.  He was kind-heartedness itself; at the same
time, she felt as if such a telling required more delicate care than he
would give--who would give it?--who would give it except herself?
Winifred shrank and flushed Pride put out its prickles; but, after all,
there was something so much stronger than pride in her heart, that it
failed to conquer.  The little impalpable bar that had sprung up between
them was the harder to pass for its very impalpability, yet--if she
could help him, only as his friend, with no touch of love to mar it, as
she thought, unconscious that it was the highest and most divine love
which she was offering, then pain of her own should not withhold her,
nor even the added estrangement which her words might cause.

The next morning she awoke with her determination unweakened.  She would
seek an opportunity, and tell him what slander he had to kill.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

  "When adversities flow
  Then love ebbs; but friendship standeth stiffly
  In storms."

  Lilly.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

People, women especially, make resolutions sometimes with no more to
back them up than a vague hope that they will be able to carry them out
in some haphazard fashion.  Winifred had almost offended Mrs Miles by
the slackness of her visits to the cottage, and hardly knew whether
Anthony were in Thorpe or not.  She persuaded Bessie, however, to ride
with her father, and, putting on her red cloak, went across the meadows,
making a little spot of brightness in the midst of the quiet winter
colouring.

She walked through the village, lingering a little at the post-office,
and afterwards going on towards Underham, simply from not knowing where
else to turn.  The rain had reduced the roads to thick mud, and strewn
them with little twigs and branches, whipped from the trees by the
violence of the storm.  But, as not infrequently happens after these
fierce gales, there was an exquisite beauty shining where lately the
hurly-burly had raged.  Instinctively Winifred stopped at a gate in the
hedge to look at what was generally dull and uninteresting enough, a
long stretch of flat meadows with low hills beyond.  But the meadow was
transfigured with a depth of colour; there were rich patches of indigo
and russet, poplars lighting up the sober background with streaks of
brown light, breadths of freshly turned earth, infinite traceries
springing from dark stems, a delicate sky broken by soft shadows and
round masses of living light, little pools of shining beautiful water
left by the rains, hedges ruddy with crimson berries, a white horse, an
old man leaning on his stick,--the picture was full of simple, homely
grace.

She was still looking at it when some one came along the road behind
her.  It was Mr Robert Mannering, and his first words connected
themselves with her own purpose.

"Have you seen Anthony Miles?" he asked.  "He was to come down by this
train, and I am particularly desirous to meet him."  Something that he
saw in Winifred's face made him add immediately, "So you have heard it,
too?"

"Does Anthony know?" asked the girl, without answering directly.

Mr Robert's kindly face looked grave and worried.  He began to brush
imaginary dust from his coat-sleeve,--an action in which he always took
refuge under any annoyance.

"If you mean the report," he said, laying a little stress upon the last
word, "I imagine that he does not.  To tell you the truth, that is why I
am here; for his father's sake I am inclined to let him hear what is
said."

Winifred flushed a little.

"I do not know why you should say for his father's sake," she said at
once.  "I do not suppose that Anthony's friends can have allowed a
breath of this horrible story to affect them, so that their one wish
must be to stand by him for his own sake."

She stopped and looked at Mr Mannering, who was silent.

"Surely," said Winifred impetuously, "Mr Pitt has not influenced you!"

"My dear," said Robert Mannering, looking out towards the low hills, and
speaking with a little hesitation, "I think that Anthony had a difficult
duty to perform--"

"Yes, yes, go on," said Winifred, trying to govern her voice.

"And that he shrank from it."

She could no longer laugh as she had laughed the night before.  A
sickening feeling came over her.  Was this lie actually living,
spreading, destroying?  Her eyes filled with a rush of tears.  She
lifted her hand in mute indignation.

"You--his friend!--you believe that!"

He was silent again, and then said slowly,--

"Perhaps neither you nor I are fair judges, Winifred.  You naturally
think of Anthony, whom you have known all your life, and I think of
Margaret Hare.  Remember that her child was in all justice the heir, and
remember what the poor mother has suffered."

"O, I remember!" said Winifred, recovering herself, and standing
upright, with the full light of the sky in her face; "and I remember,
too, who it was that spoke to old Mr Tregennas for the child.  It is
only I who recollect at all, I think.  And it seems to me that there is
little use in knowing people all one's life long, as you say, if that
knowledge falls away into doubt the instant our trust in them is tried.
If you believe this story, Mr Mannering, pray let me be the person to
tell him.  I may meet him now; at any rate, I am sure to have an
opportunity."

"As you like," Mr Robert said, gravely.  "Good by, my dear.  I am
afraid there is pain in store for us all."

But, although he was the first to say good by, it was Winifred who left
him standing by the gate watching her, as she went resolutely along with
a quickened step, and the light still on her face.

"True woman, true woman, she will not fail him," said Mr Robert to
himself, shaking his head sadly.  "Poor boy, I can't think of him
without being sorry from the bottom of my heart, and yet it was an evil
thing to do to Margaret Hare's child.  I wish Pitt had not told us--I
wish--"

And then he turned and went back again.

Winifred walked swiftly on for about half a mile, slackening her pace as
she became aware that she was going too fast, and trying to lose the
consciousness that she had come here to meet Anthony Miles, for it was
only when the pitiful feeling was very strong in her heart that it
overcame a secret repugnance, and every now and then this last grew into
a kind of startled shyness.

Presently she heard wheels, and saw the pony-carriage coming towards her
with Anthony driving.  Her first impulse was to nod and smile, and pass
on as if the meeting were accidental, but the next moment she was
ashamed of its prompting, and stood still bravely.  Ah, how strange it
was that she should need any bravery where Anthony was concerned!  It
evidently pleased him that she should have stopped, for it was with a
radiant countenance that he drew up and jumped out, and asked what had
brought her so far from Thorpe.

"He should not have asked," thought poor Winifred.  Then she found he
was preparing to send oh James with the carriage, and to walk back with
her.

"If you will let me?" he said questioningly.

"I should like it," Winifred said, so eagerly that he brightened still
more.  It struck both of them with a pleasant sense of warmth that they
two should be walking alone together through the lanes.  It was winter,
but Anthony thought there was plenty of colour and brightness, and
perhaps Winifred's red cloak had something to do with it.  As for her,
after the gleam of those few delicious moments, the dull weight of what
she had to say came back with depressing heaviness.  Anthony's
good-humour and lightness of heart added a hundredfold to the difficulty
of her task; yet, time was passing, and she felt with terror that each
step brought them nearer to Thorpe.  She was always deficient in the
feminine art of doubling upon her subject, and in this hour of need it
seemed as if she were duller than ever.  Anthony, however, knowing
nothing of her inward strife, was quite content with Winifred's softness
and kindness; he talked gayly--more gayly than he had talked since the
Vicar's death--of what he had been doing in London.

"I think I see my way to some satisfactory work at last," he said.

"Shall you live in London, do you mean?" asked Winifred, thinking not of
London, but of nearer things.

"One must, you know," Anthony said slowly.  And yet, although he had
been dissatisfied with Thorpe of late, he said these words with a
strange reluctance in his heart.  "It is necessary to be in the midst of
things.  This place is so far off."

"Trenance is let, is it not?"  Winifred was plunging nervously into her
subject.

"Yes, and, oddly enough, to a relation of old Lucas.  You remember old
Lucas, don't you?  I wonder what this Sir Somebody Somebody is like, and
whether it runs in the family to wear your hat at the back of your
head."

And so he went on.  It seemed to Winifred, poor child, as if he had
never talked so fast or so brightly, and all the while, though, as I
have said, that thing which she had to tell lay like a cruel weight upon
her heart, there was also a secret joy, a delight in this return of free
confidence, a feeling as though the happiness which had once seemed
possible were possible again.  Anthony, too, had vague thoughts
stirring.  He was pleased at Winifred's walking back with him, at her
little concession; for of late he had declared angrily that she was
cold, changed, variable.  He was too much taken up with his satisfaction
to see her wistful looks, or to guess how her heart ached with the
thought that it was she herself who must embitter these quickly passing
moments.  Already she was wasting time dangerously.  They had reached
the gate where Winifred and Mr Robert had stood and looked across the
meadows.  The transient glow which had so beautified the common things
was gone, a grey gloom had crept over the snowy clouds, everything lay
stretched in a bare, flat level; it seemed no more than a dull land of
hedges and ditches, with a few ugly poplars and insignificant hills.
Anthony laughed at Winifred a little for stopping to look at them, but
indeed she felt as if she needed the bar of the gate by which to hold,
so strange a tremor had seized upon her.  She glanced at him with the
hope that he would see that something was wrong and question her, for it
seemed to her as if her face must tell the tale alone; but he talked on
happily, until Winifred interrupted him with sudden abruptness.

"Anthony," she said, "do you know that there is a cruel report abroad
about you?"

Her heart beat so fast that she could hardly speak, and yet her voice
sounded in her own ears harsh and unfeeling.

"A report?" said Anthony inquiringly.  He began to wonder whether she
could have heard what had been told him a few days ago, that he was
engaged to Miss Milman.  It might be unlike Winifred to speak in this
fashion, but a man is often egotist enough to forget these
impossibilities, and he folded his arms on the bar of the gate, and
laughed and looked round with a pleasant anticipation of fault-finding.
Winifred kept her face turned from him, and went on nervously.

"They say that Mr Tregennas wanted to have changed his will at the
last, and to have left half his fortune to his granddaughter--"

Something choked her voice.  Anthony looked at her and gave a little
whistle of astonishment.  "Then why on earth did he not?"

"They say that he wrote to you to tell you his desire, placing the
matter entirely in your hands, and requesting that if you decided
against it,"--she left out his father's name, fearing to seem irreverent
to the dead,--"you would take no notice of the letter; and they say--"

He interrupted her here sharply.

"They!  Whom do you mean by they?"

"Mr Pitt," said Winifred in a low voice, after a moment's hesitation.
"Mr Pitt says that you sent Mr Tregennas no answer."

"So they believe that, do they?" he said in a jarred voice.

Winifred could not answer.  Her heart was too full of pity and pain for
her to speak.  She held by the bar of the gate, and saw blankly lying
before her the wintry fields, the tall, expressionless poplars.  Anthony
put another question in a moment, in the same coldly restrained tone.

"How do they account for my sharing the property with Marmaduke?"

"Anthony, do not force me to repeat such folly."

"I must hear."

"It is so absurd!" said Winifred, keenly ashamed, and trying to laugh.
"They say Marmaduke discovered the secret, and to avoid its becoming
known you consented to--to--"

"Let him share the spoils.  I see.  Has Mr Pitt returned to London?"

"I believe so.  A word from you will set it right."

"It should never have been wrong," he said bitterly.  "After what you
have said I must get home to catch the post.  Good by.  You don't mind
walking back alone?  Indeed, it doesn't seem as if my company would do
you much credit."

He was gone almost before she heard, and a cold desolation crept over
her as she stood still, turning her back upon the little network of
fields, and watched him striding away along the muddy lane.  What a
fierceness there had been in his last words!  What a sense of separation
he had left behind him!  It had required all her resolution to take this
task upon her, and it was cruel that it should thus recoil upon herself;
a sense of injustice must have stirred her into indignation, had it not
been for the womanly tenderness which at once turned it aside with
compassionate excuses.  No wonder that the very breath of such an
accusation should have angered him; no wonder that his first thought
should have been to hurry to refute it; no wonder, ah, no wonder, that
he should forget her.

She little thought that it was wrath instead of forgetfulness which was
uppermost in Anthony's mind as he splashed through little innocent pools
of water with angry steps.  Like most reserved men, he was exceeding
impatient of reserve in others, and he wanted her to have protested her
disbelief in the slander which had met him, while such a protest would
have seemed a positive insult to Winifred, who had never dreamed of
doubting him.  Her words had given him a terrible blow, and the charge
was quickly fermented by his imagination into a distorted form.
Conscious that he had not sought the old man's favour, that it had been
hateful to him to replace Marmaduke, that he was even now setting
inquiries after Ellen Harford on foot, he was accused, nevertheless, of
committing what he called a crime to gain this fortune to which he was
indifferent.  I am not defending his manner of receiving the accusation.
If he had been a hero it would have been very different; but, so far as
one sees, heroes seldom leap into the world in complete armour; they are
more likely to grow out of trials and temptations, yes, out of many a
slip and fall, in which they seem to be beaten down and overwhelmed.
Anthony had the stuff in him which would bear the furnace, although
there were little overgrowths hiding its goodness; he had a ready
generosity, high imaginings, longings to better the world; but these
were the very feelings upon which such an accusation came like a stream
of icy water.  If people ceased to believe in him, he felt as if he
could believe in nothing.

As he went quickly through Thorpe, he held aloof from the people, but
noticed them jealously, fancying he could read meanings in their faces
of which, it is needless to say, they were guiltless.  Ill report of a
man flies fast, but this was not the sort of report to gain wings
quickly, for if any of the people heard it, to what did it amount?  To
the fact that before Mr Tregennas died he put it to Mr Anthony whether
or not he should change his will.  "A'd ha' bin a big fule for's pains
if a'd said a wudd," would have been the heaviest verdict that Anthony
could have received from their lips.

But we place our own thoughts in other people's hearts, and so Anthony
heard a hundred unspoken things on his way through Thorpe.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

"Anthony Miles is gone to London," said Mr Robert Mannering, walking
into the library of the Red House, on the day following that described
in the last chapter.

Mr Mannering looked with a shiver at the door his brother had left open
behind him.  He had a cold, and a great many theories about its
treatment.

"I don't know what good he can do himself by going up," added Mr Robert
in a perturbed tone.

"He will be able to see Pitt," suggested Mr Mannering, drawing nearer
the fire.

"I wish I could feel there was any chance of his convincing Pitt.  It's
a bad business, Charles."

Mr Mannering looked up with a little surprise; for although his brother
frequently indulged in cynical speeches, he had never yet known him to
believe in them, or take anything but a largely hopeful view of
individualised human nature.

"My dear Robert--would you object to shutting the door?--"

"I beg your pardon," said Mr Robert hastily, doing as he was requested
with an abstracted bang, which made Mr Mannering wince.  But he went
on.

"Look calmly at the matter.  What do we know of the contents of that
letter?  How is it possible to judge of the terms in which the
suggestion was made?--of the burden it may have inflicted upon Anthony?"

"That is not the question," said his brother, shaking his head.  "He
denies, you must remember, having received any suggestion whatever.
Pooh, the thing's absurd.  Besides, young Lee seems to have implied that
he was aware of what had taken place."

Sometimes they are odd things which warp our judgments.  Robert
Mannering was an old lawyer, with a red face and short iron-grey hair,
and yet it took a very little thing to turn aside his shrewd every-day
sense.  Only a woman's name, and a curl of brown hair out of which the
living light had faded.

"I have said all I can for him to the Squire," he went on.  "We shall
see when he comes back.  But--"

He walked to the window, and stood with his hands behind him, looking
out.  There was a threatening of snow in the air, and a few solitary
flakes, the more dismal for their want of companionship, came fluttering
down upon the empty beds.  That "but" sounded like the key-note of all
dreary disbelief.

"Nobody can tell," said Mr Mannering, who usually took a more
desponding view of human nature than his brother.  "My own opinion is
that you are all deciding hastily, but with the wind where it is, I
don't believe there's a man alive could give an unprejudiced judgment.
As to these hot-water pipes, Jane contrives to convert them into
conductors of cold air, with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause."

"The room is like a hot-house," said Mr Robert, a little shortly, and
still keeping his back turned.  "That fool Stokes has not had the sense
to mat up the red geranium.  He'll have got rid of every flower in the
garden before long, that's certain.  Commend me to this place for
incapable idiots."

While he spoke, Mr Mannering with great care and deliberation proceeded
to fold a handkerchief, and to tie it round his head, thus imparting an
extraordinarily rueful expression to his face.

"Yates tells me they're going to push the Bill for connecting the two
lines," he said, fastening the knot.

"So I supposed.  Nothing is too fraudulent for me to discredit, and I'm
quite aware that you may pick as many pockets as you please, if only you
do it on a large enough scale."

"Come, come, Robert.  You'll be had up for a libel."

"I dare say.  There's no bigger libel than truth in these days."

And then he suddenly turned round with a laugh at himself.  To do him
justice, he was not often so cross, but then he was not often so sore
and disappointed at heart.  It was very bitter to him to think of
Anthony Miles committing a dishonourable action, and it smote him again
to remember the injustice to the dead.  He could not get one predominant
feeling, and that irritated his natural sense of orderliness.

Winifred, of whom he thought much at this time, was, perhaps, more
impatient than grieved, having an unflinching faith in the triumph of
right, which to such natures is as the very air they breathe.  Only she
had not lived long enough to know that though the triumph comes, it is
not always the thing we picture to ourselves, laurel crowns, joyful
music, and the people looking on and shouting.  There are other triumphs
besides this, wounds and tears, and a slow struggle upwards.

She believed that every shadow of blame would be swept away from Anthony
as soon as he returned from seeing Mr Pitt, and though keenly sensitive
to the reproaches she was forced to hear, took a pride in treating them
indifferently, as stings too slight even to require defence.  When Mr
Robert met her one day and would have said something, she was very cool
with him.

"When Anthony returns," she said, scarcely stopping, "we shall know
exactly how such a mistake can have arisen."

"Anthony is come back," said Mr Robert, gravely.

She could not resist the rush of blood to her heart, which made her ask
hastily, "When?"

"He came last night.  I have just seen him," Mr Mannering said in the
same tone.

"Well?"

"You will hear from himself, no doubt.  Only, my dear, don't set your
heart too strongly upon things being made straight."

Winifred had grown a little pale, but there was not one shade of doubt
in her clear eyes as she looked at him.

"I do not understand you," she said quietly.  "Things must be made
straight, as you call it, in the end; and in the mean time, of course,
no one who knows Anthony can doubt him for a moment.  That such a report
should have ever lived for an hour is the real hardship that we have to
regret."

She was so unflinchingly steadfast, that Mr Robert, who believed there
was more trouble in store for her, left his warnings alone, and went
away mute.  After all, she would know soon enough.

And to know enough, in this case, simply meant to know nothing.  Anthony
had come back as he went, with hard lines about his face, and the
bitterness deepened and intensified.  His first care had been to go to
Mr Pitt's chambers, where he found the old lawyer polite, cold, and
unshaken.  "I posted the letter myself, Mr Miles.  You have
ascertained, I presume, that it is not to be heard of in the Dead-Letter
Office?" was the text to which he returned when all had been said.  He
had not seen the contents, but Mr Tregennas had communicated them to
him.  Anthony grew exceedingly angry, and lost his temper.  Although he
was aware when he left him that it was absolutely imperative that he
should follow Mr Pitt's suggestions, which were of a very obvious and
practical nature, the manner in which they had been thrown out had
raised so strong an antagonism in his blood, that he was tempted to
fling them and all prudent dealing to the winds, and was, perhaps, not
without a feeling of satisfaction, when they proved altogether barren of
results.

It was a word, however, of Mr Pitt's about Marmaduke Lee, which gave
him something approaching to a clew, at first no more than an idea that
his brother-in-law might be able to assist him to grope in the darkness
in which he found himself, but gradually, after he went down to Oakham,
and had seen Marmaduke, growing by some instinctive power into a
perception of what had actually happened.  Only those who have some
knowledge of the strength and weakness of a character like Anthony's can
conceive what a shattering of landmarks came with this perception.  All
his impulses were full of indignation and contempt; he almost withered
Marmaduke with an outbreak of angry scorn, and yet felt compelled, by
the very intensity of this scorn to save so miserable a man from the
consequences that would have crushed him.  Something in the excessive
meanness and cowardice of the act filled him with a loathing shame which
made it impossible to proclaim it.  Naturally his connection with Marion
touched him more nearly with its dishonour, but without such a shield it
is probable that he would have shrunk from dragging such a deed from its
hiding-place, in order to shelter himself behind it.  Yet, although
there was a certain generosity in this attitude, there was little mercy
in his heart.  It enraged him to feel the helplessness of his position,
the impotence with which he must submit to the world's verdict His was a
nature to which injustice was the most unbearable form of persecution
that could have visited him, one, also, which seemed to raise all his
worst qualities in opposition, so as to sweep away with a crash the
noble ideal he had set up of men and things; and such a moment in a
man's life is full of danger and trial, his weakness concealing itself
so deceptively that it seems to himself to be the armour which enables
him to present an undaunted front.

In Marions case, it was pity which Anthony felt, and he was as anxious
as Marmaduke to spare her the disclosure; but this did not prevent a
hard contempt becoming visible in his manner, when she, as was daily the
case, openly displayed her enthusiastic admiration for her husband.
Naturally, this made her angry, and placed Anthony again in the wrong.
It was, as it often is in the world, although, in spite of the
repetitions of some thousand years, every experience comes to us with
the sense of novelty, the man who was most heavily weighted had the
least sympathy, the hardest blame, the sharpest judgments.  Other
people, less bound to partiality than Marion, compared Anthony's
abruptness, and the strong lines which had grown round his mouth,
unfavourably with Marmaduke's easy-humoured placidity by which he had
become a popular neighbour.  All the crooks and angles of Anthony's
disposition seemed to be showing themselves, and yet the poor fellow had
never so sorely wanted pity, and kindness, and patient treatment.
Whether he judged rightly or not, there was something even beyond
chivalry in accepting the burden of this hateful thing, to spare another
a more terrible weight.  There was so much cowardice and feebleness in
Marmaduke's nature that to avoid the pain of disgrace he might, so
Anthony believed, have fled from it at any cost,--even life itself; and
though he scorned such cowardice, he had not the heart to leave it to
its fate.

He left Oakham with a bitter consciousness that a gulf was dug between
them, and a hot, sore feeling with the world which he was about to face
without the power of clearing himself from its accusation.  He would
make no attempt to save anything out of the wreck; with the pride of
youth, he determined that he would not stoop to offer assurances.
Knowing how impossible it was that he could have done this deed,--as
careless of money as those can be who have never wanted it,--it cut him
to the heart that he should be suspected, and he revenged himself by a
simulated indifference.  Nothing could have been more repellent than his
manner of meeting Mr Robert, or less satisfactory than the answers he
vouchsafed.  He would make no appeal for trust.  Little by little, the
people who wished to be friendly grew irritated, and the matter was
talked of more openly and more unfavourably for Anthony when, instead of
conciliating, he seemed to provoke war to the knife.  When the Squire
passed him with a cool bow, he retaliated by taking no notice whatever
of the Squire the next time they met.  Even kindness appeared to wound
him.  Winifred was bewildered when Anthony would lift his hat and go by
as if he saw no appeal in her sad eyes.  He put himself in opposition to
all the world, and as a natural consequence grew hard, bitter, and
mistrustful.

Perhaps our powers of endurance are never so near giving way as when we
are holding them tightly strung, yet conscious of every jar and
vibration in the effort; and poor Anthony, with his sensitive and
affectionate temperament, went about with a dumb misery in his heart.
He was rejecting friendship at the time he most needed it, and really
longed to stretch out the hands with which he repelled its sweet
kindness, in pitiful entreaty for some touch of fellowship which should
break the cold isolation he was creating for himself.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

  "Those have most power to hurt us that we love;
  We lay our sleeping lives within their arms."

  Beaumont and Fletcher.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is a curious likeness in the yesterdays and to-days of our lives,
a likeness so strong that it conceals the greater differences from us
until we have gone far enough to look back and compare them
dispassionately.  We eat and drink, talk and sleep, more or less;
certain things seem to hold us in chains to which we move obediently.
If it were not so, life would be unendurable, the calls upon our
sympathy would harden our hearts or wear them out, joy and sorrow would
jostle each other too openly in the high road.  The mechanism hurts us
sometimes, but it is good discipline nevertheless.

And so at Thorpe Regis the many changes were gradually covered with the
old dress of routine and habit.  It is almost sad how soon people become
reconciled to them.  A year ago it would have seemed the strangest thing
in the world for anything to have broken through the daily intercourse
between Hardlands and the Vicarage, and here was an alienation so great
that it almost amounted to total estrangement.  Not that the Squire
desired it.  Unused to keep a very close control over himself, he
allowed his feelings to be seen, and affronted Anthony; but he would
gladly have had everything as of old with Mrs Miles, and was too
autocratic not to be puzzled when he found this not the case.

"It was not her fault.  The girls may go to her as much as they please.
The poor woman's to be pitied,--I pity her from the bottom of my heart,"
he would say.

Mrs Miles on her part had no very clear conception of what had
happened, for she had lived in close retirement since her husband's
death, and the few friends who entered that solitude were not likely to
be cruelly communicative.  But she was aware that unkind reports had
been set afloat about the will, and, while really too sad and crushed in
spirit to do more than reiterate her assurance that it would not have
happened had the Vicar been alive, she was vaguely willing to take up
cudgels against all the world on Anthony's behalf; in comparison with
whom what was Hardlands, what was the Squire, what even were motherless
Bessie and Winifred?

And so, and so, and so,--a hundred little obstacles magnified themselves
indefinitely, the two sets of lives that had been so blended with each
other fell apart, the little brook widened into a river.  Many people
thought that it would have been better if Anthony had left the
neighbourhood for a time, and allowed the exaggerated reports of his
conduct to settle quietly.  But perhaps the idea of this sediment of
black mud, only requiring a chance stone to be stirred into turbid
activity, was more hateful to Anthony than the knowledge that the waters
all about him were kept in constant disturbance.  He made no pretence of
concealing that he was unhappy, or at least no one could fail to see it
in his face; and his irritation and soreness against all the world were
marked so acutely that it was impossible not to foresee a reaction from
so abrupt a closing of his heart.  He remained at Thorpe, partly from
yielding to his mothers clinging desire to do so, partly from pride
which forbade flight from disagreeables, and partly from a failure in
those springs of action which had hitherto urged him forward.  But he
could not long endure the position of solitude he had taken up, and some
consciousness of this added to his discomfort.

When the thing of which he was accused had first grown into form,
Winifred had reproached herself for the warm glow with which her heart
assured her that Anthony would never feel her friendship fail him; but
this had long ago faded away under the keen chill of his manner, keener
because her generous spirit had never wavered in its faithfulness and
was enduring all the pangs which he believed himself to be bearing
alone.  She would not suffer one throb of resentment to answer his
coldness, but it cost her a daily and bitter struggle to learn her
powerlessness, and to understand that he was himself making it
impossible for her to put out so much as a hand to help him in his
trouble.

She was in the village one day, and just turning out of it towards the
Hardlands meadows when she met old Araunah Stokes and his
daughter-in-law, Faith's mother.  It was not very often the old man got
so far from his house, and he was now walking on with a kind of feeble
vigour, as if bent upon making the most of what small strength remained
to him.  His daughter-in-law--who had evidently been crying, and now and
then wiped her eyes--gave Miss Chester to understand that it was Faith
who caused their trouble by her persistence in her engagement.

"Whatever us shall do, I don't know, wi' her so contrairy."

"Hold your tongue," said the old man, turning upon her with a weak,
fierce voice.  "The women tells and tells, till they talks the very
brains out o' yer head.  You'm no better than a baby when they've
clacketed at ye for an hour or two without a word of sense from
beginnin' to end."

"An' me niver so much as openin' my lips," said Mrs Stokes, crying
meekly and holding up her hands.  "An' I did think as Faith would ha'
bin a comfort, me so weak, wi' no sproyle, nor nothin', and gran'father
only just fit to totle about."

"It ain't much comfort you'm like to get out o' maedens," said Araunah,
still bitterly.  "They'm so hard to manage as a drove o' pegs.  Faith
shall bide where her be, though, for all her mother's setting up."

"Has she made up her mind, then, to marry this man?" asked Winifred,
interested.

"He doan't give her the chance," said the grandfather angrily, striking
his stick upon the ground.  "Girl's a fule, that's t' long an' short
o't, an' he bain't so beg a wan."

"He knows better nor to persume," said Mrs Stokes, indignant for
Faith's sake.  "You see, Miss Winifred, he doan't feel he've got enough
to offer our maed,--I doan't know what her can be thinkin' of,"
continued her mother, dissolving suddenly again.

"An' her'd give up a good pleace.  But her shall bide, her shall bide."

"Though it mayn't be for long, with Mr Anthony goin' to be married
hisself."

Self-possession is a wonderful power.  We read with a thrill of
amazement of the Spartan boy, and the fox, and the hidden agony, but,
after all, the heroism is repeated day by day around us.  There are
people getting stabs from unconscious executioners, and the life dying
out of them, while they are smiling and keeping up the little ball of
conversation, and betraying nothing of the pang.  Winifred's voice
became a little gayer than usual as she said,--

"Mr Anthony?  Is he going to be married?"

"To Miss Lovell down to Under'm, haven't you heard it, miss?  It's that
has set Faith thinkin' more o' that Stephens."

"I woan't have it," said the old man, querulously.  "I woan't have she
comin' hoam to we, ating and drinking.  Polly has more sense than Faith
and her mother putt together."

Winifred never quite knew what she said, but she walked away with her
heart suddenly hardened against Faith.  Why should Faith escape?--why
should she not bear her lot like other people?--why should one be set
free more than another?  And, O, what had Faith to endure!  What grief
was hers, whose lover only did not think himself worthy, or who would,
perhaps, renounce his happiness for the sake of perishing souls?
Grief?--why, it was an exquisite bliss.  Faith stood on one side,
triumphant and happy, while Winifred walked in the valley of
humiliation, with sharpest thorns piercing her feet.  Anthony did not
love her, for he loved another.  Death builds no wall of separation like
this, nay, death, will break down walls,--only love itself can bar love
with a hopeless fence.  She fought against the bitter truth, poor soul,
calling herself by hard names, and laughing drearily at her own folly;
but the anguish was very acute, and she had a feeling as if, though for
a little while she might keep its sharpest suffering at aim's length, it
would overmaster her at last.  Was it all true,--real?  Was the sun
shining on her, or was it rather a cruel furnace that had suddenly
scorched the earth, and would burn and scorch day after day, day after
day, through long years, through an endless lifetime, grey with shadows
and weary with pain, and with no better hope than forgetfulness?  Heaven
pity those whose sorrow brings them face to face with such a thought and
no further!  Its very touch gave Winifred a shuddering fear of herself,
and a momentary but clear perception of something that should shine
through grief and overcome it, ah, even make the rugged road beautiful.

But it was difficult for her to disconnect her thoughts as yet while
they were vibrating and ringing with the blow.  She walked mechanically
towards home, but she saw Bessie and Mr and Mrs Featherly in the
garden, and feeling it impossible at this moment to join them, she stood
still irresolutely, and then turned and went along the field, where a
little stream was running, and a path led up through a small wood.

The day was delicately bright and hot.  Across a pale moon that looked
herself no more than a stationary cloud, little wilful vapours which had
broken away from larger masses were sailing.  Red cattle, satisfied with
their rich flowery pastures, had gathered under the hedges to chew the
cud and sleepily whisk away the flies.  The brown water hurried along,
washing long grass, and shining up at meadow-sweet and purple clusters
of loosestrife.  There were cool flashing lights, and tender depths of
colour, and a sweet content over everything, and poor Winifred growing
sadder and sadder with the sense of contrast, yet walking more slowly
and looking wistfully at the long grass, with a vague longing to lie
down in it, and let everything go by and away forever.  It might have
been this which, as she went towards a little wooden bridge crossing the
stream into the wood, deafened her ears to a step until Anthony Miles
himself was close to her.  The instant before she had believed herself
safe with the patient cattle and the water and her own sad thoughts, and
it cost her a struggle to master the tumult into which her feelings were
suddenly stirred.  But Anthony was too much absorbed in his own thoughts
to notice any disturbance, and as matters had not yet come to such a
pass that they could meet in a lonely meadow and go by without greeting,
he put out his hand, and said,--

"Are you going into the wood?  You will find it very hot even there.  A
thunder-storm would be a real comfort."

"O, I like this sort of day!" said Winifred, with a hurrying desire to
prove her own perfect contentment.  "Everything is looking most
beautiful I see Sniff is as fond as ever of the water--" She hesitated
suddenly, there being a certain awkwardness quick to make itself felt in
any allusion to the past, however slight; but Anthony said carelessly,--

"Sniff was due at Oakham, but as my mother seems to want him more than
Marion, I shall not send him."

"Is Marion quite well?"

"Quite well, thank you."

It was all so commonplace, and the moment had given her so much
strength, that Winifred made a desperate resolution.

"I have just been told something," she said, looking straight in his
face and smiling.  "I hear that you are going to marry Miss Lovell.
Please let me congratulate you, unless it is too soon."

There was a flush on her cheek, and her words ended with an odd ring of
hardness, but no one would have been likely to read these little signs.
Anthony looked at her more kindly than he had yet done, and said "Thank
you" gravely.

That was all.  A few words, the river running through the waving grass,
a woodpecker scraping the tree, flies darting here and there, Sniff
dashing after a trout, Anthony, who once had been so near them all,
standing by her, and answering from the other side of a great gulf.
That was all.  It did not seem as if Winifred could say any more except
the good-by of which the air was full, and which all the little leaves
in the wood rustled as she passed under them.

Anthony stood still for a moment and watched her going away.  He had a
very tender heart, poor fellow, though it was obstinate and proud in
many things, and too angry now to be just.  A remembrance of old times
was sure to soften him, when once he realised that they were old and
past; and he began to think that, after all, Winifred was not, perhaps,
an enemy.  He watched her, and then called Sniff out of the bright brown
water and walked away.

As for Winifred--well, it was on her knees that she fought her battle,
into which neither you nor I need look.

Almost to all people, I suppose, there comes a time in their lives when
life, not death, is the phantom they dread.  One fear may be as unworthy
as the other, but it is there.  Only for both there is a merciful Hand
stretched out, and if into that Hand we put our own it will lead us
gently until we are brought face to face with our fear, and see that the
dread phantom has, indeed, as it were, the face of an angel.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

  "They who see more of our nature than the surface know that our
  interests are quite as frequently governed by our character as our
  character is by our interests."

  Sir H.  Lytton Bulwer.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anthony walked towards Thorpe.  He was going back to the cottage, and
then intended to drive into Underham, and dine with the Bennetts.  They
evidently expected that he should spend part of each day at their house,
and the arrangement was one which he did not dislike, and to which he
therefore consented tacitly.

But it must be confessed that although when he thought of Ada Lovell,
and the position in which he stood towards her, the remembrance was
winged with a certain satisfaction, she did not occupy any large portion
of his reflections.  He was not thinking very much of anybody except
himself, and the injustice of the world.  What had he, of all men, done
to be visited as he was?  He was so sensitive, so conscious of his own
uprightness, that the cold blight of suspicion withered him with its
very first breath; and he had put on a bold front, and, as it were,
exhausted his courage with an outward show of defiance, while to his
inward spirit it seemed that all life and energy had died utterly away.
The very foundations were shaken.  For if people ceased to believe in
him, with the reaction of a sanguine mind there was nothing left in
which he could continue to believe.  He had made himself the centre of
his own theories, working them out from himself, confident in his own
powers, and suddenly all had come to an end, such an end as seemed to
him the end of all things, faith, hope, and charity with the rest.  To
his ardent nature there was no balm in conscious innocence; it mattered
nothing that he knew the falseness of their suspicions, while the
monstrous feet of suspicion itself remained.

Deep down in his heart, moreover, there was a touch of that insistance
upon martyrdom which is more universal than we perhaps think.  He thrust
away compassion, feeling as if an earthquake had separated him from his
former life, and as if no one were left to stand on the same side with
him.  This was an exaggeration of his position, for, although the world
is more ready for condemnation than acquittal, there is a party for
every side, and Anthony might have seen hands stretched out if he would.
But there was not a word or look to which he did not give a warp in the
wrong direction.  He had persistently classed Winifred with the rest of
the world, and it is possible that the very consciousness that to do so
cost him a pang made the martyrdom the dearer; but her reticence had
told against her cruelly, for she believed in him too fully to have
thought of expressing her belief, little dreaming that a more open
sympathy would have better suited his mood than her intense but hidden
feeling.  He nursed the soreness in the same way that he nursed all
things which were painful at this time, until it really seemed as if Mr
Bennett's rather coarse expressions of friendliness, and Ada's assurance
that she had no patience with people who talked as the Thorpe people
talked, had a value which he could not find elsewhere.  And then she was
pretty and good-natured, trying to please him just as ardently as in the
days before the cloud,--which, indeed, she thought a matter of very
small consequence,--and he felt a certain gratitude towards her.  There
may have been something of defiance, and a disposition to run counter to
opinion, for whatever was his motive in turning suddenly one day upon
Ada, who was fluttering and saying foolish amiable things, it was
certainly not purely that of love; but perhaps we are all sufficiently
liable to act from mixed motives, to abstain from judging him too
harshly.

His engagement, although Winifred heard of it for the first time that
day, had really lasted a week: some question of the time struck him as
he drove to the door of the Bennetts' house, and went slowly up the
steps.  There had been a little confusion of blue at one side of the
windows, of which he had caught sight, and guessed who was waiting for
him.  In the short space between the door and the staircase there rose
up before him her welcome, her look, the very words she would say, as if
it had all been going on for a year instead of the few days which had
surely offered no time for weariness.  And yet a certain weariness
touched him with a sting of self-reproach, and made him infuse a little
more warmth into his greeting than was usual.

"You are very late, Anthony," she said, putting her hand on his arm, and
shaking her long curl reprovingly.  "Do you know that Aunt Henrietta
fancied you were not coming at all?"

"But you did not accuse me of anything so impossible?"

"No, indeed.  I don't think I should have spoken to you for a week if
you had stayed away, and I suppose, though I am sure I don't know, that
you would have minded that.  But now that you are here, you are to tell
me every single thing you have been doing."

His face darkened slightly.  This small affectionate tyranny was new to
him, and he was not quite in the mood for it.

"Suppose we turn the tables," he said, with a little restraint.  "What
have you been about to-day?"

"I?  O, I have not been beyond the garden.  I sat there and read and
thought--"

"Thought?"

"Ah, I am not going to tell you what I was thinking of; you men are
conceited enough already.  O Anthony, I hear Uncle Tom.  Do go and look
out of that window; do, please, go!"

There seemed no particular reason for this separation, but she was so
eager that Anthony obeyed.  He rather dreaded Mr Bennett's ponderous
jokes himself, and it was possible that Ada had not yet become used to
them.

"Ah, Miles, here you are, here you are! just in time for the salmon,
after all.  My wife took it into her head you'd be late, but I said, `My
dear, put a salmon at one end of the line, and a man at the other, and
the two must come together somehow.'  Ha, ha! not bad, was it?  And
you'd something else to draw you besides, hadn't you?  Ada,--where are
you, Ada?  Come, come, you'd have me believe you've never met before;
perhaps you'd like to be introduced.  It's never too late to mend, is
it?"

"O Uncle Tom!" said Ada, smiling, and trying to blush.  She looked very
pretty in spite of the failure, and Anthony's face relaxed from the
lines which were becoming habitual.  She was pretty and affectionate,
adornments on which a man sets a high value, often taking a little
silliness as a natural and not much to be minded accompaniment.  The
room was cheerful, not furnished altogether in the best taste, but laden
with a certain air of ripe and drowsy comfort which went far to atone
for a few sins of colour.  It was not so easy to get over Mr Bennett's
prosy facetiousness, but his business kept him generally out of the way,
and both he and his wife possessed a fund of that kind-heartedness which
never fails to create a friendly atmosphere.  If they were apt to err on
the side of plenty, there was no doubt that they gave good dinners,
dinners which Anthony, who was fastidious, liked, although not to the
extent to which Mr Bennett credited him.  Thus there were, on the
whole, reasons which made the house pleasant to him, and with the morbid
fret that had grown into his life--or out of his life, if you will--
worrying him incessantly, it gave him a feeling of ease to find himself
in the midst of a softly moving existence, where all sharp corners were
rounded off, all hardness padded, and where he was made much of and
gently flattered.  Mrs Bennett had always sleepily thought--if thinking
is not too strong an expression for the occasion--that it would be a
good match for Ada, who had lived with them ever since she had been left
an orphan, two years ago; and as for the absurd stories which had been
spread about, it was far more agreeable to her good-natured stolidity to
have no opinions on the matter.  It was very likely a mistake from
beginning to end, or, if not a mistake, no doubt Mr Miles had good
reasons for all he had done.  Her comfortable kindness, so unequivocally
free from hidden doubts, was really soothing to poor Anthony, and paved
the way for the step which Ada's prettiness and enthusiasm and desperate
admiration brought about at last.  No one could have suspected indolent
Mrs Bennett of match-making, but she liked to see people happy, and had
not a tinge of malice or uncharitableness in her disposition.

"It is so hot," she said, coming into the room with her soft heavy step,
and sinking into an easy-chair.  "One of those things they have in
India--punkahs, don't they call them?--would be very nice.  Does your
mother feel the heat, Mr Miles?  I really think it is quite a labour to
have to go down to dinner."

"My dear, I can assure you it never answers to neglect the inner man,"
said Mr Bennett, laughing weightily at his own jokes, on his way to the
dining-room.  "Come, Ada, it's all very well to live upon air, but when
you are as old as your aunt and I, you'll find it'll not pay.  Not it,
indeed.  No, no; keep up the system, that has always been my maxim.  By
the way, Miles, I haven't seen Mannering or his brother for the last ten
days.  Nothing wrong, I hope?"

"I don't speak from personal knowledge," said Anthony, with the shade
again on his face, "but some one in the village said that Mr Mannering
was laid up with an attack of rheumatism."

"Poor fellow, poor fellow, he has wretched health, and no wonder.  Any
one must suffer in the end who lives upon mutton six days out of the
seven.  Tell him, when you see him, that he must come and dine with us
as soon as he can, and try a little variety.  Or you might drive out
there one afternoon, my dear, and see what really is the matter.  I've
the greatest regard for Mannering."

"Yes, indeed," assented Mrs Bennett in the slow round voice that seemed
hardly able to utter a contradiction.

"And I will go with you, Aunt Henrietta," said Ada, cheerfully.  "I want
to see that darling Mr Robert, and to get him to show me his flowers.
It will be very nice, and you will meet us there, Anthony, won't you?"

"Mr Robert is a better showman when he is not interfered with," said
Anthony, with a sharp pang of remembrance.  "I'll meet you afterwards,
and hear what you have seen."

"Well, I think Adas plan is not a bad one," persisted Mr Bennett, "and,
dear me, you must be as free of that house as if it were your own!  Say
to-morrow."

"To-morrow I am engaged."

"Well then, Wednesday."

"It will not be possible for me to go to the Red House," said Anthony in
an odd, unyielding tone.

Mr Bennett gave a long "Whew!"

Ada said with a pout, "O, but you must!" and Mrs Bennett came to the
rescue with the unconsciousness which constituted a real charm in
Anthony's eyes.

"It will be too hot for us to drive there just yet.  Ada and I must go
some day when I am a little less overdone and the weather is cooler."

Mr Bennett was sufficiently shrewd to be alive both to the jar and to a
perception that the subject was one which had better be allowed to drop.

"It is hot, as you say, my dear, and perhaps it would be as well to wait
until Mannering is about again.  Try a little of that Sauterne, Miles;
capital stuff for this weather.  Well, Ada, what have you been doing
with yourself?  Warren told me he had seen you at the station."

It was Ada's turn to look discomposed.

"The station?  O yes, I remember.  I walked across to see whether the
Mannerses came by the four-o'clock train.  I forgot that I had been out
of the garden when you asked me," she said, with an elaboration of
openness which was unnecessary, as Anthony had no suspicions to be
allayed.

"O, he's been asking you, has he?" said Mr Bennett jocosely.  "It's
lucky you can explain yourself, or poor Warren would have put his foot
in it."

"Mr Warren!" said Ada with scorn.

"Come, come, what has the poor man done?  Upon my word, I should have
thought young ladies would consider him a good-looking, agreeable young
fellow.  I am sure you did when you first knew him, Ada, eh?"

"I don't know what I thought once," said Ada, looking down, and smiling
prettily again; "all I know is that I don't admire him now."

If Anthony wanted mollifying,--which was perhaps not the case, although
this family party had not seemed to go quite as smoothly as those which
had preceded it,--this little speech effected its purpose.  He liked the
covert homage, and, congratulating himself upon the good-humour which
Mr Bennett's rather trying allusions could not ruffle, roused himself
into the old brightness which only now came in occasional flashes.  Ada
was enchanted, shook back her long curl, and put out all her
attractions; and Anthony, walking home through the quiet lanes sweet
with the dewy freshness of a summer night, dreamed his new dream with a
better success.  Only, alas, even in dreams there are jangled notes,
struggles, interruptions.  People's faces come and go, and look sadly at
us, changing often, just as the joy of their presence makes itself felt.
Every now and then out of Ada's face other eyes looked at him; eyes
that were grave and true and tender, and full of a trust that had never
failed, although he had read it wrongly.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

  "While friends we were, the hot debates
  That rose 'twixt you and me!
  Now we are mere associates
  And never disagree."

  Fraser's _Magazine_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anthony's engagement, coming so soon after the other affair, made a
little sensation in the neighbourhood.  Things die out so quickly that,
except in the more immediate Thorpe circle, his supposed act of
injustice might have ceased to interest people; but the young man was so
antagonistic, so sore, so fierce with all the world, that there was
nothing for it but to take the position he insisted upon.  The news of
his engagement gave something pleasanter to talk about.  There were a
few injured mothers, but the gentlemen generally pronounced that he had
shown his sense by making up his mind to marry Bennett's niece.  The
Bennetts were favourites, and held a thoroughly respectable place in the
county; and though Anthony might have done better as to family, every
one felt that a sort of cloud had just touched him, and was on the whole
glad that the Bennetts should be rewarded for their hospitality and
liberality and conservatism by seeing their niece well married.  As for
the Squire, who had been more ruffled and made uneasy by the
consequences of his own coolness than he himself knew, he came into the
room where Winifred and Bessie were together, chuckling and rubbing his
hands.

"So there's to be a wedding to waken us all up," he said briskly.  "You
know all about it, girls, of course.  I'm always the last in the place
to hear a bit of news--but there!"

"But there!--you always know it before we've time to tell you," Bessie
said saucily.  "Is that what you mean, papa?"

"You'll find out what I mean one day, when you won't like it, Miss
Pert," said the Squire, pulling her hair.  "I must say Anthony Miles has
shown greater sense than I should have expected.  He's just the man to
have made a fool of himself.  If he'd not been so confounded touchy
about that business of Pitt's, I'd have walked down and wished him joy;
but I suppose that won't do,--not just at first, eh, Winifred?"

"No, indeed," said Winifred, her face flushing.

"I suppose not," said Mr Chester, regretfully.  "Those young fellows
fly off at such tangents, there's no knowing where to take them.  One
would think I'd been the one to set that report going, and I'm sure, for
his fathers sake, I'd have given a hundred pounds--well, it's over and
done now, and can't be helped; people do say there was no real harm in
it when old Tregennas left it in his hands, but I wouldn't have believed
it, I wouldn't have believed it.  And then he goes and fights shy of the
friends who would have stuck by him if they could."

"Papa, he never did it.  How can he help being hurt with you all, when
you will not trust him!"

Winifred's face had grown pale after the flush, but her voice did not
tremble, and she looked at her father with clear steadfast eyes which
always affected him, though, oddly enough, they often gave him a twinge
of discomfort, and a little irritated him into obstinacy.

"Nonsense, Winifred," he said sharply, while he winced.  "He has never
so much as denied it.  Women shouldn't talk of what they don't
understand.  And it hasn't anything to do with his getting married, has
it?  I wish you to tell Mrs Miles that it's given me a great deal of
pleasure to hear of this match, and you and Bess had better drive into
Underham and call on the Bennetts."

He was really desirous by this time to mend the breach, and perhaps a
little secretly relieved that Mr Pitt's other idea about Anthony had
been proved so erroneous.  Before all this had happened, and while
Anthony had been a poorer man, a marriage between him and Winifred,
although it had never presented itself to his imagination, would have
met with no opposition from him, except the fret which arose from a
little personal dislike, natural enough between the two characters.  But
since a breath of dishonour had rested upon the young man, it would have
been a bitter blow to the Squire to have been forced to give him his
daughter.  He could by this time make some excuses for him, for his
father's sake,--indeed, now that he was not constantly meeting him, and
getting irritated by his schemes, he really liked him a good deal more
heartily than he had ever done before.  But that would not have availed
in such a trial.  Therefore he now felt a certain amount of gratitude to
him for removing the vague uneasiness which every now and then cropped
up when he looked at Winifred or remembered shrewd Mr Pitt.  He even
spoke sharply to Bessie, who yawned and declared it was too hot to go to
Underham.

"You'll go where your sister bids you.  Winifred, don't let that child
give herself airs to you.  If she does, speak to me.  I'll get a
governess again, or pack her off to school, or something."

"I wonder who would mind that most," said Bessie, jumping up and hugging
him.

"That's very fine.  I know somebody who'd cry her eyes out over
backboards and French exercises, and all the rest of it.  Not but what I
believe your mother would have had you do it," said the Squire, with a
sudden wistful look at his favourite.

"She is not so bad as she seems, papa," said Winifred, rousing herself.
"We read every morning, and she really works hard.  Mr Anderson is
quite satisfied."

"Well, mind she doesn't get her headaches again," her father said,
veering round to another anxiety.  "I'd rather she only knew her ABC
than get headaches, and I'm not sure you're careful enough, Winifred.
Do you hear, Bess?  Go out for a scamper on the pony when you're tired
of all this work.  You're not so strong as your sister."  Winifred did
not answer.  Something crossed her face so quickly that only the
tenderest watcher could have seen it, a look which is very sad on those
young faces.  There is no storm or impatience in it, but a kind of weary
protest.  You hear it sometimes in a voice.  The Squire went on with his
injunctions about Underham and Miss Lovell.

"I'm ready enough to be on friendly terms," were his parting words,
"only one doesn't know on which side to meet these touchy young fellows.
But this marriage looks as if he were coming to his senses."

"And we are to smooth over everything," said Bessie, shutting her book
and jumping up.  "I don't care to smooth it now that Anthony has been so
stupid.  That horrid Miss Lovell!  Don't you know how she walks, holding
her hand out stiffly--so.  You needn't look shocked, Winnie dear, for
she does, and I know she is horrid."

"Don't say anything more about it, please," Winifred pleaded, with a
look of pain.  "I am going to order the carriage at four o'clock."

"I hate them all, and I hate going," said Bessie rebelliously.  "Well?"
as her sister made no answer to this downright statement.

"Well?"

"Don't you mean to scold, or at least talk me into my proper behaviour?"

"You must learn to find what you call your proper behaviour for
yourself," said Winifred, trying to smile brightly, as she looked into
the girl's dancing eyes.  But her own suddenly filled with tears, and
just as quickly Bessie's arms were round her.

"Something is the matter, I know, and you may as well tell me, Winnie,
or I shall be obliged to find it out.  Something is making you unhappy.
Is it about Anthony?"

The hot colour flashed into Winifred's cheeks, but she was too honest to
give an evasive answer, and said, holding Bessie's clasping hands, and
pausing for a moment between her sentences,--

"I think it is, dear.  Anthony has suffered cruelly from this wicked
report.  And it is so miserable between us all, when--we used to be so
happy--"

She stopped.  She had been speaking in a low, almost humble voice, as if
her heart felt a pang of shame in its sorrow.

"Anthony doesn't care for her," said Bessie, shaking her head with a
little experienced air.  "He can't, because she isn't really nice.  I
believe he has been stupid enough to do it because he was cross."

Was it true?--this dread, that even Bessie could put into words?  And if
it was--O poor, poor Anthony!

The girls drove into Underham that afternoon, when the extreme heat of
the day was supposed to be over.  But there still remained a dry
parching oppression in the air, the long weedy grasses hung listlessly
one above the other, without a breeze to shake the dust from the
motionless leaves, the pretty green hedges were all whitened and dead
looking.  Without any thought of avoiding it, it almost seemed to
Winifred, as she drove along, as if the pain of the visit would be
unendurable.  But there was no such relief as hearing that Mrs Bennett
and Miss Lovell were not at home, and the sisters were ushered into the
comfortable drawing-room where Ada sat with a somewhat too apparent
consciousness of being prepared to receive visitors, and quite disposed
to make a little show off of the dignity she considered appropriate to
the occasion.

"It was very kind of you to come in this heat.  My aunt wished me to
drive with her, but I really thought it too oppressive.  Don't you find
it very trying?"

"I do not think we thought about it," said Winifred, truly.

"Ah, then you are so strong.  It must be very nice to be so strong, and
not to be obliged to think so much of one's self.  Now, I am obliged to
be so careful, for if I were to go out in the sun, very likely I should
have quite a headache."

It was so difficult to be sympathetic over this possibility, that
Winifred found it hard to frame a suitable answer, and was grateful to
Mrs Bennett for coming in at the moment, and presenting another outlet
for conversation.  Bessie was sitting upright, rigidly and girlishly
contemptuous, and subjects seemed alarmingly few.

"My father begged me to leave his card for Mr Bennett," Winifred said
at last.  "He would have come himself if some magistrate's business had
not been in the way, but he is such a dreadfully conscientious
magistrate, that all our little persuasions are quite hopeless."

"I hope he is not very severe,--the poor people are so much to be
pitied," said kindly Mrs Bennett.  "Only think if one was starving!  I
am sure I should be very likely to take a joint or something."

"No, he is not very severe," Winifred said hesitating, with her thoughts
wandering.  "It is rather that he has such strict ideas of uprightness
that he finds it hard to make excuses--"

She stopped suddenly, and the colour faded out of her face.  Looking at
Mrs Bennett, she had not heard the door open, nor seen Ada's rippling
smiles, nor known that Anthony had come behind her, until a general
movement made her look round, and then her start and change of colour
gave an unlucky point to the words.  Fortunately, Ada, who had longed
that Anthony should come in, was triumphant, and not quick enough to
read any discomfiture, claiming him at once with a show of possession.

"O Anthony, have you seen Mr Mannering?  He has been here and was so
nice.  He has asked us all to a garden party on Saturday, on purpose to
show me his flowers.  He asked me what time would be best, and I said
four to seven, and we promised to be there punctually.  I told him I
would tell you all about it, but he says he shall write a formal
invitation, so you are sure to have it, though of course I answered for
you.  I dare say you will be there," Ada went on, with a gracious
patronage of Winifred.

But Winifred was not likely to notice such small affronts, although at
another, time she might not have been so meek.  She was looking at Ada
and wondering.  Was this indeed his ideal?  Could he be satisfied?
There was a sort of bewilderment in recalling the fastidious Anthony of
past days, which hardly allowed her to answer Ada, who, however, was too
content with her position to require much.  Nothing could be more
delightful to her than to queen it before Winifred and Bessie, and to
dwell on the party which was to be given in her honour; and, without any
real ill-nature, she liked to feel that she was in possession of what
she fancied was the ambition of all womankind, an acknowledged lover,
and thus exalted above Miss Chester, who had always seemed to her a
little unapproachable.  In her turn she now felt herself placed on a
serene altitude, and being there, it would have been impossible for her
unimaginative nature to have conceived that adverse currents should be
blowing.  She went on cheerfully, when no one answered her,--

"The great thing is that it should be fine.  I do so hope it will be
fine, don't you, Anthony?"

"Yes--if you have set your heart upon it," he said, with a little
shortness, for which he hated himself.  But even to be called Anthony
grated upon him at this moment, and he carefully avoided using her name.

"Of course I have, and so have you, too.  Will you come here first?"

"I am sorry to say I cannot be there.  I shall be in London on Thursday
night."

He said it not unkindly, for it struck him sharply that it was hard upon
Ada, but he made no attempt to soften the words, and turned immediately
to speak to Mrs Bennett, who was talking kind little placid talk to
Winifred.  Ada opened her eyes for a moment's astonishment, and then
laughed.

"O, London must wait, of course!  Aunt Henrietta, do you hear?  Anthony
has the most absurd idea that we shall let him go to London before Mr
Mannering's party!"

Even silken fetters can cut, and something had nettled Anthony
throughout the conversation; but he kept the irritation very fairly out
of his reply, only saying earnestly,--

"I am particularly sorry to do what you dislike, but there can be no
question of my going.  The London business has already been neglected
too long."

Ada still believed in her own invincibility.  "He will come,--I shall
make him," she said, smiling and nodding.

There was nothing more to be said, and Winifred, who had almost against
her will been garnering impressions, felt that escape was possible.
Anthony had rather pointedly abstained from addressing her.  She was not
quite sure how much of the strain and oppression was due to her own
feelings, but her heart ached under some new, sad weight as they drove
away.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

  "The fall thou darest to despise
  Maybe the slackened angel hand
  Hath suffered it, that he may rise
  And take a firmer, surer stand;
  Or, trusting less to earthly things,
  May henceforth learn to use his wings."

  Adelaide Procter.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Winifred and Bessie had stopped at the post-office and taken their
letters, some little remarks passed between the postmaster and his wife,
who had gone out to the door and watched the two pretty, girlish figures
hurried away by their impatient little pony into the green tangle of
trees and hedges which a golden sunlight was brightening.  It looked as
if it were a sort of enchanted land, into which no storms could follow
them; but Mrs Miller, who had a face which might have been intended to
protest against sunshine, shook her head solemnly and said, coming back
to the counter,--

"There's trouble enough in the world, to be sure, and it's hard when the
Thorpe letters, as have gone together these years, has got to part
company.  But there's no saying where the love of money will lead a poor
human heart."

"I'm not so sure about that matter as you are, Maria," said her husband,
cheerfully sorting his letters.  "Young Mr Miles is too pleasant-spoken
a young gentleman to do all the things they charge him with, in my
opinion; and it's always the way with you women, when once a bit of
mud's thrown, each of you wants to try her hand."

"It isn't to be expected you should know better," said Mrs Miller
gravely.  "When you're converted, you'll understand more of the
depravity of the human heart.  It's a bottomless pit," she concluded,
shaking her head.

"Um, um, um," said her husband irreverently.  "Then I ain't one that's
always wanting to be poking into such places, and if I were you I'd come
out for a bit into the fresh air.  But," he added, lowering his voice
and giving a quick sign towards an inner room, "since he's been here,
you're more than ever set against the old ways."

"No," said Mrs Miller calmly, "I am not altogether satisfied that he
preaches the pure gospel.  It's rare to find one who does.  But I am
thankful not to be blind to shortcomings, like some.  And I'm sorry for
Mr Miles, but what could be expected from one who was so given over to
the world?"

Her voice had been carefully lowered in tone, but David Stephens heard
the first part of the conversation with vivid distinctness.  Every word
sank into his consciousness, not as something new,--for the subject was
rarely absent from his thoughts,--but because they seemed to offer him a
new opportunity for arguing the case, and for proving to himself yet
again and again that he had done well in keeping silence about the
letter.  A strange complication existed in his mind.  The self-deception
which ensnared him was not that self-deception which conceals itself
under false colours, for when he formed his resolution it was with the
feeling that he was forever bidding farewell to his own peace of mind,--
the voluntary acceptance of a crushing burden.  It is difficult to
conceive such a state, but there is no doubt that it existed in him,--
whether the result of a too self-reliant creed, or owing to a stronger
impulse of resistance than obedience, or to other of those secret
springs which move men's actions.  In his struggle with Anthony Miles,
his opponent had become a very embodiment of all the powers that league
themselves against good, especially the good of other men's souls.  He
had first heard him spoken of slightingly, without remembering the
answer to the reproach which he might have afforded; but directly it
flashed upon him he opened a pocket-book, in which were placed the few
and tiny atoms of paper which he had preserved with the intention of
examining, and had since forgotten.  And then began the contest.  Here
in his hands he held, as he acknowledged, the means of clearing Anthony
so as to re-establish him completely in the eyes of other men.  But
Anthony, triumphant and successful, represented a great antagonistic
force to what David held to be his mission, and to forward which he
would have thankfully endured even to the point of martyrdom.  Anthony,
on the contrary, with the suspicion of a dishonourable deed clinging to
him, lost half his power, would cease to influence, and might no longer
succeed in impressing his opinions upon Maddox, whose newly stirred
fears inclined him to turn to Stephens, while an old feeling of respect
yet bound him strongly to the Church, personified by the Vicar's family.
He was conscious of weighing a sin in himself against what seemed the
advantage of feeble, starving souls, and he shrank from the burden with
a cry of anguish, which--blame him as you will--had in it no creeping
taint of hypocrisy.  Only at rare times could he accept the excuses
offered to his conscience,--that it was no crime of which Anthony was
accused, that his interference would prove useless,--the truth generally
stood out in keen cold outlines, and he would acknowledge to himself
that he had done an accursed thing.  Yet he would have held it a worse
sin to have cast it from him.  It was to save others.  He might suffer;
he might have lost his own soul,--he acknowledged it,--but it was that
others might go in at the gate which he closed against himself.  What
could Anthony's burden seem beside his own?  The system in which his
religious thought had been moulded had developed in Davids character
both an extraordinary greatness and an extraordinary littleness; for
while he longed with an ardent and intense love to save the souls about
him, longed so that he would sacrifice his dearest hopes, his peace, his
very integrity,--he yet appeared to himself to be fighting
single-handed, to be alone in the tremendous struggle, sometimes as if
our God himself were regarding it passively without stretching forth his
hand to save.  And this blank and awful solitude opened out before him,
as the path in which he must walk, with bleeding feet, and now with the
hateful companionship of a sin bound to him by a voluntary acceptance
forever.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

Thorpe was a little excited over Mr Mannering's garden party.  To be
sure it could boast of much the same amount of hospitality annually
offered as the other little country-places in the neighbourhood, but, on
the other hand, these hospitalities generally took the form of
dinner-parties, and people came in closed carriages or flies, instead of
driving in gayly with their pretty bright colours flashing out for the
benefit of the women who stood on the door-steps, or the children who
were all agape.  Besides, owing to the Vicars death, there had been
fewer gayeties than usual, and another sort of gloom had gathered about
the village after the rumour of Anthony's deed made a break in the old
cordial intercourse.  Robert Mannering was sorely perplexed and grieved.
Faithfulness to his old love made him quick to resent for Margaret Hare
any injustice done to her daughter, and yet the estrangement from
Anthony was very painful to him.  He had tried to prevent it, but he
could not show that there was perfect trust in his mind, and Anthony was
keenly offended.  Throughout his boyhood and bright youth the young
fellow had been full of sanguine ardour, flushed with dreams and visions
of great things to be done, where he was always the champion and
deliverer, and would go forth, single-handed if need were, to fight
against wrong.  Suddenly, in a shape of which he had never dreamed,
wrong had leaped upon him, and smitten all his weapons out of his hand,
so that where nothing had seemed impossible was there now anything
possible except weariness and bitterness to the end?  Such a mood, if he
had belonged to another creed, might have driven him to become a
Trappist, not from any deepening of religion, but rather from repulsion
of the life he had hitherto lived, which had so instantaneously changed
colour.  One would speak reverently of the workings of a man's soul in a
crisis of his life, knowing that there is at times a strangeness, a
madness, a wilfulness, at war with what is highest and noblest, making
strife terrible, and asking from us prayer rather than judgment.
Anthony chafed so hotly against the injustice of society, that he was
conscious of a longing to outrage it, but the strong, tender force of
associations, the purity of a father's memory, are safeguards for which
many a one is in after years thankful; only his pride revenged itself by
holding aloof from his former friends.  He would have gone to extremes
with the Mannerings if Mr Robert had permitted it; but he was blind to
all avoidance, took no notice of cold treatment, went to see Mrs Miles
as usual, and though the announcement of the engagement gave his kind
heart a pang for Winifred, he believed it to be for the best,--
considering the Squires vehemence,--and was glad to make it a kind of
opportunity for reconciliation.  Personally, too, he liked Ada, who was
a favourite with most of the gentlemen round, and he saw no reason why
she should not enjoy her little innocent triumph.  Therefore Anthony's
refusal to come to his house vexed him not a little.

"If that foolish fellow is going to walk about on stilts all his days,
there will be no living in the place with him," he said, pacing up and
down the study with the short, heavy steps which always produced an air
of endurance in his brother.  "What do you say to it, Charles?  O, I
see, you don't like my moving about!  Why didn't you stop me?"

"My dear Robert, I might as well stop a watch that is wound up."

"That's nonsense.  Of course, I recollect it if you'll only speak.  It's
merely that sitting down in this heat gives me the fidgets, and you
can't stand another open window.  What were we talking about?--O,
Anthony!  Here's his note.  Did you ever in your life read such a
shut-me-up epistle?"

Mr Mannering read the letter, and shrugged his shoulders.

"It must be one thing or the other with him."

"It's a pity it should always be the wrong thing," said Mr Robert,
mechanically resuming his march.  "The matter has blown over, and
there's an end of it.  A pretty girl, and a fresh start, and not one of
us but is ready to shake hands.  What on earth can he expect more?"

"You must have patience," said Mr Mannering.  "The lad is sore and
unhappy, he may be looking at the matter from an entirely different
point of view to yours, and at any rate he is not one to shake off
either accusation or act readily."

"Well," said his brother, with a little wonder, "you have been his best
friend throughout, even to disbelieving plain facts."

"You should read more classic poetry, Robert."

"Pooh!  Why?"

"You would get rid of that terribly prosaic estimation of facts.  They
may be as deceptive as other many-sided things."

"Well, as Anthony insists upon drawing his sword and holding us all at
arm's length, I wish the fact that half a hundred women are coming to
trample down my turf were deceptive.  What a difference there would have
been a year ago!" added Mr Robert, with a sigh of regret.  "That boy
would hare been up here twenty times a day, planning and contriving, and
worrying us out of our senses.  It is not right of him, Charles,
whatever you may say; it's not right for the poor girl."

"Will you be so good as to close that window, Robert?" said his brother,
shivering.  "When your guests come I shall be doubled up with
rheumatism.  To drag me into society is really an act of cruelty, for I
am quite unfit for it, and as useless as a log."

Mr Robert stopped his march, and looked at his brother with a comically
grave expression of sympathy.  The same little comedy was acted again
and again, Mr Mannering protesting against the society in which he
delighted, and a victim to aches and pains until the guests arrived,
when he became the perfect host, only occasionally indulging himself
with an allusion to his sufferings, and full of the social presence of
mind invaluable under the circumstances.

Ada had been as much offended at Anthony's desertion as it was possible
for one of her nature to be, but it could not seriously ruffle her
temper.  All her life had been spent in a kindly appreciative
atmosphere, and a certain placid self-satisfaction seems irrepressibly
to radiate from such lives.  No doubts were likely to trouble her.  She
was too serenely comfortable to be conscious of the little stings and
darts which torment some people every day.  She was haunted by no sense
of short-coming.  There looked out at her from the glass a pretty
smiling face, her uncle and aunt petted her, the days were full of easy
enjoyment,--all of us have been sometimes puzzled with these lives,
which irritate us at the very moment of our half-envy of a placidity
which seems so far beyond our reach.  And now, although Anthony's
absence caused her a prick of mortification, she had no intention of
resigning, in consequence, any of the honours which the occasion might
bring to her feet, nor even the attendance of an admirer, for she had
persuaded good-natured Mrs Bennett--always readily moved to anything in
the shape of a kindness, and especially of one which affected the bodily
comfort of her acquaintances--to offer a seat in the carriage to Mr
Warren, a young would-be lawyer who was working under Mr Bennett, and
who would otherwise have had to tramp out along the dusty road, instead
of, as now, appearing in the freshest of attire, ready to be Ada's very
obedient servant, and not at all ill-pleased to stand, if only for a
day, in what should have been Anthony's place.

It gave Winifred a start to come upon the two walking towards the
green-houses; Ada with much the same little air of prettiness and
self-consciousness which she had displayed towards Anthony on the day of
the sisters' visit, Mr Warren certainly more attentive and lover-like
than the real lover had been.  And Ada was not in the least discomposed
by the look of astonishment in Winifred's clear eyes.  There was, on the
contrary, a triumphant tone in her voice.

"We are going to see Mr Mannering's ferns.  It is such a delightful
day.  I do think it was so charming of Mr Mannering to give this party,
but then he is charming, and I was just telling Mr Warren that I had
lost my heart to him."

It is strange how from some lips praise of those we like becomes much
more unbearable than its reverse.  Winifred had never felt so
uncharitably towards Mr Robert.

They went on through the flickering sunshine--which the bordering
espalier trees were not tall enough to shadow--talking and laughing,
while Winifred looked after them with a perplexed sadness for Anthony.
What was he about?--why was he not here?--did he think he could escape
pain like this?  She was right in concluding that his absence would not
improve his position, for people who came with the intention of being
gracious were thrown back upon themselves.  It looked odd, they said, to
see Miss Lovell there and Mr Miles absent.  It left the party
incomplete.  The day was exquisite: a little breeze rustled through the
great elms, the lights were laden with colour, there were grave sharply
cut shadows on the grass, a soft fresh warmth, full of exhilaration, Mr
Robert's brightest flowers sunning themselves, but--somehow or other
there was a jar.  Even Mrs Bennett began to look a little troubled at
the speeches which reached her ears, especially when Mrs Featherly drew
her chair close to her, and began what she intended for consolation.

"You and Mr Bennett should have made a point of it, you should indeed,
if only in consideration of what is past," she said, shaking her head
impressively.  "There can be no doubt but that it was his duty to come.
And it always grieves me deeply when you see people endeavouring to
evade a duty."

"He has gone to London," said poor Mrs Bennett, with a feeble show of
indignation.  "And my husband says that ladies have no idea of what
business requires."

"I flatter myself that there is nothing of Mr Featherly's business
which I do not know as well as he does himself," said Mrs Featherly
loftily, "and I should make it a point of principle to be acquainted
with that of any one likely to become connected with our family,
especially if there were a past to be considered.  But of course, if Mr
Bennett is satisfied--and he is, I believe, remarkable for his caution?"

It was one of Mrs Featherly's peculiarities to credit people with
virtues which could not be considered strong marks in their character.
Caution was so far from being Mr Bennett's prerogative, that one or two
little difficulties in his profession had arisen from his lack of that
lawyer-like quality.  Mrs Bennett thought of moving to another part of
the garden, but she was in a comfortable chair and could see no other
vacant seat, so she murmured an assent and let her tormentor run on.

"One is bound at all times to hope for the best, and, of course, we feel
an interest in this young man, the son of a neighbouring clergyman and
all, as my husband very properly remarked.  But it is most unfortunate.
Poor Ada, I am really quite sorry for her, and so is Augusta.  Were you
thinking of moving?  I know you are so active that I dare say you hardly
share my relief in sitting still.  With a parish like ours I assure you
the responsibilities become a very heavy burden, but, as you say, there
are family responsibilities which are scarcely less trying, and poor Ada
not being your daughter--"

It was like a nightmare.  Poor Mrs Bennett, who had not thought much of
Anthony's going to London, and was conscious of all the capabilities of
comfort around her, began to feel as if everything were wrong, and had
no weapons with which to defend herself.  Luckily for her Mr Mannering
came by, and she almost caught at him as he passed.

"It is rather hot here," she said, searching about for some physical
means of accounting for her discomfort.  "I think I should like to move
to a shadier part."

"We will both go," said Mrs Featherly, spreading out her dress.  "Now
that you are here, Mr Mannering, I may as well remind you of your
promise of subscription to our organ.  Was it you or Mr Robert?--but of
course it is the same thing."

"I wish it were," said Mr Mannering, in his courteous, easy manner.
"Robert is the philanthropic half of the house, and I have every desire
to benefit by his good deeds.  I always aid and abet them at any rate,
so that, if you will allow me, I will make him over to you where he
shall not escape."

"Ah, but you must assist us, too," said Mrs Featherly.  "It is a most
dangerous doctrine to suppose that you can avoid responsibilities.  That
is just what I was pointing out to our friend.  Naturally she and Mr
Bennett feel much anxiety with regard to their niece, and it is so
unfortunate that Mr Miles did not make a point of being here to-day at
all events."

There are some people in the world for whom it seems the sun never
shines, the flowers never blow, the earth might be sad-coloured, for
anything that it matters.  Even Mrs Bennett, whom all these things
affected in a material sort of way, was more influenced by them than
Mrs Featherly, who shut them out of her groove with contempt.

"Here is Miss Chester," said Mr Mannering with some relief, for he did
not quite know how to separate the two ladies.  "Miss Winifred, I want
you to be kind enough to help Mrs Featherly to find my brother.  He is
avoiding his debts, and must be brought to book.  Mrs Bennett is tired,
and I am going to take her to a shady seat."

Mr Mannerings voice was too courteous for Mrs Featherly to be able to
persuade herself that she was affronted, but she certainly felt that she
had not said so much as she intended to Mrs Bennett upon the subject of
Anthony's delinquencies.  She was not really a malicious woman, but she
considered that her position gave her a right of censorship over the
morals of the neighbourhood, and that it was both incumbent upon her to
see that people acted up to their duties, and to speak her mind when she
was of opinion that they in any degree came short of them.  And as she
never had any doubt as to the exact line of duty which belonged to each
person, she was not likely to distrust her own power of judgment.  She
prepared herself to deliver a little homily to Winifred.

"My dear, I was so surprised to see Bessie here.  Does your father
really think it wise for so young a girl?  Why, she will not come out
for another year and a half."

"Bessie will be seventeen in October," said Winifred, "and she has
coaxed papa into promising that she shall go to the December ball at
Aunecester."

All Mrs Featherly's ribbons shook with disapproval.

"The Aunecester ball!  Impossible!  It would be most injudicious.
Eighteen is the earliest age at which a girl should come out.  Augusta
was eighteen, I remember, on the twentieth of December, and the ball was
on the twenty-seventh.  If her birthday had not fallen until after the
ball, Augusta has so much proper feeling that no consideration would
have induced her to persuade me to allow her to go.  She would have
known it was against my principles.  Eighteen.  Eighteen is the
earliest, and Bessie will not be eighteen for a year.  I must speak to
Mr Chester myself, and point out the impropriety.  I must, indeed."

"My father has promised," said Winifred, smiling.  "He never will call
back a promise."

"He must be made to see that it is a matter of principle.  The young
people of the present day have the most extraordinary ideas.  Now, there
is Anthony Miles.  Why is he not in his proper place to-day, when, in
consideration of his position, and out of regard for our excellent
friends, we were willing to meet him, and to let bygones be bygones?"

"Anthony need fear no bygones," said Winifred, with an indignant flush
burning on her cheek.

"You must allow other people to be the best judge of that," said Mrs
Featherly, drawing herself up stiffly.  "Both Mr Featherly and I are of
opinion that appearances are very much against him; and appearances, let
me assure you, are exceedingly momentous things.  At the same time, it
may be the duty of society to make a point of not proceeding to
extremities, and, taking into consideration the young man's position in
the county as a gentleman of independent means, as the son also of your
late Vicar, society in my opinion acted as it should in extending its
congratulations on the approaching event, while the young man has, to
say the least, been injudicious.  Most injudicious."

"It is certain that he would not meet society on such terms," said
Winifred, with difficulty commanding her voice.

"My dear, a young lady should not undertake a gentlemans defence so
warmly."

Poor Winifred was helpless, angry, and provoked almost to tears.  For
though her heart was not too sore to be generous, every now and then so
sharp a pang struck through it, that her only refuge seemed to lie in
such hard thoughts of Anthony as should convince herself that she was
indifferent.  She did not want to be his defender.  And yet it was
unendurable to hear him suspected.  Perhaps she did the best that she
could when she stopped and said gravely,--

"If we talk about him any more, I might say things which you might call
rude, and you are too old a friend for me to like to affront you.  But I
want you to understand that Anthony Miles was brought up like our
brother, and I know it is as impossible for him to have done such an act
as you suppose, as for my father to have done it.  There is some
unfortunate mistake.  Please, whether you believe me or not, do not say
any more about it.  Did you not wish to see Mr Robert?  There he is.  I
must go to Bessie."

So poor Winifred carried her swelling heart across the sunshine which
lay warm on the soft grass, and past the blossoming roses, leaving Mrs
Featherly more keenly mortified than she knew.  No possibility of a last
word was left to her, and she was so utterly discomfited that she even
forgot the organ and Mr Robert.  But as she drove home she said to her
husband,--

"James, we shall pass that man Smiths, and I must beg that you will get
out and tell him that I cannot allow Mary Anne to come to the Sunday
school with flowers in her bonnet."

"If you wish it, my dear, of course," Mr Featherly said reluctantly.
"But it might be as well not to irritate that man just as he is
beginning to show signs of a better--"

"Principle is principle."  Mrs Featherly had never felt so
uncompromising.  It was one of those odd links of life which baffle us.
Here were Anthony and Winifred and Mr Mannering's garden party
unconsciously playing upon big Tom Smith and poor little blue-eyed Mary
Anne, who had somewhere picked up a bit of finery, and decked herself
out.  Mrs Featherly had received a check that day, and wanted to feel
the reins again.  "Principle is principle," she said unrelentingly.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

  "The days have vanished, tone and tint,
  And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
  Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
  A little flash, a mystic hint."

  _In Memoriam_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

When September came, things had changed but little since the summer,
except that talk had drifted into other channels, and there was less
curiosity in noticing Anthony Miles's behaviour.  He still kept aloof
from his friends, and looked worn and haggard, while the charm which
used to take the people by storm was rarely visible.  The men, who had
never liked him so well as the women, grumbled at his manners, and the
women confessed that he had lost his pleasantness.  Winifred, who now
scarcely saw him, used to wonder how true it was, and what she would
have found out if the old intercourse had not ceased.  One day, when she
and Bessie were in the High Street of Aunecester, they met the Bennetts,
and Anthony with them; and as they were coming out of a shop it was
impossible to avoid walking with them, though he was so cold and
constrained that Winifred longed to escape.  It was a keen autumnal day,
the old town had put on its gayest, in honour of a visit from some
learned Association or other; there were bright flags hung across the
narrow street, setting off the picturesque gables and archways, and here
and there decking some building black with age.

"Are you going to the concert?" asked Mrs Bennett.  "Ada would be sadly
disappointed if I did not take her; but, really, I have been sitting in
the hall and listening to all those lecturers until I have a headache.
I think it would be much nicer if they stopped now and then, and let one
think about it, for I became quite confused once or twice when the heat
made me doze a little, and I heard their voices going on and on about
sandstones, and slate, and things that never seemed to come to an end."

"I was so glad to get out," Ada said.  "I believe Anthony wanted to
stay, but I really could not, it was much too learned for me.  I suppose
you liked it, Miss Chester?"

It seemed as if she could not resist a little impertinent ring in her
voice when she spoke to Winifred, and Bessie was going to rush in with a
headlong attack, when Mrs Bennett made one of her useful unconscious
diversions.

"There are the Needhams," she said.

"They are going to the concert, I dare say," said Ada.  "Anthony, I hope
you took good seats for us?"

"I took what I was given," he said, a little shortly, and at that moment
Ada spied Mr Warren, and invited him graciously to accompany them.  It
turned out that he had no ticket, and Anthony immediately offered his
own.

"Then I shall go back to the hall," he said, "for Pelham is going to
speak, and one does not often get such an opportunity."

"That will be a capital plan," said Ada.  Winifred could not tell
whether she were vexed or not.  To her own relief they had reached the
end of the street, and there was a little separation; the concert people
went one way, the Chesters another, Anthony went back to his lecturing.
Just as they parted Winifred asked for Marion.

"She is better, thank you," he said gravely.  "She has been very ill,
but we hope it will all go well now."

"I did not know she had been ill," said Winifred.  She could not avoid a
reproachful jar in her voice, and the feeling that her lot was harder
than Anthony's, since she met distrust from him, and he only from an
indifferent world.  "Does he think we are made of stone?" she said,
walking away with a sad heart.  Perhaps she was not far wrong.  For
Anthony's was a nature which such a blow as he had received, anything
indeed which shook his faith in himself or in others, would have a
disposition to harden, and all that was about him would certainly take
its colouring from himself.  He was letting his sympathies dry up,
almost forcing them back out of their channels, and was ceasing to
believe in any broader or more genial flow in others.  People are not so
much to us what they are as what we see them, so that there are some for
whom the world must be full of terrible companions.

And with poor Anthony the colouring he laid on at this time was cold and
grey enough.  Every gleam of brightness lay behind him in the old days
which had suddenly grown a lifetime apart,--school, college, home, where
on all sides he was the most popular, the most brilliant, the most full
of life.  And now--old friends had failed him, old hopes had been
killed, old aims seemed unreal, old dreams foolishness.  The saddest
part of it all was that he was making even his dreariest fancies truth.
There are few friendships that will stand the test of one dropping away
from the bond: as to hopes and dreams and aims, they too become what a
man makes them,--no less and no more.  He was beginning to feel with
impatient weariness that his engagement was not fulfilling even the
moderate amount of contentment which he had expected.  He had never
professed to himself any overwhelming passion of love for Ada, but he
had turned to her when he was sore and wroth with all the world, and it
had seemed to him as if here were a little haven of moderate calm.  If
he had loved her better he would have felt as if she had a right to
demand more, but I doubt whether this ever troubled him.  With an older
man also the experiment might have succeeded better, but his life was
too young, and as yet too full of mute yearnings, for a reaction not to
follow.  It was not that clear-sightedness was awakened in him: the
girl's character was just one which the dullest woman would have
fathomed, and scarcely a man have read rightly,--it was rather a cloudy
dissatisfaction, a weariness, a consciousness that neither touched the
other nor ever would, a sense of failure.  No thought of escape was
haunting him, he had a vague impression that his destiny might for a
time be delayed, but meanwhile his destiny stood before him, and he knew
that he was moving towards it, whether with willing or reluctant steps.

Of Winifred he thought very little.  He did not choose to think of her.
If ever there had been a day when it had seemed as if she might have
become a part of his life, that day was gone like many another day.  She
and the world were against him, and if his own heart had been on that
side, poor Anthony in his desperation would have fought against them,--
heart and all.  It would all come to an end some time, and meanwhile--
Well, meanwhile he could go on towards the end.

As he walked down the old street under the flags, a sudden brightening
of sunshine lit up the gay fluttering colours, a fresh breeze was
blowing, the houses had irregular lines, rich bits of carving, black
woodwork,--an odd sort of mediaeval life quietly kept, as it were, above
the buying and selling and coming and going: now and then a narrow
opening would disclose some little crooked passage, narrow, and
ill-paved with stones which many a generation had worn down; while
between the gables you might catch a glimpse of the soft darkness of the
old Cathedral rising out of the green turf, trees from which a yellow
leaf or two was sweeping softly down, a misty, tender autumnal sky,
figures passing with a kind of grave busy idleness.  There was a band
marching up the street, and at the corner Anthony met Mr Wood, of the
Grange, and at the same moment Mr Robert Mannering.

"Glad to see you," said the latter, ignoring the younger man's evident
desire to hurry on.  "You're the very couple I should have chosen to run
my head against, for Charles never rested until he had made Pelham and
Smith, and half a dozen of their like, engage to dine with us to-morrow,
and they'll certainly not be content with me for a listener, so take
pity, both of you, will you?  Half past seven, unless they give us a
terribly long-winded afternoon, and then Mrs Jones will be in a rage,
and woe betide us!"

"No, no," said Mr Wood, shaking his head, and going on.  "Don't expect
me.  I've just had a dose of Smith, and his long words frighten me.
They don't seem quite tame."

"I'm sorry that I can't join you," said Anthony, putting on his
impracticable look.

"Come, come.  You've treated us very scurvily of late.  Miss Lovell must
spare you for once, Anthony."

"Thank you.  It is not possible."

He said it so curtly, that Mr Robert's face grew a shade redder; but as
he watched the young man walking away down the street with short, quick
steps, the anger changed in a moment into a sort of kind trouble.

"He'll have none of it, and if it's shame I don't know but what I like
him the better, poor boy!  I know I'd give pretty nearly anything to be
able to put out my hand and tell him I believe that confounded story to
be a lie.  But I can't, and he knows it.  The mischief I've seen in my
day that had money at the bottom of it!  Well, I hope that pretty little
girl will make him a good wife, and I shall make it up to Margaret's
child by and by.  There goes Sir Peter, on his way to patronise the
Association, I'll be bound.  He'll walk up to the front and believe they
know all about him, how many pheasants he has in his covers, and what a
big man he is in his own little particular valley.  Why shouldn't he?--
we're all alike.  I caught myself thinking that Parker would be
astonished if he could only see my Farleyense; and there's Charles as
proud as a peacock over his Homer that he's going to display, and Mrs
Jones thinking all the world will be struck with the frilling in which
she'll dress up her ham, and so we go on,--one fool very much like
another fool.  And as the least we can do is to humour one another, and
as, to judge from the shops, the Association has in it a largely
devouring element, I'll go and look after Mrs Jones's lobster."

He turned down a narrow street.  The Cathedral chimes were ringing,
dropping down one after the other with a slow stately gravity.  People
were making their way across the Close to the different doors.  The
streets had their gay flags, and carriages, and groups in the shops, and
mothers bringing little convoys from the dancing academy, and stopping
to look at materials for winter frocks,--but hardly a touch of these
excitements had reached the Close.  It seemed as if nothing could ruffle
its quiet air; as if, under the shadow of the old Cathedral, life and
death itself would make no stir.  The chimes ceased, the figures had
gone softly in; presently there floated out dim harmonies from the
organ.  As Mr Mannering passed along under one of the old houses he met
the Squire.

"Winifred and Bess are there," he said, nodding towards the Cathedral.
"The children like to go in for the service.  They're good children--
mine--God bless them!" he went on, with a sudden abruptness which made
Mr Robert glance in his face.

"Good?  They're as good as gold."

"So I think, so I think.  Bess, now.  She's a spirit of her own, up in a
moment, like a horse that has got a mouth worth humouring, but all over
with the flash, and not a bit of sulkiness to turn sour afterwards.  And
Winifred, she's been a mother to her sister.  She has, hasn't she,
Mannering?"

"Don't harrow a poor old bachelor's feelings.  You know I have lost my
heart to Miss Winifred ever since she was ten years old, and she refused
to marry me, even then,--point-blank."

But the Squire did not seem to be listening to his answer, or if he
heard it, it blended itself with other thoughts.  He said with something
that seemed like a painful effort, "Pitt had a notion that Anthony Miles
liked Winifred.  There never was anything of the kind, but he took it
into his head.  I'm glad with all my heart that Pitt was mistaken, for I
would not have one of my girls suffer in that way for a thousand pounds.
But I've been thinking to-day,--I don't know what sets all these things
running in my head, unless it is that it is my wedding-day.--My
wedding-day, seven-and-twenty years ago, and little Harry was born the
year after.  I wasn't as good a husband as I should have been, I know,
Mannering, but I used to think, if little Harry had lived--"

He stopped.  He had been speaking throughout in a slow disjointed way,
so unlike himself that Mr Robert felt uncomfortable while hardly
knowing why.

"Come," he said cheerily.  "Look at your two girls, and remember what
you have just been saying about them."

The Squire shook his head.

"They're well enough," he said, "but they're not Harry.  Who was I
talking of--Anthony Miles, wasn't it?  I've been thinking that perhaps
I've been too hard on the boy.  It would have broken his father's heart
if he had known it, for there wasn't a more honourable man breathing;
but if my Harry had grown up, though he never could have done such a
thing as that, he might have got into scrapes, and then if I had been
dead and gone it would have been hard for never a one to stick by the
lad.  I don't know how it is.  I believe I've such a hasty tongue I
never could keep back what comes uppermost.  Many a box in the ear my
poor mother has given me for it, though she always said all the same,
`Have it out, and have done with it, Frank.'  It was a low thing for him
to do, sir," went on the Squire, firing up, and striking the ground with
his stick by way of emphasis, "but--I don't know--I should be glad to
shake hands with him again.  Somehow I feel as if it couldn't be right
as it is, with his father gone, and my little lad who might have grown
up."

And so, across long years there came the clasp of baby fingers, and the
echo of a message which was given to us for a Child's sake,--peace and
good-will.

"I wish you would," Mr Mannering said heartily.  "He is somewhere about
in the town at this very minute; perhaps you'll meet him.  Only you
mustn't mind--"

He hesitated, for he did not feel sure of Anthony's manner of accepting
a reconciliation, or whether, indeed, he would accept it at all, and yet
he did not like to throw difficulties in the way.  But the Squire
understood him with unusual quickness.

"You mean the lad's a bit cranky," he said, "but that's to be expected.
Perhaps he and I may fire up a little, for, as I said, I'm never sure of
myself, but there's his father between us, and--well, I think we shall
shake hands this time."

Not as he thought; but was it the less truly so far as he was concerned?
For a minute or two Mr Robert stood and looked after him as he went
along the Close, a thick, sturdy figure, with country-cut clothes, and
the unmistakable air of a gentleman.  The Cathedral towers rose up on
one side in soft noble lines against the quiet sky, leaves fluttered
gently down, a little child ran across the stones in pursuit of a puppy,
and fell almost at the Squire's feet.  Mr Robert saw him pick it up,
brush its frock like a woman, and stop its cries with something out of
his pocket.  The child toddled back triumphant, the Squire walked on
towards the High Street, and Mr Robert turned in the other direction.
Some indefinite sense of uneasiness had touched him, though, after all,
there was no form to give it.  If Mr Chester's manner had been at first
slightly unusual, he explained it himself by saying that he had been
stirred by old recollections, and the vagueness his friend had noticed
quite died away by the end of their conversation.  He was walking
slowly, but with no perceptible faltering.

"And a man's wedding-day must be enough to set things going in his
head," Mr Robert reflected.  "If matters had fallen out differently now
with Margaret Hare--Well, well, so I am going to make an old fool of
myself, too.  I'd better get on to the carrier, and set Mrs Jones's
mind easy about her lobster."

Distances are not very great in Aunecester, and it did not take long for
Mr Mannering to reach the White Horse, transact his business, and go
back to the principal street to wait for his brother.  There was one
particular bookseller's shop, to which people had parcels sent, and
where they lounged away what time they had in hand, and just before he
reached it Mr Mannering noticed an unusual stir and thickening of the
passers-by.  He concluded that the band might be playing again, or that
some little event connected with the Association had attracted a crowd.
It was not until he was close to one of the groups that the scattered
words they let fall attracted his attention.

"An accident, did you say?" he said, stopping before a man whose face
was red and heated.

"Yes, sir.  A gentleman knocked down.  That's the boy, and a chase I've
had to catch him."

Mr Mannering began to see a horse, a policeman, and a
frightened-looking lad in the midst of the crowd.

"Nothing very serious, I hope?"

"It looked serious, sir, when we picked him up.  He is took into the
shop, and they've sent for the doctor.  Boys don't care what they ride
over."

"I fancy something was wrong before the horse touched him, though," said
another man, with a child in his arms.  "There was time enough else for
him to have got out of the way."

"Who is it?" asked Mr Mannering, with a sudden wakening of anxiety.  At
that moment Anthony Miles came quickly out of the shop, almost running
against him in his hurry.

"Have you seen them?" he said hastily, when he saw who it was.  His face
was drawn and pallid, like that of a man who has received a great shock.

"Who, who?" said Mr Robert, gripping his arm.  "It isn't the Squire
that's hurt?"

"Yes," said Anthony impatiently.  "He's in there.  Somebody must find
Winifred, or she'll be in the thick of it in a minute."

"She is at the Cathedral, she and Bessie," said Mr Mannering, asking no
more questions, but feeling his heart sink.  "They must be coming out
about this time.  God help them, poor children!"

Anthony was off before the words were out of his mouth.  Mr Robert, his
kind ugly face a shade paler than usual, turned into the shop, which was
full of curious customers, and made his way to a back room to which they
motioned him gravely.

It was a little dark room, lit only by a skylight, on which the blacks
had rested many a day, and hung all round with heavy draperies of cloaks
and other garments, which at this moment had something weird in their
familiar aspect.  The Squire had been laid upon chairs, hastily placed
together to form a couch; the doctor and one or two of the shop-people
were talking together in a low voice as Mr Robert came in, and a
frightened girl, holding a bottle in her hand, stood a little behind the
group.

By their faces he knew at once that there was no hope.  Perhaps for the
moment what came most sharply home to him was the incongruity of the
Squire's fresh open-air daily life, and this strange death-room of his.
He said eagerly to the doctor,--

"Can't we get him out of this?"

"Not to Thorpe," Dr Fletcher said gravely.  "But we can move him to my
house.  I have sent for a carriage."

"Is he quite unconscious?"

"Quite.  There will be no suffering."

There was no need to ask more.  Death itself seems as helplessly matter
of fact as the life before it.  Mr Robert stood and looked down with
moist eyes at the honest face that had been so full of vigour but the
day before, when the Squire went through his day's shooting like a man
of half his years; and then thought of him as he had seen him that very
hour, on his way to make peace, comforting a little child.  Those had
been his last words, the kind, good heart showing itself behind its
little roughnesses, and softened as it may have been--who knows?--by a
dim foreshadowing.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

  "Its silence made the tumult in my breast
  More audible; its peace revealed my own unrest."

  Jean Ingelow.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anthony told everything on their way from the Cathedral to the shop,
for, indeed, he did not know what might not have happened even in so
short a time.  But except that the crowd had pretty well dispersed,
leaving only a few of the more curious idlers to hang about, all was
much as he left it, outside and in.  Bessie was crying and trembling,
but Winifred went softly in, without looking to the right or left, and,
kneeling by her father's side, clasped his hand in hers.

"We are going to take Mr Chester to my house, where he will be a good
deal more comfortable," said the doctor with the cheerfulness which is
at all events intended for kindness.

"Not home?"  Winifred asked, without looking up.

"My dear, the long drive would be more than he could bear while he is in
this condition," said Mr Robert gravely.  "And now Dr Fletcher will
have him altogether under his care, which is particularly desirable.
The carriage is here: we only waited for you."

She rose up, showing no agitation except a tremulous shiver which she
could not repress, while Bessie clung to her and sobbed convulsively.
Anthony, who was greatly shocked, had fallen involuntarily into his old
brotherly ways.  He brought a fly, and put the two sisters into it, and
when Bessie looked at him imploringly, got in by their side instead of
walking round with Mr Mannering.  It was like a dream, the flags, and
the bustle, and the people coming down the street from the concert, and
this sad cloud chilling their hearts.  He saw on the other side Mrs
Bennett, and Ada, and Mr Warren: Ada was staring in wonder, but he
cared nothing for that or anything else except the beseeching look in
Winifred's sad eyes.

By the time they reached the doctor's house, Bessie had rallied from the
first terror of the shock, and Winifred was as outwardly calm as
possible, ready to receive her father, quick to comprehend Dr
Fletcher's directions, and so helpful and quiet that it was only now and
then that Anthony knew that she turned to him with a mute appeal in the
look, as if in this wave of sorrow she too had forgotten all
estrangement and coldness, and gone back to the old days which both
believed had passed away forever.  There was a strange sort of tender
pride in the way he watched her, which must have startled himself if he
had been aware of it.  But he was not.  He was not thinking about
himself, and, indeed, might have argued that the veriest stranger must
have been touched and moved at such a time.  When he was obliged to
leave her, he could hardly bear to do so.

"I may come back in the morning, may I not?" he said, unable to avoid
saying it.

"Do come," Winifred had answered with a quiet acceptance, of his help,
and going on to tell him what was wanted from Hardlands.  As he went out
of the door he met Mr Robert coming to see if he could be of any
further use.

"I have made Charles go home, for he is not fit for this sad business,"
said Mr Robert in an altered voice.  "Poor things, poor things!  It is
one comfort to know he does not suffer.  Fletcher says he will not
recover consciousness.  Good Heavens, I can't believe it now!  His last
words,--ah! to be sure, Anthony, he was going off after you when it
happened."

And he told him what the Squire had said.

It touched Anthony inexpressibly, but it seemed also to bring back an
avenging army of forgotten things, so that Mr Robert could not
understand what made his face grow dark, and let his voice drop coldly
as if it were a shame to waste a sacred thing on one so unforgiving, not
knowing to what his words had suddenly recalled him.  The past had been
sweet through all its sorrow, and now it was over, and he must gather up
his burden.

"The Bennetts are at Griffith's, and were inquiring for you.
Good-night," said Mr Mannering shortly.

Anthony went mechanically towards the bookseller's, knowing exactly all
that would be said to him, the exclamations and questions which Ada was
likely to pour out seeming unutterably wearisome at this moment when
Winifred's face would persistently rise before him, so brave, so
patient, so womanly in its sorrow, that Ada could not stand the
contrast.  And yet he was to marry Ada, to become one with her, to swear
to love her.  He turned white when the thought struck him suddenly, as
if it were a new knowledge.  She was standing at the bookseller's door,
waiting impatiently, and smiling a pretty show of welcome, as usual.

"I am so glad you are come, Anthony; it was such a pity you did not go
to the concert.  And poor old Mr Chester,--do tell us all about it I
don't think I shall ever fancy Springfield's shop again."

"I don't wonder you are shocked," Anthony said, rousing himself and
conscious that he owed her amends for the very agony of the last few
minutes.  "It seems hardly possible as yet to realise it."

"No, it is dreadful," said Ada, her looks wandering away.  "Does Miss
Chester feel it much?  She looks as if it would take a good deal to move
her.  There are the Watsons,--you didn't bow."  Mrs Bennett's face at
the other end of the shop looked like a refuge to which he might escape.
To escape,--and he was to marry her!  He had not yet heard the end of
the petty inquiries which fluttered down upon him, but at length he saw
Mrs Bennett and Ada driving away, and Ada pointing towards
Springfield's and explaining.  Anthony went quickly into a back room,
wrote two or three letters to the Squire's nearest relations, rode as
fast as he could to Thorpe, gave Miss Chesters directions to the
Hardlands servants, and then, after a moment's thought, turned his
horse's head back to Aunecester.

He said to Dr Fletcher, "Do not say anything of my being here to Miss
Chester; it can do no good, I know, but--we were near neighbours, and I
may as well sleep to-night at the Globe, so as to be at hand if I am
wanted.  You'll send for me if I can do anything of any sort?  And there
is no change?"

"None whatever.  We have, of course, had a consultation, and Dr Hill
entirely takes my view of the case.  I regret that I cannot tell you
that he is more hopeful.  I am inclined to think Mr Chester's condition
not altogether attributable to the blow, but that there might have been
a simultaneous attack."

There was nothing to stay for, and Anthony went, though not to the inn.
He walked about the old town for more hours than he knew, thinking of
many things.  Those last words of the Squire had touched him acutely,
and his thoughts were softened and almost tender towards the friends
whose countenance he had been rejecting.  But the idea which seemed to
hold him with a rush of force was that he must see Winifred again; that,
happen what might, it was impossible but that there should be a meeting,
if not one day at least another.  It did not strike him as an
inconsistency that this thing which he wanted had been within his reach
a hundred times when he would not avail himself of it; like most men
when under the influence of a dominant feeling, he did not care to look
back and trace the manner in which its dominion had gradually asserted
itself, nor, indeed, to dwell upon it so far as to admit that it was a
dominion at all.  Was he not to marry Ada Lovell?  Only pity moved him,
pity that was natural enough, remembering the old familiar relations, or
allowing himself to dwell upon the sweet womanly eyes which no darkness
could shut out from him.  For gradually the dusk had deepened into
night, the Close in which he found himself was singularly deserted, now
and then a figure that might have been a shadow passed him, a quiet
light or two gleamed behind homely blinds, and by and by was
extinguished, the trees stood black and motionless against the sky, only
the great bell of the Cathedral clock now and then broke the silence,
and was answered far and near by echoing tongues.  Such a night was full
of tender sadness, to poor Anthony perhaps dangerously soft and sweet,
for he had been living of late, in spite of his engagement, in an
atmosphere of cold restraint, peculiarly galling to his reserved yet
affectionate nature.  All Ada's pretty assurances and the pleasant
amenities of the Bennetts' house had never removed the chill.  They were
something belonging to him, at which he looked equably, but they had
never become part of himself.  Alas, and yet to-day a word or two of
Winifred's--Winifred whom he did not love--had pierced it.

Winifred--whom he did not love.

With one of those unaccountable flashes by which an image is suddenly
brought into our memory, there started before him a remembrance of her
in the old Vicarage garden, that Sunday morning when he and she had
strolled together to the mulberry-tree,--the quaintly formal hollyhocks,
the busy martins flashing in and out, the daisies in the grass, Winifred
softly singing the old psalm tune, and laying the cool rose against her
cheek.  Had he forgotten one of her words that day, this Winifred whom
he did not love?  And then he thought of her again at a time which he
had never liked to look back upon, that winter day when she had met him
in the lane, a spot of warm colour amidst the faded browns and greys,--
thought of the gate and the cold distant moorland, and the words which
had struck a chill into his life.  It had seemed to him then as if it
had been she who had done it, and he had never been able to dissociate
her from her tidings; so that no generous pity for the woman who had
wounded him, nor any understanding that she had done it because from
another it might have come with too cruel harshness, had stirred his
heart, until now when another compassion had forced the door, turned his
eyes from himself, and shown him what Winifred had been.

The darkness reveals many things to us, and that night other things were
abroad in the darkness,--death, the unfulfilled purpose of one whom he
had chosen to regard as his enemy, if, indeed, it were not rather that
God had fulfilled it in his own more perfect way,--these were working
upon him, however unconsciously.  Yet those revelations were full of
anguish, opening out mistake after mistake in a manner which to a man
who has over-trusted himself becomes an intolerable reproach.  The
accusation which had seemed literally to blast his life stood before him
in juster, soberer proportions; his manner of meeting it became more
cowardly and faithless, made bitter by an almost entire forgetfulness of
the Hand from which the trial came.  And in the midst of his angry
despair, by his own act he must deliberately add another pang to his
lot, and, putting away his friends, bind himself for life to a woman for
whom his strongest feeling was the fancy for a smiling face.  Perhaps,
as yet, he hardly knew how slight that feeling was, but even by this
time he was bitterly tasting the draught his own weakness had prepared.
These thoughts all came to him with a quiet significance, adding tenfold
to their power, yet touched by a certain solemn gravity which gave him
the sense for which he most craved just now, the old childlike
trustfulness in an overruling care.  As we sow, so we must reap, but
even the saddest harvest may yield us good sheaves, though not the crop
we longed and hoped to gather.  And this night was the first hour which
seemed to bring Anthony face to face with his own work.

He had been walking mechanically about the Close.  Turning out of it at
last, he went back to Dr Fletcher's house, and looked up at a light
burning in an upper window, little thinking, however, that it was a
watch by the dead, and not by the living, that it marked; for in spite
of what Dr Fletcher had told him, the tidings he heard in the early
morning fell like an unexpected blow.  He would have gone away without a
word, but that Dr Fletcher came out at the moment.

"There was never any rally or return to consciousness," he said, leading
the way into the dining-room, where his breakfast was spread, "and
although this naturally aggravates the shock to his daughters, they have
been spared a good deal that must have been very painful, poor things!
My wife is with them.  Will you have a cup of coffee with me?"

"He was always supposed to have such a good constitution," said Anthony,
looking stunned.

"Perhaps not so good as it seemed.  He led a regular life, temperate and
healthy,--I only wish there were more like him,--and he had never been
tried by any severe illness.  As to this, a more tenacious vitality
might only have prolonged the suffering.  I think you said you had
written to the relations?  I would have telegraphed this morning, but
Miss Chester was anxious that her aunt should be spared the shock."

"My letters will bring them as soon as possible," Anthony said.  "There
is a sister of the Squire's, a widow, an invalid, and her step-son is
quartered at Colchester.  Besides them there are only cousins.  Mrs
Orde will start at once--But, good heavens," he went on, breaking down,
and burying his face in his hands, "it is so awfully sudden!  What will
they do?"

Dr Fletcher made no immediate reply.  He was a kind-hearted man, but
his sympathies were chiefly bounded by his profession, and it was easier
for him to be energetic in behalf of a suffering body, than to express
anything which touched more internal springs.  He was wondering whether
Anthony would have the courage to face a woman's grief, and meditating
on the possibility of giving up his own morning's work, when he said
aloud, quietly,--

"Miss Chester will probably return to Hardlands to-day.  Is there any
one who can be with her and her sister?"

"My mother is their oldest friend," Anthony said, without looking up,
and pushing his plate from him with a slight nervous movement.  The
doctor waited for some assurance to follow this assertion, but Anthony
could not give it, for his mind quickly ran over the situation, and
foresaw that his mother's kindness would not suffice to guide her past
the little embarrassments which awaken so great throbs of pain at such a
time.  Finding he was silent, Dr Fletcher went on,--

"Would you wish me to inquire whether Miss Chester is ready to see you?
That is, unless I can persuade you to take a little more food?"

"I am quite ready," said Anthony, getting up hastily.  He dreaded the
interview fully as much as the doctor had divined, and the force with
which he compelled himself to meet it produced a certain hardness which,
to a shallow observer, might appear like cold indifference: certainly
there were hard-set lines on his face as he stood at a window waiting
for Winifred.  Trees, with iron railings before them, were planted in
the space in front of Dr Fletcher's house; there were crimson berries
on the thorn-trees, a robin or two hopping about familiarly, a grey
rainy-looking sky, and now and then a warning drop on the pavement
below.  Winifred did not come at once, for it was difficult for her to
leave Bessie, who was overwrought as much with terror as sorrow; and
Anthony, having strung himself up to the meeting, lost himself again in
thoughts which grew out of but did not absolutely belong to it, and did
not hear her behind him when at last she entered the room.

When he turned round she was standing close by him, and put out her
hand.

"I thought you would come," she said simply.

But she saw in a moment that it was she who must be the comforter, and
went on without leaving a pause which should oblige him to speak.  "It
was all so calm and so peaceful that I cannot realise anything beyond
the comfort of knowing that he had no suffering to endure.  Poor
Bessie's grief seems something for which I am very sorry, but in which I
have no share.  It must be as I have read and never quite believed, that
a great shock deadens all one's perceptions."

"Yes, indeed," said Anthony, relieved by her quietness and the simple
words which had nothing constrained about them.  "And by and by you will
be thankful that you were with him,--so close at hand--"

"O, I am thankful now!" said Winifred, with intense earnestness.  "It
does not seem as if one could have borne it to be otherwise; but now I
have all the last looks,--the knowledge that there was nothing lost.
You can think what that must be."

Twenty-four hours had put away on her side all the divisions that had
existed, and taken her back to the old familiar friendship, so that if
she remembered any cause of estrangement, it was that she might touch it
softly, and let Anthony feel that it had only been a shadow, not
affecting the true kindness of her father.  With an instinctive loyalty
she would have liked to clothe the dead in a hundred virtues.  But
Anthony himself was feeling the separation with a strength that almost
maddened him.  There was a gulf between them which was of his own
digging.  There they were, he and she, and yet he could not put out a
hand, could not take her to his heart and comfort her.  As she spoke he
shook his head with a quick gesture, throwing it back, and turned away
from her towards the window, against which the rain was now pattering
gently.  Winifred was surprised, and a little hurt, but as it struck her
that he might dread what she was going to say, she went on with a voice
that faltered for the first time,--

"Dr Fletcher told me that you would settle for me what ought to be
done, but--perhaps--I believe that I can give directions--if it is
painful to you--"

"That is impossible," Anthony said, almost sharply, and without looking
round.  "I will do it all,--why else am I here?"

She drew back almost imperceptibly, but then, as if moved by an opposite
feeling, went up to him, and touched his arm.

"Anthony," she said in a low voice.

If it was to oblige him to look at her she succeeded, for he immediately
glanced round, although he did not answer, and indeed she went on
hurriedly,--

"I dare say you think I do not know, but Dr Fletcher explained to me
that there must be an inquest.  It is not so painful as you fancy,--
nothing seems painful just now,--do not be afraid to tell us what is
necessary.  Dr Fletcher says it had better be here, he will make them
come as soon as possible, and he wishes us to go back to Hardlands at
once.  I would rather have stayed, but I can see that it would be bad
for Bessie, and--he would have liked her to be spared.  Richardson is in
the house, if you would tell him to go back, and bring the carriage at
once--and,"--she hesitated wistfully, for it did not seem quite so easy
to her to ask anything of Anthony as it had been at the beginning of
their interview--"would it be possible for you to stay,--so as to be at
hand,--to stay until to-morrow, or till my cousin comes?  Some one must
be here," she said, with a little passionate cry of sorrow, as her
self-control broke down; "he shall not be left alone."  She stopped
again, this time for an answer, but when none came she said with an
effort, "Perhaps you cannot stay,--perhaps Mr Mannering would come?"

"Of course I shall stay," Anthony said, in a bitter, half-choked voice.

He knew that she thought him cruelly hard and cold: he heard her give a
little sigh as she moved away a step or two, but it was with almost a
feeling of relief, anything being better than that she should know the
real feelings of the moment.  Winifred was not thinking of him as he
imagined, but something in his manner brought to her a keen impression
of the breach between the dead and the living, which she had been trying
to make him forget.  She stood for a moment with her hand on the door,
and her head bent,--thinking.  She said at last, softly and
pleadingly,--

"If it has not been between you and him of late quite as it was in the
old days, you will not remember that any more, will you, Anthony?  If he
ever did you an injustice in his thoughts, it was not willingly, only--
only one of those misunderstandings which the best, the noblest,
sometimes fall into.  If he had lived he would have told you this
himself one day, and therefore I say it to you from him," she added,
lifting her eyes, and speaking with grave steadfastness, as if she were
indeed delivering a message from the dead, "and I know that you will be
glad to think that it is so, and to help us for his sake."

The moment she had said this she went away so quickly that Anthony's
call did not even reach her ears.  It was only one word, "Winifred!" but
it was as well she did not hear, since one word is sometimes strong
enough to carry a whole load of anguish and of yearning love.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

  "In my own heart love had not been made wise
  To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind,
  To know even hate is but a mask of love's,
  To see a good in evil, and a hope
  In ill-success."

  _Paracelsus_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ada's frame of mind at this time was one of thorough content and
satisfaction.  She had always taken life smoothly and with a certain
ease, perhaps inherited from her aunt, and she could manage either to
slip round its little angles and roughnesses, or else to exert a faculty
of not perceiving or comprehending them, to a really remarkable extent.
She was so well satisfied with herself that it never appeared possible
that others should not share the satisfaction to the full; and this
armour, call it amiability or self-complacency or what you will, made
her absolutely impervious to the darts which prick and goad more
thin-skinned victims.  Even to good-natured Mrs Bennett it had
sometimes become apparent that Anthony was not so ardent a lover as
might have been expected, that he expressed no anxiety about the
wedding-day, that he was often late in coming, and not infrequently
stayed away when there was no reason to account for his absence; but Ada
was never ruffled by such reflections.  It was a matter of course that
Anthony should be most happy when he was by her side, and if he were
obliged to stay away, she expressed a little contented pity, and smiled,
worked, and talked, with a serene absence of misgivings.  Hers was not a
nature to be quickened into rare moments of deep delight; Anthony was
simply one of the things which had been sent to make her life what she
had always expected; it was a good match, as her uncle had repeatedly
assured her, they would have money, comforts, an excellent position; but
she had never been troubled with any doubt that in due time all these
would naturally come to her, and everything seemed only moving in the
sequence that was to be expected.  Of any unfulfilled dream, or sense of
dissatisfaction in the relations between herself and Anthony, she was
unconscious, for the reason that it never entered her mind to conceive
of herself as other than she was.

Nevertheless, although her reflections could not so much as touch the
possibility of discontent on her lover's part, she was aware now and
then that he was both dull and moody, and it was in her eyes one of the
appointed pleasures of her lot that Mr Warren should be more attentive
and bent upon displaying his devotion than in the days which preceded
her engagement Mr Bennett used to laugh, and declare that Miles would
be jealous; but he was an honourable and unsuspicious man, more pleased
at an occasion for a joke than troubled by fear of mischief-making, nor
indeed had the thought of an actual preference to Anthony--Anthony, be
it observed, comprising all that he could give--entered further into
Ada's head than her uncle's.  It was simply that Mr Warren's attentions
and little compliments were agreeable to her, and she had never been
accustomed to deny herself what she liked.  Anthony himself was
indifferent about the matter, considering young Warren an empty-pated
and harmless youth, and wondering a little that Ada should make him
welcome to the house, but beyond that not troubling his head.  The
Bennetts were so hospitable, their house so open, that it was hardly
possible to conceive a shutting of doors upon any one; and if such a
thing were needed, there was a natural solution in the kindly interest
Mr Bennett was known to show towards the young men who worked with him.
Both Mr Bennett and Anthony were ignorant of a good deal that passed,
such as meetings which were certainly not the result of chance, and
which Underham discussed actively.  But after what has been told,
Anthony Miles could scarcely have borne to have found fault with Ada,
even if he had known the utmost.  He was oppressed with a terrible sense
of wronging her, which, though it often produced intense nervous
irritation, made him the more scrupulously polite in every word and
action.  Moreover, he was hesitating between two courses, and rather
bent upon dissection of his own motives than upon weighing Adas merits
and demerits, from which, with an instinctive generosity, he recoiled at
such a time.  Since the discovery of his own feelings, it was impossible
for him not to realise the question of right or wrong involved, that
there were conflicting claims; he tried to think of it with cold words,
to force himself to judge as if from the outside, but more often he felt
with a blank despair that he could do nothing except let matters drift
on where the current carried them.  Men sometimes call that resignation
which is no more than a fear of facing pain, and the deception may be so
subtle that it evades discovery until too late.

There had been an idea, on Anthony Miles's part, of his spending three
months of the early winter in London; for although his dreams had lost
their brilliancy, there are other motive-powers besides enthusiasm, and
he was feeling the need of work as a refuge from thought, and talked of
seeking occupation of some sort with more determination than he had yet
employed.  But the days went on and he remained at Thorpe.  To a certain
extent he had resumed his old position.  He no longer avoided his
neighbours, and if he kept up any coldness towards the brothers at the
Red House, it was only now and then shown by an increase of the reserve
which had grown on him.  To Hardlands he went by fits and starts,
sometimes finding one or another pretext for a daily visit, sometimes
absenting himself for a week at a time.  Mrs Orde, the Squire's sister,
was for the present remaining at Hardlands, Mr Chesters will having
expressed a desire to that effect; and Bessie's despair at the idea of
leaving was sufficient to reconcile Winifred to the arrangement,
although she herself had a longing to go away.  But she was happier in
Anthony's return to friendliness; of any other feelings on his part she
was spared the knowledge, since her own peculiar loyalty and
faithfulness prevented her from thinking such feelings possible.
Unfortunately, he had caught the trick of comparing her with Ada, and
there was but one end to all such comparisons, for although, had he only
known the one after the other, things might have seemed different, the
pang was very acute of perceiving to what he had wilfully blinded
himself; and every fresh instance of Winifred's sweet nobility of nature
came to him like a revelation.  Perceiving his continued gloom, people
began to talk curiously again.  Mr Robert could not feel as kindly
towards him as in the old days, yet Anthony's looks worried him; and had
he not unfortunately begun by getting hold of the wrong end of the
string, or had Anthony been magnanimous enough to understand and forgive
the error, he might have been the young man's best counsellor.  As it
was, Anthony had to meet this second complication, which had grown out
of the first, with a sore perplexed heart, and no friend to help him.
He felt utterly humiliated as well as miserable, for although a happy
love is not the one thing needful to a man, and if it is denied him
there are other things worth living for, such a mistake as he had made
is apt for a time at least to destroy the spring of energy and doing.

Frank Orde soon followed his step-mother to Hardlands.  He had taken his
long leave before Christmas, with the intention of spending it at
Thorpe.  Anthony had never liked the thought of this arrangement, and
when he arrived there was something so attractive about him that he felt
all his prejudices confirmed.  It was like a breath of fresh air coming
into the midst of the little household who were moving about with
saddened quiet faces, and already falling into the little feminine ways
which mark the absence of the more vigorous race.  Captain Orde had the
physical activity which made him send his luggage in the carriage, and
himself walk from Underham on the day of his arrival; he had also a
taste for exploring and geological theories, the enthusiasm of which
roused his cousins into interest; indeed he was so full of energy, so
open-hearted, and so secure of sympathy, that to withhold it was as
difficult as to avoid being warmed by the sun of midsummer.

They were all at dinner one evening when the day had been so
persistently rainy that only Captain Orde, to whom weather was
apparently a matter of indifference, had faced it, coming in just in
time to avoid breaking the punctual routine which the Squire had
established at Hardlands.  Mrs Orde sat with her back to the fire: a
thin woman, with a plain pleasant face, high cheek-bones, rugged
features, and an upper lip too long for proportion, but curving in to a
well-closed mouth; there were the two girls in their black dresses, and
Captain Orde, unlike them all with his dark twinkling eyes and a fresh
look of unbroken health.  He had been telling them, with the vivid
enjoyment that characterised his talk, his adventures in the muddy lanes
round Thorpe, and of the difficulties he had met with in the way of
extracting information; but it was not until the old butler had left the
room, and they had drawn their chairs after a pleasant old-fashioned
winter custom round the fire, that he said,--

"By the way, I fell in again to-day with my friend the local Wesleyan,
as he tells me he calls himself.  You haven't any of you taken to him
more kindly, have you?"

"Do you mean that dreadful David Stephens?"  Bessie said, setting a
chestnut on the bar of the grate, and holding up her hand to screen
herself.

"It has been hard to do anything for him," said Winifred, thinking of
Captain Orde's old words, "almost impossible, although I dare say you
cannot believe it.  How can one help him?"

"He would say, build him a chapel."

"Frank!"  Bessie said indignantly, from her knees before the fire.

"I thought you were in earnest," said Winifred with a touch of
disappointment.

"I only say that is what he would choose.  I don't recommend you to do
it.  There is something he really wants a good deal more."

"Tell us what you mean," said Bessie, tossing a hot chestnut into his
lap.

"Never mind.  It is nothing you will ever give, my dear," said Frank,
who was looking at Winifred, while his mother looked at him.

"I should think not, if it is for that man," said Bessie defiantly, "and
the sooner he goes away the better.  We were all as glad as could be
when Anthony put a stop to his horrid plans."

But Winifred asked no more questions.  Perhaps there had come to her
already, through the patient teaching of life, perceptions of a broader,
kindlier horizon than used to bound her view.  Perhaps she saw dimly
what once seen can no more cease to grow upon our sight than the
daylight which from the first eastern flush grows into the glory of the
great day, that the blessed good in our fellow-man is that which we must
look for, and help, and nourish; that so best wrong may be made right,
and evil conquered, and weakness strengthened.

Bessie was not satisfied.  "What did he mean?" she said in the
drawing-room, nestling against Mrs Orde, of whom she was fond by fits
and starts.  "What did Frank think that I should never give?"

"I suppose he was talking about sympathy, my dear," said Mrs Orde,
dryly.  She was a kind-hearted woman herself, but a little timid over
other people's kind-heartedness.  I am not certain that she did not
consider it a dangerous doctrine, at any rate for young men.

"He had no business to say so," Bessie replied petulantly.  "I am sure I
am as sorry as can be when any one is ill or anything.  No sympathy,
indeed!  What does he know about it?"

"What do you know about it," Mrs Orde said decidedly, "a young thing
like you?  Frank was quite right.  Go and play that sonata: I don't
believe you have practised it at all, and your lesson is to-morrow."

"There's a ring," Bessie announced, going slowly.  "It must be Anthony,
for no one else comes at this time of night."

Captain Orde had also heard the ring, and the young men met in the
passage and came in together, making a contrast, more marked than usual,
as they stood side by side.  Frank dark, high-shouldered, keen-eyed, and
Anthony with his slight, wiry, nervous build, and a face depending for
all beauty upon the expression which happened to be uppermost.  It was
not at its best now, for he was angry with himself for coming, and
therefore, by a not unusual consequence, angry with those among whom he
had come.  His own heart was warning him.  And yet he would not listen
to his heart, lest it should shut him out from this haven.  Other things
made it only too easy.  Mrs Orde liked him.  She knew nothing--having
so lately arrived, and from the circumstances having entered not at all
into society--of the story of the letter, which might have influenced
her judgment; but she knew that he was engaged to be married, and
perceiving that he was unhappy, which, indeed, he took no pains to hide
from the world, she mentally put two and two together, as she said, and
drew her own conclusions.  Sensible, steady-going people are the most
romantic of all.  Mrs Orde, who never did a foolish thing, began to
reflect what would be Frank's case if he were engaged to a woman who was
not worthy of him,--a supposition so possible that she could only
shudder, and be kinder than ever to Anthony.  As for Winifred, she saw
quickly enough that he was gloomy and unhappy, and had not the heart to
put obstacles in the way.  If anything were worrying him, it seemed only
natural that he should come back to his oldest friends, and it was a
sign of that reconciliation which she liked to think death had not
really hindered.  Her own burden was made the heavier, but a woman does
not think of this.  Anthony, who knew what Winifred did not, should not
have come, but--he was there.  And he used to get hurt and sulky with
Captain Orde.  That night Bessie, who was affronted with her cousin, and
anxious for an ally, began in the intervals of a little idle running up
and down on the keys of the piano,--

"What do you think, Anthony?  Frank has struck up an acquaintance with
David Stephens.  He is going to help him to build a chapel, and then to
hear him preach."

"Really!"

There was a good deal not very pleasant in the "really," and Frank
looked up from the newspaper he was turning over as he stood before the
fire, and laughed.

"Bessie's facts are indisputable," he said.  "It is all true, of course.
By the way, I am afraid my ally is no ally of yours?"

"I've done my best to keep him out of the place," said Anthony, with
some bitterness.  "The fellow is a rank dissenter to begin with, and
does a great deal of underground mischief of other kinds.  I say nothing
against his character; I believe he deludes himself with the belief he
is in the right, and I dare say makes a good enough clerk, though it's a
pity he should have found an employment to keep him here.  But I do not
consider it advisable to listen to his talk."

Frank took no notice of Anthony's tone, which had in it an imperious
touch.  He said as if he were replying to a calmly conducted argument,--

"The question is scarcely whether or no one will listen.  Merely as a
matter of cold prudence, it is surely better policy to help a stream to
find safe channels than to refuse it a passage through your land."

"That is the talk which will ruin the country," Anthony said coldly.
"Every doctrine nowadays has but one basis,--expediency."

"I don't understand what you are talking about," said Bessie, who was
playing, a gigue with quaint trills and turns in an undertone, "but I am
quite sure that Anthony is right."

"Yes, I think he is right," said Mrs Orde, sighing.  She was looking at
her son, and admiring his sweet temper, but for all that she thought it
was necessary to oppose his opinions, lest they should carry him too
far.  Winifred was glancing from one to the other, with her eyes
dilating and then melting.

"Well," Frank said good-humouredly, "it sometimes requires greater
courage to stick to the popular side than to go against it.  If my
doctrine is ruining the country, the want of it is injuring David
Stephens, unless I am much mistaken."

"All the better,--if it drives him out of the place."

"O Anthony!" said Winifred, in a low tone of hurt reproach.  He looked
round and saw she was on the other side, and grew a little white.  Frank
looked at the same moment and brightened.

"It is wiser not to mix one's self up with such persons," said Mrs
Orde, talking exactly contrary to what she would have done, as people
often do.

"No, mother," said Captain Orde, becoming grave, "that is a very
helpless receipt.  I suppose you don't want me to say that I don't agree
with the end to which this man's thoughts have led him?  But they have
surely in some measure been forced upon him, and I hold that we are to
blame for it, and are responsible.  I should be very glad to convince
him that we have a common interest, instead of dwelling with such
persistence upon our points of antagonism."

"You must excuse my doubting the wisdom of your plan," Anthony said in
the tone the conversation seemed to have awakened in him.  "My own
conviction is that, for the sake of others, these men should be put down
with a strong hand."

He was too bitter to be anything but unjust, and Winifred looked sadly
at him, thinking of his own troubles, and the misjudging which she had
thought might have softened him towards others.  She knew nothing of
that other trouble which had its grip upon his heart as he glanced round
at the bright room with its warm lights, and at Winifred and Frank,
thinking angrily that he had cut himself off from her, and another had
come in and filled his place.  Nobody knew the wild, mad thoughts that
were battling with him that night.  All that could be seen were four or
five people smiling and chatting, the fire crackling and leaping round a
log of wood, and throwing dancing shadows on the pretty chintzes, and
the bits of quaint old china, and the piano where Bessie was playing
soft visionary music with tears in her eyes; for the Squire had liked
the dreamy chords, and the girl had gone back to him, as she did more
often than they fancied.  And yet to one of the number the pleasant and
kindly harmony of the hour was full of sharp discords, of things that
fretted and jarred him.  He made up his mind that he would not come
again.  He looked reproachfully at Winifred.

And yet, as he walked home across the silent fields, on which the moon
was casting cold silvery streaks, he felt as he had never felt before,
as if he could not marry Ada Lovell.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

  "It was in and about the Mart'mas time
  When the green leaves they were falling."

  _Old Ballad_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

That afternoon, when Captain Orde fell in with David Stephens, the two
men had walked together to within a hundred yards of the Red House.
Here, for it was almost dark, Captain Orde struck into one of the fields
which would take him to Hardlands, and the other, standing for a moment
as if lost in thought, went on through the red mud and the quantities of
fallen leaves which had dropped from the hedge-row elms by his side.

As he passed along the wall enclosing Mr Mannering's garden, a door
opened, and Stokes came out, locking the door after him.  David had
stopped, and his peculiar figure probably marked him sufficiently even
in the waning light, for the gardener said in a slow and rather injured
voice,--

"That's you, is it?"

"Yes, it's me."

"And you'm going to see Faith?"

"Yes, I am," said Stephens; and the two men walked on side by side in
silence.

At last Stokes began again heavily, as if he had been reflecting on the
answer,--

"'Twould be a dale better if it warn't you.  That's arl I've got to say,
and I've said it a dale better."

There was another silence before David spoke, with a fire of purpose
contrasting strangely with the other man,--

"I don't pretend that I don't know what your words mean, and I don't say
they haven't got something on their side.  I suffered myself to be
misguided by my own stubborn heart when I spoke of love to Faith.  I
should have known that this is no time for marrying and giving in
marriage, with souls crying out of the darkness.  It was a snare of the
enemy to withhold me, and I was weak and feeble, instead of plucking out
the eye, and cutting off though it were the right hand.  I thought much
of my own love, and that maybe we were called to work together in the
vineyard, never rightly taking home to myself what was the sacrifice the
Lord had called on me to make--"

David stopped suddenly with a tremor in his strong voice.  Stokes was
always slow of speech, and for a few moments there was no sound but that
of the heavy steps trampling through mud and dead leaves.

"I doan't know nowt of what ye're talking up," said the elder man at
last, doggedly.  "It's my Faith as I've got to think of.  Nowt else."

"You've got your soul, and the souls of others, if you'd only see it,"
said the other.  But Stokes shook his head.

"Noa, I ain't," he said, "that's the passon's business.  I bain't no
passon, nor yet no pracher, nor I doan't think much o' prachers as comes
and takes t' bread out o' passon's mouth.  I ain't nowt to do wi' souls.
I goes to choorch, and a'll be buried up thyur comfor'able, and us
doan't want no prachers to Thorpe."

"That's the teaching of the enemy," said Stephens, vehemently.  "Don't
you ever think of the sin and wickedness about you?  What of Tom
Andrews, and Nathaniel Wills, and that poor girl at Peters's farm?
Don't you believe that if their hearts have been stirred by a faithful
messenger they might have been saved from their sins?"

"Noa, I doan't," said Stokes, with a persistent force of opposition.
"That thyur Tom Anders has been a bad un ever since he wor a little
chap, and stealed tummerts out o' my basket before my very eyes.  I told
his feyther then as he'd be hanged before a'd done with un, and so a
wull.  And Nat Wills is another poor lot.  Leave 'em aloan, and us'll
soon see th' last of 'em.  That's watt I says."

"Ay, what you all say, and the most any of you can do," David said
bitterly.  "Parson and people all alike.  He sits in his arm-chair and
expects those poor sinners to come up to him, and preaches fine sermons
in church, when there's not one of those as wants the sermons most there
to hear him.  I walked twenty mile yesterday, and fetched Nat Wills home
with me, and I've got him at my lodgings now; but if I hadn't gone after
him, do you think he'd have come to me?"

"Then you was a fule," said Stokes, promptly.  "He'll never do you no
good.  An' now you'll be convertin' him, and setting un up for a saent.
I doan't hold by they thyur doings."

They had come into Thorpe by this time; a bright light streamed out from
the blacksmith's forge at the corner, where three roads met.  A man who
was standing there, with his face turned towards the fiery sparks struck
out with every blow upon the anvil, looked round as he heard the
advancing steps.

"Be that you, Tom?" he asked, peering into the darkness.

"What's brought you in from Wesson this time o' day?" said Stokes,
answering one question by another in his slow deliberate way.

"Th' old missess is tooked so bad, master fetched the doctor hisself,
and sent me right off for the passon.  I'm to bide hyur for un, and go
back in his trap."

"So th' old woman's come to her end at last, and has sent for the
passon?  Hyur's Stephens been tryin' to set down passons and choorch,
and arl the rest o't."

"Ay; he'd like to have it a' under his own thumb, for a' he's so smarl,"
said Stringer, who, like most of the people about, knew David, and had
nodded to him across Stokes.  He did not mean to offer any offence by
his words; it was only stating facts when he alluded to the young man's
personal appearance.  "That's the way wi' the Methodists.  My mawther
wor wan, and she never gived poor feyther no quiet.  But wann they'm
took bad, they likes a rale minister.  I take it very kindly o' Passon
Brent to turn to at this time o' night."

"Yes, he'll go," said Stephens, gravely, "and flatter with smooth words.
But what has he done for that old woman's life?  Hasn't she a name
through the country for her hard, wicked, grasping ways?  Has he ever
been to her, and pleaded with her, and been faithful with her sin?  Do
you think the Lord's Apostles were content to go and say a prayer over
the poor souls that were dying?"

"Been and pladed with her?" said Stringer, at once.  "You'd ha' had a
kettle of boiling water over you, if you'd tried that on wi' the old
missess.  Noa, noa,--I doan't say as passons is bound to ran risks wi'
the wommen, such as that.  But they've been going on wi' their ways for
a good bit, and it bain't so strange to they as't is to you dissenters,
as think you've found out something new, and must go runnin' arl over
the country a talking about it."

"That's it, Dannel, that's it," said the gardener, moved to a chuckling
delight by his friend's acuteness.  "Passon knowed arl about it before
you was born," he added, turning on Stephens.

"It must be a new thing to you and me, though, before it can work on our
hearts," said the young man, almost passionately.  "You think it's
enough for another man to know it, and to preach about it, but I tell
you that you must feel its burning power in yourselves, and then it will
give you no peace until you tell it out to others."

At this moment there was a sound of wheels coming along the wet road,
and Mr Brent drove up in his rough dog-cart.  He pulled up sharply,--he
did everything sharply,--and called out in the same tone,--

"Come, Stringer, are you there?  Get up behind as fast as you can.  As
it is, with these roads we shall be a longer time than I can spare
getting to Weston.  Is that you, Stokes?  The master has been
complaining of Samuel again.  The boy's doing no good whatever at
school."  And without waiting for an answer, or taking any notice of
Stephens, who was standing in the full light of the forge, Mr Brent
drove quickly off towards the farm.

Burge the blacksmith, who had come out to the door, and stood, lifting
his cap with one hand, and passing the other through his straight black
hair, was the first to make a remark upon the last-comer.

"He bain't such a pleasant-spoken gentleman as old Passon Miles."

"P'raps he bain't," said Stokes, gruffly; divided between injury on
behalf of the culprit Samuel, and a fear of weakening what he looked
upon as his late victory over Stephens and the dissenters.  "P'raps you
and me shouldn't be so pleasant nayther if us had to turn out to Wesson,
wann us had done our day's work, to plaze the old missess."

"Day's work!" said the blacksmith, coughing violently, and going back to
his labour.  "I'd give something to kep your hours.  I sim, sometimes, a
smith ain't got no hours.  He's at everybody's call, worse luck to me."

David had not heard the other men's remarks.  He was standing at the
door of the smithy where he had first stopped, with his eyes fixed upon
the ground, and the red glow from the forge lighting that side of his
face which was nearest it.  These fits of abstraction were not uncommon
with him, and, as something which they did not understand, and set down
as not quite right, added to the disfavour with which he was commonly
regarded by the people of Thorpe.  David was quite aware of this
disfavour.  He was in the position of a reformer attempting to benefit
society against its will.  Each sin of which he heard, and each neglect,
smote on his excitable nature as a crime on the part of those who might
have prevented it.  Driven in very much upon himself and his inward
communings,--for the fervour of his opinions found as little favour in
the eyes of his brother Wesleyans as in those of Churchmen, and he
himself shrank in disgust from all that appeared to him to savour of
worldliness and self-advancement,--the one thought that was always in
his mind lost its fair proportions and grew as, alas, the best within us
may grow, out of shape and out of bounds.  All that opposed him seemed
to be the especial opposition of the Devil, a conviction leading to its
corollary, that hardly any means could be thought unlawful which tended
to circumvent the evil one.  He regarded Anthony Miles as the chief
adversary raised up against him, and the great wrong he had done him he
would not have undone, though it weighed like lead upon his conscience.

When David at length lifted his eyes, and recalled his thoughts from old
Mrs Mortimer's deathbed, where he had concentrated them with a powerful
purpose, and a stern disbelief in the adequacy of the means now on the
way to Weston for her assistance, he found himself alone.  The gardener,
who was not unwilling to shake off his companion, had taken advantage of
his abstraction, and departed.  He lacked the energy of old Araunah, and
had not attempted to hinder Stephens from seeing Faith by more decided
opposition than lay in surly ungraciousness; but he knew that his wife
and father would expect more from him, and made up his mind to keep
silence as to the meeting and David's intentions.  He himself regarded
the latter with a sort of contemptuous dislike, mainly, no doubt,
arising from his deformity, but partly from the new-fangled opinions,
which were both unpleasing to his ears and disturbing from the fact of
their being presented to him when he was unprepared.  His own religion
consisted of Sunday services, in hearing an occasional chapter read to
the old man by his wife, and less frequently in listening with
astonished admiration to some glib answers in the catechism repeated by
his youngest "little maed."  David's passionate and fervent appeals were
as confusing to his mind as it would have been to have had his meals at
other times than those to which he had been accustomed always from his
childhood.  He therefore disliked him, but there was a certain torpidity
in his most acute feelings, and he was not likely to interfere with
Faith in any manner more active than by expressing his own poor opinion
of her lover.

David himself, recalled to his position, went away from the blacksmith's
shed and walked through the village towards Mrs Miles's cottage.  It
was now quite dark, and wild gusts of wind were sweeping across the
fields, and up the street where thatched cottages stood back in little
gardens with rows of bright chrysanthemums in flower before them.  The
children were safe in bed, the women, many of them, out talking or
buying.  Quite a little knot was gathered in the little shop which
provided both groceries and clothing, and from which a cheerful light
gleamed out upon the wet road.  The warm brightness beckoned invitingly
to the young man, who, as was not unusual with him, was both tired and
hungry.  He stopped for a moment to look with an almost wistful gaze at
the group.  The women were laughing at some jest, even the pinched
features were smoothed and brightened.  A little bitterness surged up in
his heart as he contrasted himself with these people whom he was
yearning over, spending himself for, and who would have given him,
perhaps, scarcely so much as a kind word.  What was he to them?  And
what were they to him that he should wrestle for them, ay, even give up
his dearest hopes in life?  There was Nat Wills's mother laughing with
the rest, while David was hungry because he had shared his little with
the boy whom he, and he only, had walked those weary miles to reclaim.
There was a thin woman whose husband was a drunkard, there was another
whose daughter had left her,--he knew all the histories of these poor
sin-stained lives, and for the instant a bitter sense of injustice swept
upon him.  Was he forever to stay in the darkness and the cold?  Must he
always put from himself light and love and pleasantness for the sake of
those who neither cared for nor would hearken to him?  Might he not turn
away and leave them to their fate?

Ah, if he, standing thus, could repel the impulse, by the might of the
love which bound him to their souls, do you not think that the Greater
Love which helped him in his struggle would lead him with infinite
tenderness, out of his loneliness and self-deception, into the full
light of the perfect truth?

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

Faith, when she heard the knock at the back door, knew very well who had
come, and her heart leaped up, for all day she had felt as if she could
scarcely longer endure the suspense in which she was placed, and had
been blaming David with the unreasonableness of impatience for not
coming during the hours in which he was employed at the post-office.
She jumped up and stopped a younger girl who was going to answer the
knock.  But when she had opened the door and saw David himself, all her
little reproachful speeches were forgotten.

"I don't know that you'd best come in," she said hurriedly.  "Sarah
would be pleased to see you, but she and Jane are both there, and
there's things I want to hear."

"No, I must see you by yourself," said Stephens.  "The wind's high, but
it's not so sharp, and if you stand by the door you'll not feel much of
it."

"You're tired," interrupted Faith.

"Ay, no doubt.  A man must be tired whose work lies where mine does.
They're rough paths along which one has to go to find those poor
sinners, and the enemy doesn't make them more easy to those who are
searching."

"Mother says you'll wear out yourself, and everybody else," Faith said,
with a touch of petulance,--"going on so."

David was silent for a moment.  It was often the case that in the first
sweetness of being with her he lost sight of the purpose which had
gradually been strengthening in his mind, but such words as these
brought it back with a sudden shock.  And he knew that to-night he must
speak plainly, whatever it cost him.

"Your mother is right, dear Faith," he said gently.  His speech was
often abrupt, and rather fiery than persuasive, but he had a full and
mellow voice, and it was at this moment modulated into the tenderest
tones.  "I've thought it over on my knees, and I know I've been
over-hasty in asking you to be my wife.  I didn't ought to have done it,
and I can never blame myself enough.  For you couldn't bear it, any more
than I could bear to see it."

His voice failed him in these last words, and he held his breath
tightly, waiting with an eager faint hope for Faith to make some answer
which would show that she would work by his side.  She understood what
he meant, knowing it was the self-imposed hardships of his life to which
he was alluding, and she took the most effectual method of replying by
putting up her apron, and beginning to cry piteously.

Stephens made one step towards her, but then he suddenly checked
himself, though the dim light that came from the kitchen showed his
strong features working with agitation.

"Why should you be different from other men?" said the girl, sobbing.
"There's Jane going to be married, and Mary Bates, and Elizabeth.
What's to prevent you and me from settling down quiet like them?"

Ah, what?  Here was the thought with which he had just done battle
presenting itself in a fairer, softer shape.  Why should he be the one
to leave the brightness and warm glow, and content himself with cold and
hunger and weariness?  Not of the body only,--that seemed to him as
nothing, if Faith might be by his side,--but hunger of the heart.  Then,
as the longing within him was to him a divine longing, and all that
opposed it took the form of the evil one, a sudden anger rushed into his
heart against her who was tempting him.

"Hush, Faith!" he said in a stern, sorrowful voice, "you are setting
yourself against God's work.  I have got my hand to the plough, and I
cannot look back."

"But, David," said Faith, frightened at his tone, and forgetting all
except the fear of losing him, "I wouldn't keep you back, I wouldn't,
indeed.  You might go to preach, you know, just the same, and when you
came back I should have things comfortable for you."

"Yes, my dear, you would," he said, with the thrill again in his voice.
And then he cried out passionately, so that Sarah in the kitchen
wondered what was being said, "Don't make it more hard, Faith, don't!
I've heard of tearing out one's heart, but I never knew  before what it
meant.  Think what my life is.  There are so many sick and suffering
that I must help somehow, or their eyes would follow me to the very
judgment-seat,--I must do it,--I am constrained.  I have had no food
to-day but a crust of bread and a glass of water.  Up in my lodgings
I've got that poor nigh-lost Nat Wills.  I walked twenty mile yesterday
to get hold of him, and there he is.  By and by I'm going to his
employer to see what is to be done.  It's the same always.  But if I had
a wife I don't know that she would think it right to her that I should
do it, and yet I could never dare leave it undone.  I couldn't, Faith."

His voice had kept at the same high-pitched abrupt tone, as if he were
speaking under the pang of some physical anguish.  Faith was frightened
by it, but her mother had told her to pluck up spirit, and she thought,
like other women, that a show of anger might bring David to her way of
thinking.  So she turned half away from him, as he saw very well by the
dim light, and said, throwing her apron over her arm,--

"That's all fine enough, but I don't see as how you're more bound to
them than to me, after the things you've said, and the neighbours
knowing and all.  It would have been better if I'd minded grandfather's
words, and Mis'ess told me neither she nor Mr Anthony was pleased to
think of me marrying a man that sets himself up against the Church."

Faith delivered this speech with considerable energy, but there were
tears in her eyes which it was well for David's resolution that he could
not see.  Her mention of Mr Anthony stung him sharply.  He said in a
compressed tone,--

"You will not listen to him?  There's no man in the county has done so
much against the good cause, and may God forgive him, for he needs
forgiveness!"

Since he had kept silence about the letter all Anthony's deeds had grown
blacker in his eyes, and he thought, with the strange self-deception
which men permit themselves to weave, that the obloquy that had fallen
upon the young man was but a just retribution for those acts for which
he had now professed to ask forgiveness.  Faith, who had been silently
crying for a few moments, found her voice to continue in the same tone,
which she thought had produced a little impression,--

"I've stuck to you faithful, for all I've had to bear from every one.
And this is what I get--" she added, breaking down altogether into sobs
at last.

"It's a heavy burden," said David, drawing a quick deep breath; "the
worse for me, because I should have spared you, and ought never to have
told you how I loved you.  But with the light that's been given to me, I
dare not follow my own weak heart, unless--unless--" he went on, in a
voice that trembled as a woman's might have done.

"Well, unless--?" said Faith, looking up.

"You couldn't bear such a life as mine must be?" said David, speaking
slowly, and as it were out of a strange silence.  "Poverty and hardship,
and men's bitter persecutions, and only me faithful by your side?  You
couldn't bear that, my dear, could you?"

The words were so tender, so wistful, that for an instant Faith
hesitated.  But her love was not strong enough either to cast an ideal
light over the life he thus unfolded before her, or to enable her to
face its endurance for his sake.  Instead of giving him a direct answer,
she said with a touch of anger,--

"And you'll be marrying another girl, I suppose?"

Stephens caught hold of her hand.

"Don't say that again, Faith, for I can't bear it.  You know that to my
dying day I shall never love but you," he said hoarsely.

This assurance of love was sweet to Faith.  After all, he would never be
able to give her up.

"You'd do well enough," she said quickly, "if you'd keep to your
business, and not share your own with every idle body, which nobody's
called to do.  Come, David, and then we might be comfortable."

"It can't be that way," he said; and there was a direct force in his
words which let her feel the uselessness of saying more.

"What shall you do, then?" she asked, in a tone that was half petulant
and half tearful.

"The way isn't clear to me yet," said David slowly, "but there's one of
our body has spoken to me about going out to South America as a
missionary.  He thinks there is a manifest call there to a faithful
worker, while there are others holding that work may be done here more
effectually than hitherto, though we are so cramped and fettered in its
discharge.  It will be made plain to me before long.  You will think as
kindly of me as ever you can, Faith, won't you?  Words don't seem worth
anything between you and me, but there's an inward speaking surer.  You
won't let them set you against me, my darling,--you'll forgive me--"

He stopped suddenly, speechless with rush of intense feeling.  Faith's
spirit failed her, the hope that had so persistently kept its place died
away out of her heart, all her little persuasions seemed useless; and,
touched by some vibration from his own strong emotion, with a mute
gesture, pathetic in its helplessness, she turned round; flung up her
arms against the wall, and pressed her face between them.

When she lifted her head to speak, David was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

By the time the morning came, Anthony had not made up his mind what
course to take, but he had seized the idea that relief was possible, and
this thought gave a buoyancy to his spirit and a new freedom to his
step.  His mother brightened immediately.  She followed him into the
garden and made her usual remarks in a happy voice, even consenting,
though not without a pang, to the destruction of her favourite
flower-bed, because Anthony thought the turf should have a broader
sweep, and she said, with tears, that Anthony's improvements reminded
her of the old Vicarage days.

The day had been fair, with a fresh and constantly changing beauty, but
as the afternoon wore on, the greyness so often to be seen in late
autumn came over sky and land.  There was a veil of thin mist hanging
about the meadows when Anthony, with Sniff at his heels, walked through
the lanes to Underham.  Sniff, it must be said, had a particular
attraction in Underham.  He was a dog with a peculiarly strong sense of
humour, and in the little town it unfortunately happened that there
lived another dog, the property of an old lady, and the victim of
innumerable washings.  Mop was a white Spitz, of a depressed and meek
turn of mind, probably the result of the many torments to which his
white coat condemned him; and, with a profession of gambolling
friendship which it would have been impossible for Mop, even if he had
possessed the spirit, to resent, it was Sniff's great delight to choose
a muddy spot of road, rush at and tumble him into it.  It added much to
his enjoyment when, as was every now and then the case, he could see his
friend, with drooping tail, caught by the cook and carried ignominiously
to the tub; and his appreciation of this little comedy of his own
invention was so great, that it was almost impossible to avoid taking
him to Underham.  Some mute signs there were which instinct enabled him
to detect, and, with that walk in view, no coaxing could induce him to
venture where a door might be shut upon him; and more than once Anthony,
congratulating himself upon having given him the slip, had found the
little Skye waiting for him at some corner of the lane, wagging his tail
with the most irresistibly deprecating expression of brown eyes.

So favourite a diversion at the end of his journey made Sniff run on
more cheerily than his master could follow; for, although Anthony's old
sanguine disposition to some extent asserted itself, a man does not go
very happily to such an interview as lay before him.  As the colour died
out of the sky, everything looked dull, blank, uninviting: sodden grass
clothed the hedges, the air was laden with a smell of crushed apples, a
few yellow leaves hung on the scraggy moss-grown trees of the orchards,
the ricks caught no gleams of sunshine, the farmyards were drearily
prosaic.  Until now, Anthony had hardly realised how he had grown to
hate the road to Underham; even now he tried to believe that the
unattractiveness lay in all these outward things.  He pictured to
himself the Bennetts' house, Ada coming forward with her pretty smiling
face,--would it change?--would she care?--could it be possible that the
next day he might be journeying away from Underham, free, unfettered?
He went on thinking these thoughts until Underham itself was in sight, a
few white cottages, the marshes, a canal, a bridge, and to the left red
houses, black wharves, and a little confusion of shipping, all lying in
the grey mist.  There was another road joining that from Thorpe before
it crossed the bridge, and two figures coming along under the trees
Anthony glanced at carelessly, until they resolved themselves into Ada
and Mr Warren.

Ada looked almost frightened for a moment.  She came up quickly, and
laid her hand on Anthony's arm.

"We could not have the carriage to-day, and I always get a headache if I
stay at home all the afternoon, so I came for a walk.  Isn't it odd that
I should have first met Mr Warren, and then you?"

"Very," said Anthony shortly.

"He had been for a night to Stanton, and was just coming back."

"It's a good day for a walk after the rain," said Mr Warren, in his
turn.

They were awkward little explanations, or might have been, if Anthony
had been bent on another errand.  As it was, after a momentary wrath at
the man's impudence, his strongest sensation was that of discomfort at
Ada's mark of affection.  That they should be walking arm in arm towards
her house was not the preamble he would have chosen to that which he had
to say.  Otherwise, it did not seem to him that he had any right to find
fault with her.  And he was too generous to admit the thought that he
might use her own conduct as a weapon against her in the coming
interview.  He did not say much, because many things were in his mind,
but his silence did not arise, as Ada and Mr Warren imagined, from
displeasure with them.  Ada quickly recovered herself, and wished Mr
Warren a careless good-by.  As they passed the rectory they met Mrs
Featherly coming towards them, presenting the soles of her feet very
visibly as she walked.

"I understood you had a cold, Ada," she said.  "I am surprised to see
you out in the damp."

"Have you a cold?" asked Anthony, when they were alone.

"Yes--no--I had, but the fresh air has cured it, as I thought it would."

"Then you would not mind staying out a little longer?"

He had thought, suddenly, that it would be easier for him to speak there
than in her uncles house.  Ada hesitated a little.  Each had their own
anxieties as to what was coming, and she was divided between dread of
the conversation and a wish to keep her lover in a good-humour by
yielding.

"It is getting late," she said slowly.

"But it is not cold.  Come to the edge of the canal, and see that
Norwegian schooner unloading."

"Very well," Ada said, hoping to charm him by her acquiescence.

They went to the edge of the wharf, at a little distance from the
vessel, where there were men working at cranes, and great planks of deal
from northern forests lifted and dropped on shore among the coils of
rope, and sailors and boys who were lounging about and looking.
Sometimes one comes upon a little scene of bustle like this, which yet
lies under a strange hush.  For a soft greyness had veiled all colour in
the distant moors, a line of cloud as soft and as grey resting at a
little height above them.  Between cloud and hill the sun was sinking, a
mighty ball of fire, throwing out no perceptible rays, but a ruddy
glory, which rose behind the greyness, spread over the western heavens,
and faded in a clear bright sky, softened by vapoury lines of cloud.
The light was repeated in the water of the canal with a grave, gentle
solemnity; there were groups of masts, rounded lines of boats, and,
slowly moving out of sight, one tawny sail on its way to the river.
Nothing could break the hush of departure which rested on the water, the
quiet meadows, the hills, the changing sky--Anthony, who was always
quickly affected by external influences, now that he had drawn Ada to
the water's brink, found it strangely difficult to enter on the subject
which a few hours ago had come shaped to his thoughts in burning words;
the soft melancholy of the time made it hard to say anything which
should give pain, and yet how was it possible to speak without sharp
pain to himself and to her?  Ada, meanwhile, who knew more than he did
about the meeting between herself and Mr Warren, was for once a little
shaken from her self-complacency; the young fellow had said some foolish
words about his return, and she had walked along the road by which she
knew he might be expected, with a pretence of wonder when she saw him
coming; and now she was turning in her mind what she was to say, and
feeling sure that this was the reason of Anthony's abstraction.  Her own
silence was unusual to her, but she had a perception that, her position
would be bettered by his opening the attack, and his first words
unconsciously added to her impression, although he only spoke them out
of that fencing with ourselves with which we try to postpone a difficult
task.

"Had you been out long, Ada, when I met you with Warren?"

"No, O no," she said eagerly.  "Aunt Henrietta thought as I had a
headache I had better go out.  She wanted some ferns, so I went towards
Stanton, but it really is the worst of living near a town that one
cannot escape from people.  One might expect the Stanton road to be
quiet, mightn't one?"

He took no notice of this appeal.  He believed all that she said
implicitly, and her secret uneasiness had not in the least touched his
consciousness.  He was looking at the sinking sun, at the water moving
slowly away, at the moments, perhaps, that were passing.  She became
more uneasy at his silence, but it was so unlike what she had been
expecting when he at last spoke, that her breath seemed to fail her.

"Ada," he said quickly, "I have behaved very ill to you."

The ring of pain in his voice was too unmistakable to admit of the
possibility of a thought that he was not speaking in earnest, which
would otherwise have been her first reflection.  But it was an
instantaneous relief that he should be blaming himself and not her.

"Have you?" she said, with a little laugh, "I dare say you have.  Old
White, who was my nurse, used to say one should never trust any one.
But I don't know--I have not found her words altogether true as yet."
And she slipped her hand into his arm with a little caressing touch
which added tenfold to the difficulty of his task.

"I shall never forget your trust in me.  I can never forget that when
other friends were ready at once to think evil, your generous belief
never wavered," he went on, speaking nervously, and not looking at her.
"It is partly on that account, and because I feel it is impossible to
repay that debt, that I must tell you the truth now."

She was a little startled and uneasy again at his manner.  Her
imagination was not quick except in matters which concerned herself; but
she began to picture the possibility of Anthony having done something
much more dreadful than that act of simply leaving a suggestion
unnoticed, which had never seemed to her such a mighty matter.  Perhaps
all his money was to be taken away from him.  She drew back her hand and
waited.  The sun was gone, the sail had passed out of sight, Anthony
went on more rapidly when he no longer felt the touch upon his arm.

"I knew that I was grateful; I was conscious of the relief and comfort
that Mr Bennett's house, with its kind atmosphere of welcome, never
failed to give,--selfishly conscious, I am afraid.  And so I asked you
to be my wife."

He stopped suddenly again, and looked at her for the first time, with a
troubled imploring look, as if her mind must have leaped to the
understanding of what he was trying to say, and no further words were
needed.  But except that she was relieved from her first fear, she did
not understand in the least.

"Yes, Aunt Henrietta always knows how to make a house pleasant," she was
saying, smiling up at him.  "I don't think that rooms ought to be quite
so hot, but, except that, they really are as nice as they can be.  I am
so glad you like it all, Anthony."

"You are too good to me, all of you," he said, reading only in her words
a care for him which stung him with new remorse.  "Ada, have you never
repented?--do you think you can be happy with me?"

"O, why not?"

Perhaps some remembrance of Mr Warren came across her answer, and gave
it just a touch of chill.  If Anthony had not immediately been aware of
the shade, I think he would have failed altogether in the courage which
was necessary to pursue the subject; but, although Ada smiled again
after her words, he was too sensitive to let it escape him.

"Men and women have made mistakes before now, I imagine," he said with a
little bitterness, "and it would be no honest means of proving my
gratitude to bind you to a mistake until it becomes irrevocable.  So,
for pity's sake, let us speak openly to each other,--while we can, at
any rate."

It flashed rapidly upon Ada that she had at last found the solution of
the riddle, and that Anthony's unaccountable words sprang, as she at
first supposed, from the meeting that afternoon, although it was not
anger which moved him, but fear lest she should be repenting of her
choice.  It was not the case.  That little shade which had made itself
felt in her answer to his question went no deeper than a little surface
regret.  She had no desire to marry Mr Warren rather than him, unless
some change could alter the relative position of the two men; and it was
quite necessary that Anthony should clearly understand this fact,
although the idea of exciting a little jealousy was not undelightful to
her vanity.  She lifted her face, and said reproachfully,--

"I have always made a point of speaking openly.  I do not know why you
talk about mistakes, unless, indeed, you feel that you have made one
yourself."

This undesigned home-thrust staggered Anthony for a moment, and then
helped him to his purpose.

"In one sense I have," he said in a deep voice.  "It need make no change
in our mutual position, but in your eyes it may do so, and at least I
should put it before you.  It is a poor return for all your goodness to
me to say that I believed I had a whole heart to offer you, and that I
was a fool, for a part of myself belongs to another, always has, and, I
suppose, always will; but, Ada, would it not have been worse to have
hidden it from you?  I could not have done so, it must have blistered my
tongue when I spoke; I could do nothing but tell you, and put my fate
into your hands.  Will you still marry me?--will you believe that I will
do all I can to make you happy?--will you forgive me?"

As he used the words, he was not looking at her.  He had a vague
perception in the midst of them that he was trying to thrust his
emotions away from both her and himself, and to bury them out of sight.
He hated himself for speaking the words at all.  They were part of that
wretched mistake of his life, which he began to feel would hold him
tightly in spite of his efforts.  He hated himself for doing her this
wrong.  He could not look at her.  He felt that burden of humiliation
and vexed anger which will make even a generous man indignant with the
woman who has caused it, although innocently.  There was a blank silence
which lasted some minutes, while he was even more taken up with what he
had said than with what it was possible she might say, and yet when her
answer came at last, it startled him.

"Are you engaged to Miss Chester?" she said coldly.

"Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, stung to the quick, and facing her
angrily.  "Am I engaged?  Do you know what you are saying?--do you
suppose that I have been acting a lie all this time?--"

The hot words died suddenly on his tongue.  Had he not been acting a lie
to her and to himself together?  The blood rushed into his face, but his
words all came to an end.  Ada, however, who had been impressed with the
passion in his voice, began to recover from the anger which had been the
first weapon her wounded vanity had caught up in self-defence.  It was
so impossible for the serene self-satisfaction of her nature to conceive
a preference on his part for another woman, that her mind immediately
began to cast about for some ether reasons for his words.  Mr Bennett
had often said that Anthony was morbid.  She had not troubled her head
about it, but the expression came to her now with relief.  He had walked
away a few steps, and stood moodily looking into a boat, with his
shoulders a little raised, and his hands thrust into his pockets.  Ada
followed him and touched his arm.

"Dear Anthony," she said softly, "why should you be angry with me?
After what you said, I thought you really must have some object in
saying it.  Had you?  Do you wish not to marry me?"

"I wish you not to marry me without knowing the truth," he said, feeling
as if circumstances were against him, and as if common humanity demanded
some touch of tenderness on his part towards her.  "I told you that I
was conscious of having behaved very ill, but you know all now, Ada."

"Then all that I know is that you are very fanciful and very foolish,"
she said, speaking lightly.  "If you tell me that you wish our
engagement to be at an end, I should wish it too; I should only think of
your happiness--" and as she said these words, she allowed her voice to
change and falter slightly, so that Anthony, smitten with fresh remorse,
turned and caught her hand in his,--"but if you are only speaking from
some scrupulous--crotchet, shall I call it?" she went on, looking up at
him, and smiling, "and fancying that I am not content, don't make
yourself miserable about what is really nonsense.  Most people have
little likings before they marry and settle down.  Aunt Henrietta always
says I am not like the foolish girls in novels.  I am quite sure we
shall be very happy."

"If only I can make you so!" said poor Anthony, touched and overcome by
the manner in which she had borne what he had to say.  He forced back
the sinking numbness which was creeping over his heart, and made his
resolve tenderly.  While those two had been standing there, the glow and
ruddy lights had faded away, the grey deepened into gloom, the idlers
had lounged home, a little red fire burned on board the unladen vessel,
and made odd shadows, at which Sniff was barking in puzzled wrath.
Anthony and Ada were standing in the darkness when he stooped slowly
down and kissed her.

"So you are satisfied?" she said triumphantly.

"I am glad you know," he said, in a deep voice which he used when he was
moved.

Two or three men on board the Norwegian vessel, who were sitting in a
dark group by the fire, began suddenly to sing one of their folk songs.
It was a pathetic simple little air, without much variation in the
refrain which came again and again.  "Forloren, forloren," it repeated,
as if the lover could find no other words for his sadness.  Was it an
answer to her question?  Was it his own heart crying out in the
darkness?  As they went slowly away, the sound followed them, growing
sweeter when the distance softened it, as distance and time soften all
sadness.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

  "Then every evil word I had spoken once,
  And every evil thought I had thought of old,
  And every evil deed I ever did.
  Awoke and cried, `This Quest is not for thee.'
  And lifting up mine eyes, I found myself
  Alone, and in a land of sand and thorns,
  And I was thirsty even unto death."

  _The Holy Grail_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The depression of spirit which fell upon David Stephens after leaving
Faith was deepened by a number of other circumstances, which seemed to
choose the saddest moment of his life to cast their separate troubles at
him.  When he reached home it was to learn that one of the most
influential members of his body, in whose hands a sum of money had been
gradually accumulated by means of the most painful labour and
self-denial, had gone off to a Mormon settlement, carrying the money
with him.  And on the following day, David, hastening back at
dinner-time to the prodigal whom he was sheltering and yearning over,
found the little room empty, and the boy gone.  The landlady, who had
been in a heat of lofty indignation since Nat Wills was first brought to
her house, would give no information; and David, tired and sick at
heart, sat down on his bed, forcing his mind, by the strongest coercion
he could bring to bear, to travel wearily along the probable roads by
which the lad was setting forth again upon his downward journey, that so
he might go after him and bring him back,--no matter what it cost him.

But although his resolution was no less supported by an iron
determination than it had been a few days ago on almost the same errand,
the spring which had then made it comparatively easy had lost its power.
His face was haggard and worn as if with a long illness.  His hands
moved restlessly from one thing to another.  He turned with loathing
from the food on the table, which, frugal as it was, was more than he
would have ordered if he had not provided for the guest who had left
him.  Never in his life had such an unconquerable gloom seized him as
that which held him now in an ever-tightening grasp.

It appeared to him and he believed that he was looking dispassionately
at what he judged, that all his attempts had resulted in failure.  He
had prepared himself for it in some sort, but not as it had met him,
lull of crushing pain, a pain which had grown into his eyes, never to
leave them again, and perhaps gave them some of the strange power which
people noticed when he spoke.  His aim had been the highest.  Blame him
as you will, his faults had been the falling short of that aim, his
manner of striving towards it, his wilfulness in its pursuit, not the
forgetting of it, or turning aside to something lower.  He had yearned
for the poor souls about him, the force of his love-making every
shortcoming towards them horrible in his sight, so that out of his very
pitiful compassion there grew actual injustice.  Then he had seemed to
gain many, his burning words having in them a compelling force which
frightened and attracted the souls they touched.  Against pride in this
success, against the pride of which some who were jealous of his
eloquence accused him, he had prayed intensely and passionately.  He had
not sought worldly advancement, riches, or fame, the only use of these
things in his sight being as means by which he might have scope for the
work, the desire of which possessed his soul.  Men who have such
longings are apt to believe that the very purity and nobility of their
aims must needs put what they want within their reach, not perceiving
that it is the very height at which they grasp which causes what they
call failure.  For, evermore, as we toil and climb we learn our
littleness, and something of the glory of that which lies beyond; until
with the struggle there comes the knowledge that here is not the end,
nor the crown, nor the fulfilment.

But to David at this moment the end seemed to have been within his reach
and to have been missed.  The power which he believed himself to have
attained over some of the minds, or rather the affections of those with
whom he had been brought in contact, directly it was touched by the test
of self-interest, even in its basest form, failed.  He told himself
bitterly that if a passing emotion led them to ask how they might flee
from the wrath to come, with something of the spirit which urged the
Ephesians to burn their books, the Florentines to cast aside their
vanities at the bidding of Savonarola,--when the emotion passed, the
older selfishness reasserted its sway.  As for himself, what was he to
them?  A humpbacked preacher, to whom novelty would attract them, but
for whom not one would turn out of his way to send after him so much as
a kindly word.  The sense of desolation which surged up in his heart as
he thought this was so terrible that great drops stood on his forehead
and his limbs trembled.  In spite of himself, he had never lost the hope
that Faith might have faced his lot, and clung to him: but Faith had
given him up; the boy for whom he had been pinching himself had run
away; the man whom he called friend had crushed his last hopes of
gaining what he believed absolutely necessary to the success of his
work.  Everything was against him.  Men clung to the wreck from which he
would have dragged them, hurt him with hard words, turned their faces
from him; and standing there, solitary, in a room heavy with the
remembrance of the boy who had shared and left it, David cried out in
the anguish of his heart as though some one had smitten him a deadly
blow.  Yet with it all there was no faltering of his resolution, no
holding back of his hand.  He would go out again that evening, walk all
the night if it were necessary, once more to bring back the last lost.
As he passed along the street to the office, the boys jeered at him.
"Thyur's another pracher for the Mormuns!"

"Wann be'm going, Jim?"

"Doan't 'ee know?  Whay, wann thyur's a lot more money scraped up for to
build a chapel."  Although David walked along without paying any
apparent regard, each word fell like a lash on his sore heart, on which
the burden of the other man's deeds seemed to be heaped.

He went through his work dully and mechanically, but without failing in
any point of its routine.  He was, however, detained at the office until
a later hour than usual, owing to a delay on the line, and he made up
his mind, in the intervals during which he allowed his mind to dwell on
the subject, to search for Nat Wills in Underham itself before going
farther; thinking it not unlikely, from some words the boy had let drop,
that he would find a hiding-place there.

When he left the office it was quite dark, and long ago the glory of the
setting sun had faded out of the heavens.  For an hour or two he went,
as he had determined, from house to house in the black courts where vice
and misery huddle together, nearer us oftener than we think in our
contentedness.  And even here he was scourged by the other man's sin.
Women taunted him with it, every taunt carrying a fresh sting.  Some of
them in moments of emotion had given him their pence for the object he
had at heart, and cast this in his teeth again, or reproached him with
mute white faces which were more intolerable.  No one could tell what it
cost him to feel that the work he had believed to be in progress lay all
unravelled and useless in his hand, the stone which infinite labour had
pushed upwards had dropped back an inert mass.  The solitude, too, of a
sectarian creed was upon him.  He felt alone among these people.  When
he came out at last into a wider street, the light from a lamp hard by
falling on his face showed it intensified with a look of such pain as a
man cannot endure long and live.

The purpose in his heart was, however, as strong as ever, and he moved
slowly along the street towards another quarter in which it was possible
that Nat might have found refuge.  Just as he reached a corner Anthony
Miles came round it on his way from the Bennetts'.  It was not a happy
time for him to meet David, after the talk of the night before, and when
the evening had been such as we know.  He stopped abruptly, and David
stopped also.

"That's you, Stephens, is it not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Mr Bennett has been telling me of the rascally manner in which that
man Higgins has made off.  I should think that ought to show you the set
of fellows you're getting mixed up with.  But if you will run your head
against a wall there's another thing I've got to say.  I understand you
are still trying for a bit of land in Thorpe, and you may as well know
that I've not changed my mind, and that I shall fight you through thick
and thin before you get it."

"I know that, sir," said David, with a concentrated forlornness in his
voice of which Anthony was immediately aware.  "You've done it with all
your might up to now, but you won't need to trouble yourself much
longer."

"Have you changed your opinions, then?" said Anthony, softened by the
thought of concession.

"Have I given up my faith, do you mean?"  Stephens said bitterly.  "Can
I put my religion on and off as easy as you your glove?  No, Mr Miles,
if there's no more left to me, there's that, at any rate.  What I mean
to say is that since the money has gone there's a further hindrance put
in the way of the gospel, and that if there's any who can triumph over
the working of another man's sin, they may do it now."

In spite of his irritation at the man's meaning, Anthony could not
repress some sort of pity for the deep dejection with which he spoke.
It was impossible to doubt his earnestness, although he had no sympathy
for his efforts.

"There are different ways of preaching the gospel, Stephens," he said
more kindly, "without taking other men's duties upon ourselves.  Well,
good-night to you.  I wished to give you that warning.  If I were you I
should shake myself clear of the Higgins lot."

Each figure went its separate way in the darkness, little thinking how
soon they were to meet again.  For the first time for some weeks a fresh
alarm awoke in Davids conscience, perhaps caused by the touch of change
in Mr Miles's manner, perhaps by the end of those hopes which had
influenced his conduct towards him.  He had succeeded in persuading
himself that Anthony had been a persecutor of religion, and that his own
silence had been caused by no mere personal grudge; now, wounded by the
scorn and disappointment of the last two days, he began to realise what
he had permitted to fall on the other man.  What if he, more than
Anthony, had been the persecutor?  What if here were a sin which he had
nursed until God would have patience no longer, and had smitten him and
his labour to the earth?

He groaned aloud, and stretched out his hands towards heaven and the
stars which were shining softly.  A woman who passed noticed a dart
figure leaning against a house, and fled in terror.  David never saw
her.  The anguish which he had carried with him all the day reached its
crisis, and almost overwhelmed him.  His soul, struck with a sense of
its own weakness, swallowed up by a terrified horror, was crying out for
help, for teaching, in a new-found passion of humility.  He sank down on
his knees in the road, and, taught by the spiritual experience of his
life to crave for and to obey sudden impulses, had almost resolved to
follow Anthony at once, and to tell him all he knew.  The recollection
of Nat Wills withheld him; and as if he would lose no more time in
finding him, and thus becoming free to follow his design, he staggered
to his feet, and hurried along towards the water.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

  "But this I know, that not even the best and first,
  When all is done, can claim by desert what even to the last and worst
  Of us weak workmen, God from the depths of his infinite mercy giveth.
  These bones shall rest in peace, for I know that my Redeemer liveth."

  Owen Meredith.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The short conversation between the two men did not leave the same
impression upon Anthony as it had left upon David.  Other thoughts had
hold of him too completely to allow of much wandering from them.
Although he had made no distinct resolution to do that which he had
done, and permitted himself to believe that his words had not been
premeditated, but were such as grew out of the situation, the
possibility that they might be spoken had in truth lived in his heart,
or had, rather, been lived upon, for some time past.  He was too young
not to feel that suffering was intolerable, that his own wrong must be
righted, deliverance come in some unknown fashion.  The hope was never
altogether absent even in his moments of deepest dejection, and as yet
he could scarcely grasp the fact that he had used the one resource which
had seemed to him at once desperate and certain, and that--it had failed
him.

When he reached the bridge a bark at his heels startled him.  He stood
still and whittled for Sniff, and meeting no return remembered that he
had left the Bennetts hurriedly, and had forgotten to ask for the dog.
He turned round at once, and more from a vague feeling that some pain
haunted the road by which he had reached his present point, than from
any actual choice, took the path by the canal, and passed the spot from
which that day he had seen the sun sink, and watched the shades gather.

The Norwegian vessel lay still against the quay, its masts rising
sharply against the softer darkness of the sky, in which tremulous stars
were shining.  Underneath the wall there was a blackness of water, where
a plank or two floated and caught the faint light.  Smoke was still
pouring out of the little hooded funnel where the men had their fire,
and there were three or four figures on the deck, and laughter which did
not sound quite friendly.  Anthony, as he came nearer, could distinguish
words of broken English, and fancied that the men had been drinking and
were quarrelsome.  It was all shadowy and dusky, with here and there a
little weird leaping light, and rough voices grating on the silence.
But as he passed by the water's edge he heard another voice which he
recognised as David Stephens's, and this made him look at the group with
more curiosity, and wonder what the young man could be doing on board a
foreign vessel.  He could distinctly see him standing in the midst of
the sailors, who were jeering or threatening, and presently he saw him
turn away as if to jump on shore.  Anthony lingered, he could scarcely
tell why, when suddenly there was a cry and a splash; one of the men by
accident or design had pushed violently against David, and he was in the
water.  The sailors, sobered in an instant, were crowding, looking,
shouting, and in another moment Anthony was in the midst of them, had
caught a rope, and swung himself down between the vessel and the quay.
He was a good swimmer, the danger lay in the cramped space in which it
was possible to move, and in the darkness which hid everything; but
presently lights flashed, people were running and calling, and a gleam
struck for a moment on something at which he clutched and missed, and
clutched again, and dragged up at last on the slippery planks.  Help
came very quickly, men collected, two boats were jostling each other,
and they lifted the burden from him, laid it in the boat, and rowed to
the landing steps.  There the men who were carrying poor David paused as
if in doubt.

"Where shall us take un, sir?" asked one of the old sailors.

"It's young Stephens, the preacher!" said another who had got a lantern,
and held it up to the white face.

"You may carr'n over to my place, if you'm minded," said a gruff voice
out of the little throng.  "It's handy, and the mis'ess wouldn't be
willing for he to be drownded."

"Take him to whichever house is nearest.  And, here, one of you, go off
for Mr Bowles," said Anthony, recovering his breath.

They carried him very tenderly across the road to a door at which a
little light was already shining.  The foreign sailors were watching
with alarmed faces, uncertain how far they would be held answerable for
what had happened.  One of them began explaining in broken English to
Anthony that he had come on board to look for some boy whom he accused
them of harbouring, and then the men made fun of him, not in the least
intending what had happened, their spokesman declared.  It was so
impossible to say whether there had really been more than this, that
Anthony could only listen in silence.  He was a little confused himself,
for it had all passed in a minute, and there was a strange flutter of
unreality about the darkness and the trampling feet moving through the
narrow door.  A kind grave-looking woman was there, who came forward
with wet eyes, and touched Davids hand gently; she had had but a moment
of preparation, and yet it all seemed ready as the men came in with
their dripping burden, and carried it up stairs and laid it on the bed.
Her husband stopped the people who were pressing after, but a lad broke
past him, ran up into the room, and fell on his knees by the bedside,
crying bitterly.

"I'm Nat, David.  I'll go back with you where you please," he said over
and over, with a sharpness of appeal which touched them all.  It seemed
as if the heavy lids must lift themselves, the mouth unclose, in answer
to this boyish cry; the men fell back a little, and waited in mute
expectation.  David had been right in tracking him to the ship.  He had
got one of the men to hide him for a lark, and then he had heard all the
inquiries, the jerk, the sudden splash.  They had some ado to keep him
from flinging himself over the side, too.

But neither cries nor remorse touched the quiet of the face which lay
unconscious of them all in that awful insensibility which affects us
with a curious sympathy as something that one day must hold us also in
thrall.  They thought that he was dead, and when at last, after the
doctor had tried all means of restoration, life struggled feebly back,
it was so slight and so precarious that it scarcely seemed like life at
all.

"I suspect some blow was received in the fall; but the poor fellow was
weakly before, and the shock has proved too much for his rallying
powers," said Mr Bowles, under his breath.

"Do you mean that he will die?" said Anthony, shocked.

"You had better go and change your clothes, Mr Miles," said the doctor,
evading the question.  "Can you find your way to my house?"

"I will go to the Bennetts', and hurry back as soon as possible.  Is
anything wanted?"

"A little brandy for yourself.  Nothing here, thank you."

Anthony was quickly back again, and Mr Bennett with him, full of fussy
good-nature.  David had spoken a word or two, and the calm of his face
had deepened into something that looked like happiness, as he lay with
his eyes resting upon Nat Wills, who was burying his head in the
bedclothes, and now and then lifting it to sob out remorseful words.
But as his look turned towards Anthony, and lay there for a minute or
two as if he were not sufficiently conscious to know who it was, those
who were watching saw a sudden change pass over the still features.  It
might have been wonder, fear, even terror, which drew the muscles
together and opened the eyes, but it was shown so sharply that every one
turned at once to look in the same direction, and see what caused the
movement.

"You may as well just slip behind, the sight of you seems to excite
him," said the young doctor, a little curious like the rest.  As for
Anthony, the intensity of the look fairly appalled him.  He had disliked
and opposed Stephens, but he was one of those people to whom it is
always a shock to have ill-feeling returned, especially at a moment when
he was full of kindly emotion towards the man whose life he had saved.

"He wishes to say something.  Keep back, good people," said Mr Bennett.
"Is there anything you want, my poor fellow?"

The pale lips parted and closed again.

"He has not strength to bear questioning," said the doctor, impatiently.
He would have stopped it more decidedly if that look had not remained
upon the man's face, so terrible in its dumb language that it seemed as
if something must be done to loosen its tension.  And yet Anthony had
drawn back into the shadows.  After a moment's thinking, Mr Bowles
motioned him forward.  "You had better speak and find out what is the
matter," he said in a low voice, "for something is exciting him more
than he can long bear."

Side by side with Nat Wills, Anthony Miles knelt down by the bedside.

"Do you know me, David?" he said, with the gentleness that death teaches
us.

Once more David tried to speak, once more the words failed him.  His
eyes turned away in piteous entreaty, and the doctor, passing his arm
round him, got him to swallow a few drops of stimulant.  Then those who
were nearest heard his voice as if front far away.

"I was going to you--next--that letter--"

"The letter?" repeated Anthony in surprise.  The shadow of his life was
not touching him at that moment; he could not understand.

"Have you given him a letter?" asked Mr Bennett.

"The letter---about the--will."

The blood rushed over Anthony's face.  He understood at last.  For an
instant it was like the lifting of an iron weight, for an instant his
heart leaped up.  Mr Bennett came closer and began to question
eagerly,--

"Do you mean the Cornish letter?--the one all the talk has been about?"

"I ought to have told--O God, have mercy!"

"Told what?--What do you mean?--Say it out, man!"

"Give him time," said the doctor, quietly.

"It did come--I saw the postmark--Polmear--I gave it myself to--"

"Hush!" said Anthony, very gravely and kindly.  "You need not tell us
any more, David, for I know it all."

"But--Anthony, Anthony, my dear fellow, for Heaven's sake, let us hear
what he means.  Our coming here I consider quite providential.  Here is
this abominable story on the point of being cleared up.  Don't stop him
for worlds."

"Mr Miles never had--it," said Stephens, speaking more strongly.  "You
will find the bits--I picked up--and the date in my pocket-book.  He
tore it up--"

"There is nothing more to be said," interrupted the young man, much
moved.  "If this has been on your conscience, David, I am very sorry,
for I knew that the letter reached Underham, although I never saw it.
Your being able to tell these gentlemen so much ought to be a good thing
for me, I suppose," he went on with a touch of the old bitterness; "but
as to other particulars, the way you can best repair any wrong is by
keeping silence."  The dying man's eyes met his once more with a mute
look of anguish.  Was the sin he had nursed to die with him without his
being permitted to reveal it?

"I thought--you hindered the--good work," he said, lifting his feeble
hands as if to ask for mercy.

"And what troubles you now is, that you feel you have wronged Mr
Miles?" said the doctor, who began to understand something.

"David, listen," said Anthony, speaking in a low gentle voice.  "May God
forgive me as I forgive you, freely, fully.  May God forgive my hard
thoughts of you.  He is teaching us both something, and I think I have
the most to learn.  I wish there was one soul could cling to me as that
poor boy is clinging now to you."

David's eyes turned slowly towards Nat Wills, and softened into a look
of great love.

"Nat," he said faintly,--"Nat!"

"I'll go just where you likes," said the boy, eagerly looking up.

"Then you'll go to Thorpe--to Mr Salter--Mr Miles will, maybe, help
you--and you'll tell.  There's nothing like telling before it's too
late."  His voice had grown stronger, his eye brightened.

"Do you know that it was Mr Miles who saved your life?" said Mr
Bennett, who had been a good deal shocked by what he heard.

But David was still looking at the boy.

"The mist is lifting from the water," he said slowly.  "Does Faith see
it?--Faith told me she would--look, look!"

"He is wandering," said the doctor, softly.

What does the soul see when the cords are loosened for a moment, and it
goes where our feeble pity follows, not knowing what we say?  Do the
mists lift indeed, and does the glory of the Day Dawn shine in its
nearness?  Whatever David may have beheld, something of its wonder
touched his face, and brightened it with an intense joy, a joy which
rested, and at which by and by they looked reverently as at something
which had done with earth and its sin forever.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

Mr Mannering was sitting in his library the next morning, when Mr
Bennett was announced.  It was not yet twelve o'clock, and the Underham
lawyer was generally deep in his work at that hour, so that Mr
Mannering met him with a touch of wonder in his cordiality.

"The more welcome because I should as soon have expected Thorpe to
receive a visit from the Mayor and Corporation as from you at this time
of day.  Sit down, pray.  My papers are all over the place, but I
believe you can find a chair."

"If I had not known better, I should have said you were still in
harness, I own," said Mr Bennett, looking round upon the familiar signs
of business.

"Harness?  I sometimes think that for men who have passed the greater
part of their lives at work there is no getting out of it.  There is a
review in the last Quarterly which all the world is talking about, and I
can assure you I have not yet found five minutes in which to look at it.
The truth is that an unlucky mortal who has neither time, money, nor
health, should make up his mind to endure a great deal in this world."

"What's that, Charles?" said Mr Robert, coming in with a ruddy glow
upon his face.  "If you had Stokes for a gardener, you might begin to
talk about endurance.  Glad to see you, Bennett, this fine fresh
morning.  All well, I hope?"

"All my household, thank you," said Mr Bennett, settling himself to his
story with great satisfaction.  "But we had a sad accident in Thorpe
last night.  Anthony Miles had been dining with us, and had not left
half an hour when back he came, and really it was fortunate that Ada had
gone up stairs, or she might have been terribly alarmed to see him
dripping from head to foot at that hour of the night.  However, the
ladies were out of the way, by a stroke of good fortune."

"Dripping!  Had he tumbled into the water?"

"Not at all, not at all.  It was a foolish thing to do, but it seems he
saw the man fall, and jumped in after him.  And then, of course, he came
to me for dry clothes."

Mr Mannering was leaning forward in a trim attitude of attention, with
his legs crossed, and his head a little bent.  Mr Robert was fidgeting
as usual under Mr Bennett's prose.

"But who was drowned or dragged out, or what was the end of it?" he said
hastily.  "Bless the boy, he'll be himself again, if people believe him
to be a hero.  Who was it, Bennett?"

"Ah, there is the extraordinary coincidence.  It was such a fortunate
thing that I went back with Anthony, because, although it was not the
case for a formal deposition, I am ready to prove that he made a
voluntary declaration."

"He--who, who?"

"The young man's name is David Stephens," said Mr Bennett in a tone of
mild reproof.  "He is a clerk at the post-office."

"Young Stephens, the humpback preacher!  Deposition?--Do you mean there
had been a quarrel or anything?"

"My dear Mr Robert, if you were to guess for a week you would never
imagine what he had to say," said Mr Bennett, sitting back in his
chair, and tapping one hand lightly with the other, too secure of his
story to mind the little pokes and digs that were being administered.
"I can assure you that in the whole course of my experience I have never
met with anything I consider so strange.  It just appeared the shadowy
kind of accusation which is most difficult to rebut; and, although I was
convinced that it might be explained in some perfectly honourable
manner, it cannot be doubted that there were persons whom it did
influence otherwise."

Mr Mannering looked as courteously attentive as ever, Mr Robert had
sunk into a despairing silence.

"My most sanguine hopes hardly amounted to an actual acquittal, owing,
as I have said, to the difficulty of proving anything in the matter--"

"You are talking about Anthony Miles," cried Mr Robert, jumping up, and
becoming very red in the face.  "But what on earth had that young
Stephens to do with it?"

"Could you have imagined that he had in his hands this letter which made
all the stir, that he gave it to a certain person, and that, it having
been destroyed, Stephens was able to tell us where we might find one or
two of its fragments, minute fragments I need not say, but sufficient
for the purpose of identification, and such as under the circumstances
may be considered conclusive."

"Conclusive?--but of what?  The existence of that letter is the very
fact to which we have all been trying to shut our eyes," said Mr
Mannering, dubiously joining his fingers.

"The letter existed," said Mr Bennett, leaning forward and speaking
emphatically,--"the letter existed, but it never reached the owner to
whom it was addressed.  Another person received it from Stephens, and,
as I have told you, apparently destroyed it.  One or two things must
have excited Stephens's suspicions, for he managed to possess himself of
a shred or two of the writing.  I have them with me."

Nobody spoke for a moment.  Mr Robert walked to the window and blew his
nose violently.  Mr Mannering took the tiny witnesses, and fitted them
together with his long slender fingers.

"Here are four," he said at last, "one with only the word `will,' which
is valueless; another may be `proposal' with the first letter and half
of the second missing, and the remaining two are, I should say,
unmistakably part of the signature.  You are right, Bennett.  They prove
nothing, and yet under the circumstances they prove a great deal.  I am
heartily pleased."

"Who was the rascal?" asked his brother from the window.

Mr Bennett pursed up his lips and did not answer until Mr Robert
repeated his question, and then he said,--

"That is the most unsatisfactory part of the business, I lament to say.
Will you believe that Anthony Miles knew all that I have told you from
the first, and would not speak, and that now he has prevented our
becoming acquainted with the name of the person?"

"Whew!  That complicates the matter again.  How can Anthony be such a
fool!"

"I have urged everything in my power," Mr Bennett went on, rather
pompously.  "His position in regard to my family gave me the right to do
so.  But he is exceedingly determined.  He says the information is not
new to himself, and he even requests me to keep complete silence on the
subject."

"Don't pay any attention to his crotchets, Bennett," said Mr  Robert,
marching back from the window.  "Silence?--Tell everybody, everybody!--
it's the only thing to do.  He has proved himself too incapable to be
allowed any longer to manage his own affairs.  Besides, for Miss
Lovell's sake--I'm delighted, more than delighted; that business has
been a load on my mind ever since I first heard of it.  We'll give a
dinner-party, Charles, and ask the whole neighbourhood; I'll write to
that dry old Pitt, and insist that he shall come down and eat his words
before he has any other dinner.  Poor boy, we've treated him shamefully.
But, I say, Bennett, what of Stephens?  It seems to me that he comes
badly enough out of it.  What has he got to say for himself, eh?"

His kind, ugly face was radiant.  Mr Bennett looked up nervously, for
the tragedy of the night before had touched him more deeply than he knew
himself.

"I don't think we had better say anything further about his part of the
business, poor fellow," he answered, a little apologetically.  "He is
dead now, and he did his utmost at the last.  Perhaps it's easier to
judge than to understand."

"Dead!  I thought that Anthony Miles had saved him?"

"Bowles said from what he saw and heard from a miserable boy--who, by
the way, belongs to your village--that Stephens had got down to a very
low ebb with want of food and want of rest, and the shock was too great.
It really was very affecting, the boy's grief and all that, and this
morning the house is besieged.  I think the poor fellow must have had
some good in him, in spite of the ugly look his silence has."

When Mr Bennett had gone, Mr Robert came back to the library, rubbing
his hands.

"Well, Charles," he said.

"Well, my dear Robert."

"I am going to the cottage at once."

"I would go with you if this lumbago only left me the power of moving.
But let me forewarn you not to expect a very warm reception from
Anthony."

"Warm or not, I couldn't stay away an hour.  I shall go on to Hardlands,
and perhaps somehow or other get a lift to the Milmans or to Stanton.
It seems a sin to leave that matter uncleared another day.  You'll write
to Pitt, Charles," added his brother, suddenly becoming grave.  "I
suppose we both guess who was the other person?"

"I am afraid we do."

"It was sheer folly to have sacrificed himself, but, naturally, their
relationship added to his reluctance.  Well, we have no right to make
other people acquainted with what is simply conjecture, but I shall be
surprised if others besides ourselves do not put two and two together."

"Nevertheless, remember that as the story cannot be made altogether
clear, we may expect incredulity yet."

"The story is clear enough," said Mr Robert, indignantly.  "Nobody can
doubt it who is not wilfully malicious.  Anthony's statement was that on
a certain date he had received no letter.  People could not prove that
he had, but it was just open to doubt,--upon my word, I don't think I'll
ever doubt again to my dying day,--now comes a witness who can swear
that Anthony is correct, who saw the letter in other hands, and produces
a portion of that letter destroyed.  What on earth can be asked for
more?  If you are not satisfied, Charles, I shall say you are as
unreasonable as Stokes."

He went away laughing and rubbing his hands.  The day was warm and damp,
the clouds had a uniform tint of grey, drops clung to the beautiful bare
boughs, which had so much cheerful undergrowth of green that they lost
their wintry aspect, as Mr Robert started on his triumphal progress,
which, however, like other triumphs, was not free from disappointment.
Anthony was not at the cottage, and Mrs Miles would have resented any
rejoicing over a proof which it seemed to her absolutely wickedness to
demand.  Mr Mannering could not be sure that her son had told her
anything, and the only compensation of which he dared to avail himself
was praise of Anthony's courage the night before.

"Which way has he gone?" he asked, as he stood at the door.

"I think he has walked up to Hardlands.  I wish he would have kept quiet
to-day, after the shock and all," said Mrs Miles, proudly.

"I suspect the shock was in the right direction, in spite of my
gentleman's pride," Mr Robert reflected, walking out of the gate.  "It
will not hurt me to trudge to the Milmans, and then he shall make his
own revelations at Hardlands.  If only the Squire could have seen the
day!"

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

  "For Love himself took part against himself
  To warn us off, and Duty loved of Love."

  Tennyson.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

That afternoon Winifred was at home alone, rather an unusual thing for
her, but Mrs Orde had occasion to go to Aunecester, and her son and
Bessie had gone with her, while Winifred was glad of some excuse for
staying at home, not having yet become accustomed to the sight of the
street where her eyes were constantly picturing what had happened such a
little time ago.  A large fire was blazing, and she opened the long
window, and sat down with some pretence of work in her hand, but after a
few minutes' attention her eyes wandered away to the grey familiar view
before her.  The firs to the left looked thin and dreary, the grass of
the field which stretched beyond the lawn had grown a little coarse, no
lights flashed from a mass of low heavy-lying clouds, all colours except
cold greys and browns seemed to, have been drawn from the distant trees,
the cottages, the little line of sea, the sad hills.  Winifred's eyes
filled with tears as she looked out.  It would have been so natural for
the Squire's strong figure to have made the foreground of the picture,
his voice might so well have been heard calling the dogs, and gathering
around him a little circle of cheery life, that the blank solitude smote
her with desolate pain.  It is, however, possible that when such a sad
and unacknowledged jar has grown into a girls life as had come to
Winifred, there is a certain luxury in a permitted sorrow.  It seems at
the time as if trouble were being heaped upon trouble, but it really
takes away that hard feeling of repression which is like an iron band on
a wound.  Perhaps there is hardly a grief over which we mourn, but has
those hidden behind it of which the world knows nothing.  How
imperceptibly do other memories weave themselves round the one
remembrance that is so sad and yet so dear!  How heavy with longing may
be the thoughts which creep softly back to days not very long ago,
except for that drag which makes time seem interminable!  It was not
only over her father's image that Winifred was crying softly when she
heard a sound, and Anthony Miles came in.

It may have been that he was too preoccupied with his own feelings to
notice her tears, or that he did not dare to notice them.  Winifred
herself rose hastily, and sat down again a little hastily too, taking
care to turn her back to the light which she had before been facing.
She knew that her hand was trembling, and although it might have been
caused by the momentary surprise, the feeling of weakness it produced
unnerved her, and she was thankful that Anthony, when he sat down, sat
leaning forward with his elbow on his knee, and his face on his hand,
looking straight before him through the open window at the dull
greyness, as if he saw nothing on either side.

A minute before Winifred had not felt as if it were possible to speak,
but it is often necessary to fly from silence and take refuge in
commonplaces, and she gathered up the work which lay in her lap and
said,--

"I hope you did not want to see the others, for they have driven to
Aunecester."

"I did not want to see any one but you, Winifred," said Anthony, without
changing his position.

The words were so unlike what she expected, that she trembled again with
a thrill that was neither joy nor fear, but something more exquisitely
painful.  Anthony went on after a moment's pause,--"I suppose you do not
know what happened last night?"

"Last night?  No."

"That poor fellow of whom we were speaking the other evening, David
Stephens, fell into the water, and died in a few hours."

"O poor Faith!" said Winifred, touched by an instantaneous sympathy.

"Yes," said Anthony, gravely.  "We would have sent her home, but she has
begged my mother to let her stay."

"Were you there?--how did you know about it?--where was it?"

"Yes, I was there.  It was in Underham," said Anthony.  He had spoken
throughout in the same short abstracted tone, as if a fit of absence
were upon him; but what he had told her was sufficient to account for
it, and she had forgotten herself in its sadness, and was looking at him
with compassionate eyes, when he turned round for the first time, and
said slowly, "I wished to see you alone, because you may as well know
that it is proved--sufficiently, I suppose, for the satisfaction of my
friends--that I am not quite the rogue they made me out to be.  I can't
answer any questions, and it is not possible now, any more than then, to
explain exactly what did take place.  Therefore, there is, of course,
still room for doubt.  At the same time David, before he died, poor
fellow, declared that the letter never reached my hand, so--you may take
the evidence for what it is worth.  You are the only person to whom I
shall repeat it."

Passionate tears sprang into Winifred's eyes.  This clearing of
Anthony's honour, for which she had prayed and yearned, had all gladness
frozen out of it by the coldness of his words and the want of trust they
implied.  Her fate crimsoned, and when she tried to speak her voice was
choked.  Anthony, who had expected congratulations instead of this
silence, turned towards her in surprise, and met her look intensely
reproachful.  He started up and walked quickly to the window.  That look
thrilled him suddenly with a doubt that carried sweet anguish and bitter
joy.  Had her faith been, after all, unshaken?  Had it been he who had
thrust her from him?--his pride which had separated them forever?  He
turned round and looked at Winifred again; burning words rose to his
lips, and died away: if he had found a voice I do not know what he might
not have said, but for a moment it was impossible to speak, and
Winifred, although she was trembling under his eyes, was bravely holding
back her own emotion.

"I am so thankful," she said.  "Now all that has past will lose its
pain.  I don't want to ask any questions, but it has been very cruel for
you,--for us all," she added softly.

"Pain does not go away so easily as you believe.  I think it has only
just begun," said poor Anthony.  "Answer me one thing, Winifred.  Does
this that I have told you make no difference in your thoughts of me?"

"How should it!--how should it!" she cried out with an impetuosity of
rejection which startled him.  "O, how could you think so!  Do we not
know each other?--are we not friends?--can you suppose that for one
moment I ever doubted you?"  She stood up and looked at him with
reproachful eyes, only eager to repel the accusation.  He, looking also,
knew for the first time that he, not she, had failed; that the want of
trust, the want of friendship, had been on his side, not hers.  And yet
she said that now the past would lose its pain!  He turned away with
something like a groan.

"What is the use of it all then?" he said.

"One thinks of other people, I suppose," said Winifred, trying to
understand his mood.  "So many people are ready to believe evil.  If you
are not glad for your own sake, you must be for those for whom you
care--"

She stopped trembling, for he was facing her again, with his eyes fixed
upon her, and a depth in their gaze before which her heart fluttered and
leapt up.  For an instant she felt as if it had met his own; for an
instant the happiness that flooded her carried her on its triumphant
tide; for an instant the world was full of a sweet joy, beyond either
measurement or control,--for an instant and no more.  Her voice had
scarcely faltered, and she might have been only completing the sentence
when she said in a low tone,--

"For Miss Lovell, especially."

She was looking away from him and did not know whether he had changed
his position or not, for he did not answer.  There was a strange heavy
silence in which she could hear a watch ticking, the sigh of the wind
among the fir-trees, a scream from the distant train, the throbbing of
her heart.  All her strength seemed to have gone out in those four
words.

"Yes," said Anthony, at last, hoarsely, "for Miss Lovell, especially."

Something in his voice or in the mechanical repetition of her words
brought back Winifred's courage.

"For her sake and your mother's," she said, earnestly.  "However
insignificant an accusation may be, its falseness must be a grief to the
friends who best know how very false it is.  I hope you will not try to
prevent our being glad, although I dare say the poor man's fate makes
rejoicing seem heartless."

"It makes me believe that failure is the end of our best hopes,--of all
that is best in us," said Anthony, standing with his back to her and
speaking in a tone of deep despondency.

"Not failure, really," said Winifred, with a flush of lovely eager
colour rising in her cheeks.  "Surely it is not possible that what is
best can fail.  It may seem so even to ourselves, but it cannot be the
thing itself, only our way of thinking of it.  Don't you believe that
failure and victory are sometimes one?"  Anthony was silent.  Was it so
indeed?  Sometimes one, triumph and defeat, death and life, the end and
the beginning?  Was it now--when he was ready to cry out that all was at
its dreariest, with pangs of which he was tasting the most utter
sharpness--now that he caught, through the clouds, a glimpse of
something beyond change and beyond sorrow?  He came and stood in front
of Winifred, and put out his hand.

"I can't tell," he said.  "It may be so, and I think you are more lively
to be right than I.  At all events, one has to learn how to accept
failure, and perhaps--some day--one will understand better.  God bless
you, Winifred."

She sat where he left her; she heard doors open and shut, and, turning
round, saw him presently go quickly down the little path, pass under the
fir-trees, and disappear from sight.  Her breath came and went rapidly,
a light was in her eyes.  With all her struggle, those minutes had not
been so bitter to her as to him; there was a joy in knowing that he
loved her, it seemed to lift a secret reproach off her heart; and though
this knowledge might bring sharper sadness to her by and by, for the
moment the relief was so great as to make all sadness seem endurable.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

Thanks in a great measure to Mr Robert's policy, the news of Anthony's
clearing spread rapidly through the neighbourhood.  The Milmans had a
luncheon party about a week afterwards, and as Lady Milman said to her
daughter beforehand, it was really quite a comfort to have something to
talk about.  She contrived, very skilfully, to keep the welcome topic
out of the desultory conversation before luncheon, feeling that it was
too valuable to be broken into fragments, as would then have been its
fate.  But in the first pause after they were seated in the dining-room,
Mrs Featherly's voice was heard emphatically declaring,--

"A very strange and unsatisfactory story this, about Anthony Miles.  Not
that I ever expected the matter to be cleared up in the manner one has a
right to desire, but with his father vicar and all, I often told Mr
Featherly that I should make a point of hoping against hope."

"Well, I don't know about its being unsatisfactory," said Lady Milman,
looking very handsome, and inclined to take a kindlier view of things.
"It's odd, of course, and unlucky that we can't hear the whole affair,
but so long as he did not receive the letter it is really no difference
who did.  I always liked Anthony Miles, and I think his jumping into the
water and saving the man who had done him so much harm was a very fine
thing."

"O, but it was in the dark, so he could not possibly have known.  I can
tell you precisely how it all occurred," said Mrs Featherly, who would
have scorned to have been unable to give a precise account of anything
which happened within a circuit of ten miles.  "He had that minute left
the Bennetts', and heard a scream and a splash, and saw some one in the
water, so of course he could do nothing less than jump in.  There were
the steps close by, and there was no possible danger."

"Ah, it's a capital thing to be able to economise one's neighbours'
virtues," said old Mr Wood of the Grange, helping himself to
mayonnaise.

"Well, if Anthony Miles knew who it was," said Mrs Featherly, tartly,
"he showed a very proper spirit, a dissenter and all.  Dissenters are
never to be trusted, and this one behaved in a most reprehensible
manner, going about in my husband's parish and making himself
exceedingly troublesome,--though I should be the last person to speak
ill of the dead."

"It is unsatisfactory, as you say, because they can't feel it," put in
Mr Wood again, in a tone of assent, which Mrs Featherly accepted as a
tribute to her argument.

"I have no doubt that it is all true so far as that David Stephens acted
very wrongly," she continued, "but then I do feel that if one hears part
one should hear all.  I should like to know, if Anthony Miles did not
get the letter, who did?"

Mr Mannering had already laid down his knife and fork, and joined the
tips of his fingers together, divided between a desire to speak and a
fear of impoliteness.

"Excuse me," he said, in his pleasant, courteous tones, "but I cannot
but feel with Lady Milman that here we open another subject.  I am sure
Mrs Featherly, with her usual candour, will admit that Anthony Miles's
conduct may be considered blameless in the matter?"

"Indeed, I am not so presumptuous as to call any human being's conduct
blameless," said Mrs Featherly aggressively, "especially that of a
young man who has the snare of no profession.  Not that anything seems
to have any effect nowadays.  There is that young Warren, good for
nothing but to dance attendance upon Miss Ada Lovell.  I have told Mr
Featherly he really must make a point before long of speaking to Mr
Bennett."

"Warren?" said Sir Thomas Milman, joining in from the end of the table.
"That will be his cousin whose death was in yesterday's paper.  It must
have been sudden, very sudden.  He only came to the title about four
months ago, and now it goes, I should say, to this young fellow's
father.  Isn't it so, Mannering?--you're up in all this sort of thing."

"Sir Henry Warren is undoubtedly dead, and if this young man's father is
his uncle, it must be as you say," said Mr Mannering, a little
startled.  "But I always understood theirs to be a family of great
possessions.  I had no idea this young Warren belonged to them."

"Well, as often as not there's a poor branch hanging on to the big stem,
though they don't very often get such a puff of good luck as this to set
them straight.  But there's no doubt about the money."

"O, they creak of money," said Mr Wood.  "Their pedigree is not long
enough to have given them time to spend it as yet.  They must wait for
that till they get a little good blood into the family."

"I shall make a point of calling upon Mrs Bennett this afternoon," said
Mrs Featherly, who had been listening in blank amazement, "so that I
may learn exactly what has happened.  Mr Warren the son of a baronet!
Well, I must say he has always performed his duties in an exemplary
manner, and I shall be quite glad to show him a little attention, that
he may see we appreciate it.  It is certainly one's duty to do so.  I
shall make a point of it."  Even Mrs Bennett had been raised to
something like excitement, when her husband told her of Mr Warren's
sudden prosperity.

"So much happens every day that it quite takes away my breath," she said
comfortably from the soft chair in which she was sitting.  "Then, my
dear Tom, Mr Warren will not stay with you?  Dear me, Ada, you and I
shall be quite sorry to lose him, he has really always made himself so
pleasant and so attentive.  I hope he will come and tell us all about
it.  And the poor young man who is dead, how sudden for him!  Only
three-and-twenty, too!"

"He takes it very properly," said Mr Bennett, rubbing his hands.  "Of
course it puts me to a little inconvenience, and he spoke very well
about it, very well.  Offered to stay, and said quite the right thing.
But I should not take any advantage of that sort, as you may suppose.
He'll go to the University, I imagine, and probably to the bar
afterwards.  Odd world, Ada, my dear, isn't it?"  As for Ada, the tears
had rushed suddenly into her eyes.  She murmured something in reply, but
the weight of disappointment which she felt almost frightened herself,
and when she made a faint attempt to assure herself that Mr Warren was
nothing to her, it was only to become conscious that he was truly the
embodiment of those things for which she most cared,--brightness,
compliments, admiration, attention; and now--how much more besides!  Ada
was only romantic when romance did not interfere with more solid
comforts, but to have all within her reach, and yet to be obliged to
turn away, was a trial which touched her sorely.  It seemed to develop a
vein of bitterness, as opposed as possible to the petty prettinesses of
her life, which made her thoroughly uncomfortable, and which she tried
to dignify by the name of misery, although her feelings were at no time
deep enough to admit of strong names.  It added to her vexation that, so
short a time ago, Anthony should himself have offered to free her from
her engagement.  Her vanity found so pleasant an excuse for his words in
setting them down to a fear on his part that she should not be fully
satisfied, that she felt no anger towards him for what he had said, but
it provoked her that it should not have been later, when she might have
been guided by these new circumstances.  Marriage with Mr Warren had
hitherto been out of the question; and now that its possibility was
suddenly presented to her, Ada wept the bitterest tears of
disappointment she had ever shed in her life.  People with whom life has
gone smoothly are not disposed to admit of any course of events whereby
they are defrauded, as they think, of the good things that yet should
fall to their share; the very shadow of withdrawal astonishes them in a
manner which is not without its pathetic side to those who have tasted
draughts out of the depths.  There is, too, in these natures, often a
curious power of centralisation, so that their own life becomes the
point round which all others revolve, and in relation to which all
others are considered.  Ada would have understood the sin of another
girl acting in what the world would call a heartless fashion; yet, so
far as Anthony's heart was concerned, she looked at it only as made for
the satisfaction of her own; so that it would not have entered her head
that suffering which seemed wrong and unendurable for herself might not
properly have fallen to his share, and indeed there was, perhaps, a
feeling as if a balance were struck with Providence, by admitting the
necessity of tribulation for other people.  It was not the pain she
might inflict which weighed upon her now, but a vague dissatisfied
conviction that her uncle and aunt would not permit her to throw over
Anthony; a kind of dim sense, it might be, of honour, growing out of an
atmosphere which, if easily selfish, was not dishonourable.  Marrying
him, she would feel all her life long that a great injury had been done
her, yet she was aware that, cruel as it was, she might be called upon
to endure this wrong.

Things seemed so harshly upset that, for the first time in her life, Ada
caught sight of her tear-stained face in the glass, and her pretty eyes
swollen and discoloured, without any answering impulse being awakened to
put aside what so greatly marred her beauty, as easily crushed as a
flower by a storm.  On the contrary, she was touched by a sort of
despair that the prettiness of which she was wholly conscious could not,
after all, give her what she had a right to expect from it.  It was a
curious petty turmoil, yet for one of Ada's nature it marked serious
disturbance that she should have gone down stairs after only languidly
pushing back her hair, without the usual marks of trim order which
characterised her, and that she should have been pettish in her answers
to her aunt.  She was so evidently out of spirits when Anthony came in,
that it was impossible for him not to remark it, but he was almost
grateful for the change.  Her constant flow of smiles grew at times to
be full of weariness, the weariness which makes people feel
conscience-stricken at the little repulsion that rises up.  He looked
very ill, and unlike a man from whom a heavy burden had just been
lifted.  Is it not so often?--what we want comes, and it is no longer
what we want,--the load is taken off, but we would fain have it back
again, if its weight might only be exchanged for the aching pain that
has grown up elsewhere; we rail at the present, and lo, it passes away,
and in its vanishing shadow we see the glory of an angel's face, and
stretch out our hands with vain weeping.

Anthony Miles had come that day with a determination to press his
marriage, and to take Ada away from Underham.  They would settle in
London, by which he knew that he should fulfil one of Ada's dreams, and
there he would fling himself into work with a will, if not with much
heart.  Something of that shame of disappointment which scourges into
fresh energy was upon him.  He had resolved to be very gentle with Ada,
and the change in her manner made it more easy than usual.  She was
sitting listlessly in an arm-chair near the fire, for her grief would
never be likely to interfere with her comforts, and at this moment a
sense of injury was uppermost, for which she instinctively felt
compensations to be her due.

"I am afraid you have another headache," said Anthony, standing before
her, and looking down, with a vague compassion in his heart.

"Nobody thinks anything about my headaches," said Ada, in a complaining
voice.  "When Aunt Henrietta is ill herself, she makes a great fuss
about it, but she never cares about other people.  This place does not
agree with me; Dr Fletcher has always said so, but they will not
believe him."

"Will you let me take you away from it, then?" said Anthony, speaking
sadly, but kindly, and trying to put away all thoughts but care for her.
"London, you know, might suit you better."

"Are you talking about our marrying?"  Ada's face lit up for a moment
with a vision of her wedding-dress, but dropped again into its new
expression of dissatisfied listlessness.  "My uncle must settle all
that."

"But you do not object?"

"I don't know,--I have a headache,--there can't be any hurry."

The indifference of the tone struck him, but it was too much an echo of
his own feeling to seem as if it were anything strange.

"Then I will speak to him?" he said.

"Very well," said Ada, turning away with tears in her eyes.

"Is there nothing I can do for you?" said Anthony, still touched with
the feeling that it was bodily suffering she was experiencing.

"No,--nothing.  I can't talk.  There is a ring, who is it?"

"I think I hear Warren's voice."

He did not expect to see her jump up, and turn with a smiling face to
greet the new-comer.  Not a trace of her languor remained; she talked,
laughed, and congratulated, all in a breath.  "What does it mean?"
thought Anthony, looking at her sparkling eyes in wonder.  Sniff had
stolen in unperceived behind Mr Warren, and crept under his master's
chair; but seeing his hand hanging down could not, even at the risk of
detection, refrain from a rapturous lick.  Anthony got the dog's head in
his hand and fondled it, while he sat and wondered mutely.

"And you are really going away?"  Ada was saying.  "We shall all miss
you so much."

"You may be certain I shall come back again."

"O yes, you must.  Still--I don't know--I am afraid there will be
something different, and I dare say you will have forgotten all about
us."

"I am sure I shall never forget,--how could I?" said Mr Warren, turning
very red, and almost stammering in his eagerness.  "I have met with so
much kindness in this house, I do not believe I shall be so happy
anywhere as I have been in Underham."

"O, but you will live in the country, and in such a beautiful place!"
Ada said, shaking her curl, and sighing involuntarily as she thought of
what her lot might have been.

"I like a sociable place like this better," said the young fellow
honestly, "and as to that, it's the people--"

He stopped suddenly, with a perception that Anthony was sitting and
looking grimly at him.  He had a soft heart, and the idea of going away
from Ada was solidifying his feelings, which had hitherto scarcely taken
shape beyond the amusement of the moment, so that for the first time it
gave him an actual pang to remember that the real separation lay in this
engagement of Ada's.  One or two discoveries were made in that moment.
Anthony awakened to the perception that another mistake must be added to
the list, and it was a mistake which, whatever may be a man's feelings,
is sure to gall him.  An apparently transparent affection, such as
Ada's, had been grateful to him at a time when he was very sore with all
the world, and the fact of this soreness and of his own changed position
gave it an air of reality which he had never thought of questioning.
Even if he had discovered that her heart held no great depths, what was
there he believed to be all his own; and Mr Warren would have been the
last person presented to his thoughts as a possible rival until now,
when Ada's manner and sudden change from gloom to gaiety made him very
wroth, with the anger not of jealousy, but of wounded pride.  Nor did
his own failure towards her soften him, for he satisfied himself by
thinking that he had at least told her the truth, and put the matter
into her own choice, while she had deliberately deceived him by liking
this young idiot, and showing her preference unblushingly the instant
the fellow's position was changed.  Anthony's face grew blacker and
blacker, and Ada, perhaps desirous of driving him to desperation, put
out all her charms for Mr Warren.  There was a certain comfortable
prettiness about the room, about the cheerful colouring, and the big
fire which looked brighter and brighter as the afternoon shortened, and
in the midst of it all one of those half-absurd, half-tragic
complications, which sometimes seem to get inextricably knotted round a
life.  Anthony jumped up at last.

"I am glad your headache is better," he said shortly.

"Are you going?  Good bye, then," said Ada, in an indifferent voice.

He stood still, and looked at her for a moment, so that her eyes fell
under his.  But she recovered herself immediately, and glanced up as if
she were waiting for him to speak.  He said no more, however, but went
out of the room, Sniff barking with delight the instant he found himself
safely in the hall.

As he walked home, his feelings could scarcely be called enviable, the
less so because, turn which way he would, there seemed no line of action
which he could take.  It was impossible for him to find fault with Ada,
who, indeed, had done nothing against which he could bring a serious
complaint; it was more manner than words, and to fall foul of manner
requires a lover's quarrel, and a lover's quarrel a lover.  He could no
more go seriously to Ada and blame her than he could fight smoke with a
sword.  And after his one failure he said to himself that come what
would there should be no further attempt on his part to loosen the bond
which bound them to each other.  But he was very miserable.  For until
now he had felt that, although the deepest love was wanting which
happiest marriages need, something they both had towards a happiness
which, if not the greatest, might serve instead,--on her part a simple
unreasoning affection, on his a certain gratitude and tenderness.  He
had not thought of these failing until this new turn of the wheel.  Now
he could no longer feel the gentle kindliness to which he had trusted as
the foundation of a moderate happiness; and even at that, insufficient
as it once seemed, he looked back as a drowning man looks at the harsh
rock from which he has been torn.  He could do nothing except wait, and
there was a passiveness about his future which made it seem utterly dark
and hateful to poor Anthony.

As he came near the Red House, the day brightened in some degree; the
faint beauty of the sun had gained strength, little cold lovelinesses
were creeping into life, a poor little pool of water was shining away,
and a scarlet glory of berries flamed from the hedge where a tiny wren
slipped in and out, scarcely moving the grass.  Mr Robert was just
riding out of the gate, and pulled up to greet Anthony.

"This rainy weather has knocked poor Charles over altogether," he said,
"and I'm going to fetch Bowles.  He always gets moped when he can't go
out.  Ah, Anthony, in old days you would have been up to see us long
ago."

There was a little tone of sadness in Mr Robert's cheery voice, which
Anthony detected in a moment, and it may have been a proof that the
young man's own troubles were no longer hardening him, that it touched
him in the way it did.

"The old days--?" he said, his words almost failing him.  Mr Robert
looked at him in an odd, questioning way.

"My dear fellow," he said, putting out his hand and grasping Anthony's,
"I'm ready to admit that I didn't stand by you as stoutly as you'd a
right to expect, and I ask your pardon for it.  If you knew the story of
my life, for even red-faced old bachelors have stories, perhaps you'd
see some sort of reason for my feeling about it.  But then we none of us
take what we don't see for granted."  Anthony was utterly shamed and
overcome.  "Don't, don't!" he said, putting up his hand to his face, for
he had a generous temper, quick to respond to kindness, and he felt now,
somehow, as if he had been in the wrong throughout.  Mr Robert went on
in his kind grave voice,--

"Perhaps I'd no claim to it, but I wish you could have treated me as
your friend, and let me know how matters stood exactly.  You'll not be
angry at my saying that I guess now what a painful position you were in.
I'm not sure that you were right, mind you, but I am sure that not one
man in twenty would have behaved as you did."

He wrung his hand again, and went on.  The two men understood each other
at last; it is sometimes a little odd to think how a few minutes and a
word or two will mend or mar enough for a lifetime.  Things did not seem
quite so sad to Anthony after that little interview.  He would try to do
what was right to Ada, to everybody.  The bitterness which made him
refuse to accept friendship, because it had disappointed him once, was
gone; for he had been too blind himself to demand that others should see
perfectly, and he felt as if he owed them all amends, if only for the
sake of Winifred, whom he had so misjudged.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

That winter dragged heavily to more than one of those whose stories I
have been telling in a broken one-sided fashion enough.  Anthony, one of
whose failings, perhaps, was the procrastination which is often joined
to a certain eager impetuosity, was going on from day to day without
taking a decided step as to his marriage.  The spring had been the time
originally proposed; and though at one time he had been disposed to
hasten matters, his wish had received a check which he had not
forgotten.  Ada, indeed, did not encourage him to press it.  She had
lost her old brightness, and the constant smiles were exchanged for a
kind of listless irritability, which sometimes broke out into querulous
complaint.  Nothing had been heard of Mr Warren since he had left them;
it seemed as if the young man were trying to forget Underham, or were
ashamed of his feelings.  At Hardlands life was very quiet.  Mrs Orde
was doing her best to act as a mother to the two girls; people said how
fortunate it was that she was able to live with them, which was true
enough; and yet poor Winifred sometimes wondered how many little jars
and frets had grown into her life.  Frank Orde, who was there again soon
after Easter, sometimes wondered sadly, too.  His step-mother was a
true-hearted woman, full of practical common-sense, but there was a want
of sympathy between her and Winifred which could not be explained.  The
girl was always admiring her and blaming herself for it, but it is
probable that it was one of those contrarieties which could hardly have
been otherwise.  There are people who, quite unconsciously, seem to
place us at a disadvantage.  We may like them, even love them, but it is
from some force of circumstances: they destroy our ease, banish our
ideas, and reduce us in some strange fashion to nonentities.  Winifred
used to puzzle herself by trying to think how this could be.  She had a
strong sweet nature, to which people turned instinctively for help, but
she would shrink at some little speech of her aunt's which yet was quite
free from any sting of unkindness.  The fear of bringing it down upon
herself would often hamper her, even prevent her from doing what she
longed to do.  One is struck sometimes by the boundaries with which
certain lives are hedged in.  They seem so small, a word, an allusion,--
perhaps no more than a thread, and yet the thread is as impassable as
any fence.  Frank Orde, who loved Winifred with all his heart, used to
wonder sadly, as I have said, at the want of harmony between the two
women who were to him the best and dearest in the world.  Perhaps, if he
had but known it, here was a little unfolding of the riddle, a touch of
jealousy making the mother cold and sarcastic.  It was not much, but it
caused Winifred's life to be a little harder than it need have been, at
a time when it was hard enough, poor child!

She and Anthony met but seldom through the winter, for after that one
interview, which Winifred blamed herself for holding in tender
remembrance, they knew that it was better not to see each other more
than was necessary.  But when the spring came, the time when all
beautiful things seem possible, the burden weighed more heavily, and she
longed feverishly to hear that the marriage day was fixed.

Anthony, too, felt that the delay must not last much longer.  Ada could
not accuse him of having given her no time in which to make her
resolution, and these months of waiting seemed to be eating the heart
out of more lives than one.  Without coming to a determination
beforehand, he one morning obeyed a sudden impulse and started for
Underham to see Mr Bennett and let matters be set in train.

His mother went to the gate with him, where Nat Wills was at work,
putting in some plants which Mr Robert had sent over.  Anthony turned
round more than once to see her nodding at him, and smiling with happy
content.  As he passed through the village the little gardens were
bright with clumps of blue gentianellas, out of the midst of which
scarlet anemones blazed.  Inside the school the children were singing
and marching, and stamping merrily as they marched; the rooks were hard
at work, the air was full of sound: here was Anthony setting off to fix
his wedding-day.  They are sad hearts sometimes that go on what should
be the happiest errands.

He had scarcely got out of the village, however, when, to his surprise,
he saw Mr Bennett himself driving towards him.  He did not notice
Anthony until he was close upon him, and then pulled up suddenly.

"I was coming to Thorpe to see you, Miles," he said in an oddly
constrained voice.  "I suppose you are on the road to our house?"

"Yes, I am."

"Well, would you mind driving a mile towards Appleton with me instead?
I've some things I must talk over with you quietly, and should be glad
to feel secure from interruptions."

At any other time Anthony might have been struck with the contradiction
that after he had jumped into the dog-cart, Mr Bennett, instead of
plunging at once into his subject in his usual good-tempered, pompous
fashion, remained silent, and seemed to have a difficulty in beginning
the conversation.  But Anthony was too much absorbed in his own
difficulties to notice those of another, and the silence was too great a
relief for him to think it strange.

It troubled his companion, however, for he did not know how to break it,
and being a straightforward man, any roundabout course was very
unwelcome.  He looked over the hedge-rows on either side, at the fields
which, owing to a wann wet winter, had lost no vividness of green, at
the apple orchards nestling round the old thatched and weather-beaten
farms, at the less frequent patches where the blue green of the young
wheat contrasted with the red earth from which it sprang; but nothing
that he saw helped him to his purpose.

"There's been too much rain for the crops," he said at last, with a
sudden vigour as if this were the thought he had been maturing all the
while.  "At this rate everything will be washed up again.  I saw Fisher
at the turnpike,--you know Fisher?--and he detained me for at least
fifteen minutes talking over his grievances.  Otherwise I should have
met you nearer home."

"Fisher talks for a dozen people besides himself.  Mr Mannering is his
landlord, is he not?"

"Ah, yes, yes.  Mr Robert is a thoroughly upright man," said Mr
Bennett, vaguely.  "Never in my life saw any one so pleased as he was
when I took him out news of what that poor Stephens had said,--never.
Well, I was always certain something would set that matter straight."

"You at least acted as if it had never been crooked," Anthony said
warmly, at once.

"Don't say anything about it," said Mr Bennett, getting red and
uncomfortable.  "There's another thing I'm afraid is crooked, which--
which I'm ashamed to talk to you about, that's the long and short of it.
I never thought I could be driven to fence and shuffle over any
business as I've been shuffling now.  I'd sooner bite my tongue out than
tell it.  But there's the thing,--past my altering, and I've the shame
of it, if that's any comfort to you."

The man was speaking in short sharp sentences, as unlike as possible to
his usual genial rather over-familiar manner.  Some presentiment seemed
to seize Anthony, and his face grew hard.

"Well, what is it?" he said in the deep tone he sometimes used.

"I wouldn't have had this to tell you for half a years income."

"If it has to be told I can't see that any good can be caused by delay."

Certainly Anthony's manner was not encouraging.  "I only hope you will
exonerate me and her aunt," said Mr Bennett, nervously.

"Then it's about Ada?" said Anthony, after a moment's pause.

"I'm ashamed to say it is."

"Well?"

"It's anything but well.  Though I am her uncle, I do say she has
behaved disgracefully.  She says she did not know her own mind when she
accepted you, and that she has discovered she always cared for Adolphus
Warren.  His going away, she declares, opened her eyes--"

"You should give effects their right causes," said Anthony, in a low
bitter voice.  "Say the change in his position."

"I'm half afraid of it," said Mr Bennett, whipping the old grey in his
perturbation.  "What can I say?  Nothing can be worse.  It has cut us
both to the heart.  I utterly declined at first to tell you, I was so
ashamed; but she's had one fit of hysterics after another, until her
aunt is quite worn out; and, unpleasant as it was, I felt you ought to
be kept in ignorance no longer.  I've always thought she was so amenable
to what was right, but I'm really afraid nothing will move her."

"You need not fear my making the attempt," said Anthony, still in the
same tone.

"You've a right to hold her to her promise," said Mr Bennett,
unheeding.  "Of course you've a right, and so I told her.  But women are
such irrational beings, that I really believe sometimes their minds
can't grasp the obligation of a right.  You might bring an action
against her, for the matter of that.  I should not oppose it.  Any
possible reparation--"

"Do you suppose that would console me?" said Anthony, grimly.  "But I'll
tell you the whole truth, for you have behaved just as every one in the
neighbourhood would have expected from you.  It isn't pleasant for a man
to be kicked over at any time, but I had begun to think, from one or two
reasons with which I need not trouble you, that we had made a mutual
mistake.  I went so far one day as to tell Miss Lovell something of the
sort--"

"You did!" said Mr Bennett, facing round in wonder.

"And if she had known her own mind,--it was not so long ago as to make
that impossible,--it would have saved some unpleasantness."

"You don't feel it so much, then?" said Mr Bennett, not quite sure
whether he liked this or not.

"I imagine you would hardly begrudge me that alleviation?"

"O, certainly not, certainly not!  I'm exceedingly relieved to find the
blow not so heavy as we feared it might be.  Then I presume the
unfortunate affair may be allowed to drop as quietly as we can arrange
between us?"

"I shall not call out Warren, nor begin a lawsuit, if that is what you
mean.  As to the quietness, I have no doubt that by this time all
Underham knows that Miss Lovell has thrown me over."

"Confound Mrs Featherly!" muttered Mr Bennett, under his breath.

"Don't be uneasy.  In these cases it is always the rejected who is the
object of scorn.  Besides, is not Warren the heir to a baronetcy?"

"I don't know what you mean.  It was none of my seeking," said Mr
Bennett, hotly.

"Well, well, you should allow for a man's grimacing a little when he
finds himself in such an unexpected position.  Now, as the news has been
broken to me, and we are not on the way for anywhere so far as I am
concerned, I will jump out, and wish you good by."

Mr Bennett reined up the old grey so suddenly that he almost threw her
on her haunches.

"Good heavens, what am I about!" he said apologetically.  "This business
has quite upset me.  And I honestly tell you, Miles, I don't understand
your way of taking it.  In my days, if my wife had treated me so, I--I
should have cut my throat--though I'm sure I don't want you to do
anything so rash.  Still--"

Anthony had sprung into the road, and now was leaning over the wheel
with his arm against the dog-cart.  He said in a changed voice, "I can't
wonder that it should puzzle you.  I have been a puzzle to myself for a
long time past.  I doubt whether ever any one has managed to make so
many mistakes as I.  Don't blame Ada too much, I have been at least as
much in fault as she, and yet I want both you and Mrs Bennett to think
as kindly of me as you can.  Nothing can ever touch the remembrance of
your goodness."

He spoke with a strong feeling which brought Mr Bennett back to his
side in a moment.  He caught Anthony's hand, and began shaking it
vehemently.

"My dear fellow, you've behaved--I can't tell you how I think you've
behaved," he said, stopping only to begin again.  It was the greatest
possible relief to him that he might go home and tell his wife that
matters were all comfortably settled, and that they need not be angry
with Ada any more.

"Do you think so?" said Anthony, oddly.  He shook hands again to satisfy
Mr Bennett, and then drew back from the dog-cart.  The old grey, a
little affronted at her unaccustomed treatment, started off with a
snort.  Mr Bennett was looking back, and waving farewells so long as
the road kept Anthony in sight.  Overhead the clouds were parting, a
yellow sun shone out and struck the young glistening leaves, a blackbird
was whistling with clear beautiful notes; a great heap of weeds was
burning in a field close by where some boys were shouting.  Anthony
found himself noting everything, wondering idly, and shutting his mind's
door by that sort of compulsion which we have all of us in some measure
in our power.  When he could no longer do this, he set off, and walked
for half a mile as quickly as if he were walking a match.

That Ada should have treated him in this manner was the utmost
humiliation his pride could have endured, the more so because she had
bestowed upon him so many gentle flatteries, had been so soft and
yielding, so free from even the small reproaches for which he
acknowledged she might at times have had an excuse.  And the humiliation
became greater as he began to recollect past trifles which had been
forgotten, but which floated up to his remembrance now, as the flood
which sweeps away boundaries will bring to the surface little in
significant straws.  He recalled words and actions of Ada's throughout
their engagement; the manner in which she had quoted Mr Warren, who had
been too small a figure to make an impression on Anthony; the readiness
with which she accepted his society; he recollected that evening when he
had made his appeal to Ada, and had seen two dim figures coming towards
him under the trees, and her quick excuses.  He turned from himself with
a sick disgust as he realised how completely he had taken the false for
the true, the true for the false.  There was a terrible satire in his
life, or so it seemed to him when he thought of his old self-reliance,
and the end of it all.

Yet it must be allowed that, although this sting of humiliation was the
first dominant feeling in his mind, it quickly began to yield before the
relief with which he felt as if a long strain had suddenly relaxed.  He
stood still and stretched himself, flinging back his arms with a longing
to express this joy of freedom by some bodily action.  There was a gate
close by him which had fallen off its hinges; he set to work to put it
up again, labouring with a fire and vigour which was like an old
inheritance renewed, and afterwards leaning over it and looking from the
high ground on which he stood to the wooded fields below.  Where the
hedge dipped he could see the Thorpe cottages lying in rich brown
patches, the Hardlands' firs, white smote curling up from the house.
Ada and Mr Warren began to fade out of his mind like some blurred
unpleasant dream; Winifred grew into life, brown-haired Winifred looking
into his face with kind fearless eyes.  He stood irresolute, an impulse
which was as strong as it was sudden urging him.  How could he so
dishonour Winifred as to go to her at once, when but an hour ago he was
the accepted, lover of another woman!--and yet, how could he not go?
Even now he might be too late.  Something had been said of Frank Orde in
his hearing, against which his heart had leaped up with mute rage, but
now it was a whirl of fear which shook him.  It seemed as if all the
emotions he had been holding in check were ready instantaneously to
assert themselves, as if he could not endure another of those moments
which up to this hour had stretched themselves out before him in long
dull succession.  His looks went yearningly down to that spot from which
the smoke was curling easily upwards, and at last he jumped over the
gate, and went with long strides down the field towards Hardlands.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.

  "Comes a little cloudlet 'twixt ourselves and heaven,
  And from all the river fades the silver track;
  Put thine arms around me, whisper low, Forgiven,
  See how on the river starlight settles back!"

  Lord Lytton.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Anthony was looking down upon the fir-trees, there were two people
standing under them, and talking earnestly.  One of them was putting out
her hand and saying in a voice which was very sad and kind,--

"I believe I am a hundred years older than you, Frank.  Do people's
hearts go on getting older and older at this rate, I wonder?  I don't
seem to feel as if all that you are saying could be so.  Perhaps I am
beginning not to feel anything any more."

"Don't disbelieve me," Frank said eagerly.  "That is all I ask you,
Winifred.  Only try to believe how dearly I love you, and trust me, or
let me have time to show you."

She did not turn away from him, she did not even take away her hand
which he had clasped, and yet nothing in her attitude or in her eyes
seemed to have grown nearer to him during that moment in which they
stood so close to each other under the fir-trees, a little hidden from
the soft, warm sun.  Winifred stood as if she were thinking, but it
might have been of something outside herself, and with which she was
only concerned as a looker-on.  Her face was tenderly grave, but Frank
sought in vain for any glow which should answer his.  She was silent so
long, however, that at last he could bear it no longer, and said in a
voice which was all uneven and broken,--

"What do you say, Winifred?  You will not refuse me that one little
promise?"

She said immediately, looking into his face with unshrinking eyes,--

"Ah, Frank, it is because it is so little that I feel I dare not give
it.  Dear Frank, what are you offering me?--do you think I do not know
its worth?--and for all your heart you ask no more than just a little
dead sufferance.  You want to give everything, and to have nothing back
again."

"What you call nothing--" began Frank, flushing, but she interrupted him
quickly, with a new tone of pain in her voice.

"No, no,--why do we go on talking?--let us try to forget it all, let us
try to be dear friends always, but do not ask me to do you a wrong which
would make me hate myself."

Winifred might have been impetuously thrusting back something.  Perhaps
she was: perhaps she had a little secret, impatient longing to escape
somehow, anyhow, from the associations which imprisoned her.  Frank, who
knew all her little story, and knew no more than she who was coming at
that moment with swift steps across the dewy grass, looked at her, and
felt his heart sink, though he had not lost all hope.  He could wait a
lifetime, he thought, and patient waiting must gain her at last.  Just
then the little iron gate clicked as Anthony came through: he saw them
standing with clasped hands, saw Winifred look up, and turn away quickly
to the house.  Was his secret misgiving true?--was it too late, after
all?  He half stopped; but Frank had seen him, and was strolling towards
him.

The two men did not meet very cordially, but they went through the usual
conventionalities.

"So you're not off?" said Anthony.

Captain Orde, whose face was white, and whose hand was not quite so
steady as usual, took out his fusee-box and struck a light.

"No, I'm not off till to-morrow," he said, lighting his cigar slowly.
"Will you have a cigar?  I shall make one push for it to Colchester.  Do
you ever come that way?"

"Not nowadays.  Though I don't know where I shall find myself next.
Sometimes I think of travelling for a year or two."

"You don't mean just knocking about Europe?"

"No, _I_ should go farther afield."

Captain Orde gave him a quick, rather questioning glance, and walked on
silently.

"How will that agree with your other prospects?" he said at last.

"I have no particular prospects, as you call them," said Anthony,
shortly.  "If you mean the engagement in which I had the honour to be
concerned, it has come to an end."

"Does Winifred know this?"  Frank was asking very gravely in a moment.

"How should she?" said Anthony, angrily.  He was intending to speak
without excitement, but that little scene under the fir-trees danced up
and down before his eyes.  "You need not think that I shall tell her,"
he went on in hot tumult, "for probably at this time Miss Chester is too
much taken up with her own affairs to have thought to bestow upon those
of other people."

"Miss Chester is not going to marry me, if that is what you mean," said
Captain Orde, quietly.  "I have asked her--more than once--and now for
the last time."

He spoke in a dull strained voice.  For him there was neither charm nor
glory, only a dreary pain, a grey colourless sky.  Anthony was not
worthy of Winifred, but, alas, did he not know that she cared for him;
that she was at this very moment, perhaps, weeping for the helplessness,
the sadness of her love; that he, whose path must not touch hers any
more, might send her the light and joy for which she longed?  He did not
hear much of what Anthony was saying, until he found that he had left
him, and was making his way towards the house with quick, hopeful steps.
Frank, who was going up to the clump, stood still and watched.  It is a
little hard to run for a prize, and see it carried off by some one who
has never seemed to set his heart upon it.  When a man has struggled
neck and neck with you, it is easier to yield than to another who has
loitered carelessly, and yet comes up, and sweeps by with triumphant
ease.  Anthony was going to his victory, while Frank was left out in the
cold.  Yet, if there are failures out of which grow success, so also
there are defeats which bring rejoicing songs, though we do not hear
them yet, and all that reaches us is the sadness of sighing and the
weariness of tears.

Winifred was crossing the hall as Anthony Miles came in.  Mrs Orde had
caught her for some consultation about Bessie's masters, and she had
been obliged for a little while to make and answer indifferent remarks
while every nerve was on the strain, until she could bear it no longer,
and, escaping from the room, was, as I have said, just crossing the hall
when Anthony Miles came in.

There must be a world of subtile influences in the midst of which we
live, and which is not the least wonderful part of our existence.  As
he, seeing her, stood for a moment with the door in his hand, the pretty
lights and shades and trembling sunshine behind him, and his face so
much in shadow that it was impossible for her hasty, tearful glance to
read its expression, what strange joy sent a new thrill into her heart,
and quickened it with intensest life?  What swift movement of pity,
tender and womanly, went out to Frank with the touch of wondering
compassion for sorrows past so long ago, that since she had known of
them night had turned into day, winter into spring, perplexity into
contentment?  It all only lasted for a moment, but why had it been?
Anthony's own glow of eagerness died out of his heart as he came upon
her in that sudden fashion, looked at her standing in the delicate
light, and felt as if he could not say a word.  To them both that
instant seemed endless, and yet it was only an instant.

For then they came back to--realities, shall we say?  Anthony left the
sunshine and sparkling greens behind him, and walked into the hall where
Winifred was waiting and putting out her hand calmly.

"How is Mrs Miles?" she said, "Bessie was going to take the club books
to her this afternoon, for I am ashamed to say that we have kept them
two or three days beyond our time."

"What will Mrs Featherly do to you?" said Anthony, holding her hand in
his.

I do not think they were either of them conscious of what he was about.
Perhaps it is part of the mystery of that strange world of which I have
been speaking that there are states of feeling in which things that
would thrill us at other times come and go quite unnoticed, and both
Winifred and Anthony believed that they were cool and self-possessed,
and did not think that he had her hand in his.  Sniff, who had been in
wild pursuit of a rabbit, dashed in at this moment, and flung himself
down panting in a dark corner.

"Were you coming into the garden?" said Anthony.  "Will you come?"

Winifred remembered Frank, and flushed and withdrew her hand.

"I don't think I can," she said, shaking her head.  "I owe so many
letters that it quite frightens me to think about it."

"One day can make very little difference," urged Anthony.  "Pray come; I
have something to tell you."

She looked at him, and that first flash of conviction had so faded away
that her heart swelled with the thought, "He is come to tell me of their
marriage."  It did not cause her any surprise, but it made her hand
tremble as she took down her garden hat and went slowly out into the
sunshine.  Once there, she began to walk quickly, so that Anthony became
a little vexed by the idea that she wished to avoid listening to him.
The path was so narrow that he could not walk by her side, until
presently it led to a wider part where were some horse-chestnuts
bursting into leaf, and Winifred stood still and leaned over the iron
railings to coax an old pet pony of the Squire's.  It was one of those
soft bright growing days which are the most perfect in the world.
Things were thrusting themselves out, calling, answering.  Broken lights
fell tenderly on the delicate tints.  Sheets of pure blossoms swelled
round the farms; the air was full of young, hopeful scents, of dancing
insects; the grass was starred with innumerable daisies; a little troop
of lambs came rushing up from, the end of the field, and leaped away
again at sight of Sniff.  Does Arcadia come sometimes?--Have we all felt
it?  It was Anthony on whom it was smiling now while he looked at
Winifred, at her cheek a little turned from him, at the pretty curve of
her arm as she held out some leaves for the old pony to nibble.  As for
her, she was thinking of an Arcadia for him and for another.  And Frank,
who had got up to the clump by this time, and could just see the two
figures below him in the midst of all this peaceful greenery, thought
that Arcadia had already begun for them.  It looks like fairy-land to
those that are shut out, and still its loveliness is not enough to
satisfy us, little as we believe it.  There are sweeter countries yet,
though no outward beauty makes us long for them, and we see the dusty
feet of the pilgrims, and the sadness of the journey, while the smile
upon their hearts is hidden from us for a time.  Arcadia may lie on the
road, but it is not the end, and we may pass through other and harsher
ways, and yet meet those we love.  And up there under the trees were the
sweet breezes, and the sunshine, and the larks singing overhead.  Do not
fear.  There is no desolation in God's earth.

"You have not heard what I came to tell you," said Anthony, doubtfully.

The old pony's head was close to Winifred, and she was twisting his
white forelock round her fingers.  The words did not come easily with
which she wanted to assure him that she had guessed his errand, and at
last she spoke hastily, though with no disturbance in her voice.

"Is it that your marriage day is fixed?  If so you must let us wish you
joy."

"No, it is not that.  It is just the reverse," he said, with an
unreasonable feeling that Winifred ought to know and understand all at
once.  She looked round at him with quick surprise, but she did not
answer in any other manner, and he was obliged to go on.  "Miss Lovell
has changed her mind, and prefers marrying some one else."

"You are laughing!" said Winifred, flushing angrily.  "And it is not
kind.  You may suppose we care about it."

"But I am not laughing," said Anthony, in a low voice.  When she looked
at him, and saw that he was very grave, her hand began to tremble a
little.  He had become suddenly despairing with the conviction that it
was an impossible thing to say, "I was engaged this morning to another
woman, and yet I have always loved you;" he felt as if he dared not
treat her so, and yet that he could not leave her.

"I don't understand it," Winifred began to say slowly.  "Do you mean
that she has been so heartless and cruel?  O, I don't think so, it is a
mistake; you fancy things sometimes which people do not intend in the
least!  Have you been to Underham?  Have you seen Miss Lovell yourself?"

"I have seen Mr Bennett.  I assure you it was put in the plainest
possible English.  Young Warren is the lucky fellow."

Perhaps her anger was useful, as it occasionally is, in keeping off
other emotions.  She threw back her head, with a gesture she sometimes
used, a flush was on her cheek, and her eyes sparkled.

"How can you speak like that!" she said passionately.  "I hate that
people should pretend not to care for what hurts them.  Why can't you
let us be sorry for you?"

"Because I am not sorry for myself, Winifred," he said in a changed,
deep tone.  He took her hand in his, and held it close, and looked down
into her eyes.  "Because I have known for some time that the maddest
mistake I ever made in my life was when I asked Ada Lovell to marry me.
Because I feel as if a weight were lifted off my heart.  Because I can
breathe now, and live,--yes, and love,--I must say it, Winifred, my
darling--"

For she had caught back her hand, and was standing, drawn to her full
height, with her breath coming quickly, and no softening in her eyes.
The words fell away from his lips.  He, too, stood still and silent,
looking at her with a dreary sinking of his heart.  So this was the end.

"You are right," he said, quietly, in another moment.  "I ought to have
known better.  Well,--at least you will say good by?  Things don't
straighten themselves in the way we are fools enough to dream they will.
Good by, Winifred.  Come, you'll say good bye?"

He stood still for another minute, waiting, and a lark that had been
singing jubilantly overhead dropped swiftly down in a hush of tender
silence.  Winifred scarcely dared move, Anthony's tone heaped pain upon
her heart, tears rushed into her eyes, but she said "Good bye," putting
out her hand, at which he caught.

"No, it is not good by," he said suddenly.  "Why should I be sent away?"

There was a quick change in his voice which set a hundred conflicting
strings vibrating in her heart.  How dared he speak in such a tone, and
yet how dear it was!  His strong feeling was carrying her with it, but
she still found voice to say,--

"How can I know what you mean?  How can you be one thing one day and
another the next?"  But Anthony disregarded the reproach.  He said
eagerly, "If you don't love me, at least we are old friends; let us go
back to what we were, and begin again.  Don't you think if you were to
try very hard you might learn to like me a little bit, just a little
bit?"

"I cannot learn to like you," said Winifred, simply, "because we have
always liked each other, and there can be no beginning again."  She said
this very quietly, and then suddenly broke down.  "O Anthony, Anthony,"
she said, covering her face with her hands, "you have made it so
difficult!"

And then she was in his arms.  She had never consented, and yet he held
her close to him.  "My darling," he said under his breath, "can you
forgive me?"

Forgive him?  Ah, yes, she loved him, and love will lavish forgiveness
with a free hand, and a sweet joy in the bounty of its giving.  If it
were not so, how would it be with any of us?  Was there ever such a
moment,--so rich, so tender?  And yet there must be better things, or
Frank would not have been up there under the clump alone, there would
not be so many sad hearts in the world, David Stephens would not have
been lying under the grass.

Well, we shall know it all one day.

Very little has been said of late touching Marmaduke and his wife, the
truth being that there is very little to say.  They lived what must be
called a prosperous life; at least, if there were any signs of
disturbance in the midst of it, they were not such as became apparent to
their neighbours.  It was sometimes said that Mrs Lee was cold and
distant, even with her husband, and that her looks had changed since her
marriage, but her ill health was supposed to account satisfactorily for
this, and nothing ever reached the ears of the outer world which could
make it suppose that they were not a happy couple.  Miss Philippa lived
with them, by Mrs Lee's especial request, and there could be no doubt
of her happiness.  But no children were born, and rumour declared, how
truly it is impossible to say, that, after Mr and Mrs Lee died, their
money would be bequeathed to a great London charity.

Anthony's first attempt to find Margaret Hare's husband and child had
been checked by the despondency with which he had been visited when his
world had lost its faith in him; but under a new spring of energy, he
and Mr Robert were soon able to track the wanderers in Australia.  Some
of the circumstances were communicated to the father; he, however,
utterly rejected all old Mr Tregennas's intentions as a too late
atonement.  He was wealthy, and there was but one girl, and the certain
hard determination which had carried him up in the struggle for
existence now made him obstinately resolute against accepting his
father-in-law's money.

Anthony, Winifred, and their children live in London, but are often in
Thorpe, where there are both living and dead to draw them, besides its
own quiet and tender beauty.  Anthony's life was, perhaps, too soon
filled with the things it wanted to admit of its ever becoming great in
the manner in which people talk of greatness.  But it is an exceedingly
active and useful life, in the course of which he has made war upon more
than one hydra-headed monster, and that with a success of which he often
said his wife ought to share half the praise.  She used to smile when
she heard this, thinking of the many things which had helped her
champion, besides her happy love.  And, indeed, the influences that
mould our lives are often scarcely known to ourselves, and come from as
many sides as the winds that sweep the earth.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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