CHAPTER I A JOURNEY TOWARDS THE SUNSET

The train had been rushing westward for hours, and the genius of the steam-kettle who drove it along was plainly intent neither on the landscapes that in momentary glimpses might be seen from the carriage-windows, nor on the babble of conversation which, in fitful gusts, rose and fell among the company it was bearing to their several destinies. All that the scientific, yet not time-keeping, demon cared for was to reach his last station by the shortest route. Nevertheless, glimpses of scenery caught in this way from the train have an extraordinary fascination, sometimes giving a whole country-side in one vivid sheet of lightning, where every line is fixed as in a daguerreotype and can never be forgotten. And what confessional or ear of Dionysius can gather up such confidences as may be heard among chance people in railway travelling? It would seem that the silent Briton, fenced round about with reserve as with Arctic icebergs, [] fancies himself stranded on a desert island with the companion who has got into his compartment at Basingstoke or Rugby. Certain it is that he is apt, after exhibiting the most profound indifference for his vis-à-vis , to unbosom himself under such circumstances, as Robinson Crusoe would have done to the first Englishman landing on Juan Fernandez. And, as it fell out, the spirit of the steam, or any other, might have witnessed a scene of this kind, had he crept into a certain first-class carriage and lain snug in a corner thereof, watching until a couple of young men who were its occupants should awake from their slumbers.

Each had taken his ticket at the same ticket-office; each had made for the same compartment, and had established himself in a corner diagonally as regarded the other. Each had veiled his features behind a newspaper, and tried his best to imagine that the impudent fellow who shared his solitude did not exist. And each hoped to see the other take himself off when the train stopped. But in vain; it was not to be. One station after another was left behind; the country grew more countrified; the towns became of less account; the clouds began to move slowly towards the west, as though summoned to attend the last moments of a dying king who would shroud his head in their splendours; the hours drew out to twice their length, as they will do in travelling, and still no sign appeared of these unwilling companions parting from one another. When they had studied their fill of the daily wisdom purchased at the London bookstall, [] each glared out of his window, noted what seemed notable along the line, fixed his eyes steadily —upon nothing, and at last, drawing back his head, fell into uneasy sleep. And the train rushed on. Its genius might have fallen asleep too, and have been travelling in his dreams, for all the tokens of life in this compartment. Then the sun's light came more slanting, and the train seemed to be moving ever more and more into its pathway, as if in time it would leave the solid earth behind and on its wings of white vapour float into the sunset and be there transfigured among the cloud-splendours. And as the light filled their compartment, both young men woke up. That one of them who had been sitting by the dark windows of the carriage, away from the sun, changed his corner, and came and sat opposite the other. He was desirous, apparently, of catching a glimpse of the sea, which for more then an hour the train had been nearing, as the dull thunder of waves on a shingly beach, somewhere below, had testified. Being in such close neighbourhood, with only a foot or so of space between them, it would have been incumbent on any except British railway-travellers to exchange some civil speeches. Perhaps that may have been the reason why one of them, who did not look entirely English, at last, after some hesitation, opened his lips and said (but still with the haughty indifference which young Englishmen assume towards those to whom they have not been introduced), 'Is the next station Yalden?'

'No; the next but one,' answered his vis-à-vis , sinking thereupon into stony or, as a Greek might express it, adamantine silence.

The next station appeared, paused a moment, vanished, and a reach of wild country came flying at the carriage-windows. The first speaker looked at his watch, and began again. 'The train is due at Yalden now,' he said; 'we are late.'

'Yes,' said the other, 'nearly half an hour late; trains always are on this part of the line.'

The ice was broken, or rather, part of the iceberg gave way. A remark about Bradshaw, another to the effect that the tide was coming in, a third suggesting that it would be a stormy night to judge by the clouds, led to the first speaker's asking, as he looked once more out of the carriage-window, 'Do you know whether Trelingham Court is far from Yalden?' Now was the time for any hidden, curiosity-loving sprite in the down train to prick up his ears and listen.

'Trelingham Court?' said the other in an inquiring tone. 'Why, about six miles if one is a stranger; under six, a good deal, taking the short cut by St. Mirian.'

And as he looked across at his companion with more attention than before an idea seemed to strike him as possible, which in a moment or two must have grown from possible to probable, for he said:

'Excuse me, sir, perhaps you are going to Trelingham.'

'Yes,' answered the other; 'that is my journey's end.'

'And mine,' said his questioner. 'How very odd!' He added, after a pause, and with considerable diffidence, 'I am very likely going to ask an absurd question, but I happened to see a portrait in this year's Academy of which you strongly remind me, and my cousin pointed it out as—'

The first speaker interrupted him courteously. 'My name,' he said, 'is Rupert Glanville, and a portrait of me there certainly was, hung rather too near the sky-line, on those much-enduring walls. But you must have observed it closely to see a likeness between it and a chance traveller on the railway.'

'I was about to remark,' said the other, 'that my cousin pointed it out as that of the artist who was coming down to Trelingham to paint the Great Hall. Else, I know so little of art matters that I should hardly have remembered it.'

'Your cousin said so, did he?' asked Mr. Glanville with an accent of surprise. 'I thought no one—'

'It was not he,' said the other, laughing; 'it was she. Not my cousin, Lord Trelingham, but his daughter, Lady May, who was inspecting the pictures that afternoon with other young ladies, and made some of us fellows walk in her train.'

'Ah,' said Mr. Glanville, 'I have never met Lady May Davenant; and I thought, I imagined, that only Lord Trelingham knew what was proposed. Until I [] have seen the Great Hall, and heard his plans more in detail, I cannot tell whether anything will come of it, so far as I am concerned. That is why I am now on my way to Trelingham Court.'

'Oh,' said the Earl's cousin, or Lady May's cousin,—but I think Lady May's cousin sounds the prettier, the more sentimental, as introducing this young gentleman (he seemed about twenty), who should of course, were mine not a story of real life, be our first or second lover, and devoted to the Earl's daughter,—'my cousin made no secret of it, and I suppose her father made none. And though I am such an ignoramus that I don't know one style of painting from another, I remembered your portrait all the more because a great deal was said about you manner —isn't that the word? If I understood Lady May, it is quite unlike what they supposed Lord Trelingham would have chosen. They were all loud in its praise; but they seemed to agree, or all except Lady May, that you,—that, in short, there was a deal of Paganism in your pictures. Is that so?'

'Quite, I should fancy,' said Mr. Glanville, much amused at the courteous bluntness, or blunt courtesy, of this young man, to whom painting was clearly a far-off mystery, like Chinese chess. 'Paganism would be the word for it in the Earl's entourage . For he himself is by no means a Pagan.'

'I should think not ,' said the other emphatically; 'not at all a pagan, unless Ritualists are Pagans. But that was the wonder. For, of course, he will not [] want painting all round him in which he cannot believe.'

'That is just it,' replied Mr. Glanville; 'you have hit the nail on the head. Lord Trelingham does not want pictures in which he cannot believe. He is no artist; but of all the men I have come across he has the finest sense of what is genuine art and what is mere make-up and pretence. He went to certain well-known masters and asked them how they would paint the Epic of king Arthur; and they designed, every man of them, and impossible boudoir idyll, a medieval dream, in the style of Tennyson. He looked round for some one that professed, at all events, to paint realities; and I know how astonished he was on finding the "paganism" of my canvases more real than the "dim rich" Christianity of Launcelot and Guinevere in the Laureate's blank verse. So we are going to make trial whether I can paint the Arthurian history as it must have happened, if it happened at all.'

To this learned speech the Earl's cousin made no reply, perhaps because he did not understand it. About epics, classical or medieval, Homeric or Arthurian, he never had troubled himself since he left school; and there he cared only for the fighting in the Iliad, in which he would have liked to join. Poetry meant less to him even than painting; but he did not lack brains, and he said by and by:

'Lord Trelingham is fond of art, but I always fancied he mixed it up with religion. He is ever so [10] High Church, and such a Tory that I heard him say once there were none left but himself and Lord Hallamshire. Shall you put all that into your King Arthur? For unless you do, he will not know what to make of it.'

'I may,' said Mr. Glanville; 'who knows?' And he laughed as if the suggestion had roused his fancy. 'King Arthur was certainly High Church, and the Round Table a brotherhood of Tory knights. But Lord Trelingham is many things besides a Ritualist. He is an excellent art-critic; and when he came to my studio he talked much of colouring and gradation of tone, without a syllable of religion.'

'He is certainly, as you remark,' said the other, 'not one man, but several—half a dozen, perhaps. For instance, when you see him at home, you will take him by his dress for—what do you think?' Mr. Glanville could not say.

'No, of course, no one could guess. But with his long velvet coat reaching below his knees, his skullcap, and flowing white beard, he might very well pass in a play for some sort of astrologer. And the curious thing, as you will find, is that he has been given that way, and practises now occasionally.'

'Astrology and Ritualism,—a strange mixture!' said Mr. Glanville; 'how does he reconcile them?'

'Beyond me to say,' replied the Earl's cousin; 'but he does. He will probably draw your horoscope if you can tell him the day, hour, and minute when you were born, and whether the room in which [11] you first saw the light, as he calls it, looked east or west.'

Mr. Glanville's lip curled scornfully. 'He will not draw my horoscope,' he said; 'has he drawn yours?'

'I believe so,' answered the other; 'but what is to befall the unlucky Tom Davenant nobody knows, for it is apparently something too terrible, and my cousin has locked up the prediction and never speaks of it.'

A pity if anything should befall him, let me tell the reader, for Tom Davenant, as he sat there with the fun breaking out at the corners of his mouth, was a marvellously good-looking fellow, well-made in every limb, tall and broad-shouldered, with a face so clear and open that to see him was to like him. The artist, since their conversation began, had been scanning with his practised eye the almost too delicate features of this young English Apollo, meaning hereafter to translate him into his own realm of paganism, putting a little more mind into the great blue eyes (there was enough in the mobile lips), and surrounding him with the graceful Hellenic forms to which, in spite of his modern garb, he was manifestly akin.

'An Apollo,' said Mr. Glanville to himself, 'much exercised at the silver bow—that is to say, in slaying birds and beasts, fox-hunting and hare-hunting, but destitute of lute and learning, and very shy of the Muses.' And he went on with his mental portraiture.

I wonder what Tom Davenant would have made [12] of these reflections had his companion uttered them. He was not conscious in the least of the beauty Nature had given him, and thought fishing, hunting, and boating were the only business a man had in life, with smoking for a relaxation. He was a perfectly beautiful, healthy, guileless, and good-tempered youth, fond of every beast he did not kill. But as for Apollo and his lute, he preferred a good fowlingpiece to all the lutes in the world. And he was not exactly shy of the Muses, if Mr. Glanville meant thereby feminine society; but he thought them uninteresting. Whether he cared for Lady May the uneven tenor of this chronicle must show.

The train was stopping at Yalden, a steep, scrambling, irregular village that came stumbling down the red sandstone cliff as though it had meant, in a frenzied or heroic mood, to plunge straight into the sea, but had been pulled up at the last moment and was now unable to get back again. But the sea dealt kindly with it, not suffering trees to grow indeed, and often sending great sheets of spray high up into its face, yet tempering the air and encouraging the fuchsias and rhododendrons to flourish plenteously in the open, so that when our travellers arrived the village was all colour, fragrance, freshness, its houses embowered in the exquisite long creeping plants which knew how to shield themselves from the sea-wind, and the red sandstone glowing, as the rays of sunset kindled it, like a heavy purple cloak flung carelessly on the ground. The [13] waters were restless under a freshening breeze, thin lines of foam stretching themselves along and curling back as they touched the sands, which at this point make a shelly, narrow, and undulating beach. A little way beyond the village, where the sandstone yielded to some harder and more primitive rock, might be seen a tiny creek hemmed in by huge cliffs, under which, brawling and defiant, rushed one of those short, swift rivers that delight in quarrelling with every stone they meet and fall into the sea all foam and trouble. It was the Yale, from which Yalden takes its name; and its brief journey began on the moor above. There, too, the railway paused, shareholders not being in love with steep gradients and preferring to economise their resources, while the one or two small inns of Yalden added to theirs by sending flys to meet passengers on alighting.

Mr. Tom Davenant had telegraphed that he might be looked for by such a train, and as he and Mr. Glanville leaped on the platform they saw the Earl's brougham awaiting them. With windows down and the carriage going at a good pace over the moor, it was a pleasant evening drive; though Tom Davenant would have preferred riding, which was to him, as to an Usbeg Tartar, the natural way of getting from one place to another. He had talked a great deal for him, being of a silent and self-contained disposition, in the last half-hour of their journey; and he was not sorry that Mr. Glanville left him to his thoughts as they drove along. The artist, indeed, [14] was no more inclined to speak than the hunting-man by his side. He was all eye, gazing out upon the rolling moor which unfolded itself before them, now up, now down, seemingly boundless, except in one direction where the sky bent over it to the western waters, fringing it in this light with a golden line that never wavered, while on the wide waste there lay a stillness, intensified by the dying murmur of the sea they were leaving behind. And here again the red sandstone glowed purple, the heather looked glorious as the rain of sunshine fell upon it, the clouds grew more solemn and appeared to be drawing together, trailing after them fiery streamers, and leaving wide spaces of tender pale green vapour, which would melt later on into the dark blue of the evening sky and make room for the stars. Strange, too, it was to see the lonely boulders, each like a ghost standing in his place on the moor, brought thither in the long past time when a river of ice travelled over it, one knows not how, one cannot reckon when, grinding its slow way onward till it slipped into the ocean, leaving these tokens that once it had been. There were dips full of verdure and flowering shrubs, reaches of bare sand, and, as the road bent down and away from the sea, a dark copse or two, sheltered, as on a lee shore, by the higher ground, to whose sides they clung timorously. As the carriage turned a steep corner and began to ascend again, Glanville perceived that they were entering a narrow valley, which widened as it went up to the moor by easy steps, [15] and was clothed to the right with underwood which the sun had now ceased to illuminate, while to the left all was heath and furze. They were entering the Park. They passed one gate and then another; above the trees, which here found no difficulty in growing, came out the turrets of a great house. A few more minutes brought the carriage to the broad gravel sweep of a terrace facing south-west, along which ran the massive undecorated front of Trelingham Court; and the Earl himself, who was walking to and fro as if in expectation of his guests, came forward to meet them. He gave each a hand, and bade the artist welcome.

Lord Trelingham certainly bore out his cousin's half-mocking description of him as 'an astrologer in a play'; neither white beard, nor velvet gown, nor skull-cap was wanting. He wore on his little finger an amethyst inscribed with Solomon's seal; and his wrinkled, tawny face, dim eyes, and lean, tremulous figure heightened the effect, making him altogether like a man who had stepped down out of a picture and was taking his evening walk, regardless of the fact that he had been buried and his portrait counted among the family heirlooms for a couple of centuries. He was not so tall as his young cousin, but had an air of dignity which softened to the utmost good-nature when the shyness or embarrassment of others called it forth. As he stood on the terrace, enjoying the prospect and pointing out the way they had come to Glanville, the artist could not help admiring the [16] beautiful old man, and asking himself whether immense wealth and high rank always did spoil human goodness, as is commonly said. Here was an unspoiled rich man, one of the great ones of the earth, yet so gentle and unaffected that to live with him would imply neither time-serving nor ceremonious posture-making. It might, however, involve superstitious practices, if the Earl were bent on winning disciples to astrology. And Glanville, who had a lively fancy, began to smile at a Burke's Peerage recorded in the stars.

They went in, passing through the Great Hall which was to be the scene of Glanville's achievements. It was a magnificent room, opening straight on the terrace, and designed for the solemn banquets of former days, when a man feasted his tenants and neighbours at the same tables and counted his guests by the hundred. It was lighted from above, but at the farther end an immense window reaching from floor to ceiling gave a view of the inner court, with its lawn and fountain now in shadow, and a screen of dark foliage, the beginning of an extensive plantation. Trelingham Court was built in collegiate fashion, sheltering its woods from the sea, and sheltered by then in turn from the north-east. 'In half an hour.' said the Earl; 'we shall dine, but in a less formal dining-room;' and he left Glanville in the butler's charge. That stately gentleman, it is needless to observe,was though perfectly well-bred, much more ceremonious than his master. He perpetuated [17] in a lower sphere what one has heard of the manners of la vieille cour , that Versailles the graces of which must have been hopelessly lost during the French Revolution but for such fortunate survivals. In this diginfied way Glanville was shown to an apartment overlooking the front terrace, and giving views of the broken and rock-strewn line of coast, beyond which the waters spread out in a golden sheet. The sun was sinking, clear and ruddy, on their extreme edge. It was an hour to muse or write verses rather than to dine. But the great British evenign sacrifice called for its votary, and Glanville proceeded to attire himself in the garb of blackness appropriate thereto.

CHAPTER II SIBYLLINE MUSIC

On entering the drawing-room he found some ten or twelve persons, of whom he knew none but his host, standing about in the mournful way which seems to have been prescribed by a Plutonian master of ceremonies for the minutes preceding dinner. Every one was hungry, and even the ladies looked pensive or distracted, for the hour was late. Glanville had no gift of taking in a company at a glance; he was led forward blindly, introduced to Lady May Davenant, who presided over her father's household (for the Earl was a widower), and whose face, as she was standing with her back to the light, he could scarcely see,—bowed submissively to another lady whose name he did not catch, but to whom he offered his arm with the readiness required of him, dinner being that instant announced; and moved on to the dining-room not unwillingly, for all the romantic scene of lights upon the sea which curtains now shut out and [19] the flowers and subdued lamps of a dinner-table replaced.

Dazzled though he often was on coming into a room, Glanville had quick eyes and ears. When, in Homeric phrase, his mind was getting the better of its desire of meat and drink,—in other words, when an excellent soup and a glass of old sherry left him philosophically calm and capable of observation,—he looked across the ferns and surveyed the assembled guests at his leisure. Mr. Tom Davenant, who had followed him into the drawing-room, was now sitting opposite by the side of a clerical-looking lady whose partner in life was not far to seek; for the only clergyman present (he had said grace, but of course Glanville did not hear him) at that moment drew all eyes by remarking in a cheerful voice to the Earl that his two volumes of the Life of King Arthur would be out to-morrow. Glanville, a little alarmed at the announcement, earnestly scrutinised the speker's countenance. It was a bright, good humoured face, betokening no malice, and made veneable by the crown of white hair which set off a noble-looking head. Lord Trelingham, however, replied that Mr. Truscombe's work could not have appeared at a better time; it would no doubt help Mr. Glanville to more vividly reproduce the local colouring which their frescoes in the Great Hall would demand. Mr. Truscombe was the clergyman of the parish, expressly invited to meet the artist on the ground of his being learned beyond all others in British antiquities, and [20] already famous by his great book on the holy wells of Cornwall and Cumbria. Glanville received this piece of news with a polite air, but inwardly began to chafe at the appearance of King Arthur and British antiquities during dinner. No one could be more sensitive, or less given to the jargon of his trade than he. So sensitive, indeed, was the man, that he had not yet overcome his vexation on hearing from Tom Davenant that the Earl had spoken of him as 'the artist who was to paint the Great Hall.' He did not know that he should paint it. One thing was certain: if he undertook the design he must be left to his own inspirations, or it would be a failure. He had hoped to come down as an invited guest with no preliminary flourish of trumpets, to meditate upon the work in solitude, alone with Art, his unseen mistress; and here was a whole dinner-table ready perhaps to ask him, 'What were his ideas?' or, worse still, to brings out their own by way of suggestion. Glanville was a fiery, shy, unmanageable spirit, quite beyond Lord Trelingham's comprehension. The Earl could not have dreamt what thoughts were passing through his mind at the mention of Mr. truscombe's King Arthur and the short discussion to which it gave rise. For an instant the design which had brought Glanville from London was in danger. He had more than once started at the shadow of interference and flung his work aside. Could he but have done so now! Innocent Mr. Truscombe would then have proved himself the Deus ex machina , the divine agency that [21] cuts an otherwise insoluble knot and gives the tragic story a happy ending,—or rather, in this case, the tragedy would never have begun. But no, the personages of the play, on the very point of falling asunder and going out by their several exits, were drawn once more by invisible threads into a fated group. Glanville mastered, though not without an effort, the spasm of rage that had seized upon him. At clever evasions he was skilful; and, while he took care that there should be no talk of King Arthur that evening, so far as he was concerned, only a very keen observer would have known how angry the allusion had made him. It was an evil omen. Instead of the 'auspicious bird' with which he had hoped to begin, he felt as if a raven or other illboding visitant were flapping its wings over the painted scene in which already his imagination was roving.

Conversation at the Earl's end of the table floated to a fresh topic. Another voice struck in, that of Lord Hallamshire, one of his oldest friends, and, like himself, devoted to the interests of the catholicising party in the Church of England. Lord Hallamshire presided at meeting innumerable for the adoption, defence, or further strengthening of the eastward position; visited the confessors of the faith in prison; subscribed handsomely to missionary efforts for explaining to the natives of the Andaman and neighbouring islands the exact difference between a cope and a chasuble; and was a large, good, dull man, [22] with heavy brows and an immovable countenance. His enormous nose, as I have often observed in persons of Lord Hallamshire's type, indicated solidity rather than sagacity, and a firm grasp of the prosaic side of things. He was now, after some floundering about, holding straight on in an account of what had been acccomplished by the Guild of St. Austell to get the orders of the English Church fully recognised by their Eastern brethren. Their success with the Catholicus of babylon, so far, had been all they could wish.

'The Catholicus of Babylon!' said Glanville, who had recovered his good-humour; 'is that the same as the Pope of Rome?'

Tom Davenant looked at the Earl and broke into a very pleasant smile. But Lord Trelingham, who had no sense of the ludicrous, replied with much gravity, 'The same as the Pope of Rome! Oh dear, no! I see your mistake, which was quite natural. It is true that St. Peter dates an epistle from Babylon which our brethren of the Western Obedience interpret as Rome. But the Catholicus is independent of Rome, like our own archbishop. He sits in the place of St. —' He hesitated, trying to remember the name.

'St. Daniel?' inquired Tom Davenant, to the Earl's consternation, who became yet more confused and quite at a loss. The young man continued innocently, 'I know I learnt some poetry at school about Babylon where Daniel comes in as a sort of bishop. It began— "'Belshazzar gave a feast at Babylon in his hall.'"

'Be quiet, Tom,' said lady May, from the end of the table. 'You might at least quote accurately. You have spoilt the rhythm of the verse.' Then, turning to her father, 'St. Paphnutius is the name,' she said.

Glanville, who had not observed Lady May hitherto, looked at her in amazement. It was rude, but how could he help it? Was she an embodied dictionary of ecclesiastical worthies,—a blue-stocking, thus to hand her father a name like Paphnutius as unconcerned and gracefully as though it were a cup of tea? What was her age? She seemed six or seven-and-twenty; yes, it was the period when ladies began to do these things. He disliked learned women; they seemed to him unfeminine, the most beautiful thing in the world spoilt. And so he looked too steadfastly at Lady May. She might have noticed, had not the younger lady whom Glanville had taken into dinner, and who had been hitherto very quiet, added to the bizarre effect of Daniel and Belshazzar by remarking, 'My dear May, I met this very Catholicus of Babylon, who has said such civil things of your church, last week in Paris, at Madame de Mont-Bazeille's. An extraordinarily handsome man, of about thirty-six. He has a face like a statue, and the darkest of dark eyes. But his beard was not so long as I expected. His costume was splendid,—a kind of Oriental satin, of which even Worth does not know the name, for I asked him. And charmingly made up with a ruche, you know, of strange old lace. I daresay it [24] cost a fortune. Monseigneur Sidarlik they called him.'

'That is the name,' said Lord Hallamshire; 'it is odd you should have met him in Paris. His letter to the Guild was dated Constantinople.'

'Oh, he came on account of the slave-trade,' said the lady. 'I heard why, but it has gone out of my head.'

'Doubtless,' said Lord Trelingham in his gentle voice, 'it was to ask the French Government whether they could not stop the importation of slaves into Syria. I hope he succeeded in his benevolent mission.'

'I remember now,' said the young lady; 'no, it was very amusing. Monseigneur Sidarlik came to consult a great firm in Paris which gives young girls a dot ,—what are they called? Ah, yes, the Prix Montyon de l' Orient ; they send them to the East, and by way of Armenia to Russia, where they marry into the households of our great nobles. The Catholicus is their agent in his part of the world; and the number exported had fallen off, and he came to make fresh arrangements. We were all so much amused at the idea of going to Asia for a husband.'

Lord Trelingham looked aghast. 'My dear Countess,' he said, 'you must be mistaken. This is dreadful. The Catholicus would never engage in such proceedings; he is perfectly orthodox. You must have heard the wrong story.'

Lord Hallamshire thought so too. The Countess [25] shrugged her shoulders and did not argue the point; but she held her own opinion. Whether, indeed, she were maligning a blameless prelate, or casting a powerful side-light on the manners and customs of Babylonian Christians, in any case, the subject became too difficult to dwell upon. Lady May inquired of Tom Davenant what he had been doing. He bethought himself of the remarkable meeting with Glanville, and drew the artist into the conversation; and the Earl's daughter, though her sentences were brief, and she guided their talk rather than shared in it, kept them off the dangerous themes of painting and religion. Her expression, while she thus fulfilled the duties of her place, was somewhat fatigued. She wore an air of listlessness. But her lips were proud and firm; and Glanville found himself comparing her voice to the sound of a harp. It was a rich contralto, full of depth and resonance, which gave the commonest words a feeling. What she spoke was not trivial, but it could not be intimate, uttered across a dining-table; yet there was something,—there was a story to make out, Glanville fancied, though he could not have said why. If she were a blue-stocking, then blue-stockings might be wonderfully impressive. Lady May rose, and the gentlemen fell into politics when they were left to themselves. But Glanville sat considering. He was haunted by the look and still more by the voice of his hostess.

She was not exactly beautiful—or was she? The features were regular, the eyes dark and full; cheek [26] and throat of a ruddy brown, and hair as black as night. There was intelligence in the forehead, and a proud decision in her movements. Yet in those dark eyes was a far-off look, uncertain, questioning, in the closed lips a habit of self-repression. Could it be that she was unhappy? passionate she seemed by temperament, inclinning to despise those about her. And the voice again,—'fire and sweetness,' he said to himself. 'Am I falling in love?' he concluded, with and inward smile. But he was glad when the Earl invited them to join the ladies. He wanted to hear the harp-like tones, to study the character a little more.

He was fortunate. The windows of the drawing-room opened on the terrace; and a mild evening, with the moon making daylight all over the land and shimmering softly out at sea, drew them into the open air. It was not a formal party. Except Glanville, they were all old acquaintance; and Mr. and Mrs. Truscombe were, that night, staying like the rest at Trelingham. Tom Davenant went away to smoke with the clergyman; the others fell into little groups; and lady May, in her quality of hostess, came to Mr. Glanville where he stood with the Earl, and inquired whether he found his room comfortable. Her father turned to her, 'Thank you so much, my dear,' he said, 'for helping me to the name of St. Paphnutius. What a wonderful memory you have! I cannot remember names at all, and it gets one into such difficulties when one has to make a speech. But you never forget them.'

'It is easier,' said Lady May gently, 'to remember a name for you, papa, even if it is so out of the way as Paphnutius than to see you in trouble over it.'

'So,' thought Glanville, 'she is not a church dictionary after all; she is only an affectionate daughter. I am glad of it.'

Just then Lord Trelingham was called away. The artist found himself alone with the lady, and was not a little surprised when, after a pause of a moment or two, she began, 'I fear Mr. Truscombe's new book will not be so agreeable to you as to the good man himself. It is a pity the publication should occur just whem you are designing your plans for the great Hall.'

Glanville could only say in some confusion, 'Really, I don't know. Why do you think so? Perhaps I did not show sufficient interest in the Life of King Arthur . I hope I was not in any way rude to Mr. truscombe?'

'Oh no,' said Lady May; 'but there was something you did not like. My father is the most considerate of men, and admires art and artists. But he does not quite, I think, enter into the nture of their work; he does not know that inspiration is easily checked. He would fancy that you and mr. Truscombe might, to some extent, combine your gifts in the decoration on which he has set his heart. But if I understand—perhaps I do not—the quality of your painting, I should think it impossible for you to do so. And I saw you were annoyed.'

'Well,' said Glanville, half ashamed of himself, 'I was. I may not have any inspiration to boast of; and no doubt Mr. Truscombe could teach me about the local colour. But I have always worked alone, and a partner would be unendurable to me. At least,' he continued, with a sort of laugh, 'there is only one from whom I ask advice, and I seldom take it then.'

'He must be a man of genius,' said Lady May, not sarcastically, but as if she really thought so, 'for your painting has so much that is peculiar. I cannot imagine two minds, much less two pairs of hands, engaged in it.'

The artist felt astonished; had this lady studied his works closely? And why was her admiration so unreserved? He answered:

'My friend does not paint, but he knows all that has been done in painting, and everything else, I think. His advice, like that of the demon of Socrates, is chiefly negative. But it is the serverest criticism; it takes down the studio walls and lets in the sun.'

'How very interesting!' cried Lady May; 'and is he known? Has he written anything?'

'Not a line. He is quite unknown, and will never be famous.'

They fell into silence. The Earl did not return. His daughter, as if absorbed in thought, looked out over the moor towards the distant sparkle of the waves. At last she said again, 'I wonder by what secret association it is that one thinks of rain and [29] storm on such an evening as this? There is not a cloud to be seen.'

'And are you thinking of rain and storm?' said the artist.

'My imagination, I suppose I must call it, has been whispering to me of rain since we came on the terrace. Rain, coming down soft and steady, without a moment's pause; and the wind sighing through it, yet not blowing it away. It is strange that fancy should play these tricks. What is the association with a still landscape and radiant moon?'

'Contrast,' said Glanville; 'if we only knew why contrasts suggest each other, or why extremes meet. It is too deep a philosophy. But,' he went on slowly, 'there is something in your description of dark rain and wind that reminds me of I know not what musician; of some one who has put into his composition the voice of a long-continued, hopeless, weeping tempest, which sobs as though it would fain hush itself to sleep and could not.'

'Oh,' said Lady May, looking pleased, 'have you those feelings when you hear music? Do you translate it into figures of people moving, scenery, a sense that you are journeying on and on into unknown lands? I am constantly doing so.'

'And I, too,' replied he; 'but in my fanciful accompaniment there are always battles. mighty conflicts upon which the fate of the world seems to hanf. Yes, it was a movement of Chopin's that you described, the very spirit of the rain moaning to [30] itself secretly. Do you play? You may have the music.'

'Yes, I play,' said the lady, 'and there are many of Chopin's works in the drawing-room.' She turned and looked towards it. No lights were visible. The moon made a great square of silver where it shone in at the long windows opening to the ground.

'Then,' said Glanville, 'let me ask you to lay the rain-spirit with Chopin's nocturne. Let it weep itself to death on the piano.'

They walked towards the entrance; and as they were going in the Countess joined them. 'May,' she said, 'are you going to play? I want you to choose something that will take the moonlight out of my eyes. It has made me quite sleepy; and you must wake me up.' And she threw herself with the look of a tired child on a sofa near the open window.

'No, karina,' replied Lady May; 'I shall send you to sleep now. You can wake up afterwards.' Glanville lit the wax candles in a pair of antique sconces which adorned the piano. Their feeble light left a deep shadow in the centre of the room. The moon looked in at the window; on the terrace outside nothing stirred. It was a lovely scene, hushed in silence; a world all fresh, calm, and beautiful, lifted up into night and poesy. The music, found as soon as looked for, was opened; Glanville stood by, to turn over the leaves; and Lady May, seating herself, struck the opening chords.

A few bars of sad, slow meditation, passing into [31] lament, into longing, expectancy, disappointment; and then the sighing music seemed to gather the winds out of heaven, and breathe all its sorrow into them and send them wandering abroad; and by and by, as the listner fancied, the skies had turned to rain, and all round were the falling showers, soft, steady, unbroken, as they had been pictured to him, every moment more sombre, blotting out the light. He seemed to hear the thunderous harmonies with their muffed, threatening roll; and fire came into the rain and struck through it; and the music grew shrill and weird, only to sink down again into faint monotonous sobbing. All at once, as it seemed coming to an end, there rose up as from the heart of the spent storm a human voice. With not unlike cadence and alternation of feeling, now proudly defiant, now self-accusing and full of regret, now fainting to utter weariness, it in some way repeated and intensified the passionate throbbings of Chopin's nocturne. Glanville started from his reverie. It was lady May, improvising as in subtle reminiscence of the notes before her a chant in some southern tongue, that recalled the phases of the strange composition and put upon them a definite and heart-shaking meaning. The words were foreign to Glanville's ear; the accents of grief were not; and he stood motionless and embarrassed, like one who witnesses an outbreak of unsuspected wildness where all has hitherto been self-control. Lady May took no heed of him; she had forgotten his existence it seemed, and she went [32] on shaping, as he could not doubt, her words to the music, until in the gentlest whisperings of resignation they became softer and softer, and at last went out in silence. It was like seeing the curtain fall on a tragedy.

'Oh, May,' cried the Countess, starting up, 'do you call that playing me to sleep? I am trembling all over. Where did you find that horrible piece of music? It was enough to curdle the blood in one's veins. Do you not think,' she said to the artist, 'that my cousin ought to be ashamed of frightening us so? I always say she has the voice of a Medea, or a stage-murderess. Don't you agree with me?'

Glanville muttered dissent of acquiescence, it would be impossible to say which, and could not take his eyes off Lady May. What sort of temperament was it that broke loose in such perilous fashion? Was it only te genius of an actress, metamorphosed by fate into an earl's daughter, yet unable to subdue its natural longings and in this way satisfying them? A Medea! There could be no question of it. Were that untamable disposition to be roused, it would, while the frenzy lasted, be as little capable of pity as the tigress. And yet how tender had some passages of the improvisation sounded! He was at a loss; he could not tell what to think, except that in this high-born, delicately-nurtured lady there were unknown possibilities of good and evil.

She met his glance, and said, with a shade of diffidence, 'I learned to improvise when I was a [33] child in Italy; and the pleasure of attempting it is sometimes irresistible. I hope you were not frightened, like my cousin Karina. She is terrified at everything.'

'Indeed, I am not,' said Karina petulantly; 'but I never could endure your grand style of singing—you know I adore you when you are quiet—since the day it made me fall off the steps at Genoa with surprise.'

'You were a silly child,' said Lady May, 'and you fell because you would look back and make faces at me, instead of seeing where you were going.' And they both laughed at the remembrance.

The rest of the party now came in; tea was handed by the orthodox ministers that accompanied the urn; Lady May did all that could be required at the hands of an attentive daughter and hostess; and Glanville struggled with an eerie feeling, as if he had seen her in the form of panther or tigress vanishing in the twilight, which had now succeeded on the moon's going down. When he retired to his room the feeling was still upon him, uncanny, disagreeable. He was not equal to much railway travelling, and fatigue soon sent him to sleep; but in the dim caverns of unconsciousness he seemed again and again to hear the falling rain, drip, drip, drip, and the murmurs, fierce or tender, of unassuaged passion, its endless long-drawn sighings, till he sank into depths of slumber where no voice came.

CHAPTER III O RICHEST FORTUNE SOURLY CROST!

When Glanville awoke, rather late next morning, and glanced out of his window, he found that his dream had not been all a dream. The early hours must have been stormy, for the air had a moist fragrance, and the foliage on every side seemed to be glistening with raindrops. It would be an uncertain, changing day, rather dark than light, and not favourable for painting had he intended it. But the painting of the Great Hall was a long way off. He did not know whether his designs would meet with approval now that a professed (and probably ridiculous) antiquarian had come on the scene, to vex him with pedantic theories. He knew that Lord Trelingham had in these matters sound sense and judgement, however little of either he might display where the ritual of his creed was concerned. But he wanted no Mr. Truscombe to meddle; and he was resolved to keep him at arm's length. Whilst girding [35] himself up with these and the like fierce thoughts of combat, he heard the breakfast-bell. It was, for a wonder, sweet-toned and musical; and, as he hurried down, he asked himself whether Lady May shared his intense dislike of gongs and other such barbaric instruments, and whether it was by her doing that the first morning-sounds were made pleasant to waking ears.

'You see,' he said, on wishing her good-morning, 'it was your prophetic sense that made you think of rain. It seems to have come in good earnest. Last night you must have heard it creeping over the sea.'

'Then I am a prophetess of evil,' said Lady May, 'for there has not been such a storm this long while. I could not sleep for the uproar it made.'

'No,' said Tom Davenant, coming in, 'you are too nervous. But have you seen what has happened in the picture-gallery?'

The Earl followed him in haste. 'Oh, my dear May,' he said, 'such a misfortune! One of the windows in the picture-gallery blew in during the storm, and has been shattered to pieces. And the portrait of Lady Elizabeth is ruined—utterly ruined.'

Lord Trelingham never lost his temper at the worst of times. He would have gone to the scaffold with placidity in a good cause. But he looked exceedingly distressed now. 'Lady Elizabeth's portrait,' he murmured; 'I should not have cared for any other.'

'Oh, father, what a pity!' said May in a feeling [36] voice. 'How sorry you will be! Did it fall, or what was the accident?'

His distress instantly called out her sympathy.

'Ruined, ruined!' her father reiterated. 'It was found this morning by Redwood lying across some chairs; the canvas not only scratched, but torn in several places, as if it had been paper, and the face of the portrait damaged worse than all the rest.'

'It must have been struck bodily from the wall,' said Tom Davenant, 'by the window frame when it was blown in. You never saw such confusion. Glass, woodwork, and canvas all in a heap together. But can nothing be done? Here is Mr. Glanville,' he went on, turning to the artist; 'he can tell us better than any one whether the harm can be put right.'

'I am at lord trelingham's service,' replied Glanville; 'shall I go at once and examine the picture?'

'You are very kind,' said the Earl, 'but you must not stir till you have breakfasted. There is no haste. The workmen have boarded up the window, and laid the picture in a safe place.'

There was a pause, during which, with subdued mien, the others addressed themselves to the duty of breakfasting. But the Earl could scarcely eat. 'We shall feel the loss of it, May,' he said to his daughter in a husky voice. 'You will feel it.'

'Never mind me,' she answered; 'if nothing can be done I shall know how to bear it. But till Mr. [37] Glanville has said restoration is impossible we ought to hope.'

'I have always thought the history was not concluded yet,' he murmured as if to himself.

Lady May caught the words. 'No history ever is,' she said.

The meal ended they moved to the picture-gallery, a long, narrow apartment on the first floor, running half the length of the terrace and with an entrance from the Great Hall. There were portraits on one side and windows on the other, with one in addition, that which had blown in during the storm, at the end. Exclamations broke from the lips of all when the havoc met their eyes. Fragments of the casement were lying on the polished floor, and mixed with them were great pieces of the heavy gilt moulding which had been shattered as the picture fell. The canvas, rent in more than one place, was set upright against the wall where the light fell full on it. When Glanville came up the others drew back. He went close to the picture, and his first exclamation was one of intense surprise. 'Why,' he cried, 'it is a Spanish altar-piece.'

'And a family portrait,' said the Earl. 'I will tell you,' he continued, with some hesitation, 'the history, or what I can of it, in time—but first examine its condition.'

Glanville stepped back to take a general view. The picture had been, undoubtedly, a masterpiece. He did not recognise the painter. But whoever he [38] may have been, the school to which he belonged was manifest in the splendour of colouring, the bold design, and the deep religious earnestness that distinguished his composition. An altar-piece it was, as the Earl said,—an Assumption of the Virgin, but altogether unlike that monotonous repetition which fills our galleries from London to Naples, of a single feminine figure, with a moon beneath her feet shaped to resemble a bent bar of yellow soap, while winged baby-heads float round her on clouds of milliner's gauze. This picture combined the intense realism in the human forms which is characteristic of Spanish painting, with a transparent depth of air, a vastness of prospect, a visionary glory in the distance; in seemed to draw out on every side as the artist gazed, and to lift him into the serene expanse through which the crowned Madonna rose towards heaven. She did not float on stationary clouds, as though her journey were ended; in the upward tending of the hands, in the sweeping forward of kingly messengers clad in glittering raiment and borne along upon eagles wings, as if to herald her coming; in the whirlwind that seemed to take her waving garments, shot through with gold, as she was rapt away from this lower world, and to have caught up with her the attendant saints—a mighty company, in their pure white and crimson,—the sense of a quickening magnetic motion made itself felt, a rushing onward from sphere to sphere, while in the dim and starry distance portals shone half-opened, and round about them an awful faint-toned halo, like [39] a cloud or a rainbow, hiding yet betokening the mystery that should be revealed. A glorious work of genius, but ruined. Yes, it was too true. That which must have been the perfection of the whole, its central glory—the ecstatic countenance of the Virgin—was defaced, was almost beyond recognition. The crown, with its jewelled light, could still be made out; the Madonna's features were gone.

'How very lovely!' said Glanville after a long pause. 'And how hopeless, I fear, to restore it! Even if the canvas could be joined and the colouring touched again, how could the most daring painter reproduce the head of the Virgin? There is nothing to copy from, and, judging by the rest of the figure, it must have been a peculiarly striking and original face.'

'Oh,' replied Lord Trelingham, 'we need be at no loss for an original, if the picture were otherwise capable of being restored. You have only to look at my daughter, Lady May, and you will see the face that was vanished.'

'Indeed! What an extraordinary thing!' cried the artist, turning from the picture to the lady, who stood blushing a little and with her eyes averted. 'You were saying that this altar-piece, for such it is, was likewise a family portrait. Did I hear the name of Lady Elizabeth? And it was like Lady May. Yes, I can just fancy, when I look very closely into it, that there is left even now some shadow of resemblance. But how comes it, if I may ask? Do [40] tell me the story whilst I go on with my examination. I cannot decide in a moment how this should be treated.'

There was a pause. The strangers who were present silently withdrew, leaving Lord Trelingham and his daughter with Mr. Glanville. These three sat down in front of the picture. 'You have a morning's work cut out for you, I should think,' said Tom Davenant. 'I will go round to the stables and come back in an hour or so, in case you want me.' And that unromantic youth, in whose ears the family chronicles had been repeated without their making the slightest impression on his memory, went off in his careless way with his hands in his pockets. His cousin looked after him and smiled a little sarcastically. Then she said, 'Well, papa, Mr. Glanville wants you to begin.' Her father seemed to be hesitating; and one might have fancied that he did not wish to pursue the subject. He said rather hastily, 'May, my dear, I am not very good at telling a story. I hardly know where to begin. The portrait came into my hands soon after my father's death, during the war of the Spanish succession.' He paused again, and with some agitation turned to the artist and laid his hand on his shoulder—'My dear Mr. Glanville,' he said, 'the associations this picture brings up to me are very painful; much more so than my daughter has reason to suspect. It is years since I spoke of them to any one. But in the short time of our acquaintance, [41] which, however, should be reckoned since I came to know your paintings rather than from the day when I first called at your studio, I have come to think of you, if you will allow me to say so, as a friend. It is a sad story. I do not know the whole of it, but I will endeavour to repeat the chief incidents.'

Glanville was touched by the old man's simplicity and kindly tone. A soft light came into his eyes and his swarthy cheek grew ruddier as he murmured, 'You are very good to me, Lord Trelingham; I shall be happy to do all in my power.' And Lady May looked pleased, and eager to hear what was coming.

'I know,' she said to Glanville, 'the picture is like my father's sister, who died before I was born, and I am told it is like me. Colonel Valence brought it from Spain. I have often wondered why he gave it to the family when he has never been a friend of ours.'

'He was a dear friend of mine once,' replied her father. 'If he was not so later, perhaps I am in a measure to blame. But the past is past, and we can never recall it. Let me tell you the history in a few words, Mr. Glanville.'

He looked down, as if collecting his thoughts, and began in a low meditative voice, like one who watches the scenes of earlier days emerging into daylight, from the dim recesses where they hide, at his summoning.

'Edgar Valence and I were boys together; at home, where his father's little estate joined Trelingham Chase, as you may see in your ride this afternoon; at school, where he was my senior, and I counted it great good fortune that I was allowed to fag for him; and at Cambridge, where he was so distinguished and I of so little consequence that to be noticed by him was enough to make one proud. I thought him the finest fellow in the world; I loved and admired him and everything he did, and took him as my pattern hero. When he came down from the University my father welcomed him as much for his sake as for mine, and he was looked upon as one of ourselves. It was a happy time, and I thought it would last for ever. What a charm there was in his company, his bright fanciful talk, his quick reasoning, his decision and boldness of character! It enchanted us all; and my sister, Lady Alice Davenant, who was then a girl of seventeen, fell in love with him and he with her. They found it out one Long Vacation when he was at home, and they made no secret of it. My father, not unwillingly, gave his consent. Edgar Valence had nothing to call wealth, but he was of ancient descent, great talent, and unblemished reputation. He might be expected to win fame in the world if an opening were afforded him. My sister need not have despaired of being one day a Prime Minister's wife did she marry Edgar Valence. The engagement was not announced. Both the young people felt that a delay of some years was [43] inevitable; and Valence went back to pursue his studies at Cambridge.

'He and I were of the same college, though in very different sets, for my tastes led me in the direction of religious and ecclesiastical subjects—in short, towards the movement which, beginning at Oxford, had now affected Cambridge also; whilst his, I am sorry to say, had thrown him into society which, intellectual though it may have called itself, was frivolous and unbelieving. Valence was a young man of the world; he had never been a fervent Christian, and his studies and associations received that year an unfortunate bent, from which they never recovered. He became an open, a violent atheist. He said the most daring things, scoffed at the University authorities, took my own remonstrances by no means in the affectionate spirit which, I trust, dictated them, and saved himself from expulsion only by quitting Cambridge in a fit of passion and taking his name off the books. He returned, a changed and deteriorated man, to his father's house. A ruined man, alas! for it was well known why he had left the University; and in those days unbelief roused a universal horror and was visited with social excommunication. It is not so now,' said Lord Trelingham, interrupting himself.

'No,' said Glanville, his eyes falling as he answered; 'I suppose people are more used to it. But how did the change affect Lady Alice? Did she also give him up?'

'I will tell you,' resumed the Earl. 'When my father heard of this extraordinary and painful lapse in one towards whom he cherished the kindliest feelings, he sent for Valence and kept him at Trelingham nearly a week, doing his best by argument and exhortation to bring him into a more suitable frame of mind. Lady Alice, who knew of what had taken place, joined her entreaties to her father's; and her evident distress might have wrought upon a more decided temper than that of Edgar Valence, had pride for the moment not dulled his affection. It proved all in vain. During their reiterated and, as one may suppose, not very calm discussions, bitter words passed on both sides, and my father could never forgive the harsh, the blasphemous denial by Valence of all that Christians deem sacred. My sister was no less horror-stricken; I cannot, however, think she was much to blame if an affection begun in childhood survived even this rude trial. When my father pointed out to Valence that while he continued an unbeliever his marriage with Lady Alice was out of the question, my sister silently acquiesced. She did not pretend that her feelings had altered; though she exhibited much self-control, she could not, in bidding her lover farewell, but whisper that she trusted the sky would clear again and all be as before. Valence was free, she said, but she had given him her heart and could wait until he was worthy of it. "That will never be," replied my father with some anger. "Valence has no heart [45] himself, and what brain he has will bring him to little good. If he cannot believe in God, you ought never to believe in him . He will only deceive you." Valence said nothing, looked for an instant into Lady Alice's face, bowed haughtily to my father, and turned from the door. Once, and once only, was he fated to cross that threshold again.

'The engagement had been secret, and the secret was not told. After a few days spent in moody seclusion under his father's roof, Edgar Valence disappeared; and when I ran down at the end of term to Trelingham no one could inform me what had become of him. I was more grieved than I cared to show, for my father's anger increased as time went on, and he forgot the pleasant ways of the boy to remember only that they had ended in unbelief and blasphemy. Lady Alice never spoke of Edgar, and I was afraid to touch that quivering string, for I saw that she suffered. Two years passed, and still no tidings came. We had settled down into our accustomed ways, except that my father was now an invalid, and Lady Alice spent most of her time in attending to his comfort. We were not unhappy together. I began to think my sister would never marry, for she went into no society, and declined more than one brilliant proposal of marriage without assigning any reason. I asked her one evening whether she thought Edgar Valence might return, whether she hoped it; and she replied: "I cannot tell; but when I gave him my promise it [46] was once for all, and I will never break it." I argued that her promise was no longer binding, that Edgar himself had tacitly released her, since he neither came, nor wrote, nor gave sign that he was living. I might have spared my pains; they were thrown away upon her loyal and passionate nature. Poor Alice!' said the Earl; 'you often remind me of her, May, with your enthusiasm and poetic outbursts, and the steady look in your eyes. There is a wonderful likeness between you and my sister when she was nineteen, in that troubled uncertain time which elapsed from the day of Edgar's disappearance till we heard of him again.'

'Yes,' replied Lady May, 'you did hear of him again, to be sure, and in a singular fashion. I know that part of the story.'

'You know some of it,' said Lord Trelingham. 'I will now tell you the rest, so far as I can unravel this tangled skein. On a certain morning, as we sat at breakfast and the letters were brought in, I noticed that a large one addressed to me seemed quite covered with travel-stains, and before I could think whose writing it was, the post-marks, which were very numerous, caught my attention, and I exclaimed, "A letter from Spain; who can have sent it?" Lady Alice looked up from her own correspondence; and as I held the letter out, she said with a kind of gasp, "It is from Edgar," and sank fainting to the ground. Great confusion ensued, as was natural; my sister did not recover at once, and when she did [47] her distress was piteous to see. Joy and grief seemed to be struggling for the mastery; she put out her hand as if to grasp the letter, and then, whispering like one upon whom a great fear has fallen, she said to me, "Look at the date. It may be long ago, and perhaps, now, he is dead." I cannot express to you the passionate yearning she threw into her words, but I shall never forget them whilst I live. She sat trembling, and I broke the seal. It bore a date some twelve months back. My father, who had been silent until now, though painfully agitated, took the letter from my hand as I was on the point of reading it, and said, "Alice, I promise that you shall hear everything in this which you ought to know; but there may be—in short, your brother and I will read it first, and you meanwhile lie down in your own room and endeavour to compose yourself." She was led with tottering steps from the room. Even in my haste I was obliged to open the letter carefully, for it was written on the thinnest paper and would have borne very little more ill-usage. It began,—but stay,—I will bring you the strange document and you shall read its very words. I have kept it among my papers.' And as he spoke the Earl rose and left the picture-gallery. Lady May turned to the window and gazed out on the sky, which had in nothing abated of its sombreness; in the heavens was a wild and shifting dance of clouds, directed, as it would seem, by an inconstant breeze, and upon the ear came a long low whisper from the [48] waves which could be seen tossing on the beach and rolling out again to sea. Glanville was deep in contemplation of the wreck before him. 'No one,' he said half aloud, 'can tell me what to do with this, except Ivor Mardol.'

The lady came back at the sound of his voice. 'And who is Ivor Mardol?' she said.

Before he had time to answer Lord Trelingham entered. He bore in his hand a yellow, dingycoloured epistle, which, when it was unfolded, almost fell to pieces. He spread it out on a table near the window, for it was growing very dark, and said to the artist: 'Your young eyes will decipher this better than mine. It is written, however, in a beautiful hand. Edgar Valence did all things gracefully and was noted for his penmanship. Will you read it aloud? My daughter knows part of the story, but never till this moment have I shown her Valence's letter.'

CHAPTER IV THE FACE OF AN IMMORTAL

Glanville looked at the paper before him. The ink was faded, and in places the lines were uneven; but no one could mistake the exquisite character of the hand in which they were traced. There was a date, which I shall not give. But the letter began abruptly.

'I don't know,' it said, 'by what name to address my old friend, who has perhaps injured me, and who no doubt thinks I have injured him. What an age it seems since I left Trelingham! And what an effort to write that word! I meant to have done with it until I could come back and claim a promise I shall never, never forget. Ah, Davenant, if you cared for me or her, if you could only understand how brave, how loyal-hearted she was on that day, when heaven and earth, her father and her religion, were against me, you would know whether a man who had once been assured of such an affection could surrender the [50] hope of it. But what am I doing? I may have but a moment before the fever comes on again and my brain takes fire. And I have something to say, a task to fulfil, if my hurt is not too much for me. Should I never rise off the bed where I am lying, it will be your task then, not mine. This letter will reach you somehow. My nurse tells me I ought not to write; but I must, though I were dying. The thing is so strange. Excuse these cramped lines; I can hardly see what I have written, my eyes pain me so. It is the blow that wild fellow gave me across the forehead when I would not let him,—but I am telling the tale askew. Let me try again.

'This place is called Sepúlveda. You never heard of it, I suppose. A gloomy-sounding name, but a grand, romantic piece of country, some forty or fifty miles from Seville, on the spur of a mountain-range that I can see from my window, stretching across the horizon to the north like the drop-scene of a theatre. I was brought here wounded, I don't know how long ago. A week, a month, an eternity, for all I can tell! Down below in the valley I can see, too, the waters of a stream where they broaden into the deep pool of San Lucar. The convent stands on the edge of the pool, and looks at it all day and all night; for its great ruined windows are all on that side. "The convent—what convent?" you ask. It is called San Lucar, I tell you. Ought you not, as a Tractarian, to know who San Lucar was? Did he not work miracles somewhere, and live in a cave, or on a [51] column, or on nothing, for a couple of centuries? Well, I cannot tell you who this San Lucar may have been, for it is not the evangelist, but a local deity. And he is dead, and his bones used to be kept in a shrine of fretted silver in a side-chapel, which, I should think, was always dark in spite of the lamps we saw burning all about it. Oh, my head, my head! I ramble on, as if I had a thousand years to tell this story.

'You know I became an atheist and a democrat before I left Cambridge. I don't mean to hurt your feelings; but the history must begin there . And when I quarrelled with Lord Trelingham, and went home and spent a week brooding over my prospects, the thought struck me that I might as well join these Spaniards, who were doing a fine anti-Christian work since completed by Mendizabal, where it was much wanted, expelling monks, pulling down monasteries, turning the priests adrift, and burning up the foul rubbish that the Inquisition had heaped together and made holy.'

Glanville, who had hesitated in his reading more than once, now came to a dead pause, and said to Lord Trelingham, 'Ought I to read all this? It can only give you pain.'

'Never mind,' said the Earl; 'I have read it too often to be pained now. There is not much more of it; and Valence says truly enough that it is necessary to the understanding of his adventure.'

The artist read on: 'I sailed from England three [52] days after quitting my home; and in less than a month was enrolled among the volunteers who fought for progress and against Don Carlos. I should like, if I had time, to describe some of our wild picturesque doings in the South. Never had I imagined anything so frantic, strange, stirring; such a droll medley of old-world romance and unwashed barbarism, of orange-groves, and moonlight, and harsh music, and dusty marches, and raging multitudes of men and women, of flying monks, and shrieking and dancing mobs, not only in the great squares, but in the churches and the long-inviolate cloisters; and, in brief, as mad a world, with furious clamours, and a high burning sun to add to the excitement, as there ever was in the Middle Ages. It deadened my feelings of loss to find all things around me going to ruin; and I was reckless and even happy.

'I do not mind acknowledging that the ruffian band, of which I became captain,—for promotion is rapid in these parts of the world,—were as savage and motley a crew as ever escaped hanging. I often seemed to be living over Gil Blas on a grander scale, with all the riff-raff of centuries gathered round me and following the tattered banner of the Revolution. But dirty work must be done with dirty tools. These men were good enough to pull down a system that was worse than themselves; for it pretended to have come from heaven, and they didn't much care whether they came from heaven or hell; neither did they trouble as to which of the two would have them by [53] and by. They hated monkery, and they liked a wild life. Certain of them, however, were fierce fanatics; and one of these gave me trouble enough. He was a stalwart young fellow, more gipsy, I should think, than genuine Spaniard. He had been a monk in Jaen, and had run away from his monastery as soon as he got the chance. How he delighted in breaking open church-gates, and smashing altars, and pulling the great images down from their pedestals! You will not suppose I minded that! There is only one mythology I would spare for its beauty—not the medieval, which is a fantastic dream,—but that calm old Greek world of loveliness, where the gods are the forms of Nature become breathing marble, and the heroes are daring and human, with their glorious limbs and fair faces. They have no place in this half-African land brooded over by the sultry air from Sahara, and too hot and feverish to bring forth yellow-haired Greeks. No, I looked on while the churches were defaced and their shrines plundered. But my gipsy-monk would have gone much further. He was, as you would say, no gentleman. And he took my reprimands as sullenly as he dared.

'It seems such a while, and yet again the picture is so distinct that it might have been yesterday, since we marched out of Seville towards San Lucar. At this moment I have before my eyes the stains upon a great square flagstone, near a church we passed, where a priest had lately been killed by the mob. Felayo, the gipsy, pointed them out to me, and said, "I wish [54] I had been there." But he added, "We shall catch some of them, if they have not taken to their heels, at San Lucar." For that secluded convent we were making. It was served by a number of clergy, who lived, all except the chaplain of the nuns, up here at Sepúlveda; for it was not a convent of men. What led us to make such a long expedition was the knowledge that San Lucar had never been spoiled, nor its cloister invaded, even by the French during the Peninsular War; and although its treasures were at that time hidden for safety, they had come to light again and were worth seizing. And then, the delight of ruining an untouched shrine—these were spolia opima to draw us on! We marched somewhat leisurely, as Southerns will; but as nobody in Seville quite knew which way we were going, and any one of a dozen convents might have been our attraction, we gained San Lucar without a rumour of the impending catastrophe reaching the good sisters. They were at their beads from morning till night; and, as we marched up the valley late in the afternoon, we could hear the loud voices of the priests chanting one of their evening services. We had come in three days, but had left stragglers on the road, and were now a company of a hundred and twenty. ... I cannot continue. The pen drops from my hand.'

Glanville naturally paused again. Lady May, who had given him the closest attention, said, in a sort of impatience, 'Please go on.' And he resumed:

'It is some days since I broke off,' said the manuscript; [55] 'I wonder when I shall finish, or whether I shall at all. I have been asleep, they tell me, and raving a good deal in an unknown tongue. No one here understands English. But they have caught a name which I seemed to be incessantly repeating—her name! Ay de mi ! Let me make an end. But what are the words that some one is faintly singing under my window? I can just make them out. Apt enough they sound to me,—listen— "'Las venas con poca sangre, Los ojos con mucha noche." Little blood in the veins, and heavy night upon the eyelids. I must hasten while I may. We did nothing that evening except to keep the passes of the valley. It was known outside the convent that we had come, and why; but the peasants had been cowed by the revolutionary frenzy of the towns, and we neither expected resistance nor much cared if it were attempted. We were stirring next day with the sun. What a glorious morning broke over the valley and the stream, and drove back the darkness towards the mountains as with a single sweep of some glittering sword in heaven! Such a clear light came over the white monastery walls, and was reflected from the lake as we marched up to the huge wooden gates that divided the cloister from the world without. Felayo beat upon them with his thundering club, which had shattered so many before. But they stood unshaken, and we saw that if we were to enter at that point we must [56] open with a regular assault. As we hesitated to begin one of the men cried out that the church doors would be easier. That great building stood outside the cloister and opened on the public highway. We marched hastily towards it; and what was our surprise when we drew near to distinguish the solemn sounds of choral chanting and organ accompaniment within! "They are singing Mass," cried Felayo; "I suppose they would like to win the crown of martyrdom, as their good ancestors did when the wicked Moors slew them;" and again he raised his club, this time with effect, against the sacred gates. One blow drove in the rusty lock, a second and a third, aided by the pikes of the rest, broke the framework in pieces, and with yells of rage and triumph the men rushed in.

'Far away, in the dim light, we saw the priests in their vestments at the altar, and ranged on each side in the stalls choristers in white, holding books from which, though now in trembling tones, they were singing. Just as we entered the voices fell silent; the organ, which stood away in some recess, took up a softer strain; and I saw the chief priest kneel, then rise again quickly, and lift up the host on high to be adored by the prostrate throng. As if maddened at the sight, Felayo, who had paused a moment, went wildly up the church, calling on us to follow, leaped the silver altar-rails, and struck down the priest where he stood. In an instant all was confusion. Felayo swept the sacred vessels from [57] the altar; and, as the choristers ran out from their stalls in deadly terror, some to rescue the priest from being trampled on, others to take up their holy things which lay on the ground, and one or two of the bolder spirits to thrust back Felayo, I looked up and beheld that miscreant standing on the altar like a conquering demon. Hideous he seemed, with swarthy face and malignant flashing eyes, his arm again uplifted for destruction, and his voice ringing through the church in a defiant shriek. And as I lifted my eyes the clear morning light came in through the windows of the chancel, flooding the space above him; and I saw, as in a vision of glory, a face that I knew, with an expression that was all tenderness and divine tranquillity, shining down on the confusion unmoved, and a host of figures in glorious raiment about it. "Alice!" I cried, and sprang upon the altar, as Felayo lifted his head and caught sight of the picture. For it was a picture, not a vision or a dream. Above the altar, like the tutelary saint of the place, depicted in mysterious attitude and with the symbolism of some Catholic doctrine, Alice, whom I had left in England, of whom I dreamt day and night, was before my eyes; and her glance seemed to go through my very heart. I stood bewildered; the next moment I was recalled to myself by Felayo's voice, as he thundered out, "Ho, comrades, mount up here and pull down this Virgin of the monks." I caught him by the throat and flung him to the ground, leaping after him as he [58] fell. "Down, dog," I shouted; "you shall not touch the picture." He was so taken aback by the unexpected assault that for a little while he stared at me without answering. Then, gathering himself up for a spring, he strove to get from under my hand; but I held him fast by the throat, and while the others came round in amazement, I cried out, "You may pull the church to pieces and plunder what you will, but this Madonna remains sacred. I claim it for myself." I cannot say what they thought of me, but none were so fanatical as the gipsy, and they seemed to respect my whim, for they drew back and began to form into parties to despoil the rest of the church and invade the convent. Even whilst I knelt with Felayo in my grasp, I could see the nuns, who were separated by a carved screen from the body of the church, as they stood shivering in the midst of their cloistered aisle, uncertain whether to flee or remain. Felayo turned himself under me. "Let me go," he said; "I will not touch your accursed picture."—"Do you promise?" I asked. He answered through his teeth, "Yes, I promise." I allowed him to rise to his feet; but, no sooner had he done so, than, drawing his sword, he slashed me across the forehead, and had not my peaked cap partly warded the blow, that would have been the end of Edgar Valence. I was, however, only half-stunned, and with a rapidity equal to his own, I drove the sword I held in my hand through the villain's heart. With a frightful roar of pain he fell dead beside the priest whose life, in [59] the crush and confusion, had been trampled out of him.

'Meanwhile, the invaders were breaking down the cloister, tearing from their places silver lamps and the precious gates of the various shrines, rending the vestments to pieces, and hurling the great crucifixes to the ground. The noise, the riot, were indescribable. I appointed a couple of men to guard the high altar; and seeing what was likely to happen now the soldiers were getting infuriated, I made my way over the fallen screen into the nuns' cloister, and endeavoured to restore a little order amid the confusion. I told the sisters they were free to depart, but that resistance was impossible. If they wished to be dealt with kindly, let them go to Sepúlveda and prepare lodgings and refreshments for the wounded, of whom there were several on both sides. For the younger priests, when their blood was up, did not hesitate to grapple with the soldiers. There is always in the Spanish temper a wild devil to be roused; and these sons of the sanctuary were as eager for the fray as their assailants, after they had seen their mass interrupted and the priest flung down. But they had no weapons, except the fragments of the woodwork and church furniture; and in no long time they were overpowered. When the high altar was understood to be my share of the spoils, a general rush was made towards the chapel of San Lucar. I followed out of curiosity, for I could not bring myself to lay a profane hand upon anything in a place where [60] Alice seemed to be gazing at me, and with her heavenly presence reproving my unhallowed thoughts. I saw the shrine dismantled, the dust of the saint scattered where his worshippers had knelt for ages to ask his intercession, the lamps quenched and borne away by the soldiery, the huge windows broken, and the church from end to end made a wreck,—all things in it ruined save the exquisite vision looking down upon the high altar. The men ate and drank about the place, and jeered their prisoners, and would have quarrelled over the spoil, had not an order come towards mid-day from Seville, directing us to quit the convent and take up our quarters in Sepúlveda.

'I was greatly embarrassed, for I would not leave the portrait of Alice to the mercy of the new imagebreakers; and yet go we must. In this perplexity, one of the wounded priests whispered to me that, if I wished to save the Virgin, there was a secure place under the altar where it might be hidden. Let me send the rest away and he would show me. I thought the matter out for a while. We could not get the wounded to Sepúlveda without mules, of which we had very few. Whatever was to be done must be done at once; but to stay for the wounded could not be an infringement of orders. I sent men off to find means of transport; and, keeping only three whom I knew to be loyal fellows, when the church was cleared I bade the priest show me the hiding-place of which he spoke. He was badly hurt, but he contrived to reach the altar, and [61] touching the great slab at which mass had been said, he made it move out of its place noiselessly. There was a dry vault underneath, and several huge coffers in it where treasure had once been stored. If the altar were broken down, the vault would be discovered; otherwise, it was safe enough. We unfastened the great picture, not without difficulty, from its place on the wall; covered it with remnants of the heavy silk hangings; and were so fortunate as to come upon a chest which would hold it under lock and key. I took possession of the key, which is now under my pillow, and will never leave me till the picture is removed to some fitter resting-place. The priest explained to me the secret of the spring; and the great slab, revolving once more, concealed from the returning soldiery what we had done.

'They were anxious to get off with their booty; we left the convent—bare, a habitation for the beasts of the field, and a shelter for owls and other night-birds; and by the evening our men were lodged in Sepúlveda. My head was aching from the sword-stroke of Felayo; I could get no farther than the farmhouse where I am now lying. I know that I have had an attack of brain-fever. The detachment I commanded has gone, I cannot say on what errand; for it went in haste, leaving me to my fate. These good nuns look upon me as a guardian angel; all they saw was that I protected their Madonna from destruction and themselves from insult. They are not aware that I helped to overturn many a shrine [62] before I came to San Lucar. They tell me I have been near dying. Why not? Should I live, is there any prospect for me? The vision of Alice forbids me to join my old companions; I cannot bear to think that I might see her face again, looking down on me in the next sanctuary I profaned. All I desire is to rescue the canvas whereon she breathes and lives, and return with it to England. If I die before this can be accomplished, I charge you to see to it. The convent will never be dwelt in again; and you will have small difficulty in securing this miraculous piece of driftwood. What its history may be, I do not know. I have been too weak to put any questions about it; and these sisters, though well-meaning, are extremely ignorant. I doubt that they could tell me the true story; legends, of course, they have in plenty.

'Davenant, if I get well, you must prepare Lord Trelingham to receive me, if only once, within his threshold. I will not entrust the portrait of Alice to another. But when I have put it into his hands, I will turn again and he shall see me no more until he welcomes me as his daughter's husband.

'Thank the kind fates that have suffered me to write this. I am dead tired. I shall sleep now; and perhaps never waken. But this letter, at all events, will reach you. Say to Alice,—ah no, you will give her no message from me. I hear the voice singing again the self-same words beneath my window— [63] "Las venas con poco sangre, Los ojos con mucha noche, Lo halló en el campo aquella, Vida y muerte de los hombres." How pretty these old Spanish romances are! But it was not in the field that either love or death found me; yet, weak though I may be, I am strong enough to meet my fate, come when and how it will.

E. V.'

There was no other signature.

CHAPTER V BUT THOU TO ME ART MORE THAN ALL!

' Was I not right,' said the Earl, 'in calling that a strange letter? As you have read it to me, so did I read it to my father, keeping an anxious eye on the door at which Lady Alice had gone out, and every moment dreading her return. What could we say to her? Was it possible to hide Valence's danger, or the likelihood of his arrival at Trelingham? Breaking a heavy silence, my father observed, "This has taken almost a year to reach its destination. Should Valence be still living, we must expect him in England soon; nor can I decline to accept, even from his hands, a portrait which has long been wanting in our gallery." I looked at him in surprise. "What!" I said; "has not Valence dreamt the whole story? His letter was written during an access of brain-fever; and must we not suppose that his constant brooding on the loss of my sister, combined with reminiscences of the legend of Lady Elizabeth, has [65] shaped his fancies to this extraordinary result?" —"No," replied my father; "Valence must have done what he describes. Either he never knew or has forgotten the story of Lady Elizabeth. You see he does not once refer to it."'

'And may I ask,' said Glanville, 'what is the legend of Lady Elizabeth?'

'I will tell you,' replied his host. 'Ours, my dear Mr. Glanville, is not itself a very ancient peerage. It dates from Charles II., when Sir William Davenant became Viscount Davenant and Earl of Trelingham. But in his wife was represented a much older line; and it was chiefly by reason of his marriage with her that Sir William was raised to the House of Lords. She was the last of that old West Country stock, the Trelinghams of Trelingham. Her father died abroad during the usurpation of Cromwell; and his brothers—the family were Roman Catholic—had taken orders at Rome and St. Omer, but died before him. Hence the title of Trelingham became extinct. But Lady Elizabeth inherited in her own right the estates which had gone with it; and she was in a convent when her father died. The family chronicles add that the convent was in Spain, but not the name or precise situation. She was on the point of taking the veil, and had she done so, there is no doubt the estates of Trelingham would have passed to the Commonwealth. She was persuaded, therefore, to return home. Her nearest relative, a Protestant cousin, sought her hand; but [66] he was grasping and ambitious, and twenty years older than the lady. She refused him, and bestowed herself and Trelingham on Sir William Davenant, who, though not of her faith, was chivalrous enough to respect it. She loved him so well that, in course of time, she joined our communion, and her children were brought up in the doctrine of the English Church. She died young, however, and the story ran that she repented of having changed her religion. Certain it is that a mystery attached to Lady Elizabeth—the name by which she was usually designated in honour of the ancient line. She would never allow her portrait to be painted; and when I was a boy its place in the gallery—at the very spot where we are now sitting—was indicated by a purple veil on which in black letter was inscribed the name of Elizabeth, Countess of Trelingham, with the dates of her birth and decease. What was the explanation? Well, here Valence's story came in. It was said that, when a girl at her Spanish convent, Lady Elizabeth had been chosen, by a painter whose name we never heard, to represent the Virgin in a great altar-piece; and that an instinct of reverence, mingled perhaps with remorse, determined her never to allow, for ends of pride or vanity, that countenance to be depicted by a worldly artist, which had been dedicated to religion and enshrined above an altar. We did not often repeat the legend; we had no picture to show, and assuredly we did not dream that a resemblance existed between the features of my sister and those [67] of her far-away ancestress. Valence's letter was a revelation.

'While we talked Lady Alice came back, looking so pale that I ran to her, expecting her to faint in my arms. She thanked me in a feeble voice, but declared that she was strong enough to bear anything save uncertainty. I gave her the letter; she sat down and was absorbed in it, reading with eager haste, turning back sometimes as though fearing to lose a word, and quite unmindful of our presence. She uttered no exclamation when he spoke of seeing her above the altar; she was too intent on the sequel, and I dreaded to see her come to his last words. As she did so a fit of shuddering seized her. But with a strong effort she mastered her emotion, and saying only, "I will wait, I will wait," she let the paper fall to her feet and came and put her arms about our father's neck. "Papa," she said, "do not fear me; I will be a good daughter. Only let, let Edgar come. He will not be so unbelieving then. See how this strange thing has softened him. By and by he will follow your advice, and we shall be happy." Her voice broke, her eyes streamed with tears. "Very well," my father replied, "if he comes I will see him. But you must be patient."—"I will, I will," she whispered, and took up the letter again and was lost in it.

'Patience! It was a wise word. The months passed and he did not arrive. My sister was falling into a decline, my father hastening to his grave; [68] and, I confess it with shame, I had fierce thoughts about Edgar Valence. Why did he not write? But perhaps he had expired at Sepúlveda. I did not think so. I hated him.

'On a dark cold evening in November, when the snow was lying deep, my father breathed his last. We buried him on the bleak hillside, which looks almost as cold and dark this morning.' And, interrupting himself, the Earl pointed out to Glanville where the old gray church of Trelingham rose up from the precipitous shore, with the green churchyard and the mounds of the dead on every side of it. He resumed: 'The next day, late in the afternoon, as I was seated in my study, and Lady Alice was reclining in her own room, too much exhausted to move, a stranger was announced. He gave no name I bade them show him into the drawing-room. I entered, and my eyes fell on Edgar Valence. Through the windows I could see that it was snowing fast.

'He stood wrapt in furs, bareheaded, and immovable, with the scar quite plain on his forehead. When he saw me, his movement testified surprise. "I asked to see Lord Trelingham," he murmured. Then he observed that I wore deep mourning. "Is any one dead?" he cried excitedly; "is Alice—?" I interrupted him. "Lord Trelingham is dead, not my sister. What is you business, Mr. Valence?" The words were cold and unfriendly, but I was much moved. He looked like one risen from the grave; his soldierly bearing could not disguise the feebleness [69] of his health. He had suffered, and the sword-stroke of Felayo had been almost fatal. But he must not see Alice. "Did my letter from Sepúlveda reach you?" he inquired. "Yes; but why did you not write again?" He smiled. "When I quitted my farmhouse," he said, "I took service in the regular army. I was wounded again, taken prisoner, carried into Estremadura, and did not escape till seven weeks ago. Why should I have written? Would Alice have seen my letters?"

"'I do not know," was my answer; "but had you come in my father's lifetime, for her sake he would have granted you an interview. He would have done no more; and, Valence, unless you are changed neither will I."

'He answered, alas! in his old firm voice, "I am not changed; do not think it. Nor is my love for Alice."

'"Be it so," was my reply, "then you may look for the same course from me that my father would have pursued."

'"And what is that, may I ask?"

'I knew very well the answer I meant to give. It was imperative on me as a son and a Christian; but it would cost me a sharp pang to utter it, when I thought of my poor sister lying dangerously ill, without heart or hope, and the desolate future before us. I delayed the fatal moment. Instead of replying, I said to Valence, "Did you return to San Lucar, as you hoped?"—"Return?" he cried; "had I not [70] returned and brought away the portrait, do you think I should have ventured hither to-day? The picture is waiting at your lodge gates. Will you receive it? Will you tell some of your servants to bring it up? Do you know anything about it?"

'I told him the story as briefly as I could. He was surprised and attentive. "Why," he said, "this, if I believed in a special Providence, should be a decisive intimation that Alice and I were made for one another. You grant it, surely, Davenant."

'I shook my head. "There are coincidences," I answered, "which have an evil purport. I cannot think, if you are unchanged, that this will come to good."

'I gave the order he suggested. While we sat speechless—for what could we touch upon that would not be painful?—awaiting the return of the servants with the picture, I became more and more uneasy lest my sister should come in. And what was to be the end? On such a night I could not turn my bitterest enemy from the door. Edgar Valence to sleep at Trelingham Court, the night after my father's funeral! It was strange, it was most undesirable, yet I saw no way out of it. I could not help asking him, "How long have you been in England? My father's death was announced six days ago."

"'Very likely," he replied; "I landed at Plymouth that very day, and came with the utmost speed hither. At first I thought of preparing you for my arrival. But you might have declined seeing me, and I judged [71] it better to take you by surprise and trust to the generous impulses"—he spoke with frank courtesy; how winning I used to think it!—"which have always seemed to me inherent in the family of Trelingham. I saw no one—I was not aware of your father's illness, much less of what has happened."

'The men were coming in slowly with their burden. I could not but think, as the door opened, of another and a sad burden that had been carried out yesterday. I would not have them stay in the hall, or go up to the picture-gallery; and the tall package was set up against a bookcase in my study. Lamps were kindled, and Valence and I, with equal agitation, tore off the coverings, and the Madonna of San Lucar broke upon my view. At first, like Valence, I saw nothing of the accessories which are all that is now left of the painting. It was the face I sought; and oh! how strangely it resembled Alice when she was yet untouched by grief and all her thoughts were of the innocent home in which she had been brought up, or of the heavenly world that religion unfolded to her. I gazed and gazed. Can you realise what it is to have the dead beautiful past resuscitated, as at a stroke—the past, which you deemed irrevocable? I felt pity and deep regret, and a kind of protest that these things should be—a young life faded and marriage impossible. The fate of Alice, of Edgar Valence himself, scarred and maimed as he came before me, our friendship turned to estrangement— it was too much. I knew not how to speak, or what [72] to do; and when Valence, laying his hand on my shoulder, said, "Do you think I can live without seeing her?—have pity on me," I could only reply that in the morning they should meet, and then—then, if she held to her promise, I would do all that a brother should.

'On this understanding we parted for the night. I went to my own chamber, he to his, but there was no sleep for either of us. How was I to reconcile my father's wishes and the honour of a family which had ever been true to Church and King, with the opinions, the character, the inclinations of Valence? Lord Trelingham, it is true, had exacted no promise from me; and my sister, though not of age, wanted so few months of it that to all intents she might be deemed her own mistress. But the very existence of our house was at stake. Who could say that the succession to name and property would not pass to my sister's issue? There was no other relative but a distant cousin, and he unmarried, and what if her children were brought up atheists and democrats? I shuddered at the thought, and my former resolution shone out in the clearest light of reason as of religious duty. But, on the other side, was my sister's happiness, perhaps her life.

'With the morning came another anxiety. How was I to prepare Alice for the surprise, the tumultuous joy, that she would undoubtedly feel, and for all the momentous issues that hung upon the next few hours! Her feeble health, endangered by mental anguish so [73] long endured, would give way under this new strain were she to meet it without warning. I hastened to Valence's room. He was already dressed, and his fatigued look showed me that he had slept as little as I. In a few words I begged him to wait upstairs till I sent for him. He understood and made no demur. I inquired after Lady Alice, and was told that she was too weak to come down to the breakfast-room. I now sent her a message requesting her to meet me in the picture-gallery at half-past ten. There was no time to lose. Summoning a skilful workman and a couple of servants to help him, I ordered the Madonna of San Lucar to be conveyed noiselessly to its destined place among the family portraits, and fixed with the utmost expedition. My directions were carried out. When the appointed hour came the picture was hanging on the wall, and the dark curtain which had so long marked its absence alone concealed it from view. My sister entered the gallery, and came to me looking weary and distracted. I took her by the hand, asked her an indifferent question or two, and led her to speak of her own feelings. When we had reached the spot where I am now telling this story I induced her to sit down, and continued the conversation till, in a pause I intentionally made, she looked round and saw that the curtain did not hang as usual. She looked again steadfastly, and with agitated voice and manner asked me what was behind it. I answered as lightly as I could, "Do you think Lady Elizabeth's portrait [74] is there?" Quicker than thought she divined my meaning; her hand was on the curtain, she drew it aside, and, sinking on her knees, exclaimed, "He is come; Edgar is come. Oh, God be thanked!" She gave way to a burst of weeping, which I thought it prudent to indulge, saying, when she was grown calmer, "Alice, do you think you can bear to see him?" What an expression was on her countenance as she rose up and faced me! "Have I lived," she cried, "for anything else?" The colour came into her cheeks while she spoke, and her breathing was like that of a fever-patient, short and difficult. She almost fell back into her chair, but recovering, bade me tell Valence that she would see him here and now. I did not venture to leave her alone. I rang for a servant, and gave him the message that Valence had been all these hours expecting in his room upstairs. A step was heard coming down, a slow but determined step, which we hardly knew. I motioned Alice to sit still, and went to the door; but no sooner had Valence appeared than my sister flew to him, and they were clinging to one another in a long embrace. I moved away towards the new-found portrait of Lady Elizabeth; the same feeling which had inspired me seemed to take hold of them, and we found ourselves, for the first and last time in our lives, united before the Madonna of San Lucar.

'The first and last! One happy moment we had, and then the struggle began again—if struggle it could be called, which was all on my side and most unwilling. [75] I knew that whenever Alice should perceive the physical helplessness to which Valence was reduced, the argument for affection would be strengthened a thousand-fold. It was pretty and exceedingly touching to witness how, on observing his scarred forehead, she clung to him more closely, looking at him again and again with a sort of motherly tenderness. Her tears flowed silently, but she smiled, and, in more cheerful tones than I had heard for many months, she exclaimed, "Well, brother, you see that all is clear now. I cannot leave this poor Edgar. He has waited and suffered, and he has my promise. Poor Edgar!" And she fondly repeated the words as if caressing a child. I was overcome, but not wholly. Valence, still encircling her with his arm, said to me, "Davenant, love is stronger than death," and he gave me a half-mocking, half-melancholy smile. I will not relate the discussion that followed. On my sister it was impossible to make an impression; but from Valence I demanded a solemn engagement that he would bring up his children in their ancestral faith, and allow me, or some one whom he might name, to be their guardian. Alice kept her eyes fixed on him, and I question whether she comprehended a syllable of our dispute. It was in vain. At last I reminded Valence of the dignities inseparable from the House of Trelingham, which it was my bounden duty to preserve unimpaired. "And do you think," he answered, "that I believe more in your titles and laws of inheritance than I do in you traditional religion? [76] What an idiot I should be! No, Davenant; when your sister accepts my hand she breaks, I do not say with the affection of her kindred, but with the delusive greatness they call theirs. She will be no longer Lady Alice; and you may rely upon it, no child of mine will claim the title or estates, or will touch a stiver belonging to the House of Trelingham. I have enough to live upon; and if I had not, a man can earn his bread. With your sister's beliefs I do not interfere; it is too late, and she could renounce them only to be unhappy. But these things," he went on, looking scornfully round the gallery and waving his hand towards the long line of pictures, "I think she will give up these without shedding tears over them. Will you not, darling?"

'Her only answer was to hide her face in his bosom. I could say no more. I turned and went in silence out of the gallery. I knew not with which of them I felt the more indignant. Both were obstinate, perverse, unreasonable. The rest of the day I spent among my books. At dinner Lady Alice informed me that Valence was gone, but I made no remark. During the few weeks she remained at Trelingham we met as seldom as possible. A month later she went away. The Times announced, in regular form, that Colonel Edgar Valence and Lady Alice Davenant were married at a London church, and from that hour my sister was lost to me. Her I never beheld again; but her tomb—you may see it beside my father's in Trelingham churchyard. There Colonel Valence had [77] her interred, I know not in what year, for I was abroad and we never exchanged a line, but it must be eight and twenty years ago, before my daughter was born. Whether they had any children, how they lived, or in what way my poor sister died, I could never learn.'

CHAPTER VI THERE GLOOM THE DARK BROAD SEAS

The Earl's emotion in concluding his narrative made the last sentence almost inaudible. Glanville would have liked to inquire whether Colonel Valence was still living, and in what part of the world. But he refrained, seeing how deeply Lord Trelingham was moved. After some time, the latter said, with an effort, 'That is the story, and now what plan do you suggest? How are we to deal with the picture?'

'It is almost impossible to say,' he replied. 'Were it merely a question of painting, I could perhaps, on my own judgment, attempt to restore the general effect, if Lady May would kindly sit to me for the Madonna. Peculiar as the style is, I might do something. But to restore the canvas I must call in a friend who is more at home in the miraculous. I mentioned him last night, Lady May. He has a bizarre sort of name —Ivor Mardol.'

'Oh, that is Ivor Mardol,' replied the lady; 'well, call him in. My father is not likely to object.'

'No, I am sure,' said Glanville; 'but my friend—I should find it hard to describe him. It is his pleasure not to be clothed in soft garments nor to dwell in kings' houses. He is extremely unconventional, and being in manners and education far more than a workman, and refusing to be called a gentleman, it would be no easy task to find, in a house like this, the niche that would suit him.'

'What is he then by profession?' inquired Lord Trelingham.

'An engraver,' replied Glanville; 'but he works for himself, not for a firm or a newspaper. He is well enough off; lives in his own little house in a street near Charing Cross, which he has made as quaint and suggestive of the artistic life as any workshop in the time of Quentin Matsys or Albert Dürer; and is, in short, a quiet, large-minded, quick-eyed young man, acquainted not only with his own branch of study, but with painting and painters, and the history of art since the Egyptians, if they began it. He will sometimes condescend to stay with me, though seldom. He lives in his work and the studies to which it leads him. Odd and out-of-the-way society he likes, and has friends very low down in the depths. I should think he has never seen the inside of a drawing-room, except in a picture.'

'What a delightfully fresh being you describe!' said Lady May; 'you must persuade him to come to [80] us. We will excuse him from attendance in the drawing-room. We will fit him up a hermitage in the Park, or assign him a lodging in the tower. But he must come to us, though we should have to employ stratagem.'

'My dear May,' said the Earl, 'you let your fancies run away with you. Of course, if Mr. Glanville thinks his friend would come, and that his knowledge could help us to restore Lady Elizabeth's portrait, there could be no difficult in letting him follow his own way of life while staying here.'

'What I was thinking,' said Glanville, 'is, that if he saw the Madonna he could tell us whether a replica of it is anywhere to be met. Or, indeed, without seeing it he might. On the other hand, should it be necessary to attempt its restoration, I could have no more skilful assistant. The one thing for which I should, in that case, stipulate, would be, as you kindly say, Lord Trelingham, that he might be suffered to live in his own way.'

'But there is really a hermitage in the Park,' said Lady May; 'an attempt at an Alpine cottage, just large enough to hold one person and his brushes, if he happened to be an artist. It stands on an islet in the river, screened from observation by wooded heights, and is off the paths in the Chase. It is not far either.'

'That sounds enticing,' said Glanville. 'I cannot see my way without Ivor Mardol; and, if your lordship agrees'—he turned to Lord Trelingham—'I will acquaint him with the proposal.'

'By all means,' said the Earl.

'And he shall have the Hermitage,' said Lady May, 'and as much solitude as he chooses.'

'I cannot be sure,' said Glanville thoughtfully, 'that you will like him; description goes for so little. He is bright, unworldly spirit, but reserved to excess when not among intimate friends.'

'Is he married?' inquired the lady.

'Not that I am aware,' said Glanville, with a smile; 'but that is one of the points on which he would be most reserved, if the whim seized him. I know nothing of his relations or surroundings beyond what I see. Nor, though we have been friends since we were at school, has he uttered a syllable respecting them. However, personal talk was never a characteristic of Ivor Mardol. His mind is given elsewhere. For a man not yet thirty, he is marvellously staid and self-contained.'

'You describe an interesting, almost a romantic personage,' said Lady May. 'We must hope he will not be deaf to your persuasions.' And so the matter dropped. Nothing more could be done till the 'almost romantic personage' had been consulted. The portrait of Lady Elizabeth was taken away. In its stead, the curtain which had hung there before was put up for the time being; and when Tom Davenant came from his equine studies, he found that his strong arm was not to be called into requisition, but only the brains of Ivor Mardol, described as 'something between a workman and a gentleman.' [82] Tom lifted his eyebrows slightly. 'What kind of cross is that?' he inquired of the Earl. 'I don't think those half-breeds usually turn out well.' But I must do him the justice to remark that he spoke in a professional and abstract point of view, and not with contempt for the 'half-breed.' Tom despised nobody. But he liked the distinction of races to be kept. As he said now and then with the succinct wisdom which sat so well upon him, 'You can't get an Arab out of a cart-horse.'

I have no intention of chronicling the luncheons and dinners that were eaten at Trelingham during those eventful days. My reader must imagine them, with the dull or brilliant conversation which served as their intellectual garnish; and he may as well, at the same time, picture to himself the amusements or occupations—it was not always easy to distinguish between them—which filled up the intervals. The story I have in hand does not concern itself a great deal with eating and drinking, nor much with the amusements of the great world; though, doubtless, it was entangled in all these threads of the earthly life.

Suppose, then, luncheon over, and Glanville bent on a lonely walk by the sea, in spite of the rainclouds and an occasional downpour. He took a delight in wild weather, and found it inspiring; nor did it bring to his mind melancholy visions, sad landscapes, or the gloomy uncomfortable forebodings which seemed in Lady May to be its accompaniment. [83] He liked to live within himself, as he phrased it; and he was never more so than when the sky lowered overhead, and the sullen or defiant roar of the waters came, as now, like a deafening thunder all round him. Imagine him sauntering along the shingly beach. What had been told in the picture-gallery did not keep its grasp on his fancy down here; it served merely as an occasion to dream and muse, exciting him as a volume of Spanish ballads might have done, with their lingering assonance, their fine heroic clangour, and undercurrent of love, disastrous or fortunate. He thought of Lady May, of the Earl, of Lady Alice, much as you or I might have thought of them after hearing the story—with interest, and some degree of wonder that so romantic an incident should have come athwart the monotonous course of the Earl's life; but he felt no deeper emotion. Did he not stand outside their circle? When he had restored the wrecked portrait and painted the dining-hall, he should lose sight of Trelingham, and the days he was now beginning would roll up like a scroll. He had touched upon many another circle, come into the lives of old and young, and gone out of them again. 'What a lonely fellow I am!' he said to himself. 'But for Ivor, I should not have a friend, to call a friend, in the world.' It was this, perhaps, that drew them together. Ivor seemed to be cut off from the sweet companionship of home, and a solitary from childhood, much liked, successful in his work, but still—alone. 'And I am alone, too,' repeated [84] Glanville. His parents had died when he was just beginning to know them; the guardian of his moderate estate had been a man of law, highly conscientious and careful, but at no time capable of winning his ward's confidence, and now himself gone the way of all flesh. He stood there, the centre of his own universe, solitary but for Ivor.

Thinking thus, the old schooldays came back to him, that careless dreamy time when human nature is making the first trial of itself, and a boy looks on at his own deeds and ripening qualities with as little concern as though they belonged to a stranger, yet is liable to deep and sudden passion, to fits of melancholy and of longing, to pain and disquietude, which sometimes leave their mark on him for life. He remembered the springing up of this friendship, fast as Jonah's gourd; how it seemed perfect in an hour and had continued ever since. They say that only school friendships last. It may be so. At any rate, here was an exchange of mind, heart, imagination, of feelings and experience, that had resulted in steadfast devotion and an almost passionate rivalry of good offices. Rupert Glanville was proud of the ancient Norse blood that ran in his veins; and the name of Ivor Mardol suggested a kindred other than English. Both these young men, however, combined a high degree of reserve and stern silence with a frankness of sentiment which, among Englishmen, is seldom exhibited—unless in moods that express contempt or anger. The explanation perhaps lay in this, that [85] they were both, though by no means after the same fashion, artists. Neither of them took up the instruments of his calling as a drudgery, but in obedience to an instinct, and as a lifelong dedication which no success or increase of fortune would lead him to renounce. Brilliant, sociable, and, in a measure, volatile, Rupert had yet never declined the hard work of the studio. His own lightness of disposition led him to admire his friend's patient philosophy, wide learning, and easy waving aside of the world's good gifts. Rupert had a poetic fancy and a heart which, in his secret musings, he confessed was too liable to momentary conflagrations. He used to say jestingly that he went to his philosopher to have the fire put out. For Mardol, like many gentle persons, had in his nature a fund of austerity. He was tenderhearted, but his principles were severe, and he sometimes unwittingly manifested a rigour of judgment before which Glanville, though not deeply tarred, like so many young men, with the brush of worldliness, was fain to keep back certain of his own frivolities. Except for this perhaps venial offence against friendship, he was loyalty itself. The splendid success he had achieved in the last three years neither corrupted his heart nor dazzled his understanding. He had met none to compare with his schoolboy-friend, and their attachment was never so strong as when he thought of persuading Ivor to join him at Trelingham.

He wandered to and fro on the beach considering it. His letter of invitation was not yet written; [86] indeed, he had chosen this solitary promenade to shape its contents. The hermitage and Ivor Mardol living there on fruit and milk, brought him every morning by a rustic attendant, with the glades of Trelingham Chase for his outlook, made a pretty picture. But to enjoy such solitude, in the neighbourhood of the friends who had bestowed it on him, was possible only to a diseased egoist, and Mardol was by no means that. If he came, he would wish to acknowledge their kindness in a becoming spirit; and could he be at ease or bring out his rare gifts in this too polished society? Would he feel at home? Glanville was not selfish. He weighed these things in the balance. But, again, to have his dearest friend with him! And why should Ivor, in his proud shyness, or whatever it might be termed, deny himself the pleasure of associating with men and women from whom, the moment he was really known to them, he would receive an enthusiastic welcome? He must be entreated to come in the name of their friendship; for his own good he must be taken in the silken snare. He could not go on for ever being a recluse and an outcast from his natural surroundings. He had been so too long. It was all very well to begin with a healthy scorn of drawing-rooms and conventionalities—nay, to keep a little of it for future occasions; but more than this was cynicism, was not defensible in the eyes of reason, and was heroic on the wrong side altogether.

Thus far did Glanville proceed in his meditation [87] while the wind kept driving in the waves about his feet, and the flying scud ran across the sky, making a chequer of light and dark at once fantastic and impressive. Not another human being was in view. Hither and thither went sea-birds on the wing, shrieking out their thin music, now dipping into the foam with careless plunge, and now sweeping hastily by him to lose themselves in the clouds. There was no boat on the nearer waters; far out on the horizon he seemed to descry a vessel that loomed up while he gazed and sank out of sight again, giving him the most vivid notion he had ever conceived of a tossing sea and an impending shipwreck. He knew the coast was ironbound and perilous; immediately below the reach of sand and shingles he was treading a line of sunken rocks was indicated by the foaming and wind-beaten surge. But the rain came on harder; it was growing late; and he must return to the Court if he would not lose the London post, which left nearly two hours before dinner. He had come down by a long winding path; but there was a shorter way through the churchyard. He would take that.

Shorter it may have been; steeper it undoubtedly proved. Glanville, in the words of the Pilgrim's Progress , 'fell from running to going, and from going to clambering,' while he attempted to guide his steps over the huge stones, with slippery tracts of grass and prickly heather between them, which composed the main part of the ascent. He was soon out of breath, and paused to take in a fresh supply, and look round [88] on the view to which he had turned his back, for, like a true artist, he regretted leaving it. The scene was unutterably grand. A strange, cold light was coming over shore and ocean, bringing out to their smallest detail the crests of the waves, the shining sands, the fringe of rocks to right and left, and the runlets in the heathery sides of the steep he had been climbing. Between the spectator and the horizon all save this narrow strip was raging sea. On the utmost verge he could still descry the great ship struggling with the waves; but while he looked, it was gone. The rain drove heavily into his face; and he turned agian and passed up into the churchyard, of which, in the sudden exchange of daylight for dark, he could not for a moment so much as discern the outlines. It was, in fact, lying under the shadow of a thundercloud that seemed to be gradually sweeping down upon the enclosure, which, marked by a hedge of loose stones, was the cemetery of the parish. In the blinding storm Glanville stumbled along, endeavouring to gain at least the antique porch, where he hoped there might be shelter from the rain and wind. It was utterly dark when he reached it; the church-doors were fastened; and, wet to the skin and almost repenting his afternoon ramble, he sat down on one of the stone seats which, in accordance with some forgotten point of ritual, were on each side of the dim recess. But he could not rest there long. He must stand up and gaze out once more upon the tempest, although to do so he had to shield his eyes from the [89] mingled dust and foam that came driving in with the rain as it blew off the sea. A flash of lightning followed by the rattle of thunder overhead warned him that he was not in a very safe situation. He tried the door again, but it would not yield. Visibly the gloom of a thunderous atmosphere deepened over the churchyard; a mist of rain seemed to cover the ancient mounds of the dead; and the solemn yews stood here and there like uncanny apparitions in a dream, dripping with wet, and rustling mysteriously as the wild airs of heaven blew in upon them.

'What a desolate place!' thought Glanville. 'How it makes one shiver to think of the dead in these storm-swept graves by the sea! Can they rest quietly on such a day as this?' He smiled at his grim fancies even while he indulged them. But, looking, it seemed to him that something, that a figure he had not noticed, was moving in the churchyard among the low hillocks. At first he could not be sure, for the mist was thickening, and it might only be one of the leaning tombstones that to his roused imagination had assumed the outline of a cloaked figure. Nor had he time to look long. Flash after flash the lightning dazzled his sight, and the peals of thunder, coming faster than he could count, made him draw back into the porch as far as possible. Minutes passed before he could see distinctly. But when the extraordinary violence of the storm was a little abated, and a streak of open sky showed itself among the lower clouds, he saw, not without surprise, a tall figure in a cloak making hastily [90] for the place where he stood. It was no ghost, evidently, although in such ghostly surroundings. Hardly, however, had Glanville made this silent observation, before the rain and the gloom returned, and the stranger, entering as if he perceived no one in the porch, flung himself down on the stone seat, and bent his head against the wall in an attitude of extreme fatigue. The scanty light, or rather, 'darkness visible,' to speak with Milton, showed only a person of commanding stature and flecks of white hair under his drooping hat. Glanville made no sign, but waited, somewhat curious to know what manner of personage it might be that visited so forlorn a spot when tempest were abroad. It was none of the guests at Trelingham; and no house, except the Parsonage, was nearer than three or four miles. Could he be some one staying at Mr. Truscombe's? or King Arthur himself, thought Glanville, come to pay his client a visit and thank him for the enthusiastic belief he cherished in the Table Round? It might well, in mien and lordly bearing, be the fabulous King. While these idle musings were passing through his brain, the artist was astonished to observe that his involuntary companion had fallen asleep where he sat. The soft and regular breathing of a sleeper was unmistakable.

It was a strange situation. To the watcher a sleeping person has always something peculiar, some sense of mystery about him, which inspires a dim and not very comfortable feeling, as of gazing into unknown [91] depths. It is life under the semblance of death, a soul retired into far-away recesses whither we cannot follow, leaving the body animate, yet corpselike, a thing lying on the border of the great abyss and overshadowed by its horror. Glanville felt that a visitant from the tomb would have been almost as welcome. It was worse than being alone; he had a sense of the haunting presence touching him while it could not be held in turn. He would go out of the porch and make his way through the tempest; it was better than waiting in such undesirable company. But what, he said to himself, if the man were in need of succour, and too feeble to quit that out-of-the-way spot without assistance? He did not know whether at the Vicarage, itself some quarter of a mile off, there would be help, or how Mr. Truscombe's people were to know of a stranger lying asleep in the church vestibule. It would be more humane to wait until the man awoke, or gently to rouse him and ascertain his condition.

CHAPTER VII IN A VAIN SHADOW

There was no need to wait long. By some magic stroke in the heavens a ray of sunlight, piercing the sullen clouds, darted in at the door and rested on the sleeper's face. It vanished as quickly as it came, but the instantaneous change in the light seemed to have dispersed the old man's slumber. Yes, he was unmistakably an old man that now opened his eyes and fixed them calmly on Glanville standing by the entrance and watching his motions. He shook himself, came forward, and with an easy air inquired of the artist whether he had found him sleeping, and how long he had been there. Glanville told him what had really happened; and the stranger, thanking him for his courtesy, added that old bones were soon tired, and began to look out in silence at the scene before them. It had changed again. The lower clouds, melting in rain, were nearly gone; and high above them a livid, unbroken mass of [93] vapour stretched over the sky, making a sort of roof that seemed, at the horizon, to bend down and rest on a heavy ridge of purple tinged with white. The boiling sea which occupied the intervening space was desolate as when Glanville last looked across it, save for one object which he did not think to have viewed so nearly. In the midst of the tumbling waves he beheld the same vessel which had been visible less than an hour before. It was not so large as he thought. With bare poles it had been scudding before the gale, but now it was giving a tremendous lurch every moment; and as it turned a broadside towards him there were to be seen figures on deck moving about in great confusion. They seemed in evil plight. So intent was Glanville on the spectacle that he cried out involuntarily when a red flash from the ship told him that a gun had been discharged. 'What is that for?' he said to his companion, not meaning to speak aloud. A dull boom came upon his ear as the stranger answered, 'It is a signal of distress; she is likely to founder.'

'Good God!' exclaimed Glanville, 'do you mean to tell me she will be wrecked?'

'I think so,' said the other, as if it was a foregone conclusion which did not concern him. 'See, they are signalling again. They will never get into harbour; if she stands in she will go to pieces on the bar. It is a good dozen miles to the next place where she could run in. But that is only a roadstead.'

'But the lifeboat,' cried Glanville, in much distress; 'is there no lifeboat on the coast?'

'What lifeboat would venture on such a sea?' inquired the stranger. 'It would be merely adding to the number of drowned men. Ah, she signals again! It is no use; we shall see her heel over in a few minutes.'

'Oh, horrible, horrible!' said the artist. 'To look on, and be so helpless. If we could but do something,' and he moved to and fro restlessly, looking round in the hope that help of some sort might be putting off from the land. But he could see only the tall vessel staggering along and the waves rising over it.

'You never saw a ship go down, I suppose?' said the old man, eyeing him in a way that implied some pity and a great deal of scorn. Glanville, struck by the harsh ring in the stranger's voice, stopped in his walk and looked, as seeking for an explanation, straight across at him. 'What makes you ask?' he said; 'have you? You seem not to mind it much.'

'What difference can it make whether I mind it or no?' retorted the old man. 'It will not save one of them from drowning. The play must be played out. Do you think of rushing on the stage and rescuing Hamlet or Lear from his fate because you pity him? No, you sit there quietly and enjoy your sentimental illusions and your exquisite weeping. This is but a larger stage. You can't interfere; be miserable if you must, or if you wish to indulge in the luxury. It is all one to the men in that sinking ship. Ha, what a lurch! She cannot stand much more of it.'

'Why,' said Glanville, 'you talk as if you had not the heart of a man. What hideous nonsense! and at such a time! You are not, you cannot be serious.' The words of the old man seemed to him almost as horrible as the shipwreck he was gazing on.

The other answered with astonishing calm. 'When I was your age,' he said, 'I felt as you do. I have learnt since not to lament the things I cannot help. We must bear them. The time will come, if you live long enough, when you will have witnessed many a ship go down, and be as helpless to save them as you are at this moment. Perhaps it is the deepest pity that sheds no tears.'

The vessel was again out of sight; but they heard the signal-guns from minute to minute; and in Glanville's heart, at least, they excited a sickening sensation, which took away all desire of speech. But he thought he must reply.

'Pardon me, sir,' he said, 'if I did not quite understand you. This dreadful scene,—it is too much.' He stopped abruptly and turned away. The signal came again, but fainter. His next glance seaward showed the horizon one sheet of lightning, and there came crashing down upon them a roar of thunder which appeared to be sounding from every quarter of the heavens.

'You will hear no more signal-guns,' said his companion when the tumult ceased; 'that was probably the last which came before this overwhelming clap of thunder. Nothing can live when [96] sky and sea are gone mad in such fashion. To-morrow planks and spars will be thrown up along the coast, and we shall have to lay in this nook, which holds too many already, the bodies that may be cast ashore. Well, it is all over now; when the play comes to an end the tragedy is out.'

Glanville kept silence. He could not trust himself to speak. The stranger, as though thinking aloud, went on in a lower tone: 'The worst is if the curtain should draw up a second time. To be wrecked is unpleasant, but the waves close over you, and you sink to sleep as on velvet cushions. I remember the keen sense of anticipation. That cuts deep into a man. But afterwards is nothing in comparison. No,' he said, rousing himself and speaking to Glanville, who was beginning to listen, 'it is coming back to life that I regret, not seeing it slip away into the ocean.'

'Were you ever in a shipwreck, then?' asked the young man, softening.

'Once, many years since,' he replied.

'And you escaped easily?'

'I was brought back to life when I had been dead, so far as any one could tell, several hours.'

'Were you unconscious all that time?' the artist inquired.

'Utterly so,' he answered; 'and coming back to consciousness was far more dreadful than the pangs of drowning. I left half my vitality—the best half, I think—behind me.'

Glanville hastily spoke what was in his mind: 'Is that why you feel so unconcerned?'

'No,' said the other, who seemed incapable of taking offence; 'I think life itself is the great shipwreck. Existence is made up of pain. It is always and everywhere pitiable. And we are but spectators till our own turn comes to wear the burning crown and be racked and torn. You cannot help me, and I cannot help you if you stand in need of help. But the sky is clearing now the brave vessel has gone down. Let me wish you good afternoon.'

He stepped out of the porch, and, at the same moment, a gust of wind took his hat and blew it some distance. He ran after it bareheaded, stooped, and caught it up again. As he turned about, Glanville, who had run to his assistance, perceived with strong amazement that the stranger's bare forehead was disfigured with an irrgular seam, the evident trace of a sword-stroke. He almost staggered back. It was utterly improbably that here, in this churchyard, a casual visitant should be marked like the hero of the tale he had heard in the morning. It must be Colonel Valence. He pronounced the name aloud, and was answered instantly. 'Colonel Valence? What do you want with him? He is here at your service.'

Glanville blushed and stammered. He could not inform Colonel Valence that in the last four and twenty hours he had learned to know him intimately, though unacquainted with his name before; that he [98] had read a most confidential letter written by him over thirty years ago, and knew the history of the Madonna of San Lucar. Should he tell Valence of the morning's accident to that picture? No, he would tell him nothing. The Colonel saw that a struggle was going on in the young man's mind; and as Glanville hesitated to reply, he said, 'Have I had the honour of meeting you at any time, sir?'

'Never, to my knowledge,' said the artist; 'but —but I have heard your name,—something, too, of your history, of your having fought in Spain when a young man. You lived in this neighbourhood once, did you not?'

'I live here still,' answered the Colonel briefly; 'and now, since you appear to be well acquainted with my name, may I ask the favour of yours?'

'My name is Rupert Glanville,' the young man replied.

'Rupert Glanville!' repeated his questioner, surprised in turn; 'Glanville the artist?'

'An artist, certainly,' said the modest painter.

Colonel Valence seemed for a while lost in thought. 'Are you staying at the town younder?' he inquired, pointing away to the cliff which hid Yalden from them.

'I am staying at Trelingham Court.'

'Oh, at Trelingham Court!' echoed Valence, without moving a muscle. 'Then I wish you good-day, sir!' And, as if not a word more was to be said, he turned deliberately towards the ascent, and with slow but not feeble steps began his journey homeward, as [99] it should seem, for he faced away from Yalden and Trelingham, both of which lay on the same side of the country.

Glanville looked after him. There was something, he acknowledged, of the stately grace and resolute daring of King Arthur about the man; but what a harsh cynic! how little resembling the idea that, in his own mind, the artist had formed while reading the epistle from San Lucar! Heroic he might be, and doubtless was; his bearing showed it. But every particle of feeling seemed extinguished by the stern and pitiless philosophy that, in the name of pity, would not suffer him to care for the calamities which overtook his fellows. And so that was Colonel Valence! He was still living, still in the neighbour-hood of Trelingham Court. And Lady Alice was dead. In what relation did the two families stand towards each other? He longed to know more of the strange story. The thought quickened his pace as he walked up the hill. But he was cold and tired; the road appeared steeper than ever, and not until some time after the dinner-hour did he reach the front terrace of the Court. As he did so two men wrapped up as for a night expedition, and with lanterns in their hands, ran against him. They stopped and explained that, in pursuance of the Earl's directions, they were just setting forth in quest of him, for his long absence, combined with the fearful storm by which he must have been overtaken, had given rise to great anxiety. 'We should have started sooner, [100] one of them subjoined, 'but for the accident to Mr. Davenant.'

Glanville was shocked to such a degree that he forgot to thank them for going after himself. 'What accident?' he hastily inquired.

'One that might have been very serious. Mr. Davenant had been out in the lifeboat and had nearly been drowned. He was brought home as soon as men could be spared from attending on the wreck.'

'Ah, there was a wreck!' cried Glanville, and he had begun to question them as they arrived at the entrance, when, catching sight of Lady May crossing the hall, he ran up to her, and begged to know whether her cousin was in any kind of danger.

'I do not think so,' she answered; 'we were beginning to feel more anxious on your account than his. The doctor at Yalden ascertained that there was no fracture, but the shoulder has received a severe strain. My cousin laughs at the notion that he shall not be about the house to-morrow morning. However, we have written to Mrs. Davenant in town. He has been ordered to keep his bed, and we must see that he obeys. He takes any mishap to himself very lightly—too lightly indeed.'

'And was he out with the lifeboat?' inquired Glanville, feeling very kindly towards the young man, and silently contrasting him with Colonel Valence, not to the latter's advantage.

'Why, it was all Cousin Tom's doing,' said Lady May. 'You shall hear the story at dinner, for'— [101] interrupting herself to look at his weather-beaten state —'you must change at once, Mr. Glanville, and come down as soon as you are ready. Dinner is late, owing to my cousin's accident.' She rang, and instructed the housekeeper to see that Mr. Glanville was treated as an invalid. 'It is the only way to keep you from becoming so,' she added. Under such gracious care did the artist appear at dinner. He looked pale and tired; with a paleness, however, which set off his bright hair and intellectual features to exceeding advantage. He was not so good-looking as Tom Davenant; but 'he was well enough.'

They were a small party. Mr. Truscombe and Lord Hallamshire had gone down to the wreck; and the Earl, who was very fond of his cousin, could not be induced to quit his bedside until that young man was satisfactorily asleep. The only remaining gentleman besides Glanville was an elderly squire, who lived a long way across the moor and had come to enjoy a few days fishing at Trelingham. He was a good-natured, silent creature, not easily roused to express sentiment of any kind, good or bad; and while he made you comfortable in his presence (which some silent men are far from doing), you could not expect him even to ask a question. But Glanville was ready to ask a thousand; and Lady May and the Countess were only too willing to satisfy him.

He could ask questions, but he could neither eat nor drink. The light and warmth of the dining-room were grateful to him physically, and took away the [102] chill sense of desolation which so many hours in the churchyard, under the pelting storm, had inflicted; but his memory was full of the dreadful sight, and yet more dreadful imagination, which had mastered him while gazing at the tossing ship. He could not choose but think of it again and again, and, though he knew not one of the human beings she carried, it would prove an intense relief should any, by the gallant exertions of Tom Davenant, have escaped destruction. 'How came Mr. Davenant to be at Yalden?' he asked.

The Countess, who exhibited a curious mixture of excited gaiety and sudden relapses into the terror which had laid hold of her that afternoon, answered plaintively, 'It was partly my doing that he went. For I knew that this week there was to be a salmon-hunt in the Yale; and I have never seen one; and I thought I would get Cousin Tom to instruct me a little beforehand; and so I persuaded him to ride to Yalden for some tackle, because I was to have a lesson in fly-fishing to-morrow. It was all just to understand what fishing is like. Of course I couldn't join in the salmon-hunt, much as I might long for it. But I never thought Cousin Tom would persuade the men to go out in a lifeboat. Oh, May,' she cried, with a piteousness in her voice that Glanville could not laugh at, although he felt there was a comic element some-where in it, 'are you quite sure that Tom will not be hurt for life?'

'The doctor is quite sure,' answered Lady May; [103] 'don't distress yourself, Karina. Tom will be himself in a day or two, if he keeps quiet,—and if you do,' she added somewhat mockingly.

'For, you see, Mr. Glanville,' the Countess went on, 'he really did put himself into the greatest danger. The men told us that brought him. He would insist on getting alone into the lifeboat and taking it across the bar, as they call it, and—'

'My dear Karina, we shall hardly understand the story if you tell it in that way,' said Lady May. 'Cousin Tom was brave enough, but he was not out of his mind. The fact seems to have been,' she continued, looking towards Glanville, 'that when my cousin was choosing the fishing-tackle for the Countess, in a shop not far from the promenade, he saw people running down to the waterside and heard them shouting that a vessel was standing-in, showing signals of distress. He thought he had heard a minute-gun discharged; but there was so much thunder that he had not dwelt on the notion. Following the crowd, he arrived on the beach at the same moment with half a dozen fishermen, well known to him, who were passing the wet afternoon in a tavern close at hand. The air was so full of mist that even with glasses little more of the vessel could be made out than her size, which seemed considerable, and the direction in which she appeared to be going; for she was not standing-in to Yalden, but making for the roadstead to the north.'

'I saw her at that point, I am sure,' said Glanville; [104] and he described how she had repeatedly fired minuteguns and received no answer.

'You could not have heard the answer,' said Lady May, 'had any been given, with the high cliff between you and Yalden beach. But, in fact, there were no signal rockets; and the sailors had only their fowling-pieces. About the rockets there has been, my cousin says, some extraordinary mistake. But to go on with the story. You heard, I make no doubt, an unusually violent peal of thunder, which seemed to finish the worst part of the storm?' Glanville nodded assent. It was when Colonel Valence had given the vessel up for lost, and when she had, in fact, disappeared from their view.

'Well, no sooner had the awful sound died away than the ship came swiftly round the edge of the cliff, as though driven by a hurricane, and made straight for the bar, over which the waves were breaking with the utmost fury. The excitement on shore became intolerable. My cousin had persuaded the fishermen to get out the lifeboat and make her ready for sea; and thus far they were willing, although not one of them but assured him that it could never be launched. By dint of coaxing and commanding, however, launched it was; a crew was brought together, and with immense difficulty they had got her a few yards from land, when she was flung on shore again and stranded. My cousin implored them to try once more; they refused; and it was then that he told them, in a desperate sort of way he sometimes has, [105] that he would venture alone rather than see a shipful of helpless beings perish before his eyes. That shamed them; and, for the second time, as the vessel was rounding the High Cliff, they managed, with Tom for their captain, to launch the boat and get it as close to the bar as they dared. Further it was impossible to go; indeed, they hardly knew how to keep the lifeboat afloat, when the vessel struck on the bar, and its crew of four or five and twenty—I cannot tell the exact number—was seen struggling in the waves. It must have been heartrending to look on. The lifeboat did wonders. Ropes were thrown out, and nine or ten poor creatures rescued; while, as the sea was now slightly calmer, the rest, who had clung to what they could, were able, all except three or four, to keep floating till a second boat went out. Poor Cousin Tom, however, who had been so active and undaunted all through, was not to come off scatheless. The heavy sea carried the lifeboat a long distance from the point they endeavoured to make. It was driven inshore unexpectedly; and as it touched, a projecting piece of timber struck Cousin Tom on the shoulder, knocking him off deck into the shallows. It is a marvel that he escaped being crushed. He was carried some distance by the returning wave; and but for a young fisher-lad who instantly plunged in and brought him out—Poor dear Tom!' said Lady May, stopping in her narrative as the thought of his peril came home to her; 'what a brave fellow he is! and how could we have borne to lose him!'

Karina, who had for some time been listening with her hands clasped, was crying like a child, and could not speak for tears. She looked very pretty and innocent so, like a white rose upon which the rain is falling in heavy drops, while the sun lights them up.

Glanville, who felt himself liking Tom Davenant more and more, said, when the silence was becoming rather painful, 'Your cousin behaved nobly. I hope he was not left long without proper attention.'

'He was much shaken,' replied Lady May, 'and confused for a while, but not, he tell me, unconscious. They took him to a little cottage on shore, but he insisted on walking to the doctor's, and when he arrived there fainted. The doctor happened to be at home; he had to decide in a moment whether to leave my cousin or to examine his hurt before going down to the wreck. However, he gave it in Tom's favour, saying that but for him there would have been no other patients to attend to. He declares that there is only a strain, which will go off, and that nothing is displaced or broken. A carriage was got ready, and came on slowly with my cousin, while one of the men very kindly ran on before, to inform us of what had happened. There was much gentle feeling shown on all sides.'

Again Glanville's thoughts reverted to Colonel Valence. But he would not speak of him. 'Is it certain that any are lost?' was his next question.

'We shall not know till to-morrow, when Lord [107] Hallamshire returns. But I fear that some were lost at the moment of foundering,' said Lady May.

'Do you think their bodies will be recovered? Would they be buried in Trelingham cemetery, if they were?' he asked.

'Yes,' she replied; 'it is the only place at hand. You may have observed, if the storm allowed you to walk about the churchyard, how many graves there are of persons drowned. Shipwrecks are common on this terrible coast.'

'There were not five minutes of clear weather,' he replied, 'while I was in the porch. But I can imagine it is so.'

He would not mention Colonel Valence. Glanville, spending much of his time alone, and keeping his own confidence because he had none to share it, had fallen into a habit of reserve, which often induced him to be silent when he was, as now, living in a domestic circle. What harm could there be in saying that he had come across a man whose name, since he lived in their neighbourhood, must often be heard at Trelingham? However, he did not choose to repeat his disagreeable adventure; and he was spared the temptation, thanks to the Countess Karina, who, in her vivacious manner, was perpetually recurring to the event of the afternoon—admiring, fearing, and hoping by turns as the thought of Tom Davenant's heroism, of his danger, and the many perils he had escaped already on the hunting-field and the river, came uppermost. All this, from the peculiar lightness [108] of accent which distinguished the fair lady, and the impossibility of a cloud resting long on her transparent brow and sparkling eyes, seemed to Glanville like a fantastic interlude weaving itself up with the horror of the shipwreck and the simple manliness of Cousin Tom. He laughed inwardly, tired and depressed as he felt, at the naïve affection which would not let the Countess be silent. Was she engaged to her cousin? It did not seem so. She was not more than his age, if so much; but there was a tone about her that implied the enjoyment of more freedom than is usual in young unmarried ladies, even when engaged. That she was exceedingly interested in Mr. Tom Davenant no one with eyes in his head could help seeing; not even the placid sportsman, Glanville supposed, who had looked and listened in silence imperturbable during the whole of the narrative, only remarking, when it was concluded, that he knew the man whose stack of timber that was nigh which Mr. Tom had come to grief. He was a sawyer named Frampton, and ought to have taken it away a good week ago to his yard at Plymouth.

'I wish he had, then,' cried Karina. 'Don't you think, May,' she observed next moment, 'that we ought to send up and ask how Cousin Tom is now?'

'Papa will join us in the drawing-room,' answered Lady May, 'and he will tell us.' On which hint the other lady rose, and Glanville was left to the company of Squire Huffington. The squire drank his wine [109] quietly, in moderation, and as with a conscience void of offence; although in the course of ten minutes he did but open his lips once for the purpose of conversation, and then merely to emphasise the delinquency of sawyer Frampton, on which he had before animadverted. 'He ought to have taken that stack away a good week ago,' he said. Glanville could not but agree with him; and after this brilliant dialogue they joined the ladies, just as Lord Trelingham came from his cousin's room. He gave a reassuring account of Mr. Tom, except that he could not sleep long together because of the pain. But a good deal of pain, the nurse said, was better than insensibility at that stage; and the patient took it all as a matter of course, and was very obedient to orders. While the Earl spoke he glanced uneasily at Lady May, who neither avoided nor sought his observation. The Countess he patted on the head, but otherwise gave her no great share of attention. Glanville went to bed saying, 'I wonder which of them is engaged to Cousin Tom?' But he was too cold and wretched to pursue the subject, and he spent a miserable night, feeling more feverish than he liked to own.

CHAPTER VIII AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

' Dear Ivor,' wrote Glanville next morning, 'your friend Rupert has not been slow to seek wisdom at your hands when he thought it lacking in himself. And you have shown as much pleasure in giving as he in receiving; while, which I take to be a sign of perfect friendship, he has never once thanked you. But now, he is going to put your philosophy to the test—not your affection; no, indeed, who could think it?

'My dear old fellow, I want you to give me not advice, but two or three weeks of your existence. I am lost if you do not come to Trelingham Court. You exclaim at the notion; but without you I cannot stay here. You know to what severe fits of depression I am liable; one of them, owing to a misadventure that I witnessed yesterday, has come upon me again, and I shall not shake it off in the mental solitude of this place. Other reasons, curious and important, would have led me to write yesterday. I will explain [111] when you come, and you shall decide whether they would have justified me in asking you to break through your rule and mix in this kind of society. I should tell you that Lord Trelingham, who sends a most cordial invitation, and will be charmed to make your acquaintance,—this banal phrase is not without meaning in the present instance,—knows the ways and customs of the artist tribe too well to think of binding you down to formal observances. You may live as retired here and as much at your ease as in your own sanctum. I have informed him, so far as was required, of the manner in which you meet the world, or, to speak more truly, get out of its way. You shall be a hermit at Trelingham, if you will come, and meet only those you like. If you say the thing is impossible, then, Ivor, I must go back to London. To not a soul in the world but yourself would I reveal this streak of madness—for what else can it be? I was caught, by the bye, in a storm yesterday afternoon, have neither eaten nor slept to speak of in the last twenty-four hours, and shall want you if I indulge myself in a slight attack of fever. But what is the use of going on? Send me a line and say I may expect you to-morrow evening. I enclose directions for the journey.

RUPERT.'

It was altogether true. Since yesterday morning the reasons for which Glanville would have summoned his friend to Trelingham had yielded to others of a very different complexion. The overstrained temperament [112] of the artist, who works by feeling and imagination where other men are busy only with their hands, was suffering from the combined effects of long hours spent in the rain and excitement consequent on the shipwreck. This latter experience will be understood by any one that has had the misfortune of witnessing a great fire in which lives have been lost. The senses seem all wrapped up in the horror of it; the mind cannot get away from it; the eyes still see what has happened, and have in them a hot sensation. Nor will the impression pass for days. Glanville was feeling a kind of nausea which made it impossible to touch food; and when he woke from such sleep as came to him in the morning, he knew that an old and dreaded enemy stood by his bedside. He called it depression, melancholy, a streak of madness; it was all these, perhaps. When he was younger, at school, he had often suffered from it; but, as he said, except Ivor Mardol, no one guessed that so mercurial and cheery a nature could be hypochondriac; nor was he so wanting in prudence as to let his 'friends' know of the complaint which made him miserable. A man who is to succeed should never acquaint the world that he is sick, or sore, or sorry. He will meet, if he does, with contempt, not compassion. There are secrets which make up the greater part of many a life, but will never be uttered; secrets that explain sudden downfalls, want of enterprise, rashness in the wary, and intoxication in the self-controlled. But the explanation cannot be given, and the world wonders.

Glanville did not send his letter until he had seen Lord Trelingham, and ascertained that he need not delay because of Tom Davenant's illness. The Earl believed that he would soon be right again. He strongly desired to see the portrait of Lady Elizabeth restored to something of its pristine glory; nor was he unobservant of the worn and pallid look which testified in Glanville to the agitation he had gone through. Lady May insisted that he should see the physician who drove over in the course of the day from the county-town to attend her cousin. But the artist firmly declined. He would admit only that he was tired, and that a fire would make his room more comfortable. It was a curious fact, connected with his 'streak of madness,' that, whenever it affected him, he shivered and could not get warm. 'Diminished circulation and intermittent pulse,' the physician would have said, shaking his head a little, and prescribing quinine and gentle exercise. But, unlike most who suffer from slow circulation, Glanville at such a time hated sunshine, and would sit in a chill room rather than face it. What he asked was a fire, and to lie with a cloak about him on a sofa. These moderate luxuries were bestowed on him; and he hid himself away in his den, like a wounded animal.

As the afternoon wore on he thought he must rouse himself and pay a visit to the real invalid, who had only strained his shoulder, and bore it like a man, instead of surrendering to phantasmal terrors from the void inane. Tom Davenant was lying in [114] bed, as near the open window as the nurse would let him. On seeing Glanville he held out his hand, saying how kind it was of him to come, and that he hoped no mischief had befallen him during the storm. A twinge or two of pain interrupted the good-natured fellow before he could finish his sentence. The artist, who admired both his bravery and his unconcern, knew better than to praise either. He merely said, 'Oh, I am all right, thank you,' and began to inquire about the shipwrecked vessel, where it was from, and how many it carried. I think that by some knack of freemasonry which goes with reserved speech, he contrived to inform Tom, through the medium of these collateral questions, that he looked on him, if he might say so, as an exceedingly fine fellow. Tom, at any rate, was very cordial and communicative. Lord Hallamshire had come up to see him after luncheon, and brought the whole story of the shipwreck. It was an English sailing-vessel, coming home from the Cape, with only three passengers, and a crew, all told, of four and twenty. They had been driven out of their course in a fog, and, intending to make the Channel, had slipped by Land's End, and run clean into the heart of the storm which had been travelling partly ahead of them. No one on board knew the coast or its soundings. When Glanville saw them, it was their expectation every moment to be driven upon shore underneath Trelingham Church; nor did they suspect the neighbourhood of Yalden Harbour, which, owing to the mist, they had never [115] once sighted. A sudden change in the direction of the gale had turned the vessel round High Cliff and on the bar. Long before that, however, she had refused to answer her helm and was rolling at the mercy of wind and tide.

'Twenty-seven on board,' said Glanville, when Tom had brought the narrative to this point. 'And how many saved?'

'Eleven,' replied Tom quietly. 'We did what we could; but the sea was awful. Our boat rescued six, and the other which followed us picked up the rest. Mr. Truscombe will be pretty well worn out by the time he has seen to the survivors and buried all that may be thrown on shore. He is down there now; Lord Hallamshire left him in the midst of living and dead, for the poor things that were saved are quite destitute.'

Glanville started. 'Thank you for reminding me,' he said. 'I will go down and see whether I can be of use.' And in ten minutes he was riding along the avenue on his way to Yalden—not as one that hurries in vainglorious mood to proffer his aid, but ashamed that he had waited for another to rouse him. He reflected with surprise on the likeness between his own depression, which kept him lying on a couch all the morning, and Colonel Valence's despairing philosophy, which looked with dry eyes at a perishing crew. He could excuse himself only by saying that melancholy was his complaint, that it prostrated his courage and benumbed his faculties. But what did [116] he know of Colonel Valence? He rode on, and reached Yalden in a more tranquil, though not less melancholy frame of mind. For it was only as he went to and fro by the side of the good clergyman, ministering such help and consolation as he could to the survivors—who were all much distressed in mind and body—or assisting with his own hands to lay out the remains of the dead,—only then, amid these dismal surroundings, did he feel that the dark spirit was loosening its hold on him. Mr. Truscombe would not let him stay all night, as he proposed, but sent him back to Trelingham, where he arrived late, to encounter the kindly reproaches of the Earl and his daughter, to take a hasty meal, and to lie down tired, but not altogether miserable.

Next day a telegram announced that Ivor Mardol might be expected by the fast train which, two days previously, had brought down the artist and Tom Davenant, and was obliging enough in that way to open our story. Lady May inquired whether he would at once take up his abode in the hermitage. But Glanville assured her that such a proposal directly made would frighten him into the severest observance of the proprieties, although to his exceeding discomfort. A life in the hermitage would be best for him, no doubt; only, like a bird, he must enter the cage of his own accord. He was the sort of person that, from intense shyness, refuses what he knows to be pleasant, and what he would much like to accept. 'But,' continued the artist, 'please, do not think him [117] unmanageable, or morbid, or, as perhaps my account of him has led you to believe, in any way ridiculous.' Lady May declared that she was far from dreaming of such a thing. 'I do not wonder,' she said, 'if original people—in a society of portentous dulness like ours, where the outside is solid and the inside hollow—have to wear a mask. They cannot help being shy, because they are always solitary; conversation as it goes on around them must sound like the cawing of rooks. I honour Mr. Mardol's shyness. It seems to be founded on genius and character, not on the fear of man's opinion.'

'It is founded,' replied Glanville, 'on absorption in the greatest thoughts, which often makes him disregard little things when he should be attending to them. He does not wish to be or to appear singular; but his exceptional gifts make him so; and he is startled into shyness when the difference between himself and others comes out.'

'You say he is learned?'

'Beyond comparison the best-read man of my acquaintance. Speaks half a dozen languages, understands as many more, and is at home in all literatures.'

'And his profession—is he skilful in it?'

'A most sure and delicate touch. His eye quick in discerning the finest shades, and an equal lightness of hand in rendering them.'

'But why is he not celebrated? Has he no ambition?'

'I do not think he understands the word. He [118] earns money and gives it away; talks to me when he wants society, or goes among the working men in his neighbourhood; travels occasionally in a modest way; can bear his own company for months at a time; and would expire with shame if any one pointed him out in the street. Is there not a Roman poet who calls that the summit of ambition—to be pointed at as you go along? It would kill Ivor Mardol. I think he would give a gallery of his finest prints to buy the cloak of darkness they tell of in fairy tales, and go about in it unseen.'

'Your friend is a phoenix, not an engraver,' said Lady May, smiling. 'I shall be curious to see him. But is he, then, to be accommodated with an ordinary guest-chamber, like any other mortal?'

'For to-night and to-morrow I think it will be wisest. Afterwards, I will ask you to show him the hermitage.'

In this way Ivor Mardol came to Trelingham.

If Lady May Davenant had expected to discover in his outward appearance tokens of the rare excellence within, she must have been disappointed when Glanville presented his friend to her. Without showing any trace of the 'half-breed' which her cousin had fancied him to be, he looked a man whom you might easily pass in the average. His height was not commanding, nor were his features handsome. By the side of Glanville he looked plain and slight. He was very thin, stooped a little in the shoulders, walked negligently though not without ease, and for some [119] time hardly lifted his eyes from the ground while his hostess addressed him. When he did so, however, he showed a countenance that, in the manly expression of Robert Burns, 'had received its patent of nobility direct from Almighty God.' Intellectual distinction gave his dark and rugged features a stamp that you might seek in vain among the crowds wherein he would so readily have been lost. There was a steady look in those penetrating eyes, an attentive pose of the head, a resolution in the attitude, an absence of the slight nervous motions associated with ordinary shyness, that told the spectator of a man whom it would be dangerous to grapple with and hard to overcome. He spoke in very brief sentences, and very little, turning his gaze rather upon Glanville than Lady May, with an air of affectionate anxiety that did not escape the latter. What he did say was to the purpose, phrased with admirable clearness and decision, but in no sense over-confidently; and his subdued voice had the resonance which indicates that the speaker possesses one, and that the most persuasive, of the gifts of oratory. Glanville's delighted ear made him sensible of the contrast and harmony which these two voices produced. 'How well they would match in singing!' he said to himself. The commonest tones in Lady May were of a certain grandeur; if you listened, you could not but experience a thrill of admiration. Ivor Mardol, on the other hand, suggested in his voice all that was keenly passionate and caressing; it was light and high rather [120] than deep, the music of a reed-pipe, not of the swelling organ-stop. One was reminded of an English song-bird, singing on the topmost bough when winds are hushed. Or to speak more precisely, such was the similitude that occurred to Lady May, when Ivor, forgetting himself in the presence of the view that lay extended before the drawing-room windows, began to talk at his ease. The qualities of his speech may be summed up in this, that he said nothing for effect, that if he spoke at all, it was on his part thinking aloud, and almost (that there should be no difference is impossible) in the words he would have chosen had he been alone. Sincerity and directness in talk are among the lost arts in civilised life; and to fit them in with its requirements is not less rare than to possess them. We are trained to make language hide thought and the want of thought; and the more refined our conversation the nearer it approaches to an algebra of which every man keeps the key in his own bosom. Our words express little or nothing, and they imply no more than we find convenient. Now, Mardol, I do not say spoke all that he had in his mind,—often he kept silence even from monosyllables—but what he did speak had a picturesque force and a high relief which made the language of common men insignificant. Instead of showing you the painted canvas, he seemed to show you the lion. This, perhaps, made it undesirable that he should be much in polished circles, where lions, and, much more, badgers and jackals, are hinted at rather than spoken [121] of, and never introduced to evening parties. But I am fallen on a vein of moralising. Let us to our story.

When the great storm was over, and the sky once more visible in cloudless calm, the summer, as though rejuvenescent, continued many days bright and serene. The verdure had never been more tender, nor the purple bloom of the heather more enchanting; not a leaf hung yellow on the branches, nor did the petals of the roses fall until fresh buds were springing to take their place. All day a mild and tranquil splendour dwelt upon the waters, which, rippling under a soft breeze, rolled in musically over sand and pebbles, or plashed with murmuring sound against the rocks. Only Glanville, in the midst of that fair landscape, gave a thought, oftener than he would, to the gray cemetery where beneath one large mound, marked as yet with no inscription, lay hidden what the waves had cast up. His melancholy, assuaged by the coming of so dear a friend, was yielding to other sentiments—to the affection which Ivor's presence inspired and was ever drawing forth in brotherly act, to the desire for work which he felt again lit up in him, to a real and growing attachment, of its own kind, but very genuine, to the Earl and Tom Davenant; perhaps also to a feeling which he would not define, nor altogether admit, towards the daughter of the house into whose company for hours every morning he was thrown. Do not be hasty, reader; you are actute and have a practised eye for possibilities; [122] but you know as little about the matter as Glanville did himself. Have I dropped a hint that he was beginning, dimly, to think of Lady May as not merely a model for the restored countenance of her ancestress? Be it so; but I have gone no further. His mind was interested, his fancy—a young man's fancy, ever on the wing—was drawn in the direction of this rare exotic flower, planted in our northern clime. So much I do confess. Beyond that, let all be uncertain.

On being introduced to the picture-gallery, Ivor at once recognised the Madonna of San Lucar, which he called, however, by another name—the Virgin of the Seraphim , from the messengers arrayed in kingly vesture and moving as on wings of light, who heralded therein the ascent of the crowned lady towards the empyrean. It was attributed to an otherwise unknown monk, Fray Raimondo, whose works, though not numerous, exhibited the union of high artistic skill with transcendent mysticism. Lord Trelingham inquired whether a copy of the picture was extant. He received for answer that only one such had been set down in the catalogues—a copy in debased style which, taken from the Escorial by French soldiers, had since found its way into Russia. There the record broke off, nor was it possible to say who was its present owner, nor, consequently, to ascertain in what condition, after so long a period, it might be. His counsel, Ivor went on, would be to set about restoring the canvas immediately,—which he offered to do on the ground that his experience in the rougher technicalities of art [123] had been considerable; and that, while he was so engaged, Glanville should execute a portrait of Lady May, from which afterwards the countenance of the Madonna should be painted in. If this did not prove satisfactory, a replica of the original might be attempted. The entire undertaking was delicate and hazardous in the extreme; but Lord Trelingham could not surrender his hope of preserving in this way one of his rarest treasures. He consented, and the sittings began.

To find a place for them was easy. The picture-gallery suggested itself at once. It had light and space, and would furnish a morning-room for the Countess or any other that chose to look on. When he painted Glanville was not disturbed by conversation; and he cared not whether he were tête-à-tête with Lady May—except in the artistic sense—or had a company about him. He felt no embarrassment in her presence and as little in theirs. Brush in hand, he could maintain a discussion when painting a portrait, though not while engaged on landscape or the grouping of figures. With Ivor it was otherwise. To him silence and solitude were as necessary as fresh air and open windows. Nor dared he bring his mechanical appliances into the splendid gallery. Lady May, whom with characteristic modesty he consulted through Glanville, suggested, as though it were an inspiration, the chalet. He had not seen it, nor had his perfidious friend.

'Then you shall at once,'replied Lady May, and [124] she laid her hand on the Countess's shoulder, where that pensive beauty stood gazing at large out of window lost in sad thoughts of Tom Davenant's captivity in his room. 'Come, Karina,'said her cousin, 'a truce to your reveries; they are really becoming a mania. We are going to visit the chalet, and these gentlemen will accompany us.'

Karina sighed, looked at the gentlemen with a mournful sweetness of expression, which implied not regard for them, but regret for the absent; and suffered herself to be led away. Since Cousin Tom was not there it mattered little where she went. Mr. Rupert Glanville, who had never felt the pangs of disconsolate love, was exceedingly amused, though his speech bewrayed him not. All he did was, as they went along, to ask the Countess a number of indifferent and worldly questions, not bearing on the illness of Tom Davenant, and to watch how her mind slipped away from them. She answered at random; and he secretly enjoyed her blushes when she found she had been talking nothing to the purpose. Her ordinary state, wherever Mr. Davenant's image did not occur, was one of serene self-control; and now she felt vexed at herself and annoyed with Glanville, whose frivolous chatter (for so in her wrath she termed it) made her trip into these ridiculous mistakes. She answered him soon with yea and nay, letting the words drop from her lips as they might, and fell to plucking the petals of a rose she held in her hand till they were scattered on the pathway. [125] 'You will have to leave the gravel and follow this track over the grass,'said Lady May, when they had descended for some time. 'The path we are on,' she added, in an explanatory tone to the artist, 'goes winding about till it reaches the upper terrace again. There is a short cut through the rather tangled brake, which will take us first up and then down into the glade where the Hermitage stands. Are you afraid of the wet grass?'

'We will follow you, Lady May,'said Glanville. 'But the Countess?'and he turned an inquiring glance on the Lady Karina. She looked down at her boot and across at her cousin. 'I think I will go back,'she said; 'I don't like walking over wet grass,'—to which she subjoined in a reflective manner, 'and I may be wanted at the house.'

'Nonsense, my dear,'cried Lady May; 'who could want you? My father is in his library, writing a tract on the connection between the medieval reredos and the mosaics of San Clemente at Rome.'She endeavoured while saying these words to look serious, as a daughter should, but her eyes would brighten in spite of herself. 'You know he cannot bear to be disturbed. There is no one in the place but Tom, and we have promised, if he is awake, to pay him a visit at two o'clock. Come, Karina; you don't mind the grass more than I do.'

The unwilling victim bowed her small fair head, and followed in the train of this haughty Zenobia. Neither of the gentlemen could lead the way, for [126] they did not know it. The track along the grass became fainter and soon disappeared altogether; but they saw an opening in the shrubs, which here flourished luxuriantly; and with more scrambling through briars and rending of garments than Lady May expected, they ascended the side of a thickly-wooded ridge, where they could see no distance before them and only a long clear strip of blue sky overhead. The morning was fresh and balmy; an abundant dew brought forth on every side a fragrance as of paradise; and the smell of the stone-pines which rose on the low crest had that penetrating sweetness, so keen and exhilarating, which is like a sudden breeze sweeping inland from the sea and laden with its odours. But there was no view on the crest; it was all a thicket growing high above their heads. A rugged descent, where the pathway turned continually to avoid the huge masses of rock that lay across it, brought them, still under dark boughs, half way down on the other side. The wildwood trailed off to right and left; the last of the stone-pines fell into the rear; and a cry of delight from the gentlemen showed that they were rewarded for their pilgrimage by a lovely view.

They were standing on the lower side of a gorge not more than thirty yards wide; and over against them rose a steep and almost inaccessible wall of verdure to a height which, though in perpendicular measurement it could not have exceeded three hundred feet, looked noble and imposing; while the close-set vegetation and bosky undergrowth gave it a [127] soft beauty of aspect to which the firs, standing in long rows at the summit or springing abruptly from the sides, added a touch of ruggedness. At their feet, almost hidden among the trees that fringed it, ran a clear brown stream, sparkling a little way off in the sun, and as it descended the valley broadening till it might have borne a small boat, if the stones over which it swirled in diamond-like mist did not proclaim it dangerous to launch anything on the troubled waters. The gorge turned at a sharp angle on the side over against them, but on their own fell away more gently, melting by degrees into the wide expanse of moor, and allowing a dim and distant glimpse of the sea above Yalden. They could see the wooded height over the stream stretching towards fresh woods and fresh heights. But their gaze was speedily drawn up the valley, and a second exclamation of wonder followed upon their discovery of its new and singular charms. The apparent source of the stream was a large piece of water, lying in view where they stood, but more of it, as they perceived on going a few steps, spread out behind the ridge that served them as a coign of vantage. It was an irregular sheet, formed by nature, and hemmed in by the granite cliffs which, coming out bare to the north, did not allow it, except for about sixty yards, to present a wide expanse. Here it filled the valley from side to side. Deep in its placid bosom were reflected the fleecy clouds set in a great blue sky, the rising wall of verdure, and the dark granite crags which, by their fantastic shapes [128] and riven sides, reminded one of a castle in ruins which has a tower or two still intact. About midway between shore and shore, standing up in the water and anchored, so to speak, in its own shadow,—which came out foreshortened in every variety of peak and overhanging roof,—itself a picture of balconies, outside staircases, ivy-mantled porches, glistening windows with creepers falling over them, was visible, in the clear stillness of a summer morning, the object of their expedition. With delighted looks they beheld the Hermitage.

'It is a scene of fairyland,'exclaimed Rupert; 'an enchanted island, where the Sleeping Beauty should be dreaming away her hundred years till the Prince comes to waken her.'

'That was a palace in a garden,'said Ivor, who could not turn from the exquisite vision, but for the moment had lost his shyness; 'a palace with thickets of roses fencing it all about. Whereas this, which you called a chalet,'he just glanced towards Lady May, 'is a lake-dwelling, such as was intended, though he had not tools or skill to realise it, by pre-historic man.'

'One feature it has in common with the lake-dwellings,' remarked Glanville. 'There is absolutely no way of reaching it except in a boat.'

'No,'answered Lady May; 'and even that is at the discretion of the hermit. For, if you notice, the steps which descend from that projecting ledge, or floor of the verandah, are fastened merely by rings, and may be drawn up when the lake-dweller pleases. It was [129] a fancy of my grandfather's. The architect wanted a bridge on this side; and in wet weather it would be a convenience, for the lakelet is stormy enough at times. But my grandfather had a model, "in his mind's eye," he used to say; and nothing would persuade him to allow the bridge.'

'He was right,'said Glanville; 'there is something impressive in the utter isolation of such a dwelling. It seems to belong to another world, to be "an exhalation from the watery deep," a fixed vapour, taking the appearance of things we know, but ready to dissolve at a breath.'

'Is that poetry?'inquired the Countess, with a simple air. 'All I can see is a cottage made of little church roofs and old planks, which must be damp in winter.'

This original account of a lake-dwelling made them all laugh, except the author of it, in whose opinion, as she declared poutingly, it was much nearer the truth than Glanville's 'exhalations'and 'fixed vapours.'She was proud of being matter-of-fact, and said so. A stray reminiscence of Cousin Tom, however, gleamed upon her as she spoke; and Love contemptuously shook his light wings when she repeated that 'she liked matter-of-fact people.' Was the young gentleman up at Trelingham Court 'matter-of-fact'? was he not—but there is no need to pursue her meditations. She laughed at herself in a minute or two, though she took care to wait until no one was watching.

There was a small boat-house on each side of the lakelet. The party entered a tolerably-sized skiff which they found under shelter, and Rupert and Ivor Mardol took the oars. To make up for her little outbreak of pettishness, occasioned solely by a love for matter-of-fact people, Karina insisted on steering. She was not a creature to bear malice. The water was very still, and so warm and pleasant that they lingered on their mimic voyage to bask in the air and take a steadier look down the valley, which, seen from this point, appeared high and narrow, with the broad gleam of the sea and an intensely blue sky over it, for a perspective. No habitation save the lake-dwelling could be discerned; the belt of tall brushwood under the lee of which they were loitering hid Trelingham Court; and the purple moor was shut off by the ridge they had descended. A more lonely, a more beautiful, a more tranquillising scene, who could imagine? They forgot to praise and were silent. Even the restless Karina felt its subduing influence; much more did her cousin and the two friends. Transparent light brooded on the glassy depths which no ripple stirred, and seemed to dye the surface with a thousand emerald tints, bright or dark, as it reflected the rich vegetation that, embowering the hillside, crept down to the edge of the mere, and threw out straggling branches to the water-lilies floating on its bosom. A trance at noon-day fell upon our pilgrims; they dreamt with open eyes.

'Does no one live in the chalet? or is it abandoned [131] to pre-historic man?'asked Rupert, in the light tone which sometimes indicates that thoughts too solemn for speech have passed through the air.

'My father used to spend a day there formerly, but he finds it too cold,'said Lady May. 'My cousin, too, when he wants a little quiet fishing, has it put in order, and will not come up to the Court for a week if the weather favours him. It is an excellent place for trout; and I am told, though it seems hardly credible, that salmon find their way up that rocky stream. It has deep holes in it where they can lie at their ease. When they reach the lakelet, I can fancy their enjoying its depth and coolness before starting on their journey seaward again.'

'It was here,'said the Countess plaintively, 'that I was to have taken my lesson in fly-fishing.'Her grief returned at the thought.

'Well, you may take it still,'said Glanville. 'Mr. Davenant is recovering; and if he cannot join the next salmon-hunt, there will be all the more reason why he should come here to throw the fly.'

This was an expectation to caress and make much of. The Lady Karina began to steer again with a lighter heart, and forgave Glanville. A few strokes brought them to the side of the Hermitage. The waters were still swollen, and their skiff rose to the middle round of the ladder. A chain hung down over the verandah for the oarsmen to seize; the boat was made fast to it; they ascended with quick and easy steps, although the feeling was much like that of [132] getting up a ship's side, and were soon assembled, without a wet foot or other mishap, on the floor of the verandah. The chalet was built somewhat like a cabin on the main deck of a steamer. Round it was a broad open space, paved with coloured woods, and overhung with a sloping roof to keep out the rain. Casements fitted in made this a comfortable promenade, or deambulation, as the Romans called it, in wintry weather. They were now standing wide open, shaded by the too-abundant creepers; but the house was airy and dry, furnished with simplicity, as became its pretensions, but the details carried out in admirable taste. There lacked nothing to the hermit's comfort; his study, fitted with volumes of the poets and books on fishing; his sleeping apartment, contrived with a pleasant outlook towards the morning sun; his dining-room, bright and cheerful as the scene of temperate enjoyment and philosophic mirth should be; his small but elegant kitchen, copied, as to its decorations, from Pompeii; and a guest-chamber in the snuggest corner of the house, sheltered from wind and storm by the hills which looked down upon it,—these, with a watch-tower, skilfully perched up among the gables, made a lake-dwelling at which the heart of the troglodyte would have rejoiced. But Ivor Mardol was no troglodyte; he had not hitherto dwelt in a cave; and his heart laughed within him, o use an Homeric expression, when he thought of exchanging, for at least a few hours every day, the splendours of Trelingham Court for this lovely, lonely [133] hermitage. He stood in admiration, above all, of the kitchen, a temple of ideal coolness, contrasting with the fiery dens wherein our meals too commonly are made ready at the expense of temper and religion.

But Rupert, although he praised what he beheld, inquired after some reflection:

'But where is the servants' accommodation? I don't perceive any.'

'What!' cried Ivor, looking at him with large eyes, reproachfully. 'Do you imagine that a hermit has anybody to wait on him? Where would be the charm of solitude, if another human being dwelt and cooked within these walls? For my part, I should flee out of them and build myself a hut in the wood over against us, did such a demoniac presence come to trouble me.'

The grave earnestness wherewith Ivor delivered this protest amused Lady May, and she laughed more heartily than Glanville had known her to do. He laughed with her, and for some time nothing serious could be said. At last the lady, whom Ivor was now looking at, not as rebuking her, but as wondering that she should laugh, recovered herself, and said:

'But you are very right, Mr. Mardol. When my father stays here he brings a cold luncheon with him; and Mr. Davenant—as my grandfather used to do—not only catches his own fish, but cooks them, and will not allow a servant to come up the ladder whilst he is here.'

'I surrender,'said Glanville, 'to such examples; [134] and I grant the romance of the thing, provided one knows how to cook. Do you, Ivor?'

' Qui nescit coquere, nescit regnare ,'replied Ivor. 'How should a man be lord of himself that has not full dominion over a mutton-chop? I learned the art long ago. For me, a kitchen, especially when it is redolent, as this, of Pompeii and Hadrian's villa, has no terrors, but a charm unspeakable.'

'Then,'said Lady May, 'if you can be satisfied with the light, you will bring the canvas hither, and enjoy that perfect freedom which I know you prize. But I hope you will give us the pleasure of your company at dinner as often as possible. However, both then and at all times you must look upon yourself as unshackled by our formal ordinances. You see, Mr. Mardol, I have learned how great a lover of solitude you are.'

'But,'he replied, 'do I really understand that it will not seem strange to you if I spend a day or two in this cottage and do not dine at the Court?'

'Certainly,'answered Lady May; 'we know it will give you pleasure, and it will therefore please us. I think Mr. Glanville touched on this point in conveying to you my father's invitation. We could not dream of inflicting on you the captivity which is often another name for staying in a country house.'

'This is, indeed, most kind,'cried Ivor; 'more than I dared imagine, much less propose. I have lived so long by myself,'he continued apologetically, [135] 'that it makes me wretched to be in any company— even in my friend Glanville's—for a whole day without a break. I will not abuse the freedom you bestow on me. But it is delightful.'

They mounted the quaint staircases that led in the open air from one verandah to the next, and from that to the watch-tower, wherin was a chamber having windows in the four walls and a different landscape visible through each of them. At this height the sea became a vast sheet of gold, on which the waves, not otherwise to be made out, shone like an endless tracery where every point sparkled and the finely-curved lines were interwoven as with a needle. The brightness was intolerable, the radiance golden, like clear glass. 'If you could dip your pencil in that,'exclaimed Ivor, addressing his friend, 'you might paint with molten sunlight.'

'Ay, indeed,'returned the artist; 'it puts one out of conceit with painting, when we know that a sheet of white paper is the most dazzling brightness we can attain. Here is the crystal sea, shot through and absolutely bathed in a fiery element which the eye cannot bear to look upon. Will any canvas render it?'

'How dark the ships come out in all this light!' said Lady May. 'The white sails seem lost in the overpowering radiance. All one can perceive are the heaving hulls, like lines of ebony crossing the gold. Cannot you fancy creatures of a finer make, with slow-moving pinions, traversing that shining space, [136] or treading its pavement, which seems all ablaze, on errands to a distant world?'

"'He maketh the winds His messengers,"' said Ivor in a musing tone. 'What deep sayings there are in that old Hebrew book! Not slow-moving, though majestic in their march, and irresistible,—the four winds, angels between earth and sky,—binding one element with another. It is the life of Nature exhibited in vivid allegory.'

'Do you think the angels an allegory?' asked Lady May, not like one surprised or shocked, but as seeking to know his opinion.

'I think,' he replied, 'that Nature is a living miracle, not a dead machine. To me it is full of eyes which are always gazing into mine.'

'And these are angels?' she said, bending her own eyes upon him earnestly, and forgetting that they too might scorch and burn.

'You may call them so; why not?' he answered. 'Through them I discern that all things are known to one another and reflected, as in countless mirrors, from world to world.'

'You remind me,' said Lady May, 'of the famous verses in Faust;' and she repeated them: 'Wie Himmelskräfte auf und nieder steigen Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen! Mit segenduftenden Schwingen Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen, Harmonisch all' das All durchklingen!' She recited well. The artist could not help [137] admiring her. People are commonly shy of repeating verse; she did not mind. 'How finely Goethe renders our modern thought!' said he.

'Yes,'replied Lady May; 'I don't think the worshippers of angels would recognise their creed in him.'

'What matter?'said Ivor.

They were forgetting luncheon. The Countess, partly because she was hungry, and yet more from a dread that in lingering so unconscionably they would be leaving no time for a certain visit as a sister of charity in the afternoon, reminded them of the fact. 'I don't see any angel coming to us with a golden pail,'was her comment on the Lady May's quotation. 'Had we not better be going towards luncheon? It is past one.'

Thus admonished they came down from the watch-tower, embarked in the skiff, and shot rapidly across the water. Glanville moored the boat where they had found it; and, avoiding the brushwood and the stone-pines, they walked, at a pace to satisfy the Lady Karina, along an easier path, which brought them to the front terrace. They were all tired, yet delighted with their morning. An appetite for luncheon is a blessed thing; each of them was so seasonably graced; and even the sad brows of Glanville, where gloom put on a cloud from time to time, unbent at the merry meal. His friend, of more equable temper, felt that his happiness had no alloy. He was still in thought on the watch-tower, looking over the golden [138] sea, and contemplating the white-winged messengers as they moved about it. Once or twice a pair of dark eyes glanced in upon the vision and faded as quickly as they came. He had seldom enjoyed a morning so much. Ah! Ivor the philosopher, beware!

Next day he took up his abode at the Hermitage.

CHAPTER IX ANIMUM PICTURA PASCIT INANI

Now that Destiny had got a number of threads in her hand, on every one of which hung a human life, she proceeded, with the haste and fury of a seemingly blind inspiration, to entangle them. It was not merley to paint pictures that Rupert Glanville had come to Trelingham. Little as he dreamt it, the central knot of his fortune was there to be tied; he was to act and be acted upon, to drive and be driven, to be caught up as by a swiftly-turning wheel and hurried round with it. Nor did Ivor Mardol quit his London solitude and find delicious shelter in the Hermitage that he might be satiate with rustic beauty and add a new leaf to his sketch-book. By sure degrees the pleasant intercourse that marked the beginning of their stay among strangers yielded to an intimacy which, at first promising larger gratification, led to the most unexpected consequences.

I have often thought how much turns on the minor [140] personages in a drama, whether on the stage or off it. Had Tom Davenant not been kept an invalid in his room for some three weeks by low fever; had his mother, a woman of the world, not returned to London after the briefest of visits; had the Countess been less absorbed, or Lord Trelingham more observant, Lady May and the artist could surely never have spent hour after hour tête-à-tête while she was sitting for her portrait. But the Earl, intent on dossals and mosaics and altar-flagons, had not a moment to spare in the morning, and seldom looked in, although from time to time he inspected the picture with marked satisfaction. The Countess moved hither and thither in her restless way, came and went, threw in a mocking word when the conversation flew above her comprehension, sat dreaming her own dreams by the window, and, whether from negligence or wilfulness, turned a deaf ear to most that was said. She could not, therefore, be supposed to perceive how artistic discussion and talk upon general topics were giving way to more intimate personal communings, at least on the part of Lady May, and that mischief was gathering. She had her own reasons, perhaps; and we may as well endeavour to find them out.

Look at this little scene. It was a mellow afternoon, and Tom Davenant, weak but convalescent, was sitting propped up in an easy-chair by the drawing-room fire. It was the first day he had left his room. Glanville, at no great distance, was writing [141] a letter; Lady May, engaged upon some trailing piece of embroidery that fell about her feet, seemed wholly occupied in what she was doing, and neither spoke nor looked up; while the Countess, demurely seated where she could keep a charitable eye on the invalid, was wondering how she might persuade him to talk. For it was part of her infatuation to like the sound of that young man's pleasant but not astonishingly musical voice. Her longing was to be satisfied without effort on her side. Tom laid down the newspaper he was holding, and, stifling a yawn, said to Glanville, whom he had come to like rather: 'The worst of being knocked up is that a fellow doesn't know what to do with himself. He can't read anything except the Field ; and I've read it all through now. I must hark back, I suppose, and see whether I've skipped a page;'and he took up the discarded journal again.

'Shall I read to you, Cousin Tom?'said Karina softly.

'No, thank you,'he answered; adding, after a while, with some annoyance in his tone, 'I wish, Countess, you would get out of that way of calling me Cousin Tom. You know I haven't the honour of being your cousin, and it is stupid.'

The Countess blushed, but attempted a smile. 'I know,'she said, 'I am not so much your cousin as Lady May; but, if I am hers, you ought to be mine. Don't you think so, Mr.—Mr. Davenant?'The curious mingling of sarcasm, fright, and tenderness [142] with which the Countess uttered his name thus formally was worth observing. Glanville, hitherto intent on his letter, began to feel an interest in the little comedy. He knew nothing of the relation in which the Countess stood to the house of Trelingham; he had never even caught her family name. To the servants she was 'the Countess'and 'her Ladyship.' The Earl and his daughter addressed her as Karina; but Tom Davenant, as it now struck the artist, at all times spoke to her as 'Countess,'and never bestowed on her a Christian vocative. Sometimes, though seldom, he would call Lady May by her name; but this favour was witheld from the light-tongued Karina.

'Don't I think so?'echoed Tom. 'Not by any means. You are May's first cousin, because her mother and yours were sisters. But May and I are related on the father's side. You might as well have argued that your husband was my cousin because he married you. Poor fellow!'concluded Tom in sympathetic accents,—but whether pitying the Countess's late husband (she was a widow then, it seemed) on the score of his marriage or his decease, Glanville could not determine.

'Poor fellow!'sighed the Countess; 'I know you liked him, and he suffered so dreadfully at the last. It is not pleasant dying at two and twenty. But no, Mr.—Mr. Davenant,'she observed, brightening up after her transient expression of regret; 'the Lutenieffs are too proud to acknowledge kinship with any [143] but old Russian families. The Countess Lutenieff never forgave me for being half-English. She threw it in my teeth often enough.'

'Well,'said Tom, relenting, 'if you have suffered in the cause, I suppose it is fair that you should call any English gentleman you choose your cousin. But—'

She interrupted him. 'Thank you so much, Cousin Tom,'she said archly, though with contentment in her looks. 'After all, you will want a cousin when May gives up that dignity.'Tom was silent, but turned his head in the direction of the real cousin. If she heard anything, she made no sign.

'I don't know what you are talking about,'said the young man, when he saw that Lady May paid no attention to the Countess. 'It seems to me that you say whatever comes into your head. I shall go back to my room now and lie down. This fire is too hot, and I can't smoke here if I want.'

The Countess begged him to stay; she would take the coals off the fire; she would open a window so that he should not feel the draught. But her entreaties were unavailing. Tom walked slowly to the door and disappeared.

When he was gone, Glanville, who had not relished the end of this argument, and feared that the Countess—Lutenieff, since that was her name— might follow it up with unpleasant revelations, dashing some faint but idle dreams of his, rose, and passing through the long window, strolled out on the terrace. [144] To what was that mischievous sprite alluding? How could Lady May cease to be Tom's cousin? By marrying him? There was no other way. Glanville recalled her father's look that night when Tom was brought home from Yalden. He had not thought of it since. The cousins were so little together, and his attention had been drawn so strongly to Karina's worship of Tom Davenant, that the idea of an engagement between him and Lady May had completely vanished. 'Well, what if it were true?'he asked himself. 'How did that concern him?'Not a great deal, his conscience replied. Should he feel mortified, or vexed, if the lady wedded her cousin? Why, yes; he must admit it would be a disappointment. But would his heart be broken? Did he feel that life would have lost its sweetness were she married? There was no answering throb. His heart was sound, apparently. He would think it over in the presence of Lady May; perhaps the calmness he felt was deceptive. And so deciding, he approached the window. Scarcely had he come within earshot than the Countess's laughing voice broke on him. She spoke rapidly, and the sentence, complete in meaning, struck at once into his understanding and stayed there. 'But if you don't care for Tom, you must refuse him.'Such were the words. She was clearly addressing Lady May. Glanville fled to the other end of the terrace; he was aghast at having heard what was not intended for his hearing. To forget the sentence was, however, impossible. [145] The Countess had spoken in loud tones, but her laugh sounded unnatural and her voice was sharp and peremptory. It seemed to insist on a thing which was not certain to be conceded. Could there be an engagement, and Lady May so little anxious about her betrothed, so free from jealousy of the Countess, so much—he paused for the right word—interested in another?

Next day when they were in the picture-gallery, he found himself insensibly leading to the subject. 'It is strange, Lady May,'said he, 'that I never heard the Countess's family name till yesterday.'

'Did you not?'she inquired; 'I can fancy it, however. My Cousin Karina has been so constantly with us from childhood, and her marriage lasted so short a time, that we hardly think of her as a Lutenieff. Her own name, which we never liked, was Karen Zarkoff. My aunt married a Zarkoff; but he need not have disfigured his daughter by calling her Karen. So we changed it when she came to us quite young to Karina, spelling it with a K to make it look Russian. She lost both parents before she could speak. Her guardian sent her to England until she was sixteen, and then had her taken back to the Ukraine to marry Count Lutenieff, whom she had never seen in her life. There was no help for it. But she cried at leaving my Cousin Tom, who had been her idol ever since she played with him and me during a summer holiday, when we were all three in this house, as we are now. Nevertheless, she liked [146] her husband after they were married; he was a gentle, consumptive young man, greatly attached to her and to Mr. Davenant, who visited them in Russia. At eighteen she became a widow, and is, in a measure, my father's ward. But she does what she pleases, and is always on the wing; for to reason with her or to keep her in one place is impossible.'

'And Mr. Davenant?'said Glanville, controlling his voice lest it should betray undue curiosity. 'His father is not living?'

'No; he died years ago, soon after his marriage. My father spoke of him the first morning you were here. He married late. Mr. Davenant is strictly under my father's guardianship till he comes of age, which will be in some months. You see,'she went on, 'Mr. Davenant is heir-presumptive to the title and esatates of Trelingham; and so,'she said, laughing, 'he requires to be taken great care of. He has a place of his own in the next county, but he does not stay there, except in the shooting season. He will make an excellent landlord, however, when he begins. But at present he is wild about sport. He came to Trelingham to join in the salmon-hunt which was so unluckily hindered by his accident.'

All this, told in a calm way, was interesting, but it threw no light on the question whether Lady May and her cousin were engaged. One point only seemed certain. Tom Davenant might be the idol of the Lady Karina's affections as much as he pleased [147] or, very likely, did not please; to the Earl's daughter he was a cousin and nothing more. She spoke of him readily, without changing tone or colour, she lauded his manliness, and at the same time laughingly applied to him the charming words of her poet— 'It are such folk that loved idlenesse, And not delite hadde of no businesse, But for to hunt and hauke, and play in medes, And many other such idle dedes.'

That negligent chaperon, the Countess, who had slipped away at the beginning of this conference, now returned; and there came an interval of silence, during which, if many fine strokes were added to the face that was growing perfect on canvas, not a few went deep into the heart of one, at least, in that speechless company.

And now, reader, I will draw away the curtain, and, with such skill as I may, endeavour to disclose the inward meaning of this simple and oft-repeated scene in the picture-gallery at Trelingham Court. What could eyes behold? On the one hand a lady, in the dark crimson, curiously embroidered with gold, which vested the Madonna of the Seraphim, and was here in some artistic drapery imitated,—a lady, I say, seated where the light fell on her meditative, earnest brow, glowing features, and massive dark hair arranged as in a crown, her whole attitude one of reflection and yet suggesting a concentrated passionateness which, when she spoke or acted, would manifest itself daringly; and on the other, moving lightly about [148] the easel, glancing at the seated figure from time to time, smiling a little as he turned to lay on a colour, and murmuring to himself in the painters'dialect, a young man, of good height and graceful mien, of ruddy countenance too, like the lady, but, unlike her, with the yellow hair of the Norsemen or the Greeks, the sleeves of his velvet coat turned up over fine wristbands, and a certain air of distinction, of dainty though not effeminate carefulness in all his attire, which threw into strong relief the genius shining out of his bright and steady eyes. He was at once an artist, a refined man of the world, and an athletic, well-knit figure of youth and comeliness; one in whom the balance of thought and fancy, of reason and instinct would seem incapable of being over-thrown. The shade of melancholy which came, like a passing cloud, across his countenance when he was not speaking added that indescribable touch, that dim sense of the imperfection hidden in all fair things, apart from which we may admire and be dazzled with the splendour of a face, but do not feed our heart upon it.

A pleasant sight, you will say, and worthy of its surroundings in that stately room, where the portraits of three centuries looked from the walls, various in costume, feature, and bearing, yet a gracious assemblage of old and young, of knights and ladies, of warriors, statesmen, ambassadors, recalling confusedly the life of court and camp in which they had acted their part till life's poor play was o'er. In front of the great [149] windows lay the wild moor, beautiful in desolation, framed in the silver sea, which, now at peace, sent up its multitudionous voices in a murmuring chorus that whispered things sweet and strange. The lady sank, and sank, and sank into deeper reverie. She listened to the echoes in her heart of all that had been in the past, began a sentence to let it fall unfinished, and mused upon the many days she had spent alone. She had been asked in marriage—by whom? By men whose birth and breeding, equal to her own, carried with it an outward semblance of perfection, but implied neither deep feeling nor elevated thought, nor enthusiasm for anything in earth or heaven except their free open-air life, their horses and dogs, their yachts in the Solent and rivers in Norway. Yes, she had not wanted suitors of a different kind either,—solemn-faced men, with brains as unpromising as Nimrod's, but whose narrow vision took in objects less picturesque; her father's friends, lay or clerical, who asked her to share their destiny and help to build schools in the East End, and churches at Earl's Court or Stoke Newington, to weave ecclesiastical garments according to the use of Sarum, and save mankind by acres of broadcloth fashioned into coats of the strictest orthodoxy.

She smiled at the notion; but her feeling was bitter enough. Riches, leisure, friends, the most delightful surroundings had been given her by Fortune. She was a great lady, to be envied and courted. But all these things were the embroidery of life; she wanted [150] the simple greatness which comes of knowing and loving, not a gorgeous frame about the poor genre painting, which was all she had to show. How can a woman be noble, she asked herself, except by uniting her life to another which is governed by the highest thoughts? She could have devoted herself to a father, to a brother, if she had one, provided only he were intent on realising a great ideal. But her father's ideal? It did not tempt her. It was nothing but the digging up of old grave-clothes and multiplication of minutiæ; it was insular, parochial, sectarian. She had long felt that the controversies of little or no meaning which went on in her presence, and to which she was obliged to listen, were driving her in the opposite direction to her father; and, though she would not afflict him by disclosing what had taken place within her, she saw clearly that, perhaps for want of the right teacher, the religion in which she had been brought up had become to her merley a name. It gave her no principles, it had ceased to be the rule of her conduct. She longed for a light from Heaven; she did not remember that it sometimes leads astray. Unhappy she was and had been; dissatisfied, sick with longing for a world of which, in poem or romance, the outline was revealed like a cloud hanging steadfast, shining sun-bathed in the infinite blue. Was it all an impossible dream? Even so, she could not renounce it. To bend her gaze on the earth, and putting her hand into that of a man whose thoughts were fashioned of its gross elements; to [151] travel on and on, over the barren moor, with no prospect before her but the waste and sundown, was to die ere her prime. She was resolved to drink of the fountain of life. She cared nothing for station, and heeded little of the world's judgment on those that descend. Unworthy she would not be, nor undutiful to her father. 'But I must live, I must live,'she often repeated when alone. To sit at the great banquet a spectator; to find every dish enchanted of which she desired to partake; to hear the music and not know its meaning,—this had been her martyrdom, and she could bear it no longer.

I cannot tell what might have befallen Lady May if the higher powers had shuffled the cards otherwise than they did, and not Glanville, but a person of less scrupulous delicacy had come across her in this despairing mood. To represent her as perfect would be pleasant to me; but she was not perfect; she was headstrong, passionate, imperious, and, from the absence of equally determined characters around her, she had, by long habit, become utterly independent of control. She loved her father dearly; but she was too clear-minded to regard his opinions with intellectual deference. And there was no one else. Her cousin, Tom Davenant, she looked upon as a man with the simplicity of a boy; he was her junior by six years, and the thoughts that vexed her would have been to him as unintelligible as the language of another planet. Did she want a chivalrous protector, he would have sprung to her aid; but she wanted no [152] such thing; what she wanted was to go her own way. She guessed her cousin's mind; partly out of consideration for him she was now pausing on the path she had entered; but she did not mean to be affected by his generosity.

When her mother died, Lord Trelingham had thought it right to acquaint Mrs. Davenant with his resolution not to marry again. He wished Tom to know on what he might count in the future. Tom, who was then nineteen, sought an interview with the Earl, and with unspeakable confusion, but very decidedly, begged him so to arrange that the Trelingham estate might go to Lady May. It was a generous impulse, dictated by a good heart and ignorance of the legal impossibilities which stood in the way. The proposal could not be entertained. But Tom had gone further than Lady May was aware. The young man, finding one door shut, had tried another. He had asked Lord Trelingham to accept a proposal of marriage for his daughter, and to lay it before her when he should judge expedient. He had been brief and manly, saying little of his affection for Lady May, which, however, was apparent enough. He had consented to wait until he came of age; and, trusting implicitly in the Earl's honour, had quietly gone home and shot partridges. That something would be said to her when he was twenty-one, the lady surmised. She had, or soon would have, her answer ready.

For, wandering listlessly through the exhibitions of painting that make London a huge picture-gallery, [153] she had been struck one day with a drawing of extraordinary breadth of power and splendid execution, to which corresponded in the catalogue the name of a young man who had leapt into fame at single bound some three years previously. For all description of the piece were a line and a half from Wordsworth—                      'Or lady of the mere, Sole sitting by the shore of old romance.' The rest of the gallery vanished from Lady May. She saw nothing but the wide woodland scene and the dim gray waters stretching away and away till no eye could follow, so distant was the gleam of the horizon, so many the foldings of the cloud which, with a flake of sunshine gilding it faintly, hung like a vision of dreams between sea and sky. There was something weird, ghostlike, unsatisfying in the appearance of that untenanted realm, where the elements reigned supreme, yet were themselves all unsubstantial—dim air, gray water, a hidden sun. But on the shore, her bare feet just touching the waves as they rolled indolently to where she sat, was a figure, so radiant with life and longing, of such exquisite shape and lovely countenance that the spectator drew back, as if intruding on a queen's privacy, yet was drawn again in wonder to the wistful eyes, full of an intense desire which sought and could not attain its object. It would be hard to express in language the contrast between that eager, throbbing life and the gray visions whereon it was feeding. Had but a [154] youthful knight come breaking through the wild and careless brambles which closed her in on one side, or riding along the green forest path low down in the background on the other, it might have seemed that the artist was reproducing the old tale of Arthur and the brand Excalibur, given him by the lady of the mere. But there would come to this lady no King Arthur; she was beholding a vision unfulfilled— never, on any day, to be fulfilled. And yet how beauteous, how young a life, to be consumed in gazing, to be denied fruition! Lady May read the picture like her own story. She detected in it something which was not medieval, a kind of irony, bitter and sad, not intended by the poet when he wrote his magic verses, but perhaps of a deeper truth; for was not the romance he celebrated an idle thing, dedicating itself to sonnets and madrigals, and the ceremonies of the Court of Love? Behind its wan clouds the sun was shining, eclipsed only by them. 'Unsatisfied ideals,'she said, as she turned away; 'did the painter mean to warn us that Love can be contented only with Life, not with shadows?'

This picture was her book of Hours, her philosophy, for many a day. She lived in it; she saw its every detail, and could have drawn it from memory. As soon as her mind would let her, she begged Lord Trelingham to purchase the drawing; but it had made a great impression and was already sold. The intelligence grieved her like a personal loss, and she began to haunt the galleries where other works of [155] Rupert Glanville's were on view. She had not been deceived in ranking him neither among the votaries of religious medievalism, nor with the school of sentimental landscape, so to call it, which has grown out of the study of the Middle Ages by men whose creed may be summed up in the words, 'Sin and be sad.'When Glanville chose a medieval subject, he treated it like one to whom larger worlds were known; he was free, ironical, and, as the critics said sometimes, joyously pagan. What he painted was full of life; life, running over at the brim, energetic, bold, adventurous, taking the infinite resources of existence for granted. But his pictures had in them nothing sensuous or over soft; they did not represent joy as the intoxication of a Silenus, still less did they affect the morbidezza , the pallid waxen tints which in their excessive refinement denote that the artist has sought beauty in decline and is enamoured of consumption. Glanville's art was healthy; one might almost have called it, to use the philosopher's jargon, optimist. But, as in the drawing which had first made him known to Lady May, so in all he painted, there were suggestions of the infinite unseen, the mysterious and strangely possible. He, too, it was apparent, sought and had not found. His ideal, like hers, was behind the clouds. She came unexpectedly on a small picture of his in a friend's drawing-room, and acknowledged, by the violence of her emotion, that she was falling in love with the unknown artist.

Did she think of subduing her passion, of putting [156] away his remembrance? With all her force of character, and in spite of her wide attainment and unusual gifts, May Davenant was a very woman. She could do much; she could not forget, So, at least, she told her conscience when it warned her against caring about a man she had never seen. Might he not be low-born, ill-educated, anything but charming to look at? this worldly-wise conscience inquired. She did not believe it possible. No, his mind must be equal to his paintings; and what did the rest signify? His mind was himself; birth and appearance, good or ill, were but accessories. However, she would ask and be satisfied. Her father had a multitiude of friends in the world of art. She invited one of them to dinner, was very gracious to him in the drawing-room, and put her important questions among a sheaf of others, trivial, but sufficient to blind the deluded artist, who flattered himself that he was always welcome where ladies ruled. 'Did he know Glanville?'—'Oh yes, had met him several times; goodish sort of artist; made some lucky hits; was rather too deep for him, you know, but clever—decidedly.'—'Much in society?'—'A good deal, he should say; met him in the best houses, where he was a favourite; could tell capital stories, not too long; was not bad-looking; sang and played a little; fancied he came from somewhere on the Welsh border—Herefordshire, Shropshire, that way; had been told he was of good family, all extinct but himself; not a bad thing when one's family was all extinct [157] but one's self, provided they mentioned one in their wills, ha, ha!'—'Rich, did he suppose?'—'Why, not, you know, rich, but landed proprietor, that sort of thing, etc. etc.'Lady May, having squeezed this sponge, left him dry, but not discontent, to the care of others; and told her conscience it might now keep quiet, which it did for a while, being terrified at a domineering way she sometimes used towards it. By and by it would take courage and speak again.

She might make his acquaintance, then, if she wished, and ask him to dinner, like his loquacious brother-artist? Yes, and then? How much was she likely to see or know of him in a London dining-room, or during a London season? She wanted more than that. He must be worthy of her friendship; nay, could she be certain that she was worthy of his?

She began to consider. Conscience, whispering maliciously somewhere within, hissed out, 'the Belle's Stratagem.' She laughed; she was in a good humour, and would see whether a stratagem were possible. Glanville must come to the house, must stay with them long enough to reveal his character as fully as she desired. How could it be accomplished? She had got so far in her meditation when Lord Trelingham came to her with the plans which various artists had submitted for decorating their Great Hall. Her father wanted the Arthurian legend painted on his walls, for it was a proud tradition that the Trelinghams were children of Uther. He had long meant [158] to begin the work, and it was now high time, if he was to see it executed at all. The Great Hall, Arthur, Launcelot, the Lady of the Lake! It was all nature could do to stifle a cry. To hide her feelings May looked at the designs on the table. Not one but was inspired by the Idylls of the King —pretty, fantastic, old-faced, so to speak, but the only genius perceptible was Tennyson's. She swept them on one side. 'Mr. Glanville's is your artist, papa,'she boldly said. The Earl thought for a minute or two. He knew Mr. Glanville's productions well; strangely enough, he liked them. In design they were bold and clear; in execution, it was agreed on all hands, they were admirable. 'I will call on Mr. Glanville at his studio,' said the good man finally. When the door closed behind him, Lady May sank down trembling on her chair. What had she done?

This was the first of many interviews which Lord Trelingham held with Glanville, who never showed to such advantage as in adapting himself to men from whom he entirely differed. Valuing his own opinions too highly to bestow them on every chance comer, and not preaching them save by the indirect methods of art, the young man took pleasure in observing how variously the world appeared in other men's eyes; and he was therefore attentive to the Earl and charmed him in turn. To accept the commission, though brilliant, was another question. He did not want for money or fame; he hesitated to leave London for so many months as the task would [159] demand; and he doubted that Lord Trelingham would enter into his conception of the cycle of the Morte d'Arthur , which was more rugged, primitive, and barbaric, but also of larger scope and nearer, as he believed, to the roots of life and reality, than the current interpretation. To his surprise, the formal ritualist did enter into his thought,—thanks very possibly to Mr. Truscombe, whose volume, then about to be published, had been seen by the Earl in manuscript, and whose sturdy realism had one element, at all events, in common with Glanville's more elevated historical views. Thus encountering no resistance where he had looked for it, and captivated by the mingled courtliness and good nature of the old man, Glanville consented to pay a visit to Trelingham, and, after seeing the Great Hall, to lay his designs (of which he drew out a lucid sketch) before him. He did not propose to call on the Earl in town; it was a busy time when his engagements stood six deep, and he must add to them if he intended an early departure. Lord Trelingham felt relieved. He had suggested to Lady May, after his first visit, that she should ask the artist to dinner, and she, a good deal to his surprise, had not exactly declined, but put it off, saying that it did not matter and they should have as much as they wanted of him in the country. It was a fancy on her part to begin their friendship away from London, in a less artificial atmosphere. The key-note of an acquaintance is so often struck in the first conversation, and [160] how often wrong! Mr. Glanville would surely come to Trelingham; and, with a light heart, she delayed the dawn of a day whose varying fortunes she could by no means have guessed at. Resolute, however, she was in turning over this new leaf, that looked so fair in its gold-illumined border, of the book of her fate.

She would have blushed for shame had her intention pointed in the direction for which a hard, practical world would have given her credit. So rude and gross are the maxims upon which social arrangements are calculated that the motives of a lady, at the age of twenty-six, and still unmarried, who takes an interest in a young unmarried genius, seem even to the fair-minded, suspicious or self-evident. What can she want except to marry him? And there is much to be said for that view. Nevertheless, she does not always want to marry him; she may be seeking an object of admiration, of worship, which is not compatible at all times with marriage; or a friend to share her better thoughts; or simply a comrade whose amusing manners would be lost outside the circle of a numerous society by the domestic hearth. All this will be conceded by the philosopher who sees in life deeper problems than those of ordinary match-making; but even he, the wise observer, will shake his head when enthusiasm mounts so fast as it did in the bosom of Lady May. She, to her own seeming, had left behind her the 'land of white and green,' the velvet-footed flower-besprinkled [161] vally where youths and maidens choose one another; she was, and meant to continue, an 'old maid.' She did not call it the state of single blessedness; it was only not so miserable as would have been a life spent with any of the suitors that had come to her. What she did ask, had it ever been possible, was the 'marriage of true minds,' which is the inward grace of all outward union between man and woman. She dreamt now that in Rupert Glanville was such a true mind as she had hitherto sought in vain; but the time of marriage was past. With a sigh she looked back, and once more the land of white and green, the daisies and fresh springing grass, had melted into reminiscences of early youth. Glanville was unwedded; but he might still be her friend, and teach her something better than to feed on romance.

I daresay the reader will experience some contempt for Lady May, on hearing that a friendship like this, pitched just right between high and low, appeared in her eyes a state of life to which she and Glanville might be called. And yet she thought so. Inbred modesty would have forbidden her to take steps towards securing a lover; but how could it interfere with her winning a friend? Conscience, perplexed, though not entirely convinced, lay down to sleep again. The sacred epochs of fashion were passing quickly by. Lord Trelingham, who usually observed these times and seasons as he did Easter and Saints'-days,—although he never had witnessed a [162] horse-race or owned a yacht,—went down early with Lady May to his country-seat, and summoned Mr. Truscombe to advise him in the selection of historic scenes for the Great Hall. Rupert Glanville likewise, as if he were acting of his own free will, and there were no Lady May in existence, took his ticket for Yalden on a certain morning, and, in so doing, burnt his ships. There was no going back the same man that he came.

Thus, at the end of a month, we find these two in the picture-gallery: Rupert, master of himself, uncertain whether he cares for the lady, certain that he does not care with any overwhelming passion; and she already doubting whether to bind herself to friendship and nothing beyond, or yield to this new absorbing influence which is wrapping her all round in its golden haze. To yield? But, if he should think of her only a friend, would it not be planting a dagger in her bosom, never to be withdrawn? He was courteous, attentive, full of pleasant wisdom, open as the day. He would have been a perfect brother. Was that the whole of it? She longed and feared and grew uneasy, and could find no rest. She knew, what Rupert, being only a man, was not likely to perceive, that Karina Lutenieff watched them; that she would have encouraged, had she dared, an affection which to her meant the surrender, by her cousin, of Tom Davenant. When the Countess spoke in the drawing-room about Lady May's giving up the dignity of cousinhood, she was moved by a [163] mischievous desire to irritate all three who were sitting there. She had said, petulantly enough, when the gentlemen left, that it was a shame Lady May did not at once refuse Tom Davenant, since she seemed not to care for him. And Lady May had answered, 'Will you not allow me to wait till I am asked?' For though the Countess was afraid, and her cousin suspected, that something would occur on Mr. Davenant's coming of age, neither of them knew of his having already made a proposal in set terms.

There were moments, during these days of bewilderment and growing trouble, when Lady May, as she sat listening to Rupert, seemed to catch glimpses of a nobler order of things, where friendship and not love should be the primal element,—rifts in her golden haze through which the pure heavens were seen like unchanging sapphire, a great, free, illimitable world, passionless, tranquil, clear as the morning dawn. They came when he spoke of the artist's enthusiasm, of his yearning to express the unseen beauty which haunted his steps and whispered in his ear, and vanished so soon as he turned his head to look upon her. Or again, when he descanted on the secret loveliness of landscape, its infinite meanings, its mysterious half-tones, its silent touches lulling the spirit to rest, on the lapse of streams and the glory of foaming waters. While he forgot himself in speaking, she, in her rapt attention, saw the earthly vanish and themselves entering into a unity of which all the love we know is but a trembling shadow. [164] And he spoke of history, of the old classic times, of religion, not as a man largely-informed indeed, but as a true artist, whose eye sees things in their grouping and judges them by the law of the beautiful. It was the high world she had longed to dwell in. How could she think of marriage if this were not the heart of it, the gold that made it precious? She grew ashamed now, though never before, humbled at the remembrance of what passionate desires she had allowed to come between her and the unsullied light. She would be worthy of him, of his large thoughts and heroic aims; for did he not make of his profession a heroism? After a morning spent like this, she went about her household tasks with an air of gentleness, a countenance so clear and eyes so washed in heavenly dews, that the Earl, moved to admiration of he knew not what that was exquisite about her, would say smilingly, 'You have put on your angel's face to-day, my dear; why don't you wear it always for our delight?'

Alas! she could not. Rupert himself was not always soaring on eagle's wing. He could be melancholy and dispirited; he was sometimes worn out with fatigue of which he rendered no account; for, as I have said, he united to a most winning frankness a reserve that none, except Ivor Mardol, attempted to break into. He was unequal, changeable, or, in his friend's complimentary phrase, iridescent. Trifles irritated him when serious misfortunes left him tranquil. He could be touchy at a [165] word; and although in Lady May's presence he never displayed temper, it was not difficult to perceive that many things tried him. Some afternoons he would make an excuse for strolling out alone, and, going down to the boat-house, unmoor the skiff, leap into it, row across to Ivor sitting philosophically in the verandah of his hermitage, and running up the water-steps like a man pursued, fling himself down on the sofa in Ivor's study, and lie there silent till the bell summoned him to dinner. He returned, for the most part, in good though not exuberant spirits, and said not a syllable of where he had been or what doing since last they saw him. Trelingham was a pleasant house to stay at; for its owner possessed the hospitable grace of providing all things for your amusement and never asking whether you had availed yourself of them.

But these imperfections, proving that the serene spirit was human, had more danger for Lady May than their joint expeditions in quest of the Ideal. From pity to love is an easy step. She admired, she pitied, she began, despite her interest in the higher friendship, if we may call it so, to love. And mark, reader, for I must tell you the truth as I know it, she felt that, in so doing, she was descending; she did not admire her love, but yielded to it as a disease. I have heard say that falling in love is like falling asleep; it implies a quiescent, not an active will. So was it with Lady May. She felt herself falling asleep; her better resolutions melted away; her fear of consequences [166] changed to an impetuous hope. The angel-face did not return so often; the golden haze thickened and shut out the sapphire. She began to long for an acknowledgment of affection from Glanville, as a fevered man longs for the cooling water. She would die rather than speak; surely she was no Countess Lutenieff to blazon her feelings before friends and strangers; but how slow the minutes moved until that draught was handed her? She kept her secret with an agony like the young Spartan's who felt the gnawing of the fox under his cloak and would not cry out though his vitals were torn. Had men so little perception when a woman was suffering? But could he return her love merely because she suffered? No, she would not have it in such a shape, on such conditions; she would wait and think of that higher world, and—and if nothing came of it, well, she could die. The lady of the lake seated by the dim gray waters, looking on the infinitely unfolding cloud, flecked with faint sunshine, the impenetrable thicket on one side of her, the deserted path away in the green forest behind her;—all the picture came back as when first she saw it, and the same feeling of desolation. Its irony was prophetic, its meaning likely to be fulfilled in her own life with which she was now making a last and desperate experiment.

Timid though she felt in approaching a subject that might betray her emotion, she could not refrain one morning from the inquiry what his meaning was in that composition. He asked her in turn, as was [167] not unusual with him, to give him an account of it; whether it seemed to aim at anything except describing in colour what the poet had described in words. She was dreadfully embarrassed, and wished she had not spoken. In a low voice, hesitating at every sentence, she faltered out her surmises, her probably mistaken opinion, that it implied rather a longing for the unattainable than perfect joy in the realms of romance. Glanville, not laying aside his brush while she spoke, gave her a look of contentment from time to time, and said, when she could keep her voice no longer under control and took refuge in silence, 'I did not think to have made the meaning so clear. Either you have a quick discernment or my parable was plainly written. Yes, I did endeavour to convey an ironical suggestion that the beauty of old romance was deceptive, and less akin to the truth of existence, of the perfect ideal existence which it ought to be our aim to enjoy, than were the ghostly mere and its phantasmagoria of clouds to the creative sun. But,' he went on, 'you did not, perhaps, gather a second meaning I had put into the parable. That beautiful lady, who is all desire and wistfulness, seems to be passing idly through her hands the golden hair which has fallen down over breast and shoulders, while upon her knees lies the magic wand, forgotten. She understands, though dreamily, that she is beautiful; she has the rod of life within her grasp. But, charmed by the fantastic visions that pass along the sky, she sits [168] entranced; and her beauty and her magic are of no avail. Were she but to rise and strike the waters, how marvellous a change would come over them! For she is the queen, not the slave of romance; it is for her that its realms were created, and all its uncertain glories do but reflect in weak sentimental imaginations, like those of children,knight-errants, and medieval troubadours, the fulness of her life. I have painted a second picuture, where the dreaming fay remembers that once upon a time she was the Lady Venus, the mother of the living and the delightful goddess. For, as you know, these mythologies are all pretty nearly identical in meaning. During the Middle Ages life and beauty lay under a spell; they were bewitched and all things with them. To strike into the depth of existence and fling one's sails upon every breeze, confident that shipwreck in the infinite was not possible,—do you think the boldest medieval spirit would have ventured it?'

'And can you believe,' she said, raising her countenance to his, 'that shipwreck is not possible? You often speak as though the supreme law were the law of beauty. Granting that, indeed, we need not fear to go upon the rocks.' But, in her own mind, she was far from granting it.

Rupert did not answer immediately. His thoughts went back to Colonel Valence and that forlorn afternoon in the churchyard. He seemed to hear the sad yet mocking tone in which Valence declared existence a universal shipwreck; and it gave him pause. Too [169] large-minded to call a possibility in question because it was disagreeable, he preferred not to dwell upon it. After a while he answered gravely: 'There seems to be a controversy between the artists and the philosophers on this point, witness my friend Ivor Mardol and me. He does not pronounce all things evil, nor do I say they are at their best; nevertheless, I could not paint if I believed that beauty was less than the sovereign law. And he speaks of expiation, the tragic Nemesis, and I know not what.'

'Then you hope the best,' she said, 'although you see it nowhere realised. The lady of the mere is dreaming still; but she may awaken and with a stroke of her wand restore our lost ideals?'

'Yes,' he cried; 'I subscribe to that creed, on one condition.'

'What is it?' she asked anxiously.

'Let it be whispered in her ear that she is dreaming. We are near waking, it has been said, when we dream that we dream.'

'You would imply something I do not quite understand.'

'Well, then, so long as fantastic visions abuse her eyes she cannot resist them, because they are all her world. Let her see, however faintly, a different ideal; in comparing them both she will wake to perfect reason.'

Lady May sank back into her chair and meditated. The unreal vision was love which pined in secret and called forth no response. The reasonable union [170] between herself and Rupert Glanville could only be friendship, if she saw a way to keep it as intimate as now it was becoming. But no way presented itself. He would marry and forget her. She must return to a lonely life. The days ran on; there was little change in them. And while her own countenance gazed upon her from the canvas, she beheld only the enchanted fay, her eyes full of wistfulness, looking out upon dim waters, upon a mist of weary sunshine, and a world of dreams. Would she ever awaken?

CHAPTER X COMPANIONED BY DIVINER HOPES

' Thursday ,—18—. It seems only the other day since I took possession of the Hermitage; and it is more than a month. What a gap in these pages! I have never been a careful annotator of the day's work. The less I had done, the less I was inclined to write it; when my hands were full I grudged the time. But this evening I have lighted my reading-lamp, drawn the curtains, stirred the wood fire into a blaze, and, seated where I can enjoy its cheerful glow and feel its warmth, must make an effort, in the only way endurable, to hold up the mirror before me and view therein my counterfeit presentment. The time is propitious. Thanks to Van Helmont and his alchemist fore-fathers, I have at any rate restored the surface of the Virgin of the Seraphim. My composition, as binding as Roman cement, smooth enough to lay upon it the most delicate colours, and no thicker than a [172] transparent wash, will endure from Rupert's hand whatever treatment he may attempt. Who says that alchemy was good for nothing? or that poring over its obscure and dusty records will bring no reward? If I had not been drawn to them, held by them, lost in them during weeks of seeming idleness, the Madonna would still be a dismal sight, instead of inviting a great modern artist to add the finishing touch, and promising to shine out again among the Trelingham portraits.

'I have done what was required, and should be returning to London when my portmanteau is packed. Do I think of going? No. I must if the Earl does not bid me stay. But I am confident he will. There is the Great Hall to be commenced now. Rupert's designs will have to be made out, and I can help him better than any one else. Why should I not render him the service he expects? Admirable reasoning, Ivor! And is it what you mean? Come, my friend, be plain with yourself; there is not a soul listening. Let me cross-examine you a little. Now, sir, what are you by profession? A philosopher. Good. It is not the commonest trade in these times. And what kind of philosopher?—do you pretend to know the essences of things, entities, quiddities, and all the rest? You do not? You hold with an uncouth Athenian sculptor, who carved badly, but argued irresistibly, that your business, being a philosopher, is to know yourself and do your duty, not to peer into the mysteries of the gods. Yes, and you consider that a man should rise above his passions and control [173] them, not be swayed as they move. For, you say, they run wild in every direction, all wanting to be satisfied at once, and, like horses that will not obey the rein, each of them pulls the way it would like to go, and is fain to drag the charioteer along with it. Right—quite right. You remember your Greek, I see. But, then, why do you think of staying here?

'Because the place is so beautiful, adapted exquisitely to my tastes and desires. I have travelled, but never dwelt in a lovely region like this. The air feels like home; the waters are ever sounding sweetly or solemnly in my ear, and when they lie down in perfect stillness the calm penetrates my innermost being, and is more delightful than the murmur of ocean. The mind grows clear; the passion for wisdom takes on a more ethereal hue; my thoughts seem larger, and become crystalline in depth and tranquillity. Without violating the secrets of the gods, I lift a corner of the veil of Isis, and fall down in reverence before a loveliness too awful to be disclosed.

'You speak very well, better than some books I have read. And, Ivor, were I not looking so straight at you, I should think this was not only the truth, but the whole truth. Ah, you colour at my insinuation; your eyes droop. I must ask no further. My dear young man, the lawyer shall give place to the physician, to the father confessor. Tell me what that feeling is which has begun to stir like a serpent in your bosom. I will not vex you, but suggest the healing remedies, if any there be.'

When Ivor Mardol had written thus far he laid down his pen, and, going to the window, drew aside the curtain and looked out. He was in the largest chamber of the Hermitage, called the study, which permitted a view along the gorge and down to the sea. A portion of the overhanging roof had been taken away, to allow of sufficient light for mending the canvas and for such bits of engraving as Mardol might undertake during his leisure. It was a silent, starlit night. No moon was in the sky, nor any cloud. The air, though not frosty, was keen and dry, for a wind came at intervals out of the north and swept noiselessly along, brushing away the evening vapours which lingered about the Hermitage. Everywhere, as he looked, the stars broke on his view sparkling with soft light, not wildly, as when a throbbing seems to take the heavens, but in mild serenity and with friendly glances at the mortal who beheld them. 'The thousand eyes are looking into mine,' he murmured, remembering that conversation on the watch-tower with Lady May. Her dark eyes, too,— he was not likely to forget them. How beautiful and piercing they were! they seemed to look through you. But the light in them was fitful, not serene; it came and went in sudden flashes, startling you as with unexpected questionings. It did not speak of calm or comfort; the deep resignation which that silent night inspired,—how unlike the restlessness, the languor, yearning, melancholy, the fretting desire which their glance quickened into life within him. He was [175] alone now, in the presence of infinite worlds, each an abyss of splendour, a flaming ocean pouring out its waves upon Eternity, unhasting, unresting, bound by obedience to unspeakable laws which might not be transgressed, moving towards a goal that no man should ever behold. Could human passion endure in the greatness of the midnight spectacle? What was it but a little flame springing up out of the dust and dying down in a moment,—a handful of dry heather set on fire and cast into the waters of death? Should he break his heart because no flame answered his? For a long while he stood motionless, absorbed in meditation. An hour passed, but he did not move; his mind, intently thinking, controlled the muscles of the limbs; as though he were out of the body, his spirit sweeping through the countless worlds, beheld their greatness, their strange magnificence, their lonely spaces where living thing had never breathed nor would breathe, and unbroken solitude had reigned from the immeasurable past Eternity, as it would reign into the Eternity to come. He did not strive to leap the bounds of ordinance and break through the guarded gates into the mystery beyond. It was enough to open his eyes and see what was before him. The longer he thought the more was his mind overwhelmed, subdued, penetrated, cleansed from earthly desires and lifted out of itself. Again, the beautiful face, with its piercing passionate glances, came across the vision; but it had lost its power. It passed by like a falling star, vanishing in the [176] steadfast night of eternity. And the awful silent heavens looked down and were reflected in the waters of the shining mere; and deep calm fell upon Ivor. He drew the curtain again, sat down, took up his pen with a firm hand, and wrote:—

'If hitherto I have been so foolish as to dream of love, and such a love, here is the end. It is not for me. I know my calling, to which, until I found myself at Trelingham, I have never been disloyal. These moments of madness shall not count. Let me recall them now that they belong to the past; let me examine, in the starry light of intellect, a passion to which, as I think, I yielded too much, but hope to yield no more. The most efficacious means of vanquishing a sentiment is, say the wise masters, to put it under the microscope and analyse it to the last fibre. I doubt that a mistress's letters, howsoever tender and eloquent they seem to the lover, would charm or subdue if he read them critically to see where the charm lay. I will pluck up this fast-growing wild rose by the roots, trace the delicate, almost invisible threads which it was insinuating into my heart, and leave it, a beautiful dead thing, perfect but withered, compressed between these pages. Am I strong enough to be fair to myself, resolved enough not to run a further risk? But should I not still be exposed to temptation, while the warm earth cherished the seed of love? Out with it to the surface; let the light kill it! But in what way? Let me think. This book, [177] so scanty in its record of facts, is abundant in delineation of moods and feelings. I always meant to make it an autobiography,—the travels of a soul towards truth. Why, now, should I not take Carlyle's advice, and set down the story of my life? Why not, like Jean Paul, in that charming brief fragment of his, become the professor of biography to myself? It will bring out the contrast which would make any love of mine for Lady May ridiculous; and I might turn to these pages for a little cooling of my infatuation should it return. The sweet poison must not run in my veins any longer. This antidote shall allay its fury. Do but let me begin at the beginning, and not spare the subject of the story out of misplaced tenderness.

'Ivor Mardol, then, a young man of uncertain age, but, as he believes, verging on thirty, of plain features, less than the middle height, and surely not well connected,—ay, that is the inventory.

'Of my birth and parentage I know less than a workhouse orphan, except that neither can have signified to the world at large; for it is something to be chargeable to the parish. All I know is that I was brought up by good-natured, affectionate people, who told me I was no child of theirs. The old man taught me to draw, praised my ability, set me to learn what I could, being a mere lad, of the technique of engraving, and took me with him, almost as soon as I could walk, to his workman's club, his tradesunion meetings, his political association, his temperance [178] and vegetarian propaganda, but at no time to church. He did not believe greatly in churches. However, I soon learnt that the world was a busy place; and strange to say, I learnt equally soon that I had nothing to do with its concerns. I liked to see and hear human beings. To attend a crowded meeting and listen to straightforward, energetic speeches, interrupted, encouraged, sometimes put an end to, by a vast audience upon whom not a word fell unobserved,—this was to me as animating as it was instructive. All the arguments I heard were of much the same import; they dwelt on the misery of the masses and proved it by appealing to ourselves. I was not miserable; I had all I wanted. But I knew of some in my own street that had nothing, to whom the charity of neighbours supplied a crust now and then, while at other times they went hungry to bed. Did I feel for them? Have I not often sat down with tears in my eyes to our simple table, because I could not share my little meal with the poor wretches? I pitied, I caressed the tiny children, so begrimed and neglected, as they sat shivering on the door-step near the street lamp, afraid to go into the dark when night was fallen on the huge city, and mothers and sisters had left them at home—left them on what a business too often! That, too, I was not long in learning; the children of the poor know everything. They cannot be blessedly ignorant like those who are fenced round about in luxurious mansions and pleasant gardens whither evil does not [179] penetrate easily. But I have known them, though not ignorant, innocent; though acquainted so young with the ways of life, modest and self-respecting. My teacher might have forbidden me to make friends among these outcast children. He did no such thing. He trusted to the moral influence of the movement of reform to which he belonged; and his trust was not in vain. Deeply impressed as I was, at an incredibly early date, with a sense of the many things, too bad for improvement, that could not and ought not to endure, there was little room left in my thoughts for what was base or ignoble. I have smiled since on hearing it said that children are too young to understand these things. How young was I when the problem of social misery, shouted from a hundred platforms, became to me as real a fact as it is this night?

'But still, it was a problem in which others were affected, and I on their behalf, not on my own. The days of my childhood were solitary, and not at all unhappy. I could have wished for a companion in the evenings; I longed to know my father and mother. There came rainy hours to vary the long calm sunshine, and, like other children, I wept, even bitterly. But it was seldom. Mr. Mardol and his wife displayed the tenderest fondness for a child who lacked neither discernment to recognise their affection nor the feeling of gratitude that was all he could give in return. I do not mean that he was unloving, far from it; but he knew they were not his parents, [180] and he would have deemed it somehow a violation of the duty he owed elsewhere to love them as such. A curious distinction for a boy to make! He had, in truth, from the beginning a quick and delicate sense for the moral aspects of things, developed by his intimacy with men who were all day long discoursing of the just and the unjust, the rational order of the world, and the inherent defects of existing institutions. I have read nothing in the debates of Parliament or the works of political economists with which as a boy I was not familiar. The handling is not always so good; the amount of conventional falsehood seems to me immeasurably greater.

'Had I lived in my own family, or known what it was to have brothers and sisters, I too must have thrown myself as I grew up into the reform movement. To change the world, one must have a home, a country, a religion. It is that which gives the local habitation and the name, apart from which our aspirations are like the poet's dream—airy nothings. But I had neither home, nor country, nor religion. I had only myself and this kind-hearted philosophy. It charmed my imagination; it roused me at the great meetings to enthusiasm; it did not hinder me from falling back into that solitary world where I was the only figure. I learned much, and with superhuman quickness; I spent hour after hour at my teacher's side, watching all he did, and copying it as he allowed me, always with astonishing accuracy for so young a hand. The good man looked on [181] me, I think, as something uncanny. I must, indeed, have been a weird, elfish creature. And how I went on dreaming, longing, imagining, ever under a presentiment that, sooner or later, a figure would step down to me from the unknown world, and I should enter upon a fresh chapter of existence! Not that I despised my station, or coveted the rich wares I saw in shop-windows, or thought as I went by the enormous palaces of Belgravia and Tyburnia, that I should like to live in them. My dream did not run thus. I saw myself restored to father and mother, or kissing the lips of a baby-sister, and wandering in the fields, holding my new-found father's hand. An idle dream! But, surely, innocent enough.

'The fresh chapter of existence opened at last, when I was not expecting it. There was one day in the year, and only one, that Mr. Mardol had a fancy for keeping. It was Christmas Day. He did not go to church, and he despised the festive decorations by which his neighbours marked their enjoyment. But, if the day was fine, he took his wife and me for a walk in the green country, which then lay nearer London than it does now. We went just so far as to be out of the clash and jangle of the Christmas bells, but not far enough to lose their delicious chiming when heard in the distance. While we wandered quietly along, my teacher would take up his favourite parable and expound to us the universal charity of Nature; for he never uttered the name of God. He enlarged on the bounty that sends us [182] not only what we may eat and drink, but wise men, in whom there are thoughts by which we may live and learn to care for one another. He told over their names; he spoke of their sufferings, their triumphs, their undying influence; and he chose, as the greatest example, the name which so many in gross and ignorant fashion were celebrating that day. He said a man could do nothing so good as follow His example and labour to change the world in His spirit. Occasionally, he would read a few words from the story of His life; but this was not often, and the only book he would not have me peruse was the Christian Bible.

'I liked what he read; but I did not think of disobeying his wishes. What took up my thoughts a great deal more was the fancy, which I indulged without breathing a word to any one, that Christmas Day was my birthday, to be kept sacred by me, to be filled with a vision of home and all that I was by and by to recover of my inheritance of love. Christmastide for me meant infinite hopes, unquenchable desires. I, too, was to taste the joys of childhood, and be folded to a mother's bosom. While old Mr. Mardol was speaking of the dream of innocence long banished from mankind, or to be found only in the hearts of children; when he prophesied that by the law of progress it would in due time become no dream, but a universal reality, and the age of reason, of obedience to nature, of unpurchased happiness and sylvan delights, be ushered in with [183] acclamation, and terminate the ferocious strife of man with man, by a treaty of eternal brotherhood, my heart warmed within me, and I saw myself roaming the beautiful forest and playing in its sunlit glades, not an orphan or an outcast, but restored to all that loved me and were by me beloved. I could think of no progress but the change from my wintry desolation to a home looking out on the wide world, yet centred in the rustic cabin of my parents. For it was the firm conviction of Mr. Mardol, as of thousands besides, that, when the day came, mankind would pour out of their enormous modern towns, as on the opening of the prison gates captives rush forth in ecstasy, and would never more shut out the air and light of heaven with high walls and crowded habitations, or heap together corrupting luxuries, every one of which was soaked or stained with the blood and sweat of unrewarded toilers. He called the splendid capitals of Europe and America mouths of hell, where flame and smoke ascended day and night without ceasing, and the shrieks of the damned for ever filled the mirky air. But for the sense of duty which kept him where the battle raged, he would have sold what he possessed and gone away, when he was young and active, to the uncolonised lands in which a man might live as nature intended. But it was a task laid upon him, laid upon me too, he repeated with solemn emphasis, to aid in conquering from effete civilisation the countries on which it had inflicted wars and pestilence and famine, and a [184] tyranny as hurtful to the few that exercised it as to the millions who could not shake it off. Meanwhile, we must share the captivity of our brethren, and teach them to forge weapons whereby freedom might be won. I felt that he spoke nobly; I was eager to follow his lead; but my imagination delighted in the remote continents whose soil was yet virgin, and whose pathless woods owned no sovereignty but nature's. I longed to lose myself in the vast solitude, with only the stars to tell me whether I was travelling towards the equator or the pole; I spent in thought more hours than I can reckon floating down the mighty rivers in the canoe I had with my own hands hollowed out of a fallen trunk,—floating, dreaming, as the waters bore me onward between forest and forest, the endless branches interlacing over my head, and almost shutting out the sky. Was I called to be a soldier in the war against corrupt civilisation, my pleasure should be to explore in fancy the beautiful regions I could not otherwise attain. I was, and have remained amid a variety of changes, an untamable creature, a denizen of woods and wild places. The deep seclusion of this valley, where now I am writing, the loneliness of the Hermitage, have for me a charm which only those can experience who, living much in the throng of civilised men, yet strange to their ways and feelings, are in dreams transported into the midst of landscapes they have never with waking eyes beheld.

'Our Christmas morning walk did not take us into [185] the mighty woods of Brazil—my favourite hunting-ground in fancy—nor over the rolling savannahs of South America. There were times when snow or frost kept us within all day. Invariably, if we had spent the early hours abroad, we came home to our meal of deliciously-dressed herbs—for I have implied that Mr. Mardol was a vegetarian, and on the same principle was I brought up. When the dishes were cleared away, we would sit round a blazing fire, kept up in all its glory by Mrs. Mardol to whom the warmth was grateful and almost the only enjoyment in which she displayed what her husband termed an unphilosophical excess. He did not grudge the wood or the coals, however, and, as he sat there, sipping his glass of water, he would tell me stories of his youth and his old companions; how some realised in humble station the meaning and the joy of an earnest human life, and others, the many, had been as thriftless and pleasure-seeking as though born to high estate. The dispositions of men, he said, did not correspond to the cleavage of ranks. But it was his way to enlarge on the good he had known rather than to dishearten me by dwelling on the bad. Then he would recall his own adventures, which were amusing sometimes and singular; and he seldom left off ere he had drawn, with sharp strokes, in the manner of an engraving rather than a painted scene,—for it had no colour, only an admirable distinctness,—the sketch of some well-known hero that had risen, by labour and genius, to be great among his fellow-workmen [186] and a power in the world's development. The saints of his calendar were such men as Franklin, Pallissy, Stephenson, James Watt, Ampère. But he admired them less when they became rich and famous than in their days of adversity. Of some he said that they had more energy than light; that, in accepting wealth they were false to the brethren; that the founders of the golden aristocracy were too often thieves, as those who had established the aristocracy of blood had been pirates and robbers. He was never long without coming back to his favourite theme, and I was never weary of it.

'I must have been about twelve years old, when, as the short afternoon of Christmas was closing in, and the blazing fire made a mixture of light and shade on our parlour ceiling, a ring came to the sidedoor, and Mr. Mardol, pausing in the story he was telling,—I remember it was the life and adventures of Victor Jacquemont, the French traveller in the Himalayas,—rose from his chimney-corner and went to open it. We had no servant, not even a girl to run errands. It was my business to do such commissions for Mrs. Mardol, and very willingly I did them. In a few moments the old man came back with some one I had never seen. Mrs. Mardol, however, did not look surprised. Her husband seemed intimate with the man, whose peculiar appearance, to confess the truth, I did not like. He shook hands with Mrs. Mardol, sat down in the chair she offered him, and asked in a quick but courteous [187] tone, whether the candles standing on the table might not be lighted. I disliked him even for this little thing. I was fond of watching the uncertain dancing shadows on the ceiling and the tongues of fire that leaped among them, before the lights came. He seemed to be intruding on the poetic interval I had enjoyed at Mr. Mardol's knee; to be ending my time of poetry altogether. I cannot tell why this notion came into my head; but, as Mrs. Mardol said to me once, I was always fancying something. And so I fancied this, not guessing what the stranger's business might be. The candles were lighted; my teacher threw himself back in his chair; and the unknown guest, backoning me to him, drew the lights where they would fall full on my face and leave him in shadow. I looked at Mr. Mardol; he smiled encouragingly, and said, "You need not be afraid, Ivor; our friend will do you no harm." But I was afraid, although, by a strong resolution, I kept down the trembling that came upon me. How well I remember what ensued!

"'My boy," said the stranger, "should you like to be a gentleman?" I stared at him. "A gentleman," I answered when my sense of politeness returned; "I don't know what you mean by a gentleman."

"'Well," said he, "to be rich and wear fine clothes, a new suit every day if you liked, and to drink wine, and eat venison which you had killed yourself, and have servants, and horses, and carriages?" He spoke in an amused voice, and smiled, not unpleasantly I [188] thought, across at Mr. Mardol. He had not long to wait for his answer.

"'I should like a horse," I said, "very much, if I had caught it myself with a lasso, and tamed it." I did not speak of breaking it in, because I was not learned in the terms of chivalry.

"'But," I went on at once, "I have clothes enough, and Mr. Mardol says it is wrong and cruel to be rich. And I don't want to kill anything, or to eat dead animals, or to drink fire-water. And," I concluded, out of breath, though not so incoherently as it sounded, "if all men are equal, how can a good man have servants?"

'To my astonishment, the stranger bent down and kissed me. "You have been well taught, my boy," he cried, laying his hand on my shoulder; "if you really think as you say, there is small fear of your becoming a gentleman. But let me try you. I have left a carriage round the corner; will you come with me and live in a beautiful house, and have all the things I told you about?" His eyes kept looking steadily into mine while he spoke. Do you think (I am addressing the acute lawyer who cross-examined me not long ago) that the prospect dazzled or attracted me? Quite otherwise. Nay, I did not loathe the temptation, I despised it. And I despised him. Why did he come to spoil our Christmas evening? I did not believe in the devil; but, as this man sat looking into my eyes and telling me of unknown riches and a glory that I associated with blood-guiltiness, [189] I felt, for the first time in my life, that the evil power, whose tokens I saw everywhere in misery and hunger, had drawn nigh to me. I would have run to Mr. Mardol and hidden myself in his arms; but the stranger held me, saying, "Why don't you answer? Will you come?" I released myself from his grasp, and sobbed out, "Let me alone, I do not want anything of yours. I wish to be poor. I mean to be poor as long as I live." He caught me round the neck and kissed me once more. "Never mind," he said soothingly, "never mind. Did I not warn you that it was only a trial? It is true I came in a carriage, because I am in weak health, and cannot face the piercing weather on foot. And I live in a larger house than Mr. Mardol quite approves. But I am not rich; and I do not want you to be rich."

"'Then," I answered immediately, "why do you not speak the truth? It is wrong to make believe that you could give me the things you said, when you hadn't them." He laughed a good deal before replying. "I did not say I had them, but that you might have them, my boy. However, let us leave this. I am going to propose something which I mean in earnest; and I hope you will be a good boy and say yes where I want you to do so?" He raised all manner of wild hopes within me. I looked at him with eager eyes; I felt the tears coming into them; and I could hardly see him for crying, as I said tremulously, "Will you take me to my father and mother?" Such were the words in which my heart [190] relieved its pent-up sorrow. At last the promise of Christmas Day was to be fulfilled. The home I longed for could not be all a dream. As though it were near at hand, hidden only by a curtain that instant to be drawn away, I divined its presence. Children on every side of me, though in want, though with scantiest raiment, and oftentimes only sleep to still their hunger, had love to keep them warm; while I, poor outcast, was owned by none except for charity. Must not this unexpected friend, if he cared for me as he said, have brought the best of news? Who was so wretched as to lack the love of kith and kin, save only me? Shaken with childish sobbing, I repeated, "Take me to my father and mother!"'

CHAPTER XI CHASE NOT THE RAINBOW

Again there came a pause in the writing. Thoughts and emotions from the long past strove within Ivor's bosom; and, leaning his head on his hand, he sat for a while in painful meditation. Then, taking up his pen, he went on with the story.

'The man seemed thunderstruck. He started violently, putting his hand to his heart as if he had been shot. "Your father and mother?" he repeated with surprise; "no, I cannot take you to them. When or how did it come into your head that you could have any father and mother except these?" and he pointed to the good old people who sat in anxious silence, waiting—as I have thought in later years when mediatating on the doings of that night—to be informed of things about which they had no more knowledge than I. The stranger turned to Mr. Mardol with a somewhat haughty gesture. "You do not instil into the boy," he said, [192] "I am sure you do not, idle fancies of this kind. Is it his way to talk of a possible father and mother?" Mr. Mardol answered calmly, "I have told him that he is no child of mine, and there I have left the matter. Never until this evening did I hear him talk of his unknown parents."—"Right, right," said the stranger; "you rebuke me. I know well that you have dealt with Ivor wisely, and have brought him up according to our agreement." Then, falling to a steady perusal of my tear-stained countenance, he said in firm but gentle accents, "Ivor, you must put away impossible notions. To vex yourself about parents whom you have lost is foolish. It can bring you nothing but trouble. I am your guardian, although you have never seen me till now; and Mr. and Mrs. Mardol, who have taken such care of you, will give you a home as long as you wish to stay with them. But you are called to a task, in which the ties of kindred would be simply a hindrance. You know in part what I mean. You have now to learn the rest. Can you attend while I am talking?"

'For I stood absorbed in my disappointment, hearing every word, yet feeling that I was thousands of miles away, roaming in the pathless desert, and, with cries that tore the heart, calling on my unknown, on my dead parents, to have pity on me. I was alone, utterly, helplessly alone; cut off from my teacher and kind Mrs. Mardol by the sudden thrusting in of this new-comer, who styled himself [193] my guardian, and who appeared in my childish eyes hard and unlovable. His question ended my reverie; he saw I was attending. Then he explained, rather as to an equal than a mere boy of twelve, that he wished me to interrupt my apprenticeship with Mr. Mardol, and to spend three, if not four, years at a public school. "Not," he continued, "at Eton or Harrow; I could not enable you to enter if I wished, which is not the case. But you shall go to a real public school, nevertheless, where you may learn Greek and Latin, and mix with English gentlemen."

'I was again stirred to rebellion. "What have I to do with gentlemen?" I cried. "I do not want to be a gentleman, but an engraver."

"'Would you not like to learn Latin and Greek?" he inquired. My answer was prompt. "Not if they will make me a gentleman. Mr. Ashwell"—he was an eloquent stone-mason of my acquaintance, great at lecturing and a man I liked to listen to—"Mr. Ashwell says that Latin and Greek train men to be slaves of the aristocracy, and to believe wornout lies. He says no sensible father would let his children learn them." At which reply I saw a gleam of pleasure on Mr. Mardol's wrinkled features. He was of the same opinion as my stone-mason. But the smile on the stranger's face was due to another feeling. I could see he was a good deal surprised. "You are the quickest boy I have met of your age," he went on to say; "you appear to have a genius for catching up what is said around you. So much the [194] better. Mr. Ashwell, however, is right and wrong. The classics have become the studies of slaves, but they were written by free men. Do you know nothing of Plutarch's Lives? " I had read them all, in English, and I told him so. "Very well," he answered, "then you ought to understand that the classics, too, are held captive by the institutions which tyrannise over mankind. Not only the nations, but their history, their past, their very literature, must be set free and restored to its right owners. Mr. Ashwell speaks like the unwashed barbarian he probably is. We need men of a type less common, who believe in the old learning as in the latest science. You, Ivor, must be acquainted with both. And there are reasons why you should know what the inside of a public school is like. Will you go?"

"'Might I come back afterwards to learn engraving?" I would not give up what I so intensely delighted in. He assured me that such was his intention; when I could go on with my studies by myself, I should return to Mr. Mardol's workroom. If I showed no aptitude for Latin and Greek—but it could not be, I was too fond of modern languages, as he knew, not to feel interested in the ancient, which were so much nobler. The stranger talked more eloquently than even Mr. Ashwell; and my ear detected, in his accent and choice of words, a refinement that in Mr. Ashwell it would have been vain to seek. He must belong, I fancied, to the washed and scented revolutionists, the less common sort, whose ranks he invited me to [195] join. I did not feel reluctant if, in the end, I might become an engraver. At my age, it is true, three or four years seemed an eternity. What might not happen in them? But I was told that the time would run by faster than I could imagine; that it was really almost too short; and that I should spend my holidays with Mr. and Mrs. Mardol. They acquiesced in the arrangement. And, though I shed tears at the thought of entering on a new world without guide or companion, what could I do but consent? The stranger was affected on leaving me. He said I should see him again, but not until I had spent a term at school. And so the day was fixed, and he went out into the freezing weather of Christmas, to his carriage, I suppose, round the corner. I was glad to see him go. I spent the long hours of that night in feverish dreaming. All I had heard or imagined during the day came back, strangely confused, in sleep. I seemed to find in the wilderness my long-lost parents; but while I clung about my mother's knees with sobbing affection, or held forth my arms to clasp a father whose face I dimly discerned, the vision melted, and I was standing by an open tomb, wherein lay a dreadful shrouded figure. Bending over it, with sardonic joy in his looks, I beheld the stranger, and, on beholding him, fled. Ever and anon I awoke, crying bitterly, and the pillow wet with my tears. The night seemed as though it would never end. Time after time, with change of scene and attitude, the man that called [196] himself my guardian came before me as the murderer of those I held dear. His icy breath froze the blood in my veins; I shrank at his touch, but could neither escape nor resist him. His single face made my world and filled me with loathing and dismay.

'Why it should thus have affected me I cannot tell even now, when I know him so well. But early impressions are indelible. Mine are, at least. Mr. Felton has never done me harm; I am his debtor for much good. Nevertheless, to dissociate him from the visionary terror of my dreams that night is impossible. I admire his daring and resolution; and there are times when I could almost love him but for the resistance of something within. I shall not love him now—that is certain; the age when affection can be commanded, if ever it can, is past. On my gratitude, respect, and service he may count; I can offer him no more.

'My first days at school! ah me, how miserable they were! Mr. Felton's solicitor, who took me down from London, told me I should be homesick, but I must not mind, it would pass in a week or two. He little understood that the worst home-sickness is that of a child who has no home. If I felt lonely when Mr. and Mrs. Mardol took care of me, it was a thousand times worse here. I had the sense of a man with the tender heart of a child. My wretchedness was not the simple though piercing misery of a dog that has lost his master; it was poisoned and made incurable by thought. I did not in any [197] way resemble the ordinary English boy, to whom leaving his parents' house is a trial for which, in the society of other boys, he finds compensation. I had left the whole world in quitting Mr. Mardol and his friends. I liked many things of which boys are passionately fond; but I liked, I cherished with enthusiasm, others of which these had not the faintest imagination. In spite of the venerable architecture, large teaching staff, solemn routine, and gentlemanly surroundings that gave the school a name, I felt, when I could take notice of it all, like a civilised man among barbarians. It was a new world, but oh, how inferior to the old! Let me think of it again to-night; let me recall the condemnation I passed on it then, lest for the sake of a beautiful face I fling myself under the dominion of it now.

'An unreal, a fantastic world, wilder than many dreams! Here were five hundred boys, trained, as Mr. Ashwell, the eloquent stone-mason, said, to be slaves of an institution and to believe in worn-out lies. Not that their minds received any training; it was only their characters that were moulded on a certain plan. I saw none with a love of learning; enthusiasm was not scorned, for it did not exist within the school precincts. Masters and boys were immersed in routine; and they had but one standard, of vague outline, but exceedingly definite in practice: they all aimed at being English gentlemen. This did not keep the boys from schoolboys' sins. They lied to their masters, and sometimes, though seldom, [198] to one another; they were cruel, selfish, and spiteful; they believed in no religion, and they had little morality. I had been educated hitherto on such a different system that every day increased my astonishment. I cannot have seen things so clearly as I do now, or have been aware of my own reflections. But I did reflect and did pass judgment; a mind quickened by early contact with other minds is not slow in perceiving contrasts so great as that between the people I had left and the people among whom I had come. Strange as I felt to the ways of the place, a solitary in the crowd of eager, thoughtless boys, I observed incessantly what went on around me.

'I could not help looking for a friend, but it was long ere I found one. What point of contact was there between me and all these boys? They did not read; they could talk only of trivial subjects. They knew nothing of the great causes about which men were contending. They had never been thrown upon the current of life. Their very sins against the moral law had less in them of the human being than of the unreasoning animal which fulfils its desires and has never heard of a law. Mr. Mardol spoke to me of the True, the Good, the Beautiful, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the essential sacredness of duty, the wisdom of obeying the higher Nature which is eternal and unchangeable. Do not say that I could not understand. I did understand; and the proof is that I put questions to which Mr. Mardol could not always find an answer. But that [199] inability, so humbly confessed in the presence of a young child, did not abate the boundless reverence with which I listened. In my thoughts, he was the interpreter of Nature's laws, the Orpheus by whose song my slumbering spirit was awakened. I obeyed him with utter submission, and the deepest feeling of my soul was reverence.

'Here I found as little reverence as enthusiasm; a teacher that should speak of higher things than grammar would have been laughed at; nor do I remember on any one countenance a look to which in my other life I had been accustomed, manifesting the presence of the highest aspirations. It is a look impossible to mistake. Its absence made these men commonplace and the life around them dreary. I could go to none of them for comfort. They did not invite me to do so; they were peremptory and distant in their relations with the boys; and I should as soon have thought of opening my troubles to the stone lions that ramped above the main entrance as to these frigid pedants, whose souls were in the routine of their school and their domestic concerns. They remained no less strange to me when I had lived my four years under them than at the beginning. They were not cruel, but indifferent; not unlearned, but blind to the meaning of their books because so little acquainted with life; not inhuman, but quite, quite ignorant of the depth and scope of the word humanity. I thought them fitter to be playing cricket or rowing on the river than to teach others how to [200] live. Reserved though I was, the extraordinary questions I sometimes put were a surprise and a puzzle to them. I was told to keep silence; but never did one of them stoop to answer me seriously. A leading article of their creed, I soon found, was that boys have no understanding except for their games, and a few clever ones for the lessons in the school-books. I learned fast, and more than one master complained he did not know what to do with me. Why did my guardian send me to a place where my time was wasted, and I was bidden, under penalties, to spend three months in learning what I knew at the end of three weeks? Of course he had his motives. But I went through suffering which might have been spared me. Did it require all those weary months to give me the true idea of an English gentleman, or to prove by experience that our inheritance from Rome and Athens was shamefully misused? The conviction was soon stamped on my mind, burnt into it, rather, as with encaustic. To make me more of a democrat was impossible; the trial I now went through had a different but no less enduring effect—(yes, Ivor, it must and shall endure)—it was for ever to hinder me from adopting the principles or habits of the class to which my school-fellows belonged. The wealth which they took for granted I renounced with passionate scorn; the intellect they despised I came more and more to believe in; the love of mankind, which they did not even know, I resolved to make the ruling principle [201] of my conduct. What they called honour I saw was partly a brute instinct, partly the far-off reflection of Roman patriotism and Stoic virtue, by no means equal to the original. Did I see that at sixteen? Mr. Felton, who had a peculiar power of making me think, helped me to see it. What can change me?

'The boys were gentlemen in the making. With much that was agreeable, they had nothing that was pathetic about them. I could have liked one or another, as I might have been fond of a high-spirited, beautiful animal; but how different was that affection from the heart-piercing pity, the unbounded tenderness, I had felt at the sight of my poor little neighbours, —children of my own age or younger, living on stinted fare, without amusements, without green fields or flowers, shivering in the cold, and trembling when the dark night came on because they had only one another's company in the lonesome street,—forlorn, unfriended creatures, the recollection of whom makes my heart bleed even while I write, and tells me that this love trouble of mine is trifling indeed compared with the anguish that nightly haunts our cities. Be still, be still, spirit of compassion! I will serve, I am serving in the army of the poor. Do not blind me with tears until I have written the memories that are to save me from degradation, from moral ruin.

'No, there was none to share my thoughts. I made so-called friends. I was not insulted, nor was any special injustice dealt out to me. I played and laughed, and was on good terms with most of my [202] companions, and learned to speak as they did, lightly or unfeelingly as the occasion required. I never forgot that I was distinct from them in origin, belief, profession, porspect, disposition,—in everything that may make one human being unlike another. The ingrained conviction that these boys were heirs of injustice helped me; so did their quiet assumption that the world belonged to them; so did the tone in which they implied that to be low-born and base were the same thing; so, above all, did the frequent return to my old teacher and Mrs. Mardol when the holidays came for which I yearned. At the close of a dismal term I saw with fresh and ever-growing delight the familiar workroom, and handled the burin once more.

'The time would not pass quickly. I counted all the days and all their hours, gaining relief only from my books, in which were things high and heroic, if I could have been taught them by men who had felt the heroism or aspired to the height. My evenings, too, when I could be alone, were spent in a pleasant occupation; for I did not lay aside my pencil. But I must have broken down in health and spirits, or pleaded for release from captivity, but for one thing. Rupert came to be my friend. Rupert, not quite my own age, with his bright looks, ardent feelings, quick impulsive ways,—Rupert, versatile, affectionate, capable of anger and so ready to forgive and forget, sensitive, engaging,—what a change passed over my solitary life when he grew to be a part of it, when his sunshine brought out in the gray wintry landscape [203] all manner of unexpected colouring, warm tints, and comfortable cheering prospects! It was the love of drawing that occasioned our friendship; but I should always have worshipped him, though in silence, for his nature, how different soever from mine, was essentially that of the artist.

'Until I became the confidant of his thoughts I had never known what a light, ethereal creation the human spirit may be. I seemed to find in him, young as he was, the ideal charm which is revealed in the Greek statuary, as in the noble unaffected verse which corresponds to it in the Greek tragedians. The friezes of the Parthenon were known to me from the earliest I can remember. My master often took me to see them. He taught me how to admire their unparalleled perfection; for, much as he dreaded the influence of the classic training, he neither ignored nor misunderstood the greatness of antique art. He was a true artist himself, transferring a picture with astonishing insight and accuracy from canvas to steel or wood. The Greek poets I was beginning to read of my own accord, for I would not wait until these indolent guides gave the signal. Thus, in a moment, spring burst upon me out of the heart of winter, the world grew white with blossom, the soft rains fell with music and light in them on the tender meadow grass—truly meadow-sweet, and enamelled in pearly dews to my young vision. Friendship, art, poetry, all the Graces came, and with them hours of pleasant musing, of endless converse, of laughter and passionate [204] delight, and a love I could in no way express, yet was ever expressing. Rupert was my first, my only friend; and how fond he was of me! We quarrelled, not often, but yet we did quarrel; for, if I was patient, I could also be vexed, and he was headlong and impetuous. How vehement were our disputes, how full of anguish our estrangement, how proud we were in demeanour, and how deeply pierced within! Such quarrels were like thunderstorms—violent, allthreatening. Then a little word, a look, a hand stretched out, broke the spell; not a cloud but rolled away below the horizon, and all the air was sweet and fresh, with the singing of nightingales in every covert, and strange new flowers springing about our steps.

'Only a boy's friendship? Ah, golden hours, full of life and wonder, when, like virgin-snow, the unsullied feelings took on them rosy tints, and sparkled and shone pure and bright under the great sun as it rose into the heavens!

'I had known what it was to pity children,—that serious, thoughtful tenderness, which seems to befit old age, not boyhood,—but never until now had I imagined a love surpassing pity, made up of worship and delight, of joy and absolute surrender, of exquisite satisfaction and new desires. I was beginning my acquaintance with the Old Testament, which at Mr. Mardol's I had not thought of looking into. How often I dwelt upon the one verse that, giving back this fresh experience, as in a looking-glass, was to me a reflection of the eternal truth! "And it came to pass," [205] said the story, "when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David; and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." I would think of him often as David, sometimes call him by that name. For he too was ruddy and of a fair countenance. He could do nothing that was not perfect; I loved the least trifle that his hand had touched, finding a pleasure not only in his presence, but in having near me any sign that he would come again. In every friendship, says the proverb, one loves and one suffers himself to be loved. In our friendship I was the lover. I asked only such a return as the god makes to his worshipper, something tender and protecting, and, above all, leave to express my devotion. It is so long ago. Our regard has in nothing diminished, but the charm of its springtide could not last. It has yielded to a more energetic feeling, which seems to me the abiding element of manhood, and a constituent of all our passion when youth is gone. The fresh, wet colour, innocent but warm, has now a deeper tone, a more enduring consistency; it is fixed and will not fade. The hues of spring are not eternal, but its life is; and summer and harvest do but unfold it to perfection. And yet, and yet,—ah, golden hours, what would I not give for a single one of them, that hour of reconciliation when our nightingales were singing in every brake!

'All too quickly now did the days fleet on, as they swept down the river of time. I counted them for [206] the pleasure they had yet in store. Rupert, like myself, was an orphan; he did not spend the holidays at home, but either in his guardian's family or with friends to whom he was always welcome. With the courtesy of his class, he put no questions as to whence I came. I gave him to understand that I had lost my parents; that my name was not my own; and that I was not going to a university like most of our companions, or, like himself, on the Continent to study. He never said, "What, then, do you propose to do?" But he entreated me to take him for my brother in heart and soul. I promised, and I have kept my promise. The strange thing was that I loved him so well, and felt in such a heavenly new world when he was by, that I did not remember one of the controverted points on which I ought to have examined him. I did not ask him to accept Democracy, or vegetarianism (which latter, from necessity, I had been compelled at school to surrender), or the hatred of city-life, or the worship of Nature. He was gentle to every one; he could not be hard-hearted when he stooped to care for me. But I thought neither of my old associates nor of the questions they were agitating as I looked at his dear face and walked by his side. Long after I came upon the magnificent saying of Novalis, "Were there only two lovers in the universe," and so on. How deep it went into me! I remembered the time when, for Rupert and me, there were only two lovers—we two, in all the world, and we wandered as in a happy [207] dream. Life could have no problems for us; we desired nothing save that our dream might never end. Does the secret of regeneration lie there for these half-dead institutions? Is love the last word in the development of the race, as it surely is in that of the individual? But men do not understand. They have so little inspiration, so universal a sense of distrust. They are cautious, and therefore cold. They pretend to be guided by justice, by an abstract formal balancing of mine and thine, which speedily becomes injustice when the stronger holds the scales. The universal makeweight, I perceive, is the sword of Brennus.

'I went home, but thought day and night of my friend. I worked easily and spoke with less shyness than before; and my secret thoughts were altered. The longing for father and mother, though unappeased, was dormant. I knew it might stir when my last term had ended and I had bidden Rupert farewell. Neither would I mind the great problems in which I had taken such interest. Time enough, I said, when Rupert is away. Mr. Felton observed the change, questioned me, looked over a letter of my friend's which he asked me to show him, and with a grave smile asked me what I knew of the boy's position. I knew very little, except that he was of good birth, that his parents were dead, and that he meant to be a painter. All this I repeated; but, in my own mind, Rupert was the being I loved, who had no antecedents and no place in this lower realm; [208] he came to me out of heaven. What else he might be I neither knew nor cared. Mr. Felton let me alone. He saw how it was, and would not come between me and my first friendship.

'I can see now that the experiment of school had its dangers. However, it succeeded. Much as I loved Rupert, I was not tempted to prefer the English gentleman's view of things either to Plutarch or to Plato. These boys were Macedonians, not Greeks. It might have been difficult to climb from their level to the higher doctrines; but the only change for me would have been a descent, and that in the region of the intellect I hold to be impossible. I am yet convinced that English life is founded on chimæras. Its rank, respectability, wealth, and religion are phantoms, not realities. Mr. Mardol, who had none of these, was superior beyond comparison to the teachers at whose feet I was sitting. For I was astonished, and have since been amused, on finding that Mr. Mardol applied a religious standard, and made me do so too, where these nominal Christians dreamt only of their conventions. At school I kept my feelings on this and the like matters to myself; even Rupert did not know them. The conformity expected of me was by no means troublesome. Nobody asked whether I thought of eternal realities, or believed in them. I went to chapel like the rest; unlike the rest, I listened to sermons which, in their complacent dulness had a grotesque charm for one to whom the manliest popular speaking in London [209] was accessible and long had been so. I was much too young to analyse, but perfectly capable of feeling the difference. I heard the preacher in the pulpit tamely rehearse, for the hundredth time, a gospel which was not so real to him as to me were the figures of the heathen mythology in his everyday lessons. I knew the poetical worth and grandeur of Apollo; he did not know the historical worth or grandeur of his Christ. Therefore, he droned out a burden of so-called saving articles and went his way, satisfied to have spoken what he had spoken before, any time these twenty years. Of religion he knew nothing. On the other hand, my friend Mr. Ashwell, the eloquent stone-mason, rugged as he was in speech and bearing, insisted on a creed for which he would have laid down his life, or taken that of any preacher —a creed which absorbed his being and filled his daily thoughts, shining out to him as the certain salvation of mankind. Now, Mr. Ashwell did not stand alone. I knew a multitude of others, equally convinced and eager to spread their teaching, though not so eloquent. The old religion, as seen at school, seemed to me an effete babbler on Sundays, and no better than a forgotten corpse the rest of the week.'

'But, Ivor, you reason more than enough. Go on with your story. You left school as you came, a revolutionist; you corresponded with Rupert; you saw Mr. Felton once in a way and satisfied him that you were striving to unite the noble past of mankind with as noble a future; you earned your bread [210] honestly, and repaid Mr. and Mrs. Mardol's affection by tending them in their old days and closing their eyes when the hour struck. You laboured in the cause, and did not abandon it in the pursuit of worldly phantoms; you fell in love neither with rank, nor with riches, nor with respectability. You were loyal and true until a certain morning, when, as you gazed foolishly into a beautiful face, your beliefs and principles melted like frostwork in the sun; and you fell in love with Lady May Davenant.'

'Ah, spare me, stern monitor! I will confess and have done with it. Yes, it is too true. Convinced that I had nothing to fear from love, that Rupert's friendship left no room for it, I came into the neighbourhood of fire and was scorched before I knew. Pity and pardon my inexperience. How could I anticipate that feelings which had never shown a sign of existence would leap out of the soil, full-armed and mature, at the glance of a woman which meant nothing for me and yet was infinitely captivating? But is it not shameful that I waited to catch the plague until I had left my work-a-day world and was admitted within this high-born circle? Could I never, then, have fallen in love with a mechanic's daughter? I never did, nor thought of such a thing. It is only, I suppose, King Cophetua that weds the beggar maid, not a man whose rank is about equal to her father's. I have seen beautiful, though ragged, damsels in the haunts of the poor; could I have asked one of them to share my affection? Not I. [211] Cophetua had a greater mind than the engraver's apprentice. Or was it that I sought a companion who would understand me and be my radiant polar star in what I dreamt of achieving? That may be the explanation. May Davenant has, I think, the heart of a woman and the mind of a man. I like her resolute bearing, the proud carriage of her body and straightforward look, the cordial grasp of her hand. Then how abashed she can suddenly seem, eyes cast down and the colour mounting, as if in the midst of her imperious strength she remembered that she was a maiden and therefore needed a stronger arm. I beheld in her a highly-cultivated yet unspoilt nature, the finest breeding combined with as fine a play of impulse and passion,—no wonder I began to think there might be happiness in love. Let it serve for my exculpation. No, she would not dream of marrying beneath her, as the world calls it. For me she cares not at all. When I talk she looks at me with undaunted eyes; it is only while she is talking herself, or Lord Trelingham interposes, or Rupert throws in a hasty word, that the fit of blushing comes upon her. To indulge an affection like this would be chasing the rainbow. It may be difficult to renounce; but, Ivor, confess that it is impossible to attain. Some other man will appear to make her happy, if he has not come already. Her gratitude for the restoration of the canvas may give you a place in her memory among carpenters and drawing-masters. You will bid the Hermitage farewell, [212] go back to the mighty prison of London, live where no great lady comes or would venture her dainty footstep, and find in Rupert all the joy that affection is to bestow on you. Good-bye, Lady May; the rainbow has melted into mist.'

He flung down his pen, and once more, walking to the window, drew the curtains. As he did so a flood of light came into the room. He had been writing many hours; he was cold and stiff; and the morning, with its steely clearness wherein there seemed neither the warmth of sunshine nor the solemn brilliancy of the stars, chilled him yet more. He turned to the hearth where, when he began to write, the fire was blazing. A heap of white ashes lay in the fender, and not a spark glowed among them. 'The fire is out,' he said to himself with a mocking smile, 'and so is my love for May Davenant. Each has done its work. What more do I want?' And his thoughts went back to the solemn words whispered as he stood face to face with the stars at midnight. 'What is love but a handful of dry heather, set on fire and cast into the waters of death.' He would not live for it; he must aim at the larger good of immortality which, transcending passion, in some unknown way realises perfection.

CHAPTER XII SPECIOSA MIRACULA

IVOR MARDOL has made such frank confession in the foregoing pages that I need not recount the history of those bewitching days when he proved himself less a contemplative than a common mortal. He had dreamt dreams and suffered moments of misery. Sometimes he had lingered an hour after breakfast about Rupert's easel and unwittingly performed the office of duenna, which the Countess had openly renounced, saying she was tired of sitting so long at the same window. Nor had he spent as many hours as were anticipated in his island-dwelling. There, as he bent over the canvas, he had been glad and sorry that it did not vex him with a lovely face; so distracted he could never have made it whole. But he had envied Rupert. And now? His eyes were purged of glamour, he saw that Lady May's indifference to him had been complete all along. She, a heroine of the old order, could not recognise a hero [214] in this saint of the new. On hearing Glanville's description she had called Ivor romantic. She hardly thought him so after a month's acquaintance. His clear intellect, astounding erudition, frankness, and simplicity, made him as interesting as he was amiable. But to her the finest thing about him was his worship of Rupert. For she had not come to the stage of burning jealousy where even the friendship of a third person is resented. But things were going fast that way. The passion that consumed her was growing to a deadly white flame; and all beings, save herself and the artist, were becoming shadows and nonentities to her. How could she bestow a thought on Ivor?

He knew it now, and was resigned. His countenance did not betray him; and his Diary was a good, if a stern, friend in those long hours at the Hermitage. He found that he must not quit Trelingham. The Earl begged him to stay, and Rupert insisted. To their entreaties Tom Davenant joined his own. For, as if to demonstrate that not love but friendship must form his happiness, Ivor and the young heir of Trelingham had become the closest of companions. Tom, who was now himself again, had intended to return to Foxholme, but the Earl would not let him go. He persuaded him, in fact, to make the Court his home during the autumn and winter. There were deeds to be examined, accounts rendered, and other legal business transacted before his coming of age; and it would be pleasant to do [215] these things at Trelingham rather than in London, which was a place Tom abhorred. He could never stay there above three days without losing his spirits; being most unlike his fashionable mother, who declared life in the country impossible. So the young man remained, and gave his time first to fishing and by and by to hunting, for he was fond of both. This, I fancy, is rare in the civilised sportsman; and, indeed, as they are habits derived from quite distinct sets of savage ancestors, they are not likely to be united in the same individual.

Now, Ivor was a follower of Isaac Walton's, and Tom Davenant, rowing one afternoon in August to the Hermitage for some fishing tackle he had left there, had found the philosopher equipped as for an expedition, and delightedly offered to show him the resources of the Yale. Ivor was already acquainted with them, but he submitted to be led up stream and down, while his guide pointed out the deep pools and shady nooks under sun-baked stones where the trout were lurking. They spent a delicious afternoon. The stream was whipped, the basket filled, and Ivor's knowledge of the ways of that pretty river excited Tom's highest admiration. Thus did the wild huntsman and the London engraver make friends. They did not say much about their feelings. But when Ivor was not in the house, Tom was pretty sure to be away; and many an hour they passed by lakelet and stream, during which their conversation ranged wider than might have been fancied. Ivor had not [216] begun as a fisherman, he told Tom, but as an explorer. The sight of running water fascinated him, and he had spent his holidays in following the course of our English streams, going down with them through the varying landscape till they were lost in the sea. It was from lingering on the banks in all sorts of weather and studying the river life that he had come to understand the pleasure there was in angling. 'Cast a line into the waters,' he said,—and Tom listened as to inarticulate music,—'transform yourself for the while into pike or salmon, and forget your too busy reasoning, you will find after a few hours that all manner of dim faculties within are bestirring themselves, unsuspected kinships with the lower creation coming to light; you dream, and the spirit of the place floats silently near; it speaks in the only language that can be uttered in these depths, vague, elemental, soothing, and you recover a little of the freshness that made childhood a wonder and a romance.' Thus Ivor explained the final cause of fly-fishing; not to catch trout for supper, but to get back the lost sense of Paradise and be one again with the spirit of the watery realms from which, some forgotten morning millions of years ago, the first amphibian crept daringly on land. He said, now and then, to his scientific friends that while he agreed with them in going forward, he thought it would be fatal to man's happiness if he did not go backward too. In his metaphorical way he added, 'Though harvest means the golden grain which is waving in [217] the sun, you will not get a second unless you bury the seed in the earth out of which it sprang. Go back to the amphibian if you would go on to the angel.' His friends looked gravely at him and did not smile. They thought it more respectable to say as little as might be of the amphibian now he had become such a distant relative. But these were chamber-philosophers, not students in the open air. They little understood what a revolution is preparing for their science, as well as for the political systems against which they are contending. 'Man will rule over Nature,' said Ivor, 'only when he is at home in every part of it and knows it from within.'

Thus Ivor gained a second friend, to whom, after Rupert, he cleaved with his whole heart. They had in common a deep sense of enjoyment and freedom in the open air, and the unconscious poetry that lingers about the sedges by the river. Perhaps there was something else that bound them—an innocent mind, a pure and simple heart; for they were both unworldly. Tom could understand where he could not speak, and he grew greatly attached to the stranger. He consulted him on other things besides fishing: what he ought to do at Foxholme, whether he could look after his tenants without doing more harm than good, and kindred subjects on which he would never have spoken to Lord Trelingham. Would Ivor come and stay with him after he was twenty-one? Ivor smiled, but made no promises. He was not his own master, he said.

Their intimacy delighted Glanville, surprised but did not displease the Earl, and slightly amused Lady May. In the bosom of the Countess it excited some innocent wonder. She neither liked nor disliked Mr. Mardol; to her he was a species of inferior artist, who came about the place as other men did to put up stained-glass or æsthetic woodwork. She wished he would not persuade Tom to go fishing so often, or spend the time after dinner out of doors. It was stupid when Tom came in merely to dine, and to stroll about afterwards with a male companion instead of staying to be worshipped in the drawing-room. For herself, she had made several flying visits to town, and meant, after Tom's birthday, to spend a season in Paris. But she could not forego the opportunities of seeing him which Trelingham afforded. It was her second home, and she would stay until the young man went. Thus eagles, wrens, and turtledoves reason, after their kind.

Glanville, meanwhile, was falling into a mesmeric sleep. He had no defence against the sorceries of Lady May, no other love to resist an ardent nature bent on making him its own. He felt the pressure of an invisible hand, silently but surely compelling him to his knees. He could not pretend indifference to Lady May. The strange fierce beauty of her character excited him. Her conversation was singularly animated; her voice had charmed him from the first; and the loneliness of her position appeared to him deserving of the sincerest pity. She spoke [219] of the great relatives with whom she had passed her time during her mother's frequent illnesses. Among them all she had not one friend. Little by little she told Rupert all she dared. He saw more clearly than she did the peril of these confidential dialogues. But it was hard not to return her confidence and treat her as an intimate friend who would be delighted to know all about him. When the conversation was over he regretted that it had begun; he accused himself of sentimentality, of being led away by his feelings, and indulging in what the French call effusion. Nevertheless, a morning seldom ended before Lady May had taken up the thread of sentiment again, while appearing to be merely absorbed or unhappy, and Glanville had suffered another of the silken meshes to be woven about him. Now he was under the enchanter's spell; he fancied he could move when he desired, that he had only to will; and he was forgetting that to will under certain circumstances is the whole, but an insuperable, difficulty. A single word would break the spell; but how was he to utter it? On the contrary, he began whispering to himself that such confidences were very pleasant; that he knew where to stop; that there was no reason why he should not be Lady May's best friend; that he had not thought she could be so fascinating; that if he did care a great deal for her it would do no harm; that—he woke up one morning with something like a guilty conscience and began to deliberate whether he could stay at the Court and not ask Lord [220] Trelingham to consent to their marriage. Was he so sure, then, of the lady's consent? He was no coxcomb; and yet he was sure. By a thousand tokens May Davenant had convinced him that he was the most interesting man she had met. To confess it in direct terms was neither possible, nor becoming, nor necessary. He knew it. Even now he did not say to himself that she was in love with him; but he felt no anxiety. The question he had asked in his own mind, as he walked up and down the front terrace on a certain afternoon, seemed now to have an answer. Could he live without one who captivated his feelings, who would be happy to share his life, who was capable of splendid enthusiasm? Her position might demand an alliance with rank; but her extraordinary gifts made her worthy to be the helpmate of genius.

Glanville did not speak much that morning; but he looked often at Lady May, and the glance of soft inquiring meditation, which had never before lighted on her, stirred her heart with an expectant thrill. She could not meet his eyes, but a gentle blush, a sense of overwhelming diffidence, which gave to her motions a distracted and yet not ungraceful hesitation, betokened that love, waiting so long for a response, was now certain that it would not be withheld. The morning was still and autumnal; but in Lady May's heart rose the delicious feeling of spring. She was no longer miserable; the clouds were dispersing, and the sun was coming out. She felt that [221] love was answering love; and while her own was intensified, it was humbled too. Had she done that which was unmaidenly? had there been a lack of reticence, a boldness in speaking of what she had thought and suffered? She hoped not; she trusted not. But all would be well now. These first green buds were like the promise of a glorious summer; they gave her inexpressible delight. Nor was Glanville quite destitute of similar feelings. He knew that she was pleased and happy; confidence between them seemed natural enough now, and he was sure it would last. He did not think Lord Trelingham could resist an only daughter's wishes. His own success had been too brilliant and unmistakable to allow of the difficulties being raised which are commonly brought forward in such cases. He would finish the Madonna of the Seraphim before taking any step. There must be no chance of an abrupt termination to the task he had begun. But, on the day after he had restored the picture, he would demand the hand of Lady May. That, and that alone, should be his recompense. Nor would he give occasion to malice by attempting to gain the lady's consent before her father's. It should not be said of him that he had taken the Earl at a disadvantage. Had his affection been as strong as he imagined perhaps he had not behaved so punctiliously; he might have found himself saying more than he intended, and betraying a secret that lovers cannot easily keep. Anyhow, he resolved to wait.

The last sitting was over. Glanville, thinking himself much enamoured of the lady, paid her no compliments; but, with the delicate flattery of the artist, spoke of the expression, temper, and make of soul which went with this or that detail in the copy he was taking from nature. He felt satisfied that the task was done, and, as he thought, not unworthily. There remained the more difficult enterprise, to transfer the features of Lady May to the original canvas, now set up at the end of the gallery and waiting the master's touch. Curtains drawn round it concealed from profane eyes the havoc that remained, though Ivor had smoothed away crease and hollow, making, by the aid of some secret in alchemy, a restoration so perfect that the Earl wondered and Glanville was astounded. The engraver would not allow any one else to view his triumph. He insisted, mildly, but with the authority of a benefactor, on hiding the Madonna of the Seraphim in a kind of artist's sanctuary until it shone out in splendour as before the morning it was ruined. Glanville agreed, and, as he could not execute what amounted to a tour de force in the light-handed way he had taken with Lady May's portrait, it was resolved that the gallery should remain open, but the farther end be cut off and fitted up as a studio, where Rupert, assisted by his friend, might work unhindered.

With a mixture of pain and expectation, Lady May rose for the last time from the chair in which [223] she had sat and dreamt over her life during all those mornings. She put away the heavy crimson dress, sighing as she did so, and wondering whether the Madonna of the Seraphim would become to her an intolerable memory or, as Dante sings, 'the beginning and the cause of all joy.' The tremendous inward conflict, the intense longing and ardour of resolution had left her exhausted, like a medium who has with difficulty succeeded in mesmerising a reluctant will. And was she successful? She did not know. Rupert's countenance told her so little. She saw him vanish with her portrait behind the voluminous curtains of his improvised studio; and she walked slowly away, feeling like one that has witnessed the fourth act of a tragedy and is uncertain how the fifth will turn out. Alas that the tragedy was her own! She was expectant, not sanguine. It was part of 'love's fine wit,' that she anticipated on the day when the picture was restored the dénouement of these most wretched uncertainties. She must live through the interval as she could. It was not easy. Passion is one of the sleepless gods; it watched by her day and night, banished repose from her pillow, took the colour from her cheek, steeped her very music in bitterness, languor, and excitement, in delirious joy and quickly succeeding pain. She had been, in earlier times, a bold horsewoman, somewhat to the scandal of Lord Trelingham's acquaintance, but it was an exercise she had forsworn and she would not return to it. Had the chalet been untenanted she [224] might have spent her worst hours there, unobserved by the guests who were constantly coming and going at the Court. But now she felt like a wounded animal that has no place to creep into. She knew not what to anticipate nor how she should act. There was, in the whole world, no single creature with whom she could take counsel; and the gnawing pain at her heart grew, until she feared in a sudden frenzy of the nerves to betray her secret and be disgraced for ever. Day after day she wandered about the beach, choosing the most lonely situations and walking on and on wherever the strip of sand was wide enough to leave a passage at the foot of the cliffs. She was not much the better for it all; her sleep after such prolonged exertion was broken and feverish. She seemed to be living on wild hopes which would not bear examination. Now and then a passing look, a word from Glanville revived her. But that was little enough, and there was nothing else.

At length the decisive morning came, towards the end of October, when the still air seems tranquil, not melancholy, and there are frequent gleams of sunshine. Glanville had been absorbed in his work, not allowing himself a moment's leisure while daylight lasted. He could think of nothing else. All the airy shapes that filled his imagination had taken wings; he forgot even the motive with which an artist is commonly credited—the love of fame. One purpose took possession of him—to make this picture as perfect as he might; to enter into the heart of that [225] dead Friar who had painted it and wrest from him the secret of its loveliness. He felt that to restore was, in this instance, to create anew. Rupert had learnt when he was very young, what many artists have not discovered when they lay down their pencil,—at twenty he said to himself that the painter who has not lived in his picture will never make it live to others; that drawing and colouring are the hands, but imagination is the eye and the soul. In delineating the countenance of May Davenant he had seen only the lady before him; in reproducing it he forgot her, and in spirit went back to the world of religious types and ecstatic imaginations wherein Fray Raimondo had beheld the Virgin of the Seraphim ere he depicted her to others. The enthusiasm which dominated Glanville was not love; it was antagonistic to love; but he might have made to Lady May the excuse which Andrea del Sarto offered to his angry wife—that he forgot her for herself. There was no room then for a double worship; he was living, contemplating, loving with Fray Raimondo, two centuries ago, in a southern land and among a medieval populace.

There are dramatic painters no less than dramatic poets, men who throw themselves into a mood, a character, a whole epoch, with such intense realisation that the feelings spring up in them which correspond with the scene they are describing, and out of that vivid illusion they extract truth and summon the past from its grave. When the short afternoon compelled [226] him regretfully to put down his brushes, he still went on dreaming of San Lucar and the monk in his cell, with the golden vision steadfast above him. This man of the world became a child, a mortified recluse, a seer at the gate of heaven; for the time being he was neither sarcastic nor melancholy. He would not have chosen the subject; he painted no Madonnas of his own accord; but since it was given to him, the instinct which made him an artist impelled him to obey the law of inspiration whereby he had succeeded hitherto.

None but Ivor Mardol saw the work advance. The friends were much together and communicative as usual on the points raised in its execution. But on other things they were silent. Each had a secret of his own which concerned Lady May, and neither could utter it. Glanville, indeed, looked forward to the marriage on which he had, I will not say set his hopes, but made up his mind. Yet he was no more excited when he thought of it than if some one had told him that there would be rain in the evening. Had he cared half as much as the lady who was waiting breathlessly for the fifth act to commence, he would have found his tongue, and surprised Ivor with his eloquence. Then, too, he might have seen into the bosom of his friend, whose thwarted affection, purifying itself like an ascending flame, was not to be quenched, but transformed into the rarest sentiment of chivalry. Ivor was more tender than passionate; the pity which was almost born with him coloured [227] his every feeling, even that friendship for Rupert, wherein pity might have seemed to find no place. Much more did it warm and melt his being when the haggard looks of Lady May told him, the most observant and most unobtrusive of spectators, that she was suffering. It was a feeling which softened his disappointment and took away the eagerness that, under other circumstances, would have prompted him to pour his confidences into the ear of Rupert. A necessary reserve grew up between them, not weakening their affection, but marking another stage in the friendship which had united them. It was destined to exert a momentous influence on their lives when the threads had grown more entangled.

So the morning arrived, bright and clear, on which Glanville proposed to unveil the Madonna of the Seraphim. There were no strangers in the house except himself and Ivor, both of whom had by this time a false air, as the French say, of belonging to the domain. Even Mr. Truscombe had not been invited. Lord Trelingham, in his rare visits to the gallery, chiefly during the earlier sittings, had made various suggestions with regard to the tone and expression of the vanished countenance. His memory for technical details and accessories was excellent, and, thanks to it, Glanville had reproduced the style, if not the actual peculiarities, of ornament and setting. The Earl would not interrupt him while engaged on the picture itself; but he came when Glanville was not working, marked the changes [228] that he judged indispensable, and offered his advice with the respect due to a great artist. It was generally to the purpose; nor did Rupert pique himself on knowing the original better than those who had seen it. When the last colour was laid on, Lord Trelingham took what he called a private view and came away delighted. The painting was hung in its former place, the purple veil, which still had Lady Elizabeth's name upon it, was drawn in front; and on the pleasant forenoon of the day appointed the little family group stood before it in expectation.

Rupert was still in the enthusiastic mood of Fray Raimondo; only by an effort could he remember that he had promised himself a reward which to-morrow he must demand or renounce for ever. Lady May superstitiously expected to read her fate in the unveiled picture; and Tom and the Countess, who were standing side by side, the least concerned of all, felt vaguely that an atmosphere of unrest surrounded them. Karina had not discovered Lady May's secret; she fancied more than she knew; while of Glanville she could make nothing whatever. His mind was a sealed volume which required a mightier spell than hers to unlock it. She whispered to her cousin that there ought to be an overture before the curtain drew up; but Lady May did not answer. The Earl looked graver than usual, for he was thinking of that other morning, when the young Alice and Edgar Valence exchanged, in the presence of this same Madonna, the pledges that had bereft him of [229] a friend and a sister. His eyes turned more than once towards Lady May, inquiringly, anxiously, as if he were struck with her resemblance to her unhappy aunt.

There was no overture, nor was any needed. When Ivor drew aside the veil a sight as beautiful as ever graced the eyes of mortals broke upon them. The picture, as they remembered it after the storm, was blurred in a hundred places, and the countenance of the Virgin had disappeared under dust and defilement. But now! It was a new creation. The seal of age could not remain intact; fresh colours, though exquisitely blent with the old, took something of its two centuries from the painting. But there was no crudeness, no offensive novelty; a light and delicate touch had given radiance to what was dim and effect to what was faded. The splendour of the vision came back, the heavenly dyes of angelic raiment, the brightness of the martyrs' crimson, the golden emerald of the far-off gleaming gates. Most wonderful of all, the countenance that had been lost was visible once more, drawing all eyes to it, in calm unconscious beauty, not looking down towards earth, but already enlightened, as it should seem, with the glory that falls from the Great White Throne. It was not a likeness of any human face; if it resembled Lady May, the expression transcended all that had ever shone upon her features. Instead of the proud, self-centred look, there was unspeakable innocence, humility, gladness, a pure light on the [230] brow, a tenderness in the gentle eyes, a majesty blent with meekness in the pose of the head, which bore its diadem of glittering stones as if they had been flowers. The sense of eternal triumph might be discerned in the movement of that glorious procession, as it swept through the air and mounted towards the stars of God. Quitting the world of clouds it had attained the region of transparent light; nor was there a reminiscence of pain or grief on any countenance. The martyrs seemed springing to a new and divine life out of the wine-dark tide into which they had been plunged; the cherubim, with the rose of everlasting youth upon their wings, soared upward like lambent fire.

Not a word was spoken for some minutes. In the highest human achievement there is ever something which appears to be more than human, and before which praise and criticism are alike trivial. What struck Lady May with astonishment was that she could not recognise herself. That serene countenance was not her own. She had never cherished the meek thoughts that looked out of those eyes, nor loved humility and patience, nor resigned herself to sorrow, like that maiden who was ascending into a realm of peace she should never know. Whence had come the artist's inspiration? If her dissatisfied spirit had passed into him, if the influence she strove to exert had made a conquest of his being, he might have painted as splendid a Madonna, but it would not have been such as this. 'No,' she said, 'he could have [231] painted no Madonna. I am only fit to be the type of a different woman—a sinful, ambitious, despairing creature, for whom heaven and its glory are a legend.' She read in the beautiful painting a condemnation of her hopes. If Glanville's imagining was of this lofty kind, he would never stoop to her. Was he, then, a religious fanatic, or where had he seen the innocent loveliness here depicted so truthfully? Morning after morning he had fixed his eyes on her, as she sat before him, only at last to create a vision in which she could claim no part. Rupert's genius was her rival; he could always evoke phantoms whose surpassing beauty would make hers seem poor and common. It was a bitter disappointment. She could not speak; her very heart grew chill and heavy, and her lips turned pale.

Lord Trelingham came to her relief. He enlarged on the likeness and unlikeness between old and new; what had been of necessity put in, what, on the other hand, it was impossible to restore. He praised Glanville for having produced exactly the effect which must have been intended by Fray Raimondo. Neither did he forget Ivor's share in the restoration. He turned the picture this way and that to show how smooth was the surface; he made the Countess view through a glass the extraordinary way in which the colours stood out from it and were at once solid and transparent. The delicately-painted foreground, the middle distance, the perspective, were all discriminated and discussed; while Lady May [232] endeavoured to recover her voice, and Tom Davenant listened respectfully without comprehending half a sentence. Karina knew more of painting than might have been expected; she had travelled along the famous picture-galleries, and had painted a little herself. She, therefore, kept Lady May in countenance, and atoned for her shortcomings as duenna by saying now all that was required in commendation of Glanville, and encouraging Lord Trelingham to prolong his discourse. Rupert was not a man to gape after flattery. He knew that the Earl's praise was sincere; the Countess did not talk nonsense, though her remarks were acute rather than profound; and Lady May's continued silence gave token that she was too much affected by his triumph to speak. When at last she murmured a word or two, though he could not catch what she said, he answered smilingly. His own enthusiasm was not yet exhausted. He left them commenting on the picture, and went out for a solitary walk in the Chase.

He did not return to luncheon. The dinner-hour came and he was still absent. What could have detained him? Ten o'clock struck, and eleven; it was close upon midnight and he had not come. Lady May, restless and impatient, asked herself whether the suspense would never end, the dénouement never arrive. What was Rupert doing? or had anything befallen him?

CHAPTER XIII SWEETEST EYES WERE EVER SEEN

When Rupert left the picture-gallery he descended behind Trelingham Court into the Park, and, after walking some distance, struck into a little-frequented pathway, bordered with evergreens, which led in the opposite direction to the moor and came down finally to the river Yale. Sunshine, still lingering about and penetrating through the branches, made a chequered pattern before him as he walked; the foliage stirred under a light inconstant breeze, the sound of the sea broke upon his ear when he paused; and he felt that he might now, without offending conscience, take a holiday. He had been working hard with brain and pencil for several weeks. He had thought and dreamt of nothing but the picture. It was at length finished. He could stretch out his arms like a man who has had the fetters taken off them. He was free, and the great work would do him honour. Mind and brain were now [234] at rest; he might wander as he pleased and forget yesterday to make himself the readier for to-morrow. A chapter of his life was closed.

That sense of finality, of complete severance from the past, which comes on the conclusion of an undertaking in which we have long been interested predominated over all others. He saw the curtain fall on the dramatic morning-piece which might have been styled A Lady's Portrait . All that he had done, all that was associated with the Madonna of San Lucar, receded to a distance; it became as fixed and cloudlike as the ridge of mountains we may see every day from our window but never think of travelling towards. And the figure of Lady May receded, floated on, and became a reminiscence affecting him no more than the painted Madonna herself. Had he been in love? He smiled. Was there love in a fancy which could not endure a change of conditions, which fled with the crowd of momentary shadows that swept by him and left no trace? What he felt now was a sunny satisfaction, restoring him to his former sense of freedom. The mesmeric trance into which he had fallen was at an end. He could go whither he chose, and take with him neither regret nor longing. Rupert felt that he had ceased to be his own master for a little interval; but the servitude could not last. He was delighted to be free; and with a light step he strolled on till he came to the river.

At the place where he paused the Yale was [235] moving over sand and jutting stones, which broke the tiny stream into a hundred glittering rivulets, and gave a sure footing if one were tempted to cross. The other side, thickly covered with tall trees, looked pleasant in the sunshine and not hard to climb. It seemed to lead upwards to open country, to a view over the moor which Glanville had not enjoyed. He stood a moment considering, then sprang lightly from stone to stone, and began to ascend the steep. It proved more difficult than he had fancied; the ground was broken, the brushwood grew at the most irregular intervals and made his advance fatiguing. But there was a zigzag path, wide enough for one, which led along the side of the valley and might take him to the top. His thoughts were agreeable; the morning had many hours in it yet, and why should he not ramble on? He went forward, plucking a leaf here and there, or breaking off a withered branch; stopped sometimes to get a glimpse of the river where it was flowing beneath him, and fell into a poetic reverie which brushed with passing wing a thousand associations, old and new, but was not awake enough to dwell upon any of them.

He had been advancing for nearly an hour, and still the track did not turn, but ran irregularly on, as if meaning to come out at the end of the ridge. On his right, which was the way he wanted to go, the steep grew higher and more rugged; the trees huddled close together, and walking became no easy task. Should he retrace his steps?

He went a few paces forward. There was a flicker of sunshine among the leaves and a bit of blue sky showing itself ahead; perhaps there might be an opening where he saw it. The wood seemed to grow thicker than ever, but he scrambled through, and found himself in a narrow, tortuous bridle-path which descended from the high country, and, skirting the impenetrable side of the thicket, wound away in the direction towards which Glanville had set his face. He remembered the map of the region, and judged that it must be making for Toxenden. He had no wish to get so far. Looking again, he saw that a grassy opening stretched down towards the river, and he determined on exploring that way. He disliked going back on his own footsteps, but did not mind an hour's extra walking in search of adventures—pedestrian adventures, ending in muddy boots, which was all he could hope for in civilised England. He went over the grass and found that the opening continued. It was not long before he saw the gleaming of water to his left; but, instead of a sparkling thread, it seemed a broad sheet. He broke through the covert, and in surprise looked down upon 'the shining levels of the lake.' In front rose the smiling Hermitage. He had come to it by a pathway which was hardly used, and which had never before been traversed by him.

Although the sun was not so warm nor the sky so bright as when for the first time he beheld the chalet, it was an exquisite morning, and he stood awhile to [237] contemplate the picture. Doors and windows were open as then, inviting him to enter. He did not suppose Ivor would be there; for he never lunched at the Hermitage when he had gone up early to Trelingham Court. But Rupert said to himself that he might as well take possession of the Pompeian kitchen and improvise a classic, though a lonely meal, before ending his expedition. He should find a skiff in the boat-house. He opened the door and looked round, expecting to see what he wanted; but, if a rowing-boat had ever been there, it was gone. He found instead—and it made him laugh when he saw it—one of those odd-looking contrivances which represent the first untutored efforts of man at ship building, which are less advanced even than a canoe. They are round, tub-like things, made of wood and leather, roughly put together, and I fancy are called coracles. The instrument by which they are put in motion is a short-handled spoon, of a good breadth at the extremity; and they move along with great speed when a savage or a knowing University man takes the command. 'Well,' said Glanville, 'here is proof positive that the prehistoric has been in the land, or, to speak more accurately, on the water. I must really try my hand at this.' He sat himself down in the coracle, and with that mixture of courage and wariness that we may observe in genuine athletes, so manipulated the large flat spoon that he was neither upset nor sent whirling round in a hopeless circle. As he sped along, much engrossed in the government [238] of his coracle, he looked forward, and, not without surprise, perceived that the proper civilised boat was lying at the bottom of the steps which led up to the Hermitage. 'Then Ivor is at home, after all,' he said to himself; 'but why did he come round to this side? Has he been exploring in the wood like me? And if he has, why did I not hear or see him?'

He fastened the coracle, sprang out, and ran up the steps, calling out as he entered, 'Ivor, Ivor!' There was no response. Thinking he might be in the kitchen, Rupert went thither; but no Ivor was there. What could have become of him? He turned back and noticed that the door of the study by which he had passed was half-open. His friend might be engaged over some drawing and too busy to answer. Throwing the door wide, he would have called out again as he entered, but that a sight most unexpected made him pause, draw back, and become fixed, motionless as a statue, on the threshold. A young lady in a riding habit, a lady he had never set eyes on, an angel that must have dropped from the third heaven, stood with a book in her hand quietly confronting him. Not a word did she utter, and confusion held him dumb. Politeness deserting him in his utmost need, he gazed for half a minute —or was it for half an eternity?—into the calm, lustrous eyes that met his own. They seemed of a most limpid innocence—beautiful, shining, starlike. Did the lady look as steadily at him? I am sure [239] he did not know. All he saw were the beautiful eyes, not any of the meaning they may have had in them. He waited spellbound.

The lady did not blush, or seem greatly taken aback. She smiled the least bit in the world—innocently, yet not harmlessly. And then, in a low clear voice, still keeping her book in her hand, still fascinating the thrice-bewildered Rupert with her childlike eyes, she said, 'Are you the tenant of the chalet? And must I ask your pardon?'

'The tenant? No; really I—my friend Mr. Mardol—I was expecting to find him; is there any—'

Rupert stopped. He did not know how to go on; his eyes made his tongue falter. I think the young lady knew, suspected, was at least half-conscious that he could not continue while she kept looking at him. She turned slightly away, and took up his broken discourse.

'Then,' she said, 'you do not live here. I was afraid'—she did not look in any way afraid, and I cannot believe she was, although she said so—'I was afraid it might be like the fairy tale, and that one of the bears was coming home.'

'The bears—the fairy tale? I do not understand you.' He was bewildered yet. She laughed now, and looked prettier than before. 'If you are a stranger,' she said, 'and not master of the chalet, you will allow me to take my leave before any one comes. You appear not to know a great deal about [240] fairy tales,' she went on, as if enjoying his perplexity; 'but I have no time to explain. I ought to go before the bears catch me. There is no saying whether they would take me for their sister. Some of them ought,' she added pensively.

'If you mean,' answered Rupert, who began to remember the children's story to which she alluded, 'that you do not wish to meet any of Lord Trelingham's family, I think I can assure you that they are not likely to visit the Hermitage at this hour. It is my friend, Mr. Ivor Mardol, who lives here just now.'

Her gloves were lying on a chair. She put down the volume in her hand, took up the gloves, and began slowly to put them on. After some deliberation, she said:

'And is your friend a relative of Lord Trelingham's?'

'Not at all,' answered Rupert; 'he is an artist, like myself, who happens to be staying here.'

'And who is painting Lady May's portrait, I suppose.' She spoke like one to whom the name of Lady May was familiar.

'No,' said he, wondering who the lady was; ' I am painting the portrait. I should rather use the past tense, for it is finished.'

'Then you are Mr. Glanville, the other artist,' she replied; 'I heard my father speak of you. But I did not know there were two artists at Trelingham.'

Rupert wondered still more. 'Mr. Mardol,' he [241] said, 'is more properly an engraver, not an artist. But may I inquire who it was that spoke of me?'

'My father,' she repeated, 'Colonel Valence. Did you not meet him in Trelingham churchyard the afternoon of the great storm? He told me that you had had some conversation in the porch while it thundered and lightened. He mentioned your name several times before he went away.'

This was like opening a flood-gate. The notion that he was talking with Colonel Valence's daughter awakened a whole train of questions in Rupert's mind. He forgot that the lady was standing in the Hermitage, where apparently she had no business to be, and that he himself was a stranger to her.

'Has Colonel Valence gone?' he cried. 'I should have liked—I was hoping to meet him again. Our conversation was so extraordinary that I did not know what to make of it, and it has puzzled me ever since. But I beg your pardon, Miss Valence. It is impertinent of me to say all this.'

'Why, no,' she answered; 'not if I could tell you what my father meant, as I daresay would not be impossible. He shares his thoughts with me.'

'Shares his thoughts with her!' said Glanvile to himself; 'how many of his thoughts, I wonder?' He mentally compared the scarred and saturnine face of the old man with the beautiful open countenance of his daughter. She did not seem made for a philosophy in which the last word was universal shipwreck.

'Some of Colonel Valence's thoughts are very stern,' he said aloud.

'Too stern, indeed,'answered the young lady with a sigh. 'I wish some one would convert him to a gentler mood. But we live utterly alone; and when he does mix with other human beings, they are men like himself, of earnest, daring temper. We pay a price for the new world that is coming.'

She spoke with calmness and decision, looking as childlike now in her serious utterances as when she was alluding to the bears and the fairy tale.

'Do you hold that a new world is coming?' he asked, with some astonishment in his tone, which Miss Valence's ear detected. 'A new world?'

'Surely I do,' she answered. 'Are not the signs of it everywhere? I should have imagined, since you are an artist, that you would be one of the first to think so, too. Have you no share in the "prophetic soul of the wide world, dreaming on things to come"? My father calls the true artist a seer of the ideal which in other men lies dormant. He is enthusiastic about art, especially painting. It is the only enjoyment he has.'

Rupert was struck with a sudden thought. 'Has Colonel Valence heard that I have been engaged on Lady May's portrait?' he inquired. It occurred to him that Colonel Valence would wish to be informed of the accident to his Madonna. And what if he would, Rupert? do you think that a sufficient excuse for renewing your acquaintance with him, or [243] for combating his philosophy, and looking at your ease on the countenance of this young lady while you do so? Oh no; it was nothing so hypocritical. Of course not. But if the Colonel had endured such hardships to bring the picture from Spain, it would be only charitable to tell him about it. In the last few moments he had become more amiable in Glanville's eyes.

'I do not think he has,' she replied. 'The day after the storm he went to London. He will not return for a long while. He stays very little at Falside now.'

'Is Falside your home?' Rupert did not reflect how he was violating all the proprieties. How dared he be so inquisitive? I wonder Miss Valence was not offended. But she seemed not to mind. Instead of at once insisting on being taken to her boat, she answered:

'My father was born at Falside, and we have lived there since my mother's death.'

'Oh, since Lady Alice's death?' exclaimed Rupert, completely off his guard. 'But is not that a great while ago?'

'Lady Alice was not my mother,' she answered quietly; 'she was my father's first wife.'

'And she lies in Trelingham churchyard,' said Glanville. 'Was that why Colonel Valence came out on that bitter afternoon?'

'Yes,' she replied; 'he spends many afternoons there. But do you know the story of Lady Alice?' she went on.

'I happen,' he said, 'to have heard the beginning of it. That is all. I know the romantic circumstances under which Lady Alice left her home and married. But I know no more; the thread of the story has not been resumed.'

'There is little more to know,' she answered. 'Lady Alice died in London, after eleven or twelve years of married life. Then my father went abroad. You perhaps have heard that he was engaged in the campaigns against Don Carlos, and received his commission in Spain. He has never been in the English army. He was a soldier of liberty, not the defender of a state or a sovereign.'

'And did Lady Alice leave no children?'

'No; I have neither brother nor sister. That is why it would be so pleasant to find a sister in Lady May. We are not relatives, of course, and she is a good deal older than I. But when I see her driving near Falside, as she sometimes does, or wandering down by the shore, I am often tempted to speak to her and beg her friendship.'

Glanville thought, while she spoke, what a striking contrast they would make. Lady May, although not taller than the average, had a stateliness of manner which seemed to add to her height; she was dark and almost foreign-looking with her great piercing eyes, long eyelashes, and, as the poets say in describing this type of beauty, her ebon tresses, that naturally suggested a crown or a chaplet of purple flowers to set them off. She moved slowly, and had [245] nothing of the tripping fairy in her motions. The expression of her countenance was earnest and impassioned. And what was Colonel Valence's daughter like? Rupert found it necessary to study her features with great attention; he might be asked some day to paint her portrait; or what if he sketched it from memory when he went home, and laid it up in his portfolio? There could be no harm in doing that. He wondered, by the way, what her name was. How could he find out without appearing over-curious? Hers was a slender form, graceful as Arethusa's, or the mountain-nymph's whose home is among rocks and streams, where all day long she roams, climbing, or springing, or dancing, as best pleases her, seldom quiet except when she has tired herself out with play. Her countenance was clear and well-cut, of that exquisite pale olive which is the least English of tones, resembling fine ivory. And those innocent brown eyes, how softly they gazed at the audacious painter! how tender and steadfast was their expression! They had caught a golden-tawny hue from the ringlets of sunny hair falling about her face, among which the breeze coming in at the open window played wantonly. Such a combination of light and dark in the human countenance he had never beheld. The exquisite shape might be matched, perhaps, did he know where to look for it, in sylph or fairy. But could sylph or fairy boast of that serious, calm, aerial loveliness which shone out, so young and so unconscious, from the pale ivory [246] features and the soft eyes? Not knowing what had been said or what he was saying, Rupert drew a step nearer, and in a beseeching voice, as if he must fall on his knee and worship whilst he spoke, the words came from his lips in a half-whisper, 'Would you tell me—nay, be angry if you will, but tell me—what, by what name may I remember you?'

The lady blushed almost scarlet now. Her pale cheek showed a deep, passionate tinge, and even her forehead was dyed in a faint rose-colour, which grew purple as she answered:

'Sir! how dare you?' She had got no further when she saw Rupert at her feet.

'Oh, forgive me,' he said; 'I could not—I did not know what I was saying. For the world I would not offend you.'

There was something in his tone which melted her. No, he had not meant to offend; he was only overcome, fascinated, out of himself. How is it that love reveals its presence? She could not speak for a moment; and her voice when it came back was, like Rupert's, almost inarticulate. 'Rise,' she said; 'do not kneel there.'

And as he stood before her, ashamed, penitent, his eyes seeking the ground, she went on, not looking at him—'My name is Hippolyta.'

'Ah,' he said, laughing passionately, 'I knew you came out of A Midsummer Night's Dream . Titania should be jealous of you.'

'Again, sir!' she cried, going to the door; 'stand [247] aside and let me pass.' She would not even look at him. It was all he could do not to fall at her feet again.

'Not like that,' he exclaimed. 'Oh, not like that. What shall I do if you go away despising me? I am mad; I have lost my senses. But I will not, I will not offend any more.' She had reached the verandah. He followed, ran down the steps and began to unfasten the boat.

While they were speaking it had grown stormy on the lake; there was a strong backwater driven by the rising wind, and the waves, though not large, seemed dangerous for a light skiff, such as Hippolyta had come in. she did not appear to notice the weather; her face was still flushed and her eyes bright with tears. Rupert could have bitten his tongue off when he thought of the liberty he had taken. He felt more than ashamed—he was humiliated. A gentleman, he, Rupert Glanville, to have behaved so, to have spoken such words! He turned with a deprecating look towards Hippolyta as she came slowly down the steps. She could not pass him. She stopped.

'Miss Valence,' he said humbly, 'this small boat is not safe in such stormy weather. Will you allow me to fetch the larger one, which is lying in the boathouse opposite, and to row you to shore?'

'I will allow nothing,' she answered; 'I did wrong to come here. Let me pass into the boat.'

Glanville saw that the storm would be upon them [248] ere long. He said, firmly this time, like a man who is doing what he knows to be right, 'I cannot let you risk your life, Miss Valence. If you will not wait till I can bring the safer boat you must allow me to take charge of this. A very few minutes will see you on shore.'

Reluctantly Hippolyta consented. When there is danger and a man commands, a woman does not find it easy to disobey. She entered the boat and sat down, while Rupert took the oars. Not a word more was spoken. Hippolyta looked over the side of the skiff, away in the distance, as if no Rupert existed. It was all she could do to keep the tears from falling. A sharp sense of pain, almost of degradation, filled her heart. Perhaps there was another feeling too, which she knew little about, although it gave an edge to the pain. She sprang out as soon as the boat touched. But before she could quite flee away, Rupert was at her side, bareheaded.

'I beg your pardon,' he said in a low voice. His head was bent. She saw that he was biting his under lip to keep down some strong emotion. His breath went and came. But she would not pity him. Half sobbing, with tremulous indignation, breaking her sentences into short phrases, she said, turning to the abashed and guilty artist:

'I came out of childish curiosity, and—and I have been punished. Tell Lord Trelingham, if you please, that I wanted to see the chalet, that I did not know—and I had never seen it, and my father said ... but it does not matter.'

Her voice broke down. She was fairly crying now. Rupert did not dare to come near her; he could not leave her in distress; he knew not which way to look. Oh, what a villain he had been! But he must speak.

'I would give my life that this had not happened,' he cried. 'Miss Valence, I implore you, think no more of it. Indeed, indeed, I meant no harm. I was beside myself. Cannot you forgive one who has never seen—' he stopped, he was near committing himself again. Hippolyta listened, like a child that leaves off crying when it hears a well-known voice. She could control herself better now, and Rupert was very sorry. He had really been carried away by a sudden impulse. She resolved not to forgive him, all the same. One more glance she gave at the artist as he stood, like a culprit or a penitent, speechless in the presence of his offended goddess. And then she ran up the ascent till she was out of breath and compelled to rest against a tree.

Glanville lifted his face when he saw her depart, and looked, and looked, all turned to gazing, until she disappeared amid the thick undergrowth. Then, as if wings had been added to his feet, and he were Apollo that had borrowed the sandals of Hermes in pursuit of Daphne, the young man followed, not knowing why he did so, unless it were that another moment of the intoxicating vision seemed well worth flying after. Hippolyta had run fast but not far. On the soft grass she heard no steps, and when Rupert [250] came in sight of her again he beheld the gentle Amazon unfastening her palfrey—call it not, I beseech you, either cob or pony—which was receiving his mistress with manifestations of joy as she came up to the place where he was tethered. Rupert, gliding behind the friendly covert of the trees, watched her every movement. She was excited and out of breath, but evidently not much frightened. From time to time as she stopped to put her handkerchief to her eyes a pang shot through Rupert's heart. Yes, she was crying still, poor Hippolyta; and this rude swain did not dare to show that he was anywhere at hand, still less could he venture on addressing her with more apologies. What would he not have given to help her to her saddle! He had lost the grace that might have been his for a foolish word. Oh, wild human heart and hasty tongue, can nothing put a check upon you? Hippolyta patted her steed, which was a small dark roan, with beautifully-shaped intelligent head,—I do not quite know how veterinary persons would describe what I mean, but the whole head, and not the eyes or nostrils only, looked intelligent, instinct with a higher life than good feeding and grooming could bring out. But neither were these neglected, as the glossy sleekness of the creature testified. Hippolyta, I say, patted his beautiful head, and, being utterly unaware that there was a spectator of her actions, put an arm round his neck and kissed him on the forehead. Rupert bit his lip again. Young man, that is your punishment for spying and [251] gazing where you ought not to be! Hippolyta vaulted into the saddle with the lightness of a bird, gave the reins a shake, and was off like an arrow. Hermes's sandals were now of no avail. Rupert saw that she was taking the road which led up stream, and, as he supposed, to Falside. Oh, that he might follow!

He did not move from the spot where he beheld her vanish until many minutes were passed. Then, like a man waking from a heavy dream, he shook himself, looked round, and remembering that he had left the boat unmoored, went with slow meditative steps down the glade. How many hours were gone since his feet had trodden it first that morning? He could not tell. Reckoned by emotions it might be a century or two. He forgot even luncheon; and, instead of returning like a sensible mortal to the Hermitage where good things were to be had for the cooking, he simply fastened the skiff, which by a happy chance had drifted into some low tangle of branches and thus been kept from floating farther away. This done, Rupert ascended the glade for the second time, and finding a bleak and wild-looking country when he reached the top, plunged recklessly into it. He would have given half his genius, which was worth more than half the kingdom of many monarchs, to come within view of Falside. But the venture was too daring, and rather than yield to temptation he set off in the other direction.

It had begun to rain, and he had much better [252] have returned to Trelingham instead of wandering on and on, not taking note of the way he was going, nor observing that the fine small drops, more like mist than wholesome rain, were wetting him through. His whole mind was absorbed in what had happened. Was it the one event of his life, the golden day for which he had been waiting since he knew the name of love, the unveiling of the face that in dreams he had beheld and longed after; or was it an irreparable mischance? 'Hippolyta, Hippolyta,' he murmured to himself. 'Oh, senseless Rupert, did you think the wedding could be without the wooing?' It was the most unmanly thing he had ever done. 'And yet,' he went on, 'she ought to have known that I meant only to worship her.' He smiled when the words, uttered half aloud, struck upon his ear. 'How could she have known what I meant? She had never set eyes on me. Are my looks so innocent as hers? Childlike, divine Hippolyta!' He fell into delicious, delirious musing. He must see her, speak to her again, win her pardon, protest that he would spend his life in atoning for the insolence of the morning. Yes, it was insolence. To ask her name! But she had answered; she told him it was Hippolyta. That could never be undone. The bond between them was of her making, after all. And she had spoken in a whisper, with what heavenly shame in her accent, as though resisting the suggestion which made her answer while yielding to it! Love, ah no, it was not love, but pity, modesty, the [253] exquisite compassion of Hippolyta, who was a queen yet a child. In this way he babbled for hours—this great incontestable genius, walking at random and getting wet to the skin, and not minding, but with a heart all on flame, and love spreading out his golden pinions till the gray heavens seemed to melt and burn in their splendour. It was first love, the true deity and no counterfeit, whose wine, held out with coaxing gesture and half-smiling, half-frowning glance, intoxicated him when he put the cup to his lips. He rested now and then for a moment, stopping to enjoy the unmatchable emotion that had conquered him. But to keep still was impossible. He must go forward, and utter his feelings incoherently to himself as he went, smiling with a mixture of tenderness and scorn at the expressions that alone would come, the large, wild metaphors taken from all things in heaven and earth, the brief, sudden snatches of inebriation cutting short his speech altogether from time to time. He was not only a lover, but an artist whose intense fancy penetrated his nature through and through, being the fine spirit that made his genius what it was. He could not love as the common man loves; the passion he felt was individual, characteristic; it glowed with another fire than that which draws man and woman to have one heart in two bodies; for it aimed at a union of soul with soul, of all that was best in him with all that he imagined in Hippolyta. Do I say imagined? Well, be it so. But he would have rebuked the [254] word. In that strange, lovely face, in those tender eyes, he saw the revelations of a personality as choice and adorable as they were. Could any spirit of clay inform such a tenement? Thus he would have argued. But while he wandered through the clinging mist, absorbed in the contemplation of Hippolyta, beholding her in memory with the vividness of intuition which a new love bestows, he was far indeed from argument of any kind. He was drinking deep at the fountain of perpetual youth; he was roaming through Eldorado; the world was a garden of roses, and he saw Hippolyta riding on her dark palfrey over mead and mossy glade, turning towards him as she fled and bidding him follow.

It is dangerous to be lost in thought, but even more dangerous to be lost on a trackless down; and this was what had now befallen Rupert. Without noticing that he had long since left the belt of trees which marked the high ridge he had ascended, by degrees he exchanged one path for another, until he was now actually travelling the opposite way to that which he intended. Soon there was no semblance of a track; he was on the heather, guided unconsciously by the figures of the great crags which loomed up through the mist when he came near them. But he did not stop to choose his direction. The tourist of the morning, bent on adventures, was likely to meet with one now; for he had become no better than a somnambulist, and might at any moment have plunged out of his depth into the [255] boggy streams which rise on the moor and creep through the high grass with imperceptible motion. Fortunately, a strong breeze was blowing the mist aside; and the last short hour of the October day promised to be fair, and to be succeeded by a calm evening. As Rupert, somewhat exhausted with his violent emotions and headlong walk, was sitting on a huge boulder at the foot of the crag for which he had been making the last ten minutes, a final gust scattered the clouds right and left, the rain ceased, and a long lane of sunshine, forming in the space which the mist had left clear, took him up into its radiance. His face was towards the sun and his eyes were too dazzled to make out anything; but almost as the clouds rolled away he heard the galloping of a horse near at hand. He did not look up; the growing sense of fatigue had brought with it some depression; the wings of love were drooping, and he had begun to think more of the offence given than the return of affection he hoped for. But the sound of galloping came nearer; the horse stopped within a few paces of where he sat. And Hippolyta Valence, leaping to the ground, exclaimed in a troubled and astonished voice, 'Mr. Glanville, are you here? What has happened to you?'

CHAPTER XIV IN FAIRYLAND

He made no reply. The apparition was so sudden, so utterly unexpected, and the light, whether of the sun or of Hippolyta's presence, so filled his eyes that he had not a word to say. He looked strangely forlorn, in spite of the air of distinction and the beauty of feature which made him, when his feathers were preened, an Arabian bird among artists. The lonesome moor, with its streak of watery sunshine, the huge overshadowing cliffs, the shining grass and thunderous purple of the heather, gave a setting to the figure and appearance of Rupert which disclosed more of the inward man, the melancholy, brooding spirit, than was often visible. Hippolyta was struck silent. She waited now, uncertain whether she ought to have accosted him, until he should speak.

He rose with a fatigued expression, looked round, and said, as if to himself, 'I must have lost my way.' He did not seem to notice the young lady; nor can [257] I affirm that during the first few moments he had distinguished between the vision in his brain and the form that came galloping over the moor.

'If you were going to Trelingham,' replied Hippolyta, 'you have certainly lost it. The Court is sixteen miles off, and in the opposite direction to this.'

Glanville was fully awake now. 'I am much obliged for the information, Miss Valence,' he answered in a conventional tone, 'and shall be grateful if you can point out the road. I have never been in this part of the country.'

'There is no road,' she told him; 'you are on the moor. And, if there were, you could not walk sixteen miles before nightfall. The sun will be down in less than an hour.'

'I must get back,' repeated Glanville. He gave an exploring glance over the country, hoping to see a human habitation if not a village or hamlet. It was all wild and bare. Hippolyta had said truly; he was on the moor; there was not the vestige of a track. He had been walking over the heather and did not notice it. What was to be done?

The young lady reflected, and seemed to have made up her mind while he was looking about him. 'You cannot get back this way,' she said, 'nor is it the slightest use ot attempt it. You would be lost in the mosses which you have passed without seeing them, I suppose. But Falside is hardly a mile off, and you can there be put on the right road. [258] Do come, Mr. Glanville,' she said insistently, for he showed no sign of accepting her invitation.

Now he looked at her and smiled, though still in his melancholy fashion. 'I will come,' he said, 'if you can forgive me. Not,' he added, 'that you ought. I know I am inexcusable. But, if you will not overlook my great fault, I must stay here until morning. I can make my way back in the light.'

'Stay until morning, and be frozen! No, indeed,' cried Hippolyta, 'that you shall not. Come now, show that you know how to be obedient to a lady.' She was smiling without an effort, in the most kindly way. 'I do forgive you. Artists are strange people. One cannot treat them like the rest of mankind.'

'You forgive me!' exclaimed Rupert; 'I will follow you to the end of the world.'

She held up a warning finger. 'No, only to Falside,' she said.

He helped her to mount, and, in a dream of sweet intoxication, walked by her side as she rode quietly along. She did not ask him any questions. How he had got thither was evident—by losing his way. But what made him lose his way? If Hippolyta guessed at the reason, she kept her conjectures in her own breast. Occasionally she glanced down at him; but when he looked up, with something of that half-foolish and wholly ecstatic smile on his lips which betokens a young man's first sensations of happiness, she was discreetly gazing over the moor. She was glad she had forgiven him. He must have [259] undergone a self-inflicted penance since she ran away from him on landing out of the boat. Perhaps he had gone into the rain and wandered all those hours to punish himself for his rudeness. At any rate, he was too haggard and woe-begone to be severely dealt with now. She would really forgive; nay, she would try to forget.

Rupert, thinking neither of the past nor the future, but as happy as a dog following his mistress, kept on walking mechanically, and did not even ask when they should arrive at Falside. He did not want to arrive there. It was enough for him to be near Hippolyta. Had she proposed to ride to the other end of the rainbow which he beheld spanning the moor, he would have said, 'Why not? let us go by all means. We shall perhaps find the golden cup the children talk of now we are together.' I doubt that her pony would have consented so willingly. When they passed certain rocks and turned to the left, that little beast shook himself and began to express a decided wish to canter. Hippolyta pulled him in. 'No, Djalma,' she said, 'you must be patient. Mr. Glanville would not care to keep up with you at a trot after his day's expedition. We shall cross your old friend, the Yale, in a minute,' she said, turning to the artist. 'It rises a little way off, and comes down into our valley on its journey to Trelingham.'

As she spoke they came to a narrow wooden bridge, which Djalma crossed at a quickened pace, [260] and a few yards in front Rupert saw a good, well-preserved pathway leading down between rock and wilderness into the hollow. Trees began to peer up, there were breadths of cover right and left a little farther on, and the sound of murmuring leaves and waters filled the air. Hippolyta struck through the wood like one who was familiar with every step of it; Rupert followed close; and they came out after ten minutes' slow riding upon another road, not so broad as the first, which, turning very abruptly, brought them to a garden-gate overshadowed with foliage. Rupert ran to open the gate. He could see only a short distance in front, for the trees overarched and came down so close that it seemed as if they were entering another wood. But soon they reached a second entrance, clear of trees, and flanked on either side by a low wall, which permitted a view into the valley and across to the neighbouring heights. It was a ravine, at the head of which, on a projecting terrace near the waterfall, rose in picturesque beauty the gables of a double cottage. 'That is Falside,' said Hippolyta, pointing with her whip. 'You are welcome, Mr. Glanville.' She did not wait for his thanks or his assistance, but dismounting and throwing him the reins, she added, 'Will you kindly hold Djalma while I go and call some one?' Saying which she went rapidly up the path and disappeared round a corner of the cottage. If Rupert could have made sure of being unobserved, I think he too would have put his arm round the pony's neck and saluted him [261] on the forehead. But he was prudent. No more risks through excess of demonstration for him. Djalma, therefore, had to be content with much patting and caressing, which, like all beings accustomed to adoration, he took as a matter of course. He was wondering when the groom would come, and not attending to Rupert at all.

When the groom did arrive he was by no means of that spruce description which is usual in great English houses like Trelingham Court. He was an old man with white hair and an exceedingly wrinkled forehead, dressed in plain rough clothes, more suitable to a gardener or man-of-all-work than to the guardian of so beautiful and well-kept a steed as Djalma. His eyes, which were very dark and glittering, made it clear that he was some kind of foreigner, to say nothing of the expressive gesture, indicating a doubt or a question, as Rupert fancied, with which on seeing the artist he turned to Miss Valence. She merely shook her head and bade Rupert relinquish the reins, which he did unwillingly, as one that gives up a beloved charge. 'Now,' said Hippolyta, 'will you come into the drawing-room while Djalma is taken round to the stable and Andres gets your own room ready? He was not expecting a guest, or you might go with him at once.'

Rupert obeyed, not being clear in his own mind as to what was proper or becoming. He said when they passed the threshold, 'Is it not possible for me to go on at once to Trelingham? I ought not to [262] trespass on your hospitality. I thought you spoke of putting me on my right road when we reached Falside.'

'The way is plain enough from here,' answered Hippolyta, 'but almost as long as your journey across the moor. And if you could only see, Mr. Glanville, how tired you look—' A thought seemed to flash across her mind while she was speaking, and she examined his face with no less attention than he had bestowed on hers in the chalet. 'I do believe,' she went on, 'that you are more than tired. Have you eaten anything since breakfast?'

Glanville entreated her not to trouble herself about so small a matter. He had not, in fact, eaten or drunk since the morning, and was beginning to feel the effects of his involuntary fast. But Hippolyta, with the woman's feeling that men are always ready to eat and cannot, like themselves, live on three grains of rice a day, was shocked to hear it. She begged him to sit near the fire and not stir till she came back. Then, running hastily out of the room, she left him to his own reflections, which were not disagreeable, but had lasted only a few minutes when she returned, bearing the requisites for afternoon tea, as Rupert would have said in any other drawing-room. Here it was probably not tea, but ambrosia, nectar, the amrita cup,—some enchanting draught with immortality among its ingredients. Hippolyta set the tray down; and, with a smile, remarked to the artist: 'I cannot offer you wine, for my father does not drink it or suffer it near him. [263] I fancy that tea will do you more good. Andres will show you to your room when you have taken a cup and feel warm enough to leave the fire; and we shall dine as soon as possible.'

Rupert was more and more embarrassed, though happier than words can express. Was he to dine alone with Hippolyta? The gods be thanked. But what would men, and especially women, say? It was like getting into heaven by a forbidden door. He could not refuse; neither could he suggest that there were difficulties, that the world had its customs. Suggest such a thing to Hippolyta, who moved about with the grace and security of a young maiden in her own home, busy, unaffected, and the very picture of innocence! 'Oh, Mrs. Grundy,' he thought with a sigh, 'how terrible and absurd is thy dominion over the souls of men!'

It did not appear that Hippolyta minded Mrs. Grundy in any way. She was the princess receiving a shipwrecked mariner into her palace; a beneficent Calypso, to whom the rumours of the world did not penetrate, as she dwelt in her sequestered island, amusing herself with divine songs and a quick-footed steed. Had she no servants but Andres? The place seemed silent, buried in deep sleep. No footfall was heard about it; no sound but the murmuring cascade; no voice within or without. Neither did Hippolyta appear to expect attendance. Did she abide all alone, like this, whenever Colonel Valence was absent? She had described him as living very little at Falside. [264] It was an extraordinary manner of passing her existence for a young girl, especially one so bright and vivacious as Hippolyta. Was it imaginable that she liked or could endure it long? At this point in his meditations the lady offéred him a cup of the ambrosia she had been preparing. It was very good. Rupert felt like a new being when he had drunk it; moreover, he secretly resolved to look upon it as the enchanting draught which henceforth bound him to exist under the governance and in the toils of Hippolyta. It was her own doing, and he would always plead it in excuse if she wished him to become a stranger again. But that he thought impossible after the events of the day.

'Do you live at Falside by yourself?' he ventured to ask.

'It depends on my father,' she replied; 'I see nothing, and I desire to see nothing, of what is called the world. No fashionable lady ever comes to me, and the only one I wish to know is Lady May Davenant. But Falside, though solitary just now, is not so for the most part. My father calls it the refuge of the destitute. There is seldom a month that some unfortunate man, pursued by the continental police, does not make his way to our retreat. The room you will sleep in to-night has been a hiding-place for the most distinguished revolutionists, from Mazzini to Felix Pyat. So that it is no new thing, you see,' she added, laughing, 'for me to receive an illustrious guest.'

'You must have gone through a strange experience,' said Rupert. 'But you cannot, I suppose, have seen the older men who are Colonel Valence's contemporaries. They have succeeded; and now, if still living, they sit in the high places of the world.'

'That is true,' she replied; 'I never saw Mazzini, for example. Those I know best are the men of the latest time, cosmopolitan and socialist rather than patriotic.'

'Do they interest you in life as much as they might in a book?' Rupert could not refrain from this question, but his curiosity was not altogether personal. Hippolyta did not resemble the masculine creature to whom he would have attributed a love of socialist theories or schemes of revolution.

'The men less than their doctrines, and not so much as their adventures,' was her unexpected reply. 'Like the saints of all religions, they are repulsive until you come to know them. But I am quite willing to minister to their wants. It is the only way in which I can help the good cause. Some, too, have a strangely captivating eloquence, like Kossuth. But he and the Hungarians belong to the aristocracy of revolution; and now they have set their crown of St. Stephen on the head of an anointed king, I fear that they will think no more of their down-trodden brethren all over Europe. Even Kossuth, with his hatred of the House of Austria, is at heart a political revolutionist and nothing more.'

She spoke warmly, and Rupert listened with admiration and suprise. He did not pretend to feel much with those that desire universal change. He was an artist, and dreaded the advent of democracy. But he could have worshipped any doctrine which came to him impersonated in such a form. However, he was spared making his profession of faith; for Andres, coming in as Hippolyta finished speaking, announced that the stranger's room was ready. Glanville rose. He could think of more things than one at a time, and he had made up his mind, while reflecting on Hippolyta's eloquence, as to what it behoved him to do.

'Miss Valence,' he said, going up to her, 'I can never thank you for such great kindness as you have done and intend for me. But I am quite sure that I ought to return to Trelingham. They did not know I was going any distance; I meant to have been at the Court for luncheon. And Lord Trelingham is so considerate, so nervous, too, since the shipwreck, that if I stay out they will spend the night in looking for me.'

He spoke reasonably, and Hippolyta was persuaded. She insisted only that he should stay for dinner. Andres, who was their coachman when they required one, would drive him, not over the moor, but round by the good roads on that side of the country. It would take time, but save mishaps, and Trelingham might be reached before midnight. When these things were clear Rupert followed Andres, [267] who took him out of the cottage, and by a covered way up some steps into another building, almost as large, that stood behind it and contained kitchen, housekeeper's room, and two or three guest-chambers. An ancient lady, as un-English in appearance as Andres,—she was his wife,—now took charge of Glanville, and led him upstairs to a small and plainly furnished room, where she left him without a word. It was the way at Falside to do everything as silently as possible. All manner of strange guests came thither, many of whom spoke no English and bore no particular name while under Colonel Valence's roof. Whether Glanville was a refugee or an ordinary wayfarer who had been lost on the moor did not signify to the helpmate of Andres, nor did the good man enlighten her. An old revolutionist himself, he had asked in dumb show, on seeing him, whether Rupert was one of theirs. Hippolyta had used the English fashion of shaking her head to say no, and Andres, by this time somewhat naturalised, understood, but was not quite certain.

Rupert came quickly down again, and entered the drawing-room. But he found no Hippolyta. He had leisure to look about him now, for he had observed nothing but Miss Valence's face and motions while she was making tea. It was a library rather than a drawing-room, with bookshelves round the walls, and otherwise somewhat solidly furnished. But a nice disorder, and the presence of flowers and needle-work, were signs that Hippolyta made it her [268] usual abode. On examining the shelves he saw books in every European langage,—some with extraordinary titles, betokening new systems of philosophy or of government, and a large number of modern poets and novelists. Among the latter were works he had never come across, which it surprised him to see in a lady's collection. But he reflected that, in all likelihood, it was Colonel Valence and not Hippolyta who studied these daring romances. He could not associate her with the books that were there.

She came in while he was looking at them. 'My father is a great reader,' she said, 'and had taught me, too, how to read. He prefers for enjoyment the ancient authors. So do I, I think. They have a calming influence when one's mind has been excited by the works of living men and women.'

'Do you read Greek, then?' inquired Glanville, taking out a handsomely bound volume, the Antigone of Sophocles, which happened to be in front of him.

'I suppose I may say yes,' was her answer. 'I have been learning it for some years. I can read Antigone , and know it almost by heart. What a noble character she was! Like some other Greek women she deserved to belong to the new era.'

'Then you know these lines?' said Glanville, turning to a passage I need not transcribe, for it is, like the landscapes round Vesuvius and the Campanian coast, a possession of modern times as of antiquity,—the marvellous scene where Antigone, standing at first with head bent to the ground in the [269] presence of Creon, lifts up voice and eyes, saying that neither Zeus, nor Righteousness, assessor of the gods, had established among men the law which she had violated in burying her brother.

'Know them?' cried Hippolyta; 'how should I not? They sound in my ears as the very gospel of eternal right for woman.' And taking the volume from him, she read in tones of strong feeling the lines that come after, at once so calm and pathetic. 'Imagine,' she said, when she had come to the end of the passage, 'can you imagine a woman of our time, brought up as most are, saying in the face of social ordinances, base, unjust, and cruel, words like these—if the poor version I once made gives their meaning? Antigone says to the King: '"Such mighty heraldings I never dreamed, Mortal, were thine as could prevail to break The gods' unwritten and unshaken laws: Not of to-day or yesterday are these, They live from everlasting, nor doth man Behold the source when they to light have risen." How often has the whole artificial polity of men seemed to dissolve under the charm of an appeal like this to nature, to the truth of things, against the untruths which make the world poor and contemptible! Antigone will always be a type of the true woman. Do you not think so?'

'You ask a terrible question,' replied Glanville. 'Antigone died in obedience to commands which she thought to be from the gods. And you know [270] they were nothing of the kind. More is the pity! Could it signify to Polynices whether his dead body were eaten by kites and eagles, or buried with libations? Antigone died the martyr of a custom.'

Hippolyta looked sad while he was speaking. 'Ah,' she said, 'I did not think you would view her in that light. She was the martyr of sisterly devotion, which is an eternal law, not of custom. But have you no feeling, then, about the grave of any one you have loved?' Her voice sank a little; she was grieved.

'Do not, pray do not misinterpret me,' exclaimed Rupert eagerly. 'I think Antigone one of the purest and most unselfish of heroines. Nor would I blame her tenderness to the beloved dust of a brother. But it is the way with us men to do battle for a cause rather than for a person, or—how shall I say?—for an emblem.'

'And women—for what do they give themselves?' she inquired, still speaking in the low sweet voice, with its touch of sadness. Rupert fixed his eyes on her, not daringly, but with a light shining out of them as he made answer.

'For love,' said he.

She was silent. She closed the volume and restored it to its place. A moment after dinner was announced, and they passed into the dining-room. It was not so large as the one they had left, and looked out on another side of the cottage. A bright fire was burning in the grate. Andres, who had forgotten to draw the curtains, now shut out the October [271] night, which seemed raw and chill. Hippolyta motioned Rupert to a seat at the bottom of the table and took her place opposite him. She had none of that trembling shyness that might have been expected in one so young. Evidently she had been accustomed to receive guests and entertain them in the self-possessed way she used towards the artist. He felt that the tête-à-tête meant less than he had imagined. Hippolyta had no need to keep him at a distance. She seemed to have forgotten their meeting at the Hermitage altogether.

But it was not so. After dealing with indifferent topics, she came back to it of her own accord. 'I suppose,' she said, smiling, 'it was a social ordinance that I should not have taken the boat and explored a sacred dwelling like the chalet as I did to-day. However, it was not a command of the gods; and my conscience leaves me at rest.'

Glanville was sure that Lord Trelingham would have been delighted to show her over the Hermitage. It was a pity that his own friend, Ivor Mardol, had not been there to welcome her; he was exceedingly proud of having such a quaint habitation, and made a very tolerable hermit, too.

'Yes,' answered Hippolyta, 'though I know Lord Trelingham only by report, I have a great affection for him. Every one says he is the kindest of men. But a reconciliation between him and my father has long been out of the question. I do not think my father bears him malice; and I daresay Lord Trelingham [272] would take his hand, if it were offered, which it never will be. I could not have asked his permission to visit the chalet. Yet I have long wished to see the inside of it. Riding that way, it is provoking to pass so many times in sight of a curious, uninhabited house, with strange stories attaching to it, and memories of my father and grand-father, both of whom spent weeks at a time there when they were young. I have often told my father I should like to go over it.'

'And what did he say?' asked Rupert.

'Oh, he was indifferent. He tells me that I have no part in the quarrel between himself and Lord Trelingham. Not being Lady Alice's daughter, I am really a stranger to the Davenants, who perhaps never heard of me. But I should not have cared to hurt his feelings by visiting the chalet when he was at home. I shall tell him, of course. At a distance he will have other things to think of, and he will not mind.'

The dinner could not last long. Though no wine appeared on the table, it was one of the pleasantest in Rupert's life. He must go now; and Hippolyta, with the thoughtless cruelty of a young lady who was not in love, when she saw that he had no greatcoat or other defence against the night air, insisted on his wrapping himself in a soft woollen shawl which was assuredly no part of Colonel Valence's apparel. The foolish young man was now quite enough intoxicated not to recover from his state of delirium so long as [273] the remembrance of that night stayed with him. Hippolyta, on bidding him good-bye, detained him for a moment. 'If,' she said, 'when you are telling your adventures at Trelingham, you will assure Lady May that I have always wanted to make her acquaintance—I should rather say, to have her for a friend—and that Colonel Valence knows and does not disapprove, you will be doing me a kindness, and,' she continued, with a little more colour coming into her cheeks, 'you will atone for the impetuosity of this morning, which I forgive the artist because—because,' she concluded merrily, 'he seems to have no difficulty in losing himself.'

Rupert promised, of course. What would he not have promised? It was another link between them. He knew from Lady May's silence, from her never mentioning Falside or Colonel Valence's daughter, that no other way of conveying it could be open to Hippolyta. So much the better. It made him, in a sort, her representative, her accredited ambassador at Trelingham. But one thing remained which, in spite of his devotion or because of it, he had not promised, which nothing short of necessity should compel him to do; and that was to mention where and how he had met Hippolyta. Their meeting, he said to himself, was in a realm with which strangers and denizens of the everyday world had nought to do—in the kingdom of poetry, in Fairyland. Should he tell Lord Trelingham that he had dreamt a midsummer night's dream on an autumn [274] morning? Not though his reward should be,—he stopped when he came to this reflection. For the sentence would have ended by bestowing on him the hand of Lady May. He was sitting in the dogcart by the side of the old coachman, Andres; and, if he blushed, the dark night concealed his shame. Twenty-four hours ago and less he had been resolved to ask Lord Trelingham for his daughter. Had the incident of the morning not taken place he must to-morrow have been uniting his fortune with that of a lady whom he did not love, whom he had never at any time loved. What an escape! He knew the difference now. A single day had sufficed to show him his delusion. Was he grieved on Lady May's account? Love has been defined as l'égoisme à deux . Rupert was in love with Hippolyta, and for him the Earl's daughter was merely a lady whose portrait he had painted. I do not say he would have summed the position in these harsh words; but, it is quite true, the first hours of love are like a deep delirium wherein the patient sees only what imagination bodies forth. The world of reality slips away into unfathomable waters and is found no more. Lady May had ceased to mesmerise him.

It was a pitch-dark night. Andres had received his instructions from Hippolyta, and drove warily along, neither making a remark nor troubled at the artist's silence. They might have been travelling towards the centre of the earth or through a succession of coal-pits for all that was visible on either side. [275] Glanville, who had a horror of darkness, grew tired and fell into a dose which was perpetually interrupted by the jolting of the vehicle over stones and rough ground, or stopping to ascertain where the road turned. Several times Andres dismounted to make certain that they were not passing the cross lanes from Falside to Trelingham. It was weary work, made endurable to Glanville only by remembering that he was wrapped in Hippolyta's woollen shawl, which he meant not to return, if Andres could be got to overlook it, until he had an opportunity of thanking its owner in person. What ridiculous image and relic worshippers are all the slaves of Cupid! How could a woollen shawl make Glanville happier except by making him warmer? And yet it did, and not in that way alone.

It wanted little of midnight when they came to the front terrace of Treligham Court. Andres rang the bell, saw Glanville safely down from his high seat, demanded the shawl by a respectful but not to be resisted gesture, and without waiting for fee or reward drove away in the dark. Lord Trelingham and the rest of the family were in the drawing-room, to which Rupert accordingly proceeded. There was some little commotion, followed by anxious questionings, on his appearance. The Earl had been alarmed and at a loss what to do, for no one could tell him in which direction his guest had walked out. Ivor Mardol, who had not gone to the Hermitage that day, was waiting for him, uncertain whether he should [276] renew the efforts he had made a couple of hours previously to find him in the thick darkness. He had been searching on the Yalden side of the Park. But, of course, his search had been in vain. To Lady May the date marked out for something notable had seemed to be ending in calamity; she thought Rupert might have been drowned, waylaid, murdered, she could not tell what. Her joy on seeing him was proportionate; but she dared not trust her feelings, and spoke no more than she could help. Glanville, never used to giving a long account of himself, now briefly explained that he had not walked in the direction of Yalden, but had crossed the stream and lost his way on the moor. A lucky accident had taken him near Falside, where he had been given something to eat and enabled to reach Trelingham.

'Did you see Colonel Valence?' inquired the Earl, scanning his face eagerly.

'Colonel Valence was not at home,' replied Glanville.

'Who was, then?' asked Lady May.

The artist, with a great appearance of sleepy distraction, answered in two words, 'Miss Valence.'

'Oh, Miss Valence,' cried Lady May, glancing towards her father; 'then you will have a singular story to tell, I am sure.'

'I don't know,' said Rupert, feeling more and more sleepy; 'but whatever it is I will tell you to-morrow morning. Excuse me, Lady May,' he continued, [277] 'the long drive and the dark have taken away the little sense I had. Will you allow me to bid you good-night? I am ready to fall down and sleep on the floor.'

They let him go. He looked as tired as he said. The Earl would have liked to ask him about Falside, which he had not seen, except in the distance, for several years. And Lady May, on retiring to rest towards one o'clock, had only one thought in her mind, but it kept her awake for hours. He had seen Miss Valence; what was she like? Was she the sort of person to captivate Rupert, who was surely of a susceptible temperament, yet seemed on his guard against the approach of love? She could not be certain that he cared for herself in any passionate way. Would he care at all, would he care more for Miss Valence? An anxious problem.

Rupert fell fast asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow; and during the next eight hours paid equal attention, that is to say none at all, to Hippolyta and Lady May.

And Hippolyta? It would be interesting to know her thoughts after that passionate pilgrim had vanished into the dark. Could Rupert's undisguised admiration have kindled in her an answering gleam? Who knows? For, after one brief interview, the heroine in Shakespeare found herself inquiring, 'Even so quickly may one catch the plague?' Certain it is that Hippolyta, before going to her room, sat down [278] to read once again the concluding scenes of the Antigone . 'Yes,' she said to herself with decision as she came to the end, 'I was right. It is the Gospel of Woman!'

END OF VOL. I

CHAPTER XV THE MEETING OF FAIR LADIES

It was natural that Lord Trelingham should ask next morning how Rupert had been led to Falside. And just as natural was it that Rupert should not know where to begin. He would not mention his first encounter with Hippolyta, and was thereby at a loss how to explain the second. He kept, therefore, to the vague and the general. He had never crossed the stream before, and, on the completion of his picture, had been seized with an irresistible desire to spend a morning in the open air and to explore the country which lay across the high and woody banks of Yale. He was not, like his friend Ivor, endowed with a strong local memory, and the mist which came down on the moor obliterated the usual landmarks. While in this uncertainty, Miss Valence, who was riding home, as he supposed, and who might have gathered from his appearance that he was a stranger, came to his rescue. She told him [] that he could not reach Trelingham before nightfall, and very kindly offered him shelter and refreshment at her father's house. He might have hesitated had Colonel Valence been at home; but in his absence no subjects were likely to be handled in which a guest at Trelingham could not join, and he had accepted Miss Valence's benevolent offer. At this point Lady May interrupted him. 'Was Miss Valence riding unattended?' So far as he knew, she was.

'She must be an extraordinary young lady,' said the Earl's daughter. 'It is now four or five years since they came to Falside. Miss Valence has no mother, and apparently never had a governess. She has no companion, and but one woman-servant is ever seen about the place. But Miss Valence rides and walks alone where she pleases,—like a man or an American young woman. I have seen her only at a distance. Is she peculiar when you meet her?'

Glanville hardly knew; no, he thought not; he had no opinion, except that Miss Valence seemed to have had more experience of the world than he could have supposed. And here he began to consider how he should give her message to Lady May. Better now than when they were alone. He must speak as not having received any special confidences while at Falside.

'Miss Valence,' he said, not without an inward thrill as he mentioned her name, 'surprised me in some ways. I did not know at first whether she [] shared the Colonel's feelings. But it is evident that she does not. Her father, no doubt, sees that she can have nothing to do with his first marriage. At all events,' he went on, directing his words to the Earl, 'she spoke of you, I may say, with affection. Nor is that all. She expressed a strong desire to know Lady May.'

'Did she really?' cried the Countess, who had been listening attentively. 'How amusing it would be to know such an original girl! Do let us call on her, May.'

Her cousin was astonished, not at Karina, who uttered whatever came into her flighty brain, but at the message conveyed by Rupert. She was not prejudiced in favour of Miss Valence. Though her own views were unconventional and her principles daringly unlike those in which, as the daughter of a pious English peer, she had been trained, it did not follow that she approved of 'American manners,' as she called them. Neighbours who remembered Lady Alice's marriage, were slow to mention the Valences when one of the Trelingham family happened to be present. Yet she had heard and seen enough to give her a disagreeable notion of Hippolyta as a bold, hoydenish sort of young person, brought up nobody knew where, and showing in her conduct a complete indifference to the sacred usages of the class to which her father at least belonged. Lady May was capable of breaking with society to gratify a strong inclination; but she was not capable of riding [] out without a groom. Those laws of the Medes and Persians which, concerned with slight outward forms, are different in different countries, are yet in each inviolable. Now Hippolyta had never borne their yoke. She could not feel the enormity of the offences she almost daily committed against those which govern Englishwomen. Not a stain could be imputed to her; in word and deed she was white as the driven snow. And yet the mention of her name in any drawing-room within a circuit of a dozen miles was accompanied, on the part of her own sex, with mysterious looks and frowns, which implied that her reputation was a thing of naught. On first coming into the country she was too young to be introduced anywhere; nor did Colonel Valence, who never entered a drawing-room, seek female society for his daughter. She had grown up alone, and seemed not to mind it. But such an eccentric way of life made it impossible that the ladies around should make acquaintance with her now she had reached the age of nineteen. She was excommunicated by universal though tacit consent. She was a social outcast, to be owned by no class of her father's fellow-citizens or their wives. Did she feel it? Was she aware of it even? Impossible to say. If she suffered, neither Colonel Valence nor any of their forein guests observed her suffering. She went to and fro, or stayed at home and received her visitors, with much the same freedom and straightforwardness which a young man of her own age would have displayed. [] Her manners were, in this respect, American. Most certainly they were un-English. Had one of the younger revolutionists that sometimes came happened to interest her in his views, she would have written long letters to him and permitted or enjoined him to answer at equal length, nor imagined that she was indulging an unfeminine intimacy. Assuredly she had not the shadow of a notion that such correspondence implied a promise or prospect of their union for life. As a matter of fact, she had no correspondent except her father; but she might have had a score and Colonel Valence would not have interposed. She did, indeed, write letters at his dictation to all parts of Europe, sometimes in cypher, and often without remembering their contents. These things were not all within Lady May's knowledge, but some of them were; and she could not decide whether the message conveyed by Rupert was a fresh instance of Miss Valence's boldness, or whether she ought to accept it in a friendly spirit. Her first resolution was in the negative. She could not take notice of Hippolyta; it would be every way unbecoming. 'Did you dine at Falside?' she inquired of Rupert. He admitted that he had done so; and further civil questioning made it clear that Miss Valence had presided at the dinner-table. This was dreadful in a maiden of nineteen; how could any lady that respected herself visit such a hardened sinner, such an inexcusable culprit? So reasoned the Earl's daughter on hearing these confessions, [] although for the honour of her sex she made no remark. Rupert, likewise, came in for his share of censure. But he was only a man, and men are easily led from the right path when women are bold. Call on Miss Valence? no, indeed. But the Countess would not leave her in peace. When she expressed her decision in a brief but energetic sentence, that lady, appealing to the Earl, who tolerated her saucy ways with marvellous good-nature, said, 'Don't you think, uncle, that it is very nice of poor Miss Valence to want May for a friend? She must be a great deal better than her father. I don't like his looks at all. But Miss Valence seems very bright and charming; it is not her fault if nobody calls at such an ogre's castle as Falside. I daresay she does not know what people think. Although,' continued the Countess in a wise tone, 'what people think is often as silly as can be. I know I wish there were not always a servant behind one to spoil things. If I were Miss Valence I should enjoy riding about where I pleased, and doing what I liked.' She spoke with conviction, the lawless creature!

The beginning of this little speech was more persuasive than the end. Lord Trelingham smiled at the first words, and did not attend to the last.

'I incline to think,' he said, with a benignant glance at his daughter, 'that your cousin is not altogether wrong. It might be a kindness to Miss Valence, alone and unfriended as she seems to be, if [] you made her acquaintance. You could help her to understand what is expected of a young lady in her position, and perhaps put an end to the isolation in which she lives. What do you say, my dear?'

Lady May was still reflecting on the odd circumstance that Rupert should have dined at Falside. She did not answer immediately. Her affection for the artist had not yet been quickened by jealousy. But she disliked the thought of Hippolyta intervening at that moment. Why could fortune not have waited till Rupert had taken the decisive step? It was a most undesirable incident. If she declined to call on Miss Valence, she must remain in the dark about her so long as Rupert hesitated. There might, of course, be no feelings on either side; but still— She must gain time to think. 'Would not Colonel Valence make a difficulty?' she inquired by way of answering her father.

'No difficulty to me,' said the Earl. 'I have long resolved that if he or his came with overtures of reconciliation I would meet them half way. There are reasons why I could do no other. Lady Alice's fortune is still in my trust. If she left no children, it should go to her husband.'

Rupert, who had reasons on his side to encourage the intimacy, threw in a word. 'I believe Colonel Valence leaves his daughter free to choose her friends. She said expressly that he would not be displeased at her sending the message I have had the honour to convey.'

'That is strange,' said the Earl. 'I should be glad to think it implied kindlier feelings on his part. But since he said so, you may be sure he meant it. Valence always knew his own mind.'

Nothing more was said just then. A few days passed; and Rupert, still in a dream which was so vivid and absorbing that he hardly wanted to see Hippolyta, went silently to and fro in the Park or spent hours by the sea, his imagination busy on the designs which must be prepared for the Great Hall, his heart musing on its own happiness and inspiring his genius with ever fresh lights. He said little or nothing; but the watchful eye of his hostess caught him smiling often, fantastically, like Malvolio, whom, as I have remarked, most infatuated lovers resemble in their gestures. The change, unobserved by others, could not escape Lady May; but the meaning of it was beyond her. Rupert never uttered Miss Valence's name. Now that the tête-à-tête in the picture-gallery had come to an end, these two seldom saw one another alone, and at no time for more than a few seconds. While others were present Rupert stayed; when they went he found a pretext for leaving the room. All this he did unconsciously, not being quite awake. The question whether he had done Lady May a wrong was one that, after the drive from Falside, ceased to trouble him. The truth is that he scarcely thought of her at all. Years of absence could not have made a wider gulf between them than the hours he had passed with Hippolyta, [11] or in thinking about her since their meeting. He looked neither before nor after. He did not even reflect on the difficulties which might arise should Lady May call on Hippolyta and the innocent Amazon gave an account of her visit to the Hermitage. She was capable of it; but Rupert never heeded.

Fortune favoured him, more perhaps than he deserved. The next time he rowed to the chalet Ivor was at home. Our philosopher had fallen into a habit of spending almost every day by himself, and appeared at Trelingham merely for dinner, being occupied, as he said, in the work which Rupert had given him. Imagine the consternation of the latter when his friend said to him, 'By the bye, an extraordinary thing happened here not long ago.'

'What sort of thing?' said Rupert, looking up from the couch where he lounged away his time on these visits. He was alarmed and nervous at what might be coming.

'Well, I should call it a ghostly visitation,' replied Ivor. 'Do you remember that afternoon you wandered across the moor and got to Falside?'

'Of course I do,' said Rupert impatiently; 'but do go on. That has nothing to do with your story, has it?'

'Nothing; only it fixes the date. I did not return to the Hermitage that evening, as it was midnight when you came home and the notion of walking through the mist was anything but agreeable. I slept in my old room, next to yours. Some little [12] matters kept me till the afternoon; but I had made up my mind to come back, if only for a short spell, as I had been a whole forty-eight hours in the society of human creatures. So I rowed over about three o'clock. The result was a series of surprises. First, and most extraordinary of all, I found the coracle from the other side lying at the steps.'

'Do you mean,' said Rupert, who felt he must make an effort, 'that you found it in the boathouse on the Trelingham side?'

'No; here at the steps, I tell you. It was most extraordinary. It could not have moored itself; and I ran into the house, expecting to see a visitor, little as I knew who it could be. There was no visitor, although I looked everywhere. If any one came in the coracle he must have flown away again, using wings instead of oars, for there was the boat, and there was not he.'

'A ghost, surely,' cried the other young man, laughing a forced laugh. He remembered his stupidity, and anathematised himself for leaving the coracle behind.

'But was that all?' resumed he, after his laugh was out. 'You talked of surprises.'

'I did,' said Ivor. 'Look at this;' and to Rupert's horror and delight he held up a riding-glove which must have been Hippolyta's. 'I found it on the chair by the door.'

'Let me see it,' said the arch-hypocrite. He took it in his hand. Ah, how much greater was the [13] mesmeric influence of this poor dead thing than of all the lightnings that shot from the eyes of Lady May! 'Go on,' he murmured dreamily.

'Go on,' echoed Ivor; 'that is all very fine, my dear boy. But what am I to think of finding a glove here?'

'That it was lost by an angel,' said Rupert, still in a trance.

'I don't think it can have been an angel,' answered his friend laughingly; 'at all events, it was not an angel out of the Christian heaven, for it brought me a message from quite another quarter.'

'Brought you a message? Never!' cried Glanville, now thoroughly awake and starting to his feet. Could Hippolyta be in communication with his friend? Impossible!

'But it did, all the same; and that is why my time has been so taken up. I must leave Trelingham in a few days.'

'You don't mean that this glove,' Rupert held it tighter as he spoke, 'has to do with your leaving Trelingham.'

'No; but this piece of paper has.' Ivor, from the table where he was sitting, took up a folded half-sheet of note-paper and held it out. Glanville scanned it eagerly, but could make nothing of it. He turned it upside down with no better result. 'Is it Russian?' he said, 'or what? I never saw letters formed like these, if letters they are.'

'It is a cypher,' replied Mardol, 'and tells me I [14] must go to London on business.' He looked serious and somewhat downcast.

'I can guess the sort of business,' said the artist; 'but of course I will not ask you about it. Poor Ivor! are you still convinced that you are in the right way?'

'Utterly convinced,' replied he; 'nor is it that which troubles me. But I do not like to leave you so suddenly and with such little prospect of returning.'

'Shall you be absent long?' inquired his friend, feeling sad and yet relieved at the turn things were taking. If it was this errand which brought Hippolyta to the chalet she would not mention it to Lady May.

'I do not know how long. But I daresay several months. You will have to do without me in the Great Hall.'

'And if I want you?' asked his friend. 'You know how miserable I am when you vanish out of sight in this fashion.'

'Write to Grafton Place. One of my working friends will forward my letters.'

'It seems to me,' said Rupert, somewhat bitterly, 'that you trust your working friend more than you do this brother of yours. Why not give me an address where my letters could at once reach you?'

'Rupert, how can you say so?' cried the other, coming up to him and putting his hand on his shoulder. 'You know that in comparison with you I have no friend. This is a matter of duty or [15] discipline, not of affection. I do not belong to myself. When I am summoned I must go. I shall have no fixed address; in any case I am bound to secrecy.'

'Well, old fellow, I wish you well out of it,' said his friend. 'You ought to belong to yourself; and as for the secrecy which you have promised, it can bode little good to any one. But you must do what you think right.'

'Yes,' replied Ivor, 'I partly agree with you. But I have promised and there's an end on't. What excites my curiosity, however, is the way in which this notice came. I saw, on entering, that my books were not in their usual places, and on looking round I discovered a volume of poetry on the table with this paper showing out of it. Had I not been so hasty in coming in, I might have known there was a message by the marks on the front-door. You look surprised. But they are rubbed out now, and I don't mind telling you that we find it useful to adopt such signals—borrowed, I suppose, from the gipsies. But still, I cannot account for the messenger's getting away.'

'Perhaps he had two boats,' said Rupert, 'and left the coracle to draw your attention.' He could not help laughing as he spoke at the thought of trying to mislead Ivor. The fatal effects of love! He was aware that the relations between Colonel Valence and Lord Trelingham had never been discussed before his friend. Ivor did not know the story of the [16] Madonna of San Lucar except in general outline, nor until the adventure on the moor had Miss Valence been mentioned. Thus if the young man departed immediately he might never know who had left the missive on his table. Rupert felt certain it was Hippolyta. Her bold visit was now explained; and the circumstance that she had held a book in her hand when she received him so calmly was decisive. He would have liked to ask whether his friend knew the Valences or anything about them. But it was part of their silent compact never to indulge in personal questions which might involve deceit on Ivor's part. Rupert was in the dark, not as to his friend's convictions, but as to the extent to which they implicated him in dangerous designs. That Ivor would not countenance assassination he felt sure. But there his knowledge ended. So now he did not dare to mention Colonel Valence or his daughter. But Ivor was speaking.

'Bring two boats and leave one; that is an original idea,' he exclaimed; 'it would not be unlike the strange being from whom this comes.'

'Then you know the writing?' said Glanville.

'I know it,' replied the other quietly; 'but I do not know the glove, which ought to be destroyed.' He put forth his unmerciful hand while speaking, and, to Rupert's poignant grief, took the beloved object away. To protest would have been in vain. With sorrowful eyes the worshipper of Hippolyta beheld her divine glove (is it not so the poets call it?) weighted with [17] a stone and flung into the mere. A ripple on the waters showed where it had gone down, and for half a minute Rupert detested his bosom-friend. But, wise even in despair, he held his peace; and the adored name of Hippolyta escaped not the hedge of his teeth. Ivor, as though he had accomplished a sacred duty, turned the conversation to other things; and his friend when he grew calm believed that the peril on that side was past.

How did it stand on the other, which was Lady May's? When in the evening he returned to Trelingham one of the first to greet him was the Countess Lutenieff, and she did so in the triumphant words, 'We have called on Miss Valence.' The young man's heart beat fast. He thought it was the Countess's doing, and he did not know whether to feel grateful or the reverse. He wished the acquaintance had begun under better auspices. But he was mistaken. Not Karina, but Lady May had proposed to drive over in the afternoon to Falside. This was the outcome of her painful meditations. She would see with her own eyes and hear with her own ears. To linger in suspense was intolerable; it was, indeed, killing her, as she said with the exaggerated language of passion for which, in this instance, ground was not wholly wanting. Once having resolved on the visit, she was restless till it had taken place. To her fevered spirit even the hours occupied in driving to Falside seemed an age. It was a delightfully still afternoon, with that serious unruffled calm over earth [18] and sea which has the solemnity though not the bitterness of a farewell to things mortal. The trees were bare, the long lanes dry and leafless, the country silent as they drove through it. Lady May, addressing no word to her cousin, sat upright in her furs and looked eagerly onward, as though to quicken the pace at which they were moving. She would have given much to be tranquil, but it was not in her nature; and when the carriage turned at the steep entrance to Falside, she almost wished that she had never undertaken this trying visit. Could any good come of it? But self-control was too much a habit of her life to be shaken even by a meeting with the woman on whose attractiveness or the want of it her future perhaps depended; and only the sharpened attention of Karina could perceive that in shaking hands with Hippolyta she was inwardly agitated.

The supreme powers, indeed, had so ordered it that their first encounter was agreeable. Lady May acquitted herself of a delicate task with grace and courtesy, while the quiet spirit of the afternoon seemed to have passed into Hippolyta. Unaffectedly surprised and pleased with Lady May's kindness, she was not so much the spirited maiden who feared neither to ride alone nor to preside at the dinner-table when her father gathered round it his miscellaneous guests, as the child who is all shyness and gratitude in return for a token of love. With charming simplicity she did the honours of Falside; and [19] while not apologising for anything in their way of life, she spoke as if taking for granted the peculiarities in her bringing-up and in Colonel Valence's history, which would explain whatever might seem strange. There was not a turn in her speech nor a trace in her bearing that could be deemed unfeminine. The Countess was particularly struck with her; she was so elegantly dressed and looked so beautiful in the shades of colour she had chosen that all idea of a female revolutionist vanished from Karina's mind. If she was leaned, she kept it to herself; if unbelieving, as people said, she was certainly not aggressive. Her natural delight on receiving them gained her visitors in no long time, so that a stranger coming in might have taken them for old established callers.

And, pray, what did they talk about? You may well ask, for it was a curiously intimate yet strictly defined conversation. Subjects there were in the minds of all three which, though constantly suggesting themselves, could not be handled. Lady May found it wisest, as it was most natural, to begin with the occurrence that had given occasion to their meeting—Rupert's adventure on the moor. Had the gentleman himself been in company he would have praised Hippolyta's discretion—it was equal to her other adorable virtues. For when, by the tenor of Lady May's discourse, it was evident that he had said nothing at Trelingham of their meeting in the morning, she fell in with Rupert's policy and said as little. This was not because Miss Valence deemed [20] her conduct unmaidenly; the thought never entered her mind. But if Rupert had not spoken, there was no reason why she should speak. She allowed the story to begin where he told it; and keenly as her visitors examined her countenance while she inquired about him, neither the Countess nor Lady May perceived a change in its exquisite calm or noted in her voice the tremulousness that is born of love. The Earl's daughter began to feel happier; and her cousin, in whose fertile mind a certain plan had been ripening, had to brush away a sense of disappointment when it appeared that Rupert Glanville excited no more interest at Falside than a young man may to whom one has given shelter from the rain. Hippolyta knew nothing of his pictures, and could ask about them in a steady voice. Then she passed to a more important topic,—her own isolation, necessitated, in great measure, by the wandering life of Colonel Valence and the principles on which he regulated his household. It was impossible, she said with a smile, to receive friends who could not forego the convenience of servants, or who would be shocked by seeing their hostess performing what they might deem menial offices. Nor did she complain of her exclusion from the world. She was not without interests; she had travelled with her parents in many parts of Europe; and she had books and a horse. All she wanted besides—she hesitated, and looked in a pleading, affectionate way from one lady to the other—was a friend or two of her own sex, who [21] might remind her that there were other things as sweet and precious as the service in which she was engaged. Especially, she went on, it had been her desire to know a little of Lady May, to be allowed sometimes to talk with her, and, sooner or later, to help towards healing the feud which had lasted so many years. It was daring, on her part, to make the request which Rupert had conveyed. 'But,' she said, 'you would not blame a poor sailor who was cast away on a desert island for putting up his torn handkerchief as a signal to any ship that came in sight. I had no other way.'

All this was said with extreme modesty and a charm of manner which Lady May had been far from anticipating. Hippolyta's strange beauty dazzled her; while the combination of self-respect with straightforward feeling which appeared in all she spoke, made it impossible to set her down as the unwomanly creature she was deemed in the neighbourhood. She asked for affection. Could it be refused? But while Lady May was reasoning, the Countess had decided. With her birdlike lightness she had flown to Hippolyta, and, kissing her on the cheek, cried out, 'My dear, you are perfectly charming. You may reckon upon us as your friends as long as we live. What a pity we did not begin earlier; but we must make up for lost time, and consider that we have been friends these five years.' Hippolyta returned her embrace, saying in a low, earnest voice, 'How kind this is of you!' But she [22] still kept her eyes on Lady May, as though the Countess's affection by itself would not suffice. The Earl's daughter had gone too far to draw back. Neither was she disposed to feel uneasy, as before their meeting. She put out her hand and took Hippolyta's with a firm grasp, while she said, 'My dear Miss Valence, I am not much given to making promises, and the Countess knows that I have but few intimate friends. But you may always reckon upon me; and I will do my best to bring about the reconciliation you have at heart. Will you come one of these days and see my father? He will be so glad to see you.'

'Oh,' said Hippolyta, 'these are words to make one happy. I have so wished to speak with Lord Trelingham. I will come whenever you please; and you may be sure that in doing so I have my father's consent. I did not press him at all. He gave it of his own accord.'

On this understanding they parted. Hippolyta promised that she would come to Trelingham for a long day, as soon as her household affairs permitted; and Lady May renewed her assurances that she should be received by the Earl with cordiality. At the gate, to which she accompanied them, Hippolyta underwent a second embrace from Madame de Lutenieff, and again shook hands with the less demonstrative of her visitors. She saw them off, and walked back with thoughtful steps and slow along the terrace, listening to her waterfall as it [23] leapt merrily down the rocks. Much had been done, but much remained to do. Her purpose in soliciting Lady May's friendship was indeed simply to end the long disagreement between the families. She could not comprehend her father's motive in keeping it up, unless that he fancied the Earl unwilling to be reconciled. But the Earl had relented, according to Lady May; and why should Colonel Valence not do the same? Their political differences were not to the point; they never had met, nor were likely to meet, on this ground. For if Lord Trelingham was a Tory of the purest type, her father represented a programme which at that date no English party would have dreamt of adopting. He despised the politics of the polling-booth, and would have begun his reform by abolishing not only the Crown, but the Houses of Parliament with it. She knew that the two men could never again be friends; why, however, should they continue to be enemies? The waters kept falling with their pleasant ripple, and Hippolyta roamed about her garden till sundown.

CHAPTER XVI LA BELLE FILLE HEUREUSE, EFFARÉE ET SAUVAGE

Such was the event of which Rupert heard from the Countess when he came in; and at dinner she dressed it up in the grotesque fancies suggested by her imagination. She had never seen any one like Hippolyta. She compared her, as the artist himself had done, to a sylph, a creature of romance, imprisoned by Colonel Valence at Falside. They ought not to rest till she was delivered. Glanville laughingly inquired whether a captive sylph was in the habit of riding alone all over the country; and was told in reply that Hippolyta's captivity was moral, not a mere imprisonment of the body. She dressed with remarkable taste for one who had never seen a fashionable gathering; but that might be inspiration like Rachel's, who could have worn a tablecloth as if it were a princess's robe. And her manners, though wild, were beautiful. Therefore she must come out and be made know to civilised [25] people. The Countess would do her that charity if no one else was willing, for she adored Hippolyta.

'Do you think her a sylph, Lady May?' asked Glanville.

'She seems to me a young lady of most unusual loveliness, and of great intelligence and decision. But I should not call her a sylph, because I don't know what the word means. It is one of those sentimental expressions that my cousin has learnt from her French reading.'

'You are always severe on my reading,' said Karina; 'but we cannot all be philosophers. A sylph is a beautiful creature with great dreamy eyes, and wings folded up in her corset, so that she has only to spread them and she can fly wherever she chooses. Don't you believe that Miss Valence could fly if she liked?'

'She has character enough to do anything,' said Lady May, 'and I am glad to have made her acquaintance. But we shall know more when she comes to Trelingham.'

It was evident that she had not spoken of the Hermitage. Oh, wise Hippolyta, thought Rupert. Now he should see her again; and the secret between them would give him an advantage. All love-making is a contest in which not a little depends on the given odds. Hippolyta was to some extent in his power. And he was no longer in hers—since she had kept silence when to speak might have put him in the wrong.

He watched every day till she came. A whole week moved on at the laggard pace of time when we are expecting something to happen. Ivor finished his work, or at least put it in order for Rupert to finish; packed up his belongings, and said good-bye to the Earl and Lady May with a tranquil mien in which none could have discerned the passionate regrets that filled his heart. Lord Trelingham begged him to come back as soon as he could; the Hermitage would be always at his disposal, and he might rest assured of a hearty welcome. He smiled sadly; no, he thanked them, it was most improbable that he should return. Circumstances, his way of life, imperative engagements, forbade the hope. But he would call on them in town? He did not know; the future was so uncertain. Then Tom Davenant said he must come to Foxholme; and poor Ivor turned away his face because of the shame and emotion that were gathering there. If Tom could only know upon what errand he was departing, the last thing he would have imagined would have been such an invitation. He loved the young man. But they stood ranged on opposite sides in the battle of life; and the trumpetcall which was sounding in his own ears sternly told him that friendship must yield to duty. 'I will come indeed, if I can,' he answered, 'but though I never should, believe that the fault is not mine. We are all creatures of circumstance.' Tom had, therefore, to content himself with the mournful pleasure of driving him to the station, which he did with [27] exemplary skill, at the same time assuring Ivor that if he would not mind little deficiencies in writing and grammar—his ignorance of which the young man regretted, though too late—he, Tom Davenant, should find solace in corresponding with him. His friend smiled and said how grateful it would make him, adding that, in case he delayed an answer for some weeks, it would mean that he was gone from home. Characteristic of the man I call it, that his sorrow on leaving these two friends, Rupert and Tom Davenant, almost made him forget the love he was renouncing. Nay, he thought more of the new friend than of the old during those days; for the expected to meet Rupert again in London or abroad, but this might prove his last farewell to Tom Davenant. He had lived more than four months at the chalet. It was now November; and the winter of his discontent took from him, or made more piercing, the remembrance of those heavenly days when first he came. Happy if he could forget them altogether! But no, they would be a lifelong regret. Even as the thought crossed his mind he smiled bitterly. Lifelong might not be so very long after all. He was ordered to the front; and those who are to face cannon do not insure their lives at a low premium. He would not disclose to the friend by his side, or even to Rupert, how serious the danger had become; I should rather say, he could not, for they would have hindered his going. But a certain steady light in his eyes and involuntary tension of the muscles betokened the excitement under [28] which he laboured. 'You are not very well,' said Tom to him; 'can't you wait a few days?' Rupert noticed his mood, was exceedingly gentle with him as on the like occasions in their previous intercourse; but ventured neither to ask a question nor to offer advice. He knew well that Ivor did not brook interference.

So he went away and disappeared into the unknown. Rupert, a few days after, requested that the chalet might be assigned to himself as a studio and general storehouse, for he did not wish to encumber the Great Hall as yet, and his sketches took up room. But he never went across the mere till he had ascertained that Hippolyta would not call in the morning. He was now assiduous in his politeness to Lady May, upon whose spirits a dull tranquillity had fallen, like yellow fog stifling and blinding her. She could not subdue the fascination of being with him; ever when he came into the room the others vanished from her eyes and she looked at him alone, and brooded over his slightest utterances. She did not fear Hippolyta much now; and not to be jealous was comparative happiness. There had come indeed an end of her confidences and of his listening to them. But when would he declare himself? For he was surely bound by what had passed.

It was a lovely morning when Hippolyta appeared at Trelingham, in a low chaise which she drove herself, while the silent old groom or gardener sat behind. [29] She had come to spend the day, but not to dine; for she said in her note that they must excuse her shyness if she felt tempted to fly away again as soon as she found herself inside the Court. Glanville, who had been lingering since breakfast about the gate by which she was to enter and saw her drive by, himself lying close in ambush, ran along other pathways up to the house, and the moment he decently could sauntered into the morning-room where the three ladies were seated. That he blushed like a very young man on meeting those brown eyes need hardly be said; and if Hippolyta's countenance did not put on exactly the same shade of crimson, it may have been simply because hers was a pale ivory cheek and his was rather swarthy. They were both a good deal embarrassed, which Lady May ascribed to the circumstances of the adventure which had made them acquainted. She said to herself that Miss Valence, though she had sinned against propriety on that day, had done so ignorantly, while Rupert was often confused on coming into a room. They talked until the Earl came about the scenery of Trelingham Park, which Hippolyta did not know except on the outskirts. And the artist sat and gazed at her. She was more beautiful than ever. Lady May, whome he could now contrast with his divinity, seemed a majestic woman, allied to the dangerous creatures of forest or jungle in whose composition there is more fire than light. But Hippolyta did not belong to earth. Fervent she might be in her [30] feelings, quick to speak and to move; her beauty was not childlike, nor did it appeal merely to the softer passions of pity and tenderness; but there was about her, all the while, an innocent directness, a virginal simplicity, which made of her 'a thing enskied and sainted.' When she answered Lady May her voice had in it a tone of great affection, which changed to something bright and sparkling if the Countess addressed her. But it was clear that she listened, even while joining in the conversation, for a step that happily was not long delayed. Every minute she had looked towards the door in anxious expectation; and when it opened and the Earl of Trelingham came in, walking with the feeble gait which was growing habitual with him, she rose at once and ran to meet the old man. He took both her hands in his, and, clasping them affectionately, led her towards the window. There was little need to say that he welcomed her; his emotion proved it better than words. After scanning her face eagerly in silence, he let go her hands, and said, 'You do not remind me of your father, my dear child. But so many years have elapsed since I knew his features well, that I may perhaps be mistaken. It is equally brave and kind of you to pay me this visit. My daughter has told you, I am sure, how glad we are to see you and what a hope we have that this may be the beginning of better things.'

'I know,' answered Hippolyta, 'and I wish I could help more in the matter than, I fear, is within my [31] power. Of one thing pray let me assure you, for I am certain of it,' and she stopped as if for permission.

'Go on, my dear,' said the Earl; 'do not be afraid if you have anything to say.' He too seemed overcome by her great beauty and simple ways.

'What I want to tell you,' she said, 'is that my father has often spoken your name of late years, and never without affection. I cannot imagine why he has kept, and still keeps, aloof from his old friends; but there is no ill-feeling in it, of that I am convinced.'

'Thank God,' said the Earl, 'thank God! It is all I want,—to forget the past, which cannot be undone, and die in peace with all men. As regards your father, I did for a long while allow a feeling of resentment to come between him and me. It may have seemed unjust in his eyes that any one should have contested his rights as a father over the issue of his first marriage. But I went by the advice of others and my own conscience. However, my poor sister is dead, and you are Colonel Valence's only child, and it is time the past was buried.'

'My father has hardly ever mentioned Lady Alice in my hearing,' replied Hippolyta. 'It was almost by accident that I knew of his former marriage, and for months after coming to Falside I was ignorant that we lived near her family. My mother told me when she was very ill. I am like my mother. She was Spanish, and could not bear the English climate, although she did her best not to let my father see the harm it was doing her.'

'Was your mother Spanish?' inquired the Earl. 'Then, perhaps, she brought you up in her religious views.' Rupert waited with some curiosity for the answer.

'My mother did not bring me up at all,' said Hippolyta; 'she was an invalid most of her time. My father taught me all I know.' She spoke with composure, and seemed to have said all that she thought necessary. Lord Trelingham was too well bred to pursue the examination. His melancholy looks, indeed, bore witness to what he feared would have been the result. He blamed Colonel Valence, but it was impossible to blame his daughter; and the sad spiritual condition of so lovely and innocent a creature filled him with indignation, which went far to counteract his previous desire to condone the past. Meanwhile, Karina, whose eager spirits made her sometimes inconsiderate, inquired of Hippolyta, 'Do you never go to church then? I don't think your father does, at least in the country.'

Lord Trelingham, with some severity in his tone, interposed. 'My dear Karina,' he said, 'you must really not cross-examine Miss Valence. These are matters of conscience, about which we have no right to be curious.'

But Miss Valence was not offended. She replied at once to the Countess. 'I have been in some of the great churches abroad, when there was no service going on. But otherwise I do not know what is done in a church. My father did not teach me religion.'

This remarkable declaration, made in her natural voice, which was gentle and sweet, came upon her hearers like lightning from a clear sky. It startled them, although every one present had supposed it already. But there are so many things we know yet could not venture on putting into words. The Earl was inexpressibly pained; Lady May looked across at Glanville to see what effect this confession would have on him; and the Countess felt frightened, as though a snake had turned under her hand and bitten her. Rupert moved uncomfortably in his chair. It was a shock to him, certainly. He would have said, in the abstract, that with these matters women had nothing to do; they ought to keep to the religion in which they were born and leave speculation to the philosophers. But when his eyes fell on the beloved features again the discomfort vanished. Hippolyta sat, a picture of quiet beauty, untroubled by the momentary silence which had followed her declaration, and perhaps too little acquainted with the ways of the world to comprehend how much it had astonished them. She said 'My father did not teach me religion' as she would have said, had it been the fact, 'I was born blind.' She was not aggressive or defiant, but natural and innocent. Thus it came to pass that even Lord Trelingham's horror, which was exceedingly great, yielded to compassion, and he thought it more than ever expedient to make her at home among good Christians who might enlighten her.

But lest that terrible niece of his should ask more questions, he turned the conversation to Miss Valence's knowledge of the Continent, and they were soon deep in the comparative beauties of the Alps and the Apennines. Her parents, it was evident, had wandered fast and far, seldom staying long in one place, and never making the acquaintance of great families unless some member of them happened to be 'tainted with democratic opinions,' as Lord Trelingham would have called it, or, in Colonel Valence's phrase, 'enlightened and liberal.' There was something even slightly ridiculous in the way that names came up between the Earl and the young lady. If he mentioned a noble house, she often knew it; but when he went on to describe the august head thereof or his equally august consort, Hippolyta had never seen either, and owed her familiarity with the name to a scapegrace or scientific young man, the grief of his parents, who had served with Garibaldi in Sicily, or was famous in the Cretan or the Polish rising. Lord Trelingham bore it very well; this he had expected; and much as he might deplore the associations in which Valence had brought up his daughter, there were too many great Englishmen on that side to allow of unmitigated censure in the instance before him. The Earl was by no means liberal, but he was something which is perhaps as commendable in a world where we cannot have all we should like,—he was good-natured, and quite incapable of indentifying individuals with the doctrines [35] they held. He therefore listened with patience and a degree of interest to the remarks, which were rather pointed than voluble, of Hippolyta on those revolutionary young men whose pedigree he knew in Lombardy and Languedoc. He was led to speak of his own travels, which had been extensive; but, interrupting himself suddenly in the midst of his recital, he asked whether Miss Valence had ever been in Spain. Yes, she told him, once, on the side of Barcelona. And Seville, did she know that picturesque city? She had not been there, nor had her father mentioned his early campaign in its neighbourhood. Then she knew nothing of the Madonna of San Lucar? Nothing whatever, she replied. He was astonished that so striking an incident of his first travels had not been a favourite theme of Colonel Valence's. However, it might help to soften him still more if he learned how narrowly the picture had escaped destruction. He would perhaps be touched on hearing it; for the sight of the portrait long ago had affected him powerfully and even brought him, one might say, from Spain to Trelingham.

Herewith the Earl invited Hippolyta to follow him to the gallery upstairs. She rose, nothing loth; and as he evidently wished the rest to accompany them, a general move was made. The Countess, again interposing as they went along, asked Hippolyta whether she knew what kind of picture was about to be shown her. The young lady, turning half round on the stairs, answered that she supposed it would [36] resemble those she had noticed in the great collections on the Continent. 'You must not imagine,' she added innocently, 'that I have not studied the Christian mythology. I cannot say, indeed, that I am familiar with all its details.' Glanville fell back a step on hearing this language, and Karina did not open her mouth again for some time. She was daring herself, but she knew that ordinary people did not speak in this way; and again the simile of the snake occurred to her. Lord Trelingham was either deaf or preoccupied, and took no heed of the remark. Perhaps he was thinking how he could make the history of the picture brief yet intelligible; for, when they arrived before it, he began at once to run over the main points as we know them. He said nothing of Valence's motives for leaving England, nor of what followed when he came back to Trelingham. But how much of his narrative did the stranger apprehend? She stood like one spellbound, first eyeing Lady May and then lost in the magnificence and glory of the painting. The Earl ceased to speak, and there was a long silence, during which Hippolyta steadfastly gazed at it, never turning her head, with the expression of one who would learn a thing by heart. By and by she glanced towards Lady May, and going up to her, said in a whisper, 'Is not that your portrait? And when did you live in that wonderful world?' The question was extraordinary, but Hippolyta seemed in earnest. Lady May smiled with a feeling of anguish; she still felt the [37] distance between herself and that ideal of heavenly innocence.

'The picture was painted long ago,' she replied, 'from an ancestress of mine. I sat to Mr. Glanville when it was restored; that is all.'

'And so,' Hippolyta said, 'it is only a piece of imagination. But how beautiful it would be if we could believe that somewhere in the heights or the depths there was a perfect human creature, one of ourselves, a woman, like this! Do you suppose there can be?' she asked of Lady May.

'I do not know,' was the answer, given somewhat impetuously; 'the medieval Christians thought so, as the Spanish and Italian peasants do still.'

'Yes,' said Hippolyta; 'I used to hear them sing and speak of the Madonna, and I called it, as my father did, mythology. But I was never so impressed with a painting as I am with this. I should be glad if it were a true vision. And yet we all say it cannot be. The peasants have their beautiful things to believe in, and the philosophers have none. That is what I am always hearing at home. It makes me sad when I think of it. If the truth is not beautiful, what is the good of it all?' She looked round, expecting some one, as it should seem, to answer. But they were too much astonished at such curious words on the lips of one so young.

'Such questions are not fit for you,' said Glanville, coming close to her. 'If you had lived with other young ladies you would not think of them. I, at any [38] rate, believe that all true things, in the long run, will be found beautiful as well.'

'Then you disagree with my father?' she said inquiringly.

'I disagree with all gloomy creeds,' he answered. 'But come away, and do not look at the picture again if it distresses you.' Lady May listened; she heard something in his voice of which she did not approve.

'Oh, it does not distress me; on the contrary,' exclaimed Hippolyta, 'it would keep me looking at it all day. And at last I should beg the wonderful figure to open its lips and speak. What grieves me is, that with colours and a piece of linen you can express so much beauty—at so little cost—and yet the resources of the infinite cannot make this real.'

The Earl put in his quiet word. 'If you wish, my dear child, to believe it real, there is nothing to prevent you. I believe it in my own way; so do the multitude of Christians, and not the peasantry alone. But come, as Mr. Glanville says, for you are too susceptible, I see, to sudden impressions.'

She left the picture unwillingly, and looked back more than once as they went to the door. The incident had shown her in a strange and amiable light which endeared her to the heart of Lord Trelingham; while Rupert, mindful of his own enthusiasm when restoring the Madonna of the Seraphim, said to himself that this highly poetic temperament had at once seized its meaning and reality—a result which [39] only days of study had brought about in him the sensitive artist. Hippolyta was peculiar; but where in heaven or earth could he find a more exquisite creation?

When, by and by, she spoke of returning to Falside, and the Earl was taking her to the ponychaise which had been brought round, that kind-hearted old man said to her, 'It was a great grief to me that Lady Alice left no children; but, although you are not my niece in blood, I trust you will always look upon me as your sincere friend, and come to Trelingham often. Your father and I were boys together, and I can never forget him.'

CHAPTER XVII EAVESDROPPING

Three months passed quickly by, the happiest in Rupert's life. Winter by the Western Sea is often wild and stormy; the days have little light in them, and the moist vapour filling the air seems to cling heavily about one, while hour after hour the rain-clouds creep along the sides of the valleys or hang on the wooded ridges above them. It is a monotonous, dull-eyed season, the least favourable that can be imagined to inspiration; and only a brave spirit will bear up against it or keep alert under its stupefying influence. But the brave spirit was there. If light grew scant outside, and work went on slowly in the Great Hall, a radiance was kindling within the artist's fancy which became larger every day, adding an energy to his step, a charm to his voice and expression, and for the while utterly doing away with the melancholy that used to haunt him. When he was called to his London studio, as happened [41] more than once, he went regretfully, stayed the shortest possible time, and ran back again like a boy escaping from school over the palings. He came to be looked upon almost as a member of the Trelingham household; and, in turn, he seemed to love everything in and about it. His unequal humour gave place to a cheerfulness which was willing to amuse and to be amused. Nothing could ruffle him; and Lady May, in spite of herself, caught the infection of his high spirits, while Tom Davenant declared that if all artists resembled Glanville they were not half-bad fellows. The Earl, though no judge of character, became ever more thankful that Providence, through his daughter's suggestion, had put him in the way of a great painter and most agreeable companion, who knew how to observe the delicate line of conduct traced out for him by circumstances. Rupert's behaviour was, I must say, perfect; he kept his distance, did not ask or encourage sentimental conversations on the part of Lady May, and displayed towards her and the Countess a courtesy in which it would have been impossible to strike a shade of difference. If he had in any way presumed, here to a reasonable mind was satisfaction.

The secret of his content lay near at hand. For the first time in his life he was in love. He saw Hippolyta when she visited Trelingham; he met her by chance as she rode out, and watched her foot-steps along the sands where, on bright afternoons, she sometimes walked. He professed an ardent desire [42] to know the tracks over the moor which lay on the other side of Yale; and his explorations naturally took him up the course of the stream, if only to admire in its winter glory the cascade from which Falside derived its name. At this time of the year he found it more romantic, and the flood of waters more plenteous, than he had expected. It was, indeed, not the season for out-door sketching; yet an hour of fine weather would come occasionally, and he transferred to his portfolio a number of rapid and, it must be allowed, masterly views in which the water-fall dashed and foamed over its moss-grown rocks, and the bare trees bending over it added grandeur to the scene. Hippolyta's garden, lying on the hillside and green as an Alpine meadow, could not well be omitted; nor a gable of the cottage, although it stood back from the cascade, and was visible only at one point of sight. The young lady was not always at home when these sketches were taken; but Rupert, who, like all artists, had something of the gipsy in him, would go up at the back of the cottage and humbly demand from old Dolores, the nurse or housekeeper, a glass of milk to quench his thirst. Dolores saw him about the place, and did not mind; while his petition, delivered in a matter-of-fact tone and without hesitating, seemed to imply that it was customary. She gave the milk and said nothing about it to her mistress. But as he happened once to be standing at the door in his vagrant attitude, taking slow draughts of that beverage, Hippolyta came [43] running out in quest of Dolores, and on seeing him changed colour and looked confused. She drew back, and tried to cover her confusion with a laugh; but it did not serve, and she had to look another way while she begged him to come into the house and rest for a few moments. No, he would not do that; but would she deign to criticise the sketch he was making of the waterfall in this rainy light? He could not satisfy himself that it looked natural, and the opinion of one who had seen the cascade at all hours would be of service to him. Hippolyta was always ready to be of service to anybody; she threw on a shawl, and went down the steep pathway which led to the water's edge. Rupert, all thanks and eagerness, made her observe the clear yellow light that was filling the sunset heavens, how it spread above the waterfall and irradiated the high branches and slender tracery over their heads, throwing a tawny reflection from the opening to their left upon the pure white foam which crowned the falling torrent. Then he showed her what he had made of it; and she, who could find nothing to criticise,—for it was an admirable sketch, —praised it and him, of course in his artistic capacity, which resulted on his part in a momentary fit of intoxication. She knew the waterfall in all its aspects, and was beguiled into talking about them, even leading him to an upper walk where he might see how the Yale formed its tiny rapids ere it plunged down the rocks. Glanville hearkened respectfully, took out his pencil and dashed down a line or two, declared that [44] she was endowed with the eye of an artist and ought to take lessons in painting, and would have lingered till nightfall had not Hippolyta quietly observed that she must go back to her bread-baking or the batch would spoil, and sped away like a roe-deer, leaving him the helpless victim of her charms. He could not but come again and complete the sketch. Hippolyta saw him from her window as he sat in front of the waterfall. She hesitated a while, and then went down through the garden, and gave him a commission for Lady May. This little action took no time to speak of, and Hippolyta returning to the house was seen no more by Rupert. Yet he walked to the village where he had left his horse, and rode on to Trelingham in a state of singular happiness. He rehearsed his commission openly and unabashed; if Lady May had an answer to send he could take it, for he was going the same way to-morrow. And it became an understood thing that Glanville intended to exhibit a landscape, in which the cascades of the Yale would be introduced, during the course of that year.

At Trelingham, in spite of her untutored ways, Hippolyta was everybody's favourite, unless I am to except Lady May. She came often, as the Earl desired; and her bearing was so frank and gentle that even the censorious neighbours, who were shocked when they heard that she had been 'taken up' by Lady Alice's brother, began to admit that Miss Valence, though a perfect savage in her habits, was [45] interesting. Not, indeed, that many of them came across her. She begged hard to be introduced as little as possible, and saw only those chance visitors from whom she could not get away in time. When she was thus held captive she spoke hardly at all, but her silence showed that she was attending, and more than one imposing and frivolous matron found in Hippolyta's dumbness a check upon the 'pribble prabble,' to use Fluellen's excellent phrase, which passes current as 'society talk,' and is thought the proper subject-matter of a morning call. Poor Hippolyta, she was much to be pitied! She did not mean to be silent; she was overwhelmed at the kind of conversation on which people fed their minds. Was the great world, which gave laws to the rest of mankind, and boasted of its blood, and wealth, and intellect, so like that deafening house which she had once entered in the Zoological Gardens where parrots and cockatoos scream all day long, and each bird sharpens its beak on iron wire? Most of the ladies, she thought, and Tom Davenant would have agreed with her, had very hard mouths. For want of practice she could not vie with them, and she sat and listened in blank amazement.

But she had been taught to observe, and she perceived that the inmates of Trelingham Court were unlike their visitors. She said to Glanville, whom she often found at her elbow when she turned round to make a remark, 'It is curious what an unworldly air comes over this place when callers are shut out,— [46] I mean the other callers besides myself. I suppose you, Mr. Glanville, are the nearest approach to a man of the world under this roof, and you would not take a prize,' she concluded, smiling at him in a way he did not think of resenting.

'You are quite right,' he said; 'I hope I shall never win much in that competition. Neither is the Earl an example of what you mean, nor Mr. Davenant. But women of the world now, do you discover none? Lady May, for instance.'

'No; Lady May's position requires her to seem like the rest; but it is all surface. She plays her part because it has been given her, but she is too noble, her gifts are too splendid for it. Like you, she has the genius of an artist, and should be a musician, or write poetry, or do something extraordinary.'

'And the Countess?'

'Oh, the Countess!' said Hippolyta, laughing; 'the Countess is not so much a woman of the world as I am. She is an amusing, a captivating child. There is not malice enough in her composition to make a woman of the world.'

'Not malice, certainly,' thought Glanville, 'but mischief. I am not always pleased with her affection for Hippolyta. However enthusiastic, I doubt that it is quite so simple as it appears.' In which philosophic inference, not communicated to Miss Valence, but the fruit of observation, we shall perhaps see that Rupert was justified.

The only drawback to his contentment was that [47] Ivor did not write; while if Hippolyta was not always happy, she ascribed it, in Lord Trelingham's hearing, to the fact that her father had sent only a laconic message when she told him of her new friends, to the effect that she might please herself in the matter. He subjoined, it is true, a hasty postscript, but it contained merely these words, 'You know that I bear no resentment towards Lord Trelingham.' This was not all she wanted by any means; although the Earl, resolved upon looking at things in a Christian light, took it as a concession and bade her not lose heart. He did not inquire where Colonel Valence was; and though she wrote frequently, she neither spoke of his doings nor expressed anxiety for his return. No one could suppose that she did not love her father; but, though impressionable, her nerves had been schooled from the first, and the Colonel's uncertain and wandering life was too familiar an experience to make her uneasy. Still, she was alone in the world,—a perilous situation for a maiden of nineteen. Adviser she had none; her Spanish relatives, if such existed, did not come within reach of her; nor were the Trelingham family, however amiable, of the kind to influence one who had been educated on principles which the Earl abhorred, and which Lady May, in spite of her varied accomplishments and real intellect, could not have understood. It can hardly be questioned, indeed, that if Lord Trelingham had realised how far they were from being abstract theories, and what a bearing they had on life, his [48] compassion for Hippolyta would have been vanquished by his dread of their contagion. Rupert was destined to know a little more of them.

It was that difficult time of day, for an artist in a country-house, which begins somewhere about four o'clock in winter and lasts till the dinner-bell puts an end to it, when Glanville, who had been at work in the Great Hall since morning, and felt so tired that he did not know what to do with himself, entered the many-windowed drawing-room which was then empty, and walking across its wide expanse, threw himself into one of the cushioned embrasures where he could lie at ease and look out at the sea beyond. An immense wood-fire was burning on the hearth, and Rupert, to get away from the blaze, had chosen a window as far from it as possible, drawing the heavy velvet curtains about him so as to be screened and comfortable. He soon grew tired of watching the misty waters; his eyes closed, and the young man fell into an innocent and refreshing sleep. How long his slumber continued is immaterial to the story; but it was broken in upon by the sound of voices at no great distance, and as he slowly came back to himself he heard an animated conversation sustained by the three ladies, who, though not resembling the withered hags of fable, were weaving his destiny among them. It was dark on the terrace; but through the aperture of the curtains he could observe the flickering light of the wood-fire and the figures seated near it,—Lady May with a cup in her hand, sitting upright and addressing [49] Karina, who was in the act of laying a book on the sofa where she half reclined. Hippolyta, buried in the depths of a huge arm-chair, was looking straight into the flames, but, as her expression showed, had an ear for the discussion that was going on. Animated it certainly was; with less refinement of manner it would have appeared a downright quarrel. Lady May was speaking.

'You said the other day, Karina, that I was severe upon your reading. That would be absurd in me. But I do think your uncle would be scandalised if he saw this kind of literature in the hands of any woman.'

'Oh, Uncle William is so precise,' cried the Countess, 'he would not read such a book himself, of course; but he belongs to a past generation when English people read nothing but the Prayer-Book and the Quarterly Review . Why shouldn't I read anything that is clever? Besides, this is not one of the new romances. It is an old favourite of mine. Everybody in France knows Rousseau's Confessions , or knows about them. What do you say, Miss Valence? You, of course, read everything.' She looked at Hippolyta, who did not stir, but replied:

'What does your cousin say? That is of more consequence than my opinion.'

'I say,' answered Lady May very decidedly, 'that no woman can read the French literature of the last century and not be degraded.'

'Then you have not read it yourself?' said the Countess, in a tone of mocking inquiry.

'Not much; but I know many, both men and women, that have, and whether they admire it or no, they are agreed as to its character. What good can it do you, Karina?'

'What good? it amuses me. It tells me all kinds of things I want to know,—how people dressed, and talked, and ate, and travelled, and made love, and ran away from one another, a hundred years ago, and ever so much more. It must have been a very pleasant world, not like these horrid days when if you do anything it is put in the papers. And I adore sentiment, and virtue, and humanity, and all those things. I wish we could have a Petit Trianon and they would let me keep cows, as Marie Antoinette did.'

'What tinsel and paste!' said Lady May indignantly. 'Yes, sentiment and virtue in the mouth of Rousseau were indeed exquisite. But how can you talk in that idle way about their love-making! There was no such thing as love in the eighteenth century.'

'Paul and Virginia?' objected Hippolyta, still keeping her eyes on the fire.

'Yes, in romance I grant. And Lotte also was a reality when she cut bread and butter for the children; but Werther was not when he wept and raved about her—he was only Goethe the sentimental, describing his fancies, which were the one kind of love he had experienced or knew anything about.'

'I agree with you there,' said Hippolyta; 'all Goethe's love-making was sentimental egoism; like the Spectre of the Brocken it reflected himself.'

'And Jean Jacques, what do you think of him?' inquired the Countess.

'I have read him too little to form a judgment. That book on the sofa I began one day, but I could not go on with it. I felt—it is hard to give another the exact impression—as if, then, I had been imprisoned in a hot-house, with strange flowers all round, the odour of which was sickening and a deadly poison. I should not like to breathe such a moral atmosphere long.'

'How very astonishing!' exclaimed Karina; 'you talk like one of the good people, like my uncle, almost. I thought you did not mind such things.'

Hippolyta looked round now. She was very much hurt. 'I mind them a great deal,' she said; 'why do you think I do not mind them? I have never given you reason.' She spoke very sorrowfully, not as if she were angry or insulted.

'My dear child,' the Countess cried, 'I am so sorry to have hurt your feelings. I don't mind things when I read them. But as you were brought up without religion, I fancied you would not be prejudiced against Jean Jacques, like my cousin.'

'Prejudiced! no,' said Hippolyta, 'that I am not. Personally, I have an affection for him, his life was so miserable and he seemed made for better things. Jean Jacques was not irreligious, even in your sense. But, as for my education, I see you do not understand what it has been. Shall I tell you?'

'Do,' said the Countess; and 'only as much as [52] you choose,' said Lady May. They were both interested; but Lady May was somewhat doubtful as to the propriety of revelations which, innocent enough on the lips of Miss Valence, might confirm the Countess in her evil ways.

'It will not be so dreadful, I hope,' said Hippolyta with a smile at Lady May. 'I have been taught on principles unlike your own, perhaps, but I have never done anything that I knew to be wrong. My days have gone by harmlessly. So now I may begin "The Story of Hippolyta Valence, told by herself." There is no need of an introduction.'

Thus far the listener behind the curtain had felt assured that he should only terrify a peaceful company of ladies by appearing in their midst from his place of concealment. But now he was in a frightful dilemma. To escape unobserved was impossible, to stay where he found himself was still more impossible. He looked across at the doors. They might as well have been a thousand miles off; neither to the one nor the other could he get without passing the ladies who occupied that side of the room in force. He thought, as desperate men will, of impossible alternatives —of opening the heavy window, and getting out on the terrace; but that, too, meant noise and discovery. If only it had been the French window lower down! There is a fate in these things. Instant decision alone could save him, and to decide instantly was out of the question. Hippolyta had begun; he did not know what to do; he must remain [53] there imprisoned and trust to a kindly Providence to interpose in his favour. Some one might come in, or the ladies might depart without knowing they had had an auditor. He closed his eyes, but sleep would not come, even if, which I take leave to doubt, it had been seriously invoked. After all, Rupert was human; he had resolved that Hippolyta should be his, and nothing he might hear would shake his resolution. These confidences must have come after marriage; there was no great harm in hearing them before. Thus he argued, listening the while to Hippolyta's voice, which sounded in his ears like an evening bell in the distance, full of dreaming melody. For even now he was not thoroughly roused, though sleep had fled from him.

'I was born,' said Hippolyta, 'in Spain, not far from Barcelona, where, as I mentioned to Lord Trelingham, my father and mother lived for some time after their marriage. They were devoted to one another and to me. My mother had little or nothing, however, to do with my education. She was not strong, and her friend or servant—but we do not call any one a servant in our way of speaking,—her friend, therefore, Dolores, took charge of me and taught me all she knew as soon as I was capable of learning. She had never been out of her native country, and her ways were primitive enough, as I saw by comparison with those of English people when I came across them. But this advantage they had, I could have lived among the peasantry in whose neighbourhood [54] I spent my earliest years with no less comfort and happiness than any of their daughters. I know the use of right hand and left; I can take care of myself and am not afraid to live alone or to go anywhere I wish. It was, indeed, the main principle of my father's teaching that a woman who needed service or attendance was no better than a child. He thought Nature had made us free by giving us eyes and brains and a pair of hands; that it is an evil custom which, by degrading women to be mere play-things and ornaments, has enslaved men. He was an ardent admirer of Shelley, and like him he preached the emancipation of the whole human race.'

'An admirable thing,' said Lady May; 'but how did he propose to accomplish it?'

Hippolyta answered immediately, 'By making the two sexes equal and free.'

'I should like that, indeed,' exclaimed Karina; 'but the men are too strong for us, and not easily persuaded. They like their wives to be dependent on them for everything.'

'The new creed finds a short way out of that difficulty, at any rate,' said Hippolyta with kindling cheeks. 'If marriage is slavery, if it cannot be reformed, it must be abolished.' The Countess looked horrified.

Lady May beckoned to her cousin to keep still. 'Karina is interrupting you with her questions,' she said, 'but we can ask questions afterwards. Your own story is what we should be most interested in hearing now.'

'I will go on with it,' said Hippolyta. 'As I was remarking, my father held by the equality of the sexes, and would have their education assimilated in most things. The boys should be taught not to live like barbarians; the girls to use their limbs and their understandings. He would have them frequent the same schools and rival one another in study. I daresay you know that he was a Greek scholar at the University of Cambridge. He loved to throw his principles into the shape of the antique stories; and thus he often warned me that he meant to give me the training of those heroic women, the Amazons, who called themselves "equal to men." That is how I came by my name Hippolyta. My mother said I should never be tall enough to suit such a splendid appellation, and wished me to be called Titania, which is perhaps the prettier of the two.'

'And did you go to school abroad?' asked Lady May; 'you must have gone to America for the mixed education Colonel Valence wanted.'

'No, we lived such an unsettled life. Besides, my father would not have sent me to a boarding-school. I learned all that was necessary at home. My father instructed me in books of every kind; he taught me history, and gave me an enthusiasm for the great movement in which he was playing so many parts. And my mother, lying on her couch, could show me how to make my own dresses, which I have always done since.'

'You wonderful being!' said the Countess. 'I [56] thought you must have gone to a very good couturière ; but it was your mother, I suppose.'

'I do not think she could ever have had the money,' replied Hippolyta; 'she was a poor girl of Barcelona, whose father was shot by my father's side on the barricades; and that was how he came to know her first, having to inform her as gently as he could that she was an orphan. I liked to hear my mother tell the story over again, and often asked her for it. Poor dear mother, I miss her every day I live!'

Glanville did not scruple about listening now. He felt touched to the heart. Hippolyta was not crying, but her subdued tones were full of pathos; and as if the last words had stirred recollections which she could not trust herself to utter, she became silent for two or three minutes, while the Countess and Lady May exchanged glances of surprise. Here was a revelation. Miss Valence was a gentlewoman, then, only by courtesy; for her father had renounced his station and her mother had none to renounce.

'Yes,' she resumed, 'I am of the people, and am proud to inherit from my mother an affection for them, which has been my chief happiness. She could not read or write; she had never gone to school and did not know what was meant by the word history. But she could sing the ancient ballads and songs of the peasants which are all the history Spain possesses, and I learnt to sing them from her. She had only one religion—my father; he was to her all that the world could bestow of brave or admirable; and that [57] idolatry came natural, as you may suppose, to me. He was often serious, never harsh. He showed me the meaning of poetry, gave me large freedom, and brought into play as early as possible the powers of reason and conscience, not of fear, servility, or custom. The time must arrive, he said, when I should have only myself to depend on. He would not leave me the property which had been his; it was to be thrown into the common stock of the brotherhood. So that unless hand or brain could support me I should fare ill.'

'But that is monstrous!' exclaimed Lady May; 'what, to leave his only child a beggar! Excuse my vehemence,' she added, 'I see you do not agree with me.'

'I partly understand you, but how could I agree with you, my dear Lady May? I shall not be a beggar whilst I have myself. Were I helpless in mind or body, the question would be different. For such cases provision is to be made in the new order of things.'

'But, positively, you are living in Utopia,' said the Earl's daughter; 'cannot you see that these are the idlest dreams? Does Colonel Valence hope to pull the world together at its four corners?'

'I suppose you would describe it so,' answered Hippolyta. 'My father believes in a moral dynamite which will leave only such things standing as reason cannot overthrow. Whatever ought to succumb will succumb. Else we should be governed by dead men [58] who have lain in their graves for thousands of years. Regeneration springs out of the depths; it will be the people's doing.'

'But, anyhow, it will not come yet,' persisted Lady May, in whose eyes the frantic delusion of the whole business was heightened by Hippolyta's composure. 'Come it will not in our time, and how are you, and such as you, to live?'

'As for me, I am better able to make my way without assistance than nine girls out of ten. I can scrub the floor, and blacklead stoves. I can set type. I can speak and write a certain number of languages, and make my own dresses. Can you do as much, Countess?' she asked with a pleasant glance towards the reclining beauty.

'Heaven forbid!' said the Countess. 'I can speak like a parrot any language I hear spoken about me. But I have not a housemaid's gifts nor a printer's.'

'More is the pity,' replied Hippolyta. 'However, since I can do these things, I do not mind facing the world. Moreover, I have the comfort of thinking that I eat no morsel which I have not earned.'

'Well,' said Karina, 'I never earned anything, and I never shall. But that does not signify. You would not condemn me to starve like Ugolino, would you, if the Revolution came?'

'No; I should keep you in a golden cage, as a beautiful curiosity of the past,' said Hippolyta, 'and you should subsist on the money taken at the doors.' They both laughed at this sudden fancy, which was as [59] novel to the speaker as to the person that figured in it. 'But what did you mean by saying it does not signify?'

'Oh, this,' said the other lady: 'I wanted to ask you whether there would be marrying and giving in marriage when your father had his way. You said not, at the beginning.'

'I said, or at least I had it in mind to say, that there should be no marriages of interest, or convenance , or without affection on both sides. There should be no slavery in marriage, no women shut up in a moral seraglio with the bolts and bars of the law keeping them in durance while their husbands were free. They should cease to be chattels. Where there was love there should be marriage; and when love ended marriage should end too. I would burn the body when the spirit was fled; the coffin you call marriage with the corpse of a dead affection.'

Lady May had become very thoughtful. She raised her eyes and looked steadily at Hippolyta till she had done speaking, and then said, with remarkable earnestness, 'Is not that the doctrine of Free Love?'

'If you like,' replied the young enthusiast, 'but I call it Free Marriage.'

'Where is the difference? I can see none,' said Lady May.

'That would be a long story. Love ought to be free, or it is worthless. But you understand by free love yielding to every impulse of the passions, and I [60] mean obeying the true woman's heart and despising tyrannical laws and usages. My father's motto has ever been, to distrust impulse and to despise custom. They are his very words.'

'But a woman has nothing to go upon except impulse and custom,' said Lady May. 'It is exactly how I should describe her life. Men, of course, have something else; they are strong, and can override custom and put down their impulses.'

'And why should a woman not do the same? She is strong in her affections, and she might be as strong in her reason if she were shown how. At any rate, when I learnt from my father that we women have a task and a duty in the world of to-morrow, I did not understand him to be encouraging caprice, or unbridled desires, or wandering fancies. I have seen many households in travelling over Europe with him; and when they were unhappy, the reason, as he pointed out, was that women are only half-women, not so just or truthful as men because their foreheads have been flattened and their minds kept childish. The balance will never hang equal between the sexes till their union is free and rational.'

'How come you to have thought so much at nineteen on a matter like this?' inquired Lady May.

'Because my father believes that knowledge is better than ignorance. He pointed out the books I was to read; and my mother, who understood him and was of a singularly apt mind, instructed me according to his wishes.'

'Then you do not approve of marriage, after all?' said the Countess. 'You think it is a wicked custom. I see that you do agree with the French romances, although you have not read much of Jean Jacques. How my uncle would open his eyes if he heard you!'

'I did not say all marriages were wicked,' answered Hippolyta; 'only that the true marriage is the union of heart with heart, of human beings who are free to give themselves and worthy of one another. Custom is nothing, pledging the hand is nothing; and passion, they say in the stories, will not last. In my father's creed marriage is the ideal of human life. It will be realised as it ought to be with other good things that are waiting.'

'But oh, my dear,' sighed the Countess, 'we cannot wait. We get old so soon—ten years sooner than the men, for they have the best of everything. Look at my Cousin Tom, for example. He is just about my own age; and if we were equal, as you said in your very pretty sketch—and I am sure I wish we were—but he looks ever so much younger than I do.'

Hippolyta was inwardly amused. The Countess's tender idyll was no secret to her; but whether she thought it should be realised in the golden age she would not say. A long pause followed. Glanville, his mind filled with conflicting thoughts, irritated, yet more in love than ever, was hardly conscious that he might be discovered at any moment, and that the consequences would be dreadful. During the conversation, which had absorbed all their attention, the [62] ladies had neglected to tend the fire, and it was dying down into dull white ashes, with a spark here and there glowing out of them. The sensitive Karina, usually wrapt in furs, began to shiver and look round for the explanation. 'Why, May,' she cried, 'the fire is gone out; we have forgotten to drink our tea, and it is quite dark and dismal. I am half-dead with cold. Do ring for lights.'

'We had better adjourn altogether,' replied her cousin, to which Rupert mentally added an amen. 'I dont't know what has come over us to be sitting here like the witches in Macbeth. Now, my dear,' she continued, taking Hippolyta by the hand, 'since it is the first time you are dining here, you had better come to my room and put yourself in the hands of my maid. You would only get nervous if I were not there to see after you.'

Rupert strained his eyes through the curtains, and held his breath while the ladies were moving towards the door. They were very slow, for they had shawls and wrappers to collect in the semi-darkness; and it was not until the open door allowed a gleam of light to come in from the hall that they could see what they were doing. At last, at long last, they went. Glanville gave a sigh of relief; he waited a moment till the coast was clear, and then pulling the curtains aside, rose and stretched himself. He felt extremely tired and not a little excited. It was about time he said, that this strange conversation had ended, for he could not have endured either his cramped position [63] or the thought of eavesdropping much longer. And with these words he grasped the handle of the door. At the same moment he felt some one turning it from the outside.

Aghast, he staggered back, the door opened, and Hippolyta came running in. As the light fell full upon Rupert, standing like a lost man in front of her, she stopped and put her hands to her breast. A nervous woman would have screamed, a silly one would have fainted; but Hippolyta, possessed of the rare courage which answers at call, did neither. Her eyes met those of the artist, steadily, inquiringly. He was dead silent. 'You did not come in just now?' she said. He replied in a faint voice, 'No; it was —I don't remember how long ago.' She blenched, but kept looking at him still. 'And you heard what I have been saying?'—'I heard all,' was the low answer.

'Then,' she said, with the greatest agitation in voice and manner, 'oh, then, you despise me;' and as she spoke she turned from him. He caught her by the sleeve.

'Despise you!' he cried in a tone of the deepest love; 'Hippolyta, I adore you.'

She plucked her sleeve from him and was gone. He heard her step on the stairs, but he dared not follow. He was so overcome that he leaned against the wall to recover himself. Was he ashamed or exultant, struck with remorse or full of hope and courage? He was all these at once. For the [64] notions that Hippolyta had learned from her father he cared not a jot. Hers was a soul that turned them all to favour and to prettiness; she believed them because they seemed noble in her eyes and came with authority from the being she most revered. That she had laid bare her very innermost heart in speaking with Lady May and the Countess he was certain. She could never have been so frank with him, even though he stood in the place of a declared lover. He despise Hippolyta! Good heavens, why could he not this instant follow her and fall at her feet? But the die was cast. She had no choice now but to understand. He would speak that evening, if it were possible; to-morrow, at any rate. He had meant to wait a little for fear of alarming the bird ere it was caught in the snare; but events had proved too much for him. He must venture all, and, if necessary, venture again and again. While he stood absorbed in meditation the first dinner-bell sounded, and awoke him to the things of earth. He ran upstairs with a quicker step than usual, wishing that for the next four and twenty hours society and all that it inherit could be dissolved, leaving him and Hippolyta to be their own universe. At the bottom of his heart he doubted her love as little as he doubted his own. 'Free love, free marriage,' he repeated mechanically; 'yes, Hippolyta, it is love that makes us free.'

He hardly knew what he was doing, and made sad havoc among his dressing things during the next [65] half-hour. The fingers were hot and trembling with which he fumbled at his neckcloth; he took up this and that which were nothing to his purpose, looked about the room for what he held in his hand, had just sense enough not to attempt shaving—which, had he begun, this chronicle might speedily have been ended—and was not in any way ready when the second bell resounded in his ears. He came in as the rest were seated round the dinner-table, and took his place, which the fates had willed should be next to Hippolyta. He seemed distraught, but I regret to say that his distraction did not originate in a feeling of shame for what had happened. This honourable man, who for a long hour had listened behind a curtain to conversation which was not intended for any man's ears, could be scarcely said to remember where he had passed the afternoon. Some remnant of grace hindered him from directing his eyes towards Hippolyta. He knew very well, notwithstanding, both how she looked and what flowers she wore in her beautiful golden hair. He knew that she felt as uncomfortable and as happy as he did; that the slight quiver in her voice when she spoke—and she said but little—had infinite meanings; that her shyness equalled his, although it was better concealed; and when dinner was drawing to an end he absolutely looked up and met the tremulous smile on her lips with the shadow of an answering smile upon his own.

The Earl, unconsciously, was very good to them. [66] Knowing Hippolyta's unwillingness to say much in the presence of strangers, he had invited her on a day when the family were alone; and as she appeared to be still in terror he acted like a considerate host, and spoke of things indifferent which required no answering, or narrated incidents out of his own past, and had the gratification of seeing the young lady's eyes bent on him while he discoursed. For no reward in the world would she have ventured to address Rupert except in monosyllables. Once, I say, she met his gaze, and her lips fashioned themselves unwillingly into a smile. But that over, she was glad to escape; and when the gentlemen entered the drawing-room Glanville learned that Miss Valence had been too much fatigued to stay up, and was departed to her slumbers. His apology, his declaration of love or war, must wait until the moon came out of the clouds again.

But Hippolyta had not gone home; that was his comfort. He should see her in the morning. She appeared at breakfast; was tongue-tied as on the previous evening, and exceedingly careful not to address the young man, whose courage, dashed for a moment by her silence, revived when he looked upon her calm and beautiful face. She was agitated by no inward trouble, only absorbed and mastered. Could it be that she thought he would not speak? He waited to hear of the arrangements for the day. Hippolyta, still pleading fatigue, asked that the expedition they had planned might be put off till [67] the afternoon, or till her next visit. Rupert was exultant. If she stayed in the house or in the Park he would find his opportunity. And so it came to pass. The other ladies went out riding. Miss Valence sat in the morning-room, where the lights were pleasant until mid-day, and a cheerful fire was burning. She had drawn her chair to the window, and was writing at a small desk, bending over which her figure was visible to any one that came that way along the terrace. Glanville walked about in the air, trying to collect his thoughts and cool the fever which ran in his veins; but, crisp as was the morning, and cold and clear in the stinted sunshine the aspect of the distant waters, he could not bring down his high-beating pulse. And when he had passed by the window where Hippolyta sat more times than he could reckon, he summoned up heart of grace, and walked boldly into the hall. In another moment he was by her side. Hippolyta, in her extreme agitation on seeing him there, stood up and had not a word to say. They both coloured violently.

'Miss Valence,' he began; he could get no further. She did not know how to rebuke or to encourage him, or which of the two she meant. He waited until she resumed her seat, then began once more. 'May I speak to you?' he said, in the lowest tones of a passion-stirred voice. 'I have an apology to make which ought not to be delayed. I have a mind to unburden of its load. It seems as though I were always doomed to offend you, and yet,—oh Hippolyta,' [68] he said, bursting out, 'you must, you do understand that since I saw you at the Hermitage I have had no other thought, day or night—'

'Than to offend me?' she asked, with her quick sense of the entanglement into which this eloquent lover had got himself. 'I am sure I ought to be very much obliged.' But the taunt would not serve. Rupert was in too serious a mood to be laughed out of his passion.

'Don't,' he cried; 'you are cruel. I hardly know what I am saying; but I do know, and I must try to make you know, what I mean. Hippolyta, if you can return the love I have felt ever since that day you will make me the happiest man alive. Can you, Hippolyta?'

Her face was burning. She grasped the edge of the writing-table to steady herself. Which way to turn she did not know, but it seemed to her that unless she made a resolute effort she should fall off the chair fainting. Rupert stood looking down on the ground, motionless and silent. The murmur of the waves came, like the sound of bells in the air, faint and musical, athwart the stillness; and neither of them spoke. Slowly, however, Hippolyta gathered up her strength as if for a supreme effort. She said to Rupert in a steady voice where no vibration betrayed her feeling, 'Mr. Glanville, let me ask you one thing.' He raised his eyes. She seemed perfectly mistress of herself as she went on, 'Do you mean that you respect or despise me?'

'Oh heavens,' he exclaimed, 'is it possible you can doubt? Hippolyta, I worship the ground you walk on. I never saw any one to compare with you.'

'And yet you listened yesterday afternoon to a conversation in which, if aught was said that as a matter of principle could shock you,—and I suppose many things shocked you,—I was the offender. I am well aware of the views men commonly take, what they expect of a woman, and what virtues they prize.'

'But I am not such a man,' returned Glanville with eagerness. 'Why do you not blame me rather for hearkening where I had no right, than yourself for uttering sentiments which you learned in infancy?'

'Blame you?' she answered, as if the notion had not occurred to her, 'because I did not think of it. I supposed you an honourable man. If you overheard me and made no sign, I daresay there was some explanation. Oh no, I did not blame you.'

'God bless you, Hippolyta,' he cried; 'you are the most admirable woman in the world. Was I to blame? I should have been perhaps, I confess, but for the feeling of intense and ardent love which made it impossible I should hear and not love you still more. It was that, and only that, which hindered me from at once coming forward when you began the story of your life.' And then, in few words, he told her how he had fallen asleep and what happened afterwards. She listened to him gravely, and as though [70] waiting for the conclusion he would draw from her yesterday's avowal. It was not long in coming.

'I am not given to philosophy or revolution myself,' were his words, 'nor can I pretend to feel enthusiasm about anything except art. But what does it matter? If you will stoop to love me, Hippolyta, I shall be happy. And if you will not? Oh, I cannot bear to think it. You see how impossible it is that I should live without you.'

He drew nearer as he spoke, and the great flame of his affection seemed to be rushing about her and hiding the whole world in its divine radiance. In her own mind she had surrendered already; what was there to oppose to Rupert's vehemence and sincerity? But still, she would have a clear understanding.

'You know how I have been brought up, you have heard what I think, and in spite of all that you profess to care for me?'

'Profess to care? Are you not the very breath of my existence? I am talking, perhaps, like a fool, like a boy. But, Hippolyta, lay upon me any task, put my sincerity to the test, do as you please with me now and henceforth, and you will see whether my love is honest and true.' His vehemence made him gasp for breath.

Hippolyta rose and put her hand in his. The maiden's eyes were glowing with soft light; the flush on her countenance was beautiful to see. 'Rupert,' she said. Then she too paused an instant. How he waited for the next word! 'Rupert, I believe in [71] you. Such as I am, since you—why should I not say it?—since you think of me in this way I will be yours.' He took her other hand in his with a convulsive grasp. But she drew herself away, and continued, 'Only you must not come between my father and me. I have promised to do his bidding in many ways that for the present I cannot explain. Free I am not. And, therefore, if you will not consent to wait until these things are over and done with, say the word. Let all this be as though it had never been. You could not guess what a strange and difficult course is mine.'

'Ah no,' said Glanville, 'it shall never be spoken, the word that would separate us. I am willing to wait. How long, Hippolyta? I can be patient if you love me.'

'It may not be long,' was her answer: 'a few months; at the outside a year or two. My father has lately shown more reserve in speaking to me than he was wont. But I know the time is running out, and that a crisis is approaching. Can you trust me to do you no injustice, to do myself none?'

'I trust you altogether, my darling,' he said; and there his great joy overcame him. The strong man broke down. Hippolyta was much affected. With a charming mixture of affection and timidity she laid her hand on his arm and said bashfully, 'Why do you cry? Are you displeased at anything I have said? No, I see you are not. I thought Englishmen never showed their feelings.' She [72] laughed very softly, with the tenderest playfulness in her accents. Rupert caught her in his arms and for a single moment held her there. But she slipped away from him, and, leaving her unfinished letter on the desk, fled out of the room.

Such was Rupert Glanville's engagement with Hippolyta Valence. When they met again in private, which by favour of the gods happened that very afternoon, it was decided that they should keep their promises secret until Hippolyta gave permission to make them known. This was not Rupert's proposal, or entirely his wish; for he felt, with reason, that he could not have a better defence against Lady May, nor put forward a more intelligible excuse for his change of conduct towards her, than to announce the engagement. But Hippolyta, to whom he did not speak of the Earl's daughter, was apprehensive that a premature disclosure of what had taken place would thwart her efforts to bring about a reconciliation between the families. She knew how great was Lady May's influence over Lord Trelingham; neither had she waited until now to discover that something in the nature of an enthusiastic friendship, perhaps of love, existed on her side which had not been returned by Rupert. She would be a rival, sooner or later, —unsuccessfully, no doubt, but a rival still,—for the hand of the artist. That need not signify once Hippolyta had brought the Earl and her father into some sort of agreement. But meanwhile, secrecy [73] appeared to her an absolute part of discretion. She was not afraid of losing Rupert, his love would protect him, and she had been too well used to deny herself pleasant things, and therefore knew how to be patient. The gentleman, in that submissive state which lasts till he reaches the altar, and ceases as if by magic when he is returning down the church after certain words have been spoken, yielded uncomplainingly. He was glad enough to have an assurance of possessing Hippolyta at whatever time and under such circumstances as she, in her wisdom, might determine. You never saw a mountain-pard so tamed by kindness, so subdued and willing to follow the hand that led him along, as this fiery, clear-eyed, tender-hearted Rupert. His best friends, always excepting Ivor Mardol, would not have known him as he stood humbly attendant on the behest of his newly-found mistress. Might he tell Ivor? he inquired. Hippolyta reflected for a while, and answered between a smile and a sigh that she did not doubt his friend, but it would be as well to let nobody hear of it besides her father. To him she was writing by the next post.

CHAPTER XVIII THE CELTIC KING ARTHUR

So these two, opening the gates of Elysium, went down into its heathery dells and fresh green woodlands side by side. They had found one another amid the wastes of the world, and might ramble where it pleased them in a golden dream. They loved with the ardour of youth and the intensity of exceptional natures. Hippolyta's strange education had kept her innocent of the thousand artificialities which too often spoil the best of women, making them helpless, sentimental, or false, when they desire to be brave and true. She was the most loyal of human beings; her temperament was steeped in poetry, and the sweet impulses of the heart gave her slightest words a fascination. But where she loved she could not be sentimental; and Glanville, who had sometimes felt wearied with Lady May's —how shall I call it?—too great effusiveness, was delighted with a companion at once so charming [75] and so sensible. She told him much of her earlier life and her father's character and principles. To Rupert Colonel Valence seemed an enigma. He did not comprehend how a man who had professed such a hopeless creed as he had gathered from the Colonel's lips in the churchyard at their first and only meeting could spend his life in forwarding Utopian schemes. But Hippolyta, when this difficulty was urged, had much to say in explanation. 'My father,' she remarked, 'does take a sad view of existence. He thinks the forces of Nature are terrible and often malignant. To struggle against them, he says, would be as foolish as attempting to sweep the stars out of the sky. They are high above us, and we cannot reach them, though their influence shapes our destinies. But he will not allow that human misgovernment, or the ignorance of an oppressed multitude, or the distinctions of ranks and birth, are among the forces of Nature. When we come to that Utopia which you wise men of the world scorn' —she laughed and looked at Glanville, who was delighted to be so mocked—'we shall still be face to face with the terrible unknown powers that we can neither control nor appease. So my father says. But is that any reason, he asks, why we should tolerate kings and kaisers? Thus he combines the deep melancholy, which seems to grow upon him every year, with a burning zeal and such incessant activity as will not suffer him to stay at home. I feel it, but I would not hinder him from being noble. [76] My husband, when I have one, must be father and mother too. Will he, Rupert, think you?'

I need not chronicle Rupert's answer. He was willing that the Colonel should be always absent if they might be together. And they were, sometimes with no third to lessen their happiness, but oftenest in the company of their friends at Trelingham. One day, in particular, about a month after their engagement, Rupert, who spent many hours in the chalet working at his designs, begged Lady May and the rest of them to pay him a visit and see what he had done. The 'rest of them' included Hippolyta, who now often dined at Trelingham, and occupied the room which her kind host insisted on calling hers, and which was kept for her use whether she came or no.

It was a morning in March, but that mild climate turns March to April, and the promise of spring was in the air, filling it with dewy freshness. The party was larger than usual, and included not only the three ladies, but the Earl himself, Tom Davenant, and the learned Mr. Truscombe, clergyman of the parish, whose devotion to King Arthur had nearly sent Glanville home at the beginning of our story. The naval expedition which crossed the mere consisted of two comfortable skiffs and an outrigger for Tom Davenant; and luncheon was to be served in the chalet at the close of the exhibition. Glanville had expressly invited Mr. Truscombe. They were very good friends, and, though wide as the poles [77] asunder on all other subjects, had, as we know, various thoughts in common regarding their hero.

'I must confess,' said Mr. Truscombe, as they stood before the drawings, 'that I have never had patience with the ultra-sceptics who look upon King Arthur as a myth: '"That gray king, whose name, a ghost, Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak," as one of their poets describes him. In my two volumes may be seen documents which prove not merely that he lived, but when he was born, how long he reigned over Britain, and the approximate dates of his twelve great battles with the heathen from over sea, together with fragments of the laws he enacted at Camelot, London, and York. As well, on the strength of poetical confusion in the Song of Roland, deny that Charles the Great existed as, on a like ground in the Morte d'Arthur and similar epic treatments of our subject, refuse to believe that Arthur was one of our most valiant monarchs.'

Glanville listened to the worthy man in respectful silence; and when he had concluded took up his parable.

'You and I, dear sir,' he said, 'are of one mind as to the essential point, which is that a medieval writer, like Sir Thomas Malory, could understand, and therefore could truly represent, no age but his own. The art of seeing through the eyes of a dead or distant generation was born, one may say, yesterday. It is only the modern artist or historian that can [78] picture King Arthur in his habit as he lived and the world which he dwelt in. Suppose him to be a real personage of the fifth or sixth century—'

'No need to suppose, my good sir,' interrupted Mr. Truscombe; 'I have proved abundantly that he cannot have been born later than—'

'Quite so,' said Glanville; 'I accept your data and do not discuss them. For me, as an artist, the question is how, if such a man existed, did he appear to the eye, what type of race did he belong to, of what species was his military apparel, his camp, his court? On such points, I contend, the writers upon chivalry are unsafe, or rather impossible, guides. They knew nothing of the ages that went before them. Fancy one of Arthur's knights being described as a near relation, cousin in some degree—I forget which—of Joseph of Arimathea!'

The company was disposed to laugh, but not so Mr. Truscombe. 'Ah, there,' he said, 'they may well have been in the right. For Joseph of Arimathea came to Glastonbury about twenty years, as I calculate, after the Ascension; and as he may have married in Britain—'

Glanville, who saw that he was on the very edge of an abyss into which next moment the erudite but fantastic Mr. Truscombe would drag him down, hastened to save himself by timely admissions.

'Yes,' he said, 'yes. I am sure you have made your calculations with admirable care, and I have not a word to say against Joseph of Arimathea or [79] Glastonbury. All I meant was that the elements, the necessary ingredients of a sixth century epic must be of quite a different cast from those which were taken after the Crusades to construct the legend—I would say the cycle—of Arthur.'

'And what do you suppose the true elements to be?' inquired Hippolyta, who was interested and forgot her timidity while she was speaking. But she knew her face was burning when she had got the words out of her mouth.

'Look at these drawings,' replied Glanville; 'I think you will perceive in them a glimmering of my idea. I do not pretend, however, to minute learning; and I am willing to go one mile even with Sir Thomas Malory, if I am not compelled to go twain. I agree, for instance, that historical reproduction is not the same thing as archæology. But there is a middle way between the realism we cannot hope to achieve and a caricature, if I may term it so, borrowed chiefly from what we see around us—from the stark, staring present—and given out as an image of the past. Nor, again, do I say that you may not, if you have genius like Mr. Tennyson, array these old-world stories in the garb of our century; but then they cease to be epic or historical, and become fables with a moral running through them. One kind of reality or inspiration they lose to assume another, and I have no quarrel with such a transformation.'

'But I have,' said Mr. Truscombe in his deep voice; 'it is tampering with holy things. The man [80] who moralises King Arthur into a fable will perhaps have as little respect for King David.'

'Anyhow,' Glanville went on, 'if the House of Trelingham is to be represented as descending from Uther Pendragon, it will never serve to paint on these walls the fancies of the late middle age. Now, I conceive that the older epic is the more truly poetical. It has less monotony; it does not give you ever-recurring adventures of a similar type, castles all built on one plan, enamelled meadows with a fountain in the middle of them, tournaments so much alike that to describe one is to know all, and a small company of actors which may be reduced to a knight, a damsel in distress, a villainous dwarf, and Merlin the Enchanter. I feel the exquisite pathos of certain incidents and the grandeur of certain quests. But none of these things need be discarded, and much may be gained for poetry, if we fill them with the rude, tumultuous warrior life, and light this up again with the gleam of a declining or a nascent civilisation such as did, in fact, shed a terror and a glory over the Arthurian period. But, really, I am making a speech. It will be pleasanter, perhaps, to see what I have endeavoured to design.'

'Yes, but you can go on talking,' said the Countess. 'I know a little of the older poetry, which I began to read during those terrible long nights in Russia when we sat as still as mice, not having a word to say or anything to amuse ourselves with except cards, which I hated. And I do like the ballads and those [81] strange old German stories, much better than the Idylls of the King . They are so wild, they make the blood freeze in your veins with horror and then hot with a kind of war-dance. You know the tales I mean,' she said, speaking to Lady May; 'the Nibelung stories and those gruesome ballads about swan's wings dropping blood.'

'Upon my word,' answered Lady May, 'you will give your friends a delightful idea of your character if these are the things that please you.'

'I understand Madame de Lutenieff,' said the artist, 'and I am glad to see that she understands me. The battle for Britain between Saxon and Cymri cannot have been child's play. It was "sword-play" rather, and "shield lightnings," to quote a metaphor of the latest singers. There ought to be the feeling of an everlasting struggle in pictures of the time. Again, there is the extraordinary combination of Roman customs inherited during their stay in Britain with the ancient habits and traditions which existed before their arrival and lasted when they were gone. The Romans, the Cymri, the Saxons—add to these the Celts who brought over sea other legends, other manners,—allied to those of their British cousins, yet not the same,—and arts, like that of working in fine gold and colours, which have never been indigenous within the four corners of this island. I daresay I am using terms rather loosely, and Mr. Truscombe will set me right. But such has been my notion,—the cycle of Arthur is of a more elemental period than [82] that in which it became famous, and the colours in which it is usually painted are not its own. The legends of Ossian and Cuchullain have more to say to it than Boiardo; it is partly Roman, but more than all it is Celtic, in its dim enchantments, its fury of hopeless battle, its almost feminine tenderness of friendship, its fainting passion, its religious ardours, all at length vanishing in defeat, and being found no more.'

Mr. Truscombe was somewhat too literal to follow the artist, and would now have been glad to ask whether he believed in a real King Arthur or held him to be a coinage of the brain. But, somehow, Glanville's eloquence daunted the antiquarian. He was fain, therefore, to take up the nearest of the drawings, which represented a pirate ship disembarking its mailed hordes, and to put a few searching questions on the subject of chain armour, regarding which he was the first authority in Europe. Glanville replied; and the others looked at his designs.

On so genial a day, when the sun was bright and warm, indoors and out seemed equally alluring. The party scattered,—some remaining in the study to discuss the drawings point by point, others lingering about the verandah, or going down to the boats and paddling round the chalet, which on every side presented a different but agreeable aspect. While they were thus occupied Rupert invited Hippolyta to ascend the watch-tower. She looked round for a companion, but every one was busy, and she ran gaily [83] up the stairs with him. The watch-tower was empty, and the great window gave a delightful view of the long gorge with its waving woods, the meandering silver thread which marked the course of the Yale, and the clear-shining waters with a circle of clouds above them which closed in the scene. Side by side Rupert and Hippolyta stood, without uttering a word, in that most intimate of companionships which would be lessened, not added to, by speaking. Their cup was full, was brimming over. Happiness had come to them and seemed willing to stay. The breeze which fanned their cheeks, the light which rested lovingly upon their heads and appeared to caress them, was intoxication enough. They could have remained silent thus and lost in a delicious sense of their nearness to one another had not some movement on the waters below them broken the spell. It was only Tom Davenant mooring his outrigger at the steps. Glanville smiled, and, as if remembering the purpose that had brought him, went to a chest of drawers in the room, and taking thence a square sheet of paper, as it would seem, returned to Hippolyta and held it before her. The young lady looked, drew back a little to see the object more clearly, and took it in her hand with an exclamation of delight. 'Oh Rupert,' she cried, 'when did you paint this?'

He laughed mischievously. 'If you speak so loud what will become of your precious secret, Hippolyta?'

'True,' she said in a lower tone; 'but I am so astonished. How could you recollect me in my [84] riding-habit, and paint it all from memory. For you never saw me in this attitude but once.'

'How could I recollect? Ask rather how I could forget. I saw you day and night as you stood in the room downstairs, your head turned expectantly towards the door and a book in your hand. You pretended to be afraid, but your eyes did not look it. Oh, it was easy enough to paint, I can assure you, Hippolyta.'

'Hush, you mustn't say Hippolyta,' she whispered, 'and keep your distance, sir. Yes, it is beautifully done. But where are my riding-gloves? I don't look complete without them.'

'They were lying on a chair when I came in and disturbed you. Then you took them up, intending to go. But you left one of them behind, all the same.'

'Did I, indeed?' she said, with great calmness. 'And I suppose you found it. You must restore it, please.' She was laughing to herself slightly.

'I wish I had found it,' said Glanville pettishly, 'but it fell to the lot of Ivor Mardol to do that; and the wretch threw it into the mere.'

Hippolyta became interested. 'How do you know he found it?' she asked.

'Because he showed it me. I held it for two or three minutes. Then he took it away again, and said it ought to be destroyed.'

'Did he say anything else?'

'I don't think he said, but he implied that a message had come with the glove.'

When Hippolyta heard these words she became very quiet. She was thinking whether to leave matters as they stood, or explain them to Rupert. When she had made up her mind she said, with her eyes fixed on her own portrait, 'And you told him who had brought the message?'

'I told him nothing,' answered Rupert. 'I had not your permission. Moreover, it was no concern of mine. There are subjects on which Ivor and I have agreed that confidence between us would be impossible, and we are the best of friends notwithstanding.'

'Well,' she said, 'that is right, and only what I should expect from both of you. I do not know Mr. Mardol except by your report, though of course I knew his name when I came here that morning. I have never seen him. But I may, without breach of orders, tell you what concerns myself. I remember saying that my visit was due to curiosity— and, in fact, it was. I had a message to give your friend of great, though to me unknown, import. Nor could I entrust it to another, or present myself at Trelingham. In this difficulty I forget who told me that Mr. Mardol had taken up his abode in the chalet, which I had often seen from the heights over there, but had never entered. The thought occurred to me that I had better make an attempt to see him here. I was curious about the place, for, as perhaps I told you, my father used to be its regular tenant when he was a young man. Whether I saw Mr. [86] Mardol was of no consequence. I could make pretty sure that he would receive my message once I was able to get into his study. I came to the water's edge, examined the state of the rooms by means of a pocket telescope I carried with me, and arrived at the conclusion that there was no one at home. I determined to hazard it, and rowed across, being afraid only that somebody might come from the other side and catch me before I disembarked. However, nothing of the sort happened. I ventured in, left my message in such a way that it could not be overlooked, and went, somewhat timidly I confess, into the remaining rooms, like Bluebeard's wife when her husband was gone out. I little expected that Bluebeard would return from my side of the water; and I was more alarmed than you think when I saw you. Did you notice any gesture I made as you opened the door?'

'No,' said Glanville; 'I was too much taken aback to notice anything, except that you were the most lovely woman I had ever set eyes on.'

'Quiet, quiet,' she answered. 'No, I soon perceived you could not be the person of whom I was in quest, or you would have given me the countersign. Dear me,' she went on meditatively, 'when my father joined the movement if any one had talked to a stranger,—and you are a stranger, you know—.' He held up his hand, as if to threaten her, but she motioned him to keep still, and continued, 'Talked, I say, of signs and countersigns, he would have been [87] judged a traitor and punished as he deserved. But now we are coming more and more into the open; there will soon be little secrecy left.'

They heard Tom Davenant calling Rupert. 'The Earl wants you,' he said, as they came downstairs. 'I think there is some plan afoot about your drawings and my birthday, though the two things haven't much connection, one would think. It is all the Countess's doing. I wish she would let it alone. She is too clever by half.'

On entering the studio they found the party collected round Rupert's drawings, and Madame de Lutenieff in earnest conversation with her cousin. She at once came to the artist, and with enthusiasm in her accents said to him, 'Oh, Mr. Glanville, I do so hope you will take my side. I am sure as a painter you ought.'

'I shall have the greatest pleasure in doing so,' he answered gallantly, 'as soon as I know what the discussion is about. But Mr. Davenant has left that for you to tell.'

'Mr. Davenant never comes to my help in anything,' she said, with a reproachful look at that young man, who instead of attending to her was considering the signs of the times, so far as they could be studied from the window in front of him.

'I don't see the good of a dress ball,' said Tom, without looking round. 'Why cannot people dance in their ordinary clothes and not make themselves into a museum of curiosities? Fancy me got up like [88] your Launcelots and your Percivals, or whatever you call them! They look absurd enough on a stage, but in a ballroom where you know who the fellows are they look twenty times more ridiculous.'

'But then,' said Lady May, 'you profess to hate dancing altogether and you don't want to keep your birthday, so you are out of court. This is the case,' she continued, addressing Glanville: 'my Cousin Karina was struck with the ensemble , to use her own term, of your designs, and thought they would fall into admirable groups if we could get people to dress up to them. She is very fond of dancing,— are you not, Karina?' The Countess made a gesture of delight, but would not interrupt Lady May, who went on to explain that among the festivities to celebrate Mr. Davenant's majority—she looked at Tom as she spoke—a dress ball would do much to enhance the general pleasure, and there was the Great Hall, with its frescoes begun, inviting them to illustrate the floor from the walls, so to speak, and to make a grand tableau vivant of the Arthurian legends. It would be an original and quaint device, but without Glanville's aid in designing dresses and sketching the groups it could not be carried out. How did it strike him?

Instead of answering like a sensible young man, Rupert turned demurely to Miss Valence and inquired what she thought. She laughed, and blushed, but would not reply beyond saying that in these matters she had no opinion to give.

'But Mr. Glanville is quite right,' said the Countess; 'you ought to have an opinion, my dear. For you would of course shine in our galaxy that evening.'

'I shine in a galaxy?' said Hippolyta, laughing; 'you forget, Countess, that I have never been introduced to society, and should most likely not be admitted if I wished for such a thing.'

'Oh, nonsense,' replied Karina; 'you have the most old-fashioned ideas. In the first place, there is no such thing as society, in that exclusive sense of the word, now; and in the second, it would not matter if there were. Make your début at Trelingham, my dear, and rely upon it you will find no doors locked afterwards.'

Hippolyta smiled. 'Now that your door is unlocked to me,' she said, addressing Lord Trelingham, 'I do not think I mind whether the rest are shut or open.'

'My dear young lady,' said he, taking her hand, 'you will be most welcome if you come to this house, either on the occasion my niece has mentioned, or any other. Colonel Valence may have renounced society, but that should be no injury to his daughter, and only those would raise a question who do not know you.'

'Well, and of course you will come,' said Karina; 'that is all settled. I will be your chaperon and— but have you learned dancing?' she asked with comic anxiety.

Hippolyta answered, 'I am more of a Spanish than an English girl, remember. Did you ever hear of one who could not dance, or was not fond of dancing? It is the most exquisite enjoyment I know. But, indeed, I have not danced in such fine company as this would be.'

'Never mind,' said the Countess; 'you will probably put us all to shame. However, is it decided, and does Mr. Glanville promise his services?'

'Mr. Glanville will promise anything,' replied the infatuated artist. He had never till then thought of dancing with Hippolyta. What a heaven of happiness was in store! How admirable of the Countess to propose it and of Tom Davenant to come of age just at that time! To get any further conversation of a sensible kind from Rupert was for the rest of the day impossible. The Countess made her observations; Lady May, whose suspicions had been lulled to sleep, was not blind, and began once more to feel the gnawing pangs of jealousy; while Mr. Davenant wondered that people should care so much about tiring themselves to death in a hot and crowded assembly, and would have given all the balls between now and next year for a good day's fishing.

But the dress ball was decided on, and there were to be tableaux representing King Arthur and his Table Round.

CHAPTER XIX TABLEAUX VIVANTS

In proposing, out of her own head, a dress ball at which Miss Valence should be present, the Countess Lutenieff was carrying out one of those schemes, so dear to the impish character she affected, through which accidents of a perverse kind are wont to happen. She was not very learned or large-minded; and, like most ignorant persons of a quick-witted turn, she was subtle, preferring always the crooked path to the straight, and delighted when she could imagine that she made the puppets dance to her playing. Since she had recovered from the shock of her husband's death—it had taken her about six months, for she was of an affectionate disposition— her one aim had been to marry Tom Davenant, whom from a child she had worshipped. This alone reconciled her to the English sky with its everlasting gray tones, and the English manners at once so selfsatisfied and so chilling. But Mr. Davenant was a [92] shy bird, and would not stoop at her call. Nor had she a falconer's voice to lure him back again from his pursuit of more interesting prey. He, like the rest of the Davenants, was guided by a fine sense of honour,—too fine thought the Russian lady, since it appeared to be driving him on a marriage with his cousin. And its recompense might possibly be the hand of Lady May in spite of the six years which divided their ages. Nothing, said Karina to herself, will make me secure on that side but a violent passion on the part of Lady May for some one who is not Tom Davenant. Might not Glanville be the man? She had hoped and prayed so while the painting went on in the picture-gallery; but that was now at an end. The artist seemed to be dominated by a fresh sentiment in which Lady May had no part, and as Tom's birthday drew near, bringing with it apprehensions of calamity, the Countess sat down to consider what could be done. If Glanville was not desperately in love elsewhere he would fall a sure victim to her cousin, provided that May Davenant cared to subdue him. And how make her care? A great passion, Karina had read in her French authors, is only a slight one thwarted by a great difficulty. Add jealousy to liking and the thing might be done. Whatever else was uncertain, it could not be doubted that May cared for Glanville more than she did for Tom Davenant. If she married her cousin, it would be from devotion to the name and ancient descent she had been taught to revere. Let her be infatuated [93] about the artist, and her refusal of the cousinly hand would follow as a matter of course. Miss Valence had entered from the side-scene, therefore, just when she was wanted, and her cue, in the language of the drama, was 'green-eyed jealousy.' To promote that feeling in the breast of Lady May was now her cousin's dearest wish, her hourly and daily thought. The dress ball seemed to her an inspiration of some good genius. There would be much preparation, and at Trelingham a great deal of rehearsing—so to call it—with these original costumes, which would need to be carefully designed. And when the intimacy of the preparations had stung Lady May like a gadfly, the ball itself was to do the rest. She would see Rupert with Hippolyta. She would be mad with disappointment and jealousy, above all if her attention were directed that way; and when her feeling had reached that height—good-bye to Cousin Tom, concluded the Countess; he will speak only to be repulsed. Thus she thought, much musing; and the unconscious puppets fell into their places, and waited till she should pull the wires to begin their exhibition.

One point remained doubtful. Was there really anything between Hippolyta and the artist, and if so, how far had the attraction gone? To ascertain this was of the last importance. Too little would be as fatal as too much. Miss Valence went about in the most beautiful innocence, quiet and composed, like one that had not a care in the world. When at Trelingham her bearing towards Rupert was cordial [94] and friendly, but disarmed suspicion; and though the artist was often in the neighbourhood of Falside he never passed its threshold. The truth was that with Glanville's roaming habits and Hippolyta's constant ridings unattended at what hour and in which direction she pleased, these young lovers could afford to be on their good behaviour at the Court. They met under every variety of circumstance, and the romance of concealment added not a little to their passion. It was not, however, a very wicked way in them. Colonel Valence had taught his child that she must search into her heart, follow where it loved, and not fear the consequences. Though no reply had come to her letter, she knew he would consent. He must have got beyond the reach of correspondence, she fancied; that was all.

Not long after the ball had been determined on Miss Valence was surprised one afternoon to see the Countess Lutenieff ride up to Falside, enter the library, and ask her dear Hippolyta for a cup of tea. She was all smiles and graciousness, hoping she had not interrupted the interesting work in which Miss Valence was sure to be engaged; but the lovely air and the absence of Lady May, who was visiting some distant friends for some few days, had tempted her to ride over the moor for a tête-à-tête , which she knew would be delightful. Hippolyta put away her books and papers, made her visitor welcome, and submitted to her fate. She was quick enough to perceive that Karina had laid her plan for an afternoon's talk, but [95] on what subject or to what end, in so flighty a creature, it was impossible to conjecture. They sat by the open window, which was a bower of exquisite creepers, and looked down the valley over green meadows and cornfields where the blade was springing. Hippolyta waited and wondered. But the purpose which had brought Karina still lay hidden, sharp and cruel as it was, like the sword of Harmodius wreathed in myrtle. She touched many flowers of talk with her light wings, flitted up and down from art to social systems, from women to their dressmakers and the last new thing in female frippery, coming nearer and nearer to the point she had in view, sweeping round it in circles that ever grew narrower. She could be wily and indirect when she chose, although much of her ordinary conversation had the malicious naïveté of a precocious child's. And thus, without quite knowing how they came to it, Hippolyta found herself discussing Lady May's opinions on the subject of marriage and her probable destiny. Nothing could be less reserved or affected than the Countess while speaking of her cousin. 'And oh, my dear,' she said, 'I thought how providential it was, the other day, that you gave us your own romantic views—delightful I call them— when May was by to hear you. It will, it must, I am sure, have done her good.'

'In what way?' inquired Hippolyta, languidly. She did not want these sentimental confidences, especially with the Countess.

'Ah, you know, a word in season does so much [96] good. You were warning my cousin against a temptation which, with her present ways of looking at things, might well prove too much for her.'

'Indeed!' said Hippolyta. She would not encourage the Countess.

'Yes, indeed,' answered the other eagerly; 'no less than to make a real marriage de convenance where affection would have no share, to sacrifice a consuming passion to interest, or at any rate to opinion. You spoke so beautifully of obeying the impulse of the feelings. I am sure she agreed with you. Do you remember how little she seemed surprised by what were certainly bold views?'

'Yes,' said Hippolyta, feeling uncomfortable, though she could not say why. What was all this about? Had she any interest in it? She must know more. 'A consuming passion,' she said after a pause. 'That is very strong language. And have you been told who is the object of Lady May's devotion, or is it a secret?'

'I have not been told,' replied Karina; 'but to me it is no secret. What should you say to Mr. Glanville?'

Hippolyta's heart gave a great leap. The sword was out and had gone through her. 'Mr. Glanville?' she echoed under her breath. It was impossible to go on. The Countess waited, like some savage beast that sees its victim fascinated at its own first spring from the thicket. But Hippolyta did not mean to let her secret escape. She took in her hand the [97] cup of tea which she had laid down, and went on with an effort, 'Mr. Glanville,—I have nothing to say to Mr. Glanville. Do you mean that Lady May would accept an artist? Would it not be marrying beneath her?'

'I did not talk of marrying; I talked of a consuming passion. That is just the point. My cousin, if she held your principles, would insist on marrying Mr. Glanville, for she has been in love with him ever since he came to Trelingham, and he with her. But she is tempted to marry Mr. Davenant, who stands next in the succession to her father's title and estates.'

This was overwhelming. The sword now was rifling her heart, turning in the wound it had made. Hippolyta was no woman of the world, and her poor brave defence was nearly at an end. Rupert in love with Lady May! The room reeled about her; she could not speak; she was incapable of thinking. Karina sat still, conscience-stricken at the apparent success of her stratagem, but yet enjoying its success. She had in her that mixture of cruelty and remorse which plays so strange a part in the Russian temperament. She was disgusted with herself; but nothing in heaven or earth would have stayed her hand now. In this contest Hippolyta was not her match. A pause of some moments ensued, at the end of which Miss Valence in a low unsteady voice, which could scarcely be heard across the table, murmured, 'In love with one another! It is impossible. I do not believe it.'

'No; I daresay you are as much surprised as I was when it first dawned upon me. Not that Mr. Glanville is unworthy of my cousin's hand; far from it, he would do honour to any woman.' This was cunningly said, as a compliment, forcible though indirect, to Hippolyta's own discernment. 'But,' the Countess went on, 'if you had seen them, as I did, for weeks together, morning after morning in the picture-gallery, Lady May talking and Mr. Glanville looking at her, you would have no doubt on the subject.' Karina forgot, apparently, how often she had left them alone and departed on her own errands.

'Of course he looked at her,' said Hippolyta with a melancholy smile; 'how else could he have painted her portrait?'

'Oh, but there is looking and looking. Moreover, they engaged in the most confidential talk, quite like old friends. You know how charming Mr. Glanville's conversation can be when he is in the vein.'

Ah, yes, she did know, too well for her peace. It was a dangerous gift that sudden vehement inspiration which made his tongue so eloquent, his imagination so vivid and orginal, after a long interval of silence or depression. She had observed that when Rupert was in the mood any listener would suffice; all he seemed to need was an audience. The explanation which he gave her one day was plausible, but did not take away the peril. He said that when a man has lived by himself as much as he had done in former years, the necessity for speech becomes from [99] time to time imperious, and it matters not whose is the open ear into which it is poured. He had a whole chapter of curious illustrations to the point, adding merely that he still found himself holding forth to an audience of one without minding whether his silent vis-à-vis were taking in every word he said or falling asleep open-mouthed under its influence. But she was convinced that when he chose to speak his audience would not slumber. Lady May had been charmed; yes, why should she not? Before Karina spoke that idea had crossed her mind. But had Rupert been charmed in turn? How was she to find out? what was she to think? Could she ask this chattering, frivolous, mocking lady, who cared little what game her shafts brought down?

But there was no need to ask. Karina went on with her story, founded on fact as we know, but embellished and exaggerated until it seemed that Rupert might have been kneeling at Lady May's feet, in the guise of a troubadour, imploring her to have pity on a desponding lover. Hippolyta could say little in reply, nor dared to utter that little. If she spoke, she was betrayed. Her utmost effort only succeeded in casting a doubt on Karina's powers of observation. But the Countess was not to be shaken. 'Rely upon it, my dear Hippolyta,' she said, 'Lady May is devotedly attached to Mr. Glanville, and he was not unwilling to accept the incense she offered. Three months ago I should have said he was in love with her; and I still think it, although [100] naturally the opportunities for its display are neither so frequent nor so favourable as they were. You, of course, may have surer grounds to go upon.'

'What do you mean?' said Hippolyta, resolved to withstand this prying. 'You do not suppose Lady May would give me a confidence which she seems not to have bestowed on you.' She spoke hotly and angrily.

'Now, my dear,' answered the Countess, 'you will frighten me if you look like that. I mean no harm. But you are such a friend of Mr. Glanville's, since the day you gave him shelter, that I fancied he might have spoken to you of his longings, aspirations, and so forth.'

'He has never said a word to me about Lady May,' answered Hippolyta, still angry and miserable. 'Why should he come to me about her?'

'Why, indeed? But men like to take advice sometimes from a woman they can trust. However, all this is wide of the mark. It is curious how one topic leads to a hundred. For, you see, we began by saying what an excellent thing it would be if your principles could become those of Lady May. She ought to marry Mr. Glanville—'

'She ought to do nothing of the kind,' said Hippolyta, irritated into expressing more than was prudent. 'Let her marry her cousin, according to the custom of her class, and her own convictions of duty.'

'What?' said the Countess, delighted to see the [101] flame spreading and glowing so warm; 'surely you are inconsistent, Miss Valence. Would you not have her marry the man she loves?'

'Not if he does not love her.'

'But he does, I can assure you. Mr. Glanville has peculiar ways, like all his tribe. Nevertheless, observe them during the next few weeks when they are together, and you will be as convinced of it as I am. Dear, dear,' she said, rising at the last words, 'how quickly the afternoon passes with a friend, especially one whose conversation is so engrossing! And the days are still short. Good-bye, my dear. Pray don't stir; I see you have much to do, if those piles of correspondence on the table are yours. May comes back the day after to-morrow, and you will be wanted, you know, to choose your Arthurian costume. Good -bye!'

She went off with a light step and a smile of triumph. Miss Valence would do her part. There was affection or ambition on her side, sufficient to make her an excellent rival—a Fair Rosamund to Lady May's Eleanor. The scheme promised admirably, and she sang little snatches of Russian or French ballads as she cantered along. Whether Hippolyta had been deeply wounded and might bleed to death she did not consider, nor did she care. She was fond of Miss Valence, in that selfish way which people have who like to see beautiful things about them; fond as she might have been of a lovely flower, or an Arab steed. But she had only one [102] strong human feeling, and that was for no woman. She did mean to marry her cousin; and she would have immolated a thousand Hippolytas in one holocaust rather than give him up.

I will not say that she had roused the demon of jealousy in a heart so innocent, so little accustomed to seek itself or to indulge in malice and evil thoughts, as that of Hippolyta. So great a revolution was not to be accomplished in a day. But she had awakened her victim from a dream of childlike happiness, and, suddenly strking into the chords of her enchanted harp, had turned the music to harsh discords which went on sounding and jangling and would not be still. Colonel Valence had left his daughter without the usual safeguards of conventional religious training, and she had moved among the strange men and women that made her world, free as the weakest or the strongest of them, familiar with much more than the name of sin and moral degradation. For she had witnessed something of the misery upon which her father's damning argument against the society of to-day was founded. But, truly, as she declared to Lady May, her days had been spent without harm. She harboured no unbecoming thoughts; she was fearless and free; nor, until Rupert fixed his eyes upon her, had she known what it was to care for any man save her father. The power of first love is proverbially intense; and when it comes at once, without warning, to a heart so large as Hippolyta's, and hitherto so self-contained, [103] it has a depth of sacred purity, of kindling fire. Had she spoken of a consuming passion she would have been better justified than the Countess, who employed such words because they sounded romantic and startling, not for any well-assured knowledge that they were true of Lady May. The Spanish temperament, the unfettered life, the enthusiasm for things demanding sacrifice, the glamour of a devotion, sincere and expressive, on Rupert's side, must all be remembered, if we would calculate what elements there were for jealousy, watchfulness, and a perplexed yet irresistible love in Hippolyta. She did not doubt the man who had breathed out his soul in passionate utterances before her. Perish the thought, she cried, when it rose from the deeps of her anguish like a phantom and threatened to eclipse the light of heaven. She knew that he was loyal; but was there full security from the past, or had he so entangled himself in its consequences that he might not hope to be free? Most men had such a past; her books told her so, and she could bear to think of it with an equal mind, if the curtain which had fallen over it for Rupert was never to be raised again. But how, if Lady May interposed, if a claim there really was, or an old love with which to be off ere he could be on with the new? Hippolyta was devoted, but she was likewise proud and generous. She would not be Lady May's rival should it appear that Rupert, in whatever fashion, had given her a promise, or that his affection was divided. As she came to this resolution her heart [104] sickened within her. She sat motionless, where the Countess had left her by the window, gazing with fixed and meditative eyes over the valley till the moon rose up in the cloudy sky, her hands clasped on her knees, while she thought and thought, and the slow tears began to well up from within and form on the tender eyelashes. She did not know where to look for help. A Christian maiden, she said half-unconsciously, would have prayed for guidance,—whatever prayer was. But she could only resolve to be true and trusting, impartial to Lady May as to Rupert, and not unjust. It was a heavy burden for young shoulders, and the tears that fell at last were exceedingly bitter.

Her resolution, all this notwithstanding, held firm. She must ascertain the state of the case, and by that be guided. Until this afternoon she had given no assurance of attending the dress ball, which was a kind of entertainment alien from her feelings and characteristic of that social or aristocratic existence with which she could have so little in common. Rupert's pleadings even had not overcome her dislike to it; and the Countess, for all her zeal in the good cause, was obliged to be content with a very conditional acceptance. Now, however, she would take the rôle offered her and appear among the rest. Their frequent meetings, if she studied them with her eyes open, must surely betray the relation in which Rupert stood to Lord Trelingham's daughter. And if when the birthnight festivities were come her mind was not [105] clear, she would ask Glanville the question, cost what struggling and shame it might. False, no, he was not false. It was easy for a man to be imprudent, but impossible that Rupert did not mean every word he had whispered in her ear. Great as was her trouble, so new and unexpected that it quite overcame her for days together, it left in the depths of her being an assured trust that love had answered love between them twain.

As soon as she dared, that is to say when her self-control was somewhat restored, she went over to Trelingham. Lady May had come back, bringing with her Mrs. Davenant, the well-known fashionable personage who called Tom her son, and expected from him a son's devotion, though she could not give up the world so far as to make Foxholme the pleasant place it should have proved to that amiable young man. She and Lord Trelingham, though of course very old acquaintance, had never got beyond the first stage of intimacy, while Lady May, to whom the frivolities of fashion were odious, was merely civil to her and did not see her more than twice in a season. She had come now to preside over the arrangements for keeping Tom's birthday and issue the much-coveted invitations which were to gather a numerous party at Trelingham. She, also, was asking herself whether her son had serious thoughts of marrying his cousin; and it was part of her endeavouring just now to find out the way he had spent these months in the country, with Lady May on the [106] one side and Madame de Lutenieff on the other. For though Tom was an affectionate son he wrote seldom, and there was that in Mrs. Davenant's character which forbade him to let her see into his heart. There could be no real confidence between persons so unlike, however attached they might be to one another. Tom felt more comfortable at Trelingham than he had ever been under his own roof. He loved his guardian, the Earl, with a simple but earnest devotion, which had increased as the boy grew to man's estate; and he looked forward to being perfectly happy with him and Lady May, if the latter would consent to be his wife. He knew she was infinitely beyond him in cleverness and knowledge of the world; but, if anything, he was attracted rather than repelled by that circumstance. A stupid man, he argued, ought to have a clever wife who would keep him from blundering. He did not think himself unequal to the duties of a country gentleman; but, should he become Earl of Trelingham, there would be Parliament and the burden of society, and who could help him so well as Lady May?

That he would succeed his cousin if he outlived him was as certain as anything in this world. Lord Trelingham had assured him of it in so many words. It was a piece of eccentric generosity, perhaps of unnecessary frankness. But he had acted towards Tom Davenant during the last five or six years as he would have acted towards his own son; and it was in keeping with the rest of his conduct to give up Trelingham [107] Court to the festivities which must otherwise have taken place at Foxholme.

The house party would be numerous, and was already gathering when Hippolyta called after her sad visit from the Countess. She went through her introduction to Mrs. Davenant without flinching, but was glad to escape into the Great Hall, where a kind of rehearsal for the tableaux was in course of arrangement. Rupert, who had not been able to go near Falside for several days, came to her as soon as she had exchanged a word with Lady May, and was so struck on observing her paleness and the dark rings round her eyes that he could think of nothing else. He drew her away, under pretence of showing her the dresses from which she was to choose, and in low passionate undertones implored her to tell him what was the matter. She could not mistake the feeling in his voice; it was that of the most devoted love. Her spirits revived; and, though she put him off with unmeaning answers, there was enough to cheer him in her assurance that she should soon be well. He looked at her with tender anxiety; he saw that something must have happened. But she had secrets which it did not become him to pry into; her troubles might be connected with Colonel Valence's numerous projects, and were not to be removed even by a lover's assiduity. However, he would not quit her side till she insisted on it; and his frequent glances towards her revealed a preoccupation which the Countess was delighted to behold, and which, in her careless infantine [108] way, she pointed out to her cousin. Lady May was in her most difficult mood, irritated by the presence of Mrs. Davenant at Trelingham, dissatisfied with Rupert, and not at peace in her own mind. She had not conceived any great affection for Hippolyta; but now, under the Countess's malicious guidance, she saw, or thought she saw, enough to justify dislike and suspicion. Was Glanville bestowing elsewhere the love she had striven so desperately to win? It made her wretched when Miss Valence came near him, when he spoke to her in seeming confidence, when he showed how she must wear the elfin array in which he proposed to deck the Queen of Fairyland, as he smilingly called her. She was to be the Lady of the Lake.

All this reacted, according to Karina's deep-laid plan, on the feelings of Hippolyta. She, too, was made wretched; for Lady May, resolved on having her will, found means to engage Rupert's attention, and gave him so many commissions, had such a variety of questions to ask and possibilities to provide for, that the lovers, after their first greeting, met again only for an instant that afternoon. Time was when, if any one had charged May Davenant with being an adept in the arts of jealousy, she would have turned a scornful eye upon the speaker and bade him begone with a proud consciousness of her innocence. Nor am I saying now that she was mean or malevolent; she was passionate and had forgotten herself, that was all. But was it not a sad falling away on the part of [109] that lofty spirit? Hippolyta, struck through with Karina's fiery shaft, suffered and was helpless. She had no arts to counteract the imperious charm of the Earl's daughter; and when she beheld Rupert's embarrassment, how he resisted in vain, nor would look steadily in the face of Lady May, she began to fear that an entanglement really existed, and went home more miserable than she came. Certainly, she might have demanded an explanation from Rupert, and one word would have sufficed to scatter the clouds in her heaven. But it was not the time; she dreaded an explosion which must have blasted all her hopes, or sent him from Trelingham at this unseasonable moment. The play was to be played out. She took her part bravely; but as the days went on she became more and more resolute in the thoughts which had begun to ferment within her.

That afternoon was a sample of those which followed. Rupert, engaged from morning till night, and often in Lady May's company, had less time than usual to spend with Hippolyta, and none to mark that her dejection was profound and her paleness increasing. To mark, I say; for he felt that there was a vague misunderstanding between them, which he meant, as soon as the festival would let him, to have thoroughly cleared up. Lady May, however, was his greatest trial. The intimacy that had so happily fallen through seemed reviving again, and with it a sense of the magnetic danger, so to speak, which had compassed him round about in the picture-gallery. [110] When Hippolyta was present he felt it less; but then another peril awaited him, for he did not choose that his old sin should be ever staring him in the face, and yet it did. Certain confidential allusions, slight yet speaking glances which might signify nothing in Lady May, but were embarrassing to him, and a demeanour in which friendliness might have the greater share, yet love not be wholly wanting,—he could no more define these things to himself than he could photograph the wind, but he knew that it was not imagination which led him to fear them as the harbingers of catastrophe. What if Hippolyta should notice them too? He anathematised the folly of six months ago, his weakness when he ought to have been proof against this contagious sentiment. He would certainly at the very earliest quit Trelingham under one pretext or another, and put a solid interval of time between the painting of the Madonna with its mischievous associations and the work he had yet to do. There must be an end of this phantasmal coquetry, this mock sun of love which shone over against the true, and perplexed observers. He little knew the forces against which he was contending.

And so, amid fears and hopes and the strong resolutions of those upon whom fortune had laid the burden of a deadly struggle, Tom Davenant's birthday came. The house was full of guests; the Chase was thrown open, and the solemn early dinner appointed at which the Earl's tenantry were to hear their future lord deliver his maiden speech. The bright spring weather, [111] dashed with a shower of rain, was all that could be wished; and if I do not dwell upon the events of the day, it is not because they deserved no sacred poet, but that one who knew how to adorn his grateful task with flowers of rhetoric to which I may not pretend, has already written of them in the County Chronicle , to the files of which I refer inquiring friends. For I must hasten to the evening, when a more select, but hardly less numerous, company was assembled in the Great Hall, and the tableaux vivants were beginning.

Hippolyta, who had accepted Madame de Lutenieff as her chaperon in default of another, descended from her room with beating heart, and was glad to find herself only just in time for her share in the representations. The Countess led her at once to the sort of green-room where the members of the first group were putting themselves in order. A stage had been erected at the end of the Great Hall, opposite the chief entrance. In front of it hung the ample folds of a curtain which was to draw up to the sound of music, when the tableau was arranged and the signal given. The scenes were to be presented at intervals, and to last only so long as might be required to take in their meaning and to distinguish the characters which made them up, for anything like a sensible interruption of the dancing was not proposed, and would have been received with scant favour. Rupert had advised that the grouping should follow the order of his frescoes, including some which [112] were only among his drawings, but not as yet visible on the walls. Thus it began with the Finding of Arthur, when, in the great temple, he draws out of the stone the miraculous sword which has resisted the efforts of all pretenders to the crown of Britain. Tom Davenant, with his exquisite beauty of face and manly form, was the very model of a young hero, and not unnaturally had been compelled, against his will, to put on the trappings of Arthur. A crowd of knights occupied the foreground, behind them rose the dim pillars and vast recesses of a rude cathedral, and near the semblance of an altar stood Hippolyta, the Lady of the Lake, who was Arthur's fairy godmother, in converse with the mysterious enchanted Merlin. When they were all in their places a silver bell rang, and the curtain drew up.

It was a striking scene and called forth instant applause, which was hushed when the orchestra, composed of harps and flutes, began above the great entrance a shrill weird music to celebrate the coming of the King. It was Lady May who had devised this wild welcome, so unlike the harmonies of the modern muse, but for that reason symbolic of far-off ages when the appeal was to elementary passions rather than to a complex temperament like ours of to-day. The effect was strange but overpowering. While it lasted, Hippolyta, who had not ventured to lift her eyes at the beginning, looked up and saw the vast spaces before her filled with a motley crowd, in all manner of fantastic and glittering attire, [113] while a flood of golden light fell upon them from the sides of the hall, where Rupert's grandly-conceived frescoes, marking out the whole extent they were by and by to cover, added an air of indescribable solemnity and antique grandeur to the vision. Never in her life had she beheld anything so beautiful. It dazzled and excited her; it gave her a larger sense of existence, palpitating with joy and passion. She could have been content, she thought, to gaze at it without going nearer. But in a few moments the music ceased, the curtain fell, and the Arthurian group, disappearing through the side-scene, was lost in the crowd below. She gave herself into the hands of the Countess and followed. The ball began; and Hippolyta, with mingled pleasure and dismay, found herself dancing with Rupert, who had instantly claimed her hand.

What she saw and experienced that evening, thanks to the novelty of her sensations, the secluded life she had led, the love which was filling heart and brain, the trouble of an uncertain future, and her joy in Rupert's triumph, it is not easy to describe. It was a whirl of excitement when time seemed short as a lightining flash, yet every moment eternal. The pauses in the dance, the bursts of barbaric music coming between, the delicate strange colours which had been so subtly combined in the grouping, the gleam of saffron and gold, of shining battle-axe and linked armour of steel, the perfume of tropical flowers which hung upon the atmosphere and penetrated [114] her being, the steady blaze of light overhead, the sparkling of precious stones and waving of feathers and soft dark jets of velvet sheen, the sound of bubbling fountains in the conservatories which opened out of the ballroom into the garden beyond, —all this was mingled with laughing voices, with the play of outspread fans, and the movement of a multitude in whose eyes the light and the passion seemed to be reflected and to shine out again more intensely. It was a sea of life on whose waves, to the sound of enchanting music, she floated along. Sometimes Rupert held her hand, sometimes another whom she had never seen, to whom she spoke in dreamy whispers, not knowing what had been said to her. Out of the crowd a face surged up and gazed across inquiringly, as though seeking an answer in her eyes; but it was gone ere she could catch her breath and murmur, 'That was Lady May; what does she desire of me?' Or again, it was the Countess, smiling cold, inquisitive, mocking, as her voice floated over her shoulder and bade her rest a while in the shade of the cool ferns. And Rupert, where was he? She looked round in a vague, sweet trouble, and saw him leading out Lady May, whose earnest eyes seemed full of a steady fire. Could she not warn him, not rescue him from the danger? No, he was a thousand leagues away, and her hand could never reach him. As these thoughts came to darken the festival her heart beat faster with a sense of unspeakable love and pity. She felt that Rupert [115] was all the world to her, that she could not live except in the sunshine of his presence, that to surrender him would be death.

But her meditations were again and again interrupted as one after the other of these brilliant masqueraders came up to solicit the honour of dancing with her. Hippolyta was so wrapt in her passionate griefs and longings that she did not realise the impression she was making in that unknown realm, where faces, voices, manners, were all novel and strange. Miss Valence's name was whispered from mouth to mouth; her father's story, so much of it as the public knew, was rehearsed again. Some, who had heard only of the marriage with Lady Alice, imagined that this was a niece of Lord Trelingham, now publicly adopted by him; and they wondered whether Tom Davenant would select her or Lady May for his bride. Others felt her beauty enhanced by the uncertain tales of her origin, for no one in that country-side had ever set eyes on her mother or could tell who she was. And the young men declared with enthusiasm that they had never seen such dancing. It was the perfection of unconscious grace, without effort or affectation; the true Spanish gravity with a world of passion in it; the movements, slow or swift, as the music demanded, always under control, not wild, but exquisitely self-contained. That evening Hippolyta and the lady of the lake melted into one lovely lissom figure, clad in a floating vestment of dark fairy-green, with golden [116] hair falling down over the collar of wrought flowers which left the delicate throat bare, while a wreath of some strange bloom that resembled hyacinths decked the beautiful head, and gave her the look of sylvan majesty that befitted her in the legend. Nor had the warm paleness of her cheek, the light in her large, soft eyes, ever charmed the heart of Rupert as they did during those hours of dance and thrilling music. He could not turn his gaze from her; but it seemed to him that she did not always return it. Was she lost in the pleasure of the scene? He quitted the company among which he was standing, and came, on the pretence that she was wanted for the next tableau, and spoke to her. She answered like one whose fancy was roaming abroad; she was absent and preoccupied. When they entered the green-room to make some slight changes in her outward adornment which the tableau required, she did all in silence, as she was bid, not turning at the voice that spoke or appearing to distinguish the speaker. She took her place in the group of Launcelot and Guinevere, fixing her eyes, but yet absently, on Lady May, who bore with exceeding stateliness the character of the guilty Queen. Again, at the side of the painted forest, she looked on while the Countess Lutenieff, as the fay Vivien, charmed his secret out of Merlin; and her feeling was that, in the old white-bearded man, to her a stranger, who enacted the magician's part, she beheld Rupert yielding to the witchery of a maiden he did not love. When, from the floor of the Great [117] Hall, she watched the scene of Tristram and Iseult, in which Lady May and the artist quaffed the love-philter which was to bind them in unfaithfulness,— a weird and powerful representation that stirred the spectators to demand it a second time,—she could hardly refrain from crying aloud, and the effort made her weak to fainting. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes to shut out the displeasing vision. But it would not leave her; it was still there in vivid colour as on the stage, Iseult holding forth the enchanted golden cup, and Tristram in the glow of his beauty and strength bending over it, his lips couching the beaker's brim that was to take away his reason for ever. The plaudits which rang through the hall, and were drowned in the strains of music overhead, piercing like the sea-bird's scream and dying off as into the wash of a sullen sea, made a tumult within her which left no room for thought, which stamped upon her memory an impression that must be indelible, and urged her to resolve her doubts at once, without hesitation. She watched till Rupert came into the throng once more. He was moving her way, and their eyes met. In an instant he was by her side. 'You must ask me to dance,' she whispered, and ere long they were moving in the waltz.

Her dream came back: she was floating on the waves of life to the sound of a mighty music; its single tones shot through her like silvery arrows, its complex strains lifted her upon the thunderous roll of waters away and away, with Rupert, the only tenant of her universe, [118] holding her fast. He belonged to her alone, and she was of another sphere than the multitude moving in cadence around them. Still, she did not speak. And lo! the sudden vibration of a string which, for no more than a second, was heard through the music like a note of lamentation, turned her thoughts and her fancy. She beheld the world of suffering beneath the world of joy: on the barren shores lapped by these smiling waters an innumerable multitude were gathered from the four winds—all the poverty-stricken, the wretched, the homeless, the tear-besprent, the naked misery of those who crowded against one another to keep themselves warm, and who were reckoned by millions upon millions. She saw them clearly, with the mind's eye, too humbled and cast down to envy the joy they might not share, benumbed in their great misery by the sense of a long despair even more than by frost and cold. The masquerade of life was for the few; its bitter dismal reality, not tempered by dance or song, for the many. And what was she doing, Hippolyta, amid these splendours? Her place was not there, but with her brothers and sisters pining in wretchedness. She awoke from the excitement of the evening with a start. The air was suffocating, the perfume of these flowers delirious. She could endure it no longer. 'Take me away,' she said to Rupert as the dance was ending; 'I want the fresh air; I shall faint if I stay in the room.'

He looked round for the nearest exit, and, with Hippolyta on his arm, moved as swiftly as the crowd [119] would let him towards the conservatories, which opened on either side of the stage into the garden. It would be cooler there. They arrived at a spot where great cactus-like plants, mingled with creepers, stood up in the moonlight which shone through the glass roof with a cold, uncertain gleam. There was no one near. The feeling of comparative solitude refreshed Hippolyta; and her thoughts began to take a definite shape. Rupert inquired tenderly whether she were better. She smiled, and did not speak for a little while; then, drawing him close to the window where the plants screened them, she said, laying her hand on his breast, 'Rupert, were you ever in love with Lady May?'

The question startled him. 'Ah,' he said to himself, 'it has come at last.' But he would be perfectly open. 'No, Hippolyta,' he answered, 'never; but, before I met you, I might have been. For a few weeks I thought even that I was.'

'Did you tell her your thoughts?' she asked. She felt an immense relief.

'Never,' he replied; 'had I spoken it would have been to Lord Trelingham.'

'Then you are quite free as regards Lady May; you have incurred no obligation towards her?'

Rupert, who had not expected this home thrust, turned red and pale. 'I will leave you to judge,' he answered, though not immediately; 'obligation of any palpable sort there is none. I have made neither speeches nor advances to her; but I have shown [120] perhaps more sympathy when she spoke—it is now five months or more—than was prudent, since I did not love her.' He tried to explain. Hippolyta did not interrupt him. It was difficult to enlarge on the behaviour of Lady May without attributing to her thoughts of which he had no evidence.

When he came to a pause, Hippolyta, still looking at him, put a single question. 'Tell me, Rupert,' she said, 'do,' you think Lady may cared for you as I do?'

'As you do,' he repeated with fervour; 'ah, Hippolyta, who is like you in anything? I do not know; it is nothing to me what Lady May's feelings have been. You do not distrust me?' he went on anxiously; 'have I said or done anything to displease you?'

'No,' she answered simply; 'you are the same as ever. But suppose she did love you, could you always resist, always remember Hippolyta?'

'I see,' he said, 'you are troubled about it. Very well, I cannot blame a jealousy which comes of so great affection. Look here, Hippolyta, I also have been disquieted and not happy in this strange position; for, though I do not know what she feels, I have an uneasy dread that all may not turn out well. I had made up my mind to leave Trelingham for a month or six weeks, that there might be a break and a fresh start under less difficult circumstances. If you wish I will go to-morrow.'

'Are you not wanted here during the festivities?' she inquired.

'Not in any way. My work is done when the last of the tableaux has been given.'

Hippolyta, instead of answering, seemed lost in thought. Turning away, she walked two or three steps and stood apart, her eyes fixed on the waters of a mimic fountain which cast its spray around. What was she thinking about? Rupert did not dare to interrupt her. At length she came back, and, with an earnest, troubled expression, said to him, 'Go to-morrow, as you propose; it will be best. Only let me hear from you, and if I have anything to write,—you must give me your address.'

He put his hand to his pocket. There was no card in it. Tearing out one of his ivory tablets, he wrote a line or two in haste and handed them to Hippolyta. 'Write to my studio,' he said; 'I shall be there oftener than at home, almost every day, in fact; and there will be less chance of discovery. But I shall be glad,' he went on, 'when you allow me to end this concealment. It is a trial to both of us.'

'Yes,' she replied in her preoccupied manner, and said no more.

The crashing sound of trumpet-music came to them where they stood. 'We must return to the ballroom,' said Rupert; 'I shall be wanted for the next grouping.'

The words were hardly out of his mouth when they saw the Countess approaching, leaning on the [122] arm of a cavalier. She addressed Hippolyta. 'My dear Miss Valence,' she said, 'I have been looking for you this quarter of an hour. Here is a message from Falside which I have undertaken to deliver. I hope it is nothing unpleasant.' She held out her hand as she spoke, and Hippolyta grasped the note that was in it.

'My father's writing,' she said, as the superscription caught her eye. She opened it and moved towards the light. The others waited. It was a very brief message apparently, for she had read it through in an instant, and turning to Rupert, said, 'I must go home at once. My father is there, and thinks he may have only a few hours with me.' She stopped as if uncertain, looked from the Countess to Rupert and back again; but Karina would not move. It was impossible to say a word more, to bid the artist stay till she had seen her father, or go as they had arranged previously. The note was urgent. Andres had come with the pony-chaise, and she must leave the future to chance. 'Good-bye, Mr. Glanville,' she said. 'You will have to invent a lady of the lake for the Passing of Arthur,' and she offered him her hand, which he clasped fervently. But he would accompany her to the door. Madame de Lutenieff went likewise. They were fated not to speak in private, it seemed. Messages were left for the Earl and Lady May; a second time their hands joined; Karina gaily waved her fan, and the carriage drove off into the moonlight night.

In less than twenty-four hours Rupert, convinced that safety lay in flight, had left Trelingham and returned to his house in town. He could wait there for news of Hippolyta.

CHAPTER XX WAS NOT THIS LOVE INDEED?

But a week passed, and no news came. Rupert, who had never been in love till he saw Hippolyta, and had felt that she was always near him at Falside, now discovered with joy and amazement, which gradually turned to unmixed pain, how closely she had been knit to his heart-strings. Her image was before him day and night; he consumed long hours in adding to her portrait—which of course he had brought with him—the touches that were to make it, not perfect, but less unlike the cherished original. He brooded over the words, the looks, the little loving tokens which had assured him of her affection. And he would have given worlds to see her again as on the night when, laying her hand on his breast, she asked him whether he thought that Lady May loved him as she did. But these things did not atone for her absence; they could not fill up the void. A sense of exile weighed upon him; and [125] when these first days were over, but for very shame he would have gone back to Trelingham. He thought of writing; but ought not her silence to be respected? She would hear that he had kept his word, and for the present it must suffice. He would not intrude on her privacy while Colonel Valence was at home. The resolution cost him an effort, which only ceaseless riding in the less-frequented outskirts of London, and desperate attempts at reading all manner of hard books in his studio, could support. Painting, except the touches above mentioned, was out of the question. He had not certified friends of his arrival, nor did he go near a club; his accustomed haunts were left unvisited, and he went hither and thither, like the ghost of Rupert Glanville, speaking to no one, taking no interest in the movement around him, or in the press and throng of the London season, which was now at its height. Not a soul, except the aged woman that took charge of his studio, and the housekeeper who presided over his establishment, knew that he was extant among the millions of the great city.

It had lasted more than a week, and Rupert, on a certain evening, was walking down the long dreary road, bordered with commonplace shops, the line of which was occasionally broken by melancholy-looking private houses, that led in the direction of Fulham, where his studio lay. The dinner-hour was past, and he thought of dining extempore , as his aged female called it, in front of Hippolyta's picture, which was [126] hanging on the easel. Then he would smoke a cigarette, and read or dream before the fire according to his feelings. It had been a chill day with much rain and wind. The clouds seemed to draw the night after them, and as he walked on, tired and dispirited, Rupert said to himself that he could not hold out longer, and he would write to Falside on the morrow. He wished there had been a star or two in the sky; it was one great blackness in front of him, and when he turned round to survey the road by which he had come, the dull flare of London shooting up into the heavens struck him as more dismal even than the darkness. He came to the lodge that formed an entrance to his studio, and seeing no one within, passed on and up the steps at the end of the narrow garden-path which led to it. He had the key in his pocket; but on trying it found the door unlocked. He entered, pushed aside the curtain which hung over it, saw candles lighted on the table, a fire burning bright on the hearth and sending a welcome glow through the apartment, and, rising from his favourite easy-chair—Hippolyta.

He could not believe his eyes. 'What!' he cried, 'you here, Hippolyta, darling? I am mad or dreaming.' He ran to clasp her in his arms. She drew back, but gave him her hand with a smile. He was all amaze.

'No, you are neither mad nor dreaming, Rupert,' she said quietly; 'it is Hippolyta, and I thought you would never come.'

'But you did not write, you sent me no word of your visit,' he cried; 'how could I imagine it? When did you arrive? Have you had anything to eat? What can I get for you?'

She sat down again, and motioned him to a seat near the easel. 'Be quiet,' she answered; 'what an excitable person you are! I have dined, and do not want anything except a cup of tea, which I will make by and by for both of us. You look tired, Rupert, where have you been spending the day?'

'Oh, I don't know,' he replied; 'it matters not. But are you staying in town? or how is it you come so suddenly?'

'I think you must have your tea first,' she said, 'and then we will talk about it. At present not a word more.' And she threw off her cloak and began to search for the tea things.

'You must let me help you,' said Rupert, his spirits wonderfully revived at the beautiful apparition. 'You cannot guess the geography of this place.' Accordingly, they were soon opening cupboards, bringing out the curious old bits of china in which Rupert took a certain pride, and, it must be confessed, getting a great deal in each other's way. At last Hippolyta insisted on his sitting down where she bade him, and herself arranged the low table in front of the fire. It was a cosy scene. The light played here and there on the quaint cups and saucers, brought out the gleam of the silver, and showed pictures, statuettes of marble, heavy crimson draperies, [128] and the confused mingling of carved woodwork, half-theatrical costumes, vases of flowers, painters' lay-figures, and pieces of shining armour, which made up the ensemble of Rupert's abode. Sitting there with the dark night about them, the rich folds of crimson drooping to the floor, amid a stillness hardly broken by the far-off murmur of the London streets, Rupert and Hippolyta might have fancied themselves in a world from which reality was shut out. He said to her, 'We have never been so much to ourselves as now. How still the night is! Can you imagine that London is at the door?'

'You are right,' said Hippolyta. 'We were not so much alone the first evening I saw you, when you dined at Falside. Do you remember the stillness then? But the thought of an immense city near heightens it. Ah, that first meeting! I suppose you are confident even now that you cared for Hippolyta as soon as you set eyes on her?'

'Confident!' cried Rupert; 'I know it, and so do you, although you pretend not.'

'And what of my feelings?' she asked mischievously. 'You would not, of course, allow them such a capacity for enthusiasm? You believe that I waited until you spoke, and then gracefully yielded.'

'Why, Hippolyta,' he said with emotion, 'I should never dream that ther was anything in me to call out enthusiasm. You must not drive me wild with happiness.' His countenance glowed as he reflected on what she had suggested.

She went on. 'But you are aware that I believe in the equality of the sexes; therefore, if I like, I can suppose a woman's love to be as fervent and lasting as a man's. Nay, there may be love at first sight in us too, weak as we are.'

'Do you mean, Hippolyta, that when you told me your name at the chalet you were as much moved as I was?'

'Would you scorn me if I said so? Well, Rupert, I want you to be sure of this—when our eyes met for the first time our fate was decided.'

He looked at her in great surprise, as well as delight. There was a meaning in her words that he had yet to unravel. She spoke in clear firm tones, but her eyes were fixed on the ground.

'You are an extraordinary woman,' he said, 'and you have your own way of captivating a poor fellow. If you did, indeed, care for me as much as I did for you from the hour of our meeting, it is plain that we were intended for one another. And so we are. Nothing can separate us.'

'Dear Rupert,' she said, 'you asked me why I came. Let me tell you. But promise that you will hear me to the end and express no feeling one way or the other till I have said my last word. A woman's last word,' she went on, smiling for a moment, 'you think it will be long in coming. But no, it is a short story. Do you promise?'

He did not know what to make of her. 'I promise, surely,' he said.

She folded her hands over her knees in a favourite attitude of hers, and lifted her eyes steadily to Rupert's face. He could not help feeling excited, but he kept still.

'I must begin,' she said, 'with what happened after you left Trelingham. I could not speak to you in the Countess's hearing, or I should have begged you to wait another day. It was possible that my father would wish to see you. However, you had given me your promise, and I was not surprised on hearing that you had gone. I learned it only three days after, when my father bade me farewell and I was able to call at Trelingham. They were three busy days; and you will perhaps forgive me if, in the joy of seeing my father again, I put off, or rather could find no time to write the note I intended. We had so many things to settle. I told him our story. He knows all about you; likes you, I think, and said I must please myself. As for him, the summons he had been expecting for months had come at last. He was allowed only the necessary time to put his affairs in order and to say good-bye. I do not know whither he has gone. All I know is that he will have to run the extremest risk. I must be resigned, he said, if I never see him again. It is hard, Rupert, is it not?'

She was too much affected to go on. Rupert looked at her with pitying eyes. 'Is there no remedy?' he inquired. 'Could you not persuade your father to renounce the enterprise?'

'Oh, impossible,' she said; 'I know him too well. [131] When he decides that a duty lies before him he will go through fire and water; there is no holding him back. I did not venture on a word of dissuasion; but I said, as he was going, "And so, father, you leave me alone in the world." I could not forbear saying that. But he kissed me, and answered, "You will not be alone if Mr. Glanville is true," and without a word more he left me. Hush, you are going to speak and to violate your pledge. No, Rupert, wait. This is not the end of my story.

'I felt miserable indeed when he was gone. Towards evening the cottage looked so desolate that I resolved to avail myself of Lord Trelingham's hospitality, and occupy the room which he calls mine, the dear old man. It was dark when I arrived, and the place looked strangely quiet after the brilliant spectacle of the birthday festivities, the dress ball, and the tableaux vivants . The music of the dance had been ringing in my ears incessantly till I entered the vestibule; but there, under the sudden conviction that it was all over, that it had gone like a vision of the night, it seemed to stop. I felt that you were gone. Would not an instinct have drawn you from your upper chamber, brought you from the chalet, had you been there and Hippolyta at the door? Ah yes, Rupert, you love this poor foolish maiden, and she loves you, I think. So they came out and made me welcome, and told me of the pleasures I had missed by going home; and that you, to their astonishment, had not stayed out the festivities, but had been hurried [132] away on they knew not what business to London. And then they praised the tableaux, and we were deep all that evening in questions of Celtic poetry and the significance of the San Greal. Lord Trelingham asked me when my father would come again. I told him I did not know; that all was uncertain with him and consequently with me, but, as the truth was, that he had been pleased on hearing of my new life among these kind friends, and especially that I had witnessed the glories of the coming of age.

'The change and stir were good for me. I could not have borne the solitude of Falside. But I was haunted by a vague suspicion that Lady May, who is the least friendly of them all, had looked at me askance, perhaps because she imputed to my interference your leaving the Court. I could not tell, and I did not think much of it. Next morning, as I was sitting by the window where you found me that day, —you have not forgotten?—it struck me as extraordinary that there was not one of the family to be seen. Where could they all be? They had left me after breakfast and scattered as usual; but the long absence from the morning-room was not usual, at least when I happened to be staying in the house. I began to think what it might mean. Towards one o'clock, however, the Countess ran hastily in, and— you know her way—without preface or preliminary, threw her arms about my neck, kissed me in a sort of rapture, and cried out, "Wish me joy, my dear, she has refused him." I was bewildered. "She—who?" I [133] asked. "Refused whom?" The Countess did not leave me in doubt. "May has refused my Cousin Tom," she said, and danced down the room in wild excitement.'

Rupert gave an exclamation of surprise. He remembered the fragment of conversation he had heard, when walking on the front terrace, between the Countess and Lady May. The words came back to him as they had been uttered by Karina, 'Well, then, if you do not care for him, you ought to refuse him.' Had Tom Davenant proposed to the Earl's daughter? He put the question to Hippolyta.

'You shall hear,' she answered. 'When I could get the Countess to be still and sit down like a reasonable creature, she began, without pressing, to explain the events of the morning. She had been aware, for some time, that a crisis was at hand. Every one knows, and indeed she is not by way of making it a secret, that she wishes to marry Mr. Davenant. She told me as much herself at the outset. But it appears that Mr. Davenant some two years ago made a formal offer of marriage to Lady May through her father. The Earl did not consider it necessary to tell his daughter then, and insisted on her cousin's silence till he came of age. But the young man adhered to his resolution. At the earliest moment he could, when all the guests, including his mother, had left Trelingham, he went to the Earl and renewed his proposal. What passed between them nobody of course can tell. Karina, who never quitted her Cousin Tom's [134] footsteps during those days, saw him enter the library, and half an hour afterwards heard Lord Trelingham ring his bell. She was still watching when the servant who answered it went off again to Lady May's room, and the latter came downstairs—looking very much concerned, said Karina—and knocked at the library door. It opened, Lady May went in; and the Countess, steady at her post, heard a murmur of voices, one of which by degrees became loud and firm. The conference lasted not very long; and Karina, fearful of what might happen if she were discovered lingering so near, walked down the hall and stood by the entrance, pretending, as she told me, to be looking at the weather. She heard the door open again, and Lady May came with hasty footsteps along the hall. Karina turned as she drew near. Her cousin's face was hot and flushed; she looked angry. On seeing the Countess she paused, hesitated, and struck, as it would appear, with a sudden inspiration, walked over to her, and said, "Karina, you may marry Tom when you like. I will never marry him." These were her very words. "Have you told him so?" the Countess inquired. "I have told him in my father's presence; and now I hope there will be an end of this." Karina stayed to hear no more. She came on the instant to find me, whom she supposed to be in the morning-room; for, as she said, a joy that one cannot communicate is not worth having. And besides —.' Hippolyta looked about and stopped in her embarrassment. She did not see her way to continue.

'Yes,' said Rupert, 'and besides? What other reason had she?'

Hippolyta heaved a sigh. 'These are curious confessions to make,' she said. 'You must know then, Rupert, that the Countess wanted to thank me for my share in the transaction. My share? I asked her what it had been, and she told me. I felt ashamed while she spoke. That Russian lady was born to make mischief, as you will grant when I tell you about her.'

'I grant it already,' said the artist; 'she is cunning and unprincipled.'

'Cunning, certainly,' replied Hippolyta; and she rehearsed the conversation which had taken place at Falside between herself and Madame de Lutenieff, delivering, as she judged to be expedient, a round unvarnished tale. Rupert was very angry; he saw now that his suspicions had been well founded. This woman would have set Hippolyta and Lady May at daggers drawn to achieve her purpose.

'She came to thank me,' said Hippolyta, almost in tears, 'for the admirable way in which I had played my part and stirred Lady May to jealousy, not only during the week before the ball, but on that evening. My sudden departure, followed by yours next day, she called a master-stroke. I could hardly find words, but I assured her that it was pure accident which recalled me to Falside. "Accident or design," she replied, "it could not have happened better. My Cousin May has been ever since in a state of the [136] deepest melancholy, and all idea of rewarding Mr. Davenant for his great kindness in proposing is at an end." I had nothing to remark on that point, and was silent. But she would not let me alone. She congratulated me on my philosophy, wished she were as detached from the world herself, and assured me I had done an excellent thing in helping Lady May to follow the path of affection. Her conclusion was, "She will now marry Mr. Glanville, and they will live happy ever after. And, my dear Hippolyta, it will have been all your doing." Oh, how can one woman stab another in this deliberate way!'

'Women of the world, as you call them, Hippolyta, are capable of everything,' said Rupert; 'they have no heart, or have gambled it away. And so, May Davenant is to marry me, whether I like it or no. I wonder what that lady herself thinks about it.'

'You will not wonder long; I am coming to that,' she answered very seriously. 'Karina had only just finished speaking when Lady May came in. I had often thought her a person of violent temper, but she was now in a state of excitement such as I had never witnessed. Her eyes blazed. "Karina," she said, "this is a matter on which the less secrecy is kept the better." And with that she turned to where I was sitting. "I daresay you have heard, Miss Valence, from my cousin here what has just taken place?" I murmured assent. "Yes," she said, "it is true. I have refused Mr Davenant once and for all. It is not, it shall not be a secret. You may mention it to [137] whom you please. Mrs. Davenant will hear, no doubt, that the offer has been made, and then all the world will know of it." Karina interrupted her. "If it depends on Tom," she said, "Mrs. Davenant will not be any the wiser. I am sure he will not tell her."—"Well, it is all one to me," said Lady May; "my cousin means well, but I am not going to be importuned. I will not stand in your way," she said to the Countess with a forced laugh. "Thank you so much," answered Karina in her mocking tone. "As I was telling Miss Valence, we shall read one of these days that a marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between Lady May Davenant, only daughter of the Earl of Trelingham, and the distinguished artist, Mr. Rupert Glanville."

"'You have been telling Miss Valence that?" exclaimed her cousin, drawing a step nearer. The Countess shrank away. "Well, why not?" she asked, still bent on making mischief. The reply seemed to stagger Lady May. "Why not?" she echoed absently. And then recovering herself, she looked straight into my eyes. "Would it make any difference to you, Miss Valence, if I did?" she asked in her loftiest manner. My heart sank within me. "You are the best judge of your own actions," I replied, showing as little feeling as I could. "Then you are not in love with Mr. Glanville?" was her question, full of mockery and malice. Karina looked on, amused. I rose; I would not wait to be further questioned. "Make my excuses, please, to Lord Trelingham," I said, "and [138] allow me to wish you good-morning. This is the last time I shall trouble you, Lady May." I was going to the door when the Countess interposed. She begged me not to take offence; it was her fault, her cousin meant nothing. Lady May stood perfectly silent, and I thought would not speak. But she felt, I suppose, that she had been guilty of a breach of good manners, and that it was due to herself to tender an apology. When she saw I was bent on going, she stepped forward and begged my pardon. She had not meant to be rude. She was excited; would I forgive her? I thought of the Earl, who had been so kind to me, and how my departure at that moment would make a reconciliation between the families more impossible than ever. And if I went, would it not seem a confession that you and I—? In short, I did violence to myself and answered meekly. But I could not stay, as they wished me, beyond the next few hours. My head ached, and I was, you may imagine how wretched. Mr. Davenant did not appear at luncheon. He was busy, the Earl said, preparing for his journey to Foxholme, where he had to meet the tenantry next day. The Countess was radiant, Lord Trelingham serious, Lady May sullen, like one that cannot forgive herself for seeming lowered in the eyes of a friend. I was glad to get home. I shall never, never visit Trelingham again.'

'Nor I,' said Glanville; 'I will acquaint Lord Trelingham by the next post that our engagement is [139] ended. My poor darling, how you must have suffered!' He would have taken her hand; but Hippolyta, who had drawn closer to him in the excitement of her narrative, stood up, and walking towards the fireplace, said, with her eyes averted:

'But why did I not remain at home? You do not ask me that. Oh, no,' she exclaimed suddenly, 'give up your engagement at Trelingham you must not. Honour is honour.'

'It will be only paying a forfeit which I can well afford,' said Rupert, 'and I cannot look Lady May in the face again after her atrocious behaviour.'

'Yes, you can,' said Hippolyta, speaking in a wonderfully quiet tone.

'How is it possible?' he asked. 'Do you think I could go on living at the Court while you were in a kind a exile at Falside?'

'I shall not go back to Falside,' was her reply.

'What!' said Rupert, astonished; 'not go back? Have you any other plan? What is it? tell me.'

'Then be quiet, as you promised,' she said; and with great seriousness, always keeping her eyes averted, she went on, 'Why do you think I came here tonight? To inform you that Lady May had hurt my feelings? No, not exactly. When a girl like me has lost father and mother, when she is her own mistress, alone in the world, without any one to look to for light or guidance except the man she loves, what do you suppose she ought to do?' Her voice sank to a whisper as she ended.

Rupert sprang from his chair. 'My darling Hippolyta,' he cried, 'do you mean to say that you will marry me at once?'

'I mean,' she said, as he took her to his bosom, 'that I am yours in life and in death.'

CHAPTER XXI THE ORDINANCES OF THE GODS

There was silence in the room. They could neither of them speak or move in the flood of happiness which came over them. Hippolyta was the first to release herself, and go back to her former attitude by the fire. She waited for him to take up the conversation.

'Then,' said Rupert with a pleasant laugh, sinking back into the chair by the easel, 'I must get a special license as early as I can—to-morrow morning, if possible.'

Hippolyta gave him a curious smiling look. 'Who grants you the special license?' she asked.

'I don't know, I am sure,' he answered. 'I am not learned in these things. I fancy it is the Archbishop of Canterbury.'

'Do you believe in the Archbishop of Canterbury?' she inquired, still smiling. He, too, smiled at the question on her lips at such a time.

'Not a great deal,' he said; 'but he is an institution, [142] a piece of antiquity. And we cannot be married without him.'

'Can we not?' she said. 'What a strange thing that would be! No, Rupert, we do not want the Archbishop's license, or any one else's.' The words sounded strangely on her lover's ear.

'You are excited, Hippolyta,' he said, 'and it makes you talk in a fanciful way. I care nothing for the license. We can be married by banns, in the old fashion, if you like; but it will take more time, and you will have to be called by Mr. Truscombe in Trelingham Church.'

'Not in any church,' was her firm reply. 'Listen, Rupert, I see you do not understand me yet. I love you with my whole heart, but I have not ceased to be Hippolyta Valence. Do you know how I have been brought up? I am not a Christian; I have no religion, except to follow my conscience; to live the highest life and help towards realising the noblest ideas. My father has taught me that all religions debase them. And do you imagine it would become my father's daughter, at the very moment he is staking his life in the battle for the future, to stand at a Christian altar and submit to institutions which he and I have renounced? I will never do such a thing.'

'But my dear, dear Hippolyta,' he cried in amazement, 'it is only a ceremony. It can do you no harm.'

'Yes, it can do me this harm—that I shall be acting a falsehood. I have neither regard for the [143] Christian ceremonies nor belief in the creed they express.'

'But surely you believe in the sacredness of wedlock.'

'I believe in the sacredness of love, but I will have no priest to utter his superstitious formulas over my head, or recite legends to which I must hearken while despising them, or pretend that you and I may not consecrate our hearts to one another without his leave. Nor will I submit to any civil ordinance. To bind myself before man would be more foolish even than to take an oath in the presence of a God I do not believe in. Why should you care, Rupert? You think really as I do; and yet you are the slave of old customs. Are we not alone in the world, simply given into each other's hands by nature and destiny? Can a priest bid you cease to love me, or change our feelings? Here is the marriage of true minds. Can he allege an impediment against it?'

Her beauty and eloquence of attitude while she spoke were extraordinary. Rupert could not take his eyes off her. A deep crimson dyed his cheeks; there seemed to be a singing in his ears, and a tremor of emotion ran through him which all his efforts were powerless to control. He felt himself choking. What, what demon, at once persuasive and malignant, had thrust Hippolyta into this frightful danger? How, good heavens, had she been so foolish, so innocent, as to confide herself, at such a time, under such circumstances, [144] to a man who was passionately in love with her, casting away like an unsuspecting child the protection with which society girds about maiden honour? 'Oh,' he murmured, sighing heavily and turning away his eyes with a violent effort, while he set his teeth and grasped the arm of the chair into which he had flung himself, 'oh, to pluck this rose, this sweet, pale rose, breathing out love and passion! Oh, pale, sweet rose, to be trampled in the mire, its leaves rent, its fragrance gone, and I to be such a villain!' He would not look into those kindling eyes again. But the fire in his heart, how it surged, how it ran through his veins! It was the hot lava fire of temptation. No, no, he must not yield. 'How did you dare to come, you mad, impulsive child?' he cried, still choked with emotion.

'Dare to come?' was her quiet answer. 'Dare, Rupert? Not come to you because I dare not? Why, what risk am I running? Rupert will not harm me.' Her voice was low and clear; it never trembled.

'Not Rupert,' he said huskily, putting down his rebellious spirit with a firm hand; 'not Rupert, but the wildness in him, the passion you have so cruelly, so thoughtlessly—' He would not continue. Better not dwell on it. One moment of weakness and they were lost. He must be calm, find arguments against his own tumultuous feelings, against her innocent but most fatal delusion. But what reasoning could avail? She did not comprehend what she had been saying, what her principles meant, into what a [145] net she had cast herself. To her the world was utterly unknown. He could not reason as with one who would understand his half-words. Could he urge the example of society? She would laugh it to scorn. Custom, usage, respectability, how was he to make them avail where education had taken their value from them? There was no argument there. At last he exclaimed:

'But, Hippolyta, for my sake, darling; to please me, will you not do like the rest of the world? You shall be free as air afterwards. I have never given a thought to your religious views. You learnt them from your father, and it is not for me to say I know more about such things than he does. I was brought up in the ordinary way; I took my own line when I became a man, as you know. My friends would tell you, very likely, that I had not much of the Christian left in me, nor do I suppose I have. But some points we must observe till the world changes.'

'My world has changed already,' was her rejoinder; 'it has ceased to be the world of lying conventions and foolish worn-out antiquities. It is the world of truth and honour and love. If I could not promise to be faithful, if I were not sure of my own heart and of yours—'

'How can you be sure if we are not married, Hippolyta?' His voice trembled again. He could hardly continue. 'Might I not do as other men have done—be a scoundrel and desert the woman I had pretended to love? Where would be her remedy?' [146] He shook with excitement and the effort to keep it down.

Hippolyta fairly laughed. 'And do you think the Archbishop's license would give her a remedy? What a charm for broken hearts! Why, it would be a more powerful love-philter than Tristram and Iseult drank together on their fatal voyage.' A slight pang of jealousy shot through her; she could not forget the tableau in which Rupert and Lady May pledged their love on the evening of the ball.

'My dear child,' said Rupert, in his exasperation, 'you argue like a woman. It is not a question of feelings but of rights.'

'I argue like my father, who has often told me that the great wrong on which all modern institutions are founded is the divorce between feeling and right.'

'But he married Lady Alice. He submitted to the social ordinances.'

'He was young then, and his principles were not fixed as they afterwards became.'

'And your mother? a man that marries twice must surely believe in matrimony.'

'I cannot tell,' said Hippolyta, musing, but not, as it would seem, convinced. 'There was in the union of my father and mother all the sacredness which you, and I no less than you, prize in wedlock. But whether they went through civil or religious forms I never learnt. I do not think they did.'

Rupert, in spite of his large-mindedness, felt the shock. 'And is it possible, then, that your mother [147] was not married?' he exclaimed, with growing indignation against Colonel Valence.

'Quite possible,' she answered in a tranquil voice; not married as men speak who cling to the conventional. But she loved my father, and had no eyes for any one but him till the day she died.'

'I see, I feel,' he said, being utterly baffled, 'what an influence education has had on you. I am at a loss what to say. You are in the wrong; you do injustice to that highest nature you hold in veneration; and still, these principles are so novel I do not know how to cope with them. Oh,' he cried, in a tone of vehement desire, 'I wish Ivor Mardol were here. You could not resist him.'

'I do not believe he would take your side,' she answered; 'the side, I mean, which you are in vain attempting to defend. He is no disbeliever in the golden age.'

'Am I, then?' asked Rupert.

'It would seem so. You cannot imagine that two hearts, the most attachable that ever were, will be true to one another unless society—and such society! —clamps them together with iron bands. Ivor Mardol would rebuke your want of faith, not my trust in you. Come, Rupert, dear,' she went on, facing him now with her sweet and frank expression, 'let the soul of the artist within you burst these conventions, and float with me into a happier air. The old world is dying; it is nearly dead. Cannot you hear the rattle in its throat; these inarticulate gaspings of rites [148] and ceremonies, the meaning of which was emptied away before you and I saw the light? We are young; we have learnt how much of what people say they believe, and only say it, is false to the heart's core. What concern have we with effete aristocracies, obsolete religions, childish betrothals with ring and book in the sight of the profane multitude? The infinite expanse of the future lies before us, the possibilities of to-morrow. It has taken many a brave life to win this fair inheritance—the poets, the dreamers, the wise men and women who have not dreamt merely, but have begun to realise what they dreamt. On which side will you take your stand,— with the old, tyrannical, foolish, helplessly cruel past, or with men like Ivor Mardol and Colonel Valence, with women like—yes, I dare to say it—like Hippolyta? You do not know the consequences of one false step in a girl brought up as I have been to act and speak the perfect truth. Were I to do as you bid me, to go with you before priest or registrar, I should degrade myself beyond redemption. This, Rupert, is the woman's protest against the old bad order, her martyrdom if you will. It is for man to renounce honours, wealth, glory, the power which involves dominion over the weak, and is founded on their weakness. What can a maiden renounce? I will tell you. Do not shrink if I say it, conscious of the unsullied life I have led and the innocent love that is beating in my heart. Rupert, she can renounce respectability.'

He had listened like one amazed. She spoke with burning eloquence, and her eyes were bright and clear as she stood before him, her countenance glowing with enthusiasm, while with the fervent words her bosom heaved and fell. Rupert, in a taking of love and anger, was almost beside himself.

'Good heavens, Hippolyta,' he burst out, 'do you want to drive me distracted? Was ever such a situation? You do not in the least understand your danger or mine. Child, child,' he said, his face darkening, 'why have you dared to put yourself thus in the power of another, even though that other be Rupert? I will not harm you. God forbid. But see to it that you tempt me no further. Go, my dear, forget these wild and hurtling words. Let me take you to your hotel.' he looked round as he spoke for his hat and overcoat.

She laughed, no whit displeased. 'You must find my hotel first,' she said. 'I have no hotel.'

'Where is your luggage then?' he inquired.

'I brought harldly any,' she replied; 'what there is I left at the railway station. I came here direct.'

'Well, well,' he said uneasily, 'there is no harm done; we can call for it, and then drive you to some hotel.'

She did not stir from her place. With a long, earnest look she examined the expression of Rupert's countenance, where he stood by the door. He was impatient; he could think only that she ought to have an address in London and not be wandering [150] about like this. He would devise some means of persuading her to be reasonable to-morrow, when she had got over the excitemtnt of the discussion. While he was in this mental confusion, she walked slowly across the hearth and came to him. He turned round. They were again face to face.

'Rupert,' she said, 'I am here. I am your wife. We have acknowledged our mutual love, which has no rival nor can have a successor. Take me as I am. I love you. I do not fear you at all.' She looked marvellously beautiful as she stood before him waiting.

'I will not,' he cried, 'so help me God. I am willing, nay, eager as love can make me, to marry you. But, Hippolyta, have pity on yourself, have pity on me,' he said in an imploring voice; 'see, I go down on my knees to you,' and he fell sobbing at her feet. She stooped and touched his cheek with her ungloved hand.

'No, Rupert,' she answered, weeping; 'I have my code of honour as you have yours. We will be married my way or no way. You must choose.'

'Then,' he said, rising with a groan that tore his heart, 'it shall be no way. I cannot, I will not dishonour you.' He did not dare to lift his eyes to her face.

'It is all over then,' she said in a faint whisper. 'Good-bye, Rupert. I have staked and lost. No matter, no matter. Let me go.'

'Go where?' he said, detaining her. 'You shall [151] not walk alone at this time of night through the London streets. I will accompany you as I proposed.'

Her look had a strange meaning in it. 'Let me go,' she murmured; 'I am not afraid of the streets. I know my way.'

'But you said you had no hotel.' He was resolved to go with her.

'I shall not need an hotel,' was the answer she made. She drew her cloak about her shoulders and attempted to pass him. Rupert had drawn the curtain aside which hung over the door, but he held the handle fast.

'What are you going to do?' he said.

'Do you imagine,' she replied, 'that I have spent all my resources in asking you to accept my love? When I left Falside I had reckoned with the contingencies of our situation. I knew what I was risking. My reputation —as you call it,—has not a visit like this, under these circumstances, blown it to the four winds?'

'Who saw you come in?' he said eagerly. He felt the force of her words.

'Your servant and her children,' she said. 'I gave no name, but my veil was up. They will be able to describe me.'

'I can trust old Martha,' he answered, 'if there was nobody else.'

'But you cannot trust me,' replied Hippolyta. 'I have put myself into your hands, and my character is dead. I have killed the Miss Valence who was, or might have been, a respectable member of society. [152] Can I be the same to you as if this had not taken place?'

He thought she was relenting. 'You can, you can,' he exclaimed with a feeling of relief. 'It matters nothing what you have said or done to-night. Let us forget it, darling; forget it, my own worshipped Hippolyta.'

'You mistake me still,' she said. 'I am not come to act a play. What I have done is a part of myself. If you take me with it you renounce the social ordinances which, instead of uniting, have almost separated us. But if you do not—' There was a long pause, or else the minutes stretched out in this spiritual agony.

'And if I do not?' Rupert said slowly, as if coming to himself out of a sleep.

'In that case, to-night will be the last of Hippolyta Valence,' she answered.

'Do you mean that you will—?' He could not finish the sentence.

'I mean,' she said under her breath, 'that I know my way to the river. I will go whither so many of my poor sisters have gone before me; and neither you nor any man shall hinder it.' And again she endeavoured to pass him.

'Stand back,' he cried out; 'you shall not go. You have lost your senses.' And even as he spoke the thought of uttering such harsh language to the woman he loved smote upon him. 'Dear, sweet Hippolyta,' he said, taking her hand, 'forgive me. [153] It is I that am mad. But do not be angry. Give up these wild thoughts. Be persuaded. I will do anything.'

'Anything but what I ask,' she said. 'Oh, I do not mind your hard words. But enough. We have seen the last of each other. We must go our several ways.' She was calm and resolute. Her eyes had gathered a brilliant light in them during the moments of their altercation; and Rupert, as he looked at her, thought she was the woman to do as she had said. If he let her go the river would be her restingplace ere morning.

Then began a fresh scene of earnest, impassioned pleading on his part and resistance on hers. He begged, he entreated, he grew angry and gentle by turns, he employed the most caressing language and all the resources of the lover's art, not as many a lover has done, to overcome the scruples of modesty, but to save this high and noble spirit, noble in its very aberrations, from shipwreck. He might as well have poured out his eloquence to the stones of the street. Hippolyta heard it all unmoved. She said once, 'I do not scorn you for trying to change me, but I should scorn myself if I yielded. Tell me that you cannot love me unless I submit to this mockery and I shall understand. But, even then, I will not give in to you. Can you tell me so?'

'No, Hippolyta,' he answered, 'it would not be true. This is no question of love. Whatever you become I shall feel the same towards you that I did [154] when you dawned upon me like a heavenly apparition in the Hermitage.'

'If our love remains,' she said, 'what can the rest signify?' and the contest broke out again. But it was not equal. Hippolyta, as she truly said, had thought over the contingencies of that strange situation, and was prepared for the worst. Her life, spent with those who were ever exposing themselves in the field or ready to mount the scaffold, had familiarised her with the idea not only of self-sacrifice, but of failure which has death for its price. The risk, she said, must have been undertaken some day, why not now? To persuade Rupert in cold blood, or by the use of arguments, was, she knew, impossible. One weapon which not even he could pluck from her hand, one last resource there was which left the man and woman unequally matched—and the man inferior. She told him plainly. 'Do not be a tyrant,' she said, 'and compel me to die. But this be sure of, only by yielding to my wish can you persuade me to live. Make the trial. Open the door and let me go, or quit me and do not return. In twenty-four hours you will hear news of me.'

What could avail against such resolution? Rupert said to her at last, 'Will you stay here and do yourself no harm to-night, if I leave you? Give me time to reflect. You may have changed your mind in the morning.'

'I shall not change my mind,' she said. 'But I will stay here on these conditions. Promise me to [155] come back as early as you can to-morrow and to look upon me henceforth as your wife. Promise, Rupert, and I will wait quietly. But if you do not return, or still insist on what I cannot yield,—you know the rest. My dear,' she said softly, 'you have to deal with a loving woman. Trust me and let us be happy together. Do you promise?'

'I promise,' he answered in a low voice.

It was like consenting to death. The room swam before him. But when Hippolyta heard the words her countenance lightened wonderfully. She became a naive child instead of the resolute woman that had been pleading in that desperate and unparalleled cause. 'Now go,' she said, offering him her cheek to kiss. He touched it with his lips, almost shudderingly. She held the door open. He bethought himself for a moment before going, and said, 'You will find the means of making a fire in the morning, and getting a morsel to eat. Lock the door. Don't answer any one till I come. I will look in at the lodge as I go past and tell Martha she need not trouble about the place; that I have left it safe, and do not want it disturbed at present. You must not be surprised, Hippolyta, if I am delayed till towards noon. There will be many things to see to. And— and you will not do anything I am away?'

'Keep your word,' she answered, 'and I will keep mine.'

He fled down the steps and along the gardenpath. He heard the key turn in the lock. He did [156] not venture even to glance back, but ran straight on, gave a quick, brief message to the woman who came out as he passed, and with head down and rapid step took the road towards London. More agitated he could not have been had he left a murdered body in his studio. It was worse, he said to himself; he had murdered a soul. 'And yet not I, not I,' he murmured repeatedly, 'it is her father that has ruined her with his principles.'

He walked on and on. The winds were still up, driving the clouds through a beautiful stormy sky in which the moon shone bright at intervals. It had ceased raining and the streets were dry underfoot for the most part, though here and there a pool of water gleamed on the roadway, and all the scene reminded one of a chill March night rather than the end of May. There was a high-strung feeling in the atmosphere which harmonised with Rupert's excited mood, and gave him a vivid sense as though in comparison he had never lived till now. What had he promised? Was there any retreat from it compatible with honour, nay, with the existence of Hippolyta? And this, then, was the realising of all his hopes! Oh, bitter mockery! He went over the debate again and again. Why had he not urged this, why forgotten that? He had been too tame, too yielding; he might have pleaded more earnestly for himself. Hippolyta was generous, and if he had insisted on the injury to his own sense of rectitude, to his reputation, which had never endured a stain, to his happiness, [157] which must be sacrificed if they were to live in concealment or come forth with shameless foreheads before the world,—but what did it avail? The hour was past and his word given. To-morrow? It wanted how few moments of the day when he and Hippolyta should become outcasts from the world in which he had been brought up? And he was helpless, bound hand and foot by the devilish teaching of Colonel Valence. Who would have believed yesterday that the dreams of a revolutionist were henceforth to shape his life for Rupert Glanville? He had been content to dwell in the regions of the ideal; to put aside these questions, tossed to and fro by politicians and reformers, as vulgar, unworthy of the artist's consideration, fit only for debating clubs. And they had broken into his retreat and were clustering about his hearthstone. On him—him—Rupert Glanville, the crisis of the modern world had fallen.

'Why should it not?' he said with a bitter laugh as he hurried along. 'Am I so unlike the rest of men? Valence was right. The world is a universal shipwreck, and my turn has come to be thrown out on the waters. Every one must cling to his own spar. But how strangely, good God, how strangely it has come about! Hippolyta, so young, so innocent, incapable of hurting the tenderest thing,—all feeling, purity, and affection,—must Hippolyta be lost, and I be the instrument of her undoing? It is too much.'

He stopped and gazed up and down the silent [158] road, bewildered to such a degree that he knew not whether to turn back and try to persuade Hippolyta, or to leave it all to chance and depart by the next mail for the Continent. He could be ready in a few hours. He was now nearing home, and terribly fatigued with the excitement and exhaustion of the day, for he had eaten nothing since noon. To pack a portmanteau, write a farewell note, telling Hippolyta that a bad promise ought to be broken and he could not bring himself to do her wrong, then to drive to Charing Cross and catch the Dover train,—all this was still possible. He had almost resolved on it, but for the memory of her resolute pale face and her steady words, which assured him that she had not been acting a part. What should he feel if she carried her threat into execution, and he learned in Florence or Dresden that her body had been found defiled in the mud of the Thames, her sweet eyes closed for ever? No, he dared not risk it. Even death would not save her now; after spending a night in that fatal studio she was to the world at large dishonoured. She had spoken the truth; in paying such a visit her character was blown to the four winds. The falling snow was not more stainless, and yet she must bear about with her the penalty of guilt.

His thoughts, as he wandered aimlessly under the fitful moon and the wild clouds, took a fresh turn. He would not go home yet. He stood looking through the railings of the Park, and studied with an absorbed [159] gaze the misty lawns on which lay a film of uncertain moonlight, while the dark stems of the trees made a solemn background. 'After all,' so his meditation ran, 'who knows? Hippolyta may be right. What is the world's marriage but a ceremony? How many of us believe in it or respect it? Should I have let it stand in the way if I had fallen in love with a married woman and discovered that she was miserable? Fortunate for me, I daresay, that I never did. Things are all breaking up; it seems as if the lease of the old world had run out and the building had to come down. Certainly it is years since I entered a church with any belief in what goes on there. Have I any reason to become its champion? None, none whatever, except a feeble dislike to be pointed at as eccentric or a libertine. God knows I am no saint, but neither am I a libetine. How could I consent to the ruin of an innocent child? But she says it is not ruin. It will be a marriage of the heart, and why should I mind? If we were on a desert island, where there was neither clergyman nor registrar, should we hesitate to marry or think ourselves not married till one came? What is the difference then? For to me the social order is of no more consequence than a panorama which I see pass by, one view drawing after it another, and none of them lasting. I cannot answer Hippolyta's objections. Oh, why did Ivor go away? He would tell me what to do; he would find a solution. Is it only inbred custom that revolts in me, or something higher and better; is it the heart which will not [160] have its affection degraded, or a want of nobility in the intellect, fettered by chains of use? I cannot tell. Who is there that can tell me?' He lost himself in the endless discussion. The sound of a distant cab hurrying along broke from time to time upon his ear; but it died away into silence while he walked hither and thither, scanning the shapes and motions of the silvery clouds and the deep rifts of blue where the stars shone faintly. Was Hippolyta asleep at this hour, or pacing the studio in troubled thought as he was pacing up and down Park Lane? Again he felt tempted to go back.

He walked a few steps in the direction he had come; then, with a strong effort, frightened and feeling a chill at his heart, like one who has heard the voice of an evil being near him, he turned again and went hastily along the deserted streets, not towards his studio, but towards the river. He could not have explained what lugubrious fancy it was that led him on, neither pausing nor looking back, nor assigning to himself a reason for the way he was travelling, but still moving, as by instinct, always towards the river. In the weird and silent light, shed by a moon which gradually drank up the clouds and seemed to grow larger and larger, he caught a glimpse of his shadow, now in advance, now moving sideways with him, now emerging from the deep gloom of enormous buildings as a drowning man rises for a moment from the waves which are to close over him again. He passed a solitary figure at the turn of a street, and could hardly refrain from asking it [161] what business took it abroad at such an hour. He heard the steady march of a policeman pacing up and down, and the echo from the opposite side of the way, with something of the guilty apprehension that dogs an ill deed; he would have felt easier had no one in the huge city been awake but himself. And still he made for the river. A fresh breeeze blew upon his forehead when he emerged from a narrow lane; he saw the vast shadow of the Abbey, and the moon resting over it; other shadows came, as it were to meet him and guide him on. In the quiet which had succeeded to the rush and tumult of a London day there was something inexpressibly awful and mysterious; something as terrible as death, for it came upon him like the cessation of innumerable lives, of myriad activities, like the lying down to a rest which might never be broken, so profound was the silence over it, of millions upon millions. And then he was standing alone on Westminster Bridge.

For that brief space of time, the river with its multiplied solemn lights stretching far away, the immense radiance of the moon quenching them in one place, contrasting with them in another, all that flood of dreary waters and still drearier memories belonged to him alone. It had no name, no associations with history, no taint of the vulgar day; it was a broad river flowing by a great wicked city down to the unknown sea. And in its deeps were the secrets of wasted lives, a vision of horror not to be explored by the boldest. Yet he would force himself to think [162] of those whom Hippolyta, the pure unsullied Hippolyta, had called her sisters, and with whom she had been willing to make her bed that night. Where he was standing, in another hour, let him but utter the word, she would be gazing her last on earth and sky. He saw her mounting the parapet, heard her cry of despair as the arches of the bridge echoed and re-echoed it in the stillness, watched her as she sprang, as she whirled through the air, as her body struck upon the rushing waters, and her golden hair floated in the light one instant, then was swallowed down into the deeps of death. Another of the pitiful sisterhood to whom suicide opens its ghastly arms, another folded in the embrace of the spectre that knows not how to help sorrow but by slaying! And was that to be Hippolyta's doom? 'Not now,' he said aloud, 'not to-night, unless I lose pity for the sake of I know not what poor forms and conventional virtues. It shall not be to-night.' He looked steadfastly down at the river, and from a great distance the whisper was conveyed to his heart, 'Not to-night, do you say? But another night may come, more desolate than this; a night when Hippolyta, degraded, ruined, forsaken, the cruel sport of passion and poverty, shall find her way hither, and looking round for one that loved her in the old time and is not near nor will come again, crying out to the silence to have pity on her, shall find no refuge but in these deeps of death. Are you willing that such shall be the end of your romance, of your loyalty?' [163] The great light reflected beneath seemed to be gazing at him.

Even as the fancy came he beheld—whether with the eyes of flesh or only with those of the spirit, who shall say?—the depths of the river lit up, its secret places opening; he beheld its slimy banks and muddy, festering floor, which some indescribable vegetation clothed and made more horrible, and the dark yellow waters rushing along, ghastly in a pale flame, which gave them a half transparency, and which illuminated that pathway of the drowned as if it were a mausoleum wherein sacrifices to the dead, or on behalf of them, were to be offered that night. He saw the multitude crowding upon one another, and again they seemed to be each in its own solitude; so that he was oppressed at one and the same time with contradictory feelings of a throng from which there was no escape save into the unlighted abysses beyond, and a loneliness where no voice came. His ear seemed to detect the sound of footsteps moving swiftly or slowly, but oftenest with the dragging gait of despair, moving from the distant city streets, from east and west, from north and south, from the ends of the earth, converging all towards the spot where he was standing,—a ceaseless, dreadful march of those that did not know one another, nor in this life ever should, but were contributing to swell one host, and precipitating themselves into a common grave. The river itself was peopled with the dead; but still the dead came hurrying, crowding, rushing with maddened steps, or [164] creeping as in a dream, along all the ways which led up to the bridge and into the flaming waters. There was no other sound than the march of innumerable feet, no outcry to pierce the ear of darkness and wake those that slept in their warm beds, oblivious of their brothers and sisters who, fainting under the weary load of life, came to cast it from them into depths where it should be found no more. He heard the steps behind him, around him; the pavements were alive with them, but the host marching forward was already enrolled in the ranks of death. And as they pressed down into the river, breathless, hopeless, with wild eyes and haggard looks, he saw the numbers of them that had entered into this sabbath of suicides rise in their dripping garments to meet their associates in crime and desolation. The multitude grew and grew; but there was ever fresh room as it moved downward to the remoter places, whence, as it seemed to him, the ascending tide was bringing a noise of the sea and of the night-winds struggling upon it. Here was the waste of the world, the human souls and bodies for which in life no room could be discovered nor a ransom given: here was a redemption wrought for others, for the happy among men, by suffering. But how unlike that redemption spoken of in the churches! For upon this no resurrection followed; it was an offering of victims whereof account was not made and whose pains had but one alleviation—that they were ended by death. Or was it possible that the great sea towards which the throng seemed to be moving [165] might prove more dreadful than the river? Had those old tales of the fiery deep, and the streams of lament and forgetfulness, any truth in them which made of suicide not only the dreariest but the deadliest of sins? What did that stony look in the eyes, what did that scared hue upon the cheeks portend? A wasted life might then be nothing in comparison with a self-inflicted death. The dark realms; the infinite shadow; the jaws which opened from beneath, in the deeps immeasurable; the grave that was but an entrance to a lower grave, which would swallow the living soul as these waters had sucked down the body, —yes, it was more natural to believe in them here, when sin and death met face to face. And was Hippolyta to join this multitude, to dedicate her purity and her young affection to the powers of darkness, turning from the glory of the sun to go down such ways into the everlasting sea, whence no bark would bring her again or any mortal?

He could bear it no longer. With these pursuing thoughts behind him, he quitted his station on the bridge, and hastily descended into the streets once more. He fled from himself, from Hippolyta, from the night, from the morning, which had almost begun to dawn while he looked into that awful gallery of the dead. He was utterly bewildered and undone. Conscience smote him on one side and on the other; whatever he should resolve would be wrong, and fatality was dogging his steps never to leave him. But for a little while, cost what it might, he must [166] become blind and heedless. He would go home, to rest if it were possible, and let to-morrow bring what it pleased.

In such confusion did he arrive, weary and chilled to the marrow, at his own house. He let himself in. The moon was still shining when he entered. Creeping noiselessly upstairs, he undressed in the light which came in at his window, and with a heavy sigh lay down to sleep. When he woke again it was broad day. A gleam of the early sunshine rested on his face; and he rose with an instant remembrance of the scenes through which he had passed.

'Rupert,' he said to himself between scorn and pity, 'is this to be the last day of your blameless life? Well, well; and what shall be the reward?'

He dressed quickly, swallowed a mouthful of breakfast, and went out. After walking through several streets, he looked round at a point where no one seemed to be in sight but the driver of a hansom cab, who was just then passing under the archway of a mews with his vehicle. Rupert hailed him, and bade him drive at his fastest pace to an address in the suburbs. It was a long way off. 'There is not a moment to spare,' said the artist as he sprang in.

CHAPTER XXII EATING THE LOTUS DAY BY DAY

The time is a month or so since Rupert's long drive out of town; the scene an old-fashioned garden, shaded largely with elm and lime, but with sunny spaces too, where flowers and fruits and vegetables seem to be growing side by side in pleasant neighbourhood. A hot July sun is sending down its floods of splendour, but little tempered by the specks of cloud which hang timidly in the sky, and are the remnant of a glorious fleece that melted into the azure some hours ago. Three o'clock is striking from the church steeple, which can be seen at some distance peering up through the trees; for, near as it is to London, timber of an honest, ancient sort is still plentiful all about, and especially on the long ascent of the main road, which within the memory of man was the High Street of a thriving village, but is now fresh named, to denote its absorption into the mighty maze of the great city. A second clock makes itself heard in a [168] second church, more modern than the red brick edifice which has served the parish time out of mind—more modern and much nearer, since only the garden wall divides it from the garden. It is a large, handsome building of ragstone, and will look picturesque when the mosses and ivies have grown over it and taken from it the too fresh appearance as if it had been built yesterday. Other houses, of many shapes and varying dates, but most of them counting their century, are within view, each with its own garden, and with rows of plants in bloom at the upper windows—for we cannot see the lower ones here. There is a quiet hum in the atmosphere as of business, which keeps the place alive and astir, but which has not overpowered its habit of retirement, of well-to-do leisure, of middle-class ease and plenty—perhaps one should rise to a higher strain and say, of refined gentility seeking to combine the neighbourhood of town with trim gardens, winding green lanes, a pathway beyond the palings over-arched with boughs like the boulevard of a foreign city, and detached residences, inherited from one's grandfather, or taken at a handsome figure for a term of years. The prevailing tone is red brick, intermingled with dense green foliage; the roads are hard and firm, with a layer of white sand just now overspreading them, from which rises an occasional cloud of summer dust. No railway station comes nearer than a mile; and the omnibuses which convey the pilgrim hither are less gaudily painted than those which perambulate the leading thoroughfares of Town. [169] Smart carriages roll from time to time up the ascent, which is now called in the street directory Bransmere Road; and their brilliant lamps, when in winter they draw up before various of these fine old mansions towards the dinner-hour, or stand waiting at half-past ten to take their occupants home again, are a pleasant sight under the trees, like the hugest of fire-flies resting motionless in the shade.

But why speak of winter on such a day? It is over and forgotten. All the doors and windows stand open, and on the road outside, which is just visible over the garden-gate, one can see the vibration in the air which is caused by a long and steady heat, and is the beginning—and as far as we ever get in England—of the mirage that works such deluding miracles in the countries of the sun. But there is a pleasant feeling of coolness in the central alley with its screen of overhanging boughs. And there Rupert and Hippolyta are walking side by side, slowly, as if to take in the beauty around. They are under the spell of this exquisite summer afternoon, when to live is simply delightful, and to be in each other's company the crown of joy.

Hippolyta speaks. 'I never saw a prettier old garden. It is full of flowery nooks where no foot seems to have trodden, places all tangled in roses and wildbrier, which some day you ought to paint, Rupert. I do not think I have thoroughly explored it yet. As for the house, I give it up. When I fancy the last door has at length been unlocked, the [170] last case of old china discovered, I find another door that I have overlooked in a corner or behind a screen, another room with curiosities enough to furnish a museum of jewellery, glass, and deep-hued porcelain. And the queer, old Dutch pictures, how odd and amusing they look! What a fairy palace to me, who have never seen such things except in show-houses abroad! I wonder you could live in London when you had this at your disposal.'

'I have not had it long to live in, remember. Nor, if you will believe it, should I feel, if I lived here, the inspiration to realise beautiful or odd fancies which comes upon me in that dark London house, or while I am endeavouring to save my life in crossing Piccadilly. I used once to think that an artist should paint with the loveliest scenes in view. But now I doubt very much whether it could be done.'

'Don't you feel inspired when I am here to be your muse of painting?' she asked with her bewitching smile.

He looked at her very tenderly. 'Inspired to work by and by; yes. But not when you are present. You send the sunlight into my eyes, and they are too full of colour to see.'

'By and by will not be long, Rupert,' she answered, no longer with a smile. 'Your holiday will be out in less than a week, and you must go back to Trelingham. How hateful! Why cannot we stay as we are, and you renounce fame as I have renounced society?' But, seeing him put on a serious look, she added, [171] 'Now, you dear boy, smooth out that wrinkled brow. You know I mean nothing except that I want your company always, and grudge every minute of it. You cannot renounce your fame; neither ought you to throw up your engagement with Lord Trelingham.'

'I will, if you wish, Hippolyta. What keeps me to it but a sense of honour? Name and fame were much to me when I had only myself to live for. It is different now. I can paint pictures to please you, or to express my own feelings, as other men write poems or achieve greatness in war. But for the public, my quondam mistress, I care as little as you do for the flowers you plucked last spring.'

'Yes, yes, Rupert, you are brave and loving. But I am not going to make a Tannhäuser of you for all that, although I may be thought no better than my Lady Venus,' and she covered her face with her hands. 'You shall return to Trelingham; but what, oh what, am I to do when you are gone? Our honeymoon is past in a moment. So long as you are with me it seems that time stands still; I do not reckon it or mind the hours at all. But what a long, long day of emptiness it was when you went up to town last week! Time stood still in another fashion then. I thought you would never come home. For it is home, is it not, this old house in a garden where you have hidden away your Hippolyta? At least, I have none if it be not.' She looked sad in the midst of her happiness. Rupert had noticed it before. Was it only the thought of parting with him? He felt uncertain.

'I wish you would tell me, Hippolyta,' he said, in answer to her speech, 'whether you were ever melancholy at Falside?'

'I melancholy! what makes you imagine it? Not in the least. When my mother lived, we were the brightest of company; and though I felt her loss exceedingly, and do feel it, I should be telling you false if I said that I was melancholy about her. It was a different thing from melancholy—pure, unmixed sorrow.'

'Yes, exactly. I think that must be very true. But since, since you left Falside, since I brought you here, has there not been a shade of melancholy on your countenance? I do not mean always; it was there a moment ago. It has come back since I began speaking.'

'I cannot see my own face,' she answered, and would have said no more. But something prompted her to continue. 'A woman, I can assure you, Rupert, knows very little of her own feelings. She wants a physician of the mind to interpret them, just as we call in a doctor to make certain that we have a fever. You ask me a question I have put to myself sometimes, but cannot answer. Shall we talk over it? Will you be the physician to enlighten me?'

'Then you have been melancholy even in the midst of our great happiness,' concluded Rupert with a sigh. 'And what have you gained by quitting the old paths? Ah, me!'

'Do not be troubled,' she said affectionately; 'am [173] I not a woman and therefore subject to fears, to fancies, to overshadowing from those clouds of ignorance and superstition which have darkened the lives of one half the human race from the day it began? My reason tells me that we are, and for a long while must remain, the weaker sex, thanks to the institutions that have made us so. When I tremble and am afraid I know well it is the inherited malady which is giving signs of its existence.'

'And is that all? or do you repent of the step we have taken?'

'Ask me whether I repent of loving you! No, Rupert, I could not have imagined in my brightest day-dreams that such happiness was in store. It fills my heart to overflowing; and when you see me cry, as yesterday, you ought to think that it rains out of my eyes, for that is the reason, and will be, if I am agitated, restless, fervent. I must learn music to calm these wild transports. Have not you and I been in the golden heart of joy these many, these too quickly-passing days? I have felt like one suddenly caught up to the sun and allowed to wander at will through its glowing realms, with radiant lights on every side, and the dark earth so far away I could hardly tell where it was. Why,' she said, laughing, 'you will make me talk allegories, unless you say something yourself.'

'But still,' persisted Rupert, 'you have not always felt the radiance about you. The glory has changed, and melancholy come in its stead. Your temperament [174] has been unequal; and once even, Hippolyta, I thought you avoided me.'

'Now you are giving me your own impressions, which may be nearer the truth than mine. It is such a strange, new feeling that you belong to another, and that the freedom of your former days will never return, is it not? Then, too, although what I did should be done over again to-morrow, if it were necessary, I am not the bold young lady you might have thought me, judging only by that night. I was bold at the time; and I daresay courage will never be wanting to me when circumstances are there to call it forth. But my resolution cost me an effort; the last part of it,' she went on, her voice sinking, 'more than I can well account for. I am sure that I do not fear death; and yet, since it is all over and past, my mind misgives me. I could not, indeed, indeed I could not have lived, Rupert, if you had sent me away. And so I tell myself when these sad thoughts come accusing me. It was not that I meant to alarm your affection; but when I considered the days I should have spent if we were to become strangers, I saw no motive for living. But I did in some way threaten you that night with what I should do, and now I am grieved over it.'

'Never mind, never mind, dearest,' he said. Their meeting in the studio was a thing he did not wish to recall; he had put it far from him, and not gone near the place except for a few hours, when he gave orders to have his pictures and painting materials [175] carried elsewhither. He meant never to set foot in it again. For him it would be ever haunted with direful memories. He went on:

'From what you say, it is partly reaction, and will go off when you are quite used to your new surroundings. Do not give way to it. I shall never blame you for the past, and you must not dwell any more, Hippolyta, on the accidents that have brought us together. If you can resolve, as I have told you with all the earnestness of which I am capable, to go through the ceremonies of marriage, civil or religious, I am here to fulfil my part. I will not torment you about it, or say a single word more except by your permission. But, at all events, should you feel regret or discomfort, you know the way out of it.'

'I do, I do,' she answered. 'You are generous both in what you ask and in what you give up. I am not melancholy on that score, and not much on any,' she continued, brightening. 'We have talked too seriously, Rupert. Is it not time to drive somewhere and teach me my way about these rustic lanes? I shall want to know them well when you are in the West Country,—a thousand miles away from me,— since I cannot follow you.'

'I will order the carriage,' he said. 'Go to your room and get ready. There is a drive along the brow of the hill which we have not taken.'

She ran up the garden with a fleet footstep, and was heard a moment after singing in her room above, as she moved hither and thither. Glanville, his eyes [176] and his heart full of love, gave a glance at her window, where for an instant he saw her dress fluttering when she passed, and went round to the stables a happy yet preoccupied man. What an inexplicable fate was his! The bright sky and summer hours, in which all things beautiful came forth to view, clad in their gayest attire, the very loveliness and wit of Hippolyta, seemed but to deepen his pensive mood. Their joy had been great—extreme; too great to last, he would murmur, when he looked on the countenance, of his beloved, and observed in it the shade of some bitter or painful reflection, which, like a change in the evening lights, was gone ere he could decipher its meaning. But his own feelings were not unmixed either. He had spoken the truth when, in the long hours of that night-wandering about London, he described himself as no libertine. The record of his life held in it nothing that men count disgrace. It has been widely believed that genius implies or requires self-indulgence, and that only the Fornarina can inspire a Raffaelle. The creed, however, is uncertain, and Rupert's autobiography would, on the whole, have tended to disprove it. I do not say that he was immaculate, that, more invincible than Samson, he had never been 'effeminately vanquished.' But if he had now and again yielded to the temptation of a lovely face, a certain fastidiousness of sense held him above the vulgar range of low desire. He was serious, enthusiastic, given to labour, well content with Ivor's friendship instead of a thousand which [177] were to be had for the asking. When love came, he said, he would make it welcome; and he waited, not impatiently, till its day should 'peer forth the golden windows of the East.' He had not been thought the worse company for a little self-restraint, although in consequence he never went beyond civil terms with various great persons in the world of art. When, as will happen, he heard the moral code expounded with that liberty which is thought to betoken a mind above prejudice, he felt little inclination to assent. Ivor and he were agreed that a man may discard the official religion, yet be under strict orders from a higher court to respect human nature in himself. He did not pretend to be an ascetic or a Puritan, but at six and twenty, he thought, there was no need to be in a violent hurry; he would not squander his youth nor drain a cup to which the great enchantment was lacking. It might be interesting to discover when and how he came upon the momentous truth that love is of the spirit rather than of earth and the senses, or by what process he had convinced himself that no warmth of affection will compensate for the absence of respect. He believed, too, in love at first sight, and discoursed wisely on the reciprocal attractions that Nature has put into hearts of flesh no less certainly than into threads of steel and amber. But he would have resisted his drawing towards Hippolyta had she not seemed in his eyes a lovely, innocent soul of which outward beauty was the fitting apparel. And now—?

I should be describing a phantasm, and not Rupert Glanville, did I pretend that when the cup which held this great enchantment, running over with love, was pressed to his lips, he did not drink deep of its sweetness. Enthusiasm was part of his nature, and he resolved to make Hippolyta happy, and himself through her,—happy as they could be in the abundance of their varied gifts, the freshness of youth, and the enjoyment of love. Putting the world out of view, dismissing every thought of the future, leaving his reputation as a man, his fame as an artist, to take care of itself, Rupert—not unlike the knight of love to whom Hippolyta compared him, but with eyes open and will determined—had come into the Venusberg and was willing to spend, not seven years, but his life to the very end with the lady of his devotion. If, on the one hand, he felt compunction for the daring step she had taken, on the other it was a dream of his earliest days to sacrifice himself to another. 'All for love and the world well lost.' Those were words he would have inscribed on his stainless shield, and counted them a consecration. Had Hippolyta required only the ordinary sacrifice which men approve, because it is cast in moulds familiar to them! But what was this new virtue rooted in something which to the common judgment looked like vice? Well, he did not dwell upon it in the first days of their life together. He shut out the judgments of society. Away from Trelingham, from London, where his letters lay neglected, in a house [179] that had few associations with his previous existence, and seeing every moment a companion whose charm grew with the increasing confidence of their intercourse, who suffered from no misgivings as to the legitimacy or the unchangeable character of their relations, but was tranquil, and modest, and delightfully original in whatever she said or did, it is easy to understand how Rupert, like a man carried out to sea upon a great wave, was unable to return upon his former thoughts or to resist the current which drove him onward. He might rue it bitterly afterwards, when the wave was spent or the returning tide had cast him on shore. But there is a strong fascination in the opinion of another when it confirms or excuses our own. Hippolyta did not move, she did not look like a being upon whom degradation had fallen. She kept in her eyes that gaze of seraphic astonishment, as it has well been termed, which, when Nature fixes it in the human countenance, would persuade us against our senses that innocence dwells within. Its light was subdued by melancholy at times; and who, with the tender feelings of Rupert, could rebuke her then? He melted into adoring pity, into a childlike devotion that knew no bounds, and that uttered itself in terms which breathed the affection, the seriousness, the playful, half-deliberate simplicity of the heart when it is touched to the core.

The house to which he had taken her seemed made for a romantic chapter of existence such as they were going through. It had belonged to Rupert from [180] the time he was at school, having been left him by an ancient lady, his grand-aunt, to whom he was very dear, though she seldom was in a state of health which permitted her to have a talkative and rather troublesome boy in the house. He had therefore seldom been on a visit at Forrest House, nor, it must be admitted, did he look forward to staying there; for it seemed to his juvenile apprehension dark and gloomy, full of uninhabited corners, and not lightened up by the extremely white face and long trailing garments of black silk, and the black lace shawls, which made up for him the impression of his grand-aunt. He liked her in his general way of liking all who were kind to him. But he was glad to be out of doors whenever Miss Atterbury would allow him to run about, and at other times to stay with the Dutch pictures and explain in his own mind the scenes which they delineated. When his grand-aunt died he attended her funeral; and he remembered, but not well, being told by a gentleman in black, who proved in after years to be the family solicitor, that Forrest House and the properties thereunto appertaining were his own, to be held in trust till he came of age. He thought little on the subject; his father's small estate, lying on the borders of Shropshire, and in a beautiful hilly region, pleased him much better than this old red mansion, nor did he for a long while understand that it brought him a not insignificant part of his annual income.

Immediately on the old lady's death it had been [181] let, furniture and all just as it stood, to another lady not quite so old. She survived till Rupert was five and twenty; but he never had occasion to make himself known to her, and did not see Forrest House for a good fourteen years. Her death left it vacant; and the family solicitor was looking for a suitable tenant when Rupert, to his own great astonishment and with a feeling of shame, informed him that he might spare himself the trouble, and that the house was disposed of. What sort of person the incoming tenant was, or on what terms he had taken the place, Glanville did not say.

On driving thither that morning he had dismissed the cabman at the door, and showing a card from his solicitor to the housekeeper, who had never set eyes on Glanville, he went over the principal rooms. They were in admirable condition, and needed but some few alterations to fit them for Hippolyta. He gave the orders at once, stating his intention of taking possession that very afternoon, and assuring the housekeeper that she should receive a telegram from the solicitor which would authorise these prompt measures as soon as he had reached that gentleman's office. She inquired the new tenant's name. He had not thought of one, and did not answer on the spur of the moment. To the housekeeper he seemed rather absent-minded; but the fact was that he could think of no other name than his own. 'The solicitor will tell you,' he said; and he hurried away. He called the first cab which he saw going down the [182] descent, and paid a hasty visit to his man of law, during which it appeared that Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm, intimate friends of his, wanted the house, and as they happened to be travelling in the neighbourhood would like to make trial of it at once. He was decisive and peremptory; dictated the terms of the telegram lest there should arise difficulties at the other end; left the solicitor's office the moment all was concluded, and on the stroke of noon entered the studio. Hippolyta was expecting him. No words passed between them except the brief sentences in which he asked whether she was ready, and what she proposed to do with the luggage she had left on arriving from Falside. It was thought prudent to take it with them; lost or relinquished luggage gives rise to inquiry; and they drove together, for the first time— these engaged lovers—in a London cab, not speaking one word as they went along. They did not even clasp hands. A feeling of some decisive event taking place, too grave and solemn for the expression of any sentiment, was in the hearts of both. Thus they set out on what seemed the interminable drive to Forrest House, and arrived about six o'clock. It was not twenty-four hours since Hippolyta had alighted in Rupert's studio.

But with the change of scene and of name— for to the latter precaution Hippolyta, though very reluctantly, gave her consent,—with this, I say, their solemn feelings vanished. The artist had disappeared; the young lady of Falside was known no more. Mr. [183] and Mrs. Malcolm, a young married couple, ardently attached to one another, never seen apart by the neighbours who observed that Forrest House had been let, and unobserved by the rest of humankind, were living a fantastic, yet a real existence, which seemed to dispense with all ties of duty or obligations towards their fellows. They had but one duty, to be in each other's company at all times; but one obligation—which they did not appear to think a burden—that of loving one another. They fleeted the time carelessly, as in the golden age. They received no letters, read no journals, received no visits. The old housekeeper had strict injunctions not to admit callers beyond the gate; and when Sunday came, she was perplexed and horrified on seeing that neither the young lady nor her husband went to church. They might indeed be Roman Catholics, and were perhaps ignorant that the Gothic edifice on the other side of the wall was of that persuasion. She gently hinted as much to Mrs. Malcolm on the Monday morning; but no, Mrs. Malcolm said they were not Roman Catholics. And during the four Sundays of their stay hitherto they had not seen the inside of a sacred building. They spent the Day of Rest exactly like the other six days of the week, in painting and singing, and exploring the old house, and rambling about the garden hand in hand, or driving among the more sequestered lanes. Only once did Mr. Malcolm go up to town; and Mrs. Malcolm passed the whole afternoon near [184] the garden-gate, sometimes opening it to look down the road, as though by looking and wishing she could bring him home a little earlier. When he did arrive she was overcome with infantine joy, and laughed and sang, and danced a step or two about him as they went up the path together. Neither housemaid nor housekeeper—there were only these servants indoors —had seen a bride so unmistakably in love. And the bridegroom seemed equally enchanted.

It was so indeed. Their attachment, sudden as on both sides it had been, like the outburst of birds in springtime under the influence of the newly-brightening sun and fresh warm air, was deep as their nature. Rupert, whose mobile temper and susceptibility of imagination added an intense earnestness to whatever he undertook, was now wrought up to a pure enthusiasm in which he felt like an actor in some great tragic movement, the dénoûment of which —as on the Roman stage when an emperor commanded— might become not acting but reality. He had lived much alone, and had acquired that turn for concealment or reserve which would have led him, without much pressing, to join in any kind of secret undertaking, provided it were not dishonourable. A secret marriage would certainly not have shocked him; and in keeping acquaintance at bay, inventing expedients which might throw them out, or making covert journeys into the blue distance, he would have been as fertile as the heroes of Dumas or Eugène Sue. But then, a secret marriage need not be dishonourable. [185] And was the loyalty which now engaged him to live under cloud of night a thing to be ashamed of? or had he not done his best to persuade Hippolyta, and could he now by taking measures compel her to submit to the ways of the world? He would not do it, he said to himself; in all but name theirs was a true marriage; and the sense of mystery heightened his passion. Great as is the force of public opinion, and in various respects more potent than ever it was, it has nothing sacred about it, and a man who chooses to live out of society, or to live in it and be wary, need not fear that his individual freedom will suffer or his comings and goings be severely scrutinised. There are so many standards in the field, that he who does battle against one is pretty sure to find the folds of another waving over him. Rupert, indeed, could not have explained to a man of the world on what conditions Hippolyta had become his without exposing her and himself to ridicule. He would have been asked in a bantering voice why he sought far-fetched reasons for what was the simplest thing imaginable. But very few would have inquired, and still fewer cared to know, why Miss Valence had accepted him. All that society demanded of Rupert was to keep his own counsel, go his way, and observe the proprieties. Whether he lived a double life—was Mr. Glanville the famous artist in Belgravia, and Mr. Malcolm the idle young gentleman at Forrest House—concerned nobody but himself. The penalty was for bringing these things on the stage. [186] And Rupert, who was well acquainted with the rules of modern society, although hitherto not called on to practise this particular one, felt by turns amused and melancholy,—amused at lying perdu in such a way when he ought to have been cultivating life in London drawing-rooms and enjoying the season; melancholy that it was for Hippolyta's sake he had put on the outward seeming of an ill-regulated life. He shrank from the question how long it might continue. He was in the fairyland of first love, of reverie and romance, of innocence which took on the colour of guilt, and of guilt which seemed primeval innocence. The world of every day might be near, but it was on the other side of the mountains which made a steep inaccessible wall between it and them. The lovers had only to forget; there came neither voice nor portent out of the rosy sky under which they roamed, or from the trees of the forest which grew up, friendly and large-leaved, around them.

No portent out of the rosy sky; but still, as we have seen, a something in Hippolyta which, like the thinnest cloud, was visible to another, to Rupert, not to herself whom it passed upon. She would be momentarily pensive, leaning her beautiful head upon her hand, with such tender, thoughtful grace as that of Juliet meditating in the balcony, while Romeo stands watching her. But she did not know why she should be less gay at one time than at another. It was a novel experience; for though she had gone through suffering in childhood, she had not dreamt sad dreams as she did now.

CHAPTER XXIII GO NOT, HAPPY DAY!

The explanation which lay close at hand, which indeed Rupert would have been almost glad to receive, that she repented of her daring, and was ready, though ashamed of confessing it, to go through the form of marriage, did not even occur to Hippolyta. It was not true. A universal nonconformist does not feel the shock of any one act which, by itself, would be a challenge to society at large. Why, then, was she melancholy? She did not know. And, like the determined character she was, she formed a resolution to shake it off. Perhaps it came from having so little to do. She had not been taught to spend her days in amusement, but in labour; and this life of silken ease did not agree with one whose care had been extended not only to the management of Falside, but to the large correspondence which she received or transmitted on behalf of Colonel Valence, and whose exercise had been riding over a wild country.

'It must be that,' she said to Rupert, as they were driving after the conversation we have recorded. 'I am much like a peasant girl in my tastes; and although these hours of talking and moving about the garden are exquisitely dear to me, they suppose habits, good or bad, which I have not acquired. You artists, I see, are indolent by nature; you get enough outdoor exercise by fancying the landscape you are going to paint, or, perhaps, by looking at one you have painted. But we poor creatures of clay must gallop over the fields, plant the trees, and mow the grass which you are content to be gazing at. Tell me what I should do, not what I should be or suffer; for I was made for action.'

'You talk,' answered Rupert, with his ironical smile, 'like a great philosopher—I forget his name— who said that action was the end of life. It is a doctrine that doesn't agree with me. The art of doing nothing demands unusual genius in this wretched country, where everybody seems to have lost the knowledge of its existence. But it is a very fine art indeed.'

'I daresay,' answered Hippolyta, who had her own small gift of irony; 'and you practise it, don't you, Rupert, when you spend every hour of daylight painting, and all the dark hours in thinking over what you are going to paint?'

'I knew how to be idle once,' he replied, 'but it was in my better days, when the first delight of inspiration made work not only impossible but absurd. [189] I should then as soon have thought of painting my imaginations as Adam of leaving Paradise to make himself a plough and raise corn in the North-Western territory. My Paradise was within. What did it matter to anybody else if I did not work? I was happy.'

'What made you work at last?' she inquired.

'I do not know. Ambition, I suppose. Or it may have been the awakening of a new faculty which the books describe as the need of expressing one's self. It is a curious law that when we have gone on thinking a certain time we must tell our thoughts to somebody else. Murder will out, and so will genius.'

'And love, too,' she said, blushing. 'You have forgotten that.'

'Oh, love,' he said, 'of course; but love is such a born babbler.'

'I was thinking of another kind of love,' she went on when he stopped; 'you must not laugh at it, although in you it has not awakened yet—that love which my father calls philanthropy! Don't you think there may be a passion of pity, a desire to help human creatures because they are human?' She seemed a little anxious to hear what he would say.

'My dear,' he answered, 'Colonel Valence is a man of remarkable character and pronounced opinions. I was not brought up in the same school. I dislike the sight of misery—at least,' he added with a smile which showed he was not serious, 'when it does not lend itself to picturesque treatment. But in abstract [190] virtues I have very small confidence. To me the human race seems too large a thing to care about. To tell the truth, I don't care about it. But,' he sad, looking at her, 'you have a motive in asking me. What is it, dear? In you these abstract virtues become a quality I can love. Do you want me to turn philanthropist? I will try, though I warn you the attempt will most likely prove a dead failure. I am no Abou Hassan, if that was the good creature's name that begged the recording angel to set him down as one that loved his fellow-men. I neither hate them nor love them. What I say to them is, you let me alone and I will let you alone. But I can try, you know.'

'It is not that,' she answered; 'I was thinking rather of myself. When you are away from me, what shall I do to keep myself alive? There is nobody to visit, and I could not subsist on visiting, if there were hundreds. You have forbidden me to engage in household work, so that will not be a resource—at least until I have coaxed you into a better mind. Reading, practising music—oh dear! what are these but the make-believe employments of a fashionable young person who knows no other way of killing time? I do not wish to kill time, but to live, and it has occurred to me that I might take lessons in my proper profession—of looking after men and women in distress.'

'But can you go about and not be discovered?' he asked, with the uncertain accent of a man who [191] would like to refuse, and yet was willing to yield for love's sake.

'Why should I be discovered? The only human being that has an interest in me besides you, Rupert, is my father. If I could have foreseen these events I would have asked his guidance. Now it is too late. He gave me no address; he said that there was none to give, and I must wait patiently for his return—if return should be possible to him. Our old Dolores will send me the message when it comes. As for others, who is there? I am quite alone, without friend or relative in the world. The change of name will be enough to guard against accidents. It would be another thing were you to accompany me, for you have, unluckily, celebrated features; and others besides Mr. Davenant might remember the portrait in the Academy. But, sir, you shall not come anywhere within reach of my poor.' She gave him a charming look.

'And will you, Hippolyta, promise not to visit houses where there is infection? I shall not consent otherwise,' he said in determined accents.

She reflected before answering. 'I do not think it is quite right to promise absolutely. How could I visit on both sides of an infected house and shrink from entering there? But since you are lord and master, I will engage never to do so without consulting you first. Will that satisfy you?'

'Yes,' he replied, 'for I shall never give you permission.' [192] And so it was settled, and Rupert turned the horses' heads towards home.

They spent the rest of the evening in making arrangements for his departure, and planning methods of correspondence. The latter was not easy. Hippolyta, as they were sitting after dinner in the twilight, looking out on their garden, suggested that Mr. Glanville might write direct to his friend Mr. Malcolm at Forrest House; and if Mrs. Malcolm answered for her husband by writing to Mr. Glanville's house in town, whence her letters should be sent on under cover, there would be little chance of detection, especially when she had mastered the new style of caligraphy whereat she was now diligent. To provide against accidents they fixed on a set of enigmatical expressions, which might be inserted in the Times if other channels of communication were not speedy enough. And, at the worst, Mr. Malcolm could telegraph from Forrest House to Trelingham Court. These young people grew merry over the difficulties in which they found themselves. It seemed an excellent, and might prove an exciting, game of hide-and-seek. They did not trouble about the distant future. One thing must be done at a time, one business put out of hand. When the designs in the Great Hall were pretty well complete, Rupert fancied he might leave the rest of the details to one of his friends. In that case they would leave England and fix their home in France or Italy. Much might depend on the adventures, in regions whither Glanville [193] could not follow him, of Colonel Valence; something, too,—the artist murmured in a low aside, —on the development of Hippolyta's character under these novel influences, and with so great a break between her present and her former life. At any rate, they would not stay in England a day longer than was necessary. None are so free as English travellers on the Continent; they have slipped the collar of their dear native habits, and their reputation, gained at the cost of some eccentricity during the last seventy years, is now well established as men and women who are a law unto themselves. The essential thing was to get quit of Trelingham and its associations. Denying themselves a longer tête-à-tête now was the sure means of making it perpetual hereafter.

But when, on the morrow, Rupert was gone, Hippolyta shut herself up in her room. She left untasted the dainty meal which had been prepared by the housekeeper. She had never felt so lonely in her life. Sitting at the window whence they had gazed out together at the fading light, and enjoyed the perfumes of the garden beneath them during the long evenings of June, she went over the thoughts they had shared, the words of affection and trust they had spoken. For one short month she had known what human companionship was in perfection; she had tasted the honey-sweet nectar, and its delight, mounting to her brain, had filled every little act and momentary interchange of feeling with unspeakable poetry. This, then, was the crown of life—to love and to be loved; there [194] was nothing beyond it, nothing to compare with it, nothing that would compensate for its loss. But why should she fear to lose it? Rupert was frank and faithful; what greater proof could he have given of his ardent devotion? He would never be false; the heaven of their love was sure. And yet, and yet, how melancholy was her feeling now he no longer sat by the window, telling her of the thousand things he knew! A few months ago he was a stranger whose life or death mattered to her not at all; now he was her world, her paradise, her god.

While she stayed in her attitude of wistful reflection, and the sky grew clearer and the faint hues of sunset died away into a steely twilight, the forerunner of the stars which by and by would rise in the summer night, she heard the sound of music, of an organ playing and voices accompanying it, in the church whose southern windows were visible from her own. There were lights within, and the stained glass, which must have looked dark to the worshippers, had now become faintly transparent on the outside, showing, although in dull confusion of colour, the forms of saints and angels, of quaint vestments and broad glowing wings, crimson or ruby, intermixed with the gold of sceptres, crowns, Gothic lilies, and other medieval symbols. It was a fantastic, unreal vision, as of life in a child's picture-book, or on a long roll of tapestry, unlike anything we see walking the world, without perspective or proportion, but perhaps for that reason appealing to a sense of dim possibilities which lurks in our severest [195] calculations and is never more awake than when we have lost what we prize. Hippolyta, still chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy, at first took no notice of the stained windows; yet the vision pleased her unawares, the medley of colours made her smile, and if it did not soothe, it distracted her. Imagination played among them and endeavoured to make out the innocent child-faces which were seen in reversed outline, yet even so preserved something of their comeliness, and grew fairer as the evening closed in about them. It was a large building, and the windows stood high between their buttresses. More and more distinct and solemn pealed forth the tones of the organ; its music rolled along the painted windows and seemed to be echoed back from the farther end of the church; while the voices of the choir, coming in from time to time, rose and fell in a slow religious chant, subdued to perfect harmony where Hippolyta sat listening,—or could it be called listening? for she heard the voices as she might have heard the winds in a forest, not heeding them, though allowing her thoughts to be influenced by their unceasing murmur. She did not know what the voices sang, why the lights were kindled, or the painted windows began to blaze at that hour. These things did not enter into her life, but they exalted and in some degree pacified her melancholy, connecting it with the grave enthusiasm of the unknown rite, with old-time memories and the sadness of the world. It seemed as though out of the darkness had risen a company, strange to her and never before seen, [196] which in language incomprehensible yet significant chanted their sorrows, their hopes, their dim aspirations, telling her that she was not alone in the troubled night. They were human beings, not supernatural visitants; but, hidden while they sang, they might have put off the grotesque accidents of humanity, its vulgar habiliments and grossness of surroundings; they were spirit-voices, uttering themselves from a heart like her own. She listened more intently, and that heart melted. Sweet tears began to flow, tears of compassion, at first for herself, and then for she knew not what,—for the grief which makes men and women desolate, for the heavy fate that weighs upon our mortal frame, for the hope that is long deferred. Her thoughts wandered away from Rupert into realms of vague surmise and meditation. It was an experience not unlike that which had befallen her on the evening of the ball, when amid the strains of joyous music one single note of wailing had brought her the vision of the suffering multitude. But in the great bursts of organ music there was nothing discordant or lightly mocking; hope and pity were blended in the enunciation of a harmony without end. She did not despise herself for letting the floods of this sacred music pour in upon her soul, as she had been tempted to despise herself during the waltz. For it seemed to her that all the sweetness was purchased here by self-sacrifice, by fellow-feeling with them that suffered,—the great article of her creed early and late. She could not have told when the organ ceased. Her mind was far away.

CHAPTER XXIV MANIBUS DATE LILIA PLENIS

When Rupert returned to Trelingham he found many things changed, nor was the prevailing tone similar to that which had struck him on his first arrival. One may truly say, with the French proverb, that love had passed that way; and though its effects were not visible on the surface, they were none the less real. Tom Davenant, twice foiled in his endeavour to make his cousin the heiress of her father's property, was gone; nor did it appear when he would return, if ever, during Lord Trelingham's lifetime. He was now in London with his mother, desperately uncertain what to do next, and projecting an expedition to South America or the Rocky Mountains as soon as he could light upon a companion. His absence, silent and shy though the young man had been, left a perceptible gap; to be with him, Rupert said, was as good as daily bread; it was wholesome and nourishing, although you could not detect a particular flavour in [198] it. But he could no longer be reckoned a member of that household. Lady May did not mention him. The Earl was equally reticent. Other guests came and went; it was not a lonely place; but among them Rupert saw none to attract him, and he was not disposed to cultivate them from motives of worldly interest. He threw himself into his task, which had been neglected for so many summer days. He was up early and late, dined by himself as often as at the Earl's table, excused his solitude on the plea that he had devoured all his leisure while away, and lived on Hippolyta's letters, which came regularly every morning, forty-eight hours after they were written. For they had to be taken in and re-addressed at his London house.

One person had remained at the Court whom he heartily wished a thousand miles off; but she had apparently her own reasons for staying. I need not say that it was the Countess Lutenieff. In former days she had taken hardly more notice of him than of 'the mechanic,' Ivor Mardol. She now greeted him ostentatiously, came with her light insouciant manner into the Great Hall, tripped about on the scaffolding to the imminent risk of her own neck, and was, in short, much in his way. Rupert had not the brusque address of some great artists; he could not be rude to a lady (unless, Hippolyta would have interposed, he happened to be very much in love with her), and he was vexed by the presence and the babble of the Countess without knowing how to [199] get rid of either. Lady May did not come so often. Her manner, too, was changed. She looked at him as much as ever, but she spoke less; and their confidences on both sides seemed to be at an end. She would stand and watch him painting. If he expressed a wish that anything, however slight, should be altered in his room, or in the hours at which the workmen came or went, though it were a passing fancy and he had not dreamt of its being seriously regarded, still the alteration was made, the wish was carried out. He felt uncomfortable; but with his sense of obligation, which would not rise to gratitude, was mingled a feeling of pity. He was quick enough now to perceive how intense and lasting was the passion which ruled in Lady May. What would happen when she came to know the truth, or, at least, as much of it as the world should ever be acquainted with? She and Hippolyta could never meet again; their paths had crossed once, and once only, then each had gone her way. And he was moving, and should ever move, on the path of Hippolyta. How would the Earl's daughter regard their union, which would of course to her have the semblance of marriage? All depended probably on how it came to her ears. Meanwhile Rupert, wholly delivered from the fancy that she had touched his affection, was so calm, so cold, and so civil, that to one less bent on conquering him the task which May Davenant had undertaken would have seemed desperate. Either he was inaccessible by nature, or the conquest was already made—by another. She did not appear [200] to think so. She was wary, attentive, engrossed, letting not a hint escape from her, and watching every expression on his countenance, every slightest accident in the day's proceedings. Rupert felt that it was so; it gave him a great deal of occupation and made existence at Trelingham a penalty. He was not likely to be drawn away from Hippolyta by such an Argus-eyed creature. But he wished there were a Hermes to send her to sleep with his magic-wand.

Among other difficulties, one, which naturally presented itself to a lover, was that of visiting Falside, where he wished to consecrate by devout pilgrimage all the haunts of Hippolyta, making his memory identical with hers and taking to himself the past which she had lived without him. Should he go or not go? It was a serious question. At length he resolved to break the ice. The two ladies and he were standing aloft on a broad scaffold, in front of that picture representing Tristram and Iseult, which as a tableau vivant had stirred Hippolyta's jealousy. Rupert, touching the burnished gold of the chalice with his brush, and keeping his eyes on the fresco, said casually, 'I think I shall ride to Falside when I have done this piece of the day's work.'

'To Falside?' exclaimed the Countess, looking aside at Lady May. 'Oh, of course, to go on with your landscape, which, by the bye, we have never seen. What a pity it is that such a picturesque little demesne should be left in the charge of a couple of old servants! [201] It might as well belong to a ghost or a dead man as to Colonel Valence, who is never at home.'

'But Miss Valence takes care of it,' said Rupert, always with his brush in his hand, intent on the shading of the chalice. He kept good control over his voice.

'Dear me!' cried Karina, now looking straight at Lady May and addressing her, 'how odd that Mr. Glanville should not know that Miss Valence has disappeared from Falside!'

'Disappeared!' said the artist boldly. 'What do you mean, Countess? Is that a term of romance for something very ordinary?'

'Ordinary or extraordinary,' she replied, 'it is true. A few days after you went to London—when was it, May?' interrupting herself suddenly.

'When was what?' said Lady May. 'I can't help you to an answer if you break off in the middle of a sentence.' She was blushing, and the plank on which she stood trembled.

Rupert put out his arm to keep her from falling, and drew her from the edge of the scaffold. 'Take care, Lady May,' he said; 'there is always danger of accident when people begin talking up in the air like this. They forget that they are not on the ground.'

'Thank you,' she said in a low voice, coming nearer to the fresco. She was angry at having betrayed her motion. 'Well, Karina,' she said, recovering herself, 'what were you saying?'

'I was telling Mr. Glanville that Miss Valence had quitted Falside unexpectedly about a week after Cousin Tom's birthday; and that she did not inform us, in the brief note we received, either of her destination or of the causes which led to her sudden departure.'

There was a certain ill-natured emphasis in these formal words which amused Rupert. He thought himself quite a match for Madame de Lutenieff. So he laughed and answered, 'I did not know you were so much in Miss Valence's confidence. Has she been in the habit of notifying her movements and their motives to her feminine acquaintance? And has she really gone?'

'We were not mere acquiantance,' retorted Karina; 'you may remember, Sir Artist, how anxious she was to be received at Trelingham. One might have supposed it was the chief object of her life. And no sooner is she free of the house, than she vanishes into space without a word of explanation either to my cousin or to me, although we were both devotedly fond of her.'

'Don't exaggerate, Karina,' said Lady May from her place near Rupert; 'you were as fond of her as you would be of a new plaything for three days and a half; if she had not gone you would have got tired and found another plaything before long. As for me, I never pretended to be enthusiastic about Miss Valence. Her wish to put an end to the misunderstanding between papa and Colonel Valence was no doubt [203] amiable. But I could not care for a young lady who held her principles.'

'What sort of principles?' inquired Rupert. He did not feel much attracted to Lady May while she was speaking. She to scorn Hippolyta! It was well for both that he knew how to hold his tongue.

'Oh, dangerous principles enough,' she answered. 'I do not know that I can or ought to describe them; but you may imagine that Colonel Valence would not teach his daughter the maxims of English society.'

'Now you are exaggerating,' interrupted the Countess; 'they were not English maxims, I grant. But they were romantic. Do you think, Mr. Glanville,' she went on, 'that there is no morality out of England? Miss Valence, my cousin, and I had a famous dispute on that subject before she went. I agreed with Miss Valence, and we were set down by Lady May as exceedingly naughty. Were we not, May?'

'You misrepresent me,' her cousin answered, 'and you are doing injustice to Miss Valence. But I have no particular pleasure in discussing her views, even if I fully understood them. I am not sorry she has left Falside for what may prove a long time. It was a dangerous and difficult connection, as I saw at the beginning. Not indeed,' she hastened to add, 'that any one was to blame, except Colonel Valence for bringing up his daughter on such a system. I am glad we visited her, and glad the acquaintance is probably over.'

'Did Miss Valence write that she should be away a long while?' asked Rupert.

The Countess replied, 'She spoke of leaving Falside and being uncertain whether she should return. It was a short note—two or three lines in haste, that was all.'

'Something connected with her father's plans, perhaps,' said Rupert; 'he is a great traveller.' It was necessary to find out whether the Countess suspected anything.

'And a great conspirator,' said Madame de Lutenieff. 'I should like to know him. What an entertaining history he must have lived through, always plotting and going about in disguise for thirty or forty years, like the villain in a play! But we don't know whether Miss Valence followed him from home. She may have gone off with one of those dark Italians that used to be seen at Falside. We did fancy, just for a moment,' pursued this hare-brained young lady—'but of course it was only a joke—that she was not altogether indifferent to—to—' she stopped and looked across at Lady May. But no help came from that quarter. Rupert felt the blood mounting in his cheeks.

'Go on, Countess,' he said resolutely; 'you don't finish your sentences this morning.' His tone of calm indifference disconcerted Madame de Lutenieff, who could not see his face.

'Oh, it was all nonsense,' she said with less spirit than usual; 'but in the country people have nothing [205] to do except to invent stories about their friends. When you left the Court, instead of waiting till Cousin Tom's festival was over, and Miss Valence went away in a hurry, I said to Lady May that perhaps it had been arranged when you were dancing at the dress ball. But don't be wrathful, Mr. Glanville,' for he had now turned round with the brush in his hand; 'I am never serious, you know, and I meant no harm.'

'Make your mind easy, Countess,' replied the artist; 'I am not likely to be wrathful over a little bit of romance, if I may apply the word as Lady May did just now. When Miss Valence left the ball to meet her father, I had no more notion that she would be quitting Falside in a week than you had. Less, perhaps. And you cannot guess whither she has gone?'

'Not in the least,' said Karina, somewhat crestfallen. She had not shaken Rupert's equanimity; nor was she further advanced on the subject of his relations to Hippolyta. But there was something else to be attempted, and Lady May's leaving the Great Hall when their conversation reached this point gave her the opportunity she longed for. With that engaging openness which, from being really a part of her character, had been submitted without difficulty to cultivation, and was now a weapon of attack and defence, she contrived to let Rupert know that Tom Davenant had proposed for his cousin's hand, but with the unexpected result which has been already chronicled. 'Unexpected,' went on the innocent Countess, 'for I need not tell you, Mr. Glanville, that Lady May has thereby [206] surrendered, if I should not rather say forfeited, the most splendid prospect. She would have been Countess of Trelingham; she would have continued to live in the home of her childhood, and to have the control of this great property. But I do not blame her, oh no,' she exclaimed with pathetic fervour; 'I can guess the reason, and I admire the constancy with which she has resisted temptation.' Her eyes, though not capable of a deep expression, were searching the artist through and through.

He answered coolly, 'I suppose the reason is not hard to guess. Lady May did not care sufficiently for her cousin, who, if I am not impertinent in saying so, is one of the noblest young men I have come across.' He was returning good for evil, and the Countess smiled. Praise of her preux chevalier always melted her.

'Come,' she said, 'let us be friends, Mr. Glanville. I see you do not bear malice. You are right in supposing that Lady May does not care for my Cousin Tom. Shall I be indiscreet if I tell you that that is only half the reason?' And her eyes gleamed brightly.

'I should be indiscreet, perhaps,' was his answer, partly serious and partly ironical, 'if I allowed one lady to betray the thoughts of another; although they do say that is a way they have.'

'For shame, for shame!' she said. 'I shall tell you nothing now, and yet you are dying to hear.' She waited, but he would give her no encouragement.

'I am dying to finish my morning's work,' at last he said. It was hardly courteous, but why would she [207] linger there? He went resolutely at his fresco again.

The Countess thought a little while before setting her foot on the ladder by which she had come up; and then, with a mischievous smile, said to him, 'I see all your ambition lies in your art. It is very natural, as I can testify, being a sort of artist myself. But should it ever take another direction, not quite so lofty, and yet loftier, come to me for information.' With which enigmatic sentence she descended to the floor of the Hall and went out.

Glanville, I am sorry to say, was anything but grateful; and his comments, delivered under his breath as he went on painting, would have astonished Madame de Lutenieff. For, though dissatisfied with her partial success, she had the witness of a good conscience, and would not have minded explaining to a female confidante the line of conduct she had pursued. There was only one rival in Mr. Tom Davenant's affections whom she feared, and that was Lady May. So long as his cousin remained single, Tom was capable of renewing his offer. Were she married, or engaged, and out of the way, Karina trusted that the young man would have eyes for her own attractions, which were not inconsiderable. She had almost convinced herself that Lady May was in love with the artist; that passionate scene in which Hippolyta had said so little and Lady May had been so vehement was ever present to her fancy; and in the hope of a further unravelling of the [208] threads she, instead of following Mrs. Davenant and her son to London, had waited for Rupert's return. It was all important that he should know the offer had been made and rejected. She would help him to one of the most accomplished and stately of brides. It was of no consequence that Lady May would have to stoop a little in order to marry him, but of the utmost that he should understand she was there, waiting for him to fall on one knee and demand her hand. The Earl would not refuse, and the great danger would be averted. So the Countess reasoned, not foolishly from her point of view. It was a misfortune that Rupert would not accept her confidence, and that Lady May would endure no reference, on her part, to Rupert. How absurdly stiff and straitlaced was the morality of English people! Even that daring Miss Valence had shown extreme reserve in their last interview at Falside, and was now departed on an errand which might have some romance in it, but would be sure after all to end, as English stories did, with perfect propriety. Karina sighed; she was not made for this dull realm. She hoped, when the time came, she should persuade Tom to live abroad; not so much at Paris—Paris was not itself under the Third Republic—but at Vienna, Venice, Naples, with an interval once in a way at Monte Carlo. The Countess did not play, but she took great pleasure in looking on while others played.

The development of the drama which she desired [209] to see at Trelingham was, however, interrupted a few days later. The Earl, never very strong, had been ailing for some time, and his physicians, after consultation, ordered him to take the waters at Schwalbach. He was unwilling to go, but they threatened him with the consequences; and Lady May, who was really and devotedly attached to her father, added her persuasion. She would of course accompany him. The Countess thought she might join them later on; and, as Glanville declared that he fully entered into Lord Trelingham's mind on the subject of the decorations, and would write frequently and give ample details of the progress of the work, it was decided that a move should be made. Thus the artist and Mr. Truscombe would be lords of the domain during his absence; but on Glanville's suggesting that he must occasionally quit the Court for other engagements, Lord Trelingham begged him to use all the freedom he might wish. It had been stipulated at the beginning that Rupert should take a fair time over the work and not hurry. When, therefore, he had been some three weeks at the Court, and his impatience to see Hippolyta again was reaching a feverish height, they all, to his infinite content, bade him farewell one fine morning. That afternoon he rode to Falside, and, winning admittance to the library, wrote thence a glowing epistle to Mrs. Malcolm, in which he rejoiced over his new-found liberty, and promised to be at Forrest House within the week.

He kept his word. Three days of unalloyed happiness passed like a flash of summer-lightning, lambent, swift, and beautiful. It seemed to Rupert that Hippolyta had subdued her melancholy. She was adorably candid and child-like, full of pretty fancies and loving conceits, reluctant to let him go, yet comforted with the hope of their union for good and all when the next few months were over. She had found occupation in gardening, and her list of the neighbouring poor was beginning to fill. Had she gone near an infected house, or exposed herself to danger? No, she answered laughingly; there was no infection within three miles. She had attended one sick-bed, and meant to attend it still, for it had gained her a pleasant intimacy. Further the story did not go. Rupert, too much in love with Hippolyta to hear all she said, hardly waited for the end of the sentence, but was bursting out, in the manner of happy mortals, with praises of her generosity and declarations of his unalterable affection. He went back to Trelingham more in love than ever; and if he did not yield to home-sickness now, it was by dint of incessant occupation.

The story which he would not let Hippolyta finish was pretty in its way. At Falside she had taken pleasure in her garden, and with help from Andres— who loved her as if he had been her mastiff, and took more care of her than she knew—the flower-beds had flourished gaily, and the wilderness above and below the cascade had blossomed like the rose. [211] It was only to be expected that she should turn to the flowers again for consolation when Rupert went away. There was much to be done in the garden of Forrest House, for it had been neglected somewhat since Miss Foljambe's death. But the more there was to do the more Hippolyta was pleased; and every morning saw her in a costume that the work would not spoil, and in gardening gloves, engaged in weeding and trimming borders, and bringing back the straggling plants into some sort of order. The variety of flowers was unusual, and among them were lilies of all kinds, with many old-fashioned bulbs, tulips and hyacinths, which had been preserved in the greenhouse with more care than the rest. Hippolyta wanted no help; but, for the rougher tasks, she might obtain it from the man who looked after the stables— a kind of miscellaneous groom and ostler, who did not sleep on the premises.

She was alone in the garden, then, one pleasant forenoon, binding up some long creepers which had trailed over a bed of calceolarias, when the housekeeper, good Mrs. Leeming, came to her with a request. Might the gardener next door speak to her? 'Next door?' inquired Hippolyta; 'do you mean at the church?' Mrs. Leeming meant at the church, if it was giving no offence. 'None in the world,' said her mistress; 'why should it?' Well, the housekeeper did not know, but some people were set against Roman Catholics. Not Miss Foljambe, to be sure; that charitable lady had a kind word for [212] all the world. And that was why the gardener came. 'Let him come now, then,' said Mrs. Malcolm, who had not learnt to tolerate servants' long stories. The housekeeper beckoned to a man that, during their short colloquy, had been standing at the gate. He came forward and took off his hat respectfully. He was a fine-looking man of about forty, tall and well made, with a clear glance in his gray eyes, and a good address. The housekeeper said, 'Now, Mr. Dauris, tell Mrs. Malcolm what you want,' which introduction over, she discreetly retired.

Mr. Dauris, thus encouraged, and still more by the expression on Hippolyta's countenance, which was invariably gentle and sympathetic when she came across any of her own class, as she called them, said that he had made bold to come, now Forrest House was let, to beg for some flowers to decorate the altars in St. Cyprian's, of which he was gardener and sacristan. 'But,' he added, 'there is not much of a garden, only narrow strips on the other side of the building, and in a shady corner down by the lane where hardly anything will grow.' He spoke perfectly correct English, without accent either provincial or of Bow Bells, and was indeed one of the many working men that know their native tongue, and are proud of it.

Two sentences were enough to interest Hippolyta. 'You would like me to give you some flowers for your church? I will, with pleasure,' she answered; 'but the garden is in a rather backward condition. [213] Look round and tell me what will suit you best.' He thanked her; and as she walked to the greenhouse, with Mr. Dauris a little way behind, she considered whether he could not tell her something of the neighbourhood and the sick poor whom she was minded to take in charge. She put the question to him.

'Yes, indeed,' he answered, 'I know most of the poor about here. But it is not exactly a poverty-stricken place. On this side, along the Hill, you will not find any. You must cross the market and go down into the small streets beyond it, which are beginning to be crowded worse than I remember them. Our own people live there mostly. But it doesn't matter which door you open; you will find suffering and sin inside. The fathers at St. Cyprian's are there day and night; and I often hear them say that they can do no good. I don't wonder at it, seeing how the people are compelled to live.'

'No, nor do I,' said Hippolyta sorrowfully. And she was abiding within these golden gates, with every luxury at command, a garden and a palace to afford her pleasure at all hours, and neither care nor trouble! How were these things to be reconciled? She must not dwell on them. It could do no good just then.

'What made you come to me for flowers?' she asked, by way of turning the conversation, while she cut the best she could find.

Mr. Dauris, taking with a smile the bunch she [214] held out to him, answered, 'I thought you might be like Miss Foljambe, who was very good to us and sent in flowers every Saturday for the Lady altar. She was not a Catholic; but she used to say that flowers were of God's religion, and could do nothing but good to anybody.'

'She was very right,' exclaimed Hippolyta, pleased with this saying of the lady in whose shadow she dwelt all day. It was like making her acquaintance, though dead. 'She was very right, indeed. A Spanish poet says, "Flowers are the thoughts of everlasting love." I will send you some for the Lady altar every Saturday; and lest I should forget, will you come to me next Saturday morning?'

'I shall be much pleased to do so,' replied the gardener, going away. 'But I beg your pardon,' he resumed, in a less cheerful tone, 'next Saturday I must take my poor wife, if she is well enough, to the infirmary'—he named one at a distance—'where the doctors have promised to see what they can do for her.'

'Is your wife very ill, then?' inquired Hippolyta. 'You did not mention her when I was asking you about the sick in the neighbourhood.'

'She has been ill this long while,' he said; 'but we are not in want, thank God. I earn a good income as a gardener—not here at St. Cyprian's,' he continued smiling, 'the fathers could not afford it; but a few doors down when you pass Church Lane. Our cottage is at the end of the lane.'

'But I should like very much to be of service to your wife, if I could,' said Hippolyta eagerly. 'What is the matter with her?'

'We call it a weak chest; but I am afraid it is more serious. The doctor tells me—however, I keep it from my wife, so please don't mention it, for fear it should frighten her—that one lung is quite gone and the other affected. She is obliged to lie down a good deal with pains in her head and back.'

'Poor thing, poor thing,' exclaimed Hippolyta; 'how sad for you both! Have you any children?'

'Two little boys,' he answered, 'and a girl. Annie is grown up, she is seventeen.'

'And is she at home? She ought to be a good help to her mother.'

'She is generally at home,' was the reply. 'She has been in service, but we did not like it for her. It was in a lady's house near Dorset Square.' The tone in which he spoke implied some dissatisfaction, either with Annie or with domestic service in general.

'Well, I am glad you have told me,' said Hippolyta; 'and do you think Mrs. Dauris would like me to come and see her?'

'Surely she would, if you were so kind; and I should like it too. But we are not in want of anything, thank God,' he repeated, 'and we would not take your time from those that are.'

'Oh, I will find time,' she answered cheerfully; 'may I come this afternoon, or will it be too soon? I could come to-morrow, in that case.'

'I will tell my wife at dinner-time,' he said, 'and you will be welcome at any hour. In the afternoon she does not suffer so much from headache.'

It was arranged accordingly. The gardener took his flowers and withdrew; and Hippolyta, roused at the anticipation of having an object for her benevolence, went on weeding and pruning with great animation. She did not know how tired she had been all this while of living like the sleeping beauty in the wood, alone in Elfland, with nothing to do, and her prince travelling in the distance or painting pictures at Trelingham Court. She ate her luncheon with more appetite, and counted the minutes till it was time for walking out. Mr. Dauris had told her how to find the cottage. It was less than a quarter of a mile from Forrest House, at the end of the rambling lane which led by the side of St. Cyprian's, and past detached dwellings with large gardens between them, into the more open country. Rupert and Hippolyta had driven that way once, but she had not observed the gardener's little house, although it might have drawn the attention of a lover of flowers, for it was embowered in honeysuckle and clematis.

She did not go there direct, but wandered about the countrified paths, under the shade of the great trees which made all that neighbourhood pleasant. Her thoughts were not sombre, as they had been. The conviction of fearless innocence, which in other days had allowed her to roam unattended, with [217] Fancy for her sole companion, was strong within her. It was early in the afternoon, and the sun and the flowers were equally brilliant, when she stopped at the cottage-gate. She saw in front of her a two-storied house, standing back from the gravel pathway, on the edge of a triangular piece of turf which represented, no doubt, a more extensive village-green, now discommoned and taken in by the private dwellings scattered around. In front of Mr. Dauris's cottage were garden-beds, abounding in well-assorted hues, and, as was evident, carefully tended. The little porch in the middle was overrun with clematis; and when Hippolyta arrived the door stood open, giving a view of the passage beyond, with its strip of cocoanut matting. The green palings matched the green shutters, made like Venetian blinds, which adorned the windows on either side of the porch. It seemed a little nest of happiness, bright and warm, sunshine without and comfort within. 'There is sickness within, too,' said the compassionate Hippolyta, as she lifted the latch and went up the bit of walk which led to the front door. While she stood there, looking for bell or knocker, a little boy came running round the corner of the house from the garden behind. He was out of breath, and stopped when he saw the lady, a stranger to him. What a pretty boy he looked! The fairest of fair hair, hanging about his shoulders in ringlets, large laughing gray eyes, a face ruddy and white with pouting rosy lips, and his little frame panting with innocent life which mantled in [218] blushes on his cheeks. He seemed between five and six, a sturdy boy, wearing his sailor's dress of dark blue with the pride which attends new clothes in children. After standing still and looking for a moment, he came up confidently. 'Do you want mother?' he inquired, 'because she is in that room,' pointing across to the open window on the other side of the porch. Hippolyta was very fond of children. She smiled and held out her hand, into which he put his own with great docility.

'I daresay it is your mother I want,' she answered, 'but first tell me who you are?'

'I am Willie,' he said. Children seldom give you the whole of their name at once.

'Willie what?' asked the strange lady.

'Willie Dauris,' he answered, with an impatient shake of his curls. 'Come in and see mother. You want mother.' He was very clear on that point, and evidently looked on a cross-examination of himself as time wasted. Hippolyta laughed, and still keeping hold of Willie's hand, knocked at the door on her right. A low voice answered 'Come in,' and Willie pushing open the door, Hippolyta followed.

The little boy, acting as master of the ceremonies, ran across the room where some one was lying on a large and comfortable-looking couch, propped up with pillows. 'The lady wants to see you, mother,' he said, beginning to climb on the couch. His mother motioned him to be still, and holding him with a thin white hand, turned her head towards Hippolyta, [219] and said in a low but very taking voice, 'Are you Mrs. Malcolm?'

Hippolyta started at the sound of the name. She answered falteringly, 'I—I told Mr. Dauris this morning that I should like to come and see you. He mentioned that you were not well. Did he say I was coming?'

'Yes,' replied the invalid; 'he told me you would be so kind. You are very welcome, very welcome indeed. Willie, get Mrs. Malcolm a chair, and put it here,' pointing to a place near the couch. 'I lose my voice almost,' she went on, 'when the pain keeps on, and my hearing too. Did you ring?'

'No,' said Hippolyta; 'I was on the point of ringing when your boy—when Willie came. He tells me his name is Willie.'

'Yes,' said Mrs. Dauris; 'he is called after his father. He is our youngest. He will be six on the Assumption. A beautiful birthday for him, isn't it?'

Hippolyta was puzzled by the expression till she had thought a little. 'Oh,' she said, 'the Assumption of the Virgin, a festival of your religion. Yes, I suppose you would like that. And are you feeling better this afternoon? Your voice is quite clear and distinct.'

'A little better,' answered Mrs. Dauris. 'I hope to be so on Saturday and to go with my husband to the infirmary. It is a long way, but he can borrow a conveyance, he thinks.'

Hippolyta, delighted with the opportunity, offered [220] her little carriage and insisted with affectionate firmness on its acceptance. She was already pleased with Mrs. Dauris, even as she had been with her husband. The light which fell upon the couch from the open window showed the invalid to be a woman of uncommon beauty, with delicate regular features, flushing when she spoke or looked at her visitor. She seemed tall and slender, so far as could be judged from her reclining position, for, as she explained to Hippolyta, she was unable to rise, much less to do any household work, that afternoon. 'The dinner things,' she said, 'are lying on the table waiting for Annie to clear them away. It is a great trial to me, for I was an active young woman, and I never thought to have suffered from this complaint. It is not in my father's or mother's family. But God's will be done.'

'I saw Annie,' said the little boy, with the brevity of his age.

His mother looked at him uneasily. 'Where did you see her, my darling?' she inquired.

'I don't know,' he said slowly, as if there was nothing more to be added. And then, after being silent for a minute or two, he chanted again in his pretty recitative, 'I saw Annie in the lane. She was talking to a gentleman. She cried. She said I was to go in. But I stayed in the garden.'

Mrs. Dauris looked agitated. Her hands trembled, and she said, 'That will do, my dear. Next time your sister tells you to come in, you must be obedient.'

Willie crept close to his mother. 'Have I been [221] naughty?' he asked. 'What makes me naughty, mother?' The tears stood in her eyes, and Hippolyta could not help pitying her. She felt there was some sad story behind; and though not wishing to indulge curiosity, she would have given much to express the compassion that rose in her heart. An inspiration came to her. With the engaging smile which so often hovered about her lips, a mixture of kindliness and pity, she drew near to Mrs. Dauris, and said:

'I fear I am taking a great liberty, but if you do not mind, since your daughter is not here just now, I should be so glad to do anything you want. Let me put the room straight for you.'

'Oh no, you must not do that,' said Mrs. Dauris, eyeing her visitor with a good deal of astonishment, but with affection also. 'You are a lady, and it is not fit work for you.'

Hippolyta was quite at home in this sort of encounter. 'Never mind if I am a lady,' she reeplied; 'I have not lost the use of my hands. I can assure you that I am an adept in washing dishes.' And without more ado, in spite of the earnest and good-natured remonstrances of Mrs. Dauris, she laid aside her cloak, drew hot and cold water with the aid of Willie, who pointed out where everything was, but dispensed as far as possible with speaking, and was soon busy in remedying the disorder she had found on her arrival. It was not a difficult task, and she enjoyed it thoroughly. When all was done she insisted that [222] the invalid should now try to eat something. There was no resisting her; and the poor consumptive patient made a better meal than she had done for a long while. When it was over they talked a little, and Hippolyta hoped that Annie might come in. But there was no sign of her, and she rose to go. Mrs. Dauris clasped her hand with fervent gratitude; Willie clung to her skirts, and was undecided whether to stay with his mother and cry, or to follow the lady to her unknown abode. She kissed the child, made Mrs. Dauris promise again to avail herself of the carriage, and went home in that healthy state of mind which is the consequence of any little effort done with simple intent, to be of service to another. About Annie, the girl of seventeen, whom her brother had seen talking to a gentleman and crying, she was, it must be admitted, curious. But her curiosity was in no sense equal to her sympathy.

Thus began an acquaintance which ripened ere long into friendship on both sides. Mr. Dauris, when informed by his wife of the circumstances of Hippolyta's visit, was at first indignant that she should have been allowed to stoop so low in her great kindness, and ended by conceiving towards her an enthusiastic respect which bordered on veneration. She was so young, so beautiful, and so unaffectedly gracious; she had such a delicate regard for their privacy, and was so timid in making advances, that in his own mind he did not know whether to call her an angel disguised in weeds of flesh, or a modest maiden whose ignorance [223] concealed from her the humility of her behaviour. She seemed neither humble nor proud; all she did was with her a matter of course. She asked his opinion about other things than flowers, played with Willie and Charlie,—the elder boy, who had been at school on the occasion of her first visit,—sat for many hours by the side of the invalid, and ministered even more effectually to her sympathies than to her bodily wants. Hippolyta was soon recognised as a frequent and favoured visitor. When her hand was on the latch out came the boys, running to greet her, but making as little noise as they could, not to disturb their mother. In the evening she would sit with husband and wife instead of spending the hours after dinner in her solitary room; and she heard many a good word from the lips of both. She loved and admired their simple goodness. They made no inquiries either as to her religious beliefs or her story; they did not even mention Mr. Malcolm's name. This was not due to suspicion; it was native delicacy. The young lady did not speak of her husband, and they would not make so free as to begin.

CHAPTER XXV NEC DIVERSA TAMEN, QUALEM DECET ESSE SORORUM

Some time elapsed before she came across Annie Dauris. But when she was passing down Church Lane in the dusk one evening, on her way to the cottage, she observed a tall young man standing close to the hedge where a wide-spreading beech almost hid him from view, and near him on the farther side a girl whose shawl was drawn half over her face, but the accent of whose voice, though Hippolyta could make out nothing of what she said, was unmistakably like Mrs. Dauris's. The young man was not of the working-class. He was well dressed and had a supercilious air; while Annie Dauris, if she it was, clung to his arm with what appeared to be the vehemence of affection or exasperation. He heard her with impatience; flung away her hand, turned to go, but, seeing Hippolyta coming along at a little distance, went back to where he had left his companion. Both of them waited, loitering in the shade with faces [225] averted till Hippolyta had passed by. It was not difficult to guess that they had been quarrelling, and were ashamed to be seen. Annie Dauris was never at home when Hippolyta called, and it was unlikely that she should have recognised in a casual figure passing down the lane one of whose face she could have no knowledge.

Hippolyta found the gardener and his wife sitting by the open window enjoying the evening air, which was warm and genial. It was one of Mrs. Dauris's good days, when she felt free from headache and could do the light work of the house. Charlie, a bright, fair-haired boy of eleven, was learning his lessons in the garden, sometimes coming up to the window to show what he had done to his father, and at other times dropping his book and looking out dreamily on the darkening sky, his imagination full of those strange fresh thoughts and fancies which are seldom written in our too elderly volumes for children. Willie had been put to bed. There was a great stillness in the air, and it had a soothing influence on them as they sat talking in low tones. While they were thus engaged the door opened, and some one came in. Mrs. Dauris looked up. 'Oh, it is you, Annie,' she said. 'We are very dark here. Will you bring the lamp?' Annie, without speaking a word, went out again and returned in a few moments with the light, which she set down upon a table, and then stationed herself at some distance from Hippolyta, in such a position that she could examine the visitor's [226] face at her leisure. When she recognised the stranger that had passed along the lane an hour since, she blushed crimson and turned her head away. She bore a striking resemblance to her mother,—the same delicate and regular features, the same bright eyes, the same slender make and upright figure. But the general expression of her countenance was by no means the same. It was ill-tempered and passionate; there was an obstinate look about the mouth; and, for the first time in her life, Hippolyta found herself applying the word 'brazen' to a woman's forehead. She could not have told the reason; was it the swelling surface above the eyebrows which made an impression as of sullen obstinacy and want of shame? But Annie was blushing now; she appeared to be feeling confusion as well as surprise. Mr. Dauris, who had not stirred at her entrance, moved his chair round, and said, 'Annie, come and pay your respects, like a good girl, to Mrs. Malcolm, who has taken such care of your mother.' Annie seemed uncertain whether she would obey or not, but with deliberate slowness she got up from where she was sitting and came forward. Hippolyta held out her hand. She felt for the girl. Annie returned her glance suspiciously, but did not refuse the offered greeting. 'You have never seen my daughter before,' said Mrs. Dauris, 'but I daresay you would have known her in the street if you had. William says she is so like me when we first married.' There was much affection in the mother's voice; not anger or coldness, which, [227] under the circumstances, might have seemed more natural. Hippolyta did not know what to reply. But with as much gentleness as she could command, she answered, 'No, I never saw your daughter till this evening. But you are right in saying I should recognise the likeness. I did so at once when I was on my way hither, and Annie was walking outside.'

The girl looked frightened, and did not speak one word, waiting for the end of Mrs. Malcolm's revelations. What might have been the consequence had Hippolyta gone on with her story it is impossible to say. She judged it, however, expedient not to add anything. They knew their daughter's habits, as was evident from Willie's exclamations on the day of her first visit; neither did it become her to cast a slur upon conduct which, even if it had no justification, in some particulars might resemble her own. She contented herself with putting a question or two, while Annie kept a determined silence, on the kind of service in which she had lived and her special accomplishments. Annie told her at last that she was fond of dressmaking and wanted to go back, not to Dorset Square, but to a shop near Oxford Street, where she had been admitted to the sight of fashionable robemaking when about fiften. From that establishment, as Hippolyta learned by and by, her father had removed her, and she had then gone into domestic service. 'If all you want is to learn dressmaking,' said Mrs. Malcolm, 'I can give you some instruction myself, and you would be able to take care of your [228] mother at the same time. Would you like to come and see me at Forrest House? I have leisure on one or two days a week. What do you think, Mrs. Dauris? Do you approve?' Husband and wife were perfectly willing; but Mr. Dauris subjoined, 'Annie must say her own word in the matter, or she may think we are forcing her. Now, my girl, which would you prefer—to go with Mrs. Malcolm, or to stay at home as you have been doing?' She did not give a direct answer, but said, as if it was the same thing, 'I should like to learn dressmaking.' And Hippolyta thought it best to leave the matter so. In her own mind she said that Annie would be none the worse for learning, as she certainly should if she came to Forrest House, that her present attire was showy and not at all in good taste. Mrs. Dauris always looked neat and simple in her cotton gown; but her daughter assumed a tawdry style, which would have been expensive, could she have afforded it, and heightened her bold, shameless air. Had she not been so pretty, the whole appearance of the child, for she was nothing else, would have been exceedingly painful. She was like a tainted flower. Where had she gained that early acquaintance with vice and finery? Not at home, as was evident. Perhaps there was yet a chance of teaching her better things. Instractable and sullen though she was, a little incident which happened when Hippolyta was going showed that her feelings were not wholly perverted. 'Good-night' had been said on both sides, and their visitor was passing [229] through the gate, when she heard a step behind her, and turning saw Annie, who had followed unperceived. 'Well, my dear?' said Mrs. Malcolm kindly. Annie laid a furtive hand upon her dress, much in the fashion of a child who wants to whisper something, and said with a downcast look, 'Will you let me come to-morrow for the dressmaking, in the afternoon?' Hippolyta assured her of a hearty welcome; and the girl went on, forcing the words, which did not seem to flow easily from her lips. 'I like you; it was good of you not to tell my father what you saw, and not to ask me about it.' And when she had said this she let go Hippolyta's dress and went in again without waiting for an answer.

She did come next day; but some time elapsed before Hippolyta could win her confidece. It was during this interval that Rupert returned. While he stayed there was no time to instruct Annie or to call at the cottage. She did not mention the story to Rupert again; they had their own romance to talk over, and the possibilities of the future to forecast. And so it continued. Whenever, consistently with his engagements, the artist could run up to London for a few days, he would spend an hour or two at his own house, arranging papers and seeing those who would have been surprised or offended were he to overlook their claims; but no sooner were these formalities complied with than he vanished into space, and Hippolyta had him to herself at Forrest House. They were wonderfully happy.

Meanwhile her interest in the gardener's family continued. The boys, not altogether with Mrs. Leemings's goodwill, were allowed to play about the grounds of the red brick mansion, where no child had been since Glanville himself had paid those dreary visits to Miss Atterbury which he was glad not to remember. But Willie and Charlie, though they could not help doing mischief in their primeval innocence, were very amusing, affectionate, and original, helping Hippolyta with the flowers, wheeling barrows of earth or dead leaves, which they occasionally overset on the pathway to their own extreme delight, and making believe that they were elves in enchanted places, or young princes in search of adventures under the trees of the forest into which they transformed the garden to give themselves larger scope. They were great favourites with Mrs. Malcolm, whom they worshipped and followed everywhere. But being shy and well brought up, they did not presume on her favour; and if she told them there was a border they must not dig up, or a room they were not to enter, Charlie not only observed the command himself, but took especial care that Willie, who was younger and more volatile, should not foget it. 'Mrs. Malcolm said not,' was their law of the Medes and Persians which might not be altered. On Saturdays they carried between them the flowers which Hippolyta destined for the church, to their father. It was part of their play to repeat, with childish treble pipe and most naïve turns of speech, the legends of [231] the Catholic saints which they had been taught at school; and their kind protectress, whose presence did not terrify them nor check their harmless babble, listened with more pleasure than she could have supposed to their fantastic stories. But they were instinct with a life and colour which for the moment gave them something like the air of reality. It was like viewing the painted windows from the inside, where the legend came out plain and the figures seemed more human. Both the boys would be story-tellers in turn; and Willie's slow but vivid imagination, which wrought confusion in the history, made him one of the most lovable and laughable of little creatures. Charlie, however, had more feeling. He returned Mrs. Malcolm's affection ardently, and though he was too big at eleven to be hanging on a lady's skirts, as Willie often did, you might be sure that, if Hippolyta were within reach, he would not be far off. Did she leave her hat, or cloak, or gloves on the table, he liked to steal up when he thought no one was looking and to touch them fondly. One thing surprised the religious boy, for such he was, why Mrs. Malcolm never went to St. Cyprian's like his father—and his mother when she was well. On a certain Saturday, when she had made up the flowers into bouquets and put them into the children's hands, as they were going Charlie stopped and, fixing his beautiful eyes on Hippolyta, said to her, 'Won't you come and see them on the altar? They look prettiest there, and they smell so sweet in church.'

'No, darling,' said Hippolyta with a slight feeling of sadness, 'not now, I am busy. Some other time, perhaps.' The boys ran off; but she repeated mechanically to herself, 'Some other time, some other time! Ought I to have said that? I shall not go to see the flowers on the altar, let them look ever so pretty.'

Their sister was quite different. She did not enter St. Cyprian's either; she seemed to have little or none of the religious instinct; and when Willie and Charlie ran and jumped in the garden, she did not join them. Hippolyta was almost too considerate towards the girl, letting her spend long afternoons in the house, and showing her everything that she thought would interest her. Annie had never seen such treasures before; they took hold of her fancy mightily, and she was eager to learn the objects and uses of the multiplied curiosities in which the old mansion abounded. She gave careful attention to every word that fell from Hippolyta in illustration of the pictures, china, and the ten thousand knick-knacks which were necessarily not to be comprehended without a gloss by the gardener's daughter. She studied Mrs. Malcolm's way of speaking, and expended thought not only on the patterns of dress which were given her to cut out, but likewise on those which were worn by her teacher. Not without a sense of amusement, though with keener feelings of compassion, did Hippolyta observe that she seemed to be going over in her mind a part to be hereafter acted; to be [233] rehearsing, as it were, the manners and mode of speech that characterised 'a lady.' She was equally bold in imitation and timid in putting questions; but there was evidently a multitude of things belonging to this novel sphere that she thirsted to inquire about. Hippolyta, seeming not to mind, let her have her way. Annie began to talk more freely, to give expression to some of her less dangerous inclinations. She was not exactly ignorant or dull, but the first steps in mounting from one's native regions are the most difficult, and she dreaded to set Mrs. Malcolm against her. Little by little, however, the nature of the girl discovered itself.

There was nothing uncommon, except her lovely features, and they were half spoilt by her sullen look, in Annie Dauris. Between her and thousands of other London-bred girls there reigned an unmistakable family likeness; but Hippolytan, in spite of her reading and travels, did not know it, and this, the first specimen she had seen, filled her with dislike and amazement. Mr. Dauris sent his boys to the school which was carried on by the fathers at St. Cyprian's, and his girl to the convent. But there was another school which he could not prevent them from frequenting if they chose—that of the children who played with them, and of the London streets. Annie —but I think Mrs. Dauris can begin the story better than I. She had lived through it all. Sitting up on her couch, and pausing from time to time when her breath failed her, she unburdened herself of this great [234] trouble to the young married lady one morning, when Annie was ironing in the little back-kitchen and not likely to interrupt them.

'It shames me,' she said, 'to speak about such things in the hearing of a lady like you; but Annie is not the child she was, and you ought to know her ways. I don't know what came over her when she got to be a big girl. She was as good a child as you would wish to see, and the sisters were very fond of her, till she was twelve or thirteen. And then she took up with some of the bad characters in the school, and she was always going about with them at night instead of coming home, staying in the street, and staring into public-houses, and seeing what it was not right for her to see. I spoke to her often enough, God knows, but as soon as my back was turned away she would go, and not be home again till midnight perhaps, or later. I was afraid William would notice it; for, though he is a peaceable, religious man, as you may see, he can be very angry, and once he gives way to his feeling I am afraid of what will happen. He did go after her once, and she was obstinate and would not come in; it was when they were holding a fair in the market,—she said no, she had rather stay out all night; and William took her and brought her home, and that time he beat her severely. Oh, dear me, I shall never, never forget it. And it did no good; she was worse than ever. Many an hour I spent in search of her during the dark winter nights, when she would slip out and run [235] off to her bad companions. And where did I find her, after all? Standing at the bar of a gin palace, talking and laughing with grown men, or coming out of one of the low theatres in the neighbourhood. When she saw me she ran away or hid round a corner, and I have had to come home through rain and snow without Annie. My husband told me it was madness, that I should only kill myself; but I had the feelings of a mother, and I could not see my child lost. It is a wonder that she never got into worse mischief, for the men and the women she made friends of were thieves, and well known to the police. I cannot tell where she found a shelter the nights she stayed out. She would never say, and she seemed not to care. One night she would have spent in the station-house, for she was taken there with others that had been drinking and fighting; but the sergeant knew my husband, and instead of taking down the charge, he sent round, like a good man, for William, and her father brought her home. That struck a wholesome fear into her during a week or two; and then she went away again. We were at our wits' end what to do with her. Isn't it a pitiful tale, Mrs. Malcolm?' she said, turning with wet eyes to Hippolyta, whose silence had deepened with her sympathy and horror. She could not speak, but she pressed the poor mother's hand. There was a painful pause.

'I don't believe,' resumed Mrs. Dauris, when she recovered her breath, 'that there was malice in Annie. She was young and curious; she had no [236] sense of danger, and of course she liked to see what was going on. That is how we poor people lose our children. They go into the streets and the flood carries them away. We are not the only ones in this neighbourhood that have had trouble with a daughter and shed scalding tears over her ruin. Though, I thank God, Annie is not ruined yet. She has lost her character with the sisters, and the people about think she has behaved like the rest of her bad companions. But, Mrs. Malcolm, it is not true. I give you the word of a mother that there is not a word of truth in it. Annie will not be said or led by her father, more is the pity; and when he is at home she will not open her mouth, as you saw the other night. The poor child is afraid of him since he beat her, and she is stiff-necked too, and no one can manage her. I do sometimes coax her to talk, and then she tells me things. William doesn't know that Maurice Regan has been near the cottage, and I would not have him know. But Annie confessed it when I repeated what her brother said about a gentleman in the lane.'

'Oh, indeed,' exclaimed Hippolyta; 'then Maurice Regan is the gentleman's name. Is he a gentleman?'

Yes, he was a gentleman, and he had seen Annie walking home to her Cousin Harriet's from Mark Tomlinson the draper's near Oxford Street; and he had fallen desperately in love with her. It was the most ordinary of 'London idylls'—gutter-idylls, one [237] should call them perhaps. While Mrs. Dauris went on with the shameful story Hippolyta seemed to hear it all in a dream. The great workroom, with its rows of workers; the elder girl, Charlotte Fraser, who had 'taken a fancy to Annie,' and showed her fine sights, leading her to music halls, where there was comic singing, with plenty to eat and drink, and nothing for Annie to pay; the well-dressed gentleman that was a friend of Charlotte's, and gave her up to walk with the younger girl he met in her company; the first fit of intoxication, when the mother, going after Annie, saw her with eyes 'at first full of wild fire, and then as full of sleep and stupidity'; and the second and the third fit, when a stranger passing along noticed the child of fifteen lying outside the tavern insensible, with a crowd standing about her; the midnight scenes, when her father and mother went searching over London for their lost daughter; the flights from home, the recaptures, the hopeless efforts on the part of this good lady and that to bring her to a better mind; and at last, the trembling fear of the poor mother, declining every day to her grave, but dreading that Annie would break away from home once more and cast herself upon the London streets; —it was a horrible chapter of existence, more like nightmare than reality.

But it was also, for Hippolyta Valence, like holding up a blurred and crooked mirror to her own countenance. The distorted features came back, her own and not her own, as if she beheld them under the [238] oppression of delirium. Why should the sentiment of guilt or shame stir within her bosom, at the thought of Annie Dauris's unmaidenly history? There existed no kinship, how remote soever, between them. But the caricature of love was hideously grotesque; its surroundings were so vile and mean. The streets with their flaring, murky lamps; the horrible, glittering gin palaces; the throng of men and women in rags or in flaunting colours that were ever in motion, in and out through the half-open doors; the rainy nights, when mud was lying thick in the gutters and the spouts were running with foul water, and along the dark and noisome pathways went to and fro the miscellaneous company of women with their draggled garments and shameless, miserable, wrinkled faces, while their partners in vice reeled along, drunken and riotous, in the full tide of debauch,—all this, which came before her suddenly like a stage built up and illuminated from end to end in the depth of darkness, was it indeed the realisation of that dream of free love wherein she had delighted as in a thing most beautiful and tender? Was this the breathing out of pure affection, the blending of heart with heart, the springing up of amaranthine flowers from our mortal mould? At a glance she seemed to take in the existence of such a girl as Annie Dauris,—the withering of its innocence and beauty, the stubborn rage, and unfulfilled desire, and ever-renewed thirst for what was forbidden. 'Oh, horrible, horrible,' she said beneath her breath. It made her sick and faint to think of it.

Mrs. Dauris had not finished speaking when 'Hush!' said Hippolyta, 'I hear a noise this way. 'Isn't Annie coming from the back-kitchen?' They stopped to listen, and the girl entered, with a number of her favourite weekly novelette in her hand.

'I have done ironing,' she said. 'Will you let me sit here? it is so hot near the ironing-stove.' Her face was flushed with the heat, but she looked less ill-tempered than usual. She was certainly pretty, with a sweet expression, something like her brother Charlie's, just then.

'What are you reading?' said Hippolyta; 'may I look?' She surrendered her novelette doubtingly. It was not badly printed, but rejoiced in illustrations of a most pronounced crudeness and vulgarity, which appeared on the reverse of the thin paper; and its title was—but there is no reason why the title, though merely high-sounding and silly, should be advertised here. It used to glare from London hoardings in great red and green letters, for the delectation of the passing multitude not so many years ago, although it is now rarely to be met with—at least that is my experience—even in catalogues of second-hand rubbish. About a hundred and four numbers compose this sort of tale, which affects the dramatic suddenness and mysterious endings of Eugène Sue, dashed with the sentiment of Mr. G. W. M. Reynolds. There is a whole library of such fiction scattered broadcast by our freedom of the press. Hippolyta, better acquainted with Sophocles than with the [240] purveyors of 'romance for the million,' turned over the pages in silent disgust, and gave them back without remark. Mrs. Dauris, meanwhile, said to Annie with her accustomed gentleness:

'You can come and sit here in a few moments, my dear, when Mrs. Malcolm and I have finished what we are saying. There is something I want to tell the lady.'

'About me, I suppose,' returned Annie with great quickness, her cheeks lighting up and then turning pale; 'well, I don't care. Tell as much as you like, and I will tell my side of the story if I am asked.' And away she went, attempting, for the sake of bravado, to hum the notes of a comic street-song under her breath, but not succeeding in getting through it. On the contrary, when she reached the back-kitchen again and sat down by the ironing-board, such a sense of wretchedness overcame the unhappy girl that she burst into a fit of sobbing, and rocked herself to and fro in agony. She was miserable indeed; far more so than she would have dared to let her mother know or any human creature.

But, a few days later, she told as much of 'her own side of the story' as she judged expedient, sitting in Mrs. Malcolm's boudoir, and in answer to the question which that lady put to her in the words, 'Tell me, Annie, who is Mr. Maurice Regan?'

'Ah, mother told you his name that afternoon I was ironing, when she wouldn't let me sit in the parlour,' cried Annie; 'but I should have told you [241] myself, all the same. Maurice Regan is the gentleman you saw me talking with. He is—I mean—I am—'

She was confused and could get no further. Hippolyta came to her aid.

'You mean to say he is your lover. But when I passed you were quarrelling, I thought.'

Annie looked down at her work. 'Yes, we were,' she said; 'but it was only a lovers quarrel. Maurice adores me, and I adore him.'

'And was he asking you to do something you didn't like?' inquired Mrs. Malcolm, who thought she had better let Annie tell the story her own way piecemeal.

'No, it was not that,' replied the girl. 'I wanted him to take me away. I did,' she repeated, as if in answer to the look of sorrow and astonishment on the lady's countenance. 'I hate staying at home. Father makes it so miserable. And I hate him,' she concluded vehemently.

Hippolyta put her hand on the wicked lips of the child, saying softly, 'My dear, my dear, don't utter such wrong words. Your father is a good man, and he loves you.'

'Why did he beat me then?' cried Annie in a shrill voice, pushing away the gentle hand which would fain have stilled her irreverence. 'He shall not have the chance of beating me long, I can tell him.' She spoke loud, as if there was some one in the next room that would hear what she said. Hippolyta was [242] more grieved than shocked. How to bring back so wayward a being to the sense of duty?

'I suppose,' she said after a pause, when Annie had had time to reflect, and had begun to fear the consequences of speaking out loud in such a grand room and before such a fine lady as Mrs. Malcolm, 'I suppose your father wanted to break you off being out late at night, in the streets. You cannot blame him for that.'

'Yes, I can,' said Annie, her spirit rising again; 'I wasn't doing anything. Why shouldn't I go about like other girls, instead of moping indoors? If I had always kept in the house I shouldn't have come to know a soul at Cousin Harriet's. Maurice says father was cruel to beat me, and he hates him too.'

'But why do you like running about after dark, Annie?' It was Hippolyta's purpose to probe as deeply, and yet as delicately as she could, into the mind of this rebellious creature, and to discover, if possible, a remedy for the unhappiness she was causing herself and others. Annie did not hesitate. She replied:

'I do like it, and I always did. If I stay with father and mother, it is all reading good books and talking as the priest does in church. I cannot stand it. I like doing as I like. Why should I be different from the other girls? They talk and sing and dance with their young men, and go to music halls, and they have nice things to eat and drink, and some of them don't work at all—' She stopped. She [243] was going a step too far in her confidences, as she could perceive, being quick enough in her way, by the growing paleness of Mrs. Malcolm's cheek.

'Yes,' said Hippolyta in a low voice, 'there are thousands that never put their hand to anything useful. Would you wish to be one of them, you poor ignorant child?' She turned a wistful glance towards Annie. That young lady, but little abashed, made answer:

'I need not be one of them, if I can get Maurice to take me with him. He has plenty of money and a beautiful house, with servants, and horses, and carriages—'

'Then you have seen the house?' said Mrs. Malcolm, interrupting her; 'and it was there you went when your father and mother lost you, before Miss Thatchford took you into her service?' While she spoke Annie was listening attentively, but she would not answer for some time. She seemed to be turning over a resolution in her mind. Once and again she studied the lady's expression with a sharpness beyond her years, until at last, being apparently satisfied, she said somewhat less impetuously than usual:

'If you would not let anybody know that I asked, I should like—oh, you are such a good lady, I know you will help a poor girl in distress. It is no use telling father or mother, it will only make things worse. Do let me say it all to you, in confidence, as if I was going to confession. Please, will you, ma'am?' She was very imploring. Hippolyta considered. [244] Annie would keep her secret, as she had kept it hitherto, unless the promise was made that it should go no further. And might it not be the girl's salvation for one of her own sex to become in this way her guardian?

'Very well,' said Hippolyta at length. 'I promise not to repeat what you are going to say, unless it is the only way to save you from the danger you have run into.'

'It will not be the only way,' she replied, 'as you will see when I give you the account. But you do promise?' Hippolyta repeated the assurance. Annie became very thoughtful, and broke down several times in trying to begin. It was with great difficulty that at last she said in a broken voice:

'When you saw me and Maurice we were quarrelling. I own it now, because I want some one to help me so badly. He went away in a passion, and I haven't—I haven't seen him since, and I don't know where he lives, and it is like being alive and yet screwed down in a coffin to live as I have been living all these weeks.' She gasped for breath and words failed her, as she put down the skirt she was working upon in a helpless way. She looked not only miserable, but ill and feverish.

'But surely,' said Hippolyta, moved with great commiseration towards her, and forgetting the circumstances which would have seemed to make this turn of events desirable, 'if he loves you, he will come again.'

'I don't know, I don't know,' sobbed Annie. 'He [245] did come, twice, to see me in the lane, and when he began each time he was ever so kind and affectionate; but he got angry as soon as I asked him to take me from my wretched home. He said he was not ready, and I ought to wait and not be such a trouble. And then, when I began to press him a good deal more, he was so out of temper that he turned his back and walked away as fast as possible, and he would not come back when I called and ran after him. And he does not write or anything. What shall I do?' she cried wildly. 'If I cannot find him again I shall go clean out of my mind.'

'And you have no address, no means of writing to him?' inquired Mrs. Malcolm, her heart touched at the sight of distress which it had evidently cost an extreme effort not to show at the cottage, in the presence of the unhappy girl's parents. What a mockery was the so-called love of this Maurice Regan!

'There never was any address, and I haven't got a morsel of his handwriting,' said Annie with reluctance. 'We used to meet him, when I was with Cousin Harriet, at the Oxford or the Metropolitan, or wherever he sent word to Charlotte Fraser. Afterwards Charlotte and I didn't speak, but he would wait till I came out of the workroom in the evening, and come up as I was going home, and tell me where to meet him later.' She paused.

'But when last you left home, was it not to go to him?' Hippolyta felt she must ask this question. [246] Annie's thoughts seemed to wander while she was answering.

'I couldn't stay quiet,' she said, 'that was why I ran away. I wanted to see Maurice; and though he knew I lived out here, he did not come as I thought he would. So I made up my mind to go and look for him at the old places where we used to meet. I had some money he gave me; but I was hardly certain whether his right name even was what he said. Only I did love him, and I do still; and I don't care what he does, I shall always be faithful to him.' The tone of intense gravity with which Annie uttered these words, coming in the midst of real and undisguised trouble, would have amused Hippolyta at another time. Annie Dauris believed in the mockheroic, and had no doubt practised it diligently. She must be fancying herself just then one of the distressed damsels whose abandonment by their lovers made the middle chapters—as it were the third and fourth acts —of those melodramas in prose which were the staple of her reading. But, unluckily, all the wretchedness was real; and the melodramatic winding-up was yet in the far distance, if it would ever come at all.

'Did you find him in the old places?' was Hippolyta's next question.

'Not for several nights, I didn't. I went all about, but I couldn't ask any one. I thought of waiting for Charlotte Fraser, but I was not going to give her the laugh over me; and I didn't know but he might have gone back to her, just for amusement, [247] because he always told me he had not cared a bit about Charlotte. No more he had, I am sure. And I did see him at last, one night, as he was coming out of the Oxford. I ran to him and he seemed very glad. He called a cab and told me to get in, and gave the cabman the address, but I couldn't catch it.'

'Did he go with you?' said Hippolyta, waiting for the answer.

Annie did not return her glance, but answered quietly, 'No, he didn't go with me. And I wouldn't stay when I got there, late as it was. I got out of the cab and waited near the house a good many hours, until it began to rain. And he never came; and I was so desperate I went back all the way in the rain, and I don't know what I did the next days. I was mad, I think. It was after that Mrs. Wardlaw found me and took me to Miss Thatchford. And then the meetings began again, for I could get out unobserved, and this time I went to Charlotte Fraser's and we made it up. She did not care for him either. She had got somebody else, and she told him so,—better off, as she said, than he would ever be; but it was all brag, I daresay. But still, all the same, she was not jealous, and we used to meet one another sometimes at the house where she lived. That is one of the reasons why I never had Maurice's address. But I must get it now, or I shall do something to myself. Do you think he is gone for good? Oh, don't say that you think so.'

'I don't know,' answered Hippolyta very slowly, and [248] as if some unseen power were putting the words on her unwilling lips. 'Would it not be the best for both of you?'

'But I tell you, dear lady,' cried Annie, in her desperation, rising to her feet, 'that we love one another; I know we do. It is as sure as God is in heaven. He told me again and again that he was never happy without me; he counted the minutes till I came. And I am never happy when he is away,' she said, falling back into her chair. 'Oh, if you know what it is to be wild with love, and to pine and die because you can't be near the man your heart is set on, do help me to find Maurice again. If I only knew where to write I would go down on my knees and thank you. He would be sure to come when I told him I was dying for the sight of his face once more.'

She was pitiably in earnest now, not melodramatic. Hippolyta, divided between her early feelings and the rapidly growing conviction that, love or no love, Maurice Regan was a scoundrel, did not know how to reply. She sat in front of the hysterical, passionate girl in silence, dismayed and terrified, unable to put forth a syllable which should express her feelings. But where intellect failed the heart knew its way. Rising and going near to Annie, she drew the unfortunate child to her breast, and while Annie wept the bitter, hopeless tears of disappointed affection, Hippolyta mingled her own with them. For a while there was no other sound in the room. Then, lifting her face to the lady whose arms were clasping her, Annie said [249] in a whisper, 'Do, please, find out the address for me. Hippolyta shook her head sorrowfully. She was still undecided whether she ought to encourage any hope in that direction. What made her at last say, in almost as low a whisper as Annie's, the words that she had dreamt would never have passed her lips? Was it an inspiration, or was it a surrender? She did not know. The sentence was short and simple enough. She said, 'But, Annie, would Mr. Regan ever marry you?'

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she coloured from brow to chin; a deep swarthy hue accompanied with a burning sense of shame overspread her whole countenance, her eyes filled with hot tears, and, unclasping Annie's arms, she went hastily towards a table that stood in a dark corner of the room, as though searching for something. Annie, on the point of replying, was startled into silence. What had come over the lady? Was she suddenly taken ill? That, perhaps, was the explanation, for Mrs. Malcolm, after moving the ornaments about which lay on the carved wood table, returned with a richly-chased flask of salvolatile, which she opened, and sprinkling some on her handkerchief put it to her forehead.

'Have you got a headache?' inquired Annie, brusquely to be sure, but not without feeling, thoughtless as she commonly was of the sufferings of any one but herself.

'It is gone now,' said Hippolyta, laying down the flask. She could not continue the conversation which [250] was raising so great a storm in her breast. But she must inquire of Annie what her design had been in beginning it. 'What do you want me to do?' she said, almost in the tone she would have employed towards a stranger whom she distrusted. Annie, intent on her own projects, did not observe it.

'I want Maurice's address,' she answered, 'and you could get it from his brother the clergyman, Mr. Philip Regan, if you asked him, without saying who it was for. If I went to him he would perhaps give me in charge for coming about the house. At any rate he would never tell me, for he doesn't want me to know; he thinks I am Maurice's ruin. He said so that night in Dorset Square.'

'But I am not acquainted with Mr. Philip Regan,' returned Hippolyta; 'he would not be likely to tell a stranger who did not explain her purpose.'

'Oh, but you are a lady, and if you called on him the clergyman would very likely tell you anything you wanted very much to know. I can show you where he lives. He goes a good deal among the poor people in his neighbourhood. It is near Saffron Hill. I have been there; I went with Charlotte once to hear the singing at the Italian church, and as we were coming home she pointed to the other church that Maurice's brother belongs to. Maurice lives somewhere else, by himself, he told me.'

Annie was beseeching and tearful, but she did not know the difficulties that lay in Mrs. Malcolm's path, or the feelings, so entirely different from her own, [251] which struggled for the mastery in Hippolyta's bosom. There was the danger of an expedition into the heart of London, with all that might spring out of meeting a clergyman who, if he came so much in contact with the poor, would perhaps have heard of Colonel Valence, and might know those who would recognise Colonel Valence's daughter. But the main peril was of another kind. Had not fortune been dealing tenderly with Annie Dauris in taking away her unprincipled admirer and putting a great distance between them; and would it not be doing the girl an injury, an irreparable injury, to help towards a renewal of their acquaintance? On the other hand, she was not only foolish but stiff-necked, and more likely to run the worst risks than to give up the chance of discovering where Maurice Regan lived. With an invalid mother, and a father whose control over her was utterly at an end, she needed a friend, a counsellor, prepared to watch every step she took. 'There is none but I,' said Hippolyta to herself. 'And how can one that has assumed the character of a Mrs. Malcolm be a protection to such a girl as Annie?'

While she was turning over these things painfully in her mind, and her young companion sat looking and waiting for an answer, the street door was heard to open and close, and a step came along the hall. Hippolyta started up and threw down her work. She recognised the footfall outside. 'It is Rupert,—Mr. Malcolm,' she said in a hurried voice, and, leaving Annie, she ran out of the room. The sound of joyful exclamations [252] and lovers' greetings reached the girl where she sat, and brought tears of rage and envy into her eyes. Why were other women to be so happy and she so miserable? Mrs. Malcolm was good, but she could have hated Mrs. Malcolm; she hated all the world. In a few minutes Hippolyta came back, radiant, glowing with the unexpected delight of Rupert's presence. 'You must go now, my dear child,' she said, taking Annie affectionately round the neck; 'we shall not be able to do any more dressmaking to-day.'

The other, rising up to go, turned her large eyes upon Hippolyta and only replied by repeating her question, 'Will you find out for me about Maurice?'

The happy woman, rapturous at her own lover's arrival, could not be prudent or selfish then. She answered, 'If Rupert will allow me to go to Saffron Hill—if he does not think it wrong—I will call on Mr. Philip Regan, and tell you what he says.'

Annie lifted Hippolyta's hand to her lips with sudden passion, and went away.

CHAPTER XXVI IF LOVE BE FREE?

Rupert's coming was not due to any sudden event, either pleasant or the reverse, at Trelingham. It was simply the escapade of a young man who is very much in love, and who discovers, or makes, in his daily pursuits an occasion for running off to the well of golden water, and there taking long draughts of felicity when no one is looking. As soon as the feeling of Hippolyta's presence which he carried with him into the West Country from Forrest House grew dim, a devouring melancholy seized upon him, a longing for which there was no anodyne, a weariness of all things which did not remind him of the maid of his heart, and a fever which seemed to infect him when he touched any trifle she had handled or come near. He wrought then like a man who is aware that one day's labour will purchase seven days' enjoyment, —fiercely, furiously, with his genius concentrated in every stroke, and a haste that is possible [254] only to a spirit set on fire. He never painted so admirably; it was the passage of the beautiful, swift lightning over the face of a landscape, lambent, not destructive, adding a divine, an incomprehensible splendour to the colours and shapes of every day. But no sooner had he reached a stage where, without harm to the design, he could pause, than some attraction powerful as the magnet drew him to London. Now it was the need of refreshing his imagination by studying the great pictures—on which, in passing, he bestowed a glance, and hurried away from them to Hippolyta. Now it was an interview with some old friend who would be gone in a week, and whom he must therefore catch on the wing. But when he did catch him, Rupert seemed preoccupied, amazed, drowned in reverie, not equal to conversation, though capable of sudden speeches whose poetry and grace were so remarkable that even those who had anticipated wonders from their brilliant acquaintance, felt in him something original and undreamt of hitherto. Or it would be the need of rare and curious ingredients for his palette, which no one could choose but himself; or of the learning on the subject of King Arthur which was locked up in out-of-the-way books. It was something or nothing, and the French philosopher who invented 'occasional causes' would have smiled in his grave to find such a powerful demonstration of them in Rupert Glanville's comings and goings.

But the beginning, the middle, the end of the story [255] was Hippolyta and ever Hippolyta. 'Thine eyes are lodestars,' he would say, with the infantine plagiarism of lovers who think that A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet were indited for their particular use. To arrive unexpectedly; to rush into the presence of Hippolyta palpitating with eagerness and the haste of his long expedition; to dine tête-à-tête amid the antique curiosities and delicate English comfort of that red brick mansion in whose oakpanelled rooms the ghost of his great-aunt, trailing her silks and laces, and shocked out of her propriety (even as a well-informed spectre) by the sight of such romantic love-making, was perhaps still wandering after nightfall; to discourse of ten thousand nothings as if they had infinite importance, making them the strings on which love's sweet voluntary was played; to laugh and be serious and move with sudden flight into the fiery empyrean, Love seeming all the while to hold the secret of life, and existence so abounding in joy that for very excess it was transmuted into pain; to be wrapt in the flame of another's being and to feel all one's faculties alive to their uttermost height,—what was Rupert that he should resist the spell or put from him the overwhelming ecstasy of these things, and be content with a work-a-day world which glared upon him, hot and dusty, when Hippolyta was not there? Again and again he fled to his enchanted island. He was lost, rapt out of the sphere of things beneath the moon; he had broken through hedge and thicket, through thorn and brier, [256] into the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, and, oh joy and wonder! it had only a single tenant who waked when his eyes were bent down upon her, and lived upon the breath of his lips. The tumultuous company of king and chancellor, of knights and serving-men, and all their noisy array, had sunk into a deep sleep, out of which, for his part, he desired never to awaken them. Why should not he and Hippolyta go on, loving and being loved, in the secrecy which increased their happiness a thousand-fold and kept friends—those worst of foes—at a distance? 'We do not want the palace to wake up, do we, Princess?' he said to her playfully as they were walking up and down the central path of the garden once more. No, Hippolyta would have left them gladly to their slumbers. But she had a question to ask. Might she call on Mr. Philip Regan?

It was not without blushing on her side, and a good deal of laughter from Rupert, that she contrived to get her question out. And who was Mr. Philip Regan, if he might be so bold as to inquire, demanded Rupert in turn. A clergyman? Oh, indeed! And so Hippolyta wanted to see a clergyman, after all. She had come round, then, from her obstinacy; she had begun to think marriage in a duly licensed building not so wicked as it appeared a few months ago. Well, he had no objection. But, half in shame and the least bit inclined to be angry with her adored Rupert, she answered no, it was not as he supposed, and, if he would promise to keep quiet and not laugh [257] at her, she would tell him. The artist, however, was in that mood of abounding joy which the old wise Greeks thought unseemly for a mere creature of a day, whose happiness might be blown to dust by the passing wind, and which they esteemed the forerunner of Nemesis. He was quite sincere in declaring that he would marry Hippolyta when she pleased; but if that was not her motive in seeking a clergyman, —if, as seemed probable, it rose out of her enthusiasm for the poor of the neighbourhood, he would neither meddle nor mar, in accordance with the resolution he had taken at the outset. What did she want of Mr. Regan? Hippolyta, somewhat confused by his previous jesting, could not answer in a moment; she hardly knew whether, in seeing Maurice Regan's brother, she intended to thwart Annie's wishes or to forward them. And the confidence which, on this seemingly unimportant subject, might have been established between herself and Rupert was made impossible by his fit of light-mindedness. Instead, therefore, of telling him Annie Dauris's story, she contented herself with saying that Mr. Regan had it in his power to assist the family of the gardener in whom she had taken an interest; but that it was a long way to Saffron Hill, and she had not been able to decide on risking a drive into the heart of London. All this sounded very like what Glanville had anticipated. He would have been alarmed had she spoken of visiting a fashionable preacher at the West End; but Mr. Regan was not [258] known to him by name and could not be famous, while any chance of discovery in such a region as Saffron Hill was not to be imagined. He had implicit faith in Hippolyta, and, merely renewing his stipulation that she should not enter a place where there was risk of infection, and should withold her address from Mr. Regan, he gave his consent. How seldom we know which of the cards we are holding in our hand will win or lose the game! To Glanville the clergyman was nobody; and Annie Dauris was not even a name; yet, if he could have been more sober amid the enchantments of that evening, if the frolic laughter of a spirit unbent had been kept in check, he might have discerned that Hippolyta, though no longer melancholy, was meditative, and after a new fashion.

More than once during those days Annie passed by the garden-gates; but, always seeing Mr. Malcolm, she did not venture in. She knew that Mrs. Malcolm would be kind, she was never anything else; but, so long as her husband stayed, there was no hope of her leaving Forrest House for an instant. How long, then, would he stay? To Annie it was a matter of life and death. Hippolyta, meanwhile, was like a water-lily floating in its dream of beauty on the tranquil waves, her thoughts absorbed, her feelings strung to their highest pitch of intensity, her sadness gone, as Rupert perceived, and her attachment to the beloved becoming more and more a part of her existence. What could she desire that was lacking? News of [259] her father's whereabouts? Yes, it was strange he did not write or send a message to Falside. But she resolutely put that trouble away from her, like one who is on a voyage and knows that months must elapse ere he can reach the home he has quitted, or need take up again the cares he has left behind. In the midst of such a vast expanse of happiness around her, it was not difficult to forget the past or to paint the future in hues of Paradise. Three or four days of perfect love, cloudless and serene; so many hours during which the heart was steeped in bliss, the imagination laughing and gay in its fairy visions—hours at once long as eternity, swift as thought, and like some momentary crisis that can never be blotted from the memory,—were they over so soon, and was Rupert to be spirited away once more to that Hall of Frescoes where she saw him, in his artist costume, beautiful and strange as a god, not hers, but dedicated to another service? Yes, they were over; but she must not sit down to weep. Why should tears be the price of that happiness? She would help some one else to be happy; she would take charge of Annie Dauris, since there was no creature near who deserved her attention better, none whose rescue would bring so much joy to the good people whom she had found worthy of her affection. When Annie came next to the gate Mr. Malcolm was gone; and on inquiry she learnt that Mrs. Malcolm had set out soon after him, and would not be back till evening. But the housekeeper did not know that Hippolyta [260] had resolved on a visit to Saffron Hill. It was to be a secret from Annie, unless good was certain to come from telling her.

Hippolyta, meanwhile, though acquainted with London in her frequent journeyings to and from abroad with Colonel Valence, was not at home in the purlieus of the Italian quarter, and she had some difficulty in finding her way. It was no part of her intention to disclose whence she had come to Mr. Regan, and accordingly she sent back the carriage to Forrest House when it had conveyed her a couple of miles in the direction of London. Walking some distance along the high road, she engaged the first cab that came towards her, and had herself driven to Hyde Park Corner. There she alighted again, turned down two or three streets, hired a second cab, and was taken, according to her directions, within a short distance of the church that Annie had pointed out as the one to which Mr. Philip Regan belonged. It was shut, as most London churches are on week-days, or as at least they seem to be when one passes by; and this, in particular, had a padlock on its rusty gate. Hippolyta looked round for the clergy-house. There was no building near that corresponded with her rather vague idea of what such a residence should be: the surroundings were poor and squalid; the people she saw going in and out of the various houses were emphatically 'low'—that is to say, not only poverty-stricken, but brutish-looking;—and though many of the houses were large and of massive [261] construction, their general appearance was one of such pervading filth, misery, discomfort, and, she would have said, of such engrained wickedness, that she felt sure no minister of a Gospel dwelt in any of them. She bethought herself of reading the notices which were posted up on the church door, behind the rusty grating. They dealt with the things of this world, with dog taxes and carriage licenses—the latter absurdly out of place in a quarter which was traversed only by cabs in their flight east and west, or by great drays and butchers' or costermongers' carts. The only carriages likely to be seen within a large radius of St. Audry's Church were, said Hippolyta to herself, the hearse and mourning-coach of the undertaker. Parochial announcements, too, stared her in the face; but it would seem that in the modern significance a parish was not the fountain of heavenly grace to those who dwelt within its borders, so much as a corporate body bent on exacting two shillings in the pound under severest threats from the subjects over which it ruled. On other sheets were published the hours of service and the amount of the Sunday collection, distributed in columns according to the silver and copper pieces of which it was made up. In a corner of the last Hippolyta read the address of the church-wardens; but, so far as she could conjecture, these gentlemen abode at a distance, and the morning would be spent in seeking either of them. Were the clergy always so difficult to discover? She had thought of them as making a part of the buildings [262] in which they officiated, but it would seem she was mistaken. What should she do next?

The way in which Colonel Valence had educated his daughter led to her being, in the presence of a trifling embarrassment like this, wild and shy. Clergymen were so closely bound up with that huge imposture called the social organism that Hippolyta, in endeavouring to find one of them, had something of the feeling which possesses a recruit who enters for the first time on a field of battle. She was excited and, perhaps it will be doing her no great injustice to add, slightly afraid. The medieval superstition which made men begin a story with the solemn announcement, 'in those days the devil walked openly in the streets of Heidelberg,' was paralleled to a certain extent by Hippolyta's shuddering reflection that she, a daughter of the Revolution, had come in search of that reverend vice, that sage iniquity, which, in the person of Mr. Philip Regan, was then stalking abroad through the streets of London. But she must find him; and after some hesitation, she entered one of the nearest houses, the door of which stood open, and knocked timidly. There was no answer for a time, but the scudding of children's feet was heard behind the partition, and by and by a room door opened and a tall, slatternly woman came out. She listened impatiently to Hippolyta's questions, eyeing her elegantly-dressed visitor with marked disdain; for there is the pride of Diogenes trampling on the pride of Plato in many an [263] unkempt and ragged woman, when she brushes against another of her sex in silk attire. The only answer this virago made was that if the stranger would give Susan a penny, Susan would show the way to Mr. Regan's. Hippolyta was willing to give Susan many pence when she saw the pale-faced little thing, with her miserable frock reaching hardly to her knees, and an old straw bonnet on her head as much too large for her as the shabby frock was too small. The slatternly woman, among whose goods and chattels Susan was evidently reckoned, told her daughter in a loud voice to show where Mr. Regan lived and come home straight when she had done so instead of playing in the gutter. Hippolyta spoke a word or two of kindness to the child, but she did not seem to notice it, and went on before, her head hanging a little on one side and her feet finding the way mechanically. It was no distance. In a side street about five hundred yards from St. Audry's stood the small, dingy-looking house in which Mr. Regan had set up his modest establishment as a bachelor or celibate clergyman. Hippolyta kept the child with her till the bell was answered. A decently-attired elderly woman came to the door, and, in reply to inquiries, informed Hippolyta that Mr. Regan was out on his usual morning round; that it was uncertain when he would come in, and that if her business was pressing the only chance of transacting it at once would be to follow the clergyman on his beat, which was fairly regular, and catch him as he went from [264] house to house. Seeing the little girl by Hippolyta's side, the good woman gave her some particular indications as to the quarter of the parish Mr. Regan was visiting; and Susan, with the sharpness of her sex and bringing up, nodded intelligently and set out afresh, nothing loth to guide Hippolyta on her travels. Questions put at diverse points of their pilgrimage elicited the information that the minister had been seen a few minutes previously going into a house in what I will call Denzil Lane,—for the true name is too well known. Here, then, Hippolyta dismissed Susan after giving her a little more than she had promised.

It was a fine old street was Denzil Lane, with noble but shamefully dilapidated houses, once the mansions of illustrious families, on both sides, interspersed with miserable tenements huddled one against another and in the last stages of decomposition. The house to which Hippolyta was shown had a large entrance-hall and magnificent oak staircase, which were both dimly lighted from a great window on the first landing, every third pane of which was broken, and the rest discoloured with smoke and festooned with antique cobwebs. Throughout the building one might catch the sound of voices in the different rooms and the movement of a numerous life, for it was densely populated from the cellars, which lay in darkness under Hippolyta's feet, to the roof that covered in a multitude of dismal attics. Knocking gently at the door on her left hand, Mrs. Malcolm [265] inquired again for the whereabouts of this troublesome Mr. Regan. This time she received a civil answer from the woman who appeared on the threshold. 'Yes, Mr. Regan is upstairs, in the first floor front, but he may be there a long while. He always stays when he finds Mr. Mardol here.'

Hippolyta looked at her in astonishment on hearing the name. Could it be Ivor Mardol? What was he doing at such a time in such a place? 'Does Mr. Mardol live in this house?' she demanded, anxious to hear further about him.

'Oh no,' was the reply; 'Mr. Mardol is a good charitable gentleman, as well known in all the neighbourhood as Mr. Regan himself. They often meet in this way.' And the civil, talkative woman proceeded to express her wonder that they agreed as they did, and that they never had high words between them, considering that Mr. Mardol, like Mr. Minns, the tailor upstairs whom he visited, was an infidel, and Mr. Regan not only was a clergyman, but wore vestments on Sundays.

This was decisive. 'It must be the same,' said Hippolyta to herself. But how extraordinary that, in making inquiries about a stranger like Mr. Regan, she should have come upon the man whom she had been instrumental in sending away from the Hermitage, and whose absence, during those eventful weeks, had determined the course of her whole life! Should she endeavour to see and talk with him? He might be able to tell her something of her father. But, on [266] the other hand, she had never learnt, or indeed cared to learn, by what name Colonel Valence was known, if known he personally was, to Ivor Mardol. While she was debating in her own mind, a door opened above and some one began to descend the stairs quietly. 'Ah,' said the woman, 'Mr. Mardol is coming. He has left the clergyman behind.' It was impossible for Hippolyta in the obscurity of the entrance to discern more than the figure of a young man coming down the stairs. But as he drew near and the light from outside fell upon his face, she uttered a cry of amazement, and went back some paces, almost into the street. Her own face, which had been in deep shade, was now lighted up in turn; and Ivor Mardol, for it was he, startled on hearing the voice and hastening to discover who it might be, when he saw Hippolyta paused, and for an appreciable space of time looked at her fixedly without saying a word. They both offered a picture of surprise and astonishment. Hippolyta was the first to recover. She held up her hand in a peculiar way. Ivor grasped it, let it fall, and whispered the only words he had yet thought of addressing to this strange young lady. She replied in the like whisper, adding aloud, 'I know your name, Mr. Mardol, though we have never met before.'

He drew her back into the dark entrance. 'You are one of ours,' he said; 'have you come with a message for me?' He was calm, but exceedingly grave in voice and manner. No, she told him, their [267] meeting was accidental; she had intended to find Mr. Regan. Then, remembering what she had heard from the woman who was standing by, and who had viewed their introduction of themselves to one another with great admiration, Hippolyta asked him whether he knew Mr. Regan intimately.

'As intimately,' answered Mardol, 'as one knows a boy that has been at school with one. Mr. Regan and I were in the same class at—. We were not friends, however, and not enemies. Naturally, on leaving school we went our several ways, but when he came to work in these parts our orbits crossed again, and we are often in the way of meeting. If you wish to speak to Mr. Regan I will ask him to come down. What name shall I say?'

'Wait a moment,' answered Hippolyta; 'perhaps I need not speak to him. Tell me, do you know his brother, Mr. Maurice Regan? My business concerns him rather than the clergyman.'

Ivor considered before replying. He scanned the unknown visitor from head to foot, looked down, and said in a serious tone, 'I hope, my dear young lady, if I may take such a liberty, that it is no personal interest which prompts you to inquire for Maurice Regan. He is a dangerous man.'

'You do know him, then!' she exclaimed, 'and you can help me. But why do you call him dangerous? You confirm my suspicions.'

'He is one of ours, too,' said Ivor, with a look of mingled pain and displeasure; 'one by whom we [268] shall gain little credit. If you will tell me why you are looking for him, I in turn will tell you all I know about him.'

'Most willingly,' said Hippolyta; 'but where can we speak? This place is too public and we shall be interrupted.'

'I will arrange that,' he replied. 'Here, Mrs. Scruton,' turning to the civil person, who was still at her door, 'have you the key of the committee-room? I want to show it to this lady.' Mrs. Scruton, after a minute or two of searching, handed him a large key, and he beckoned Hippolyta to follow him along the hall. When they were quite in the gloom of the staircase. Ivor found a door on their right which no eyes, save those accustomed to the darkness, would have perceived. The key turned easily in the lock, and they entered a vast but desolate apartment which may have served in happier days for a drawing-room, though now it was bare of all that could make it pleasant or habitable. Some wooden benches were ranged along the walls; a table covered with motheaten baize stood at one end and beside it a wooden arm-chair, which Ivor presented to Hippolyta. She would have begged him to be seated, but there was not another chair visible. He laughed and drew one of the benches forward, and seating himself at a respectful distance from her, said in a low, earnest voice, 'Begin.'

Sympathy is never a matter of words, nor can the utmost eloquence so easily convey an assurance of it [269] as the tone, the look, which expressing that something in us that lies deeper than speech, are powerful enough to create in an instant the warm, comfortable atmosphere in which we disclose our very soul to the listener. So was it now with Ivor and Hippolyta. By a subtle, instant process she knew that she had found a friend, and Ivor knew equally well that the young lady in whose presence he sat, and whose every word and motion had the highest distinction, was sincere, unworldly, and simply intent on doing good. She unfolded to him the story, so far as she was acquainted with it, of Annie Dauris, her passionate folly and despairing love for a man who seemed to have abandoned her and gone his way. She added the dreadful suspicions which, from Annie's behaviour at their last meeting, she could not but have formed. Ivor listened without interrupting the recital, asked no questions till it was ended, and said merely as Hippolyta concluded, 'What did you propose to tell Mr. Philip Regan? the whole of this sad affair?'

'Yes,' said Hippolyta; 'I would have let him know everything, if he appeared to be a man of sense and judgment. If not, I would have asked him for his brother's address, and endeavoured to see him myself. Something must be done, or Annie will throw prudence to the winds and either disgrace her family or perhaps put an end to her wretched existence. She is not only giddy, but a slave of impulse.'

'Ah,' cried Ivor, standing up, 'is it not a heartbreak to hear such things? Maurice Regan is one [270] of the thousands that join our movement under false pretences, from their hatred of moral order and discipline, not from any wish to set their brethren free and lift them higher. He is a libertine, not a Liberal; but he thinks it is all one. I remember him, too, at school,—unruly, indulgent in every way that was then possible to himself, and hard as the nether millstone to others. He has since run through a younger brother's fortune, and plunged headlong into dissipation such as London offers on all hands to the base. He is a quick writer, speaks forcibly and fluently, and has rendered services to us in the press. But though I never thought he had principle, of course I was unaware of the misery he has brought on this poor girl. And now, you say, he has cast her off.'

'Entirely, it seems, unless something can be done to unite them. I do not suppose she will ever be happy with such a man; yet anything is better than to see her good father and mother so miserable.'

'But,' said Ivor, turning his serious glance towards Hippolyta, 'what can be done? I know the man's philosophy, as he calls it. He will never marry her, for he does not believe in marriage.'

Hippolyta trembled from head to foot. A feeling of sickness came over her, and she clung to the arms of the chair to keep herself from falling. What could she say? in what way conceal her emotion? There was a difficult pause.

'No, I suppose not,' she said at last; 'but you— [271] I—those who accept the Revolution, the principles of '89, do we believe in marriage?'

Ivor came to her with an air of infinite distress. 'I implore you,' he said with the most intense fervour, 'tell me, assure me that this is indeed the story of a third person, that—pardon me, I am too bold— that you are not Annie Dauris.'

Hippolyta smiled faintly. 'No, I am not Annie Dauris,' she said, regaining the control over her voice that she had lost; 'it is another's story, not mine. I should not dare,' she went on more steadily, 'to suggest in the hearing of a clergyman like Mr. Philip Regan the view I have expressed to you. Surely, Mr. Mardol, there can be no mistake as to the teaching of our religion. The free union of equal men and women is incompatible with marriage. If it is not, we are riveting again the chains that were smitten asunder when the churches went down.' She could face him now, this ambiguous son of the Revolution.

'I see,' he answered imperturbably, 'you are romantic. Excuse the word. I know the feeling, for I have gone through it. How shall I convince you that you are wrong?' He seemed to be pondering the matter. Hippolyta was too proud to submit to this.

'Nay, rather,' she exclaimed, 'how convince me that you have not forsaken the very principles of liberty and equality, if you are prepared to defend the iniquitous traffic in the souls and bodies of women which goes by the name of marriage?'

'Nay, nay,' he said. 'Let us use a little patience. I will convince you, if you do not shrink from the proof.'

'I shrink from no proof,' she said, rather hotly. It was too much. And he had been so full of sympathy while she was telling her tale; she must have been deceived in the man!

'Ah, but the proof I have in view is no less appalling than to plunge your arm up to the elbow in molten iron. There is but one cure for the stage of sentimentalism in which all Revolutionists find themselves sooner or later; and that is contact with reality. It is very trying to the heart and the nerves, however good for the head.'

'I had imagined,' said Hippolyta scornfully, 'that it was contact with reality, with life, which created Revolutionists. Is not that your experience?'

'No doubt,' was his answer; 'but where many of us have mistaken, and constantly do mistake, is in being satisfied with our first knowledge, and losing touch of things when we go on to mould our philosophies, our Utopias. We look once, when we should look twice and thrice.'

'What do you understand by looking twice and thrice? Finding an excuse for the rulers of mankind and turning back to the ancien régime ?'

'Not quite that, or I should have the courage, I hope, to declare that the Revolution and I had parted company. I mean, looking beyond to-day and to-morrow, considering what will happen when we have [273] pulled down what is yet standing in our way. It is not enough to establish anarchy, as our friends now appear to have resolved. We must go on to establish that which, one day or other, ought to succeed anarchy —the kingdom of justice and of human brotherhood.'

'I am still in the dark,' said Hippolyta; 'apply your doctrine of second and third thoughts to marriage. The first thought, you will allow, is Free Love; every man and woman to choose the manner, the length, and the terms of union.'

'Yes, the romantic stage; degenerating in men like Maurice Regan into the stage of libertinism. Oh, I know,' he went on, lifting his hand as if to deprecate the expression of arguments familiar to him. 'You will say the abuse of Free Love is not greater, that its dangers are even less, than the abuse of marriage. But let me finish my prologue.'

Hippolyta, who had risen in her vehemence, sat down again. Ivor continued:

'When we turn our eyes upon life, as it is and has been, we are appalled at the multiplied serfdoms which go to make it up. Church, State, family, profession, rank in the world—what are these but names of long-established, deeply-rooted servitudes from which we can escape only by going into the wilderness? The present order of things is founded upon manifest or disguised slavery. Neither those that command, nor those that obey, are free. The king wears a golden chain, the convict an iron one; but the king can have his will as little as the convict. [274] Yet all this heaping of serfdom upon serfdom does not end in happiness. Some internal disease appears to be eating out the vitals of civilisation; and our Socialism and Nihilism are but desperate remedies for the universal gangrene. See how far I go with your first thoughts. Is it far enough?'

'Perhaps,' answered Hippolyta; 'I will tell you when I have heard your second.'

'How wise women can be sometimes!' he said, smiling. 'I am not sure that you will like my second thoughts. They may be brought under a single axiom—'

'And that is—?'

'That man is a spiritual being, and can therefore be neither saved nor lost by a change of institutions which in their nature are mechanical. Or put it this way, man is made by character, not by laws or ordinances.'

'My dear Mr. Mardol,' cried Hippolyta, 'that is the old Christian fallacy. Do not laws create, modify, and mould character? What but a difference of institutions has made the Turk other than the German, or the Hindoo other than the Mussulman?' She would have drawn out her instances, but Ivor by a sign entreated her to pause.

'Excuse me,' he said, 'you are talking the dialect of the eighteenth century; and that is the old leaven of Revolutionists. We should have made further progress if we had not yielded to that fallacy, which the Nihilists begin to see through. At the root of all [275] institutions lies the national character. I admit that enormous changes ought to take place; I am doing what I can, as an individual, to help on the transformation. But, when all possible changes have come to pass in the outer world of law and custom, nothing will have been done unless a change has taken place in the inner world of the spirit. And now I will tell you how this bears on Free Love. We want all institutions cleared away which fetter a woman's power of saying no. We want every means bestowed upon her by which she shall come to a full freedom of choosing,—a matter with which law has hardly anything to do, and custom almost everything. But this can be provided only by a right education of women.'

'Quite so,' said Hippolyta; 'that is what I have always believed. But would you have marriage indissoluble except by the legal process that drags a woman in the mire?'

'Now you have touched my second thoughts. Are the difficulties surrounding marriage artificial, that is to say of man's making, or do they exist in the nature of things?'

'How like a Socratic question!' she said, laughing, and Ivor joined in the laughter.

'A strange sort of question in Denzil Lane, is it not?' he cried. 'But this is one of the points on which my brethren and I cannot agree. So they have excommunicated me.'

'What!' said Hippolyta, becoming serious in a [276] moment, 'you are jesting. It is impossible that you should speak so lightly if the thing had happened.'

'Well, it has happened. I do not wish to sail under false colours. I thought, in fact, when you disclosed to me your connection with the society, that you had brought me a message from the chiefs.'

'And that was why you looked so grave,' exclaimed Hippolyta, with compassion in every feature. 'Oh no, no, I had rather be excommunicated myself. But do tell me, if it will not distress you, how such a deplorable misunderstanding can have arisen?'

'It is no misunderstanding. In the society to which you and I belong, founded as it is on a social creed, speculative differences lead to very practical results. I must not disclose what is, after all, the secret of others; and I could not tell it now in any case. The quarrel is that deep one between the century which gave birth to the Revolution and the century which is guiding it through infancy. I believe there are difficulties—mysteries, if you like to call them so—in the nature of things, which must ever limit our aspirations towards an earthly Paradise. And I do not believe that to revolutionise all our institutions will have the effect which the brethren anticipate. As I say, the multitude are romantic and sentimental; they have not read, they will not study, the annals of the past. And they little see that when they have abolished Church, State, and family in the old forms, all three will spring up again in the new.'

'Oh, this is melancholy,' cried Hippolyta. 'I [277] know not if it is one degree better than my father's gloomy prognostications.'

'Who is your father, may I ask?' inquired Ivor.

Hippolyta hesitated. If Mr. Mardol were no longer on friendly terms with his old companions there might be danger in giving him the full answer. She said, therefore, in an off-hand way, to dismiss the subject, 'My father is a philosopher and inclined to be a Pessimist.' Then, with a change of tone, 'But where is your proof that conventional marriages are better than Free Love.'

'I did not say that,' he replied; 'but if you would wish—I should say rather, if you can endure—to see a world where Free Love reigns supreme and unchecked, I can assign you such guides, good and worthy persons of your own sex, as will show it you.'

'In what part of the world?' demanded Hippolyta.

'Here,' he said, 'on all sides, within a radius of a couple of miles. Have you the heart to go down into these depths? You are romantic, and naturally so, since you have dedicated your youth to the Revolution, like those passionate, intellectual women—true Sibyls and Amazons of our modern world—who lead the van in Moscow and St. Petersburg. But the young are enthusiastic without knowledge, as the old have knowledge without enthusiasm. Come and study life where it may be seen in myriad forms, all strangely, dreadfully instructive; and then tell me what you think of Free Love, Mrs.—?' he paused inquiringly.

'Mrs. Malcolm,' she said with no tremor in her accent. Yes, she would come and see things with her own eyes. 'I am not afraid of truth or reality,' was her proud declaration to him. But she must not forget Annie. 'Can you get me Maurice Regan's address?' she said, rising to go when it had been settled that she was to return and begin her voyage of exploration in three days.

'I will inquire of his brother, and let you know,' replied Ivor; 'but, if I may offer one final piece of advice, it would be that you do not communicate with your young friend until you have gone over some at least of the scenes to which you will be taken. A desperate girl is, no doubt, one of the most fearful responsibilities you could have. But, on my honour and conscience, I do not think she could do anything worse, let her do what she might, than fall again in the way of Maurice Regan. She has perhaps escaped ruin once; but that sort of miracle is too rare to be looked for a second time. But you should watch over her as well as you can.'

He took up his hat where he had laid it on the green baize table, led Hippolyta to the door, which he locked, and asked her whether she would permit him to send for a cab. The day was fine, and, thinking she had better walk a little way, she declined. Ivor Mardol watched her depart, and, with an expression on his face which betokened great pity and equal doubt as to the destiny of such a frank and determined nature, restored the key of the committee-room [279] to Mrs. Scruton, and went away in the opposite direction. He could not get the thought of Mrs. Malcolm out of his head that evening. Still enamoured of the lady whose bright eyes, had she been acquainted with his folly, would have scorned him at Trelingham, Ivor had only a calm, but a very sincere, interest to bestow upon any one else. He was in great trouble; his views had been altering and, as it seemed to him, enlarging for a number of years, and they had now brought him into a situation of such peril and loneliness that, but for his work among the poor, he must have sat down and eaten his heart with grief. From Hippolyta's conversation, from her way of putting what she had had to tell, he divined that there was a deep unsettlement beneath the daring opinions to which she had given utterance. Was she, like himself, ready to pass from implicit faith in the ways and principles of the Revolution to the severest criticism of them? No, not ready, far from it. But suspicions were rising up in the secret chambers of her heart and would not be lulled to sleep.

END OF VOL. II

CHAPTER XXVII THE DEEPS OF HELL

True to her appointment, Hippolyta arrived in Denzil Lane on the day and hour fixed by Ivor Mardol. The place of meeting was the committee-room, and Ivor came, as he had promised, accompanied by one whom he thought well qualified to guide Mrs. Malcolm through the labyrinth of London misery and to bring her out unscathed. It was a lady of high standing, great wealth, a heart larger than all the wealth of the world, and that wonderfully humanising experience which forty years of service among the poorest outcasts could not have failed to give. Miss Desmond, the daughter of an untitled but very ancient and noble line, was, in all but name and outward habit, a sister of charity. Endowed with a fortune in land and railway shares which amounted to some score of thousands a year, and which was entirely at her own disposal, she had early come to a determination that it should be spent in [] the endeavour to diffuse a little happiness around her. For she was modest and unassuming, with that quick discernment in matters of benevolence—she had no great learning or accomplishments of any other kind —which enabled her to see, almost in her first year's novitiate among the byways of the world, that money is only the beginning, and that philanthropy, like most things worth pursuing, is an arduous enterprise. She perceived that it was surrounded with difficulties; that it required a special tact if the result was not to be waste of resources, ingratitude, the demoralising of those who had seemed already at their lowest, and the added sufferings which arise at the remembrance of opportunities lost. It was clear that she must give something more than money and kind words,— she must give herself. The resolution cost her an effort. Miss Desmond's charity, flowing from a tender heart, was allied to the many virtues, and no less to the many vices which may spring from a quickness to feel and to suffer. She was naturally fastidious, shrinking from the sight of pain, and disposed to be indignant with those she could not help, from the very keenness of her sympathy with them. But she was, too, a simple-hearted Christian, not minding the varieties of creed which she took for granted among the other inexplicable facts around her; she read her Bible and found good in all its pages. 'To succeed through failure,' that was her device. Had any one accused her of paradox she would have answered quietly, 'Come and see,' pointing to the work of [] rescue which had been accomplished by following these divine tactics. She gave her time, her thought, her affectionate care, her never-ceasing diligence, to the task of winning from the miserable wretches whom she had taken for her province a little human trust; and when the heart was opened on both sides she gave wisely and abundantly of the lesser gifts, not now as a matter of pity and alms-deeds, but as to her brothers and sisters. For one that understood this exquisitely humble and loving spirit there were ten, there were fifty, ready to mock and to deceive. She knew it and bore the heavy burden as her Saviour bore the Cross on which He was to redeem the world. And she had her reward, often unexpected, but always exceeding great. The delight of her life was to save the young out of that terrible devouring fire through which they are passed to a worse than Moloch. She had ransomed many hundreds and sent them to the far continents which have been created to redress the injustice and lighten the shameful misery of a civilisation become so chaotic as our own. 'Her children,' for so she called them, wrote from all parts of the world to their mother, encouraging her by the prospect of their well-doing to continue this task of diving for pearls in the deep sea. She was a beautiful, welcome figure as she appeared in the fever-haunted dens and crowded fetid dwellings into which she never hesitated to pierce her way. It was on such errands of charity, now some years ago, that she had come across Ivor Mardol. Their work did [] not clash, and he was so gentle, clear-minded, and self-sacrificing, so little disposed to introduce dogmatic quarrels where the great text of love sufficed for a whole Gospel, that Miss Desmond and he became ere long the closest of friends, and she employed him to distribute her charities in many a case which did not seem to admit of her personal intervention.

Such was the guide whom Ivor had designed for Hippolyta. Knowing only that the young lady who called herself Mrs. Malcolm was of 'the movement,' and that she had been led, by her innocence and enthusiasm as he did not doubt, into one of the most fatal delusions which attended, if was not a part of, the revolutionary creed, he could not give Miss Desmond any information as to her antecedents or present mode of life. But he said enough to suggest that here too a good work might be accomplished if Mrs. Malcolm were allowed to go with her. Hippolyta assured him that she desired to labour among the people, and that all she sought was a sufficiently wide sphere, and some one to warn her when she was likely to make mistakes. All this, it may well be supposed, Miss Desmond cheerfully undertook; and their first interview brought out the most amiable qualities of the two women, so much alike in what they felt for the suffering multitude, and in all else so decidedly contrasted. Hippolyta Valence was at this time in the bloom of youth and beauty; she loved and was beloved; she did not anticipate sorrows of her own, and the immense happiness she [] enjoyed gave her a courage in dealing with the miseries she came across which added something heroic to her dauntless character. She still looked forward to playing a noble part in the revolution which was to bring all good things; and the sense of failure was an experience she had never gone through. Moments, I have said, of passing melancholy came to her, but they were like ripples on the stream raised by a breath of wind and dying down with it into the smooth waters.

How little did all these traits resemble the elderly Miss Desmond, now close upon her sixtieth year, of plain though not unlovely countenance, with silver- gray hair and slightly wrinkled forehead, tall and thin, not much given to smiling except when children came about her, and with a heart in which the sorrows of so many had taken up their abode! There was an air of tender resignation, or of resigned hope, in her movements, and a quietness in her manner of speech that seemed to make of the world in which she lived habitually one huge hospital, and of herself an unwearied seldom-sleeping nurse by the bedside of patients innumerable. And she had that calm wisdom which grows up in the soul and governs the thoughts when all the evil places of life have been explored with the ray of sunshine we call goodness. In Hippolyta there was, despite her marriage that was no marriage, the naïve goodness of childhood; she knew the world as in a picture-book. Whereas the spotless maiden lady, upon whose reputation no breath of [] slander had passed, went to and fro among the horrors of the great city as an angel might descend into the lake of fire, and by virtue of the heavenly element he brought with him return unharmed into the presence of the Most High. It is not knowledge that leads to wickedness always; indeed, I would rather say, there is a degree of knowledge with which wickedness is incompatible. And thus that strange-looking angel, Miss Desmond, opening her wings to shelter the young and beautiful Hippolyta, and bidding her fear no evil, descended with her into the Inferno of London.

There is a story told of one of the modern Catholic saints—is it San Filippo Neri, the Florentine? —who endeavoured to convert a young man of the world, the wicked world of other times, not ours, from the errors of his ways, but in vain. To all his admonitions the pleasure-seeker returned a mocking laugh. 'I see,' said the saint gravely, 'that I must deal with you in earnest. Kneel down and lay your head on my knee.' The young man, still laughing, did so. Filippo Neri laid both his hands on the bent head before him and prayed for some moments in silence. When he had ended he said, 'Now, get up and go your way.' The young man arose, his countenance fixed in horror, and departed without saying a word. But from that day he was a changed being; and those who knew him intimately whispered, that while he bent his head upon the saint's knee he beheld the underworld opened beneath him, with its [] vision of fire and hopeless torments. Such was the experiment Ivor Mardol was now attempting with Hippolyta Valence. What was to come of it the sequel must disclose.

That young man converted by San Filippo Neri did not speak often of his vision. There are many reasons, apart from a divine command, which seal the lips of those who are best acquainted with the secrets of the prison-house. It is enough to have been in hell. The horrors and fears of that abyss, which spouts its dark fire into the atmosphere of many a proud city, will not bear to be dwelt upon in the tender light of day; and no reader will expect from me more than the abstract and brief chronicle of what Hippolyta beheld during those months,—they were few but actively spent—in which she accompanied Miss Desmond, and laid to heart the revelation that was awaiting her. What did she see, you ask? Nay, rather, what did she not see, of things that would dim the very eyes of God with tears where He sits in glory, were it not for some secret anodyne that He keeps for the world's healing in His own good time? She descended into depth below depth; she heard the lives, recounted by themselves, of those to whom misery was their proper element; she gathered up the sighs of innocent children blasted by evil ere they knew that good existed; she attempted, but in vain, to reckon up the pangs that made each particular agony; she drew back to contemplate the universal woe in its length and height and breadth; [10] but the spectacle was too much for her, and she could not see for weeping. 'Why,' she asked herself wonderingly, 'how did life continue under these iron laws? What hindered men and women from making an end of it all with themselves?' The conception of life to which she had been accustomed was an harmonious development of all its faculties under the guidance of reason; she had ever upon her lips such words as love, progress, light, the true, and the beautiful. Her world was an ordered music into which discords came only that they might enhance the effect. Not that she had dreamt the music was everywhere or always playing. That the multitudes were miserable had been, as she told Ivor Mardol, the foundation, the justification of her creed. But she seemed to have been speaking by rote when this immense and hideous tapestry, painted in all lurid colours, was unrolled before her. The creating word of her universe was love. And here, what had love become? It was little to say that she had left the realm of humankind to lose herself in a howling wilderness of wild beasts. These were not wild beasts; they were men and women. That was the culminating horror. Upon the rage, and hunger, and passion of the brute-world instinct puts a check. The tiger, when he is sated, falls asleep; the boa is torpid when he is gorged with prey. It was the absence of a governing principle, the boundless lust, the steady unintermittent fury, the feeding of death upon death, which made even Hippolyta's pitiful heart long for a [11] flame to run through the sky from east to west and devour the uncleanness, though it should lick up with the same tongue whatever life was found within the horizon. There was no law, there was no light, there was no shame. She saw only a festering heap of human beings, flung on top of one another and kneaded into a pestilential mass by the iron heel of necessity. And morning after morning flowers sprang up on the black dunghill and turned their leaves hopelessly towards the sun that would not shine on them, and withered, and were trampled into the foul mass. For in this horrible world children were born by the hundred thousand—delicate children, sometimes beautiful, with their large tender eyes, always frail and in need of sustenance and of love. Every house into which Miss Desmond led her swarmed with children as a hive swarms with bees. When they were fortunate they died young. And how short was the youth of those that lived! At six years old a child in the deeps of London has seen most that can happen of foul, unclean, and heartbreaking on this planet of ours. But ere its birth it is predestined by the laws of the dark realm into which it must enter to be a devil's child and never to know the face of its Father in heaven. Its very breath and bones are made of vice. The typical child of the well-to-do classes looks beautiful, strong, happy, and innocent. The typical child, encountered again and again by Hippolyta as she moved in that short radius of which Denzil Lane was the centre—the [12] angel of the house whom she beheld in every nook and corner of that dismal universe—was ugly, deformed, ailing, accustomed to stripes and blows, full of premature greed, a thing of rags and disease, old in sin, and steeped in impurity. No hand of redemption or blessing had ever come nigh it. And was there any production of Nature alone so complete in hideousness?

To be suddenly flung out of the blue ether into the abysses of death; to exchange the feeling of Rupert's love with all its glowing lights and hues of romance, as softly blended as the prismatic sheen of the dove's neck, for the desolation into which no love came,—this was the experience which Hippolyta had chosen to undergo. Her existence had been merged in his; they two were all the world to one another, and their life had taken the grandest sweep towards the Ideal, for it was full, and actual, and unselfish, and its fulness consisted in their thinking high thoughts and sharing in the most exquisite sentiments together. Now was Hippolyta to see how differently things might be ordered for men and women of like texture with herself and Rupert. The one great, astounding, miserable fact which smote her in the face wherever she turned was the absence, the utter ignorance on all sides, that such love could exist. The genius of Dante, it is well known, has conceived the central core, the innermost circle, of his Inferno as not fire but thick-ribbed ice. The breath of Lucifer freezes; it does not burn. This unexpected and most awful [13] thought, containing in itself more than the poet was perhaps aware, recurred to Hippolyta many, many times during her pilgrimage among these living damned. She had expected to find an outburst of love, wild and exuberant as spring on the plains of the East. She found the very opposite. Instead of tropical heat and the quick succession of sentiments which might be justified in the poet's eyes by their warmth and intensity, what she perceived was—how shall I express it?—a cold fury, a chill and dreary animalism, in which the embers of himan feeling were hardly to be discerned. All things here had a wan, spectral appearance, not inconsistent with murderous impetuosity or the frenzy of hate and desire. But love? Ah, now she began to understand what a solemn and sacred word it was, how little to be confounded with the instincts which, having full sway among these dreadful simulacra of humanity, were but a madness added to the rest which made ascent towards the light impossible. Without saying it to herself, or indeed knowing that such a truth was becoming luminous to her, she felt that the noble conception of love had its roots in the reverence and reserve, in the great all-surrounding atmosphere of modesty, which makes the distinction between true refinement and barbarism, be the latter never so gilded. Where shame is wanting, love cannot exist. In these regions there was no such thing as solitude, privacy, or a house with closed doors. There was not room to move in, not air enough to breathe. The confusion [14] of ages and sexes, of strong and feeble, even of good and bad, was beyond description. No slave-ship was ever more crowded than the miles of narrow streets through which Hippolyta, shuddering and sick at heart, was forced to thread her way. For those who dwelt in them Nature had no meaning; the green of the meadows, the grace of field and forest, the beauty of running water, nay, the very lights of heaven did not exist for them. All they knew was this living prison of human bodies which hemmed them round, and from the walls and roofs of which came incessantly, as in a falling shower, sounds of blasphemy, rage, cursing, pain, hunger and thirst, intoxication, insanity, and murder. It was not to be thought that love could unveil its shy face amid such horrors. The charm of love is, in the for once poetical imagery of Swedenborg, that it draws two spirits from the ends of heaven to meet and embrace, obeying the secret laws of affinity which make them and them only fit for one another. How preserve such transcendent personality in the thick of such a crowd as was here battling for life and trampling the fallen into a gory slime? It was a strange place to come to for the revelation of the sacredness, the singleness, so to speak, of love. Yet this was what Hippolyta learnt; and on her first meeting with Ivor Mardol she put her experience into such words as would most forcibly express it. They were together again in the committee-room, where Hippolyta was waiting for the arrival of Miss Desmond.

'But I cannot agree with you, Mr. Mardol,' she continued, 'that I have witnessed the evil consequences of Free Love. I see no love anywhere in this frightful chaos.'

'It is exactly the same thing,' he answered, not at all as if uttering a questionable saying.

'The same thing to love, and not to know its meaning? You are bent on mystifying me, I perceive.'

'Not at all. Both are forms of infinite caprice, of desires not brought under reason. Free Love and unbridled passion will ever be one to the multitude at large. If by Free Love, indeed, you mean the choice by one man of the one woman in all the world that Nature destined for him, and passing by all others as objects only of chivalrous devotion, not of personal attachment, do you know what star will rise in the sky of humanity?'

'Tell me,' she said, with great earnestness.

'The star of Duty,' he replied. 'There can be no rational freedom in love, or in aught else that belongs to our nature, when Duty is cast out.'

'And is it a duty,' she inquired, her eyes glowing as she spoke, 'to go on pretending to love when affection is dead?'

'No; but affection which has once taken on itself the yoke of duty will not die; it partakes of the spirit's immortality. You are still persuaded, I see, that instinct passion, and true love are but different names for one feeling. It is not so, believe me. [16] The human element which transmutes instinct and passion to love is the will lighted up by reason.'

'Then love is never spontaneous, and your philosophy transforms it to a palace of ice.'

'Nothing was ever more spontaneous than love; but not all that is spontaneous should be confounded with it.'

'Ah, here comes Miss Desmond,' cried Hippolyta, relieved at her appearance, for she was beginning to feel a vague trouble like the first slight symptoms of a dangerous illness. 'I will go with her, and leave you to your abstractions, which do not suit me at all. I am sure Miss Desmond is not a Stoic.'

'And you think I am?' inquired Ivor with his usual serenity; 'well, never mind. Only apply what I have been saying to any cases you may meet in your excursion to-day, and let me know whether the idea of duty is not a key to unlock even a larger number of doors than your idea of sacred personality, —with which, observe, I have no quarrel. But we should beware of idols, and look life in the face. You will pardon my unmannerly presumption.'

He went away, convinced that Mrs. Malcolm would not let his words fall to the ground. She had that within, he felt sure, which prompted her to find a solution of some difficult problem closely affecting her happiness; though what it was he neither asked nor desired to know. He had learnt that it is best to wait until people begin to speak of their own accord. It was a simple word, Duty, but an infinite idea; and [17] he knew how far it had led him on the path he was pursuing. If Mrs. Malcolm had need of it,—and with her the superstition of Free Love was evidently more than a mere opinion,—she would be reminded forcibly of its sacred character, of its supreme worth, by the contrast of so many myriad lives in which it found no place. 'Freedom,' he murmured as he went along; 'yes, the freedom to do right. That will carry us a little farther, I trow, than the freedom to destroy a man or an institution which happens to stand across the path of progress.'

He was not mistaken. Hippolyta dwelt more than she would have been willing to confess on those Stoic aphorisms, as she called them by way of lessening their importance. But her expeditions into a strange and dismal realm, these dazzling cross-lights, and great spaces of darkness, where it seemed that neither Conservative nor Revolutionist could discover a pathway, inflicted on Hippolyta the sense of deep disappointment, and little by little drew the clouds over her sky. Was it so very hard to make things better? Miss Desmond, though faithful to her task day and night, evidently thought so. Ivor Mardol thought so. Her father, who had begun with an impassioned belief that the progress of the Revolution meant universal happiness, had grown pessimist and saturnine as he reckoned up how little had yet been done. When Hippolyta spoke in the old eloquent way to Mardol of reconstructing society from summit to foundation, he answered sadly that the creative [18] spirit did not come at call, and we wanted rulers of men not partisans of chaos. 'When you have got your anarchy,' he said with a melancholy smile, 'what will you do with it?' Hippolyta could not refute his doubts. She had lived in dreams, then, and the waking reality did not at all resemble their pliant lovely shapes. It was stern, cold, unmanageable, like granite which has been melted but once by the primeval fires and can never be moulded again by the forces at man's command. Colonel Valence's daughter became at times unhappy, with a sensation as if she too were lying under anathema and had brought a curse, she knew not how, on herself and the miserable creatures whose wants she was endeavouring to supply.

A more tangible discomfort was the impossibility of discovering a trace of Maurice Regan. She could not now enjoy the leisure which had been hers at the beginning of her stay at Forrest House, and consequently she saw Annie Dauris not nearly so often. But whenever she did, the girl cried like a feverish child, 'Can you tell me anything of Maurice?' Hippolyta had consulted Ivor Mardol; and by his advice she neither called on Mr. Philip Regan nor told Annie that she would do so. Ivor made inquiries of the clergyman from time to time, but he received the invariable answer that Maurice Regan's only address was at his chambers, that he never came there but had his letters sent on, now to one place, now to another, and that apparently he lived a wandering life and was not to be met in London. [19] Hippolyta did not see the advantage of telling these things to Annie; they would only make her restless, and, on the whole, if, as time went on, Maurice Regan kept out of her sight, she might give up the expectation of finding him, and resign herself to the life in her mother's cottage. There she would be safe whatever happened. Mrs. Malcolm did not venture to express her more painful thoughts to the gardener's wife. She hinted something, but Mrs. Dauris was very ill, did not realise what she heard, and repeated her assurance that Annie had only been foolish, not wicked. The girl herself was obstinately silent. Thus matters stood when Hippolyta, after a hard day at the East End, came in late and tired. She made a light dinner, and lying down, fell into a deep sleep which lasted longer than usual. About eight next morning she was awakened by the entrance of the housekeeper, who, with many apologies for disturbing her, announced that the little boy, Charlie Dauris, was in the hall, and begged earnestly to see Mrs. Malcolm. 'Does he say what it is about?' inquired Hippolyta, sitting up as she spoke. 'No, ma'am,' replied the good woman; 'I asked him, but he would not tell. He was crying, though; and I have no doubt they are in trouble. Perhaps his mother is worse.' The thought startled Hippolyta, who remembered how delicate Mrs. Dauris had been looking lately. She sprang up, and sending Mrs. Leeming downstairs, said she would come in a moment. What could it be? Making a hasty toilette, [20] she ran down into the hall, where Charlie was standing, his eyes fixed on the ground, and great tears rolling down his cheeks. Hippolyta kissed the boy,—who was, as I have said, a favourite of hers, and of a very feeling, affectionate nature,—and took him into the dining-room. 'What is it, Charlie dear?' she said anxiously. 'Is your mother not so well?'

'Mother is very ill,' he answered; 'but it is not that. It is Annie. Oh, Mrs. Malcolm,' he said with a fresh burst of weeping, 'Annie's run away again, and she left this letter for you on her bed. Mother found it this morning when she went to call her.' And so saying he gave a sealed envelope into Hippolyta's hand. She went towards the light to read it. There were only a few lines, hastily scrawled, but when Mrs. Malcolm arrived at the end of them, she turned deadly pale, and sat down like one about to faint, putting her hand to her forehead in great and evident distress. It was shocking; it confirmed her worst expectations.

Annie wrote, in haste and agony, that she dared stay at home no longer. She reproached herself bitterly for not being so frank with Mrs. Malcolm as she ought to have been. The story she had told her about Maurice Regan was not the whole truth. He had been her true love, but he had ruined her; and she was going now to find the father of the child that should be born to her, and in case she could not find him to put an end to her misery. She would never, never come home again. She [21] begged Mrs. Malcolm, for the love of God, to break the news as gently as she could to her poor mother. 'It will be her death,' were the concluding words of the letter; 'but I cannot help it. I must go.'

Hippolyta did not know which way to look. She was dazed and confounded. While she had been endeavouring to rescue strangers at the other end of London this unhappy child had escaped her at her own door. How convey the fearful news to the mother, who would perhaps die of a broken heart, or to the father upon whom Annie had always so unjustly cast the blame of her wicked conduct? Oh, what a desolate home would that be when they knew the reason of their daughter's flight! The boy, meanwhile, stood looking at Mrs. Malcolm with tear-filled eyes, not venturing to ask her what his sister had written. But when he saw how she began to cry, he ran to her and put his arms affectionately round her neck. 'Poor Charlie,' she said, pressing him to her, 'you have a bad sister. Never mind, we must do what we ought.' And, rising up, she hastily poured out a glass of water and put it to her lips. She could touch none of the breakfast that lay on the table. Her one thought was to go immediately to the cottage and do what she could to comfort Mrs. Dauris. The lady and the child were soon on their way, Charlie holding her hand fast and looking up to her from time to time as with panting breath they hurried along. Before they could reach the gate they saw Mrs. Dauris waiting for them [22] on the threshold. Hippolyta keeping the letter in her bosom, where she had unconsciously thrust it, embraced the poor invalid with overflowing sympathy, and led her without saying a word into the house. There Mr. Dauris sat expecting her in the arm-chair by the window, his head bent upon his breast, absorbed in painful thoughts.

Hippolyta had never fulfilled such a task as now devolved upon her. To acquaint these friends whom she loved and pitied with their daughter's dishonour, to hint at her probable fate unless immediate steps were taken to find out whither she had gone, to soften their despair, and induce them to master their grief lest it should prove the occasion of Annie's irremediable ruin;—and to do all this, knowing that she could not appeal to religious principles in which she did not believe, or comfort them with the possibility of a marriage that would be the remedy of past and future;—it seemed a thing beyond the strength of woman. But Hippolyta was self-denying to an heroic degree. She would not utter what she did not believe. Nevertheless with tact and gentle feeling, in accents wherein all the tenderness of her nature found expression, she unfolded to them the story of shame. She could not hinder it from overwhelming them. It was a thunderbolt that smote the fabric of their happiness at the four corners and brought it to the ground. In comparison with the sin, the disgrace, the horror of what had befallen them, death was nothing.

'I could have borne to see her die,' said Mrs. Dauris, falling back on her couch and clasping her hands wistfully,—'that would have been only giving her back to God from whom we received her. But to think that my Annie should be her own murderer and perhaps her child's.' She could say no more.

'God's will be done,' said her husband reverently. 'I tried to bring my daughter up well. She has turned out perverse, and now we must bear her shame.'

Hippolyta suggested that Maurice Regan might yet be found. If Annie did not come upon his traces, they, with his brother's assistance, perhaps should fare better.

'I doubt it—I doubt it,' replied the gardener after a moment of sad reflection. 'And what though we do? We cannot compel him to marry the wretched creature he has ruined.'

It was impossible, in a house where the new ways of thought had not penetrated, to whisper that if the two young people were in love they might be happy together without marriage. To her intense surprise Hippolyta felt that the mere suggestion, though confined to her own breast, was not right. Would not perfect reciprocal affection, then, be enough unless marriage came to add its consecration? She sat thinking over it. When a little while had passed, and they were still silent, considering what to do first, she said hesitatingly, 'But I cannot help believing that he really did care for Annie; in which [24] case, if he can only be told what has happened, he will come to her rescue.'

'Care for Annie,' echoed Mr. Dauris with deep disgust in his tones; 'forgive me, my dear lady, you know too little of the world or you would not say that. He cared for her as much as he would for a wildflower plucked out of a hedge. He cared for himself, the dastardly villain; that is all such men care for.'

The gardener rose and went to the door. 'It is the old story,' he said very bitterly; 'I must go to the police station once more and tell them to make inquiries. I shall soon be well known there, with my runaway daughter.'

'Oh Annie, Annie,' sobbed the mother, as her husband went out, 'how little you thought of the trouble your wilfulness would bring on us all. See what it is,' she continued, turning to Mrs. Malcolm, 'not to have any rule or check but your own pleasure. It means misery to every one belonging to you.'

What could Hippolyta say? She was stricken dumb.

But there was little occasion for her to say anything. The question was what could be done. Mrs. Dauris became so affected by the thought of Annie's past misconduct and present danger that she went from one fainting fit into another; and it was all Hippolyta could do to attend upon her while Charlie went to Forrest House to fetch Mrs. Leeming. For there was no one but the elder boy to watch [25] over his mother; and it seemed advisable to communicate at once with Ivor Mardol, whose address Mrs. Malcolm fortunately knew. He was well acquainted with the ways of underground London; he could induce Mr. Philip Regan to make inquiries for his brother, and at the same time could plant scouts in the neighbourhood which Annie Dauris had been wont to frequent. Hippolyta, therefore, made haste to leave Mrs. Dauris in competent hands, took a melancholy meal at home, standing up in her desire to have done with it, and ordered the carriage to take her to Mr. Mardol's house, in Grafton Place. She had never been there previously, nor was she aware of the trade or profession, if any, to which Ivor belonged. It was so considerable a distance that the coachman, surprised, repeated the address to make sure he had not mistaken. She bade him impatiently drive on. The day was cold and the air brisk. To make sure of Mr. Mardol Hippolyta had despatched a message by telegraph, asking him not to leave Grafton Place till she arrived.

During the long journey, wrapped in the costly furs that Rupert had presented to her when the cold set in, Hippolyta had leisure for thinking. Her thoughts were far from pleasant. She blamed herself for not having offered better advice to Annie Dauris, whom she had encouraged, it now seemed to her, in making sentiment the mainspring of all her actions. Why not have shown her the folly of such ill-assorted love? Why, at least, not have put by the side of her [26] wild romantic notions the stern truth which even at that moment she, Hippolyta, was learning under the guidance of Ivor Mardol and Miss Desmond? Why not have made more strenuous efforts to elicit her secret? But no, she had been absorbed in self, eager only to make out a strong case for that yielding to impulse which was the cause and explanation of Annie's downfall. Oh, she could have reviled herself bitterly; no words of condemnation could be too severe for her. If Annie had gone to such a friend as Miss Desmond, how differently matters might have fallen out. Then she began, as we all do when most occupied with the troubles of another, to look into her own situation. It was no longer so plain to her as it had been. True, she had wronged nobody, had brought no desolation to her father's heart, nor dishonoured his gray hairs. What she had done and was doing, the manner of life to which she had given herself, would have received Colonel Valence's approval, she knew quite well, had she been able to inform him of it. Her action was not the fruit of a passionate impulse; it had been calm and deliberate. Nor was she prepared to allow that society had the best of the argument, in spite of Ivor Mardol's demonstration from the chaotic deeps of life. It did not touch her, though it might be applicable to such as Annie Dauris. For all that she could not resist the uneasiness which seemed to be creeping over her, like a fog which makes the lights indistinct and the ways uncertain. She wished—and yet again how [27] could she wish?—that Rupert were at home. He would have aided her to think as she ought. But not so, he would have encouraged her scruples, for he desired nothing so much as that they should marry like the rest of the world. There it was,—the rest of the world, the hardness, injustice, cruelty, luxury, unmanliness, the atheism of that most despicable and sordid kind which consists in blinding our eyes to the godlike which is in man. 'Ah,' said Hippolyta more than once as the carriage bore her along, 'I knew well it was the heart of the question. To surrender that one point is to acknowledge that there is no remedy, that men and women must go on suffering, hating, despairing, trampling down others, or being trampled on themselves. I will not believe it. Free love may be an impossible dream; these laws of marriage are a real and present slavery.' But again she asked herself whether she was not hurrying forward in the hope of finding Maurice Regan and persuading or compelling him to marry the girl whom he perhaps had ceased to love? 'What a tangle life is!' said Hippolyta.

The carriage stopped. Mrs. Malcolm looked out and saw a small, but rather quaint-looking house, two stories high, with a clean pavement in front of it, and a strip of open ground on each side, making with the wall of the adjoining houses a sort of passage leading probably to some enclosure beyond. She caught a glimpse of tall wooden beams standing upright, or slanting across one another at the end [28] of the passage, and making that appearance against the sky which in a city always reminds one of shipbuilding. It was, in fact, a joiner's yard, with saw-mills attached, and the smell of fresh wood had something in it briny and sea-like. Hippolyta alighted, and at that moment Ivor Mardol opened the door and bade her come in. She entered after a word to the coachman, whom she desired to wait, as there might still be need of him.

The entrance-hall in which she found herself was square, with a low ceiling of some ancient woodwork; and the walls were hung with engravings or decorated with exquisite specimens of carving. A low, broad staircase, dark and polished, with massive wooden rail, led to the upper apartments. To the right a curtain of gilt leather hung over and concealed the entrance to Ivor's workroom. Holding it aside, the engraver, as that room would soon declare him to be, made way for Hippolyta, who was so tired that she threw herself into the first chair she saw, and being more agitated than at any former time in her life, more even than the night when she came to Rupert's studio, on sitting down burst into tears.

Ivor was alarmed and distressed. Ready, on receipt of Mrs. Malcolm's telegram, to believe that something had happened, he did not know what to conjecture. But he had seen enough of the lady before him to be assured that she was of a high-strung, resolute nature; and the fact that she kept her residence and the circumstances of her life a mystery, [29] not only from himself, but from Miss Desmond, indicated that there were reasons for doing so of which her present visit to him might be the consequence. However, though Mrs. Malcolm wept, she did not faint. In a little while she recovered; and begging pardon for an unseasonable exhibition of feeling, which, as she said, could only add to the trouble, not lessen it, she proceeded to tell him the story of Annie Dauris's flight.

To Ivor, who did not know Annie Dauris, but saw much in Mrs. Malcolm to draw forth his admiration and esteem, it came as a relief. He had feared for the lady herself; the girl's case, though pitiable in the extreme, was one of every day. She might not be found; Maurice Regan, even when found, might decline to acknowledge or assist her. But Ivor would do all that lay in his power. He thanked Mrs. Malcolm for coming to him. It would save time if they drove at once to Mr. Philip Regan's and let him know the circumstance under which his brother's presence was immediately required. Hippolyta, who had anticipated all this, offered him a place in her carriage, and they set out.

'Shall you be leaving any of your work that requires to be finished?' said Hippolyta as soon as they were seated. 'I forgot to ask you before, I was so confused. Let me make it up to you if you are. I am rich,' she added, smiling rather mournfully, —'richer than I have any right to be.'

'You are very kind,' said Ivor; 'and I will let [30] you know if anything of the sort happens before we have found Annie Dauris. But I, too, am richer than I ought to be. I have made money in unexpected ways, which I hoped to contribute towards the expenses of the "movement." But now I am cut off from the rest, I do not see my way to employing it profitably.'

'Why were you cut off?' asked Hippolyta; 'believe me, I do not ask in a spirit of feminine curiosity, but because, woman though I am, my relations with the various branches have been extensive, and I might be able to help you towards reinstatement.'

'You might do much,' he said, with his serious playfulness. 'No, my dear lady, unless a great change comes about in others—which is every day less likely—nothing can be done. If I could disclose the nature of my offences you would agree with me. They are the most serious, short of betrayal of secrets, that can be imagined. I am a lapsed heretic,' he went on half to himself, 'and fit only for the stake.'

It is next to impossible to carry on a conversation in any vehicle making its way through the streets of London; and but few words passed between Ivor and Hippolyta as they went towards St. Audry's. Their interview with Mr. Philip Regan was brief, and resulted only in their receiving the address of his brother Maurice's chambers. For, though as a clergyman he was properly and profoundly shocked, he seemed to take it as a matter of course that [31] Annie Dauris had been the tempter and Mr. Maurice Regan the tempted. He was too well acquainted, he said, with the character of young women of that class to have any doubt on the subject. It seemed to Hippolyta that she had come unexpectedly in contact with a Pharisee; and, although she had heard of his kindness to the poor, and knew he spent much of his time in visiting them, she could not help fancying that he looked on himself as exceedingly clean, and on those to whom he stooped as exceedingly the opposite. With scornful amusement she pictured the surprise and disgust which would have taken hold of this handsome, clean-shaven, scrupulously fitted-up ecclesiastic, had he learned what manner of woman it was that came to plead the cause of Annie Dauris within his gates. He would write to his brother, certainly; but he trusted that Mrs. Malcolm was quite sure of the facts on which she was now moving. Hippolyta replied immediately, 'I am sure that Annie has left home; I believe she is a ruined girl; and I have every reason to think that she has gone in search of Mr. Regan. All I ask of you is to inform that gentleman, if you know where to reach him, of the contents of Annie's letter. I suppose,' she added with some bitterness, 'it is only unbelievers like Mr. Mardol that think a woman as well worth saving as a man.' The clergyman bowed stiffly and led them to the door. He gave less credit to Annie Dauris's story than ever.

CHAPTER XXVIII WRECKED!

Such was the first of her weary and fruitless journeys, undertaken by Hippolyta during that day and the next two or three, in search of her lost and fallen sister. Not finding Maurice Regan at his legal address—but, of course, they had not expected to find him there—Ivor sat down and wrote him a brief account of Annie's disappearance, requesting him to let her parents know if he was acquainted with her whereabouts, as the police were already engaged in searching for her; and if he were not, to take such steps as lay in his power towards her recovery from the danger into which she had plunged. The next point was to visit Charlotte Fraser, who either could not or would not give them any information, except the names of certain persons, lower than herself in the social scale, with whom Annie had been wont to consort. The places where these women abode did not seem fit for Mrs. Malcolm to approach. Ivor [33] promised that he would make all needful inquiry, and let her know the result. She begged him to address her at the gardener's cottage; for, even in this crisis and bewilderment of her faculties, she was still uncertain whether Rupert would wish his friend to know that she lived at Forrest House. So far as Ivor was concerned she need have had no anxiety. He was ignorant of Rupert's connection with that red-brick mansion, as of the extent and situation of his property altogether, except that of the house in town at which he had once stayed.

They were three long and miserable days, while a bitter east wind was blowing under the darkened sky, and in Hippolyta's heart there was a sense of growing distress and heaviness which she could not account for, even when she thought of the trouble in her friends' home. Certainly it was sad to look on Mrs. Dauris, now sinking into a state of perilous exhaustion, her appetite gone, and a severe headache and racking pains in the chest making her almost insensible to the cause which had brought her low. Annie's father was still more to be pitied. At times even his religious faith threatened to give way; he sat in mournful silence, or broke out into sharp words of reproach against his misguided child; and only Charlie's affection and thoughtful care prevented him from yielding to the demon which always lurks at such a season of misery near the threshold of the poor. It was the boy of eleven whose gentle earnestness kept the grown man from forgetting his sorrow in drink. But he had [34] set his children a good example of which he was now, in Charlie's piety and devotedness, reaping the fruit. Mr. Dauris was a good man and a true Christian; he knew that he must not yield; but desperation was ever whispering that he might as well yield now as afterwards.

'You see,' he said, 'Mrs. Malcolm, we have done our best, but Annie has proved too much for us. Her mother will die; and what does it matter how I live? But yes,' interrupting himself, 'it does matter, and you do well to rebuke me with your looks. I beg your pardon. I ought to have more trust in the goodness of God.'

Hippolyta said all she could think of to comfort him. The struggle of such a man under temptation was dreadful to see. Could a foolish love in one young girl's bosom work so great harm? What a contrast between the happy, peaceful husband and wife, patient in spite of their trials, as they had appeared on her first knowing them, and the shattered home where every divine light seemed in danger of being quenched! The shock to this good man's virtue affected Hippolyta even more than the ruin of his happiness. 'It is little to be unhappy,' she thought, as she went away that evening; 'one may be unhappy, yet endure it. The horrible change is when one falls from the ideal and is willing to believe in universal disorder, as though it were no use to hold by what is good.' She dwelt repeatedly on these things in her own mind while going to and fro next day in the [35] haunts of Annie Dauris. She called on Ivor Mardol, hoping there might be some fresh intelligence. But there was none; and at the close of a weary afternoon, dismissing the cab which brought her to the bottom of Bransmere Road, she began to walk towards home.

'It seems very late,' she said to herself, pulling out her watch. It was just half-past seven. While she stopped to look at the time, for it was anything but a bright evening, she noticed that a number of persons were going by her up the Hill, and that no one was coming down. She looked round and found herself in the midst of a not inconsiderable crowd, all going apparently the same way. Some were well-dressed, but the greater number, both men and women, belonged to the labouring class, and many of them were thinly defended against the cold. Hippolyta walked on with them, wondering, in an absent, tired fashion what could be taking all these people past Forrest House. But her wonder ceased when she came to her own gate and saw that they were entering the church beyond. As she paused with her hand on the lock she heard the organ rolling out its solemn music, and perceived a dim light shining through the stained glass windows, the confused emblems of which she had tried to make out the first evening when Rupert quitted her. She was exhausted with the long day's work. The sense of loneliness and uncertainty which for some weeks past had been gaining on her was now at its height; and she felt in that dangerous mood when the slightest token, one [36] way or another, determines a nature like Hippolyta's to make an experiment with the unknown, in the hope of finding what has been sought to so little purpose elsewhere. After reflecting for a moment she turned from her own gate, drew her furs about her, let down her veil, and followed into the church with the multitude.

It was already thronged, and Hippolyta had some difficulty in making her way through the narrow porch and past the still narrower doors which opened inside it, under a gallery at the west end. A few jets of gas, at long intervals, cast their uncertain flickering light on the crowded benches at which the people were already kneeling, strings of beads in the hands of most. They were engaged, as it would seem, in public prayer, for a low monotonous hum, broken only by the click of the beads, ran from time to time through the building. Hippolyta could perceive, when she was able to find a place, that there were kneeling forms likewise in the chancel, which by that dim light seemed to be a great distance from the western porch. And they, too, from time to time, murmured something of which she could only gather the sound without being able to understand in what language it was spoken. A devout woman, seeing her standing up, made way for her at the end of a bench near the wall; and Hippolyta, unable now to move in advance or to retreat by the way she had come, judged it prudent to kneel like the others lest she should draw their attention. The monotonous [37] prayer ceased; the people stood up and sang a hymn; the jets of gas were turned to their full height on both sides of the central aisle; and Hippolyta, raising her eyes, saw that an ecclesiastic, in a white surplice, and with an embroidered scarf over his shoulders, was standing in the pulpit about half-way between the altar and the west end of the church, waiting in silence till the people had taken their seats again and were quiet.

Now that the church was lighted up Hippolyta was able to judge of its extent, which, though not vast, like those of the immense cathedrals she had visited on the Continent, was considerable and imposing. It was built in a pure style of pointed architecture; and the clustered columns, with their slender shafts and deeply-wrought capitals, gave it an air of loveliness which enhanced the beauty of its proportions. On either side were chapels with lamps burning in front of their altars, while a profusion of statuary under niches seemed to betoken that the heavenly citizens were come down to dwell with their brethren on earth and offer them protection in exchange for homage. There were pictures here and there on the walls, but it was impossible for Hippolyta to make out the subjects. At the extreme end of the church a solitary lamp glowed crimson within the chancel. The stained imagery of the windows, luminous outside, was black and indistinguishable viewed from within. Every nook and corner of the church now seemed filled with people like those Hippolyta had met [38] coming up the Hill. It took them some little while to be seated and to have finished coughing. Meanwhile the preacher stood still with an open book on the desk before him, and a crucifix in his left hand.

He was by no means a striking figure, although the calm decision of the attitude in which he stood betokened something not quite commonplace. He seemed of about the average height, or a little more, with dark, close-clipped hair and beardless face, very dark steady eyes, and the worn expression of countenance which is so frequent in Roman Catholic saints of an ascetic type,—an expression to be rendered by some such phrase as 'fasting from earthly joys.' His hands were thin and nervous, brown rather than white, and now kept motionless, one resting on the edge of the pulpit, the other grasping the ebony cross on which glimmered the dead-pale figure of ivory. Amid a hush of perfect silence he stooped, took up the book, and gave out these words in a clear low voice: 'In the sixth chapter, twenty-third verse, of his Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul has written, "The wages of sin"—he paused, seemed to lift the crucifix ever so little, and to let it fall as he uttered the conclusion of his text—"is death." '

There is nothing, there is everything, in the inflection of a human voice. Hippolyta's mental wanderings were arrested. This unknown man had as yet pronounced not a word of his own, and he was already speaking to her; his accents came close round her heart. Was there likely to be any wisdom [39] with which he was conversant and which she had yet to learn? Impossible. Nevertheless she seemed to say to him under her breath, 'Speak on, what is your message?'

He was already speaking in the same searching, musical tones—slightly foreign she thought them— that gathered volume as he went on, and rose gradually to a steady height at which they seemed to float over the assembly. Not a word was wasted; clear and distinct each of them fell upon the ear and pierced into the spirit, carrying with it a sense of truth rather than of passion, of what must be said because so things were, rather than of rhetoric framed to delight or to hold the fancy captive. Hippolyta could interpret their music, she could follow their eloquence. The doctrine, abounding in brief allusions as to things well known, she did not grasp. But again and again, when the preacher turned a swift glance to the crucifix and once more bent his eyes on the audience, it seemed to her that he as well as they, and they no less than he, were conscious of an awful presence wherein whatever he said took on it the impress of eternal, absolute truth.

He spoke of their gathering that night as to an enrolment on the eve of battle. They were to range themselves under a standard, to take the oath of allegiance to a captain, and to look the campaign in the face on which they were entering. How should they choose if they knew not the difference between the contending causes? Let them not enrol themselves [40] except in the light of knowledge and as prepared for the extremities of war. They must be ready to submit to the event, for it was not here as in the battling of earthly powers, where quarter was given, prisoners taken alive, and a peace made at the end. Each party would inflict on the other all it could of defeat and disaster. This at any rate was sure. Would they ask proof at his hands? He held forth the crucifix. Such, he repeated in grave emphatic terms, was the culminating victory of the powers of evil, which they wrought upon the leader of the hostile array. They stripped and scourged Him; they made Him an open shame; they reft Him of friends, followers, admirers, so that He fell down wounded and alone under the shadow of death; and as He lay a helpless captive they did with Him what they would, flouting and mocking His pretended majesty with the purple rags of kingship and a crown of wild brier. He made no complaint; He was but enduring what a man must expect from his enemies. It was the fortune of war. Neither did He beg their mercy when they smote Him through with nails and fastened His dying body to the Cross; what else should they, being the powers of darkness, do with one that could never own their dominion or be their friend? He stretched out His hands to the hammer which drove in the spikes; He bowed His head, the thorny wreath wounding it, upon the pillow they had made for Him. 'Was that all?' asked the preacher, as he looked round upon the silent audience. 'Was [41] the cup drained to the dregs? Not so; there remained a bitter draught, compared with which all bodily pain was little. From His Cross Jesus, opening His eyes on the world, meditating on the years He had spent, saw words and works alike frustrate, the good defeated, evil triumphant; power, and wealth, and dominion, and knowledge, and religion itself, in the service of a lie. He was hanging on the Cross, not worshipped on the throne of the world. Why? Because the world was Satan's and all it contained. Therefore Christ was made an outcast, and His efforts came to naught. Suffering and death were the penalty of rebelling against the dominion of crowned and sceptred evil. In this sense, too, the wages of sin is death. To resist sin is to die.'

Hippolyta listened as to the opening bars of a symphony which unlocks the feeling and brings into vivid presentment vague thoughts one has had for years—thoughts that have wandered formless through the heavens like an unseen vapour which is not yet capable of taking the appearance of a rain-cloud. What were the powers of evil which had the sovereignty of lower things? Were there any such? or was it a parable for the unlearned to which she was thus giving ear?

The preacher, who seemed to be uttering thoughts given to him at that very instant, resumed. With the passion and death of his Master he bound up the misery, degradation, pain, anguish, torture, disappointment, of every human life. He might, like Hippolyta, [42] have been dwelling in the deeps with those to whom light and hope were denied. His voice trembled and grew husky, his eyes filled with tears. 'Sorrow is universal,' he cried; 'it is like the air of heaven, we cannot live out of it. And what shall we say? Has it no meaning, no purpose?' A mild light kindled in his eyes. 'Brethren,' he went on, as under the inspiration of a loftier spirit, 'it has a meaning and a purpose. Its meaning is the moral of the Cross— the wages of sin; its purpose is the triumph of the Cross, it is redemption.' And soaring up into the unseen, which alone, as he declared, is true and everlasting, he exalted that life of Christ, that heavenly existence, which began with His defeat and death on Calvary. 'Was there,' he asked, 'any other way of winning mankind, or of overcoming the powers of darkness save by this supreme resignation? And who was it that failed and suffered loss in the battle which cost Jesus of Nazareth His life, His earthly honour, His glory, nay, the very peace of His human soul? Was it Jesus or Satan that came to naught on that day?' Then, enlarging on this strange philosophy, he showed how sin, the one absolute disorder, brings with it all others, and is from the first an admission of defeat; how it untunes the universe. While goodness, which has the promise of life in itself, cannot die. The triumph of time is for the powers that have no dominion beyond it, but can only look for a certain dreadful coming of judgment when time is past; the good alone does not, cannot perish, but [43] is everlasting. And again he asked in piercing tones, with his eyes on the emblem which he seemed to study as a book, 'Is Jesus dead? or does He not give the mightiest token of life by making all those live that believe in Him? They conquer themselves by His indwelling spirit; and when a man has become his own captive, he has subdued the world. Christ reigns in hearts innumerable of men and women; on them, as on Him, sin has done its worst; it has inflicted death, not once, but every time the cup of pitiless suffering has been held to their lips. But can it do more? The pain which destroys only this lower happiness has become, for such, redemption without end.'

Then he depicted, with forcible and gloomy eloquence, the lot of those who, shrinking from earthly pain, have chosen sin and its eternal remorse. At the foot of Calvary he seemed to open the bottomless pit wherein all they dwelt to whom the harmony of God's law was turned to discord. These were the martyrs of evil who made their own hell; no God made it, but they themselves, lighting up in their own breasts the fire they could never put out. The wages of sin? What were the wages of hatred, envy, drunkenness, unhallowed love, indulgence of self-will? And was there any principle anywhere that could so change the nature of things as to hinder these from having their consequences? To resist sin was to suffer a momentary death, to enter heaven, like St. Laurence, through a curtain of fire; to yield to it [44] was to take into one's bosom the seed of everlasting death, and to dwell in the world of horror we had created for our Paradise. Would they choose Christ with His Cross or Satan with his fiery crown? There was no halting or being neutral on this battlefield; to be neutral was to be defeated ere a blow had been struck.

For a long while, Hippolyta thought, the voice continued in this strain; but though its sound fell upon her ears she was not hearkening. She had heard enough. Sitting there alone, unfriended, and worn out with her three days' searching, she felt like one that, watching from the deck of a deserted vessel, beholds the dawn breaking over a wintry and wreck-strewn sea. The illusions of life were at an end. She was wounded to the heart's core. Had she, then, chosen hitherto the service of darkness, imagining that it would usher in the kingdom of light? She remembered the text of her own gospel, taken from Goethe, Im Ganzen, Guten, Schönen fest zu leben . If the preacher were not wholly wrong, what a mockery it was! Not order but disorder; not good but evil; not the beautiful, but this monstrous thing called sin—such had been the deities worshipped in her ignorance. She bowed her head in her hands and wept hot tears beneath her veil.

Suddenly, while the voice of the preacher still resounded in the pulpit, Hippolyta saw the vast congregation rising to their feet. Innumerable lights twinkled over the church; almost every one present [45] held a taper which seemed to have been lit at a preconcerted signal. The preacher's face was half-turned away to the high altar. Hippolyta, doing mechanically like the others, rose from her seat; and the devout woman next to whom she had been sitting put a lighted taper into her hand, which, not knowing why, she held aloft as she saw them all doing. The people began, with the thunder of their many voices, to repeat a solemn formula after the priest; and Hippolyta, her ear more accustomed to what was going forward, could now distinguish words renouncing evil and dedicating those who uttered them to the service and the Cross of their Redeemer. She could not join in the words, but her tears fell fast. The good woman near looked at her very kindly. And while she was endeavouring to conceal her emotion, she happened to look across the church, and there, not a long way from the pulpit, she saw William Dauris standing with a taper in his hand, not bowed down with sorrow as when she parted from him the evening before, but erect and firm in attitude repeating the words of dedication and renouncement, while the tears ran down his cheeks. A sense of thankfulness relieved the fulness of Hippolyta's heart; if she, too, continued weeping it was not with such extreme desolation. There was one, at least, who had vanquished his great enemy.

She could not tell what followed; her mind was all absorbed. The twinkling tapers were put out; lights appeared far away in the chancel blazing over [46] the high altar and around it; figures in strange raiment came and went; the smoke of incense ascended clouding the lights; and music seemed to be filling the high roof above and rolling its waves on every side. It did not soothe, it excited her. She became conscious that she was meditating a daring resolution. At that moment she thought of no one but herself and the Form that seemed to be gazing at her still from the crucifix. There was an interval of intense stillness; the organ had stopped, all heads were bent, and she saw something—she could not tell what—going forward at the altar. Thrice she heard the tinkle of an unseen bell; and the music broke out again. Then the congregation rose from their kneeling posture and began to move down the aisles towards the door. Many of the gas-jets were turned off; but one or another in Hippolyta's neighbourhood was still kept burning. She knelt and covered her face with her hands. Deep thought kept her immovable.

But ere long, when she lifted her head, she saw the preacher in his black habit and white surplice coming with rapid step down the church towards where she was kneeling. When he had arrived within a few paces of her, he turned and opened the half-doors of a tall upright construction in dark wood, which somewhat marred the architectural beauty of the Gothic building and reminded Hippolyta of the confessionals to which she had on one or two occasions seen people resorting in the churches of Paris and Rome. [47] It was, no doubt, a confessional. She watched the ecclesiastic enter and fasten the doors after him; she heard the click with which he drew aside something within; and she saw a man and a woman take up their position at each side, where a curtain more than half-concealed the kneeling figures. After a while one of them rose and went away, followed, at no great interval, by the other. No fresh arrivals came; and the priest, opening one of the upper partitions into which the doors were divided, looked out into the church and saw Hippolyta. She was kneeling still. He drew back, opened the other partition, and appeared as if sitting in a tribunal waiting till Hippolyta should come. As the fancy struck her she rose hastily, and without considering what she was doing, threw herself on her knees in the confessional. There was a wire grating between her and the priest; and all she could make out was the glimmering of his white surplice. In an almost inaudible whisper he muttered some words, the sense of which was lost on her. She did not speak; and after that one brief sentence neither for a time did he. At last, finding her so silent, he bent his head near the grating and said very distinctly, 'Will you not tell me, my child, when was your last confession?'

'I don't know,' replied Hippolyta, confused; 'I am not of your Church. I am of no Church. I am not a Christian.'

'Poor child,' said the priest, more grieved apparently than astonished; 'why do you say you are [48] not a Christian? Have you been unfaithful to your baptism? So have we all.'

Hippolyta felt encouraged by his calmness. But what had she to say?

'I have never been baptized,' she answered. 'I do not believe in the Christian creed. But I am in such trouble; and what you said to-night made me think—' There was no possibility of going on, she was so agitated. The priest heard her sobbing.

'Yes,' he said very gently after a while, 'it made you think? What did it make you think? Tell me.'

'Oh,' she replied wildly, 'I am one of those that have chosen the wrong side. Is there not a woman in your Gospels named Magdalene? I have been, I am now, a Magdalene.'

'Do you mean, my poor sister,' he said in the same calm voice, like that of a physician at the bedside of a patient, 'that you are living in sin?'

'I mean,' was the answer given with heaving breath, 'that I have scorned to believe in marriage, and have thought love by itself enough. My husband is not my husband; I would not let him marry me.'

'Was he willing to marry you?' inquired the priest.

'Yes, yes,' she said, weeping again; 'it is all my fault. It was I, in my pride and foolishness, that persuaded him to do evil. How shall I repair it? What must I do?'

'You must repent,' answered the priest gravely, [49] 'as Magdalene repented of a lesser fault. For she yielded to passion; and you, my sister, have perverted the very principle on which purity and all human affections rest.'

'How did Magdalene repent?' said Hippolyta, with a sudden flush upon her face which made itself felt in the darkness. 'Tell me, for the love of good, what did she do?'

The answer came slow and distinct, 'She followed Christ to Calvary and clung to His Cross. She lived and died for Him.'

When Hippolyta heard these words she waited for no more. Rising and turning from the confessional, she ran with a lightning-like speed to the door, and was lost in the night.

The priest looked sorrowfully after her fleeting figure and shook his head. What would become of the strange penitent?

·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·

Hippolyta did not go far. At first the violent agitation of her spirits made it seem stifling to enter a house, and she walked down the Hill until she reached the turn where it became the London Road. It was a cold raw evening, and chilled her to the bone; but the physical discomfort did her good by recalling her to the things of the lower world; and after wandering for some half hour, she retraced her steps till she arrived at her own door. It was open, and the housekeeper, who appeared to have just come in, was taking some letters out of the letterbox, [50] which, on seeing her mistress, she handed to her. Hippolyta looked at one of them. It was in her father's handwriting, redirected from Falside. The other was from Rupert. On seeing it a terrible feeling of sickness and misery took possession of her whole being. She stood under the lamp which hung in the middle of the hall ceiling, tore open the enclosure, and read its contents. They were brief. Rupert, in his usual tone of devoted affection, announced that he should be coming up to London that very day, but should arrive too late to come on to Forrest House. He would settle some little business next morning as early as possible, and she might expect him, at latest, by twelve o'clock. Hippolyta shivered, put the letter in her pocket, and on Mrs. Leeming's inquiry whether she would now dine, as it was getting late, she merely shook her head, and went slowly upstairs to her room, in which lights were burning. When she reached it she looked round as if in search of some object. What it was soon appeared. Among the many costly ivories with which her boudoir was decked Hippolyta had one day noticed a crucifix of exceedingly noble and finished execution, due probably to the hand of a Flemish artist of the Renaissance. An instinct had led her to take it down from the wall where it was hanging, and put it away out of sight in a drawer. She had a touch, if not more, of that dislike for seeing the emblem of sorrow continually before one's eyes which has distinguished various poets [51] and poetic natures of the century; but whether it was that or something deeper which had prompted her to hide it long ago—what a weary time it seemed—she would have been unable to say. Now she took it out again, and set it up where the strong and steady light of a lamp would fall upon it. Her next action was to lock the door of her chamber and draw the curtains across the window, so as to shut out the view of the garden,—a measure hardly needed, for the darkness outside was very great. Not a breath of wind stirred among the dry branches or the foliage of the evergreens. In the house, as all round, a perfect stillness reigned.

And in the silent night, amid the solitude of her own room, Hippolyta paced up and down, hour after hour, with the same intense self-concentration, the same sense that time was flying on the wings of night never to return, the same overwhelming dread of the morrow, which the condemned criminal must have in his prison-cell when that morrow is to see him die. Her thoughts were deep, confused, and overwhelming, recurring ever to the one theme which the preacher had handled with such portentous effect, —the guilt, the awfulness of breaking through the divine order. She had been so confident of her cause; and it was her cause that had turned against her. To spread the light had ever appeared the only ambition worthy of her heroic soul; but the light in her was deceptive, a mere marsh-light guiding to ruin. Instead of mounting the heights to which [52] she aspired, she had flung herself into the mire, and she was now become an object of loathing to every honest man and woman. She, Hippolyta Valence, so conscious, so proud of her rectitude, was fallen, polluted, horrible to think upon like the women whom she had styled, in the excess of a self-admiring sympathy, her sisters. The revelation of sin as no phantom, or superstition, or conventional metaphor, but a foul and loathsome reality, had come upon her like a whirlwind blackening the sky. Sin, the most unwomanly, the least admitting of excuse or palliation, was it then become a part of her being, a record in the past never to be blotted out? As in her mind she went over these things again and again, questioning, denying, admitting, shrinking from herself, yet not knowing how to escape into the sweet fresh air that, after she had been breathing it for so many months, had suddenly changed to miasma, her feeling was like that of a trapped wild beast; she could have raged against herself, and in the fury of her disdain rushed upon death as a relief. She turned with the thought of it flaming in her eyes; but the steady light still showed her the crucifix, and when her gaze went out to it, she remembered the words which described it as the image of supreme resignation. To kill herself would not be resignation or victory; it would be pride and defeat. What though she had fallen, might she not rise again? 'Oh never, never,' she cried in her anguish; 'the snow has been trodden into mud, the ermine is [53] stained.' Tears had been given in the church to ease her overflowing heart; but now she had no tears. The sweet short dream of delight was over. She might in a few hours go forward to meet Rupert Glanville with a smile on her face, concealing the canker-worm within. Did she choose to follow a desperate course, she might still feed upon the honey of these poisoned flowers and dare retribution. But where was the tranquillity of heart, the peace and loving security, which, as she now perceived, had been the foundation of her previous happiness? Gone, gone, never to return. Conscience had inflicted a deadly wound upon her, and she hung writhing on the spear. The hours fled on.

But why believe in what she had heard by accident? What was there in common between Hippolyta Valence and this religion that so imperiously divided the light from the darkness? There was no Satan, and Christ was dead and buried many ages ago. Suppose it a fable, a children's story, an arabesque on the skirt of the eternal night. Alas! it was impossible. Her sin had found her out; to lapse into the delusion of innocence was beyond her for evermore. In this fearful noonday glare she beheld the stain, as though it were the spilt blood of murder, spreading over her soul and soaking into it, deep, deep. When the murderer dipped his hands in water, they were none the less polluted, but the water became crimson, mixed with the blood that fell into it. So, she went on saying to herself, it [54] would be with marriage following on the loss of innocence; it could not bring back what was lost, it could only suffer degradation because of it. A woman was either angel or demon; she must be pure or impure. 'And what am I?' said Hippolyta, shuddering, as in her pacing to and fro she came to a standstill before that silent figure on the Cross.

Her anguish became unendurable. She threw open the window and looked out. All was dark and wintry. Through the stained glass of the lancet nearest her she seemed to distinguish a faint gleam as of a light still burning somewhere in the church. There were lamps, perhaps, that kept in all night. She could not imagine any one was there at such an hour, past one o'clock. Not a star was to be seen in the sky. 'How like it is to this life of mine!' she murmured with a sigh, as she closed the window and drew the curtain again. But a voice within seemed to make reply, 'Have you deserved the guidance of a star, when you have been wilful, headstrong, confident in the strength of your own knowledge?' and she was compelled to make a confession, as humiliating as it was salutary, that she had dreamt of being a sufficient light to herself. And what, in those arrogant days, had she known of the mighty, mysterious world? Now the veil was withdrawn, the tragic prospect clear. She had been made to fix her thoughts, her eyes, her memory, on the existences which were governed by passionate, evanescent impulses, whether of love or hate; the blind world [55] of instinct, she saw, stood in need of a divine reason to overrule its manifold contradictory tendencies. Was it not the same with the blind world of man? And how much blinder had she proved herself than those in whom ignorance was the outcome of incapacity or lack of education? Hers had been wanton, self-asserting, criminal. Was Annie Dauris not saved? Whose sin was that but Hippolyta's. Was Rupert, the generous, confiding, devoted Rupert, lowered in his own eyes, turned from the path of happiness and honour, made to share in turpitude of which he had never dreamt? Whose sin, whose unpardonable, damning sin was that but Hippolyta's? Could the murderer, the suicide, have done worse?

Thinking these accusing thoughts, seeing these horrible shadows trooping around her, discerning no way of escape, with an impetuous burst of tears Hippolyta cast herself prostrate on the ground before the crucifix, crying aloud again and again, amid the solitude of the dismal winter night, 'Oh thou unknown Christ, have pity on me!'

·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·

It was nearly twelve o'clock at noon, and the sun was shining high and bright in the heavens, when Rupert Glanville, his face radiant with love and happiness, dashed up in a hansom cab to the gates of Forrest House. He sprang out hastily, dismissed the cabman, and ran as if wings were carrying him along the garden path into the hall. When the housekeeper saw him she turned red [56] and pale. 'Where is Mrs. Malcolm?' he cried gaily. 'Is she in her room?' The housekeeper stood motionless, looked at him compassionately, and made no reply. He was struck with her silence, and his mood altered. 'Answer, woman,' he said sternly. 'Why are you standing there like an idiot?' She put up her hand with a pitying gesture, and faltered out, 'Oh, sir, Mrs. Malcolm is gone.'— 'Gone!' he repeated in amaze. 'What do you mean? Gone where?' Then she told him that on sending the maid as usual to wake her mistress that morning, the girl had found the door of her bedroom wide open, the bed not slept in, and Mrs. Malcolm not there. It was seven o'clock when they missed her. They had searched all over the house and in the garden; they had sent to William Dauris, but all in vain. Not a trace of her was to be discovered. She seemed to have taken nothing with her but her cloak and hat.

Rupert ran madly upstairs, rushed into Hippolyta's boudoir, saw that everything was in perfect order as the servants had told him, and looked round like a man bewildered when he found no Hippolyta there. What had become of her? Was it a dream? He went by a natural instinct to her writing-table and examined the papers lying on it. They were of no importance; they yielded no clue. But the blotting-book was wide open, and a sealed envelope with his initials outside caught his eye. As he tore it crosswise, in his eagerness, a plain gold ring fell [57] out which he had induced Hippolyta to wear as Mrs. Malcolm, and round it a slip of paper. Written on the latter, in a trembling hand, were only these words, 'Rupert, we must part; do not seek me.' It was too true. Hippolyta had disappeared.

CHAPTER XXIX LIKE MADNESS IN THE BRAIN

The blow which had thus been struck at the heart of Rupert Glanville was so unexpected, and its occasion so wrapt in mystery, that the young man, on reading Hippolyta's brief sentence, announcing as it should seem an everlasting farewell, refused to believe and stood there incapable of realising it. His face was calm as that of a man who has just been shot dead. Hippolyta vanished? But why? he asked himself again. She must have simply been called away by a sudden emergency; she would return in a few hours; or she had heard from Colonel Valence and he was in danger, dying perhaps, and in need of his daughter's presence. Surely it was that which, giving her an overwhelming shock, had disturbed her reason; that or the attack of disease alone could have made her set down those few wild words which he read again and again, vainly striving to make them tell more than their own meaning. He drew a chair [59] to the writing-table, and sat down by it, looking out of the window in a dazed and helpless fashion, not able to think or to act, every faculty benumbed and a weight like ice in his bosom. The entrance of the housekeeper roused him as from a stupor. Ought they to do anything? Had Mr. Malcolm any orders to give? Rupert laughed sardonically on hearing the name which had gone with his golden honeymoon. It was nine months, almost to the day, since he brought Hippolyta from his studio to Forrest House. Nine months! good heavens, how happy they had been, how swift to come and go, like a broad stream of sunshine losing itself in the smiling ocean! It was all over. 'A dream, a dream,' he murmured to himself. Or was he dreaming now? The housekeeper spoke again; and he gave a start at the sound of a strange voice in Hippolyta's boudoir. He had forgotten that any one was there. 'What did you say?' he inquired, passing his hand over his forehead. Orders! No, he had no orders to give; and he turned over the scrap of paper which he held between his fingers, vaguely imagining there might be some message on the back which he had not seen, to say that it was all a jest, all make-believe, and Hippolyta would come ere the day was spent. There was nothing except the fatal sentences written on the paper; he knew it before he looked. But this slight action brought him to himself. Hippolyta must have been seen when she went away; if not by the servants, yet by those who were passing along the street, by the [60] neighbours, the police, by whatever people might be about in the early morning. What if a misfortune to her father had driven her out of her mind, and she were wandering somewhere without any one to take care of her! The thought was terrible, inciting him to lose no time in seeking her traces, and allowing him, till she should be found, to believe that she had not known what she was doing when she wrote him farewell. Was it not a symptom of madness that people turned against those they loved most dearly, and fled from them? This appalling comfort that Hippolyta might be out of her mind was a sad testimony to the overthrow of Rupert's happiness. 'Why, oh why,' he cried in despair, 'did I not come on last night instead of lingering in town? I should have noticed the change and ascertained the cause of it; a few hours would have made all the difference. We could have called in a physician, set some one to watch over her to see that she did not stray away by herself. But let us do what we can and not delay.' He was eager and active now; the stupor had passed for a while, because a ray of hope seemed to be dawning again. The more he considered the stronger he found those evidences of Hippolyta's mental aberration which the circumstances of her flight seemed to give. She had not taken anything with her in the shape of money or clothing; she had made no preparations for a journey, long or short. Her books, correspondence, wardrobe, were all in perfect order, as Mrs. Leeming had seen them only the day before. [61] There was no sign of hurry or confusion in the room, nothing out of place, except in that pleasant way which betokened that some one had made a home of it. The note she had received from Rupert and had read in the hall when she came in last night was lying on her dressing-table with her keys. Only her hat and cloak were gone. Rupert questioned the servants closely. Had any one found a door or window open that morning? No, but the housemaid, on going to unbolt the front door, was astonished to observe that it was unfastened. Some one must or might have left the house that way; all other means of exit were as they had been left the last thing at night.

Had Mrs. Malcolm appeared in any way strange during the past few days? Had she received letters, or heard agitating news, or done or said anything unusual? In answer to these inquiries the housekeeper mentioned the two letters received last night, told what she knew of the trouble and flight of Annie Dauris, and of Hippolyta's anxiety to discover and bring her back. The girl, she added, was not yet found; neither did they seem aware at the gardener's cottage of anything peculiar in Mrs. Malcolm's conduct. They were very much attached to her, and she had displayed great kindness towards them. Rupert sent for William Dauris. The gardener came immediately, with an expression of intense sorrow in his countenance, and so deeply grieved on hearing of Hippolyta's disappearance from home that he could hardly reply to the questions which Rupert addressed [62] to him. He was evidently as much in the dark as any one else. He could not think so feeling a lady as Mrs. Malcolm would have set out on a long journey, especially if it was connected with his daughter, and not come to say good-bye, or at least send them word that she had found a clue. She had certainly been much troubled when she heard of Annie's misbehaviour; he knew that she had made inquiries everywhere, and had even gone into the East End herself to help them on. How did she go, Rupert asked, by what conveyance? William Dauris could not say; he thought the coachman had driven her. The coachman was sent for, and gave his account, which was not much. It had been Mrs. Malcolm's custom to have herself driven a couple of miles along the London Road and then dismiss him. He believed that she often engaged a cab to take her much farther, into town, he supposed. But he had never driven farther himself except three days ago, when she told him to take her to an address in Grafton Place, Strand,—a Mr. Mardol's,—and afterwards—

Rupert almost leaped out of the chair in which he was sitting. 'What name did you say?' he cried. 'Mr. Mardol's? Grafton Place? Are you sure?'

The coachman was quite sure. Not only had he asked Mrs. Malcolm the address twice over, but he heard Mr. Mardol's name several times when he drove on to the East End, whither Mrs. Malcolm was accompanied by a gentleman from Grafton Place.

'Oh, I see now,' exclaimed Rupert with a sigh of [63] relief; 'it will all come clear. Thank you, Thomson, thank you; you have given me the clue I wanted. Why did you not inform me at once?'

Thomson had not felt certain that it mattered, or he would have spoken. He knew the house in Grafton Place, and the other off Saffron Hill. If Mr. Malcolm wished to see them himself, he could get the brougham ready at once.

'Right, quite right, Thomson,' said his master; 'be quick about it. I will drive to Grafton Place. Mr. Mardol is a friend of mine. There has been some misunderstanding, I suppose; that is all. It is nothing, nothing. Only look about you. I shall be waiting till you come.'

The coachman departed on his errand; and William Dauris, who had been standing silently near during this conversation, took heart again on seeing how Rupert's face brightened. He appeared like a changed man.

'Then we shall have Mrs. Malcolm back?' said the gardener timidly.

'Oh, never fear,' replied Rupert, shaking him warmly by the hand; 'back this evening, no doubt. Ladies will give us these frightenings now and then,' he said, smiling as one does to assure friends that one has escaped a great peril.

'I am very glad,' said William, 'and so will my wife be when I tell her. She has been crying ever since the housekeeper brought us the bad news.'

He said no more, but went away quietly. Rupert, [64] who had not taken off the travelling wraps in which he had alighted from the hansom, walked from the front door to the gate and back again, up and down the garden path, till the brougham came in sight. He at once ran to meet it, leaped in, and told the coachman to use his utmost speed till they reached Grafton Place. He would willingly have galloped with the horses, so great was his excitement. To have done with the journey and clasp Hippolyta in his arms again—he could think of nothing else. He would forgive her at the first word; but she must never so frighten him again.

In the midst of these disjointed reflections the thought presented itself, 'But suppose she were not in Grafton Place?' Why, he replied at once to himself, he had not fancied she would be there; at least it could not signify; Ivor would know where she was, what motive had induced her to leave home suddenly, and in what frame of mind she had come to him. The reason of their meeting was plain enough. Ivor, Hippolyta, and Colonel Valence were all mixed up in that mad revolutionary movement which appeared to delight in these mysterious vanishings and trap-door scenes; there had been some plan afoot, and Hippolyta was required to take part in it. 'But,' said Rupert, in a gayer mood now that he was going to see her very soon, 'I shall not allow this doctrine of blind obedience to come between husband and wife. The next time Hippolyta sets out on a humanitarian expedition [65] she shall take me with her, or I will know the reason why.'

The drive was horribly long, but it could not last for ever. At a little distance from the house Rupert pulled the check-string and got out. It might be an alarm or a warning to the conspirators, as he termed Ivor and Hippolyta in his recovered good-humour, if the carriage were to drive up to the door. Bidding Thomson, therefore, wait round the corner, he walked on briskly to his friend's house, with which he was familiar from of old, and rang the bell as quietly as the agitation of his nerves would let him. The door was not opened at once. 'Ah,' he said under his breath, 'Ivor is cautious; he perhaps wishes to reconnoitre before parleying with the enemy. I will pay him out for this.' He had hardly got the words out of his mouth when Ivor opened the door. 'What, you, Rupert!' he cried joyously; 'who in the world would have thought it? Come in, my dear boy, and let me look at you. I have been working at high pressure to make up for lost time. That is why I did not come at once; I was busy.'

And with delight overspreading his rugged features Ivor, lifting the curtain of stamped leather with one hand, pushed Rupert gently forward with the other into his workroom. A lad, who happened to be assisting him, retired at the sight of a stranger through another exit. Rupert was half-minded to call him back. He dreaded some trick of collusion, he knew not why. Ivor had never deceived him in his life; [66] but in the present excitement suspicion caught at a film of gossamer. The boy disappeared; and Rupert, who could endure the suspense no longer, turned at once on his friend without preface or introduction, and cried, 'Where is Miss Valence, Ivor?'

Ivor stared at him. 'Miss Valence?' he repeated. He seemed quite lost. Rupert thought he was dissembling, and he could not bear it. 'Yes, Miss Valence,' reiterated the artist in an angry voice. 'Come now, tell me what you have done with her.' And he took Ivor by the shoulder.

The astonishment of the latter increased. 'But, my dear fellow,' he said, looking for an explanation of this strange scene in Rupert's eyes, 'I don't know who Miss Valence is. I never heard her name in my life.'

Rupert turned white with passion. 'Never heard her name,' he exclaimed, 'and she was with you three days ago, and you went with her to Saffron Hill. Shame on you, Ivor; how can you tell me so?'

Ivor was bewildered still, but not quite so much.

'Indeed!' was his reply, 'so that is the lady's real name. I thought there must be something.' And then, turning to Rupert, 'I give you my word this is the first I ever heard of a Miss Valence. The lady who came here three days ago announced herself as Mrs. Malcolm. It appears that she gave a false name.'

Rupert, listening impatiently, was now bewildered in his turn. He said slowly, 'My dear Ivor, you [67] surely knew the name of Miss Valence, Colonel Valence's daughter?'

'Neither Miss Valence nor Colonel Valence, as I am an honest engraver,' said his friend; 'you must be dreaming, Rupert. What has come over you this morning?' He made Glanville sit down, and, in drawing him towards the light, was disconcerted at seeing the ashy paleness of his cheek.

'What in Heaven's name is it?' he inquired with anxious affection. Rupert kept studying every expression that passed over his friend's features, anticipating, somehow, that the mask would fall and the truth declare itself. But Ivor looked the soul of candour and innocence. The artist was staggered. He sat up, pulled himself together with an effort, and said, with an imploring accent in each of his words:

'Do be frank with me. You must know Miss Valence and her father. They are Socialists like yourself; and I believe you have already received communications from them, although I never spoke to you about them. The lady that came here—you knew she was Miss Valence.'

'I declare to you solemnly,' said Ivor, 'I knew no such thing. The first time I set eyes on her was three months ago, by mere accident as it seemed, in Denzil Lane, as I was coming out of a house where I had been on business. She told me her name was Mrs. Malcolm, and—' he hesitated for a moment, but continued deliberately, 'I also learned, though I ought not to tell you so, that she belonged to our [68] society. More than that I neither know nor desired to know. What you say about previous communications is impossible. Who is Miss Valence, then, and why does she go by another name?'

Unless Ivor was playing a part with unparalleled sang froid and equal heartlessness, he must be speaking the truth. Still, he was not his own master; there might be an obligation among Socialists to deceive one's dearest friends for the good of the society, thought Rupert; and in that case it would be in vain to persevere with his questions. The fear of losing Hippolyta returned with horrible force. He must try again.

'I don't wish to inquire into your secrets, Ivor,' he began mildly; 'I have always respected them. Only tell me where Mrs. Malcolm is,—let us call her Mrs. Malcolm, we need not quarrel over a name,—tell me how I can send her a message, and I will thank you from the bottom of my heart.'

There was the sound of tears in his voice.

Ivor, if not sincere, was a consummate villain, who did not need to learn from the greatest how to tear his friend's heart. He stood seemingly in the uttermost bewilderment, incapable of answering a word, and trying to make sense of what had just been spoken by Rupert. When at length he found his voice he did but mutter, 'Miss Valence, Mrs. Malcolm?' as though the two names were a subject of unmixed surprise and perplexity to him. Nay, the sight of Rupert's affliction moved him almost to tears, [69] and he said, forgetting apparently what had been asked by the latter:

'Is there any reason why you should take this deep interest in the lady? If it is one you can confide to me, I will do all in my power towards discovering her, as I understand from you that she is no longer to be found. I was utterly ignorant that you cared for any woman, Rupert.'

The artist's suspicions were not to be laid by kindness. He knew only too well that Hippolyta had conveyed the message to Ivor Mardol, which compelled him to quit Trelingham on a secret expedition. This questioning about his own interest in Miss Valence was to throw him off the scent. He cursed Socialism and the revolutionary ideas which made a friend like Ivor disloyal, as he answered:

'What my reason may be for inquiring about Mrs. Malcolm signifies to no one but myself. I want to know where she is, and I believe you could inform me, if it was not for some oath or other you have taken. Will you do so, or are we to break off our friendship here and now?'

'Rupert, my dear Rupert, what madness has come over you?' exclaimed Ivor in unfeigned distress. 'I cannot do more than assure you that three months ago Mrs. Malcolm was a perfect stranger to me, that I have never known her address, and that I know it now as little as you do.'

'And Miss Valence brought you no message when [70] you were living at Trelingham, in the chalet?' inquired Rupert with intense sternness.

'None whatever,' replied Ivor; 'the message I received, and which I remember you saw, came from—' he paused.

'From whom?' said Rupert.

'I must say no more about it. These things are really secret, and they do not concern you, Rupert, nor yet Miss Valence. I implore you to let the matter drop.'

'Very well,' said Glanville sullenly, rising as he spoke. 'Then here we say good-bye, and that is the end of an old song.'

He went to the door. Ivor followed. 'You are not going for good, are you, old fellow?' he said tremulously, endeavouring to detain him.

'Yes, I am,' he returned, shaking off the hand that was laid affectionately on his arm. 'This is the last you will see of me.'

He threw open the front door and walked into the street. Ivor, wounded in his deepest feelings, and more sensitive to the change in Rupert's affection than to the affront he had received, stood on the threshold watching him till he turned the corner. It would be no use calling him back while he was in such a mood. Ivor shut the door, went back to his workroom and took up the plate on which he was engaged. He could not go on with it; his thoughts were all abroad, and his fingers would not serve him. After nearly a year's absence to meet and part like [71] this! Rupert was not a good correspondent, resembling in that particular most men of genius, who find occupation without difficulty, and are loth to forego present delights for the monotonous work of recording the incidents of the day. But few letters, therefore, had passed between these friends; and the nature of Ivor's cosmopolitan interests on the one side, combined with Rupert's desire to conceal Hippolyta's residence and way of living on the other, had made intimate correspondence difficult, if not impossible. Love is the sworn foe of friendship, and puts out lesser lights, as the sun quenches the stars. Nor is cosmopolitan or religious enthusiasm, which you cannot share with a friend, less likely to estrange you from him. In spite of all this, the devotion of Rupert to Ivor was intense and heartfelt; while Ivor would have sacrificed their friendship to nothing less sacred than a sense of duty. Had he done so now? His confession or the discovery of Hippolyta alone could decide.

So Rupert might have argued in cold blood. But his blood was not cold; it was boiling in his veins as he walked away in search of the brougham, convinced that Ivor had sheltered Hippolyta or was conversant with her design in quitting Forrest House. At that instant he cared not a jot for any man's friendship; and he flung Ivor's from him as a thing soiled and worthless. He would be his own friend and seek Hippolyta till he found her. Who was the other she had called on? Thomson would know. He stopped [72] the carriage, which was slowly moving up and down, and before he entered it, made the coachman repeat what he had begun to say in the morning about driving Mrs. Malcolm to some place near Saffron Hill. Thomson had a good local memory, and knew the street near St. Audry's Church. He had seen the clergyman, also, as he was handing Mrs. Malcolm to her carriage. Rupert told him to drive thither. He could not conceive how a clergyman should come into the story; but it was so mad a world, and the rage of new opinions had spread into such unsuspected quarters, that his surprise by no means equalled his determination to find out the share which this apparently socialistic preacher had taken in decoying Hippolyta.

It was late in the afternoon and already dusk when the brougham drew up as near Mr. Regan's as it could be safely taken. Rupert, not venturing to give his card, whether as Mr. Glanville of Clarence Gardens, or Mr. Malcolm of Forrest House, merely said in answer to the servant who answered his knock, that he had urgent business with the clergyman. She had admitted that he was at home, although Rupert, not knowing his name, or whether there were one or more, had made a random guess in simply asking for him under that general designation. When he spoke of urgent business, she left him standing in the dark passage and disappeared. Returning not long after, she showed him into the sitting-room, which was almost as dark; and there he waited, considering [73] with himself how he should begin the cross-examination to which he intended to submit the unknown ecclesiastic. Mr. Regan came in, apologised for the want of light, turned on the gas, and made ready to listen. The artist judged it prudent to begin with Ivor Mardol's name.

'Excuse me,' said Mr. Regan at once, 'I trust you have not come about the business which brought Mr. Mardol here some days since. I am certainly not my brother's keeper in this instance; and if you want him, you must go to his chambers.'

Rupert looked at him. 'I do not know whether it is your brother's business or not,' he said curtly; 'it may be, if your brother, or yourself, for matter of that, be a member of a secret society.'

'I, my dear sir!' exclaimed the clergyman in accents of dismay; 'for what do you take me? As for Maurice, I give him up. I cannot deny, how much soever I may deplore, his connection with plotting and nefarious men.'

'I thought so,' said Rupert, his face darkening; 'and was it about your brother that the lady came who accompanied Mr. Mardol?' The murder was out, he said to himself. These were all meshes of a net in which, by whose fault it did not signify, Hippolyta had been entangled.

Mr. Regan examined his visitor's looks, and became more cautious.

'I know nothing of the lady except that she called herself Mrs. Malcolm. I told her what I have already [74] repeated to you, that if she wished to hold communication with my brother, the only way was to call at his chambers.'

'Cannot you inform me of Mrs. Malcolm's business with your brother?' inquired Rupert, moderating his tone. 'I assure you it may be a matter of great, of vital importance.'

But the clergyman was not to be disarmed. He had a great regard for his brother, worthless though Maurice had proved himself. On many a previous occasion he had thrown the shield of silence over his delinquencies; and the stern, serious manner of the artist, who gave no name and seemed to have business of an unpleasant sort in hand, determined him to say as little as possible. Instead, therefore, of disclosing the errand on which Hippolyta had come, he answered deliberately:

'If you will let me know whom I have the pleasure of addressing, I may be better able to judge whether you would be interested in Mrs. Malcolm's business. But I must decline discussing it with a stranger.'

Except in Forrest House and among the acquaintance of his servants, who could not be expected not to talk of their master, Rupert had never assumed the style and title of Malcolm. What name should he give? Would this suspicious clergyman tell him anything he did not know, even when he had run the risk—for a risk it was in either case—of appearing as Malcolm or in his own name? It did not seem probable. Allowing, as was now evident, that the motive [75] for Hippolyta's leaving home—he still called it home —was connected with the designs of revolutionists, he might be certain that they would guard their secret jealously. He must try another means.

These thoughts passed through his brain while he was putting on his glove. He had remained standing, and Mr. Regan had not come many steps inside the door. He now said:

'My name is of no consequence. I will only ask you to inform Mrs. Malcolm, if you should see her again, that her visit here is known by those who seek her, and that she will do well to communicate with them if she desires to prevent the most serious harm.'

He meant it for a threat of suicide, and Hippolyta, he thought, would so understand it. Mr. Regan answered, with much dignity, that he did not suppose the lady would call again. He was a frigidly-correct, not an inquisitive man; and although, a few moments after Rupert left the house, he heard the sound of wheels driving away, he would not so much as look through the window to ascertain what species of conveyance it was that had brought his anonymous and unwelcome visitor. Rupert, on the other hand, when he had been driven the length of a street, bethought himself that it would be well to know the clergyman's name. He got out, therefore, and inquired at a little shop hard by who it was that lived at the address he mentioned, for he had learnt that from Thomson. The shopman, not without pomposity, answered, 'The [76] Reverend Philip Regan.' A light flashed across Rupert's mind. 'Philip Regan?' he said, 'I remember now. By heaven, it is the very clergyman Hippolyta wanted to see,—how long ago? Before Christmas. Yes, it is months since she spoke of him; and I, dolt as I was, made a jest of it when she seemed to be telling me why she wished to call. But did she really mean me to know, or was it only a ruse? The thing must have been going on then, whatever it was. And she seemed so happy; the cloud had quite passed from her which I noticed at the beginning of our life together.'

He groaned aloud when he thought of it. Was she the guileless creature he had loved and worshipped, or full of design and treachery? Oh, it did not matter now, not now; let her only come back and his heart would be open to her as of old. How could he live without Hippolyta? The strong man leaned his head upon his hand, crying like a child, as the carriage rolled forward through the interminable London streets, the gas-lamps flaring on each side of it, and the noise of traffic and the roar of vehicles seeming to mock his grief with their soulless reverberations. Where was she now, when the night had drawn on, when every one that had home or shelter made towards it? She was in peril and far from the heart that loved her best in all the world; he knew no more, but alas, he could not be uncertain of that. She was surely miserable and a wanderer on the face of the earth. Perhaps she was alone; or, if not, in [77] the power of villains who would make of her, generous, confiding, ardent as she was, the tool of their murderous ambition. Other women, carried away by the frenzy of revolution, had whetted the knife or sharpened the dagger. And Hippolyta, with her wild enthusiasm, might think to emulate the Charlotte Cordays who had risen up throughout Europe in these anarchic times. When Rupert thought over it all, he cursed Edgar Valence and Ivor Mardol, to whose influence early or late he attributed the evil which had fastened on Hippolyta like a disease. But for Colonel Valence, the love which had innocently sprung up between them would ere now have been crowned with marriage, and Hippolyta be happy as the wife of one whose reputation, at any rate, was not altogether unmatched with her beauty and grace. Or, allowing the first false step, she might still have dwelt in seclusion, surrounded with every homage, her slightest wish anticipated, enjoying happiness and giving it in the way she had chosen. But no. What her father began, this false friend must accomplish. She had sacrificed the world to Rupert; she had now been prevailed upon to sacrifice him and all his hopes and joys to the Revolution. Glanville was cut to the heart. What should he do to-morrow, when no Hippolyta was near him? And would to-morrow be only the first of many days to be endured alone, without love, without friendship, all the light gone out of his life? Surely he must find her or make an end.

With these sad thoughts weighing on him, Rupert arrived, after his long journey through the lamp-lit streets and the straggling suburban lanes, at Forrest House. He sat alone at table and forced himself to eat, knowing how much was to be done, or attempted, on that morrow which he dreaded to see. It was like a meal at the side of the grave. His food choked him. There was no letter or message from any one. William Dauris had come round at nightfall and inquired whether Mrs. Malcolm were returned, or what news they had. 'Tell him there is none, as yet,' said Rupert wearily. He did not desire to see the man; he shrank from contact with any one that had known Hippolyta as from everything she had touched. But the latter feeling gave way to overpowering tenderness when, late at night, he entered her boudoir and sat down in her favourite place near the window. There the signs of her recent presence, the trinkets lying in a pretty feminine disorder, the scarf thrown carelessly down, were so many arrows to wound him. How well he remembered their bright caressing lovetalk during those long summer evenings, when they watched the stars rising like silent silver fires into the sky and shining down upon them peacefully! How beautiful she looked when, her eyes seeming to kindle under her golden hair, she spoke in tender accents of the charm that love had cast over them both, and of its glamour which was life, and truth, and the heart of existence! He had been delighted and amazed, during those hours of rapture, at her [79] strange high poetry. Alas, alas, had she not been such a votaress of enthusiastic beliefs, had there been mingled in her some grains of vulgar commonplace, she would be now turning his solitude to heaven. But he rebuked the profane thought. Hippolyta might be impulsive, wild, demoniac in her headlong aspirations; vulgar or commonplace she never could be. It was her unlikeness to other women, her supremacy of spirit as of outward loveliness, that had brought him to her feet. And the deity was vanished, the shrine broken. He sat during the night alone with his sorrow, going over these things till the repetition racked his brain.

Alone, indeed, he was; singularly, fatally alone, now that he had broken with Ivor Mardol. If Hippolyta was gone the way he supposed,—and what other way could she have gone?—but one man in London could aid in her recovery, and that man's lips were sealed; or rather, he was the criminal and would be the last to confess his crime. Ivor was daring and resolute; he believed—like Robespierre, said Glanville to himself—in his own integrity, and behind him were the resources of a great association, pledged to second its agents in whatever they undertook, and hesitating at no turpitude. What was Rupert against such odds? He might instruct his lawyer, call in the police, offer rewards; and when he had done all this, the only result would be to publish Hippolyta's disgrace to the light of day and blast his own character. What he did, therefore, must be done [80] warily; he could not take any one into his confidence. In the neighbourhood of Forrest House it would be incumbent on him to appear as Mr. Malcolm; but he dared not present himself under a feigned name to the police authorities. Mardol and Hippolyta had doubtless weighed these things, and knew how difficult they made pursuit and discovery. The more he thought of them now, the less he was inclined to his first conjecture, that disaster had turned her brain, and her flight had taken place in an hour of madness. Nothing, it should seem rather, had been wanting to the deliberation of it. What cruel, cold words she had left behind, as her farewell to the man she loved? They stabbed him again and again with their icy point; he could bear almost anything else, but not to recall that line and a half. ' "Brief," ' he said to himself with the curious aptitude we have for remembering well-known verses or sayings when our nerves are highly strung,—' "brief as a woman's love, or the poesy of a ring." Oh, true, Hamlet!' he cried.

CHAPTER XXX INTER MORTUOS LIBER

But something must be done without delay. He would return to his house in Belgravia, to be nearer the scene of action, if action there should be. For it was not imaginable that Hippolyta would show herself in the vicinity of Forrest House, situate in an out-of-the-way, peaceable suburb, not known for its connection with aught more revolutionary than borough politics. Much more likely that she had left England and was travelling to Berlin, or St. Petersburg, or New York, to the centre of the storm-cloud that might be on the point of bursting on the head of Prince or President. What were the newspapers discussing? They sometimes held out storm-warnings of this kind also, and might for once be useful to him. Glaville did not believe in journalism, and seldom read a line in the daily prints. But now he went to his club, and sitting down in the library, which at that time of day was solitary as an African wilderness, [82] turned over the files of the week's intelligence. Pah, how vapid it seemed! Did the nations put this stale vinegar to their lips every morning, and take it as sent down overnight from the suppers of the gods? What rinsings of Olympus! He turned the pages to and fro, travelled down the leading articles, sounded the solemn depths of the Foreign Correspondence. It left him uncertain. There were plots and rumours of plots, meetings of European workmen, strikes at Breslau, at St. Etienne, at Barnsley, on the railroads of New England, and among the cotton-spinners in Italy. Signs of a possible storm he read everywhere, but from what quarter would the lightning flash out? An infernal machine of the latest invention had been discovered at the Winter Palace, in the Emperor's writing-desk, and several of his confidential aides-decamp had been arrested on suspicion. The police had dissolved a socialistic gathering of Free Czechs at Prague; and the guard round the English Prime Minister was to be considerably strengthened in consequence of the last attempt to blow up his country seat. In yesterday's Times Glanville read with a beating heart that two women had been stopped by the Belgian police on their way from London to Brussels, and that compromising documents had been found in their possession which indicated the outbreak of another dynamite enterprise, though whether in Moscow or St. Petersburg it was not as yet possible to say. The description given tallied in neither case with Hippolyta, and the news was too recent; yet [83] Glanville could hardly restrain himself from starting at once for Ostend. When, however, he reflected that his presence and the inquiries he must make would serve, in a foreign country, only to inculpate Hippolyta, if she were one of the women captured, and that more light would be thrown on the affair in the course of the next few days, he judged it prudent not to run after an uncertainty. One thing was clear, that Colonel Valence's daughter, if disposed to thrust herself into peril, might find the occasion wherever she happened to cast her eyes. The battle seemed to be raging along the whole line.

As he read on, not knowing what else to do, his attention was caught by one of the many advertisements which promise secrecy and success in the investigation of cases like Hippolyta's. He wondered that he had not thought of it before. But Glanville was a man who would hardly stoop to pluck a jewel out of the mire if there was a likelihood of soiling his fingers. The idea of a private police was repugnant to him, and was associated in his mind with every form of vice and degradation. Truly, it might be said of this artist-temperament that he was gentlemanly to his very finger-tips. Now, however, when he required a search to be made, and could not turn to the authorities of Scotland Yard, he clutched at the only means which appeared feasible; and taking the man's name and address, went home and despatched thence a carefully worded letter, in which he begged him to come immediately to Clarence Gardens [84] on a matter of the utmost urgency. He might name his own terms, but there must be as little delay as possible. Glanville, after reflection, had resolved to prosecute the search in his own name.

It was well he did so, for Mr. Bernstein, when he appeared in the course of a couple of hours and was introduced into Rupert's study, began the conversation easily with an allusion to the artist's fame, and the pleasure it gave him to recognise the fidelity of the portrait which had created such a sensation in the Academy two years ago. Glanville, whose talent for self-mockery had been a good deal cultivated, said in reply, that to be famous was indeed a fine thing, and offered to paint Mr. Bernstein, if that gentleman would sit to him. The answer was a not unpleasant smile, which served as garnish to the aphorism, pronounced by the detective with a business-like air, that time was money. He preferred to sit on golden eggs rather than in the luxurious but expensive chair to which Glanville invited him. The artist, however, had been really struck with the capacities of Mr. Bernstein as a subject. As his name indicated, he was a German, or more accurately speaking, a Polish Jew. It is possible that in the sacred pages of the Almanach de Gotha —a volume never to be mentioned without reverence—there may be illustrious and even princely Bernsteins. But this was not one of them. Plebeian, not prince, was stamped on his yellow forehead, his starved and sallow countenance, and his drooping shoulders. He was of unusually [85] small stature, though not a dwarf; and the meagreness of his general appearance denoted either scant opportunities of eating, or a severe control over the grosser appetites. But it was the pear-shaped head, with its flaming coal-black eyes, and long, curling, coal-black hair, that had drawn Glanville's admiration. The vitality in that dried-up organism must have been immense; it seemed to pour out at the eyes and to overspread the parchment-like features; it was suggested in the snaky curls which would doubtless, if one touched them, give out electric sparks like the back of a tiger. The man, though no patrician, was full of intellect and energy; there could not have been a drop of Western blood in his veins, nor a fold of Teutonic dulness in his brain. Glanville beheld him with the same mingling of wonder, curiosity, and dislike which he had felt in reading the grimmest pages of the Old Testament. He was a leaf torn out of the Book of Judges.

When he had taken a seat where he could observe Glanville closely, and the artist was reflecting how he could give sufficient information for the purpose of recovering Hippolyta, yet keep himself in the background of his narrative, Mr. Bernstein, who, with his head slightly bent on the right side, appeared to be looking him through and through, lifted his yellow hand impressively, and with forefinger held up as if to bespeak earnest attention, began in a strong penetrating voice, where the German accent made itself harshly felt, 'Before you tell me the story which I see [86] you are turning over in your mind, let me sketch the principles on which I conduct my office. They are simple. On your side you purchase, and no doubt you require, absolute secrecy. You shall have it. But on my side, acting under your directions, I can require nothing except what you wish to grant. Are you interested in succeeding; greatly, deeply interested? If so, your account of the situation will be absolutely frank and complete. But if you are not, you will either keep something back, or overlook some little detail on which all the rest hangs. I have had large experience, and I have always seen, as your poet Shakespeare says, that "riddling confession finds but riddling shrift." Now, sir, we can proceed when you like, and I am at your service.' He unbent his warning attitude and leaned back in his chair.

Glanville, though in deep trouble of mind, could not refrain from smiling at the quotation, so quaintly borrowed for the purposes of private inquiry from Romeo and Juliet , as well as at the straightforward shrewdness of the old man, who spoke with official gravity. But the words came home. What should he disclose, what keep to himself? He took the wa that promised the least difficulty.

'The facts,' he said to Mr. Bernstein, 'on which I should like you to exercise your skill are as simple as your principles. A lady—'

'Of course,' said Mr. Bernstein, taking out his pocket-book; 'what is her name?'

'Her name is Hippolyta Valence, but she has [87] been known for the last nine months as Mrs. Malcolm. She has suddenly disappeared from home, and I am commissioned to discover and if possible bring her back.'

'Commissioned by Mr. Malcolm?' inquired the Jew, scrutinising his every feature.

Glanville was at a standstill.

'I see,' said the other, 'you do not know whether to tell me. Perhaps Mr. Malcolm is of no consequence; perhaps it all depends on who Mr. Malcolm is. Let me know the rest, and we will come back to this point.'

'No,' said Rupert, forcing the words through his teeth, 'it will not do. I am Mr. Malcolm.'

'Good,' was the answer, 'now the mountain is levelled, and we shall see our way. The lady has left you, and you wish her to return. Very well; can you say who is the gentleman? Have you any suspicions?'

'There is no gentleman,' returned the artist, blushing all over; 'that is what makes the case extraordinary.'

The Israelite shook his head in sign of doubt. 'Such a case would be extraordinary indeed,' he replied with a philosophic smile, and then shrugging his shoulders as he spoke; 'but it does not happen. You will find there is a gentleman. It may well be that you have never seen him, but that is nothing. Now tell me where Mrs. Malcolm lived, and what society was within her reach during those nine months.'

Rupert, omitting the scene in the studio, which he despaired of making credible to this hard-headed cynic, as he appeared to be, told all the rest faithfully so far as knew it. There was so little, however, to tell. The Jew, as if he had been a Queen's Counsel examining a hostile witness, obliged him to discriminate between the facts about which there could be no doubt, and the inferences which Glanville was inclined to draw from them. But he did so with a gentleness that encouraged and did not confuse the mind; he was astonishingly observant of the artist all through, and seemed to take down his notes with a flash of lightning. When the flight of Annie Dauris was mentioned, followed at three days' interval by that of Hippolyta, he lifted his pencil and said, 'Have you searched out the antecedents of that young woman? The case grows clearer. I daresay when we come upon the trace of Annie Dauris we shall discover the second gentleman not far off.'

Rupert again denied vehemently that Hippolyta's motives for quitting Forrest House were of the nature alleged. But it was true that he had not much information about Annie Dauris. However, it could be obtained from her people. And he went on to speak of Hippolyta's frequent visits to the East End, culminating in her appearance, after Annie's flight, at the door of his friend Ivor Mardol. This led him, under impressive silence on Mr. Bernstein's part, to introduce the subject of Nihilism. He had no sooner done so than the Jew rose from his chair, saying [89] hurriedly, 'Why did you not begin at the beginning? There may be two leading motives here. Was Miss Valence a Nihilist before you made her acquaintance?'

'She has been educated in revolution,' replied Glanville; 'it is her own and her father's creed. Colonel Valence has taken a decided share in all the movements of the last thirty years against the social order.'

Mr. Bernstein, looking very grave, sat down again. 'Let me hear all you know about Colonel Valence,' he said, 'especially his aliases .'

'His what?' inquired Glanville, not catching the word.

'The names under which he has travelled. You do not suppose a conspirator has only one set of visiting-cards in his pocket,' returned the Jew placidly.

'I know nothing of all that,' replied Glanville.

'Miss Valence never talked to you of her father or of secret societies then?'

'Never in that way. I did not wish for confidences about them. It was the same with Ivor Mardol. If he had an alias I never learnt it.'

'No, that is evident,' said Mr. Bernstein; 'and Mrs. Malcolm, you say, took no money with her when she left you?'

'Not a shilling, I believe; not even what was in her purse, which I picked up next morning on the floor by her writing-table.'

The affair looked darker than at first. When nearly two hours had been spent in Rupert's examination, [90] and he had, or seemed to have, nothing to add, the Jew, running his eye down the pages of his pocket-book, said in a judicial tone, 'There are several alternatives, of which the least probable is that Colonel Valence, acting alone, has sent for his daughter. That will be seen into, but for the present may be omitted. The others reduce themselves to these: Miss Valence, acting in collusion with Annie Dauris, which we may take for granted, has put herself under the protection either of Maurice Regan or Ivor Mardol, whichever of them she has fallen in love with. Your mistake, my dear sir, lay in your supposing that a lady, brought up in the principles of the Revolution and among revolutionists, would or could remain faithful to a man who did not satisfy that side of her temperament. No doubt her inclination for yourself was very powerful, but it was not rooted in the deepest passion of all, to which it has now yielded. You may be right in supposing that she has been engaged, or will be later on, in carrying out the Nihilist designs; I should think it very likely. But it will always be under the orders of her lover. We have found the gentleman, you see. What makes it slightly embarrassing is that there are two of them.'

'I cannot believe it,' said Rupert, groaning aloud at the picture of Hippolyta's degradation conjured up before him. 'I had rather see her dead than so shamefully dishonoured. It is impossible.'

'Yes, yes,' replied the Jew; 'you naturally feel so. And yet these impossible things are mostly true. À [91] propos ,' he went on, in a tone of calm inquiry, 'there has been no search made in the dead-houses?'

'Where?' cried Rupert, shuddering from head to foot. 'You—you must not say such things to me, or I shall do you or myself a mischief.' The horrible suggestion completed his dismay. Hippolyta dead! Dead perhaps while he had been lingering at Forrest House and over the files of newspapers! He almost fainted at the thought. 'Why do you not go at once?' he cried to Mr. Bernstein, who sat waiting impassively till he should recover. 'Inquire everywhere. Put out a reward. Tell the police to have the canals, the Serpentine dragged.'

'Patience, patience, my dear sir,' replied the Jew in soothing accents; 'everything shall be done as it ought. Is it not a proverb with you, the more haste the worse speed? We cannot inform the police like that. If they meddle, they will do as they have always done, and throw out the child with the bathwater.'

'What do you mean?' said Glanville, his mind still confused with horror.

'I mean that the Nihilists, or Socialists, call them what you will, have friends among the police, or among their acquaintance, and therefore can know when they are coming. It is not my way to employ the police. And see you, sir,' he continued, with a ring of decision in his voice, 'I will show you my mind as if you were reading it on paper. I do not feel sure that we shall recover Mrs. Malcolm. If it [92] was only an affair of the heart, I could promise something. For love is very indiscreet and given to talk; and he does not mind being found out, he is so proud of himself. But there is another passion here, nearly as strong, which desires concealment and knows many hiding-places all over Europe. More than that, I have not any business with secret societies. I am a stranger to politics and revolutions; and the province I have assigned myself is entirely confined to private life. If I was to put my hand into politics I should be putting it into the wolf's throat. One must not lie between the hammer and the anvil or it will go bad with one.'

'But you will take up this inquiry,' said Rupert, 'if I ask you, and pay whatever you demand. The politics are nothing to me—only bring back Miss Valence; it is all I want. For what I care, the Nihilists may blow up the Tower of London to-morrow.'

'That would not be my sentiment if I were an English citizen like you,' returned the Israelite. 'But you do not understand my position. I have to live and move about in a subterranean region, which is full of mines and—how do you say?—countermines. Look, it is like a London street. Under the pavement which the carriages of the great people roll over, there are the water-pipes, and under them the gas is laid, and beneath that again is the main drainage, and deep down, in the bowels of the earth where all should be still as a mouse, there is the [93] railway with the trains tearing along,—you say tearing? —and there are stations with their lights, and the boys selling journals, and people eating and drinking at buffets, and I know not what. Such is the world to which I also belong. The police do not like me, for I take the bread out of their mouths; the International does not like me, for it is impossible that I should not know of their doings one day or another; and so my people encounter great risks. I tell you, then, that if Mrs. Malcolm has thrown herself under the ægis of the revolution, I may hunt out where she is, but to bring her back I cannot give a pledge. Is it understood?'

When Mr. Bernstein spoke hastily, he fell into the German idioms to which his youth was accustomed, diluting them in a menstruum of French, as is the way with nearly all who have travelled much in their time.

Rupert answered with the utmost impatience, 'For God's sake, let me have tidings of her, and we will decide the rest then. Only lose no more time.'

He laid on the table a purse of sovereigns, which Mr. Bernstein said he preferred to a cheque as being safer; and, when arrangements for corresponding had been made on both sides, he saw the Jew off with a sense of alleviation, for the interview had tried him exceedingly. As soon as the door was shut on that venerable figure, he returned to his study, and, throwing himself on the sofa, fell into a troubled sleep. Mr. Bernstein, meanwhile, bearing an epistle [94] from the artist, drove at his top-speed to Forrest House, to inspect, as he said, 'the basis of operations.' He had a strong belief that the localities tell half the story when they are examined by a careful eye.

It was late in the evening when Rupert awoke, not so much refreshed as shaken and unnerved by the nightmare slumbers into which he had fallen. One dread predominated—the horrible fear evoked so calmly by Bernstein, that Hippolyta might have done herself a fatal injury or have met with foul play. To know that she was living, though degraded and estranged from him for ever, would have been consolation, in spite of what he had exclaimed a few hours ago. Hippolyta's death was an evil without a remedy; he would bear anything, however disgraceful, rather than that. Search the dead-houses, had Bernstein said? What were the dead-houses of London? Whither did they take the drowned, and the murdered, and the bodies of suicides in the great Babylon? There was no Morgue as at Paris. He began to think over what he had seen from time to time in the newspapers on this frightful subject. It seemed to him that he ought to go from one hospital to another, from one workhouse to another, and make inquiries that very night. But the Jew would do all that was necessary, and let him know if anything came of it. Rupert, with many a sigh, had given him the only portrait he possessed of Hippolyta. It was the one precious thing he carried with him wherever he went. You remember it, [95] reader? The sketch made in happier days, soon after their engagement, which represented Hippolyta in her riding-habit, as Rupert beheld her for the first time when, in the Hermitage, she turned round from Ivor Mardol's book-shelves, and faced the intruder. Nothing could be more light or graceful. But Mr. Bernstein, who had not been shy at expressing his admiration for Rupert's portrayal of himself in the Academy, knew human nature too well to say a word on receiving this of Hippolyta. He was sharp of speech and independent; but that silence was golden naturally occurred to him on observing the look with which Glanville abandoned his treasure. Yes, the private-inquiry office would send what intelligence it might have; and the artist had implored Bernstein not to delay, be the hour day or night, in despatching his messenger to Clarence Gardens. But an unrest drove him forth, and once he was in the streets, he might as well, it seemed to him, do that which lay nearest his heart and gain assurance, if possible, that Hippolyta was yet living.

For the second time, then, he found himself wandering about London alone, possessed with the thought of her, as on that night which had seen the commencement of their guilty happiness. Guilty, did he call it? Yes, he acknowledged his sin. He would not pretend that he was blameless, or had been coerced by a stronger will. He ought to have resisted. The doom might have fallen upon Hippolyta which had now overtaken them both; it was [96] fear of it that had swayed him then; but he saw now with fatal clearness that what would have been at the worst his misfortune was become his unpardonable crime. The night, which was wild and stormy with chequered moonlight, reminded him of the flying clouds and cold brilliancy of that former scene, when he had spent hour after hour meditating on the temptation instead of resisting it. Again his thoughts reverted to the solitude of that night, the silent ghostly bridge, and the flood of waters hurrying between its arches to the sea. Was Hippolyta floating along the river now, or hidden in its depths amid the unutterable pollutions that had revealed themselves to his vision where he stood, gazing into it? He dared not go near it yet. He would inquire at a police station, at one or two of the workhouses which he supposed must be in the neighbourhood, whether the dead body of a woman had been found that day or the day before. It was late, and suspicions might be aroused; but he could not go home, and, while he was abroad, this spirit of unsatisfied longing drove him on.

He did inquire, at first with no result. There had been accidents within the last forty-eight, within the last sixty, hours of all kinds—drowning, burning, fatal collisions in crowded streets, children run over, the bodies of new-born babes found on the public highway,—casualties in the battle of life which is ever going forward under the cloud of civilisation that hides it and yet heightens its horror. But [97] on the list of the dead was no woman such as Glanville, who dared not use too particular a description, inquired after. Was he sure, they asked, that it was a case of drowning? Other kinds of accidents were taken to the hospitals,—indeed these were, too, when there seemed hope of restoring animation. Rupert said in a low voice, 'Thank you,' and went on his way. What was it he thanked them for? The little courtesies which soften and adorn our commonplace life have in them something hideous, grotesque, sardonic, when they are repeated amid the horrors of death. He turned to the first great hospital of which the name was ringing with monotonous iteration in his brain. He entered the hall, which at that hour, with the lights halfturned down, looked vast and solemn. There was some one keeping vigil, who rose when he appeared on the threshold and came towards him. In a whisper he asked whether any one had been brought there lately from the river or elsewhere, any accident, —a woman, young, fair-haired,—and he described Hippolyta. The night-porter could not say; he would make inquiry, and he went in search of a nurse. Soon they both came back, whispering. The nurse looked at Glanville, saw he was a person of distinction, and replied that such a young woman, but poor, in ragged garments, had been brought in early that morning, not from the river, but from a common lodging-house. She had poisoned herself in a fit of despair, of shame, it appeared. They [98] had brought her round a little, but she could not live. They did not know her name or history. Would the gentleman see her? He followed the nurse at once, stepping noiselessly upstairs, and was shown into a great ward, full of beds, in almost every one of which lay a sleeping patient. On his right, near a window, he was bidden to look close and say whether he recognised the young woman that lay there staring at him with eyes wide open. She was not asleep, nor yet fully awake, but dazed and speechless. Oh no, it was not Hippolyta. How could they speak of that as fair hair? They had never seen the golden locks which had wounded his heart. The features were pretty but wasted; he knew what sort of woman it was; and while he said so to himself in a low whisper, the staring eyes seemed to gather consciousness and to look at him more fixedly. No, no, not Hippolyta. Again he thanked them and went out.

The clouds were drifting still, and the moon high. He rambled aimlessly, falling into a slow walk, until, as he moved past some huge building, his memory tapped him on the shoulder, as if to say, 'Ask the question here; it is a workhouse which you pass when you are driving to the station for Trelingham.' He rang the night-bell, inquired, was told that others had been there already on a like errand, and that only the corpse of a boy, whom his mother had stabbed the day previously, lay in the mortuary awaiting an inquest. 'Bernstein, then,' he said to [99] himself, 'is taking pains, as he promised. Why do I not go home?' But his limbs were possessed with the spirit he had called up. On he went, uncertain of the ways, now hither, now thither, sometimes inquiring when he found himself, he knew not how, at the door of a police-station, sometimes when his hand was on the bell turning as from a fruitless search and passing by. Still, the instinct that led him seemed to unlock these grim repositories; and he remembered years after the vision of the dead and drowned which in that long night was opened to him. He saw more than one woman, young or old, lying in her shroud prepared for burial, or in the clothes she had worn when casting herself into the river; and the wan features and startled eyes remained with him as a memory which he could never blot out. What a terror clung to the withered, gray tresses, stained with mud from the Thames, which he noticed, and that instant stereotyped on his brain, when casting a hurried glance into the dead-house, —at Kensington was it, or in what other place? He did not know, but he remembered the long gray tresses, which were not Hippolyta's, yet moved him to compassion as though there could be a likeness between them and her sunny curls. Enough, enough. He would not follow the spectre that held him so fast by the hand, but return to his miserable couch and wait. The morning brings good dreams, he said, and his eyes filled with womanish, helpless tears. If but in a dream he might see her for a [100] moment, only once, only for so long as would let him fix again in memory the features whose outline was already growing dim. It was so little to ask. But his prayer was vain; and though he slept, not even in his dreams would the lady of his heart appear to him.

Ten days and nights passed in bootless wanderings through the immeasurable forest of London, in sighs and tears, and all the sad accompaniments of a downfallen love which seem so bitter to him that undergoes them, so trivial and unnecessary to others that only look on. It is strange how the bleeding of a man to death, which has happened sometimes on the ruin or loss of a beloved person, should tend to excite mockery; and yet it does. Glanville, with this arrow in his heart, would not have dared to face his friends; he hid away from the intimates who would have thronged round him had they known he was in town; and his feet strayed involuntarily towards the places where he thought Hippolyta might be concealed, in the dens of East London, which, as he had gathered from William Dauris, she had been visiting while he was at Trelingham.

On the tenth day Mr. Bernstein, who had sent him short messages of no very definite import during this time, appeared once more in his studio. He looked calm and collected—a contrast to Rupert, whose eyes were beginning to show that fatigued expression which follows upon anxiety continued [101] over sleepless nights. The Jew, however, had not been idle. Warranted by the artist's letter to Mrs. Leeming, at Forrest House, he had searched into every corner of the old mansion, and, though discovering no clue to Hippolyta's disappearance, had been rewarded by finding Annie Dauris's letter, brought by the little boy on the morning of her flight, and locked up in one of Mrs. Malcolm's jewel-boxes. At the same time he had appropriated certain scraps of paper which enabled him to compare Hippolyta's former handwriting with that which she adopted in corresponding with Rupert. All that the gardener or his wife had to tell of their daughter, and of the lady's interest in her and attempts to bring the girl to a sense of her duties, he likewise knew, although he did not go near the cottage in Church Lane. He had even come upon the trace of Annie, who, it now appeared, had gone, as Hippolyta surmised, to Charlotte Fraser's, stayed with her a day and a night, and afterwards plunged into the obscure regions of London rascaldom, either, as he supposed, in search of Maurice Regan, or to meet him by a preconcerted arrangement.

Rupert paid little attention to all this. What did it matter where Annie Dauris went? She was not Hippolyta. The details of private inquiry, however interesting to Mr. Bernstein, were to him ignoble and disgusting. But he woke from his lethargy when the Jew went on, in the same unimpassioned voice, to say, 'We have likewise examined [102] Mr. Mardol's connection with this strange affair. When I heard the story from you last time I could not satisfy myself as to which of the two gentlemen, Mr. Mardol or Mr. Regan, was principal, and which was accessory—to use the terms of the law. I am now confident that Mr. Mardol has directed the game all through, while Mr. Regan may have held the cards. I do not say otherwise as to that,' he concluded.

'I was sure of it,' said Rupert in a low voice; 'but could I think that Ivor was a villain?'

'I did not say so,' replied the Jew; 'it is not for me to make a moral appreciation of his acts. But, first of all, did he not say that he was unacquainted with Mrs. Malcolm until he saw her in Denzil Lane?'

'Certainly,' answered Rupert; 'he gave me his word of honour that it was so.'

'Very well; and perhaps it was clever of him to persist in a system of complete denial, for he may have dreamt to himself that you could not reach the evidence. But one has found in his desk a number of papers, written in cypher indeed, to which we have not the key—that can wait—but in the known characters of Miss Hippolyta Valence. I will show you one morsel. See'—and he laid on the table a long thin strip of foreign note-paper covered with writing, which Rupert instantly recognised as Hippolyta's. He covered his face with his hands. She was lost to him for ever. Good heavens! how had he been deceived?

'Much,' said the Jew continuing, 'would depend on the date of this correspondence; but some of the envelopes found with it retain their postmarks, which are of two and even three years back. It is to be concluded, then, that your friend was not speaking the truth when he denied to know Miss Valence. And as the girl Annie Dauris will account for the intrusion of Regan, we may assume in our future investigations that Mr. Mardol is the person to watch and convict.'

'But what has he done with Hippolyta?' exclaimed Rupert; 'you should have watched him already.'

'We have done that, to be sure,' said Bernstein; 'he does not leave home, however, except to go among the working men whom he is in the habit of visiting, and they appear to know nothing. Neither does he send letters by post. There was one he posted two days since. It was to you. Did you receive it?'

Rupert was fairly startled on hearing this slight but extraordinary proof of the completeness with which Mr. Bernstein conducted his investigations. He opened a drawer behind him and took out the letter. The Jew's eyes glittered for a moment like those of a gamester sweeping the stakes into his pocket.

'You have not answered it yet,' said he, looking attentively at the artist; 'what will you say to your friend?'

'Don't call him my friend, or you will drive me mad,' cried Rupert. 'No, I have not answered, though how you know that is a mystery. Are you also acquainted with the contents of this letter?' holding it out as he spoke.

Bernstein quietly waved it back with a motion of his hand. 'I have seen them,' he said; 'Mr. Mardol repeats the asseveration that he is innocent of Miss Valence's disappearance, and offers to help you in whatever steps you may undertake for her recovery. Not true? Is that not it?'

'Yes,' answered Rupert, more astonished than he chose to say. The Jew waited for him to continue, but as he seemed lost in thought, Mr. Bernstein himself resumed the thread of the conversation.

'If I might offer you an advice,' he said, 'I would accept Mr. Mardol's proposition.'

'What!' exclaimed the artist; 'take his hand again, after all these things; after breaking with him as I have done? Never! Our friendship is at an end. He has murdered it.'

'Ta, ta, ta,' said the Jew contemptuously; 'that is the reason itself of my counsel to you. The proverb says, "To a rogue, a rogue and a half." Mr. Mardol is a false friend, you say. Good—then you must be more false friend.'

'I could not do that,' said Rupert slowly. Mr. Bernstein got up and came to within a foot of where he was seated. The artist in surprise eyed him, not without curiosity.

'My dear sir,' began the private detective in his hortatory voice, 'Mr. Mardol is, you say, a villain, a taugenichts , or what worse; but when he wrote to you he was doing you one service and me another. We will succeed by his means. But, Mr. Glanville,' he went on sternly, 'how will we succeed if you do not keep your share of the bargain?'

'What do you mean?' said Rupert, rising in his astonishment.

'I mean,' said the Jew, 'that it was understood between us that I should conduct this search, not you. And you are crossing our path at every turn, and asking imprudent and unnecessary questions, and raising the dust of suspicion where it is not easy to bring water and lay it. Why should you go to the dead-houses and the hospitals? If there was anything I would have informed you. But it is like two packs of hounds running down the same hare. They do only run into one another, and the hare escapes to her form. So is it with hunting in these fields. With one word, it cannot go on.'

Rupert felt the justice of his remarks and endeavoured to apologise. But it was a bitter draught, explaining the restlessness of a great sorrow to this vulgar Jew. 'Oh, Hippolyta,' he thought to himself, 'how are we fallen! Must you be dragged in the mire, and our love be desecrated like this?' Mr. Bernstein was not unacquainted with the outward fashion of intense grief. He listened to the apology and seemed satisfied.

'There are attenuating circumstances, I know,' he said; 'it is not my purpose to forsake this investigation, which promises to be curious. But now Mr. Ivor Mardol comes to our aid. You desire something to watch. Watch him. For, I must tell you,' he went on as if to anticipate Rupert's objections, 'you did not right, eleven days since, when you threw away the opportunity of seeing all he would do. It was the very time when you should have clung to him like a leech. Ah yes, like a leech. But there is no loss, because he has laid his plans cunningly; and in what place Mrs. Malcolm may be, she will stay there until the storm has blown over. It was done at a stroke, cleverly, when you could not be there. Accordingly, it is now required to lay by hurry and passion, to persuade Mr. Mardol that you take him at his word, and to constitute yourself his gaoler, which you may do, if you please, from henceforth. And you will do it, if you are truly attached to Miss Valence. On the other foot, you will lose her once for all.'

The last words told. It was quite true. Granting that Ivor Mardol was the agent who had put all this machinery in motion, there could be no method of gaining control over it so effectual as to be ever by his side on terms of close friendship. Treachery was it? But who had been traitor first? And if, as he pretended, Ivor was innocent, there could be no harm in accepting a proposal he had made himself. When the letter came containing his attempted exculpation, Rupert had been minded to fling it in the fire without [107] opening it. He was now glad he had restrained his passion. There were signs of relenting in his attitude as he sat down once more and motioned Bernstein to his seat.

'What do you advise?' he asked, without looking up.

'I shall advise,' answered Bernstein, 'something which is full of hazard, especially for a celebrated man like yourself. If you wish to pry into all Mr. Mardol's doings, you must become a member of his world— in other words, a Nihilist.'

'I become a Nihilist!' cried Rupert, with a mocking laugh. 'The suggestion is piquant. Why don't you bid me sell myself to the devil, eh, Mephistopheles?'

'Because I am not Mephistopheles,' replied the Jew, as calmly as before, 'and because it would not advance matters, unless that potentate could tell us where Miss Valence is now. Come, Mr. Glanville, think it over, and you will confess it is the only way. I can watch Mr. Mardol so long as he keeps on this side of the curtain; but when he goes through it into the secret chamber of his fellow-revolutionists I cannot, or at any rate I do not desire to follow him. I have told you it is not my department. But you, who do not care if the anarchists blow up the Tower of London to-morrow, need not be scrupulous in joining them. You can then keep an eye on Mr. Mardol during every one of the twenty-four hours. He did not foreshadow this move when he wrote to you his letter. [108] It will give him the checkmate. He will be in your hands like a child or a teetotum, to spin round.'

All this appeared plausible enough; and to a desperate man, whose prospect in life without Hippolyta seemed like a long unbroken winter, the reasons which Bernstein urged with force and conviction might well prove decisive. They did so, in fact, although not until the Jew had presented them in the strongest light, adding that in the alternative of Glanville's refusing, he would throw up the game and sweep the pieces from the board. 'When you have become one of the society,' he continued, 'the match will be in your favour. I suppose Mrs. Malcolm cherished a real affection for you. In that case she may be persuaded to return, since in you she will find the realisation of her ideal, who should undoubtedly be a hero of the new order. Besides that, you will acquire friends whose co-operation may be indispensable, but of whom the very existence is not as yet known to you. Acknowledge Mr. Mardol's letter, appoint him a meeting here, and tell him frankly that you believe his defence, and only wish now to discover Colonel Valence. For that purpose you entreat him to make you an entrance into the society. He will at first refuse on the score of principle. But, tell me, you have never posed as a friend of absolute power? You are known as a free-thinker, and have nothing to unsay? If I had not ascertained that such was your reputation I would not have presented myself with this proposition in my hand.'

Rupert could not help admiring the combination of frankness and guile in Bernstein's proposal. To make an anarchist of a free-thinking artist was by no means difficult; and were example sufficient to justify that course it might be had for the asking. More than one well-known poet and painter had been enrolled in the Nihilist ranks. Nay, was it not the consummate littérateur , Turgenieff, who had invented the name? But it might be too late. Would not Ivor suspect this instantaneous conversion?

'No,' answered the Jew, 'not if you are as unreserved as I advise you to be. Make the prime motive your desire to meet Colonel Valence. The rest, considering your previous history and opinions, will seem perfectly reasonable. I should tell you that, while we know Mr. Maurice Regan left England last Friday on his way to Brussels, we cannot discover Colonel Valence or any one that has heard his name out of the neighbourhood of Falside, where inquiries were instituted immediately.'

'And the women arrested at Brussels?' asked Rupert, 'is anything further known of them? In the English newspapers it is only said that they have undergone a fresh examination.'

'Here are their photographs, with the accompanying description by the Belgian police,' replied Bernstein, taking a packet out of the valise he had brought with him into the room. 'I do not think either of them can be Miss Hippolyta Valence.'

Neither did the artist, when he had seen the [110] portraits and studied the accounts sent with them. One of the faces was too old, the other too young; and it was impossible that Hippolyta, however skilful in disguising herself, should have altered the very contour of her features. What was known of the women's antecedents, though needing confirmation, made the non-identity yet more certain. He gave back the parcel to the Jew, promised he would send for Ivor that afternoon, and arranged the plan upon which, in the alternatives of success or failure, they were to proceed.

When Bernstein was gone Rupert hastily scribbled the words, 'Come and see me at once,' and sent them by a messenger to Grafton Place. In a short time the sound of wheels was heard at the door, and Glanville, watching from the dining-room window, saw Ivor Mardol alight and run up the steps. Determined to act his part thoroughly now he had taken it up, Rupert came out into the hall, shook Ivor by the hand—a pressure which his old friend warmly returned—and led him into the study, where Bernstein's chair, standing in the middle of the room, testified that a visitor had not long departed. The sudden change in Rupert's behaviour, which he had been far from expecting—or was it anything else?— occasioned such uncontrollable emotion in Ivor that for some minutes he was unable to speak.

I have said that Rupert had almost in excess the artistic quality which seizes upon the present with a passion and firmness of grasp, which are utterly [111] beyond the reach of those in whom reason and memory are stronger than imagination. It is the endowment which makes a consummate actor. And another gift he had which does not so often accompany it, due rather to the melancholy underlying his everyday character,—I mean that of keeping a secret from friends who, in other respects, were admitted to the fullest confidence. He could be frank enough to win implicit trust for what he said, while he was giving in return only so much as he deemed expedient. These were dangerous power, and he knew it; but the time seemed to have arrived when he must stake or lose all, and he resolved to play the game boldly. It roused an excitement within him which, like one fever driving out another, made his grief for Hippolyta, though not less real, in some degree less poignant. Towards Ivor Mardol, who had lied to him deliberately, who had for years been carrying on relations with Colonel Valence's daughter which must have continued during her stay at Forrest House, Rupert's feeling was that of the Red Indian who treads noiselessly in every footstep his intended victim has made, always seeing his murdered man —to quote Keats's fine expression—a little ahead of him, and following with uplifted tomahawk until the moment is come to strike him dead. Treachery for treachery! Be it so. What other way was there of recovering Hippolyta or avenging her loss?

With the caressing eloquence, therefore, which he knew so well how to practise, Rupert, waving aside his [112] old friend's attempt at exculpation as needless, and excusing the harsh words that had sundered them during these days on the ground of sudden, irresponsible passion, went straight to the point he intended. He might count on Ivor's devotion, might he not? On his help in the calamity which had befallen him? Yes, he knew it. That was the reason he had sent for him. Rupert confessed, in terms of affection and self-rebuke, that he had been punished for keeping a secret from his dearest friend. That secret was the love which had sprung up, how, where, and when it mattered not, between himself and Hippolyta Valence. He watched for a change in Ivor's countenance, but no, the dissembling was perfect. Well and good. Hippolyta, who had had her own motives for living under the name of Mrs. Malcolm, had disappeared and could no longer be found. She had not returned to Falside; in London, what hope was there of coming upon her traces? The speaker's voice faltered as he went on to declare that he did not believe she was dead, or had met with a violent end. In the first outbreak of distress and fear he had charged Ivor with abducting her. It was, of course, absurd. He would not dwell upon the painful exhibition he had made of himself that morning. But, surely, some one had induced her to quit the house in which she had been residing and, without a moment's notice, to abandon those to whom she was dearer than life. Who could it be? After long meditation he had arrived at the belief that it [113] was her father, Colonel Valence. What did Ivor think?

Ivor, who sat listening with his eyes fixed on Rupert, had not asked, and did not ask now, under what circumstances a young lady like Miss Valence was living away from home. It would have been an unpleasant query, though put by a friend. Rupert supposed that he was aware and did not require telling. Nor was he surprised when Ivor, instead of assenting to his theory about Colonel Valence, replied simply that he knew not what to think. He was evidently unwilling that Rupert should tear down the shelter afforded him by Hippolyta's father,—a thing which might speedily have happened were the Colonel sought after and proved innocent. Rupert returned to the charge; and Ivor, after making protestation that he did not wish to think evil of a man he had never seen (Rupert almost ground his teeth on hearing him repeat the falsehood), at last yielded and said, 'Suppose it were he, then?'

'Then,' cried Rupert, feigning more passion than he felt, 'I must discover him wherever he is,' and he straightway proceeded with the second half of the scheme. When he spoke of joining the anarchists his friend smiled; but, as he went on to assert with growing vehemence that he should certainly do it, cost what it might, Ivor turned pale. Did he see his plans checkmated? But he merely said, 'If you had resolved on it, Rupert, why did you not join our society before telling me? I need not have known; [114] whereas, hereafter, you will be putting me in a dilemma where I must either denounce my friend or break my pledged word to my associates. Are you not aware that it is incompatible with the existence of a secret society to allow men like yourself to enter it, or not to denounce them if by any means they have got in?'

'Men like myself!' repeated his friend. 'Ah, to be sure, you mean traitors and disbelievers in the principles of revolution. But I shall be no traitor. I am as ready as yourself to subscribe and to propagate the creed you maintain.'

'Readier, perhaps,' said Ivor, with a melancholy smile; 'but that will hardly save you, should your motives for joining us be revealed, as they might be.' He spoke with much deliberation.

Rupert looked at him. Was it a veiled threat? 'Yes,' he said to himself, 'I dare be sworn they would be revealed when it suited this fellow's convenience; but that is part of the risk.' And then aloud, 'No, Ivor; they would be quite safe so long as you were the sole confidant of them, which is what I have in view. I want you, in short, to introduce me —to be my sponsor and the guarantee for my orthodoxy.'

'Me, my dear fellow,' exclaimed Ivor with agitation in his bearing and accent. 'Could there be anything more unfortunate? It is impossible. In the first place, knowing your motives, I should be acting a disloyal part to the association; and, in the second, I [115] am myself under a cloud and what you may call excommunicate from the brethren.'

Glanville heard him with increasing hatred and admiration. He was an abominable liar and scoundrel, but how ready, how fertile in device! It had not cost him a moment to strike out a double line of fortification between himself and the enemy. But it should not avail him. The artist affected not to take his words seriously.

'Bah, my dear Ivor,' he said, 'do you mean to tell me there is a single lodge in Great Britain that you could not enter this evening, and bring a friend in your train, if you chose?'

Ivor seemed to feel embarrassed. 'No,' he replied, though with evident reluctance; 'I do not say that. The matter is not one I can explain to a stranger, since all are strangers,' he added, as if to preclude offence, 'who have not taken our engagements. But I may tell you that I have been deprived of the offices I held, and am looked on by the most influential leaders with extreme distrust and dislike. I have attended no meeting for months. I do not know when I shall.'

'Here is an opportunity,' returned Glanville, who did not believe a syllable of what Ivor had just trumped up, as he scornfully whispered to himself. 'You could not have a better. You are a strayed sheep returning to the fold of your own accord, and bringing another to prove your sincerity. It is the very thing.'

Mardol shook his head. 'No, it is not,' he said. [116] 'I mind my own risk as lightly as any man. But I will not encourage my friend to thrust himself, unarmed, into the lion's den. Do be persuaded, Rupert. Leave it to me to find Colonel Valence and his daughter, since you are sure they belong to us. I will make search in all directions.'

'Leave it to him, ay, that is what he would like,' was the mental commentary with which Glanville heard these words. He must strike the decisive blow. He stood up, walked across the study, and put his hand on Ivor's shoulder. Ivor turned his head towards the face which was bent down over him.

'Look here, Mardol,' said Rupert in clear metallic tones. It was so seldom that he called his friend anything but Ivor that the young man put his hand to his heart with a sudden pang on hearing the colder designation. Rupert, who knew how sensitive his affection was, or had been, noticed the gesture with satisfaction. Was he still capable of being wounded? So much the better.

Glanville, hardly pausing, continued what he had intended to say. 'Things between you and me'— such were his words—'have come to a pass where friendship must show itself heroic or must cease altogether to exist. There is no method by which I can hope to recover Miss Valence, or even to learn whether she still breathes, but this of entering your association. You, and you alone, can open the door to me. Do so, and you shall have your fitting reward, if you require any beyond that of helping a friend. [117] Refuse, and we part, not now in passion as we did ten days ago, but with our eyes open, and for ever.'

He went back to his chair and sat down. Ivor's paleness became ghastly and his breath was like that of a man labouring under the greatest agitation. At last he said, 'Rupert, it is a hard battle. Will you give me your solemn promise not to betray the secrets, whether political or nonpolitical, of the society?'

'With pleasure,' answered Glanville, who perceived that he was relenting. 'I will keep all the ordinances with the same fidelity which you would exact from the meanest member.'

'There are no mean members,' said Ivor; 'we are all equal once we have taken the oath.'

'Very well; then count me as your equal in this respect. I want to see Colonel Valence, and I am prepared to pay the price. Can I say fairer? Come, decide.'

'It shall be as you wish,' said Ivor, his voice sinking. 'What would life be without your friendship?'

'What, indeed?' returned the artist in the bantering tone with which he was accustomed to receive Ivor Mardol's idolatries when they were at school together. The light mockery seemed to exhilarate the heart to which it was addressed. Ivor, too, rose from his seat, and stretching out his arms and shaking himself, as though to get quit of a burden, he said in a lighter tone to Rupert, 'And to which party among us do you suppose Colonel Valence to belong? Is he a Spartan or an Athenian?'

'I am sure I cannot tell,' said Rupert; 'explain your meaning, my philosopher.'

'Not now,' answered his friend; 'this conversation has fatigued me horribly. By and by. I will take you first, however, to see the Athenians. Hold yourself free from engagements till you hear from me.'

CHAPTER XXXI ANARCHY IN PURPLE

Rupert sent a faithful account of the conversation between himself and Ivor that same night to Mr. Bernstein. It was like acting the spy and the traitor, but he said, while engaged upon it, 'The curtain has drawn up, I have come before the footlights, and, so long as the play lasts, I must be true to the character I have assumed, not to Rupert Glanville, who lies in a magic sleep.' He could not unravel the threads of Mardol's discourse when reflecting on it, nor had he dreamt that so calm and metaphysical a mind could thus develop the gifts of an arch-intriguer. When would the imposture burst? And how long should he be compelled to wait until the reappearance of Hippolyta? However, he gave up rambling through the ways of the metropolis, dizzied himself with occupation, and, as in the days when he was longing for the one who had now abandoned him, rode from morn till dusk, and came in half-dead with fatigue. [120] It was an inexpressible relief to him when Ivor ran hastily in on a mild and spring-like evening, soon after he had taken off his riding-things—for he had only just come in from a long expedition out of town—and said to him, 'You are to meet the Athenians this evening; how long will it take you to get ready?'

'Must I dress?' inquired Rupert; 'what do the Athenians wear—a chlamys or a chiton? I haven't got either in the house; we shall have to adjourn to my studio.'

'I am sorry to say there is no need,' returned Ivor; 'they wear the ordinary evening dress of European gentlemen. But the distance is considerable. Do you know the Duke of Adullam's house at—?' He mentioned an outskirt of London. On hearing the Duke's name Rupert turned round and laughed.

'Are you acquainted with him?' inquired the artist. 'I thought you never entered the society of Dukes.'

'I have entered his,' was the reply, 'and must do so again. He invites you to dinner; but I may as well warn you that after dinner, when the uninitiated have taken their leave, we shall hold open lodge for your benefit. I am keeping my ill-given promise to introduce you as a candidate. The rest you will look to yourself. A wrong answer, a slightly too conservative opinion, may ruin you.'

'Then you must coach me before we start,' said Rupert. 'I am quick at catching the sense, or nonsense, of a brief. Tell me what is expected, [121] and I will mouth faithfully what madness would gambol from,—how do the verses run?'

'Be serious,' his friend said. He was afraid of these high spirits, which prompted Rupert sometimes to dangerous frivolity. 'What is expected of you is to show that you understand and sympathise with the Revolution. If you have the principles sound within you, the words will come of themselves. But let me tell you that you will meet men of quick discernment.'

'And is the Duke a Socialist?' laughed Rupert, going off to dress.

'You shall know when you have passed your examination,' said Ivor.

Rupert quickly finished his transformation, and when he came down, the two apparently devoted friends, in whose hearts such different feelings were ascendant, drove at a rapid pace along the western road, and found themselves, towards eight o'clock, traversing the country lanes under the dim radiance of the stars. Glanville, though like the rest of civilised men he knew by repute the house to which they were going, had never seen the outside of the park in which it stood; nor had he met the Duke of Adullam.

This Scriptural name, which conceals an illustrious and very ancient title, had been given to the Duke by his intimate friends, as well as by his inveterate enemies, for much the same reasons which made it a political weapon of offence on a memorable [122] occasion. Before his father's decease the Duke had figured in the House of Commons as a leader of opposition, whose reckless and daring eloquence, combined with a personal charm which few could resist, had threatened to sweep away a Ministry and to break up a party. That the party happened to be his own, and the Ministry that of their opponents, seemed not to trouble him at all, and added a bizarre interest to the man whose pleasure evidently lay in making mischief and leaving others to pay for it.

But at the opportune moment, when both sides of the House were trembling with dismay, a god appeared out of the machine and the country was saved. It was no other than Hermes, who conducts the shades to Charon's ferry. The Duke, the old Duke, our present Duke's father, was struck with apoplexy, whether on seeing his son's disregard of the sacred obligations of party, or in the natural course, was not apparent. But he did the one thing asked of him—he died,—and his son was rapt in a golden cloud to the House of Lords. The party was not dissolved, and the Ministry did not resign. These latter gentlemen, in the fulness of their hearts, would have offered the dead Duke a public vote of thanks and his remains a resting-place in Westminster Abbey, could they have discovered any other service he had done the nation save that of dying at the right conjuncture. As it was, they found some relief to their joyous feelings in condoling with the [123] House of Commons on the loss it had sustained by the Marquis of—'s translation to another place. The new Duke was not vindictive, but he felt the wound. Henceforth, although he did not openly proclaim war against the social order, he patronised all those that did. In becoming a Duke he felt that he had ceased to be a leader of men.

He set about showing his resentment, however, in a way of his own. The late member of the House of Commons and leader of a democratic section therein, became at one stroke its severest critic and, as the unthinking public supposed, a High Tory. He had sometimes affected the magnificent style of Edmund Burke,—he was clever at adopting any style for the nonce,—and had termed the Commons' House the august depositary of the rights and liberties of Englishmen. He now turned completely round. In many a winged speech, barbed with truth and polished like the edge of a razor, he showed that if Parliament was the acme of respectabilities, it was, for that very reason, a bundle of vested interests bound round the axe or the tax-gatherer, as the rods were tied about the Roman lictor's. His picturesque words and bold delivery drew cheers and laughter from the crowd, whom he was careful not to identify with a vulgar House of Commons. His epigrams, witty as they were cynical, made a stir in the languid air of society, and were relished by those who despised not only the degenerate Parliament of England, but all [124] Parliaments and all peoples. His reputation rose higher than ever, and prophets were not wanting who spoke of the coming Tory Prime Minister as one that would bring back the days of Pitt and Chatham. They were in the wrong. After making a brilliant début in the House of Lords,—which, however, though he charmed never so wisely, could not be persuaded to sit over the dinner-hour—and when he might have spent his days in receiving informal deputations from all the interests at which he gibed, the Duke suddenly abandoned politics, and was seen no more on platforms. He had found, or was endeavouring, like Tiberius, to invent, a new excitement. When he was tired of attacking respectability he outraged it. Hitherto a man of average, if not of irreproachable conduct, he shocked every one by publicly professing, in modern London, the principles of the Regent Orléans. That he chose to practise them was, in comparison with this parade of belief in them, venial and trifling. Society has never thought it right to interfere with a man's private pleasures, least of all with those of a great Duke. But it does insist, on this side of the English Channel, that vice shall pay due homage to virtue, whether in the shape of hypocrisy, or in that of reserve and a decent reticence. The Duke was not married; and it would have contributed to the happiness of others in his own rank with whom he was on intimate terms, had they not been married either. It had been said, with some truth, that [125] no woman could resist him. They did not always make the attempt. He was perfectly unscrupulous, foolhardy, and unblushing. His reputation among decent people was that of a man who had shamed his pedigree, his order, his relations, his acquaintance. He would have sought admittance in vain at doors which would be gladly thrown open, à deux battants , as the French say, to visitors that brought with them only the shadow of his strawberry leaves. But he did not seek admittance at such. He went into circles which gave him an affectionate welcome, and he sounded the almost unfathomable depths of refined and cultured vice. He was still in the prime of manhood. At twenty-five he had achieved fame in the House of Commons; he was not seven and twenty when a malignant fate decreed that he should sink into inglorious ease among the peers of the realm. And he was now enjoying an evil reputation of some ten years' standing. All this was matter of extreme notoriety; it might be known to the dogs in the street, and it could not escape the ears of Glanville, who, though not mixing in the society haunted by the Duke, had often heard his character discussed, and was aware that he sheltered under his roof every kind of doubtful person, foreign and domestic, making himself still a leader in those private coteries which influence the rise and fall of Governments, the success of opera-singers, and the fortunes of a play. It was from the universal access which distressed persons had to the Duke, especially if [126] their character was at a discount, or the police took an interest in them, that he had acquired the title of Adullam, and his villa, to which Rupert and Ivor were now drawing near, that of the 'Cave.'

In spite of the disenchantment which Glanville had experienced during the last few days in regard to Ivor, he could not refrain from feeling, and expressing, his surprise that so austere a personage should endure the acquaintance of the Duke of Adullam. Ivor answered very little. He warned Rupert that until his initiation should be complete, and his loyalty to the brethren tested, there were matters of consequence which he must take as he found them, for no explanation would be forthcoming. If he dreamt of purchasing secrets to-morrow by taking an oath this evening, he would be grievously disappointed. The artist bit his lips and kept silent. Evidently there was a struggle impending in the future that would call out all his energies. He must be wary and not impulsive, or his defeat was certain.

Buried in these reflections, which did not tend to raise his spirits, Glanville hardly noticed that they were passing through the gates of a lodge and entering a long avenue which was formed by great trees, the outline of whose stems and foliage, dimly visible under the stars, was no less grand than sombre. It might be some half-mile to the house; and, as they approached it, they saw the front door open, several other carriages standing before it as [127] if just drawn up, and the windows right and left blazing with lights. They got out, and, passing up the wide steps to a terrace bordered with flowers, which were all dark and asleep in the night-time, entered a splendid hall hung round with paintings. Ivor, the shy and philosophic Ivor, appeared to be at home in the midst of these grandeurs; the servants likewise seemed to know him well, and for the first time in his life Rupert felt that he was under the protection of a man from whom, however great his affection might have been for him, he had never anticipated that particular kind of service.

They were shown into a smaller room, fitted up as a salon in the style of Louis XV., where they found the Duke awaiting his guests. It was, Ivor said in the carriage, to be a bachelors' party. Rupert was introduced by his engraver friend, whom the Duke lightly rallied for having deserted the Cave so many months together. Ivor Mardol replied that business had taken him abroad for one thing, and that principle had kept him at home for another. His Grace of Adullam smiled. He was a singularly prepossessing man, though not exactly handsome. But Rupert liked a human being to show some individual traits of character, even at the cost of a little beauty, and not to be eternally reminding one of that sad, unsatisfying Antinous. The Duke's figure was well proportioned and he seemed neither tall nor short, though he stood six feet in actual measurement. His motions were graceful as a [128] panther's, his voice lingered in the memory; and the large dark eyes, flaming like a basilisk's, told, no less than the melancholy passionate mouth, of a spirit that suffered the reverse of the pain of Tantalus, —not the longing before satiety, but the despair which comes after it. Ivor, when the Duke moved away, turned to his friend and said, 'What do you think of him? I have invented a Shakespearian compound name for the kind; I call it "restless-drooping."' The artist assented, but thought he should like to hear more of the voice that corresponded to the countenance and figure.

He was not to be baulked. When the number of guests was full they went rather silently into the dining-room, which was long and narrow, not unlike the picture-gallery at Trelingham, fitted up with a panelling of dark polished wood against which shone marble statues of exquisite loveliness. The lights were low and soft, except where they threw a blaze from above on the dinner-table; and somewhere in the distance might be heard the sound of running water, a subdued ripple which seemed unconsciously to tone the conversation that ensued and fill up its pauses. Rupert was charmed and, he could not but allow, surprised. Not that he had imagined he was invited to a noisy rout; the Duke was well known for his extreme refinement, and had never mixed with the rabble which stands on the outskirts of the highest society as on those of the lowest. But he had looked for something different. [129] Were the guests around him anarchists? He examined them one by one. There were sixteen at table counting the Duke, who, as Rupert was again astonished to observe, had seated Ivor in the place of distinction at his right hand, where he talked to him earnestly. The young man took his honours with unruffled mien and seemed entirely at his ease. There was now no shade of anxiety on his brow. Again Glanville marvelled that he should be so thorough an adept in dissimulation. Ivor, he said to himself, knew that he had taken Hippolyta from his friend, and that his friend knew it. And he was sitting with that friend at the same table as completely unmoved, as entirely master of himself, as though his loyalty had been unimpeached and unimpeachable. What a vile masquerade was life and friendship!

His thoughts reverted to the others. Were they indeed patrons or partisans of anarchy? The table at which they were met was a Duke's; the wines, the viands, the flowers that bloomed around them, were each in their kind rare and exquisite. Life in these climates had nothing more perfect to show on its material side; the senses were gratified to their highest, and every crumpled rose-leaf that could trouble their enjoyment was swept away. He noted the conversation. It was clever and ingenious, but at times something too searched-out,—he found himself saying with Holofernes, 'too peregrinate,'—to bear the stamp of unpremeditated gaiety. Nor was it exactly gay. [130] It was high-pitched and then languorous, abounding in prose which apparently exhausted the resources of impassioned verse, yet could not express its meaning to the speaker's satisfaction. Some of the guests were gentle almost to effeminacy, and their out-of-the-way learning contrasted singularly with the mincing, tender tones in which they gave utterance to it. Two or three past the first years of old age were, on the other hand, grave, sententious, and majestic. Wearing the Florentine lucco instead of the black dress-coat and waistcoat, they might have come straight from the Purgatorio of Dante, with their earnest gestures and slow sonorous voices. These were not all English, like the young, wild-haired—and perhaps, in spite of their seriousness, hare-brained—dilettanti whom Rupert recognised as of the class which is perpetually discoursing of poems and pictures, though incapable of creating either. What struck him in all the talk was its chaotic nature. Not only did every man appear to have different patterns of heaven, earth, and hell from those which his neighbour carried, but the number of discordant patterns in each sample-book was without end. These strange guests, who did not mention or call each other by their names, had read everything, seen everything, and travelled everywhere. They had opened Pandora's box and rifled it of its contents, but not one of them had found Hope at the bottom. He could not but allow that they were erudite, refined, polished to excess; but the refinement seemed to have undone the work of [131] travel and experience; it had taken the life out of these men and extinguished in them the last spark of spontaneity. Art had overcome Nature; the fine-spun inner clothing had completely wrapped up and overlaid that fine-spun inner flesh that we call temperament and genius. There could be no passion where there was no fire; but the curious fact remained that in every sentence enough passion was breathed forth to outdo Cleopatra and Sappho. Rupert laughed inwardly when he perceived that he could remember only the names of women to match these simulacra of men.

Yes, they were anarchists surely. They denied, doubted, disparaged; they had nothing but refined scorn for all that makes life worth living. They called nothing into existence; they satirised everything that was not sensuous feeling, that did not feed delightful moments. Glanville had long detested morbidezza in painting; he saw it here and hated it in literature and life. The deity worshipped by this company was ρωςπτερος ,—the wingless, earthly love which turns life into a frenzied lyrical chant, and steeps the senses in earth-born parfumes. In like manner the high thoughts which for him made the literature of the world an inspired, heroic Bible, sank down here to the wine-crowned parables of Hafiz. Had he come by mistake into a Paradise of sensuous delights instead of the ambrosial supper for which Ivor had prepared him? Was the Duke of Adullam no better than this? He had supposed that transcendent [132] disdain of conventionalities lay at the root of his daring conduct. If he was only a treble-distilled Sybarite, a nature all softness and attar of roses, how came Ivor Mardol to be intimate with him? Rupert, who had said very little hitherto, looked at them both and wondered.

The Duke caught his eye. 'I cannot thank you enough,' he said to Glanville in a most winning voice, 'for bringing our John the Baptist back again.'

'Do you mean my friend?' said the artist. 'I was not aware that he had been preaching in the wilderness. I thought he was always sure of a good audience among—'

'Hush,' said the Duke, with a well-feigned expression of dismay, 'it matters not among whom. But look at the glasses standing by him; you will see that he deserves his name.'

Rupert glanced across the table, and perceived that Ivor had taken no wine. The array of glasses stood empty and dishonoured.

'You see,' said the Duke, 'such is the defiance held out by our friend on the first night of our restored amity. He will not touch wine or strong drink. Like another Baptist—though I may have my doubts whether he is heralding a fresh Gospel—he symbolically rebukes the New Paganism, of which wine is the emblem and Dionysus the father. You, I know, will be on our side. Your paintings have nothing of John the Baptist in them.'

'Truly not much,' returned the artist, smiling; 'but [133] I have long since given up the thought of persuading my friend to enjoy life. Lately,' he went on, with a bitter meaning in the words, 'he may have come to view things in a more joyous mood, and to find nectar in the rosebud.'

'Indeed?' cried the Duke eagerly. 'What, the Spartan turned Epicurean! Pray take off his pallium and show us the man of pleasure beneath it.'

'I may some day,' was Rupert's grave answer. 'At present I am not sure that he has not kept a second pallium in reserve.'

Ivor looked at him uneasily. Was Rupert jesting or in earnest? It would serve no good purpose to let the Duke misunderstand.

'His Grace knows,' said Ivor, 'that I was brought up a water-drinker and vegetarian. I admit that I have not kept my creed entire. I eat the flesh of bird and beast, as you see; but I cannot become a complete renegade, so I abstain from wine.'

'And you still condemn luxury?' asked the Duke.

'Not among Athenians,' said Ivor, smiling. 'I wait till I get to Sparta.'

'You catch the allusion?' the Duke inquired, addressing the artist, who replied that he did in a measure.

'Let me endeavour to fill up the measure,' said the Duke pleasantly, at the same time keeping his fingers twined about the stem of his champagne glass, which an attendant was replenishing. 'What we have to consider—we, I mean, to whom the future [134] outweighs the present—is what sort of republic shall succeed the monarchies now going to pieces all over Europe before our eyes. Shall it be a republic of all the virtues, or a republic of all the pleasures—?'

'Why not combine both?' said Rupert.

'There spoke the artist,' exclaimed his Grace of Adullam,—'the artist to whom pleasure is only a form of virtue, or virtue a form of pleasure. But it cannot be, I fear. You know there are bourgeois virtues which it is not fit for a gentleman, and much less a lady, to practise. And there are gentlemanly vices the absence of which in our republic would make it, what I sometimes dread it is going to be, excessively dull.'

'That was for a long while my objection to Socialism,' said Rupert; 'it might be justice personified, if you please; but how distressingly ugly the ancient dame appeared!'

'Oh quite, quite,' said one of the guests with gentle horror; 'a state of things in which one would be forbidden to scent one's self with sandal-wood because it was of no service to draymen!'

'And where, as there were no poor, there could be no rich,' said another. 'Think what would become of you and me if we happened not to be rich. We should expire in agony within twenty-four hours.'

'It is just as well, then,' interposed Ivor, with a doubtful smile on his features, 'that you decided not to be born at Sparta. You remember the law of Lycurgus about those who were deformed from their birth, and Taygetus?'

'What, then, are the rich, and the artists, and the cultivated minority in general, to do when the good time comes?' demanded Rupert; 'Taygetus will not be large enough to hold them, any more than the valley of Jehoshaphat will hold everybody at the Last Day.'

'You have stated the problem,' said the Duke, 'and it behoves those whom it chiefly concerns, that minority of which the existence would be imperilled,— and all we at this table belong to it,—to discover the solution. Sparta will clearly be fatal to us. I have been saying, therefore, to such as I could influence —they are not many—why not try Athens? One or the other we shall surely come to.'

'But neither of them,' said one of the grave old men that had not yet spoken, 'was a republic. You don't suppose all that dwelt in Athens were free citizens. And at Sparta, besides the ordinary slaves, there were the Helots.'

'I grant you,' said the Duke, 'as much ancient history as you can require. But I am still anxious to know what will become of us, who are not dead and illustrious, when there is a universal Republic and no guillotine for aristocrats.'

'These are mere questions of the day,' replied the old man. 'Why trouble ourselves with what is in all the newspapers? Art and literature—surely these are a realm of serene tranquillity in which we may live. The rest is like a far-off storm at sea.'

'Yes,' said Rupert; 'we may escape into the Ideal [136] until the floods invade it and swallow artist and poet alike. The waves are mounting, and who will build us an ark?'

'Just so; I like your way of putting it,' said the Duke. 'There will be hardly terra firma left on which to build an ark, even as small as Noah's, if we do not begin at once. But suppose we could teach the many-headed monster that he need not be afraid of us, that our existence enlarges the possibilities of his, that even luxury will provide bread for his table?'

'He will want your luxury, too,' said Ivor, 'as soon as he can lay hands on it.'

'Well, let him,' answered the Duke, 'and then he may come to me. I will show him that luxury, though indispensable to dukes and the like unhappy creatures, would only take away his chance of happiness if he gave himself to it. However, what we want is Athens. The barbarous interlude, the sort of medieval mystery which we know as the Christian religion, has come and is nearly gone. We shall see it out. What remains but the only genuine civilisation which has made man human,—made him free, scientific, artistic, passionately poetical? That is all summed up in the name of Athens. There is no other. Sparta, Corinth, Rome, are provincial towns in the republic of the Ideal. And, therefore, we citizens of the future must call ourselves Athenians and resuscitate that humanising polity.'

'Do you propose to make an Athens of London?' inquired Rupert, whose mind went back to the days [137] and nights he had been spending among its hospitals, workhouses, back lanes, and mortuaries. 'I fancy you had better burn it down first, by way of a beginning.'

'Will your friend Ivor Mardol,' inquired the Duke in his turn, 'transform it to a Sparta where there shall be neither slaves, Helots, nor black soup?' and he addressed himself to the morsel of woodcock on his plate while waiting for an answer.

But Ivor interposed. 'I never said I was a Spartan,' he replied calmly, 'but that is no reason why I should allow that Athens and luxury are synonymous. I think a time may come—it will come, as I hope—when nothing will be deemed worthy of men except what gives them clearer brains and more generous feelings. The art of living stands in as urgent need of revision, nay of revolution, as the art of governing. Who is there that knows much of either?'

'Ay,' said the Duke, laughing, 'I told you so. We have come round to the Baptist, with his locusts and wild honey.'

Coffee was served, and they adjourned to the salon in which the Duke had received his guests on arriving. In no long while about half of those present took their leave. Rupert, who could not tell whether his 'examination,' as Ivor called it, had begun or was already over, kept his eye on that suspicious friend, whose reserve had hitherto concealed from him this extraordinary acquaintance with the Duke of Adullam. [138] All reticence between intimates—though some must be unavoidable—has this inconvenience: when one secret has come to light a hundred may be suspected, and, like a casket in which a false bottom has been discovered, the friendship will seem to be lined with reserves innumerable. If Mardol could be on such terms with the Duke, yet his nearest friend not know it, why should he not have been acting throughout on principles which would make his loyalty a pretence and his affection a snare? But while Glanville was chewing the cud of this bitter fancy, the Duke approached and invited him to the smoking-room. Ivor, who was standing at no great distance and saw the motion, nodded approval and prepared to follow. The way led up a flight of marble steps, along a closed verandah, and into a room illuminated from above with a mellow radiance. It was the electric light glowing through yellow and crimson roses which seemed to hang from the trellis of an arbour, while mats of gorgeous colours strewed the floor, Indian shawls of dead golden hue fell over the entrance and the windows, and a divan of softest texture, covered with pale yellow satin, ran round the walls. As in the dining-chamber, so here was audible the sound of rippling water mingled with the plash of a fountain. The air was not heavy with perfume, but there hung about it the faint, yet pungent, fragrance of Eastern tobacco, in which a whole world of reminiscences —Cairo and the Golden Horn, and far-off Hindustan —seemed to dose and dream.

'Is this your Nihilist conclave?' whispered Rupert to his companion, as they passed the enchanted gateway, and the crimson and golden light came streaming over them.

'Why not?' returned Ivor; 'do you think the Indian shawls will make a difference? It is the men, not the room, that constitute a meeting.' They flung themselves on the silken divan.

'Ah,' said Rupert under his breath, 'this is perfect.' He meant the apparition of a brown-skinned Nubian boy, of exquisitely regular features, and in Oriental costume of crimson, with a yellow turban round his head, who advanced towards them silently when they sat down, and offered them in turn a bowl of meerschaum with twisted tube and tobacco of their choice. Ivor looked at the boy and laughed, at the same time putting the narghileh away with his hand. The Nubian, if such he was, laughed back to him, and in doing so displayed a range of pearly teeth between his beautiful lips. He, too, must be familiar with Ivor's ways, said Rupert to himself. At that moment the Duke, turning round, caught sight of the pantomime, and shook his head mournfully.

'You smoke, I am sure,' he said to Rupert. 'I can see that you believe in the sacred fire. This frost-bound philosopher,' indicating Ivor, 'is an infidel and deserves to be immolated on a pyre of cigarettes. Yes,' he went on, 'happy is the man that has learned to smoke from his youth up. It is the one consolation that can never fail him. But now, Mr. [140] Glanville, nerve yourself for the ordeal. You are not ignorant of what is before you.'

'Well, I am rather,' answered Glanville. 'I understand that dinner was what Freemasons call "open lodge." But what may be coming next I certainly cannot say.'

'Dinner,' replied the Duke, 'never can be anything but open lodge. It is merely the vestibule of truth. But the smoking-room is her sanctum. Amid these clouds—the only incense left us—she reveals her lineaments, as you will speedily perceive.' Then changing his tone and becoming all at once serious, 'My dear artist, I presume you are aware that you have thrust yourself into considerable danger in coming hither?'

'Very likely I have,' said Rupert, taking the narghileh from his lips. 'What then?'

'Why then,' answered the Duke, 'everything depends, not on your courage,—I should be the last to call it in question,—but on the degree of earnestness with which you have come to us.'

At this juncture Rupert's friend rose from the divan, and went over to a group of guests who were smoking at a little distance. Glanville and the Duke were in some sense alone, but if either raised his voice the conversation would reach listening ears. At present the Duke's subdued tones were a hint that he desired the colloquy to be carried on between himself and Rupert only.

The latter, with an inquiring look in his eyes, [141] faced the Duke, who sat sideways on the divan and smoked very placidly. 'Well?' said his Grace.

'I do not know what the earnestness means of which you speak,' said Glanville, 'or what guarantee will satisfy you.'

'There is only one condition, and it is guarantee sufficient,' replied the Duke. 'What have you lost to put you at enmity with the social order?'

Rupert gave a short, bitter laugh. 'Is that all?' he said. 'I might, if I were overbold; ask your Grace that question. What have you lost?'

'Everything,' replied the Duke simply. And when Glanville stared, 'Come,' he said, raising his voice, 'this gentleman will not believe that a' duke can be a Nihilist. How shall I convince him?'

Four or five of the others, including Ivor, came at these words, and, in the language of the theatre, grouped themselves, dramatically, round the Duke and the artist. The rest seemed to take no notice and went on with their smoking. The Duke waited, as if for some one to counsel him.

'Tell him your life and adventures,' said one.

'Too long,' put in another, as he turned to light a fresh cheroot.

'Tell him mine, then,' retorted the first.

'Yours is too singular to have a moral,' said the second. 'It is horrible besides, and one must not begin with a nightmare.'

'The rest are little better,' said the man whose [142] story, apparently with his consent, was declared to be a nightmare. And there was a pause.

'But,' said the Duke, 'we cannot stay here all night. What is to be done?'

He reflected for a moment, amid the perfect silence which followed his words. The fragrant ascending clouds veiled with prismatic vapours the yellow and crimson light of the flower-like lamps. Existence, so curtained about with webs of divers colours from the Indian loom, so penetrated with aromatic drugs, so wrapped in dreamy lawns of smoke, and illuminated with the charmed rays that fell softly from above, seemed to the artist a drowsy, delicious, trance-like state wherein was neither pain nor pleasure, but only luxurious repose. Why not go on dreaming thus for ever? thought Rupert. There would come no visions of an arduous ideal through those silken folds, not even the sound of poetry or music, to suggest the painful sweet reminiscences which might stir a man to action. The existence which was all love, and passion, and loss, had vanished into the dark night outside. Why should it return and vex him any more?

The Duke touched his hand. 'You are falling asleep with your eyes open,' he said; 'look up and listen.' Rupert turned slowly towards him with such an expression as we may fancy they had who dwelt in the Lotos-land, where it was always afternoon.

'All right,' he said, 'I am listening.'

'Look round you also,' the Duke insisted sharply, and his voice became very stern. 'You wish to be one of us. Here, then, are seven men who have joined the party of despair. Can you tell why?' He paused, and Rupert, gathering his faculties together, replied:

'How should I know? I never saw one of them before except Ivor.'

'And he,' said the Duke slowly, 'like the rest of this company, has a shattered existence.'

'It is a lie,' exclaimed Rupert, springing up; 'he has shattered mine; he has broken my heart.' Ivor looked at him, long and sorrowfully, but said nothing.

'Right, right,' said the Duke with amazing tranquillity; 'at last I hear the cry of a wounded spirit. Why, man,' he went on, addressing Rupert, whose dreams had fled like a troop of frightened deer, 'do you suppose we are playing for amusement? If your friend had not assured me that a great grief had smitten you through, these doors had never opened to you.'

Rupert, dumfounded at so novel an experience, knew not how to answer. It was clear that, be the game jest or earnest, he was playing with men vastly superior to himself in resource and cunning. The Duke seemed to perceive what was passing through his mind. With a gentle but decisive grasp he drew Rupert to his seat again, and while the others stood about in their careless attitudes, he went on:

'You have perhaps, my dear friend, confounded [144] us with the ornamental mysteries of the last century. I do not mind being taken for a Rosicrucian, or Mesmerist, or what not, by the crowd standing and staring about the doors. It is as well they should think we are not much in earnest. But with you it is different. If you enter, you belong to us. And you ought to know what binds us together. It is not the flimsy threads of sentiments, or philosophy learned by rote, or political clap-trap. Every man here brings a ruined life in his hand. The rank and file of our societies, which number hundreds of thousands, are made up of those who by hunger, want, misery—and by reflection on all that—have been driven to join us. We, I do not say the élite , but the few, have suffered neither hunger, nor thirst, nor nakedness. But we have suffered worse. We have lost, one in this way, another in that, the good of life. We, too, are stricken so deeply that only in the destruction of society, if at all, can we hope for a glimpse of happiness.'

Was he listening to a madman? Rupert gazed right and left in search of the answer to this enigma. The Duke, watching him, smiled.

'I see that you cannot believe me,' he said. 'You want ocular demonstration. You shall have it in good time. Now I will only say this. I am acquainted with the story of every one here, though not every one here knows his own.'

'Do you know Ivor's parentage, then?' inquired Rupert eagerly.

'I knew it long ago,' replied the Duke, 'before I had set eyes on him. But I have not informed him, nor shall, until it is likely to do him good. Ivor has other things now to trouble about besides his parentage.'

The artist could not believe that his friend, who appeared so subdued and patient, would be standing by in silence had he given credit to these words. Yet the Duke spoke with authority, and the rest seemed to take it as a matter of course.

'You perhaps thought,' resumed this tamer of men, who saw the deep impression his words were making on Rupert, 'that by taking a few oaths and professing general principles you might be free of the brotherhood. You must now realise that our bond is not so easily put on, and that it never can be taken off. There is, or has been, in the life of each one here —and of those outside who belong to us—a personal reason why he should despair of the society that has made him what he is. Those only give up the past who have nothing more to hope from it. Tell me, then, what injury has society inflicted on you?

The artist thought of Hippolyta, and was beside himself with rage. What but the stupid, immoral, mercenary, polluting conventions of the world had first made their marriage impossible, and now flung her out into danger and loneliness, far from his love and care? That pure and lofty spirit had been immolated to the crying social sin which makes of wedlock the worst prostitution. From first to last she [146] had been a victim whose innocence did but make her the easier prey. What had he lost?

'You need not ask me whether I am a wrecked and miserable man,' he replied, with a firmness equal to the Duke's. 'Society has done me a harm it can never repair; and I am yours, soul and body, heart, hands, and brain, if you will undertake to restore that which has been reft from me. I will not publish the history in this room, to men who are doubtless worthy of all confidence, but whose names I do not even know. If you care to receive it as a secret, I am willing to inform you whenever and wherever you choose. Provided only,' he concluded with a glance towards Ivor, 'that my friend is spared the trouble of being present.'

'Your friend,' said Ivor quietly, 'has never asked to know any man's secrets. He will respect yours so far as to decline knowing them.'

'Be more considerate, Ivor,' said the Duke, laying a hand on his shoulder. 'Can you not see that it is passion, not your friend Mr. Glanville, that speaks? Were he not thrown off his balance by that loss, which must yet be recent, I might be slow to credit his sincerity. Whereas I believe and honour it.'

Ivor hung down his head. He was ashamed of his resentment. After a few moments he came forward to where Rupert was seated and took his hand, which the artist, overcome by conflicting emotions, did not refuse. The Duke smiled, 'You have not lost everything, Mr. Glanville,' he said, 'while you can count on the friendship of Ivor Mardol.'

'But come,' he exclaimed after a pause, in the lighter tone which he had affected during dinner; 'you want to hear what has made me, the Duke of—of Adullam,' he said, smiling maliciously, 'a Nihilist. Can you not see for yourself?'

Rupert shook his head. He wanted the Duke to go on. Then said his Grace, 'Look at me. The one sufficient reason why I should detest the present order of things is that I not only was born great, but have had greatness thrust upon me. You ask what society has taken from me. I answer, a motive for exertion, an interest in life.'

'But you have enormous interests,' said Rupert.

'True; but no interest. I cannot go to seek my fortune as young heroes do in the story-books. I have more already than I know how to manage. If I were capable of earning a name in science or literature I must not attempt it. A Duke that writes verses or volumes on chemistry is always slightly ridiculous. Besides, I could do neither. One thing lay within my reach. As Leader. of the House of Commons, as a democratic Prime Minister, I might have governed the nation and put into effect the true principles of social order. But,' he concluded, laughing, 'when I was on the point of beginning, and had nearly broken up the party lines which have made injustice and oppression secure for the last two centuries, fate stepped in and insisted on my becoming a Duke and a nonentity.'

'That was hard,' observed Glanville, smiling gravely. [148] 'No wonder you wish to pull down the House of Lords.'

'Yes,' replied his host; 'a state of things in which a man must become a Duke, whether he likes it or no, is simply unreasonable. In the world of the future those only shall have prizes that are capable of enjoying them.'

When he had reached this point in his half-serious, half-satirical remarks, the Duke rose and, taking one of the guests with him, went away. Another who had been standing near in silence addressed Rupert, as he seemed hesitating whether to follow them or remain.

'The Duke will come back presently,' he said. And then, after a while, 'Our host finds pleasure in making his earnest appear like jest. But you may take for granted that no man living has had a more melancholy experience.'

'How so, if it is not a secret?' inquired Rupert.

'Oh, there are secrets and secrets. The history of the Duke of Adullam would be frightfully strange in your ears were you told merely what I know, and some others in this room. But, as he remarked, you have only to look at him and you can imagine what kind of secrets have made up his life and taken the glamour from it. He is the victim of nature as of society. The trial has been too much for a mere man. Consider his fascination, grace, and accomplishments. They would make him miserable in any station, high or low. They have given him every [149] pleasure without stint; they have filled his cup to overflowing with the enjoyment of which others crave a single drop to intoxicate them. He has drained the goblet, and for him the intoxication is past. He cannot be deluded any more. Were he a great genius he might go on forging delusions for himself and living upon them, as we lesser mortals accept delusions ready made, with docility and gratitude, never asking how they came to be. The Duke, for his misfortune, is neither a fool nor a poet. He is clear-headed, self-controlled, accustomed to the childlike devices of men who come to him enamoured of his influence, and of women that have fallen under the spell of his enchantments. He understands the human animal whose governing motive is self-interest. I do not say he cannot love, but he cannot believe in love, and hardly in friendship. He is, therefore, very exquisite,—and very corrupt. And he knows it, and wonders whether in the boundless universe there may not be something which would cure him of his disease of realism,—an ideal the possession of which should not be fatuity, disappointment, and sickness of spirit.'

'You describe an old complaint,' said Rupert; 'I suppose that his private ennui has been endeavouring to transform itself into the pain of the world. It is a pity he has not something to cry for.'

'A great pity,' replied the other; 'but I do not see how he can be wounded. His most dreadful quality is to be invulnerable. Who was the man at [150] the stake that shrieked out to the bystanders, "I cannot burn; for God's sake, help me to burn"?'

'Ridley or Latimer, I forget which,' answered the artist; adding, 'now I understand the Duke a little better. Ennui is, I daresay, the torment of the damned; and in those who have never felt it not likely to excite compassion.'

'I do not believe,' said Ivor, who had been sitting by all this while without a word, 'that the Duke was ever in love, though he may have fancied he was. He has been too much adored—a god enshrined above the multitude for their worship.'

'And now,' said the stranger, taking him up, 'he has got tired of them and their worship, and has leaped down from the altar and begun demolishing the temple.'

'It is the story of the French noblesse repeating itself,' said Rupert; 'first, Louis Quinze and Voltaire, then the Fourth of August.'

While they were talking, the subject of their conversation returned. He took Ivor affectionately by the arm and, whispering some words in his ear, seemed to be sending him away. Ivor left the room; and the Duke, approaching Rupert, said graciously, 'Will you come to my study for a moment?'

The artist bowed and followed him as he led the way through the verandah. They traversed several rooms, which were brilliantly lighted, and only looked the more solitary for the air of expectation that seemed to hang over them. Glanville as he passed [151] could not forbear the tribute of an admiring glance at the paintings, statuary, and curious furniture with which they were adorned. The Duke's study, in comparison, was plain and simple, containing all the requisites, daintily mounted, of that extensive correspondence, much of it in cypher, which his Grace of Adullam carried on. At no time had he been indolent; perhaps the secret of his unhappiness lay, as he said, in the excess of energy for which he could find neither scope nor occasion. He motioned the artist to a chair, took one himself, and while the fire sparkled in front of them, turned down the lamp till only a ruddy twilight reigned in the room. 'Now,' he said, 'we are alone, as you desired. Ivor Mardol is not hidden behind the arras; and what you tell me shall sink into silence on the instant. I have received many a confession here, but none has gone over the threshold.'

While he had been following the Duke, Rupert's mind had not ceased to busy itself with the question whether he should still try to fence, or surrender, and throw himself on his opponent's generosity. The figure of the Jew, Bernstein, seemed to rise and mock his hesitation. Confide in the Duke? But that would be the same thing as confessing to Ivor. How could he possibly tell that they were not in collusion? Nay, the horrible thought crossed his mind that Hippolyta might be in that very house, hidden where he was least likely to seek her out. His blood turned cold as he dwelt on it. However, he was sick [152] of dissembling. He did not doubt that if he chose he could go on playing his part as hitherto, but the recoil when the play was at an end would be terrible. Why should he not speak and have done with it? Were these men guilty of the abduction? Had Hippolyta consented to be taken away? In that case they would know already as much as he could tell them. He resolved to fling his cards on the table, and let them decide the contest as they fell. The Duke waited, without a sign of impatience. He was mild and calm, and imperturbable.

'If I am to say anything,' Rupert at last began, 'it must be everything. And the history is strange— incredible, in fact.'

'I shall not find it incredible if you tell it me,' replied the Duke.

'Well, then,' said Glanville, 'I must go back to the Hermitage at Trelingham.

'A picturesque locale ,' said the Duke of Adullam, 'as I remember it when I stayed with the Earl some years ago, in my Tory days. Something quaintly conceived, with the water and the hills round it.'

'And do you know Colonel Valence as well as the Hermitage?' inquired Rupert.

'He was not at Trelingham,' the Duke answered quietly; 'however, yes, I know him.'

'Good,' said Rupert to himself; 'now we are coming on the track. I will give him every bit of the chronicle, from the Madonna of San Lucar onward.' And he did so, condensing the narrative [153] where he could, but leaving out nothing that he deemed of consequence, except the affection that Lady May had indulged for him, and the immediate motives connected with it which had induced Hippolyta to quit Falside and seek him in London. He found an admirable listener. When Rupert grew excited the Duke said not a word, but allowed him to recover himself at leisure; and when the sudden remembrance of his great loss choked his utterance and would not suffer him to proceed, a gentle whisper, the expression of profound and delicate sympathy, restored his spirits and animated him to complete the recital. Experienced as the Duke was in all possible combinations of passion, at certain points he displayed a keen interest, and even amazement. Once or twice he seemed about to interrupt the narrative; but, checking himself, bade Rupert, by a gesture, continue. When at length, after describing his return to Forrest House, the indications of Hippolyta's flight which he there came upon, and, in general terms, his fruitless efforts to find her, he paused and looked down, the Duke of Adullam only said, 'Have you Miss Valence's portrait?'

The artist gave a half smile, which was not pleasant to see, as he thought of the person to whom he had confided that portrait and the man who now asked him about it. He preferred Bernstein to have it before any Duke. But that it should be in the hands of either—!

'No,' he replied shortly; 'your Grace will have [154] to draw on your memory if you desire to know what she is like.'

'I have hardly any memory,' answered the Duke, who was as quick at discovering other people's thoughts about him as they were in thinking them. 'I never saw her but once,' he continued, 'and that was some years ago, when she was a mere child. But she knows I am her father's sincere friend.'

For some time he sat lost in reflection, after which, turning up the lamp and looking full at Glanville, he said:

'Your suspicions of Ivor Mardol are absurd and unjust. I am sure that he knows nothing of Miss Valence. To conjecture, as you did in the first instance, that she had gone under his directions on a revolutionary errand was ingenious; but you should have accepted his denial. You have been very near losing your other self, who will be true when all the women you have ever cared for have turned out false.'

'But, except Ivor, she saw nobody,' returned the artist. 'What reason, unconnected with the movement, as he calls it, can she have had for flying in a moment from Forrest House?'

'It is idle to talk of reasons,' said the Duke, 'where a woman is concerned. Find me a passion, and I will unravel the knot, which at present, I confess, is insoluble. Enthusiasm—we want some infusion of enthusiasm to account for the madness.'

'Ah, good heavens!' groaned Rupert, 'there was no lack of enthusiasm. Hippolyta was capable of [155] going the length of England to discover Annie Dauris, or of joining her father in Siberia. Do you think,' he said, with a sudden gesture, 'that she has done it? Where is Colonel Valence?'

'Not in Siberia yet,' returned the Duke, with a peculiar smile. 'I believe I can find him for you. But oh, young man,' he continued, between jest and earnest, 'how happy are you to feel such a human, such a natural grief and excitement! Do not be in a hurry to extinguish them. You are living through the most delectable chapters of your romance. You have come to the thrilling part where one-third is love, and another third anguish, and the last third uncertain hope and longing mixed in about equal proportions. Believe me, you will never live it through a second time. What would I not give for the despair, the active, poignant despair, no mere dull and chronic feeling, which I underwent in the days of my first abandonment,—not where I forsook, that would have been tame—but where I was forsaken? The throbbing of exquisite pain, the life in all its fiery ebullition, the changing dread and sudden palpitations of joy as the heavens above me closed or opened! That was a divine anguish. And will you hasten to bring in the heavy father from a side-scene, where the old man is waiting in hat and cloak, leaning on his absurd staff, merely that you and Miss Hippolyta may go down on your knees before him for his blessing, and live happy—that is to say, bored to death—ever after? Foolish, foolish young man.!'

The Duke in his fervour rose and paced the room, while Glanville, provoked and miserable, did not know whether to laugh, to storm, or to take himself out of the house. It was not long, however, before the eccentric peer sat down again, and resumed a little more seriously, 'But I perceive what I suspected to be true; you are not miserable enough to join us at this stage of your experience. The evil done to you may be repaired, Miss Valence may come back, and your discontent with social institutions will give place to an ardent desire for the delights of a fashionable wedding. St. George's, Hanover Square, will quite satisfy your aspirations towards the Ideal, and serve as your Rome and Mecca. "Journeys end in lovers' meetings, every wise man's son doth know." Is it not so? But he that would join us must have seen through the veil, and become convinced that the most solid-looking and utterly venerable institutions, from matrimony to the House of Lords, are cobwebs to hide the nakedness of existence. When you have got so far—five years, say, after your union with Miss Valence—you may knock at the door of our smoking-room again. Meanwhile, we will allow you to be an honorary member, and to see anything in which you feel an interest. As regards pains and penalties, why, you are a gentleman, and will keep your word to be secret about these mysteries of the nineteenth century. I will not even say, Vous en serez quitte pour la peur . You are not the sort of man to be frightened.'

Glanville heard, but he was scarcely attending. When the Duke stopped in his talk he seemed to wake from a reverie in which he had been plunged during the last few moments, and he said with decision, 'I must mention that I have seen your Grace, and I will not promise anything as regards Colonel Valence. Not all the fathers in the world, nor all the societies, shall come between me and Hippolyta.'

'Beautiful enthusiasm!' sighed the Duke; 'would that I could share in it. Were I in your place, knowing the disenchantments that must come by and by, I should try to believe that Hippolyta was divided between love for me and some other love equally strong, which made her existence a flame of fire like my own. Oh, you need have no scruple in mentioning your visit here. And it may be some time before you meet Colonel Valence. He resembles your friend Ivor in being as much at home with the Spartans as with the Athenians. However, I will send you word should he come this way.'

The conference was at an end. Returning to the salon which he had first entered, Rupert, after bidding farewell to the Duke, who accompanied him so far, was joined by Ivor Mardol. The other guests had vanished. It was brilliant starlight as they drove to the artist's abode, where Ivor was to take up his quarters that night. The Duke's conversation, sarcastic and odd though it had been, did not fail to do Rupert one good service. It almost persuaded him that, in suspecting Ivor, he had committed an [158] injustice. His heart was not so heavy. On the other hand, his friend made no inquiries, did not appear to feel resentment, and spoke at intervals in his usual affectionate tone, remarking, with some degree of malice, on the unexpected nature of the initiation which Rupert had gone through. 'You were wondering when the daggers and death's-head would be brought in, I could see,' observed Mardol, 'and were much disappointed when the dusky page offered you mere pipes and tobacco.'

'I am still inclined to think it was mostly make-believe,' said Rupert. 'Nihilism is the fashion, and your Duke of Adullam likes playing at it.'

'Hush!' exclaimed Ivor. They were driving along the Knightsbridge Road, and sound of belated newsboys crying out an extraordinary edition of the evening journals came through the open carriage-window. 'Tell the coachman to stop; there is news.' The coachman stopped. They heard the word 'assassination' repeated many times. Ivor got out, caught hold of a newsboy, and held up the paper under the street lamp. He came running back.

'What is it?' inquired Rupert languidly. His friend sprang in, pulled up the window, and said in a low voice, 'They have done it at last.'

'Done what?' said the artist.

At that moment he caught the announcement distinctly which was filling the air, and he heard the words, again and again,'Assassination of the Emperor of Russia.'

He started in his seat, and tried in the gloom to make out his companion's face, but could not.

'Ivor, Ivor,' he cried, 'did you know this was going to happen? Tell me, for God's sake.'

'Don't ask me what I knew,' returned Ivor; 'it is unspeakable, appalling.'

There was silence in the carriage till they came within sight of Rupert's door. A ray of light penetrated the gloom and showed Ivor, with his face buried in his hands. He looked up, and said after some deliberation, 'Rupert, I am not in any way acquainted with your Colonel Valence. But I heard to-night that he was in Russia. If he is mixed up in this, there will shortly be news of him. He may escape, and he will come, as they all do, to London. If, on the contrary, he is captured, we shall have the photographs of the prisoners sent over to us, and you will be allowed to see them and discover his features, should he be among them.'

'Do you think,' said Rupert, his voice sinking to a hoarse whisper, 'that he would have exposed Hippolyta, his own child, to a danger like this?'

'A Nihilist has no children where the society is concerned,' replied Ivor. 'I fear from your description of Miss Valence that her daring and enthusiasm would have pointed her out as the very one to be selected for the post of danger. Anyhow, if her father is not dead or in the hands of the Russian police, you will soon be in the way of meeting him. I must say good-night here,' he went on, as the [160] carriage stopped at the door, and they alighted on the pavement.

'Why,' said Rupert, 'you promised to sleep here.'

'Yes, but'—he paused and looked round—'I may be wanted at home. There will be letters,— visitors,—early in the morning. Oh, you need not take alarm,' he continued, seeing Rupert's countenance growing troubled. 'This was none of my doing. I am only an ambulance officer, one of the Geneva Red Cross, on the battlefield. But I ought to be at my post. Good-night, Rupert. Do not distrust me again. I could not bear it.'

And he hurried away. His friend took the journal which he had left, went into his study, and sat down to read it. The account was brief, as might be supposed, and he saw only that women, as well as men, were implicated. He watched and thought into the small hours of the morning; his mind was busy reckoning the times, possibilities, probabilities, which would throw light on Hippolyta's connection with the plot. He could make nothing of it all. She might have been there, such was his conclusion.

When the murky light of day came into the room he was watching still.

CHAPTER XXXII LIGHT OR LIGHTNING?

The torment of the next few days in Rupert's soul no words can express. He seemed to be lying on the rack, waiting, palpitating, suffering new anguish every moment, while the hours drew on and on, and would not finish. There was excitement all over Europe, of which the daily papers gave a vivid reflection,—excitement among the adherents of governments and aristocracies, which had received a deadly shock in the assassination of the Tsar; excitement as great, but felt like a subterranean earthquake, among the revolutionists that had dealt it. Rupert's one anxiety was to catch in the welter of confused voices the name of Hippolyta. He scanned the journals eagerly, and went every morning and evening to Grafton Place, in the hope of hearing through Ivor Mardol that some one had brought information from St. Petersburg. And as refugee after refugee appeared in London, but Colonel [162] Valence did not return, and nothing was said of his daughter, the artist's despair became uncontrollable. His suspicions of Mardol woke from the slumber into which they had been cast by that evening at the Duke of Adullam's. He began to devise wild schemes of penetrating into the Russian prisons and seeing with his own eyes whether they held Hippolyta. Wandering restless and uncertain, he forgot to eat or drink, he could not sleep, his studio was abandoned, his whole existence seemed to be falling into confusion. Ivor was all kindness and brotherly love; but he could not enlighten Rupert, for he was still in the dark himself. He did not dare to hint what he surmised.

Things were in this condition, and Rupert was looking the picture of fatigue and disappointment, when Bernstein the Jew presented himself one afternoon to complain that for several days Glanville had sent him no report, not even that of his first meeting with the anarchists, which, he said, must have taken place. The artist looked at him wearily.

'What is the use of my telling you?' he said; 'you will not find out anything. You have failed utterly up to this.'

'Yes,' answered Bernstein composedly, 'I have failed. Did I not warn you that so it might be, when I heard of the twofold motive? I said, "To find Mrs. Malcolm I cannot promise." But, we say in German, no thread so fine is spun that it comes not to the sun. And thus it will prove. I have [163] caused to be inserted your advertisements in the Times . There is no answer yet. Perhaps the true answer was the news from Russia. We must wait But,' continued he, 'two things I have found. One is that there is search going on for Miss Valence by the side of ours. My people have met other people below, in the under-world of which I did speak to you when first I came. And the second, I can tell you what has happened to the young woman, Annie Dauris.'

'What?' inquired Rupert. He did not care much. Annie Dauris was nothing to him.

'She is dead,' said the Jew calmly.

'Dead?' echoed the artist in his absent voice; 'it was soon over then. How do you know?'

'Because I saw her lying dead in—Hospital,' was the answer.

Rupert became interested. 'Ah,' he said, 'it was the first hospital I went into that night. Stay,' he continued, turning to the Jew, 'was Annie Dauris fair, light-haired, rather pretty, but with a careworn expression? Can it have been the patient I saw that could not speak and looked at me attentively?'

'Yes,' said Bernstein, 'yes, it is the same. She was brought from the lodging-house poisoned, and was, in a manner, restored to life. But she was never able to speak. While she had the fever her child was born. The mother and the child are dead. The inquest was yesterday. Her father and her companion, Charlotte Fraser, identified the body. It [164] was Annie Dauris, and I think she knew too much and was murdered.'

'By whom?' asked Rupert.

The Jew shrugged his shoulders. 'You would not believe me,' he said, 'therefore I hold my tongue. You are not a strong character, Mr. Glanville. Your friend Mr. Mardol is the strong character. He can and will turn you round his finger, and lead you about by the nose. Pardon me, but is it not so? You go to him twice daily; you sit long with him. You do not send me a memorandum. It is clear that you believe him your friend again.'

'What if I do?' exclaimed Rupert; 'you can go on searching, all the same. Who else, I wonder, is looking for Hippolyta?' he said to himself thoughtfully; 'it must be the Duke of Adullam.'

Bernstein caught the words and frowned till his black eyebrows met. An expression of alarm passed over his countenance. 'I know that name,' he said; 'it is a mock-name of a great noble who does much in my world. You and Mr. Mardol went to his house and stayed there many hours such a night. Why went you?'

'That is my business,' answered Rupert; 'and now, Mr. Bernstein, understand that I give you full permission to go on with your search, but I have no longer the assurance that my friend Mardol has done me an injury.'

'Your friend Mardol, I say, is the clever man,' repeated Bernstein. 'I will search, for it is a strange [165] case. But if I make clear to myself that Mrs. Malcolm was in Petersburg, and is taken, or—,' he stopped; then after a pause went on, 'shall I bring you the news, whatever it may happen to be?'

'Yes,' answered Rupert in a low but steady tone; 'let me know the worst.' He perceived that Bernstein's conjectures were taking the same direction as his own. It shook him violently. When the Jew left and he was sitting alone, with his head bowed, thinking, always thinking, as the day went on, the most terrible imaginations came flocking round him; and one, which recurred like a monomania, drove him from the house. He saw himself lying on the floor of his dressing-room, shot through the heart, a pistol lying at his right hand. There was a gloomy fascination in imagining the look of deadly calm on his face, the attitude of his limbs as he lay where he had fallen, the disorder in the room, and the silence brooding over it. A little more and he would have begun to mount the stairs which led to his bedchamber. It must not be. 'Not yet, not yet,' he murmured, as though soothing a child. He would go to Ivor. He would stay under his roof tonight and to-morrow, in the neighbourhood of his schoolboy friend. He felt chill and heartsick beyond all he had experienced. But he did not venture to sleep in his own house.

Ivor was waiting, not to give him news,—there was none,—but to say that an old friend had requested him to be that evening at the Spartans', in [166] Denzil Lane. He proposed to take Rupert. 'It will be a stormy meeting,' Ivor continued, 'for I have not attended a lodge, except one, since you called me to Trelingham, and that ended in my banishment. But there is always some comfort. The friend I am going to meet has more acquaintance with the inner circles of our society than any man living. He is sure to know Colonel Valence under some name or other. I wish you could tell me all that you have learnt about that mysterious personage. But the Duke of Adullam has warned me not to ask.'

The low fever that had taken possession of Rupert grew upon him every hour. He did not talk; and when dinner came, eating was impossible. His friend began to think he had better go to Denzil Lane by himself and bring back what news there might be. But he no sooner proposed it than the artist, rising up, said in a melancholy tone, 'For God's sake, Ivor, do not leave me to-night. I have lost all control of my imagination. My thoughts, my fancies are suicidal. Find Hippolyta I must, or go mad.'

They left the house late, in silence, walking along the crowded streets without exchanging an observation. Ivor had his own sad thoughts, apart from the anguish of his friend. He did not know whose fate trembled in the balance that evening, his or Rupert's. The strange acquaintance between himself and the Duke of Adullam had made it comparatively easy to face the so-called Athenians, with whom he had never [167] entirely broken. The Spartans, as their name denoted, were much less tolerant of private opinion, and ready to inflict the severest penalties on dissentients or renegades. Ivor was walking up to the cannon's mouth. He knew his men, and did not promise himself a speedy reconciliation with them or an untroubled lease of life. And the reception he met on entering would have discouraged a bolder man.

It was the large, bare committee-room, which we remember, in the decayed house at Denzil Lane, where Hippolyta and Ivor held their first conversation. The passage was not lighted, and Ivor, leading Rupert in the dark, had to knock twice ere he gained admission. A species of warder, wearing a red sash across his breast, stood inside, jealously guarding the entrance. On opening he recognised the engraver, drew back, and seemed uncertain whether he should be allowed to pass. But at the sight of Rupert closely following on the heels of his friend the warder put out his hand, laying it rather heavily on the artist's shoulder, and said in a quick, rough undertone, 'What do you want here?' Rupert stood perfectly still. Ivor, just looking at the doorkeeper, said two or three words and held out a scrap of paper. The effect was instantaneous. The grim warder drew aside; Rupert passed in; and the two friends, making their way up the room, seated themselves, by Ivor's choice, where they could see all that was going forward and keep an eye on the door.

Rupert, somewhat roused from his lethargy, looked round and thought he had never been in such a place before. The scene resembled a night-school rather than a Socialist meeting. The great windows at either end were closed with wooden shutters and iron bars; three jets of gas hanging from the plastered ceiling threw a crude light on the benches occupied by some thirty or forty men, who seemed, by their dress and general appearance, to belong to the steadier sort of mechanics. There was a tribune, or master's pulpit, at the upper end away from the door, which was at present empty. Near it was the table, covered with green baize, at which Hippolyta had seated herself while Ivor uttered his thoughts to her the first morning they met. But Rupert did not know that Hippolyta had ever been in the room. He felt almost as much surprise here as at the Duke of Adullam's. He had expected a larger meeting, and not this kind of people. In his mind there went with Socialism something squalid, frowsy, unkempt, and forlorn. But these men seemed to be in receipt of wages enabling them to dress decently; they had an educated look; and many of them were turning over the journals or reading written documents. Among them were evidently a certain number of foreigners. They all looked up on the entrance of Ivor Mardol. Seeing Rupert, they looked inquiringly at one another; and a second officer, in red sash like the doorkeeper, came up and asked him who he was. Rupert pointed to Ivor; again the scrap of [169] paper was shown, again the magic working followed. The men bent over their journals and documents. There was apparently no business going on, or it had not begun.

In the midst of the silence a slight young man went from his place at the side of the hall into the pulpit, carrying with him a bundle of papers. The rest laid down what they were reading, and threw themselves into listening attitudes. The secretary, if such he was, began to run over what seemed an interminable list of meetings, resolutions, and subscriptions —a recital which, tedious though it proved to Rupert, had clearly a deep interest for the assembly, Ivor himself appearing to follow it point by point. More than once the reader was interrupted, now by low earnest murmurs of approbation, and now by marks of the reverse. A bystander would have said that in this committee of anarchists the old sections of the Revolution had renewed themselves. But the artist, weary of these monotonous proceedings, and attending but little to the hum of conversation, which by degrees grew louder, could hardly have told when the secretary ended, or what shape of man took his place in the pulpit. He did not suppose Colonel Valence would haunt assemblies of this species; and Ivor's friend apparently was yet to arrive.

From such stupor, consequent partly on the illness he was feeling, Rupert awakened at the sound of Ivor's voice. He opened his eyes and looked about. [170] His friend had arisen in his place, and the speaker in the pulpit had come to a pause. The rest were dead silent.

'Ay,' said Ivor, with a fine ring of scorn in his accents, 'things are going the way I foretold. But they shall not without one more protest from me. After that, you may do with me as you like. I suppose there must be martyrs of the new Gospel as there were of the old. You,' he continued, facing the man in the pulpit, 'are preaching assassination. You tell us it is an article in the creed of anarchy. And I tell you, here, not for the first time, that it is no article in the creed of humanity.'

'Sit down, can't you?' shouted one of the men across the room; 'your turn 'll come by and by. Why can't you let the man speak?'

'By all means,' said Ivor. 'It is out of order, I suppose, to protest that our society is not a company of assassins.' And he sat down, flushed and excited. Rupert pressed his hand.

The other took up his interrupted speech; and the artist for the first time heard a sermon, in well-chosen language and with apposite illustrations, on the text of dynamite. A stern gospel, which the fanatic standing before them clearly believed in. He was a thoughtful, mild-looking man, young, well educated, and fluent in address, a foreigner, or of foreign descent. He was much applauded, though not by all; and he knew when to leave off. The impression made was deep and solemn, like that which a High [171] Calvinist might have produced in his epoch by proclaiming that hardly any one present would be saved, and by adding that the more of them were lost the greater would be God's glory. As soon as he turned to come down from the pulpit, Ivor stood up again. Voices cried, 'To the front, to the front;' but he did not stir. The noise died away. Looking very steadily at the brethren who crowded nearer to him, he said, 'I doubt that I belong to you, and I will not go into your tribune.'

There was a strong murmur of disapproval, which seemed to loosen his tongue.

'How should I belong to you,' he cried, 'when you will take warning neither by the Revolution nor by the Governments, when you are mad enough to dream of creating a new world by the methods which have ruined the old? You disown your greatest teachers. You—I say you—are restoring absolute government, the Council of Ten, the Inquisition, and the Committee of Public Safety. You, as much as any king, or priest, or aristocrat, stand in the way of progress.'

There was a great outcry. 'Proof, proof,' exclaimed some; 'renegade,' 'reactionary,' 'traitor,' came hurled from the lips of others, while Ivor stood unmoved amid the commotion he had excited. He smiled disdainfully, and lifted his hand to command silence, but for a time it seemed as if the meeting would break up in confusion. There were two or three, however, bent on restoring order and hearing [172] what he had to say. The tumult grew less, and Ivor, as soon as he could make himself audible, exclaimed, 'Do you want proof? It is waiting for you. I will prove myself no renegade by showing who is. I say that this lodge was founded on our faith in humanity. Its creed, when I joined it, condemned regicide, assassination, and private war. It would have condemned dynamite, had that hellish weapon been invented. I say again that I am a son of the Revolution, which has made freedom possible and will make it a universal fact, if we and the like of us do not throw it back a thousand years. What are my proofs? you ask. They are illustrious and decisive parallels; they are the principles on which alone a scientific and progressive reconstruction of society can be attempted. Do you believe that Voltaire or Goethe would have countenanced regicide while the printing-press remained? Would Rousseau have taught Émile the Gospel of dynamite? Is Victor Hugo a mere and sheer anarchist?'

'Bah,' said a thickset, deep-toned German, interrupting him. 'Why quote men of letters?'

'Because they are the priests and prophets without whom no revolution could have existed,' returned Ivor; 'because they see the scope, and measure the path, of our endeavouring; because it is by their methods, and not by yours, that we shall win.'

'Slow methods,' retorted another, 'while the people are starving.'

'Dynamite will not help them to live,' said Ivor. [173] 'You may blow up Winter Palaces and kill Emperors with it. You will not gain the intelligent, or the men of science, or the good anywhere, by the sound of its explosion.'

'We want a mental and spiritual democracy as well as the rest,' interrupted a third; 'we care not a jot for aristocracies of intelligence or benevolence. That is why we call ourselves Sparta.'

'I know,' said Ivor, his face kindling; 'but your new Sparta is worse than the old. You aim at a democracy! Yes, at one which seen from behind is despotism. You will not tolerate differences of opinion; they must be abolished with the dagger. That is your Inquisition. You make a slave of every man that joins you, and punish his so-called infractions of the rule with death. That is your Council of Ten. You decree the destruction of the innocent, the blowing-up of cities, the plunder of the poor by your howling rabble. That is Saint Bartholomew and the Committee of Public Safety. Oh, my friends, you need not lose patience,' he went on, as the interruptions began again. 'When I have spoken to the end there will be time enough to kill me. But this, in the face of your threatenings, I repeat, that you have forgotten the very purpose of the Revolution.'

'Have we?' was the cry. 'Let us hear it, then.'

'Read it in Victor Hugo,' he replied, 'if nowhere else. The Revolution means liberty and light. It means equality in the best things, the only things [174] worth having—love and justice and truth. It means reason, not dynamite. Ah, my brothers,' said Ivor, his voice softening, 'how comes it that we have lost faith in the heart, the mind, the brain of Humanity? Why must we turn, like wild beasts, to our fangs and our claws, to the poison of the rattle-snake and the teeth of the tiger?'

'Why?' exclaimed one who had not yet spoken; 'because we are fighting with tigers and rattle-snakes. How else are we to conquer?'

'Your conception of humanity, then,' said Ivor, 'does not include the governing classes. Have all revolutionists been ignorant? have all sprung from the people? You invert the pyramid; but your anarchy is only aristocracy turned upside down. You want the guillotine, the infernal machine, the flask of nitro-glycerine, as the Governments want their hangman and their headsman. Oh, worthy successor of Robespierre, I congratulate you.'

'Robespierre was the greatest and holiest of revolutionists, always excepting Marat,' answered the other sullenly.

Ivor was not to be daunted. He went on with his theme. 'How did Robespierre differ from Torquemada?' he inquired. 'Their views of the next world might not be the same, but they were pretty much of a mind in dealing with this. If the Jesuits were regicides on principle, were the Jacobins any better? A fine revolution,' he exclaimed, 'when you change the men, but carry out the measures more [175] obstinately than before; when you snatch the people from the lion's mouth to fling them to jackals and hyenas! You tell me that force alone will conquer force. It was not by force that Christianity won its way to Empire. When it took up the sword it struck, indeed, a deadly blow, but into its own heart. Are we going to repeat the mistake, and abolish the principles of '89 by the guillotine of '93? Conquer force by force? Not in this battle, be you sure of that. It is a battle against darkness, and only light will scatter it. Therefore I conclude,' he said, raising his voice and speaking with impassioned earnestness, 'that the resolution which would commit our lodge to a policy of dynamite is nothing short of apostasy from the principles on which it was founded; and I, for one, will dare or endure the utmost rather than assent to it.'

'What will you put in its stead?' The question rang out clear through the room, drawing every eye towards the speaker, who had come in while Ivor was replying to the interruptions of his opponents. He was a tall man, wrapped in a cloak with which until now he had covered his face where he sat by the door. At the sound of his voice Ivor gave a start. Rupert, looking that way, saw the man rise from his seat and press towards the tribune. He let his cloak fall, and from that moment the artist's eyes were rivetted on his pale and haughty countenance. Again, as at the beginning of Ivor's speech, there was complete silence, and the men present looked at one another in expectation [176] of something unusual. Ivor, standing up while the stranger passed, made no attempt to resume. The stillness became intense.

'You are debating a question to-night,' said the stranger, as he looked at them from the tribune he had mounted, 'on which the future of the world hangs. Let me help you to solve it. All the lodges in Europe have been debating it too, since a certain afternoon when the telegraph brought news from Petersburg. The French Revolution has become cosmopolitan; the nations are on the march, and they must have their '93. Anarchy first, then order. When France challenged the kings to battle, it flung them the head of a king. We have done more; we are going to pull down the Europe of the kings, with all its wealth, feudalism, ranks, and classes, till we have swept the place clean. And,' he paused, 'our gage of battle is the shattered body of the Tsar.'

There could be no mistaking how the applause went now. It was violent and vociferous. The stranger hardly seemed to notice it. When silence was restored he went on in a musing voice, low but exceedingly distinct, as if speaking to himself. 'When I was a boy I too had my dreams,' he said, and he glanced towards Ivor. 'I believed in Goethe and Voltaire, in Victor Hugo and the sentimentalists. I thought the struggle was for light. I see it is for bread. Look out in the streets to-night and consider the faces that pass. Beyond these walls,' his [177] voice sank lower, but it was wonderfully clear throughout, 'lies the anarchy of London. Rags, hunger, nakedness, tears, filth, incest, squalor, decay, disease, the human lazar-house, the black death eating its victims piecemeal,—that is three-fourths of the London lying at these doors. Whose care is it? Nay, who cares for it? The piles of the royal palace are laid deep in a lake of blood. And you will leave it standing? You talk of light; you prefer sentiment to dynamite and assassination! What a meek Christian you are!'

'No,' returned Ivor, with heightened colour in his face, 'I am neither meek nor a Christian. The lake of blood is a terror to me as to you. That is not the question. You know me too well to imagine it,' he said almost fiercely. 'The question is whether a second anarchy will cure a first. I say no. I prefer sentiment to assassination? Very well, why should I not? But I prefer reason and right even to sentiment. I appeal to what is deepest in the heart of man.'

The stranger laughed unpleasantly and resumed, as though dismissing the argument. 'I have seen battles,' he said, 'in which there were heroism, and madness, and the rush of armies together, and the thunder of cannon, and wild, raging cries in the artillery gloom, enough to intoxicate a man with the bloody splendours of war. But I never beheld anything more heroic or glorious'—he smiled, his voice fell, and he gave a long, peculiar glance down the [178] hall—'than the overture to our great enterprise. It cost many days to think it out; it was accomplished in a moment.' Then, in the strange, musing tone of one that has a vision before him, 'I saw him stagger, lean his arm against the parapet, and fall, shattered as with a thunderbolt. It was not the death of a man; it was the annihilation of a tyranny.'

'And the springing up of a fresh tyranny from his blood,' cried Ivor, unable, amid the cheering of the others, to contain himself.

'Ah, it was a fine sight,' continued the speaker, as though he had not been interrupted, 'and new in its kind. The great White Tsar has often been murdered —by his wife, his son, his brother; Nicholas committed suicide, and so did Alexander the First. But never until now have the people done justice on their executioner.'

Then in the same quiet voice, where passion was so concentrated that it gave only a dull red intensity of expression, but none of those lyric cries that lift up the soul, he recited, without naming person or place, the tragedy of which he had been a witness and one of the prime movers. No sound of protest came while he was speaking. The audience hung spellbound on his words; and the sombre, sanguinary picture unrolled itself in all its dreadfulness before their vision. Like a tragic messenger, he told the tale graphically, yet as though he had no part in it; but the conviction, unanimous in that meeting, of the share he had taken added a covert fear, a wonder [179] not unmixed with something almost loathsome, as the man stood there, his hands clean, but the scent of blood clinging to his raiment. Ivor listened, his head bowed down, motionless. Rupert never once turned his eyes from the stranger, who moved along the lines of the story swiftly, quietly, painting with lurid tints, and not pausing till he had shown the mangled remains of the victim wrapped in his bloody shroud.

'That was not all the blood spilt in the tragedy,' he concluded. 'We, too, lost our soldiers, but they were willing to die. And now that you have seen the deed through my eyes, judge whether it was rightly done.'

'Stay,' said Ivor, rising again, and in his agitation leaning heavily upon Rupert's shoulder, 'before you judge let me ask on what principles your verdict is to be founded. Will you take those of the Revolution, or return to those of Absolutism?'

'The Revolution, the Revolution,' cried many voices.

'One of them,' returned the young man, 'is fraternity. Where did his murderers show pity to the Tsar? Another is humanity, to employ the arms of reason, to enlighten blindness, not strike it with the sword. Must war be perpetual, or where is retaliation to cease? I have always thought that pardon, light, and love were the watchwords of our cause; and I looked forward to the day when men should live in peace with one another. To be a man, I understood, was to bear a charmed life, on [180] which no other man should lay a daring hand. Murder, I was told, is sacrilege. Am I now to unlearn all these truths, and join the crusade of dynamite-throwers instead of the crusade of reason? That is the counter-revolution indeed. I, for one, will have nothing to do with it. Take my vote, which condemns anarchy, whether in the heights or in the depths, and let me go.'

He moved out of his seat towards the door, pulling Rupert after him. In an instant the way was barred. Some few, whose secret thoughts had been expressed in Ivor's indignant language, held aloof; the rest were all speaking excitedly, and reiterating the words 'traitor' and 'informer,' which had been previously hurled at the head of the dissentient. Ivor, unable to reach the entrance and surrounded on every side by angry faces and uplifted arms, was in no slight peril. But he did not seem to notice; he was collected and silent. Once he looked towards the stranger, and their eyes met. It is impossible to say what would have happened next, for more than one foreigner had drawn a knife from his pocket and there was a gleam of steel in the air, when, striding down from the tribune and pushing his way through the crowd, Ivor's antagonist arrived in front of him. The others fell back. To Rupert it appeared that they obeyed this man as a chief.

'Where are you going, Ivor Mardol?' he said in his distinct accents. 'Are you proposing to denounce your friends?'

'Denounce? What do you take me for?' replied Ivor. 'I shall never enter this committee-room again. I give up the society, and you may inflict on me any punishment you please, but I am neither a spy nor an informer. You know where to find me. I have not been hiding for the last six months. In spite of your threatenings I have walked the streets of London. These men know, for some of them have seen me.'

'And this friend of yours, who has not spoken a word all the evening?' inquired the other; 'is he, like yourself, a partisan of light or a spy?'

'It matters not what he is,' replied Ivor; 'he has authority for coming hither which even you will not dispute.' And for the third time he held out the scrap of paper.

The stranger looked at it closely, gave it back, and said, turning round to the brotherhood, 'We must let them go. It would be dangerous to have any quarrelling in this place. Public opinion is roused, and what has been done is compromising enough to the whole order. I will be responsible, and will watch over their movements myself.'

Amid confusion a strong character maintains its ascendency. The stranger was determined and cool; Ivor had shown no timidity; and Rupert's silence implied that self-possession of the Englishman which appears so formidable a thing to the average foreigner. It would seem as though the three men settled the business among them, while the meeting looked on. [182] 'Wait till I join you,' said the stranger, leading the friends through the lane which was made for them to the entrance. Ivor bowed silently, and refused his proffered hand. The door closed behind them, there was still no light in the passage; and not a word was spoken till the young men were in the street. Then Rupert, grasping Ivor's arm and pulling him towards the gas-lamp which shed a dull, flickering light in front of the great doorway, said with the utmost vehemence, 'Why did you tell me a falsehood? You said you did not know him. That, Ivor, that is Colonel Valence.'

Ivor staggered back. 'What, Rupert?' he exclaimed.

'Colonel Valence, I tell you,' replied his friend. 'I knew him the moment I set eyes on him.'

The engraver was bewildered still. 'Is it possible?' he said to himself. 'Ah, was that the resemblance I fancied, but could not account for, in Mrs. Malcolm?' He fell into a deep silence.

Rupert shook his arm impatiently. 'When are you going to explain?' he said. 'You knew them both, and you would never have told me. Oh, what a false friend you have been, Ivor!'

'No,' said the other, rousing himself; 'spare me your reproaches. I do not deserve them. I know that man, have known him these sixteen years; but he is Mr. Felton, not Colonel Valence.'

'I tell you,' returned the other with emphasis, 'it is Colonel Valence. Voice, and manner, and [183] appearance,—I recognise them all. I met and talked with him in Trelingham churchyard the day after I went there.'

Ivor made him recount the incident, while they walked up and down in front of the house, waiting till the lodge broke up. But the artist was impatient, and said hardly a word of Lady Alice. His thoughts were set on Hippolyta. The old man— Colonel Valence looked older than ever—must surely know what had become of her. But would he tell Rupert? He was rigid and unfeeling, capable of leading his child into the thick of battle and with dry eyes beholding her perish, so long as the cause triumphed. Glanville, when he had ended the short recital, turned again to cross-examine his friend. What did Ivor know of Mr. Felton? Not much, or more truly nothing, apart from the Socialist designs wherein both of them had been engaged. He still persisted in declaring that he had never communicated with Miss Valence, nor set eyes on her till she came to the spot where they were now standing. There was something in her face that vaguely recalled, he could not have said whose features, but he now saw they were Mr. Felton's. The artist thought of the documents which Bernstein had seen in Ivor's desk, in the writing of Hippolyta; but he felt ashamed to mention them. How did he know they were there?

It was a bitterly cold night, and Rupert shivered as they went to and fro in the windy street, not [184] speaking while there was any one near, and having occasionally to pause lest the throng that at moments swept by should carry them away from the house, and Colonel Valence should escape them. For the artist was sure that he had been recognised by the old man as he came towards them from the tribune. Nothing but Ivor's perilous situation had kept him from challenging him there and then. The feeling of suspense was horrible; and Ivor, overwhelmed at the discovery that his guardian, his stern and pitiless friend, was Mrs. Malcolm's father, walked by Glanville's side, voiceless, trying to piece together the details of this strange story. In what way had his own solitary life come to be entangled with that of the woman who had disappeared, and with her father's? Was she alive or dead? His affection for Mr. Felton had never been strong; it was now annihilated by the exultant cynicism with which that prophet of evil had depicted the Tsar's tragedy. It had almost turned to loathing.

The men were coming out. Rupert, standing under the street lamp, scanned their features as they passed; and when the stream slackened made a sign to Ivor, and pushed into the hall, where a tallow candle was burning at the head of the stairs. The man he sought was on the threshold of the committee-room. Its door, wide open, showed the gas flaring within. When the last man had issued forth, Ivor, darting in front of Rupert, said eagerly, 'Mr. Felton, come this way,' and went in, followed [185] by Rupert and the old man. No sooner was the door shut, and the three by themselves, than Ivor, in a trembling voice, cried out, 'Rupert says you are Colonel Valence. Is it true?'

His guardian looked at them in turn. 'It must have come,' he said under his breath. 'Yes, Ivor,' he went on in a louder tone, 'I am Colonel Valence. Do you know anything about me?'

Rupert, who could wait no longer, struck in. 'What has become of Hippolyta?' he asked, his face growing pale. The name would hardly pass his lips. Colonel Valence, forgetting Ivor, wheeled round, and gave an astonished glance at the artist.

'Is not she at Falside?' he demanded in turn.

'The Jew said there was no one there but the servants,' answered Rupert confusedly.

'The Jew? What Jew? Have you gone out of your mind?' exclaimed the Colonel, more and more perplexed. 'Has my daughter left home since I went away? I thought by this time you would have arranged everything.'

'She is lost,' said Rupert gloomily. He did not know what to think. He saw that Colonel Valence was troubled, but not like a man who had seen his child die, or left her in prison with the surviving assassins at Petersburg. He asked for explanations. Question and answer succeeded each other rapidly. Her father appeared to learn for the first time that Hippolyta had come to London, had taken a false name, had met Ivor Mardol. Rupert, in the presence [186] of his friend, and to her father's face, could not describe how she had given herself to him. He kept back what he could; but Colonel Valence did not press him, did not seem to think of dishonour in connection with Hippolyta. He inquired only how many days she had been missing, what she had taken as provision for her journey, and whether she had received any letters. Rupert told all he knew, and mentioned the second letter, besides his own, which Mrs. Leeming had handed to her the last evening she spent at Forrest House.

'That was from me,' said the Colonel, 'announcing that I should probably return to Falside in the course of three weeks. I allowed a margin for accidents, and the time is out. I told her where I was. It is conceivable that she went abroad in the hope of meeting me, or of helping me in Petersburg. Hippolyta was always a creature of impulse. She must be at Falside. Lost! No, my dear Glanville, do not think it. We will all three go down to the West to-morrow.'

'Not I,' said Ivor, turning away.

'Why not?' inquired his guardian.

He answered firmly, 'Because I have done with you, Mr. Felton. I said so to myself a hundred times while you were speaking, and I mean it. You are —' he stopped.

'What am I?' asked the other quietly, with a severe light in his eyes.

'You are worse than a murderer, that is what [187] you are,' cried Ivor Mardol with great passion. 'Others commit bloody deeds, but you make a religion of them.'

Colonel Valence frowned. 'Boy, boy, you must not talk to me in that fashion,' he said. 'What I have advocated is justice, not murder. Have done with your tenderness for crowned criminals, and come with me to Falside.'

'I shall do no such thing,' replied Ivor. 'Goodnight, Rupert. When you have found Mrs. Malcolm, let me know.'

He was going. Rupert caught hold of him. 'Dear Ivor,' he said, 'be a friend to me. If I do not come upon Hippolyta soon, I shall—I don't know what I shall do—something desperate. Never mind Colonel Valence. Come and help in the search.'

But Ivor was not to be shaken. He kept his eyes carefully averted from the spot where his guardian was standing, in a strange attitude of grief and scorn. The Colonel did not speak, and Rupert went on entreating, but to no purpose. At last Ivor said, 'I will never come under the same roof again with Mr. Felton'—the old man winced slightly, but was silent as before; 'never,' continued Ivor, 'while I live. If you want me, Rupert, I can go down to Trelingham and stay at the Hermitage, while you are searching for Miss Valence. I doubt, I doubt,' he concluded, shaking his head mournfully, 'that you will find her.'

'What makes you doubt?' asked Glanville.

'The way she seems to have left you,' replied his friend. 'She had a strong will, and she must have meant,—oh, my dear fellow, I know it is hard,—but she intended her flight to be a separation for ever, or she would not have left you without a sign.'

'She must be at Falside,' repeated Colonel Valence in a low voice.

'Come, Ivor,' said Rupert entreatingly.

'To Trelingham, if you please,' answered his friend. 'I know the Earl is kind and will understand that you want me. But never to that—that other house.'

Colonel Valence, in a gentler way than he had hitherto shown, said, 'Ivor, I am an old man. My principles are a part of my experience, which all the discussion in the world cannot alter. Come and stay with me at Falside with your friend, with Hippolyta. Let us enjoy a few days of happiness together.'

Such language from the stern Mr. Felton surprised Ivor. It was unlike him, not in his character. But this night had made him odious. The scent of murder hung about him yet. It was impossible that any change in his bearing could take away the guilt of what he had said and done. As a final answer, Mardol turned to the artist and said with decision, 'When you return from Falside, you will find me at the chalet. I will write at once to Lord Trelingham, if you can give me his address.'

And so saying he went out of the room, without looking round. He supposed Rupert would stay, to make arrangements for the journey of to-morrow. [189] When he gained the street he paused, considered for a moment, and walked hastily towards Grafton Place. His thoughts were in a tumult; he scarcely knew which way he was going. In the midst of his painful and distracted musings he heard steps behind him, as of some one coming rapidly on. A moment after Rupert was by his side. 'Why did you not wait?' he said, out of breath. 'Colonel Valence is gone. We are to travel together by the fast train at ten o'clock. Here is Lord Trelingham's address. What shall you do?'

'I will follow in the afternoon,' replied Ivor. 'But, Rupert, prepare yourself for disappointment. I am almost certain Miss Valence is not there.'

'You cannot tell me where she is, all the same?' inquired the artist, half angrily.

'I can tell you nothing, because I know nothing. I have searched where I could. Miss Desmond has not seen her. The Duke of Adullam thinks—but it matters not what he thinks. It is mere conjecture. The best thing we can do is to go back to Trelingham Court,—you to finish the Great Hall, and I to bear you company. If Miss Valence is living, she either cannot or will not inform you of her existence. You may as well wait for news at the Court as anywhere. You will have work to distract you.'

Rupert accompanied Ivor in silence to his own door, and went home.

CHAPTER XXXIII THE VALLEY OF PERPETUAL DREAM

The journey from London, which Rupert and Colonel Valence undertook next day, was melancholy. In spite of his indomitable vigour and iron frame, the Colonel looked tired, said but little, and appeared to be sunk in his own reflections, which could hardly be of a cheerful cast. There were moments when he seemed dispirited. A curious experience, which he knew not whether to call pain or pleasure, was that of Rupert, as he sat opposite the gray-haired man and traced in the lines of his weather-beaten countenance the far-off likeness of Hippolyta. At a word, sometimes, the mask would seem to change, the whole expression would be soft and gentle, like that of his daughter when a pleasant thought came into her mind; but again, it vanished and the stern lines were fixed as ever. The Colonel asked no questions; he had gathered the story last night from Rupert's confused narrative, all except the motive [191] which could have brought to so sudden a conclusion the idyll they seemed to have begun. On the other hand, he spoke without prompting of Ivor Mardol, whose resolution to break their long friendship seemed to afflict rather than to anger him. 'Strange,' he said, 'that the old man should be so much more advanced than the young! Ivor is sentimental; he talked of Victor Hugo. I daresay he writes verses. While I have gone forward with the age, he is turning back to Utopia and the idealists. He does not see that the question between Governments and people is which shall make an end of the other. But he is very noble.'

The artist replied at random. He felt the old affection for his schoolboy friend reviving; but of the argument last night he remembered nothing distinctly. He was suffering almost as on the morning when Hippolyta left him, when he sat, a ruined man, in her boudoir. The mind was torturing the body. One fear hung upon him and from time to time shook him with a passionate thrill; what if she were not at Falside, or had never been there? The journey was a forlorn hope. All he could say was that she must, in any case, have written to her father. The old man was not dissembling, he thought; had Hippolyta gone from Forrest House with his approval, he would not be taking all these pains to convince Rupert that she was lost to him. He would be following her to the Continent. She had, then, fled of her own accord. But why? It was an impenetrable mystery.

They passed through the scenery which his frequent expeditions to and from Trelingham had made familiar; at a certain junction they changed for Toxenden, which was the station nearest Falside. They saw nobody of their acquaintance. When they alighted at the small country station, looking pretty even in the lap of winter, Colonel Valence ordered a vehicle, remarking, as they entered it, 'A fortunate thing that we are not obliged to go round by Trelingham! Although, during the last seven years, I have travelled constantly on this line, never once have I encountered the Earl or any of his people. They knew when I came or went; for it was idle to disguise my name in a place where everybody remembered it. Else I have not borne the name of Valence for thirty years and more.'

'The Duke of Adullam is acquainted with it,' said Rupert.

'Ah, has he told you so?' returned the other; 'but the Duke knows everything.'

'Even the parentage of Ivor Mardol,' observed the artist.

'I daresay,' was the careless reply, as Colonel Valence settled down in the carriage.

The evening was dark and cold. The way seemed long, although Glanville knew it from his frequent riding over the country in those happy days when he was learning more and more the worth of Hippolyta, to be, in fact, but a couple of miles. It went uphill towards the moor, then turned again [193] rather abruptly, and kept on the bare hillside. And now the sky seemed a huge cloud resting on another, which was the dark sullen waste, heavy and dismal in the gloom. They turned in at the steep gate of Falside. The evergreens would have hidden the lights had any been shining in the library windows. But there were none. That side of the house was quite dark. When they reached the second gate they dismounted, and Rupert stood there all impatient while the Colonel paid and dismissed the driver. No one came at their approach, although the sounds of their wheels must surely, said Rupert to himself, have been audible on the gravel-path. He followed Colonel Valence round the cottage, where all seemed deadly still, to the housekeeper's room at the back. There was a light in the window. The Colonel tapped in a peculiar way; and Dolores, the aged nurse of Hippolyta, came at once to the door. On seeing her master she began to explain that Andres had gone to the village.

'Where is my daughter?' inquired the Colonel. She looked at Glanville, whom she had not before noticed, and seeing the expression on his face, screamed out some words in her own language. Colonel Valence, answering apparently in the same— for Rupert, though he could read Spanish, had no practice in hearing it—turned to the artist, and said, 'She has not been here. There must be a letter in my study.' And he took the light which Dolores offered. The two men ran down the steps, through [194] the covered way, and into the house, each disquieted, but neither stopping to utter his thought. The library was in perfect order, but had that woebegone appearance which comes over a room where no one has dwelt for some time. Colonel Valence, setting down the light, began, with uneasy looks, to turn over the pile of miscellaneous correspondence that lay undisturbed on the table. There were many letters, which he tore open and flung from him, when he saw they had not the enclosure he was expecting. He came to the end of them, turned back, shook them out carefully again, and sat down, fixing his eyes on the floor and not uttering a word. Glanville was equally silent. At last Colonel Valence looked up, haggard, with the deep veins on his forehead swollen. 'Mr. Glanville,' he said, with curious formality, 'I can find nothing. My daughter must have been murdered.'

Under that dreadful shock the artist reeled and had almost fallen, but recovering himself he went to the table; and, for the third time, the correspondence was turned and examined, in the vain hope of finding a trace of Hippolyta. She had not written; there was nothing there. The two men, when Rupert laid down the last of the papers, sank into a stillness that resembled apathy. Neither stirred nor spoke. The Colonel sat with his eyes on the ground; Rupert, grasping the table with one hand, stood like a man in a dream. The candle burnt to the socket, flickered, and went out. There was darkness [195] in the room, and far down the valley a star or two seemed to twinkle. The sound of Andres returning on horseback struck upon their ears and woke Colonel Valence from his overwhelming grief. He rose and went to the door, calling out to Andres in Spanish. The old servant stopped. There was brief colloquy between them; the Colonel did not return; and by and by lights were brought into the room, and Dolores set down a tray with supper on it by the side of Glanville. Her husband, who brought the lights, said that Colonel Valence would not appear again that night, but the stranger's room would be made ready as soon as possible. Both the old servants were in great consternation and shedding tears; but Glanville hardly noticed them, and the supper remained untasted where it had been laid. He heard the sound of Colonel Valence's footstep as he paced up and down outside on the terrace. It was a slight thing, but intolerable. Seizing his hat he ran up the steps once more, and let himself out by the little postern-gate leading to the bridge. How well he remembered that afternoon when Hippolyta brought him through it for the first time, and he followed like her dog, or some poor thing she cherished! Gone, gone! She was dead, or worse than dead, to him.

He wandered on the edge of the moor, stumbling over the great stones, but, by some instinct, never going beyond the sound of the waterfall, which made a strange monotonous music in the night, like a [196] sobbing ghost, he said to himself. When some hours were past Andres found him, and persuaded him to go in, speaking to the proud English gentleman with soothing words as to a child. He showed him the stranger's room. 'My first night at Falside, under her father's roof,' murmured Glanville, as he looked round him. 'This is the coming home, and the end of the honeymoon. Hippolyta is dead, and I am miserable.' He crept into bed and fell asleep. Next morning, when he woke, the fever was upon him, but he would take no heed of it. He came downstairs. Colonel Valence was gone,—to London, said the note which he had written and left for Glanville. He might be compelled to seek his daughter on the Continent. He would let the artist know if he heard anything.

A fire was blazing on the hearth, looking clear as in frosty weather. Dolores, when she had laid the table for breakfast, lingered until Rupert sat down, and then, with the tenderness of the kind old creature she was, induced him to eat. He made a hasty meal, and at its conclusion was setting out from the cottage, when she asked him at what hour he would come back. He echoed the words wonderingly. 'Come back?' he said, 'never.' She insisted, and begged him to say in what direction he was going. In the same absent way he replied, 'To Trelingham.' Upon hearing that she called Andres, and between them they made Glanville stay until the pony-chaise could be got ready. He waited by the garden wall; he [197] would not enter the house, nor even look towards it, a second time. He seemed to have no interest in himself, no purpose save that of reaching Trelingham at the earliest. When Andres appeared with the carriage he mounted silently, drew his ulster about him, and sat upright, gazing straight on before him, but speaking not a syllable, and seeming not to remark the way they went. His thoughts, meanwhile, were busy enough with it, going over the dreams, the vanished illusions of that night on which he had been driven along these very paths, in the dark, but with Hippolyta's remembrance to light up all within. Now the darkness had entered his soul. He did not dare to whisper the name which, barely thought of, pierced him like a sword. He wanted to get away from it, to see no more of Falside, to be only the artist whose work was to be done at Trelingham. Plans for the future he had none. 'I shall be stronger,' he said, 'when I am in the Great Hall painting.' He tried to think of the frescoes, but the exertion sickened him. It seemed to him that he was neither living nor dead. He was stunned and yet suffering.

The well-known trees rose up to greet him as they came in view of Trelingham Chase. The winter- landscape, though bare in places, and taking in the wild moor with its belt of dark-blue sea, was soothing and gentle. The great house stretched its wings over the silent terrace, where no figure was to be seen. They passed the lodge, drove slowly up the [198] winding walk by which Hippolyta had always come when she visited Lady May Davenant, and arrived at the chief entrance. The butler, who was at hand, observed Glanville's extraordinary pallor, but, with his usual discretion, said nothing except that Mr. Mardol had come the evening before, and was at the chalet. Rupert sent him a message, shook Andres by the hand, and let him go. It was a relief to see the pony-chaise depart; it had belonged to her. While he was taking off his wraps, Ivor, who had been walking near the house, came in and ran up, catching him by both hands, and, by a look, inquiring what news there might be. The artist bit his lip nervously and turned away. 'She is not there,' he whispered. That was all. They understood one another, and said no more.

It was a bad sign that Rupert would neither eat nor lie down. Capable, like all great artists, of working for many hours on end, he was also, like them, subject to fits of weariness during which he slept the day through. But now he was fatigued, and he wrought on. He made the Great Hall his abode, leaving it only to retire late in the evening to his own room, where he would throw himself on the bed, sometimes without undressing, and lie, not knowing how his thoughts went, in a state of semi- consciousness that left him more tired than the day before. His work, however, showed no trace of fatigue. Ivor looked on with grave misgivings, astonished that he would not unburden his heart, [199] seeing the fever on his brow, but powerless to influence him. Rupert, silent for hours, kept his friend in the Great Hall, and seemed disquieted if he went away; which led to Ivor's giving up the chalet and sleeping in his old room at the Court, next to Glanville's. He received, a few days after his arrival, a most gracious letter from Lord Trelingham, who, with his daughter and the Countess Lutenieff, was staying in Paris at the house of a Legitimist noble, M. de Flamas. In his own epistle Ivor had said that Rupert had wanted him immediately, and he had ventured to anticipate the Earl's permission to spend the necessary time at Trelingham. The Earl, in reply, hoped that Mr. Glanville was in his usual health, regretting that he had not heard from him for more than a month. Rupert, in fact, could not have said when he last wrote to Lord Trelingham. He had forgotten the name of Lady May.

And so he continued to paint the Morte d'Arthur, working from his own designs as though they had been another's, not creating but remembering, and with the refrain of his sad thoughts for an accompaniment. One evening as he was coming down the ladder from his high scaffold a fit of giddiness seized him, and but for his friend, who caught him as he slipped, the accident might have proved serious. He walked occasionally on the terrace; but he would never visit any point from which the Hermitage was visible. When the letters came he inspected them [200] eagerly. There was nothing from Colonel Valence Bernstein wrote several times, and Rupert did not answer. At last, when he had been working some ten days with despairing eagerness, he laid his brush down and said to Ivor, 'My brain does not seem right. I think it means fever. Take care of me when it comes, and let no one enter my room.'

Next day he was unable to rise. He slept a little, woke with a throbbing brow, and hardly knew who it was that sat by his bedside. Ivor sent for the physician that had attended Tom Davenant. When he came the patient was wandering in his mind, talking much but unintelligibly in a low tone, and stretching out his hands every moment for water. The attack, which had been delayed by Rupert's energy for so many days, now came in full force. His reason, his life were in danger. There could be no thought of moving him. Ivor telegraphed to Lord Trelingham, and the same evening received an answer from Lady May announcing that they were coming home, and recommending the utmost care of Rupert. Though it was an abrupt termination to a visit that the Earl had long resolved to pay and was now enjoying, the good man, who liked Glanville exceedingly, at once complied with his daughter's suggestion; and they crossed the Channel twenty-four hours after the telegram had acquainted them with Rupert's situation. The Countess, not so much interested as inquisitive, and just then at a loss what to do, accompanied them.

I shall say little of Lady May's feelings. They are easy to imagine; they would take long to describe. How had she lived since her father's illness had compelled her to quit Trelingham and Rupert Glanville? As we all do when despair of some pleasant prospect has fallen upon us,—from day to day, without hope, letting the hours creep on, and finding existence like sand in the mouth. Rupert had never so much as addressed a line to her, though occasions were not wanting. He had sent the usual unmeaning messages through Lord Trelingham; but, writing at length on subjects connected with painting, and diverging now and then to social topics, he did not wear his heart upon his sleeve. To guess at his inner life was impossible. He seemed happy; the tone in which he indited these pleasant nothings was a sign of it. Had the Earl's health been less uncertain, less dependent on clear skies and medicinal waters, she would have urged him to return home, to take up his residence in town, at any rate, during the season, where they must from time to time have had a visit from Glanville. But she was tired of devising schemes which brought her no nearer the goal. She lived a proud solitary life, making the most of her music as the channel of emotions she must otherwise conceal, and conscious every day that she was walking in a vain shadow. Of such an existence there is nothing to tell, except how long it lasted. For while there were endless changes of feeling, they bore no harvest.

And now Glanville was down with brain fever, how brought on she could not imagine. Who was to nurse him while it lasted? Any misfortune that left him helpless in her hands was welcome. They must hasten back, and keep him at Trelingham. the journey was accomplished slowly, because of the Earl; but it could last only a short time at the outside. Lady May kept down her trouble. Karina, always watching, saw nothing to lay hold of. And soon they were all once more at home.

The meeting between Lady May and Ivor was on both sides full of emotion. But the lady cared only for Rupert,—and his friend, at such a time, could not indulge in the self-torment of unrequited love. The patient's delirium had increased; he recognised no one, and he talked incessantly of the dreadful sights he had looked upon during his night-wanderings in London. Ivor thought himself bound by his injunction to let none pass the threshold of the sick-room, save the doctor and the nurse. He did not desire that Rupert's secret should get abroad; and his former suspicion that Lady May had some thought of marrying the artist, made him doubly unwilling that her presence should trouble him. But he had to deal with a determined woman. She satisfied Lord Trelingham by getting the physician to assure him that there was no risk of infection; she submitted to the jealous surveillance exercised by Mardol over every one that came near his friend; and she insisted on her right as hostess and a good Samaritan to see [203] that all was as it should be about the invalid. She went and came, but Glanville did not look her way. Ivor gave him his medicine, contrived, with the nurse's aid, to pour liquid nourishment down his throat; and never left him day or night.

It was an extraordinary thing that, in all his raving, one name never crossed the patient's lips. It seemed to be erased from the folds of his brain, or to have sunk into the dim recesses whence fever could not pluck it forth. None but Ivor could have told how he came to be ill. He had overworked himself and undergone exposure to cold; he must have been sickening when he left London. That was all Ivor would say. And the name of Hippolyta was never pronounced. Rupert, living over again the scenes which had followed her disappearance, recurred continually to the vision of the gray-haired woman whose form he had beheld in the dead-house—wherever it was, for he did not know. And by and by another took its place. All day long he murmured the name of Annie Dauris; he described the wild look in her eyes with which she had started up in her bed at the hospital on seeing him. When the Jew acquainted him with her death he had made no remark; his own trouble absorbed his fancy. But now he did not speak of Hippolyta. The unknown girl of seventeen, with her fair hair and pallid eyes, seemed to be staring at him terrifying him with the thoughts of muddy death, recounting the horrors of the wicked river flowing to the sea. A stranger would have [204] guessed some story from his words, and guessed all wrong. But Ivor took care that Lady May should not overhear them.

For weeks Rupert hung between life and death. His friend, on some pretext or other, twice drove to Toxenden,—the only occasions on which he quitted his bedside,—and walking by roundabout ways arrived at Falside. There was no news of Hippolyta. Colonel Valence had gone abroad. Ivor was thankful to have missed him.

·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·

Such an one lives, says the Greek poet, that would be glad to die; and Rupert Glanville's story was not ended. Could he have chosen he would never have come back to a sense of misery. But neither of his life nor his death was he master. When the fever had brought him to the brink of the grave it left him. He awoke to a dull feeling of pain; he looked round, saw Ivor, and called him. The loving fellow wept tears of gratitude. Rupert stretched a white hand out of the bedclothes and asked, as men do on recovering from a swoon, 'How long have I been here?' He was told to keep still and to refrain from talking. He slept once more. Next day when he woke there was no pain, but extreme weakness, and in that state he lay for a long time. Lady May came frequently, as often as she dared. He showed no sign of displeasure; he hardly noticed. Later on, when he was convalescent, he saw that she looked worn and thin. 'Have you [205] had a fever too?' he asked, with the naïve manner which comes back at that stage, a reminiscence of childhood. She smiled rather sadly, and answered that it was gone. Lord Trelingham's presence gave him evident pleasure; but he did not talk much. He would fix his eyes on Lady May as long as she stayed in the room; and when she disappeared, he gazed after her. He did not ask who she was, but Ivor sometimes thought his memory must be affected; for he seemed not to recall her name, and when he spoke, it was either of their schooldays or of the unfinished frescoes which he was anxious to go on with. Had he forgotten Hippolyta? His friend, dreading a relapse, did not venture to come near the subject. But one day, before he could prevent himself, the name slipped out. Rupert gave no sign. His countenance did not change. He answered the question that had been put to him, but it was about the Hermitage, and he passed over the once-loved name as though it had been some foreign term, or he had not heard it.

During his long illness Ivor, who opened all the letters that came, read several from Mr. Bernstein, the last of which declared that he looked on Mrs. Malcolm's recovery as impossible, and declined to prosecute the search any longer. He enclosed a formidable account. Ivor went to Lord Trelingham, borrowed the money (for Rupert was still delirious), and sent it by return of post to Mr. Bernstein. Now he did not know what to do with the receipt. [206] Money of his own would be shortly due, enough to repay Lord Trelingham, though leaving himself poor enough for the next twelve months. But if Rupert had forgotten, why recall this frightful business? He thrust the Jew's epistles into the fire; he locked away the receipt among his own papers; and the artist, who put no questions, did not hear from the private inquiry office again.

It was midsummer, and one of the pleasantest days of the year, when Rupert came down, recovered in health, but somewhat changed, it would appear, in disposition. He was no longer melancholy or fantastic, neither was there the same brightness about him. He seemed grateful to every one for a kind word. He sat and walked a great deal with Ivor in the course of the next few days; then he would stay longer in the drawing-room, and Lady May observed, with the most exquisite delight, that he seemed to depend on her for his comfort, and asked her often to improvise on the piano, while he sat and listened. The Countess had gone away at an early stage of his illness; she could not endure invalids. She said the thought of one in the house made her unwell. Tom Davenant, when he knew that Ivor was back again at Trelingham, wrote to him often, and in the most affectionate terms; but he was still smarting under his disappointment, and paid them no visit. So that Rupert and Lady May were almost as much alone as when they spent their mornings in the picture-gallery.

Ivor, looking on with kinder and sadder eyes than [207] the Countess had done,—now nearly two years ago,— considered how these things might end. He spoke to Rupert casually of Falside. There was no tremor in return. He went so far, in his experiment, as to remark that Colonel Valence must be from home, and the artist replied, 'He went after meeting me in the churchyard.' Could it be possible that the episode of his affection for Hippolyta, with all its incidents, was blotted from his memory? Full of the idea, and ready to encourage it in Rupert's interest, Ivor did a bold thing. When Mr. Bernstein wrote to resign his commission, he added that Mrs. Malcolm's portrait had been returned to Mr. Glanville's house in Belgravia. Not long after, an epistle from his solicitor, which Ivor opened, apprised him of the place where Rupert and Hippolyta had lived during their brief union. The man of business required instructions as to Forrest House. Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm, it appeared, had left suddenly; the servants' wages were unpaid, and but for Mrs. Leeming, who had, been sent there originally by the solicitor, the red brick mansion must have been for several months at the mercy of any one that chose to come in. Ivor, in reply, informed the solicitor of Rupert's dangerous condition, sent money to pay the servants, and recommended that the house should be let as soon as possible. This was done, and there remained only the question of Hippolyta's portrait. Ivor now took the opportunity, while Lady May and the artist were so much together, of running up to London; [208] called in at Clarence Gardens, opened the parcels he found there, and carried away the dangerous picture to Grafton Place. He consulted a distinguished physician, and after giving him the history of Glanville's brain fever, the events which had led to it, and the apparent loss of memory which it had caused, asked him what advice he could offer. Among other things he inquired, 'Would it be well for Rupert to marry?'

'Yes,' answered the physician, 'but not to live in the neighbourhood of his disaster. Let him marry and go abroad, practise his profession, and be kept from everything which would remind him of the lost Hippolyta.

From that moment Ivor resolved that the marriage should take place, cost what it might to himself or to any one else. He felt a choking sensation in his throat; it was surrendering his dearest illusions. But let them go, he said, provided Rupert were safe.

On his return he found matters unchanged, the lady devoted to the gentleman, and the gentleman strangely dependent on the lady. He took Rupert aside one bright afternoon, as they were walking on the terrace, when the air was full of sweetness, the moor glorious under floating clouds, the sea flashing upon the horizon. There was a party of lawn-tennis at Trelingham, and the laughing voices of young people and the sound of their playing came up where the friends paused. 'Rupert,' said Ivor, 'why don't you marry Lady May?' He waited [209] with intense anxiety for the answer, but it was not long. 'I never thought of it,' replied his friend, in a calm voice; 'do you fancy she would accept me?' —'Go and ask her,' said the chivalrous young man; 'she is walking at the other end of the terrace.' Glanville raised his eyes. She was alone, pacing up and down thoughtfully. He quitted Ivor, went slowly along, looking neither to the right nor to the left, until he approached within a yard of her. She stopped and turned. 'Lady May,' he said, holding his hat in his hand, 'Ivor thinks you would marry me, if I asked you. Is it true?' Her heart gave a great leap. She put out her hand. 'Why did you not ask me before?' she said. And they walked back along the terrace together. Ivor was watching them and saw what had passed. 'God bless them,' he murmured in a half-groan as he turned away. But they were by his side. 'It is true, Ivor,' said his friend, with a subdued tenderness that had something marvellously strange in it to one who knew his fiery temperament. 'Lady May says she will marry me. Will you come to our wedding?' The promise was given. Rupert continuing said, 'I must have done with the frescoes, however. And, Lady May,'—she trembled as he addressed her,—'when we are married we will leave Trelingham. The air is not good for me.' She was surprised; but Ivor thought,'What good genius inspired him to say that at once?' It was a formal stipulation, so to speak. The lady cared nothing for Trelingham if Rupert were [210] away; and with him she would have roamed the world.

Her father was visible in the library. She proposed that they should go to him without delay. The artist, apparently having no will but hers, consented; and as he looked up from his desk the Earl, to his astonishment, beheld his daughter leading Rupert towards him. It was bewildering, but Lady May laughed as she told him. 'Karina knew my secret long ago,' she said; 'this gentleman has kept his till to-day.' Rupert, with a look of great clearness in eyes and countenance, interposed, 'I meant to ask you when I finished the Madonna of the Seraphim; but I went away.' 'Ah, yes,' she answered, smiling a rebuke at him, 'you went away. But you never shall again.' Lord Trelingham was still confused. 'Are you sure that you can make Mr. Glanville happy?' he said to his daughter; 'in a marriage like this so much depends on the wife.'—'I am sure that I love him,' she answered, and Rupert thanked her with his eyes. 'Very well,' said the Earl, 'you are your own mistress, my dear. You know I never wished you to marry your cousin, even when I thought you liked him.'—'Oh,' she said laughingly, 'because of the horoscope. But are you quite certain it was Tom's and not mine? Mistakes will happen, I suppose, even in astrology. But we believe in happy stars, don't we, Rupert?' It was the first time she had called him by his name, and her eyes sparkled. 'What was that about Tom [211] Davenant's horoscope? he inquired, as they left the library. 'It is all nonsense,' she said; 'something about his being drowned. I will tell you another time, not now; the day is too beautiful for sad things.' They heard the tennis-players coming from their game, laughing merrily.

'What a light there is on the waters!' murmured Rupert, as they stood once more on the terrace, with the sea in front of them. May put her hand in his, and they continued gazing in silence, side by side.

CHAPTER XXXIV HYMEN, O HYMENÆE!

The announcement which Madame de Lutenieff had mockingly foretold—of a marriage between the well-known artist and the daughter of a great peer —was delayed until Rupert had fulfilled his task and the frescoes were complete. They made a magnificent show, but he entreated that their formal exhibition to the world might not take place until Lady May and himself had quitted Trelingham. He could not bear to be congratulated. He knew that the work was equal to anything achieved in England of late years; and he thought it would speak for itself to those who had eyes in their heads. It was part of his strangeness that he never referred to the memorable evening of the ball at which, for the first and last time, he had danced with Hippolyta. Some allusion was necessarily made to the tableaux vivants , but from him it drew no response. Had he forgotten, or was he acting a part? Ivor, staying by express [213] invitation from the Earl, who perceived that Glanville derived much benefit from his company, was convinced that the fever had passed a sponge not only over Hippolyta's name, but over the scenes wherein she had appeared. He dreaded accidental references to her, and sought occasion one day to whisper in the ear of the Earl's daughter that if she desired Rupert's continuance in the health he was enjoying, she must be careful not to mention Falside, or any one connected with it. In surprise she asked the reason. He thought it best to reply, with seeming frankness, that Glanville's attack of fever was due to an accident he had sustained near the cottage; that during his delirium the least allusion to place or people made him much worse; and that she might notice for herself how completely he kept silence about them since he had recovered. Lady May thanked him. She remembered now that the name of Colonel Valence or his daughter had not been heard from Rupert's lips during the past months. Ivor begged her to warn Lord Trelingham. She did so, and the tacit consent was renewed which for years had banished the name of Valence from conversation at the Court.

There was considerable stir in the great world when their engagement became known. It had then existed nearly six months, and the marriage was to take place before Lent. This was a stipulation of Lord Trelingham's, to which his daughter willingly acceded, as likewise to the arrangement whereby all [214] the glory of it was to overshadow his favourite church, St. Ethelfleda's, in Duke's Lane. The ecclesiastical ceremonies would be elaborate, and some of them, it was thought, illegal; but on these points the Earl admitted of no compromise. Rupert assented languidly. He could have wished to be married on the Continent; but if that might not be, anywhere was better than Trelingham. The settlements involved less delay than usual. Lady May's interest in the Earl's entailed property was slight; and her personal fortune, though smaller than it would have been in more skilful hands than her father's, was perfectly safe, and included neither land nor houses. Rupert was, if anything, the wealthier of the two. His solicitor drew up a lucid inventory of his goods and belongings; among them was Forrest House, now let at a handsome figure to a tenant who held it on a seven years' lease. Lady May observed the name; she was acquainted with the neighbourhood, and asked Rupert what sort of place Forrest House might be. He answered in very few words, telling her it had belonged to his grand-aunt, and he had not seen it since spending his holidays there when a boy. 'It must be worth a visit,' she said. 'No,' he replied absently. The conversation drifted to something else.

It was a brilliant wedding, and St. Ethelfleda's was thronged. Ivor, invited to act as Rupert's best man, declined, alleging that he should feel absurdly out of place; and he contented himself with being [215] a spectator. There was no lack of 'best men' among the artist's acquaintance, including that particular one of his confrères who had first given Lady May an account of him. The bridesmaids were, what they are always said to be on such occasions, charming; the ceremonies as elaborate as they could be made, the crowd of carriages great, the wedding-march thrilling, the wedding-breakfast artistically splendid. Rupert, as more than one of his friends observed, was grave and still. 'He is subdued before marriage,' said a cynic; 'well, as lief sune as syne; all men are subdued after it.' In returning thanks for the way they had drunk Lady May Glanville's health— she blushed at the new name—he was felicitous, as they expected, but not so bright as many had known him to be. The ceremony was over, the scene vanished. Lady May and her husband, accompanied by the Earl, whom they insisted on taking with them, went by easy stages to Florence, and travelled during the next half-year up and down Italy. Tom Davenant, before their engagement was published, had found a shooting companion and was now in the Rocky Mountains. The Earl wrote to him at San Francisco, where he was in course of time to spend a few weeks. And Ivor Mardol returned to his engravings in Grafton Place. He had broken with his society; he was watched, suspected, but otherwise let alone.

·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·

In the old stories a year and a day was the fated [216] period when happiness or misfortune came to an end. Will happiness last so long? Lady May would have returned to that inquiry a triumphant answer in the affirmative on the morning that she and her husband bade farewell to Florence, after a sojourn which had continued, with pleasant interruptions, some eighteen months. With her it was still the honeymoon. There had been flecks of cloud in her untroubled sky, but they did not linger; they melted quickly into the blue, leaving her the most contented wife in Christendom. Her father's delicate health was a trial, which he lightened for the married pair by a cheerful countenance and a resignation corresponding to his inward hopes. Tom Davenant, won by the Earl's solicitations,—he could not bear to see the young man wandering over the face of the earth,—had come back from America, and was now on his way to meet them at Nice. They proposed to spend a few weeks there and in the neighbourhood, exploring, as the season grew milder, those dead cities along the coast which neither Rupert nor Lady May had seen. Afterwards they would extend their travels, according as the Earl could bear it, into Spain, as far as Valencia. They did not know exactly how their course would lie. The charm of travelling, said Glanville, is to have no plans; there is nothing like the unforeseen. Perhaps Cousin Tom would accompany them.

The inspired artist had been quiescent in our friend since his wedding-day. He studied pictures, [217] and sharpened his powers of criticism; but he painted very seldom, sketching a scene or a head that took his fancy, working for two or three hours, and then throwing down his pencil with an air of fatigue. This was one of the flecks of cloud that rose in the heaven of his wife's content. He would be absorbed, too, in his thoughts, and not speak for a whole morning; sometimes his sleep was broken, he had bad dreams, and could not always remember where they had been staying a few days earlier. But his love was not to be doubted. Though he never went into the raptures which his eager disposition should have demanded, he was grateful and protecting, full of quiet tenderness, and never separated from her during the twenty-four hours. They did not go much into society or receive many friends; but apart from Lady May, Rupert had no amusement. Once at the reception of a Roman princess, to which Rupert had taken her chiefly to see the marbles, which were famous, they found themselves, in the crowded rooms, face to face with the Duke of Adullam. He had known Lady May in his time of innocence, and he at once accosted Glanville. The artist gave him an inquiring look, and said with embarrassment, 'Pardon me, sir. I seem to recollect your face, but I cannot tell where it was we met.' The Duke, who, as I have remarked, was admirably quick in divining other men's thoughts, supposed that Rupert was feigning. He smiled, and murmured under his breath,'This is needless;' then raising his voice, said [218] pleasantly, 'We shall meet again,' and passed on. 'Who is it?' inquired the artist of Lady May. 'The Duke of Adullam,' she answered, wondering in her own mind where they could have known one another. 'I must have met him somewhere in society,' said her husband. It was the only time they met abroad.

May Glanville was jealous of her husband's fame, and, while they were at Nice expecting Tom Davenant, she began to urge him, somewhat vehemently, to resume his painting. He replied,'I have no inspiration. The spirit has gone out of me. I could not design a fresh drawing to save my life.'—'Why not finish what you have commenced?' she said; 'there are portfolios of drawings in our room. Shall I send for them?' He was willing, but not interested. The drawings were brought down, and Lady May began to turn them over. 'This seems nearly perfect,' she said, holding the largest of them out to him. He took it in silence. It was a water-colour. 'When did I paint that?' he muttered to himself. 'May, is not this the cascade at Falside?' He seemed to be searching in his memory. 'No one could mistake it,' she answered; 'don't you remember going over several times from Trelingham to sketch there?'— 'No,' he said, shaking his head; 'I often think I must have forgotten what I did that year; it is all so dim.' His wife, mindful of Ivor's warning, and terrified at the change in his expression, took the sketch and hid it away. He would not paint that morning, and they went down to the sea. After [219] dinner he asked to look at the drawing again, but it could not be found. His mind seemed busy with it while he slept, and he awoke several times in the night with sobs choking him. Lady May was in consternation. She never urged him to paint again.

Tom Davenant's arrival gave them pleasanter occupation. He was still the wild huntsman, nor had he lost that boyish innocence which made his talk, though neither witty nor profound, so engaging. A life of adventure could not take away the ruddy and white of his countenance; the feminine beauty and the open beaming eyes had in nothing altered. But his bearing was more manly; he dwelt a little on the social aspect of landed property, and said he should take Ivor Mardol's advice what to do about his tenants when he got back to Foxholme. He was reserved and courteous with Lady May, spent most of his time with the Earl, and seemed struck with the alteration in Glanville, whom he had never set eyes on since the coming of age. 'Brain fever must be a peculiar thing,' he remarked; 'I should not have known Glanville.'

He readily consented to accompany them on their tour. You could get riding and shooting in Spain of an uncommonly good sort; and the fishing, a man told him in America, was superb, if you knew where to look for it. They must be careful of the season, that was all. And he helped Glanville to draw out what they called a fever time-table, showing when the air was deadly to foreigners in the various provinces. [220] Lord Trelingham, though not a rapid, was a good traveller. Rupert did not care how long the journeys took. His sole desire was not to return to England. He would have liked Ivor to join them; but Ivor was now working hard to keep himself alive and had sold his genius to a newspaper. He did not meddle with Socialism, nor had he entered a lodge since the fatal night in Denzil Lane

They were still at Nice, when Rupert one afternoon, being too fatigued to go out on the beach, stayed in to write a letter or two, and was resting by the open window. It was a lovely winter's day, the sea tranquil, and the lights subdued and pensive, while the air came in warm gusts through the casement, which was completely framed in leaves. Glanville felt very weak; his mind, too, was distracted, he could not tell why. The letter he was writing would not get itself finished. He let his pen drop, took up a paper-knife, and began to make imaginary drawings on the desk. While he was playing idly with it, and the confused memories of the last three years were passing through his brain, a thought struck him, and he looked attentively at the desk, almost as though it were a living thing which could tell him what he wanted. 'Why do I carry this always with me? he asked himself; 'I know there must be a reason. Did it belong to any one?' He could not recollect. But he turned it to and fro, opened the compartments, unlocked some secret drawers, and poured out their contents on the [221] table. They made a miscellaneous heap. 'Looking for letters,' he said musingly; 'who was it that turned over a great pile of correspondence, looking for letters? I was standing by. And there was only a candle burning. At night it was, surely. I wish I could remember.' He passed his hand through the papers; it struck against a bundle of them, which he drew out—a small packet tied carefully with riband. He undid it, and a number of letters fell on the table. At the sight of that handwriting, which he did not know, which he could not assign to the writer, a fit of trembling came over him. He sat down, and for some time would not look again. Then with an effort he turned to the signature. There was none, all the letters were unsigned. But there was a heading to each of them, and it breathed the tenderest affection; and as he passed from one to the other, astonished, overcome, pierced through and through, the flood-gates of memory burst open. Tears gushed from his eyes; he laid his head, weeping, on the desk, and murmured in agony, 'Hippolyta.'

Little by little it came back, the sweet, dreadful, forgotten past. Holding her letters in his hand, putting them to his bosom like the anodyne that would still his beating heart, reading them in snatches and breaking off blinded with tears, he spent the next hour and the next piecing together his shattered life and endeavouring to make out his own story. Hippolyta was lost and he was married to Lady May. That was the sum. Fate had been too strong for [222] them. Three years—he could not reckon, even now, whether it was three years or how long it was —since the only woman he loved had forsaken him, and he was the husband of another! A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He felt like a dying man. 'What if the fever should return, and I forget again!' he said, shuddering from head to foot. How strange to have forgotten Hippolyta! But she had been more cruel; she remembered and was gone away. Or could she be dead? Her father thought so; it was the last word he had spoken that night at Falside.

The sound of footsteps was heard on the gravel. May and her cousin, who had attended Lord Trelingham in his walk, were coming in. Rupert thrust back the letters into their hiding-place, and brushed past his wife at the door.

'Where are you going, dear?' she said, trying to detain him.

'For a walk,' was his answer; 'I shall not dine. Don't wait for me.' She was utterly astonished. Glanville, taking his hat, ran down the steps and away in the direction of the sea.

'Tom,' said Lady May to her cousin, 'something has happened. Rupert is not well. Follow him, please, and keep him in sight till he comes home again.'

The young man obeyed at once. He did not like the appearance of Rupert's eyes when he passed them. They were wild and dangerous. He moved on [223] quietly, and saw that the artist was taking hasty strides up and down the beach, his head sunk in deep meditation, his arms folded in front of him. To disturb him would have been imprudent; there was nothing for it but to keep out of sight and watch till darkness came on. When night fell Rupert was still pacing over the sands. Then Tom went up to him, and with gentle decision took him by the arm and led him home. Glanville did not resist; he went in and shut himself in his room. Lady May found him lying on the bed asleep. She sat there a long time, afraid to wake him; but when he came to himself again he reprimanded her tenderly for letting him lie, dressed as he was, so many hours. 'Are you better?' she inquired, bending over him.

'As well as I ever shall be,' he replied in a tone of utter sadness. And that was all the explanation he would give of the fatal afternoon.

He left her now frequently and took solitary expeditions on foot, in which he would allow none to join him. Tom Davenant was not fitted to play the spy; he felt that Rupert, though ill and feverish, was capable of resenting surveillance, which indeed, after the first outbreak, he did not seem to need. Lady May consulted the Earl's physician privately. He recommended that as little notice as possible should be taken, but a person set to watch Glanville when he went abroad. it was done, and nothing came of it. The artist merely went by the sea, or sat in a sheltered nook when he had got some distance from [224] home. He appeared to be reading papers occasionally; he met no one and did himself no harm. The surveillance was given up, and Lady May, on her father's advice, urged their journey to Spain. Perhaps change of air was all Rupert required.

He required much more, but she could not have imagined it. During the next months there went on a desperate struggle between his restored memory, bringing him daily anguish, and the weakened reason which the brain fever had left him. To unburden himself of his secret might have been deliverance, but he could not speak, least of all to Lady May He said, 'I do not love her,' when he was away by the sea and Hippolyta's letters, with their naïve and intoxicating tenderness, were spread out before him. But he came home, and the letters were hidden again, and he felt pity for the deluded wife who had been faithful in everything. He knew the romance of the picture which had first made her acquainted with his name. She told him one day at Fiesole; he did not remember Hippolyta then, and he was grateful that this high-hearted Lady May had understood and cared for him. So now he pitied, he almost loved her; but it was not the great warm sunshine of love; it was a dreamy pale reflection, leaving him chill and her dissatisfied. For she could not tell what had come over Rupert. Was there an earlier affection? They came across Madame de Lutenieff in their travels. She was the same as ever, but she remarked a change in them. She had always been a [225] little sceptical of the artist's devotion to her cousin, though never, since the day when she refused Tom Davenant, of Lady May's attachment to him. With her old malicious lightness she sped a random arrow, as they were sitting at the late breakfast in the hotel at Burgos, where they were all staying. 'Have you heard of Miss Valence lately?' she said to Glanville, looking across at him.

He rose hastily, and thundering out, 'Never mention that name in my hearing, you witch,' left the room.

She was mortally offended, and said to Lady May, 'I knew it was not all fancy. Take care they never meet, or you will suffer the consequences.'

May, with equal anger, declared that it was a vile calumny. Rupert had been thrown from his horse near Falside, she went on, and the concussion of the brain which ensued had almost proved fatal; that was why he could not endure the associations of the place. Karina did not believe the story. She declined to pardon Rupert; and though it cost her a pang to leave Tom Davenant, her passion for whom was more absorbing than ever, she bad them good-bye next day.

Not sorry that she was gone, the others continued to travel southwards. They saw the curious old Spanish life that still lingers on the Mediterranean shore. They visited many a gloomy or graceful cathedral. They spent as many days as its depressing climate would allow in the golden air of Valencia, [226] and were fascinated with the limpid skies, exhilarating atmosphere, and gorgeous painted sunsets of Malaga. Thence they returned through some of the wildest and most picturesque country they had ever beheld,— green valleys, steep and rocky paths, and luxuriant vegetation, where the dark-green of the orange groves was mingled with the cane-brake,—by Velez and Alhama to the 'Last Sigh of the Moor,' and entering late, while the sun glittered on the snowy range aheadof them, beheld the enchanted Vega and Granada. It was three days' riding such as Tom Davenant had not enjoyed in his life; for he delighted in landscape, though he never spoke of it. The third day had been allowed for the sake of his cousin and her two invalids. Rupert, still fighting with madness, saw the beautiful things of their pilgrimage as in a dream. But the Sierra Nevada, with its glittering snows, made him lift his eyes to it. 'Oh, that I had wings like a dove,' he murmured in the sweet familiar words, 'and I would fly and be at rest.' They had come through Barcelona, but he had prevailed on them not to explore what sights it possessed. He could not bear anything that reminded him of Hippolyta; the remembrance that she was born in this land of the sun made it melancholy to him. But he would have been sorry to leave it were the moment of departure at hand. Which this of our travellers was self-controlled enough to find due pleasure in the walks by Genil and Darro, in the endless unfolding dream of Alhambra and Alameda, with their thousand [227] reminiscences from a dead and gone time? Not Rupert. The green Vega, the rosy-tinted snows, the silence as of eternal mourning for a past that could never be restored, the pathos, the desolation,—these spoke to his heart, soothing it a little. They went on to Cordova, built by the Moslems in their ages of faith and high fortune, when their sword carved out empire and their chisel smoothed the marble blocks into symmetry, making of them sanctuaries wherein stood the golden-fretted inscription, 'There is no conqueror but Allah.' The artist-soul began to stir in Glanville. He felt a desire to sketch these Oriental-looking houses, to visit the great mosque under changing lights, to steal its colour from the Sierra for his canvas. But a very slight excursion with Tom Davenant in the vicinity—Tom pursuing the sport which abounds here, and Rupert loitering to fill his sketch-book—convinced him that he must lay aside the pencil again and fight his ghostly enemy with other weapons. He was too weak to paint.

The spring was not much advanced when they came to Seville, which they proposed to make their resting-place till the first heats should compel them to go on. The bright city, beloved of Moor and Christian, pleased them more than all they had seen. Situate in the midst of a watered garden, sheltered to north and south by a double parapet of hills, lit up with a clear sun which makes the air transparent like glass and brings out all delicate and fervent colour, with a gay and smiling population moving [228] in the shade of the narrow, winding streets, or basking in the warm sunshine, it might well have seemed a Paradise for the convalescent spirit, that could be cheered and strengthened only by surrendering itself to gentle influences. The nights were fresh; the air exhilarated like wine. For Rupert, the physician said, if he would not expose himself to the levante—the wind from the African deserts —there was no climate more suited. His prostration of spirits would cease; work would again be possible. Lady May devoutly hoped they should witness a change in him for the better ere they set out travelling again. The pictures, the glories of Murillo, the Herreras, and Zurbaran that made Seville a treasury, ought to rouse his enthusiasm, his emulation. Surely he would not renounce his splendid calling? And she quoted many of his sayings in the gallery at Trelingham,—how art itself, pursued in a spirit of truth, demanded and drew forth a heroism equal to the highest. He listened, he assented, but he was cold.

Yet there came refreshment to his weary spirit, though the star of hope had set never to rise again. He was glad to have lapsed, as it were, out of the busy modern life into a realm where all that was living belonged to the past, like a vision made palpable to the sense, but remaining a vision still. The memories of those London nights did not vex him so keenly. He strolled about alone, crossed the river frequently to explore Triana, the gipsy suburb, [229] and distract himself with the strange costumes, dilapidated, picturesque lanes, and odd-looking bits of colour which seemed quainter and more out of the world the more he studied them. His health improved. But with returning strength came a feeling of estrangement from Lady May that, conceal it as he might, would make its presence known by imperceptible channels. She was alarmed, indignant, at her wits' end. Could Rupert, so long after their marriage, be going back to the days when he cared nothing for her, when she dared not meet his eye? The thought was not to be endured. They had never indulged in lovers' quarrels; but they were sometimes near quarrelling now, and the atmosphere was charged with thunder. May Glanville was jealous. Of whom or what? Of a dead love, a memory, a regret? Suppose, after all, he had once cared for Hippolyta Valence, what did it signify? All men had such things in their lives. Was he not a devoted husband? 'Not as in those first happy months,' she answered with a sigh.

Tom Davenant was sorry that they had not stayed at Cordova, the country round which, with its pine forests and wild-wooded hollows, he preferred to the environs of Seville. But coming in after a long day's rambling, he upbraided his friends at dinner for not having paid a visit which, he supposed, they would have undertaken at the earliest opportunity. 'In what direction?' Lady May inquired. 'Wasn't that picture in the gallery at Trelingham brought [230] from a place, a convent or church, in these parts?' he asked in turn. 'From the convent of San Lucar,' replied his cousin, 'and the nearest town was Sepúlveda,'—'Quite so,' said Tom; 'I heard you mention the name often enough; and I fixed it in my mind by calling it Sepulchre, which it sounds like.'— 'It is the name of a poet,' interposed Rupert, 'a native of Cordova, I think, whose ballads are sometimes pretty.'—'Well, I got within sight of it to-day,' said Tom, 'and I thought it looked as gloomy as any place I ever saw. But the country all about is fine. Why don't you make an expedition to the convent? You could get there by driving in three days at the outside.'

'It would be an agreeable diversion,' said the Earl. 'Do you suppose we could put up at Sepúlveda?'

'I will tell you the best way,' answered Tom. 'I came round on Sepúlveda—what a name!—by cross-roads, and I saw the convent, standing out very clear on one side of the valley, and a large white house, which I took to be a sort of paseo , if it was not an inn, on the other. Let us look in the guide-book. An inn at that spot would be exactly what you want. You could sleep the night there, go over your convent next morning, and come back when you pleased.'

The guide-book when produced gave little information. There was an inn where Tom Davenant had seen one, not of the very best, but fairly good. In Sepúlveda there was none to be recommended. Of [231] the convent only this brief notice was given, that it once held the shrine of a local saint, and had shared in the general suppression. After considerable debate it was resolved that they should set out in two days, and Tom should precede them to make all ready.

At this point in my story I may as well remark that not long before the Duke of Adullam had despatched a peremptory message to Ivor Mardol, who was working as usual in his own home in Grafton Place. The laconic epistle forbade delay; a carriage was waiting which conveyed Ivor to the Duke's residence, and in a few minutes they were seated with closed doors in his library. The conference lasted some time. When Ivor came out again his face had the strangest expression, and bore traces of violent weeping. He returned home in the carriage that brought him, sent word to his newspaper that they must find some one to take his place and consider his engagement at an end, put some few things together in the greatest agitation, and started for Paris by the night mail. This observed we may return to our friends at Seville.

They set forth in brilliant weather; and difficult as are Spanish roads, and ill-tempered as were the Spanish beasts that carried them sullenly along, it was not possible to resist the sweet influence of air and sun, the genial morning, and the prospects, which grew lovelier as they advanced. Rupert, mindful of the purpose they were fulfilling, and the associations [232] which must be vividly present to Lady May and her father, exerted himself to bear a worthy part, and by assiduous and delicate attentions all but effaced from his own mind the feeling of estrangement which had ruled there during the past weeks. It was natural to touch on the Madonna of the Seraphim and its wonderful history; but they diverged thence to speak of a thousand things which were but distantly connected with Madonnas or with painting. The charm of Glanville's conversation, long suppressed by illness, and his anxious inward conflicts, seemed greater than ever. Lord Trelingham listened in a pleasant mood, and his daughter's eyes sparkled with delight. She did not venture to express her feelings, lest Rupert, become self-conscious, should fall back into his tone of reserve; but he saw that she was happy and it took away the sting of remorse. He knew his conduct for some time had been unjustifiable; he could not excuse or explain it. However, he would strive against the tempter. During these days he would not think of Hippolyta. While saying so to himself he let fall the conversation; he was thinking of her already, and the lovely face came to trouble and perplex him. Still, he made the effort; he found subjects which would lead them away from the Hermitage and Falside. If at eventide he seemed worn out Lady May did not suspect the reason.

Their journey during these two days took them by many a desert place and wild, where not a tree grew [233] nor a house was to be seen, and only the lentisk and the coarsest grass would flourish. Irrigation failing, much of the garden of Andalusia has become a wilderness; the country people have retired in the train of effeminate dukes and marquises to the towns; and often when the gates are passed the traveller might fancy himself in the wastes of Africa. But overhead was the steadfast blue sky, and on the edge of the landscape rose that semicircle of lofty heights which Colonel Valence had long ago in his letter compared to the drop-scene of a theatre. The snow lay on them in great sparkling fields, which sometimes had the softness of clouds, and changed colour as the sun passed over them. Rupert spoke little this second day, but he did not seem ill at ease.

A wearisome drag up the side of the wind-swept, long-drawn ascent brought them at close of day to Sepúlveda, which, huddling on the brow and straggling over the sides of its mountain, appeared dark and grim as they drove through its unpaved streets and solitary Plaza. 'I am glad we are not staying here,' said Lady May. They came out on the other side as the bells of San Lucar were ringing the Angelus. For a while they paused. The narrow valley with the country beyond lay at their feet, the glory of sunset streaming over it. To their left, at no great distance, rose the gray-white walls of the convent, its imposing church seeming to stand in front of the other buildings, as though to protect and sanctify them. The windows glittered, and below them, but [234] not far down, the waters of the Guadalete, broadened to a lake, shone like a blazing mirror beneath the rays of the sun, which was now on the verge of the mountains, a fiery, golden ball. The white roads ran by the convent, through garden after garden, vineyard after vineyard; and near and far the cornfields grew lusty and green, while feathered palm-trees rising close to San Lucar gave an Oriental charm to the landscape, and reminded our pilgrims that they had come to an Arabian land. There was something Moorish and fairylike over it all. They considered the way they were going. On the right Lady May pointed out to her father, whose eyes were weak, the track which led to their inn—a large white-washed building, with the air of a deserted barracks, standing high over against the convent. For on that side the ravine was steep and much more elevated than San Lucar, serving to screen the house from the north-east wind. Small white cottages, or rather huts, were visible, looking like tiny sailing-boats, among the vineyards; and on the river side a fisherman here and there was drying his nets. Otherwise not a human being was anywhere in sight. The stillness, the absence of breathing life, added a mournful charm. 'The landscape has fallen asleep,' said Rupert.

Very slowly, for their beasts were tired, they made the circuit of the road, now up, now down, until they arrived at La Fonda d'Oro. Tom Davenant met them on the way. He had made everything [235] as comfortable as might be. The host, a travelled and well-educated Andalusian, full of kindness and courtesy, received them with much warmth, addressing them in a few words of very broken English to show that he knew their national habits. He was a Liberal, had lived some months an exile in London, and would probably join in the next pronunciamento on behalf of the Republic. But happily he could not talk politics with Lord Trelingham, whose mastery over foreign languages had never been great. The rooms were large and cool, with little furniture and unpapered walls, but the most extensive views over the valley and beyond. There were no other guests. Tom Davenant had caught some trout in the river below, their wine they had brought from Seville, and when dinner was served in the immense dining-room, whose windows seemed to join the sheet of silver water outside, they were feeling more intimate and at home with one another than had been their fortune since Rupert's memory was restored to him.

They resolved on spending the morrow in going over church and convent. The host, in reply to their inquiries, said they had better cross in the boat. It was shorter than going back to the bridge near Sepúlveda. But there was nothing to see, in his opinion. The church had lost its treasures; the convent, he added between his teeth, had been given by the clericals who now ruled Spain to some fresh order of nuns, he could not say whether black, white, or gray,—they were nuns, that was enough,—who [236] had got it through the Queen's confessor three or four years ago. They were not the old set, he knew, but they were nuns.

Lady May, who followed his Spanish more easily than the others, interpreted to her husband, hoping it would amuse him. The Earl retired, and Tom Davenant went to make friends with the ostlers, including the zagal or boy who had run with the horses from Seville, and to smoke endless puros in true Spanish fashion, to the increase of their good fellowship—for he gave away as many as he smoked.

Rupert and his wife, when they went upstairs, were drawn to the window by the splendid moonlight which flooded the valley. They stood a long while looking out, in silence. The palms rose dark against the sky; vineyards and cornfields had put off their bright green. The lake was a sheet of silver, on which the reeds, trembling as the wind took them, cast wavering shadows. San Lucar, with its many roofs and massive sanctuary, was wrapt in slumber, and the moonbeams glorified it like a pavilion whose curtains were drawn, and its inhabitants spellbound, as in the thousand and one nights of Scheherezade. The stillness was deeper, if possible, than in the day. Leaning her head on Rupert's shoulder, the lady said at last, 'This makes you happy, does it not, my artist?'—'Happy?' he replied. 'Ah yes, but not for to-morrow. Life's a dream.'

CHAPTER XXXV THE CRY FROM OFF THE WATERS

The Andalusian air is pleasant in the early morning, and our travellers were stirring betimes. It was their intention to cross the lake immediately after breakfast, but a slight incident had almost put off their expedition. Lord Trelingham, fatigued with his three days' journey in a rough vehicle, and perhaps feeling the languor which in warm climates assails those who come to the hills from the city, was unequal to the many hours' exploration which might be in store for visitors to the convent. He required a day's rest. To go without him seemed uninviting, for his interest in the sanctuary and his antiquarian knowledge would have lit up the past they were to study, and a true picture of which they desired to take with them from San Lucar. But he would not have them delay on his account. Tom Davenant would bear him company; Rupert and Lady May promised to return for luncheon when they had visited the church, leaving the [238] convent for a later inspection; and thus it was arranged. The Earl saw his daughter and son-in-law embark; they declined the services of a boatman, Lady May steering and Glanville taking the oars. They carried a sail, which they thought of unfurling on the homeward voyage. A more lovely morning, clear, bright, and breezy, could not have been wished. The waters flashed from the blade and fell away in diamond streamers as they moved along; the reeds shivered delicately and half-bent into the wavelets which the boat was making; in a neighbouring cover the music of sweet-throated song-birds was audible, and nearer and nearer came the gray old convent, tranquil as in the moonlight, sacred, melancholy, peaceful. 'I will sketch this by and by,' said Rupert.

They touched the gravel, landed, and made their boat fast. Not a soul met them as they went up 'the way of the partridges,' as the Spaniards call a track that can hardly be seen and is wide enough only for a bird's foot. It led through low brushwood, not far, and they found themselves on the broad, dusty terrace which they had observed the evening before, from Sepúlveda, running like a white thread round the convent. Turning to the left and going forward a few steps they reached the wooden gates which had been erected instead of those battered down, forty years ago, by the wild gipsy and his companions that day they sacked the cloister. No fear of violence seemed to be felt now within those walls. The gates were open, so too were the doors of the church. They passed [239] in and could hardly see at first, the roof was so low and the gloom so intense.

It was an exceedingly ancient edifice, which had been first Gothic, then Moorish, and then Christian again in the course of its thousand years. Built, as it now stood, chiefly under Moslem influence, it was a confused but not unpicturesque combination of the mosque and the basilica, ending in a chancel of the Early Pointed style whose lancet windows almost touched one another. Thus, on entering, it appeared a forest of low pillars where darkness dwelt, with a large and pure radiance in the sanctuary. There were many side-chapels, now bare of gates and altars, with narrow round-headed windows, hardly admitting the light of day. A lamp, burning feebly, denoted where the shrine of San Lucar once had existed; but its marbles, precious offerings, and pictures encrusted with gold, were no more to be seen. There was a priest saying mass at the tawdry altar, with only the boy kneeling behind him for a congregation. The nave was vast and desolate. Fragments of gilded work remained where the hands of the despoilers could not reach them; and the curious motley architecture, stained with the dust of ages, with the smoke of tapers borne in procession, and the burning of a hundred lamps day and night, resembled in its intricacy and mellowness the work of Nature rather than of man. It was all matted together, so to speak; one style ran into the next, and a sudden turn revealed the old embedded in the new like a fossil. The grandeur, the [240] solemn abandonment, the petrified life, had a vast and penetrating effect which could neither be defined nor resisted. Man had erected this magnificent pile, yet it spoke not so much of man or his works as of the unknown influence that subdues and takes possession of them while the ages flow on. The artist's pride was brought down, his glory annihilated, and another spirit seemed to be brooding over the creation which had once been his. Time, the irresistible; Change, the magician; and the world's judgment as men hasten upon other paths,—these had emptied the holy place, and made it a desolation, while lifting it up into the serene air of eternity.

They spent a long hour in going from chapel to chapel, not always seeing what was before them, nor talking of it, but exchanging, as seldom hitherto, their thoughts on the manifold ideals which have gleamed as out of a cloud upon humankind, and, shedding momentary light, have vanished again. At intervals they heard the sound of a bell, denoting that mass was going on at the various altars; they made way more than once for a priest who moved by them across the nave, in vestment and alb, carrying the chalice. They could hear faintly when a great door was opened or shut in the convent itself; and by degrees they came through the forest of pillars to the Trascoro, with its railing of wood instead of the bronze gates that had been torn away, and its white walls on which neither painting nor ornament was visible. No Madonna of the Seraphim hung [241] above the high altar; saints and angels had spread their lustrous wings and were fled. The pictured glass had been struck into fragments by Colonel Valence's soldiery, and was now replaced by the commonest sort, into which a shred or two of colour, still flamboyant, had been introduced, as a reminiscence of that which could never be restored. It was a comfortless chancel, not inviting to pray; and the light, though pure, seemed too large.

Naturally they paused a long while in front of the altar. 'Here,' said Rupert, 'your face was visible for two hundred years, as in the clouds of heaven. Were one of the old sisters to come alive now and see you, she would fancy the Madonna of the Seraphim had descended from the wall.' As he spoke, and while he went on to explain the peculiarities of the style, he raised his voice occasionally, for nothing tires so much as a whispered conversation. From time to time he turned to look down the church. At the great door a flood of morning light poured in.

The nave was still empty; but kneeling to his left, not far from the altar-rails, in the shadow of clustering columns, was a figure draped in black from head to foot, whose attention had been caught by the voice of the stranger, and whose face, bordered by a long white veil, was now fixed upon his with overpowering astonishment. He returned the look for a full half minute in complete stupor. Lady May was examining the chancel, and her face was turned from [242] him. 'Good God,' he said, grasping her arm, 'who is that?'

'Who?' said Lady May, turning round. The colour was gone out of his cheeks; he stood bewildered. Ere he could recover, and while Lady May was still uncertain of his meaning, the black-draped figure rose hastily and disappeared round the column. They heard swift steps, the sound of an opening door, and its recoil upon its hinges again.

Glanville without a moment's pause, when he saw the figure retreating, followed it. He ran to the first door in the side aisle, pulled it violently open, and beheld the unknown woman moving fast along the narrow passage in which he was now alone with her. There was a turning, and the steps fled round it; still Rupert followed. A number of cells lined the passage on both sides, and a large door at the end standing open showed the lake and the distant side of the valley. It was impossible the nun should escape him. She reached the last cell,—it was a guest-room or parlour,—entered it, and stood palpitating with frantic terror as Glanville rushed in, and falling at her feet, clasping her robe, kissing the hands she would fain have withheld from him, cried, like a man out of himself, 'Hippolyta, Hippolyta, have I found you? In mercy speak. Tell me I am not mad.'

'You are not mad,' said the nun faintly; 'I am Hippolyta.'

It was no other. Lost so long, vanished so suddenly, she was found in a moment, thus. He [243] sank speechless to the ground. He did not swoon. His eyes, like those of a wounded animal, looked up at her. After a minute and more, when he could speak, he said pityingly, breathlessly, 'What has become of your golden hair? It was so beautiful. Why do you hide it under that veil?' He seemed to think of nothing else but this.

'I have cut it off,' the nun replied in a low voice. When he heard the words, tears came into his eyes. 'I saw a woman in the hospital that they told me had golden hair,' he murmured, 'when I was looking for you the first night; but they had never seen yours, Hippolyta, or they would not have said so. The woman came back when I was ill, when I had brain fever. She was dead then, I think. Her name was Annie Dauris. Her hair was not like yours, Hippolyta. Why did you cut it off? Are you a nun?' He spoke, hardly knowing what he said, in low uncertain tones.

'Oh, must I suffer this again!' cried Hippolyta in agony, her eyes streaming. 'Rupert, Rupert, be a man. I have left you, I am nothing to you. Are you not married?'

'Yes,' he answered simply. 'Would you believe it, darling, that I forgot even your name when I was ill?' He went on, pausing at every two or three words, and shaking with passion, 'I didn't remember that I had seen you till one day, one winter's afternoon, when I found your letters, and it all came back. Why did you leave me? Was I unkind to [244] you? I never meant to be. It made me ill for a long while; it made me forget everything. I married—you know who it is, you were friends once —May Davenant.' It was pitiful to hear him—reason seemed to be tottering on its throne; and the accents were those of a trembling, penitent child, asking pardon for a fault it has committed unwittingly. Hippolyta's distress grew with every word. She implored him to rise. He did so, and stood a little way off, facing her. 'Why did you go?' he repeated, beseeching her with a mute gesture not to be angry. She wrung her hands.

'Because it was wrong from the beginning,' she exclaimed; 'because I sinned and made you to sin; because He spoke to me from the Cross and chided me, and my heart broke. I could not, I could not, Rupert, stay with you when I was so guilty. I went because the sound was in my ears of lost souls, and polluted children, and murdered maidens. I was worse than all; I had believed in sin, dedicated myself to sin; how could I face you when the light broke on me and I saw myself—stained, stained? Oh, I went. I would have thrown myself into the fire if it might cleanse me.'

'You were never stained,' he said, his eyes flaming with wrath and love; 'you were my own Hippolyta. I loved you. Did you love me?'

'Ah, Rupert,' she said, weeping.

He was subdued at the sound of her voice. 'Never mind, never mind,' he went on more composedly, [245] and as beginning to control himself. 'But I would have married you—I told you so at the beginning—when you pleased. It was only to say the word.'

'There was no marriage for me,' she answered; 'the past could never be undone. I sinned with Magdalene. I must do penance with Magdalene.'

'And you would not marry me?' said Rupert, trying to understand, but his mind all abroad, unhinged by the shock, and not yet comprehending how the woman he loved could be standing there in the nun's dark raiment.

Hippolyta answered, 'I had fallen below marriage. My sin spoilt our affection; it took away its sacredness. It made me unfit to be any man's wife.'

'Who taught you it was a sin?' he inquired. But his looks were fastened on her face, and he was thinking how the soft brown eyes glowed above the paleness of the cheeks and the crimson lips. Hippolyta had always been pale. The white linen deadened her countenance. Why did she wear it? She had begun to answer the other question which he had forgotten while he was thinking over this.

'Look who taught me,' she said, putting a hand on the crucifix she wore at her girdle.

Rupert glanced towards it, and shuddered. 'I do not like that symbol to be everywhere,' he said pettishly; 'Spain is covered with it. You ought to have stayed in England.'

'I made it my book before I left England,' she [246] replied. 'Will you hear my story, Rupert? It will reconcile you to our separation—if you ever loved me,' she went on hastily, for the dangerous light was in his eyes again.

'Must we separate because I love you?' he cried. 'Hippolyta, be merciful. I have suffered— so much,' his voice sinking; 'not pain only and fever, but madness, despair, a gnawing at the heart that will not, will not leave me.'

She broke down at the sight of his grief. Pressing the crucifix to her bosom, as though to gain strength from it, after a while she had so far recovered that she made him listen. Briefly, pathetically, she tole her experience in the depths of London, her consternation at the flight of Annie Dauris, her chance hearing of the sermon in St. Cyprian's, and the night that followed. 'How could I be the same to you?' she went on, while he stood in amaze, not taking in her thought, but afraid that she might be obstinate after all. 'How to meet you next morning? I cast myself on the mercy of God, whom I did not know, who was hidden, yet had sent this message to me. I had but an hour to decide. When the light came, in the gray cheerless dusk, I wrote—oh, they were hard words; I made them so. I wanted you to despise, not to search for me. I made them hard.'

'They almost killed me,' said Rupert; 'do not be afraid, they were cruel enough. Look at them.' And from his breast he drew the wedding-ring with [247] the scrap of writing twisted round it. 'I have always carried them since the day at Nice,' he continued. 'They are poison, the antidote to lesser grief.'

Hippolyta took the ring out of his hand. 'How can you be so harsh to yourself, Rupert?' she said gently. 'Let this be the end.'

'It shall be,' he replied. There was silence between them. Hippolyta was about to continue when a knock was heard at the half-open door. A lay-sister entered. She did not look at the strange visitor, but said in Spanish:

'There are two gentlemen, foreigners, inquiring for you, sister. They say they are from England.'

'Two strangers, did you say?' inquired Hippolyta, in surprise and with quivering lips. 'Who can they be? One I might have expected.' Then, after a pause, she said to the lay-sister, 'Take them to the other guest-room and say I will come. Ask them to wait a little.' The other departed, leaving the door, according to conventual rule, half-open, as she found it. 'I thought I heard some one,' continued Hippolyta to herself; 'it must have been the lay-sister moving about. Why did she not come in immediately?'

But she was mistaken. It was not the lay-sister. In this terrible drama there was a third, unseen, but no less affected and overcome than the two that stood fronting one another with the narrow convent cell for their stage, and the lovely prospect shining unregarded before them through the window. When [248] Rupert left the church in pursuit of the flying figure, Lady May, unable to account for his hasty movement, waited, thinking he would return. But on hearing the door shut behind him she became vaguely alarmed, always dreading, as she did, some access of the delirium which he seemed incapable of shaking off. She followed, therefore, but the door at which she arrived resisted her efforts. It had caught and she spent some time in getting it open, and in entering the long passage leading into the public portion of the convent where strangers might pass through. But she saw no one. Whither had Rupert gone? While she was wondering she heard the sound of voices, mingled, as she fancied, with sobbing, in a room on the right. She hearkened, holding her breath. Yes, Rupert was there; he was speaking. She crept along, paused on this side of the door; looked through the long slit between its hinges, and saw her husband at Hippolyta's feet. Neither veil nor habit deluded her for an instant. She saw the countenance, she knew the voice; but she remained perfectly still. Her blood was boiling in her veins, her brain was on fire. 'This, this,' she said to herself, 'is the secret; this explains all.' She listened as for very life. She heard everything. She saw Rupert's changing expression and Hippolyta's distress. She watched while the ring was taken back. At the same moment she heard a step coming down the cloister. What was to be done? Fortunately, the great door leading out on the terrace [249] had been flung back against the wall, making a large angle with it, on the other side of which, in the darkness, a person might be hidden. Quick and noiseless she darted past the door of the cell, and was crouching behind the portal when the lay-sister arrived. It was the rustle of her dress in passing which had caught Hippolyta's ear. In her new position she was quite safe; and though unable to look into the cell, she could hear what was spoken.

Hippolyta continued her narrative, to which Rupert lent a more attentive ear, while Lady May caught and dwelt upon every word of it. There had been much said that to her was incomprehensible. She did not know when or where Hippolyta and Rupert could have been together. Was it for months or weeks? At Falside or in London? Impossible to guess from the story. But that signified nothing. Colonel Valence's daughter had fallen; she confessed it; and Rupert was the man to whom she had sacrificed reputation and virtue. What was this incredible story of leaving him? She strained her ears to listen.

'I wrote those words as an everlasting farewell,' said her poor rival, not aware to whom she was confessing; 'and I put them in the blotting-book, and crept downstairs and out by the front door. No one saw me. The street was empty. There was only one place in which I could take shelter. I thought they would receive me at the convent, if I told them —if I might speak again to the priest whose sermon [250] I had heard. It was but a little way, and I kept in the shadow of the houses; and then the morning was dark, and I came to the convent door without being noticed, and I stood there awhile, not daring to ring. But there was no time to consider. I rang twice and thrice; nobody came. Oh, it was a terrible moment; yet I could think of nothing except that perhaps they would not open. Rupert, if the grave had been my only refuge, I had no power to go back.'

'Don't torture me,' he said abruptly; 'do you think I am adamant?'

'Don't be angry,' she besought him, her tears falling afresh; 'oh, how happy we might have been but for my wickedness!'

'We shall be happy yet,' he muttered, more to himself than to her.

She gazed at him doubtfully. But he must hear the rest; it would bring him to the right conclusion. She took up the story again: 'At last,' she said, 'I could hear footsteps as of several passing along, and I rang loudly. This time the door opened. The sisters were coming from an early mass in their own chapel. I stood inside near the door waiting till they had passed. The portress, I could see, was startled at my appearance. I did not know what to say. But I told her that I wanted to see the Mother; that I was in great trouble; I persuaded her to take my message. Oh, what a morning it was! The Mother came; I went into a private room [251] with her, and she was good and compassionate, and I confessed everything. She pitied, she did not despise me, as I thought she would.'

Glanville seemed to be listening while Hippolyta went on. He let her finish without interrupting. He had something in his mind. Her own agitation was outwardly much greater than his. She spoke of seeing the preacher, and of finding him to be like herself, Spanish, though long resident in London; she told how she had repeated her confession to him, and asked whether she might remain in the convent, and how consent was given, though not easily, for it was against the rule; and how she stayed there several months and came afterwards to San Lucar. But there were many things about herself which Hippolyta could not have told, for she did not suspect them. The story of her repentance was better known to others. And it was exceedingly strange.

At one stroke Hippolyta Valence, from the high-spirited woman she had been, attached with the most passionate intensity to Rupert, whom she regarded as more than a husband, was changed to a humble, conscience-stricken penitent, whose sole thought was expiation of the past. She left Forrest House, as the medieval saints had fled out of the world, her sin burning the road under her feet, darkening the sky, overwhelming her with fear and loathing. She said truly that rather than return and face her lover she would have leapt into the grave. From that moment Rupert Glanville was to her simply a dreadful [252] memory, and a name which did not pass her lips. With the new faith, to which she had turned as her sole refuge, she had only an abstract and vague acquaintance which counted for nothing in the life on which she had now determined to enter. She came to it like a little child. The word expiation, which had been so frequently on Ivor Mardol's lips, rang in her ears as the only gospel. How was she to realise it? They put Christian books into her hands, and she found therein a language that expressed the abasement, the contrition, the hope which now made the very essence of her being. But it was not enough. To pray was not to work. She went after a few days to the Spanish preacher again, and said timidly that there must be some place—she had heard of such —where women like herself were admitted. Might she go there, and labour with and for them? He was astonished and greatly moved. Could he explain to her that the fallen sisterhood was made up chiefly of the ignorant, untaught, rough-mannered women, the outcasts of society, on whom she had been expending pity in the dens of the Ratcliffe Highway? She would be like a rare exotic among weeds. But she entreated so earnestly, it was hard to say no. The head of the convent, Mother Juliana, was consulted. She answered like Father Laurence, that it was not to be thought of; and Hippolyta, meekly submitting, wasted and fell into a dangerous illness, which lasted several months. She could not leave her room even to walk in the convent garden; and while [253] the search for her continued all over London, she remained in a dying condition not a quarter of a mile from Forrest House.

She never lost consciousness during that long prostration. When Mother Juliana inquired whether she would allow Rupert to be informed that she was living, her answer was at once in the negative. Did he know where she was he would not rest until he had brought her back. And for the like reason she would not write to her father. What more appalling shock for him than to learn that his child, brought up far from Christianity and the creed of repentance, was now of her own free will imprisoned within convent walls? He had pulled down so many shrines, thrown open cloister after cloister in Southern Spain, apparently that Nemesis might overtake him in its least endurable form. The daughter of an iconoclast become a nun! Strongly as he believed in the freedom of the individual to choose his way of life, it was not to be thought of that he would acquiesce in Hippolyta's voluntary dedication of herself to asceticism. But she had the tremendous courage of her creed. She would go to the full extent of that text which speaks of renouncing father and mother, house and home, to follow the steps of Christ. She gave up once and for all those whom she loved best; it was a part of the expiation she had resolved on after sinning so deeply. To fast and do rough work with delicate hands, to give the hours of sleep to prayer and weeping, to entreat as [254] a favour that the most abject offices of the community might be assigned to her, to keep silence, and be alone, and think no more of the interests which had filled her life—all this was nothing compared with the nailing of her love to the Cross, and surrendering her father and Rupert. She drove the nails in with unfaltering stroke, while her heart seemed to bleed its last drops. That she could not kneel in humble service at the feet of her outcast sisters, fretted her only because it seemed a denial of the bitter cup which she had been commanded from the Cross to drain. She sickened under it. In that bitterness she hoped to find strength and courage.

'No,' said Hippolyta; 'I asked them to let me work in London, but they refused. I wanted to be a lay-sister at the convent, and that, too, they said was unfit for me. I had been with them nearly a year when Father Laurence came to me, and proposed I should join the new order of which this is the noviciate. It has been founded to help towards the elevation and conversion of women in the East —a work that can be attempted only by women. It is an active order, not cloistered. I was glad to come, though it has made my penance more dreadful to be at San Lucar, reminded always of the past. But in a few months I shall sail for India. I am professed and acquainted with my new duties.'

'Does Colonel Valence know?' asked Rupert, always in the same abstracted voice.

'He will soon, I think,' she answered cheerfully. It was a good sign that he asked questions, and did not return to what she feared. 'When I knew that I was to leave Europe I sent him a message through his old friend, the Duke of Adullam, telling him where I was and what I thought of doing. There was no danger in that, now you are married,' she concluded, faltering.

'None,' said Glanville briefly. His eyes sought the ground; he was still intent on something which he did not express. After a pause he lifted his head, drew a step nearer, and said in a low tone, 'You have explained all, darling, and there is nothing to forgive. When shall we return to England?'

She misunderstood him. 'If Lady May is with you,' she replied, 'it might be well for you to go immediately. She ought not to guess at what has passed; and to meet would be too painful. I do not think I could bear it.'

'Who was talking of Lady May?' he returned; 'I meant you and me, Hippolyta. We have met; I know what you have been doing away from me; and it is all as it should be. We shall never part again.

The listener, so many times torn with anguish during Hippolyta's narrative, was sick unto death. But she must endure a little longer. The nun, the fallen woman, was speaking—oh, how tender she could be! Yes, she called him Rupert, in spite of her self-chosen penances.

'Dear Rupert,' Hippolyta was saying, 'do not be unmanly. Your duty is clear. Mine is not less so. Don't you understand that I have taken a vow?'

'Yes,' he exclaimed; 'you took one to me in the studio. That goes before any other; it annuls the rest, if there were a thousand. You have broken it; but I forgive you, darling, I forgive you.' His voice sank. Had he taken her hand or knelt to her? The listening woman dared not move, though she would have given worlds to see with her own eyes the degradation into which both of them were falling.

'The vow you talk of was a sin; it left us free to part when we chose,' Hippolyta replied; 'it did not make us man and wife. You are married to another.'

'What marriage?' he said with a ring of desperation in his voice; 'it is no marriage. Did I not tell you that the fever destroyed my memory, that I could not recall your name, or your features, or any scene in which you had taken part? For nearly two years Hippolyta was to me as though she had never existed. It was during that time I married Lady May. How could I have done so had I remembered you?' The accents of the speaker were high and piercing. They filled the room with their echo.

'He never loved me,' said Lady May in a dull whisper. She left her hiding-place and went slowly and noiselessly out on the terrace, then moved with unequal but hasty steps along the narrow track by which Rupert and herself had come up. It lay out of sight of the cell-window a high, narrow grating, [257] through which the lake was visible, as I have said, only in the farther distance.

Glanville, utterly oblivious that he had left Lady May in the church, continued to plead his cause with passionate vehemence, while Hippolyta, though not to be moved, became every moment more wretched. 'Ah,' she said at last, as her tears fell, 'if I sinned, if I was self-willed and cruel when I came to you in the studio, I am suffering for it now. Think, Rupert, think what you are asking. Am I to break the vow I have made? Are you to forsake your wife?'

'I have no wife but you,' he cried wildly. He had no sooner uttered the words than they heard a woman's scream from the water, echoed by confused exclamations and the rush of feet on the terrace. 'What is it?' said Hippolyta, running out, followed by Glanville. A dreadful sight met their gaze. The boat in which Rupert had come was floating in the middle of the lake, apparently adrift; and in the water they saw a form rising to the surface, which, with cries of horror, they both recognised as Lady May. Her face, turned towards them, was distinctly visible. Then it disappeared in the depths. As it did so, a second figure which they had seen running to the lake-side leaped in, and swam rapidly to the place where the body had gone down. Hippolyta and Rupert, out of themselves with anguish, ran headlong through the low underwood and arrived on the bank just as the stranger who had plunged [258] in turned round towards the shore, keeping himself afloat as well as he could while holding the inanimate form of May Glanville. Others came running at the same time, fishermen from the upper stream, men and women from the church and the convent. The disaster had been viewed from all sides; it could not have been in a more conspicuous part of the river or the valley. But assistance had come apparently too late. The young man who had rescued Lady May was seen to pause ere he reached the bank, exhausted; he gave a faint cry; and rescued and rescuer sank into the waters again. Several of the fishermen leaped in bravely, and between them brought the bodies to land, clinging in a close embrace. But there seemed no life in either. It was a moment of awful confusion. For hardly were they laid on the sand than an old man who had been standing by motionless, watching all, but unable to stir from his place, rushed suddenly forward, and flinging his arms round the young man's body, fainted. Rupert drew near, gave one startled glance, uttered an exclamation, and would have led Hippolyta away. 'No, no,' she said; 'this is my place. Who are they?'—'Look,' he said in a terrified whisper. She bent over the old man. It was Colonel Valence. He held Ivor Mardol in his arms.

Then it was that Hippolyta's heroic nature showed itself. She did not fall or faint; but while those around stood frightened and bewildered, she took Rupert by the arm, and said to him, 'Now be a [259] man and help me. The thunderbolt has fallen.' Unlocking Lady May's arms from the neck of the unhappy Ivor, whom she had dragged down with her into the depths, she and Rupert between them lifted her from the ground and put her gently into the arms of the rough fishermen, who carried their sad burden, lifeless as it still appeared, through the door from which a short while ago she had issued in her madness, to the cell where the fatal conversation had taken place. The nuns came about her. A bed was hastily strewn on the floor, and all possible efforts were made to restore the spirit which had seemingly fled.

Ivor lay on the sand, his eyes closed and his limbs motionless, but a faint pulsation could be detected when Rupert put his hand to his heart. 'He is not dead,' said he, bursting into tears. Colonel Valence was some time in coming to himself; nor was it without difficulty that his arms could be disentangled from the embrace in which he clasped Ivor Mardol. Till that was done there was no moving them. Hippolyta knelt by her father and put a cordial to his lips. He drew a deep breath, as if awaking from a sleep, opened his eyes, looked round, and did not seem to know any one. 'Is my son drowned?' he said in a stifled, unnatural tone. 'Ivor is by your side,' whispered Hippolyta. She was too much intent on recovering him from his swoon to notice what he had said. Colonel Valence rose, took Ivor once more into his arms, [260] and turned towards the house. No one could hinder him. Walking steadily under the corpse-like weight, he went up through the brushwood and did not pause till he reached the terrace, Hippolyta and the rest following. 'Where can I lay him down?' he said, always in the same unnatural voice. Don Ramiro, the nuns' chaplain, who had been a witness of the disaster and was standing by, answered, 'In my room; let me help you to carry him.' Colonel Valence would have put him aside; but in trying to do so, he staggered and almost fell. The priest silently insisted; and they moved to one of the farther doors, then along a broad passage and up a flight of stone-steps, bearing Ivor as best they could, and still followed by the others. When he was stretched with face downwards on the large writing-table which was standing near the window, a shudder ran through him; the water poured out of his mouth and nostrils, and he put a hand to his side as if in pain. His clothes were torn and muddy; there was blood on them. But when Rupert and the priest stripped him, they could find no external injury. His hands had come in contact with some jagged stones at the bottom of the lake and were bleeding. He seemed in great agony. The chaplain expressed his fears that the hurt was internal. They must send immediately to Sepúlveda for the only doctor at hand. Rupert prayed him to do so, and one of the men set off on horseback. Colonel Valence had never quitted the room; he did not speak, or offer to help [261] Don Ramiro. He could have done nothing to the purpose. Silent and motionless, he sat holding Ivor's hand. Hippolyta, as soon as she had seen the young man taken to the chaplain's room, had returned to Lady May, without speaking a word to her father. It would almost seem that they had not recognised one another.

While they were running to and fro in the convent, distracted by the suddenness of the accident, not knowing which needed the more instant attention, Ivor or Lady May, and vainly conjecturing the cause of the disaster, a second boat was perceived crossing the lake. All the horror of that morning was not yet known to Hippolyta. As she moved about the inanimate form of Lady May, suggesting one appliance after another, and dreading that all might fail, she was accosted by a sister who begged her in God's name to go out and comfort the father of the dying woman, now standing at the door. Hippolyta was overwhelmed. She went out hastily, and found Lord Trelingham and Tom Davenant, the former endeavouring to force his way in, while the latter, with distress painted on his countenance, strove to keep him back. 'She is dead—she is dead, I know,' said the Earl piteously; 'but let me see her. I implore you to let me see her.' Hippolyta spoke to him. 'She is not dead, and she shall not die,' said Colonel Valence's daughter. Lord Trelingham seemed to know the voice, but he did not remember to whom it belonged. 'If she is living, I can wait,' he [262] answered simply, and leaned against the door as if meaning to stay there till they suffered him to enter. Tom Davenant explored with his eyes the countenance of the sister.

'Are you Miss Valence?' he said under his breath. 'Yes, yes,' she replied impatiently. 'But take Lord Trelingham away, see, into that other room. Make him sit down till I come again.' The Earl moaned. 'I saw it from the hotel,' he said feebly; 'she slipped from the prow of the boat into the water. It was an accident, was it not? Tell me it was an accident. Tell me she is not dead. But oh, it was so strange to see her fall over the edge of the boat and no one near. Where was Rupert?'

'Do take him away, dear Mr. Davenant,' said Hippolyta in great anxiety; 'if his daughter should hear the voice, it may kill her. I will come again the moment she is restored.' And Tom, with much gentle persuasion, induced him to pass into the vacant room opposite and to rest there. What the Earl had witnessed was, to a man of his devout religious temperament, more shocking than death. He had seen Lady May throw up her arms wildly, and deliberately put her foot over the side, slipping into the waters while the boat drifted away from her. It was not an accident he saw; he could not hide from himself the horrible truth. His daughter had attempted suicide. At once he sought for a boat, he called Tom Davenant; the delay was heartrending, but he [263] controlled his nerves till they had traversed the lake and reached the convent door. Hippolyta's words gave him a faint hope. But he wept agonising tears while waiting for the moment when he should look on his child again. He listened intently; the long minutes grew to an hour, and no sound of her voice had broken the silence.

Hippolyta had said, 'She shall live;' and if a miracle of devotion, prayer, and loving attention were required to save Lady May, it was not wanting. When Colonel Valence could be safely left with Ivor, and in the care of the chaplain, Rupert, whose fever of the morning was upon him yet, came down to the cell where his wife was lying. Hippolyta noticed his look was alarmed at the effect it might produce on Lady May, and persuaded him to join Lord Trelingham. The two men met in silence. Of the events which had preceded his daughter's attempt at self-murder the Earl knew nothing, and Rupert had nothing to say. In his brain the scenes which had followed one another with bewildering rapidity were a phantasmagoria, in which he could distinguish neither persons nor motives. He knew that he had found Hippolyta, that Ivor Mardol was not dead. He felt towards Lady May like a stranger, but was dimly aware that she had been his wife, and that he must not leave the place where she lay unconscious. Only that thought prevented him from returning to Ivor. He did not feel grief or remorse at what had happened. His brain was incapable of reflection; [264] his heart was sated with emotion and could take in no more.

They were sitting thus, without a word, when Lord Trelingham started up. He seemed to hear the sound of his daughter's voice in the next room, and ran to the door. Tom Davenant drew him back, saying, 'Wait for Miss Valence; she said she would come.'

'Where is Miss Valence?' inquired the Earl absently; 'I have not seen her.'

'It was she that spoke to us,' answered Tom, 'the sister. She will come. Be patient.' After some time he heard the door of the guest-room opening. Hippolyta was coming out.

Lord Trelingham's ear had not deceived him. Thanks to the repeated efforts of Hippolyta and the nuns, Lady May had given signs of returning life. She was of a death-like paleness, and her limbs were at first rigid as those of a corpse. But there still was life in her wounded heart; and little by little it came back with the colour on her lips and with the trembling in hands and feet. Her eyelids unclosed, and the first object on which her glance fell was the last she had distinctly beheld, Hippolyta Valence, in the dark weeds of a nun, her face framed about with white linen, and her eyes full of light. Lady May turned from her. 'Oh, the horrible vision!' she said. Hippolyta moved on one side, and the eyes of the drowned woman opened again. 'Is it gone?' she asked in fearful [265] accents; 'I thought it might be there still and haunt me for ever. They say hell is made of such visions; they come in fire, and will not depart. Merciful God, grant me another hell than that. The fire I will endure, I will not complain. I have deserved it. Only do not let the vision come back.' It was the sharpest stroke Hippolyta had suffered, even on that day of suffering. May looked straight before her, quite still, as though she feared to bring the vision again by turning to the right or the left. And the penitent, heart-broken Hippolyta knelt in the shadow of the wall, and murmured with broken voice, 'Lady May, forgive me. As you hope to be forgiven, do not speak those frightful words again.'

'Are you still there?' replied the other, putting her hands, which she could hardly lift, to her eyes. 'Are we both in hell—you for being a harlot, and I for killing myself? I should be happy if I thought the fire had got hold of you. I hate you, Hippolyta Valence. I ought to have killed you first.'

That was the voice Lord Trelingham had heard, his daughter cursing the woman that, as she said, had stolen Rupert's love. Well for the unhappy father that the walls were thick and Tom Davenant held him when he would have made his way to her. Hippolyta dared not stay in the cell. Such agitation would cost Lady May her life. She was not far from the door. She glided out and came to the old man. 'Your daughter has recovered from her swoon, but she is wandering,' said the nun, taking no heed [266] of Rupert. 'If you would sit by her bedside it might calm her.' Lord Trelingham pressed her hand gratefully and replied, 'You are Lady May's saviour.'—'Ah no,' said Hippolyta, her glance sinking; I have saved nobody.' Rupert drew near. 'Will you always malign yourself?' he cried sharply. They were the first words he had spoken in the Earl's hearing. He did not offer to accompany Lord Trelingham. When he was gone to his daughter, Tom Davenant, looking compassionately on the artist, said to him, 'Is there anything I can do for you, Glanville?'—'Try to save Ivor,' was the reply, which bewildered Davenant, who had seen nothing, and did not know who had rescued his cousin. He thought Glanville must be out of his mind. He sought an explanation from Hippolyta, who could hardly speak for crying. But when he learnt that Ivor was in the chaplain's room, and perhaps fatally injured, for so Rupert told him, he entreated Miss Valence to show him the way, and all three were standing at Don Ramiro's door as the physician arrived from Sepúlveda. They were forbidden to enter, and a dreary pause ensued till the medical examination was concluded. It left no hope. The injuries were internal, and of the most serious character; they could not be dealt with, and the utmost now to be expected was that the patient would lose consciousness ere the agony became unendurable. Not knowing in what relations those present stood to Ivor, the physician, a brief sententious [267] speaker, uttered his verdict aloud, prescribed a few simple lenitives, and a gradually increasing dose of morphia which he had brought with him; and was proceeding to visit Lady May. The tall military-looking man who had insisted on being present at the examination, but did not utter a syllable throughout, rose when the doctor ended, and said to him in very pure Spanish, 'How long will my boy live? I am his father.' The doctor uttered an angry exclamation. 'Why did you not tell me, then? am I an executioner?' he cried. 'The young man may live seven or eight days. But it is uncertain,' and his voice dropped,—'the days may shrink to hours.' Colonel Valence sat down and took Ivor's hand again. It was resting on the coverlet, for he had now been transferred to the chaplain's bed.

CHAPTER XXXVI THE FURIES APPEASED

The case of Lady May proved less desperate. She had thrown herself into the deepest part of the lake, and would have been washed down by the current of the Guadalete—which was there running at a great speed—had not Ivor Mardol seized her as she rose the second time and carried her within a few yards of the shore. Thus she had escaped unhurt, while he, striking, as he last went down, on the sunken rocks, had received his deathblow. When the doctor came Lady May was sitting upright with her arms round her father's neck, weeping and imploring his forgiveness. She told him it was a sudden frenzy for which she could not account that tempted her to stand on the edge of the boat when it drifted. The name of Hippolyta she kept in her bosom, nor did she inquire for Rupert. The doctor at once insisted on her lying down. He prescribed rest for several days and light nourishment. [269] 'Who brought me out?' she asked. The doctor did not know his name; and would not of course mention the dangerous state in which her preserver lay. Thus the evening closed in. None of the strangers returned to the Fonda d'Oro. Accommodation was found for them in the dismantled wing at San Lucar. But there was little sleep that night for any. Ivor, kept awake by intense pain, but scarcely conscious, refused to take the narcotic. He did not want to die yet; such was his constant cry. There was so much to be done. He must have time.

And by the mercy of Heaven time was given. The pain grew less towards morning. He slept without morphia, and passed a comparatively easy day. In the afternoon he sent for Hippolyta, who, fatigued with the horrible scenes through which she had gone, had been ordered by the Mother Superior to take a few hours' rest in the morning. She no sooner came into the room than he held out his arms, 'My sister, my sister!' he cried in a feeble voice but with exceeding joy on his countenance. 'I am every one's sister,' she replied, smiling at the poor invalid. 'Are you in less pain now?' He laughed as she spoke. 'You are not every one's sister as you are mine,' he answered; and trying to turn towards Colonel Valence, but sinking down as he found the pain catching him, 'Tell her, father,' he went on with a gasp; 'she does not know. Why didn't you tell her yesterday?'

The Colonel had passed the night sleepless, like Hippolyta—he at the bedside of Ivor Mardol, she in a chair at some distance. But though he saw her move about him, and even called her by name, and kissed her on the cheek, he had spoken hardly at all; neither did he explain his words to the physician. And she, intent on so many things, could not realise their meaning. It was like a sudden flash, therefore, when her father, looking at the young man rather than at his long-lost Hippolyta, said calmly, 'This is your brother, my dear. He is the son of my first wife, Alice Davenant.' He drew her to him, and joined his children's hands.

There are meetings, recognitions, which refuse to be described. There is a joy in the depths of sadness greater than mortal can depict, though many have felt it. I shall not attempt to speak of the hours that succeeded, as, little by little, brother and sister came to understand that they were indeed what Colonel Valence told them. It was a feast for angels. In the melancholy convent, with an unhappy Rupert lying prostrate in his room, and Lady May coming back to the recollection of yesterday, with its poignant anguish and irremediable sin, nay, while the wings of death were hovering over them, Ivor and Hippolyta sat entranced, and knew that nothing could dim their joy. The new-found brother told, in feeble accents, and pausing at the end of almost every sentence, the story of his birth, and the reasons that had moved a father who, albeit in a [271] stern way, loved his children, to put a veil of mystery between himself and his only son. Ivor would not allow Colonel Valence to take the word out of his mouth; an excessive gladness, mingled with reverence for his father, impelled him to repeat the strange story, as one child may delight to tell another the fairy-tale it has heard. Hippolyta listened with a sadder feeling. She was not surprised; but she was grieved at the remembrance of those many years during which she had not known a brother's love. She looked at her father wonderingly. If it was a rebuke, he did not take notice of it. He had no thought for any one but Ivor. And he sat, in the bent attitude of fatigue or sorrow, while they talked in low tones at his side, Ivor resting as well as he could, and Hippolyta holding her brother's hand.

Three children, it appeared, were born of the marriage with Lady Alice. Two were daughters, who died while they were quite young in London, where their parents had for the most part resided during the ten or eleven years of their wedded life. Lady Alice, who had always been of a delicate constitution, never quite recovered from the trouble of her last two years at Trelingham. She was absolutely submissive to Colonel Valence; she did not speak of her brother, and would have accompanied her husband on his Spanish expeditions, had he not insisted that she should stay in London and watch over the children. Twice he returned, and twice he was called on to follow the beloved remains of a [272] daughter to the grave. He was not a man to bend under the storms of fate; he bore up, and he suffered acutely. His old daring spirit was unchanged, but every year beheld the growth of a sadder and a more saturnine humour in Colonel Valence. To his wife he was a perfect husband; to his associates a proud, resolute, unhappy man. At last the stroke fell which cut his life in twain. Lady Alice gave birth to a son, and died the same day. With failing breath she implored her husband, whose darkening brow and fierce intensity of grief struck her in the midst of her agony, not to visit on the child his mother's loss. And then she calmly passed away, having attained and enjoyed the one happiness on which she had set her heart. But the bereaved husband could not endure to look on Ivor. He turned his face when the nurse brought the poor wailing thing, and would have put it into his arms. Only Lady Alice's condition had kept him from returning to Spain, where the prospects of the democratic party were gloomy, and the presence of the bolder spirits was urgently needed. Long determined that no child of his should touch Lady Alice's fortune, or take a place in the succession to Trelingham, he saw that it was time to carry out a resolution which should endure into future years. Lord Trelingham was not yet married; his cousin, Mr. Davenant, who came next in the entail, was a middle-aged man about town, of easy fortune, and easier morals. He had not married, did not intend to marry, and viewed with the equanimity [273] of selfishness the extinction which threatened both the elder and the younger lines of the ancient house to which he belonged. Colonel Valence had kept an eye on these things. It seemed by no means improbable that Lady Alice's surviving child would come into the Trelingham estate; and if he did so, and were a man of ability or character, he would not find it impossible to get the title of Trelingham revived in his favour. That must not be, said the Colonel, and he shaped his action accordingly.

He had long known and admired the stern integrity of Mr. Mardol. At one time their principles had been almost the same; and though they never met without discussing the question of 'physical force,' they remained on terms of friendship, and, I might say, of affection. At this juncture, then, Colonel Valence entrusted Ivor to the keeping of the old philosopher and his wife. He did not say whose child it was, or what motives made such a step necessary. Nor did they ask. Mr. Mardol consented on two conditions. One was that Ivor should be told, when capable of understanding it, that he was not their child; the other, that he should be educated strictly on the lines of the humanitarian philosophy. We have seen that both were fulfilled. Colonel Valence believed that a little knowledge of life would lead his son to sufficiently stern principles, and he trusted no one like Mr. Mardol.

He went abroad, and was absent from England [274] many years. During the interval Lord Trelingham had married, but the only issue was a daughter, Lady May. Mr. Davenant, too, had been caught by a clever woman, and surrendered his bachelor independence. He had one son, a child of two years old. Thus the danger of the succession seemed to have been averted from Ivor. But Lady Alice's fortune still awaited him, and there was no security that he would not, on Colonel Valence's decease, be taken up by his mother's people, and lost to the cause of democracy. The Colonel, therefore, persisted in his old plan of bringing up Ivor Valence as Ivor Mardol, and training him to the habits of life and thought which befitted an engraver's son. He could now bear to look on the boy; he loved him after a silent fashion of his own. But he was resolved, cost what it might, to keep the vow he had spoken in the picture-gallery at Trelingham Court. No child of his should touch any part of that inheritance, great or small. He might have acknowledged Ivor at an earlier date, if the young man had not shown such tenacity in adhering to the peaceful principles of Mr. Mardol. But while he did so, the mystery continued. Rather than endanger it, Colonel Valence, on learning the presence of Ivor's friend, the artist, at Trelingham, had at once quitted Falside; and he stayed away as long as Ivor dwelt in the Hermitage. From Hippolyta he kept the secret as carefully as from all the world. He allowed himself the pleasure of making her copy his epistles to her brother in [275] a cypher of which she had not the key; and to the same motive we must attribute the commission he gave her, which led to her visiting the chalet, and making the acquaintance of Rupert Glanville. All this Ivor could not know, or repeat if he had known. But he told Hippolyta of his early dreams, his longing for home and a sister's affection, his grief lest she should have gone astray on leaving Rupert, his estrangement from Colonel Valence after the meeting in Denzil Lane. 'And you,' he said, the smile coming into his eyes,—'it was you that ended it; you that brought father and me together. When you wrote to the Duke of Adullam,—oh, I know him, he has been a kind friend to me,—and said what you had done, and that you desired to see your father before leaving this house, the Duke sent for me. He was aware that a difference had arisen between me and Mr. Felton, as I called him. It does not matter now. By and by I will come back to that, when I am dying,'—his smile was ineffable,—'but, you know, the Duke thought it was time I should learn everything. Do you remember meeting him?'

'Once, years ago, when I was quite a child; but he took no notice of me.'

'He was acquainted with your history, nevertheless, and had been told more of it by Rupert than I knew. And he went over it all from the beginning. He sent me the same evening to Paris, to Mr. Felton. And I found him, and how surprised he was, and glad too, when he saw that the secret had [276] come out! He did not wish me to be a Davenant or to be tempted by the glories of Trelingham. That was why he had denied himself, and, in a manner, disowned me, poor boy! As if I cared for Trelingham!'

He was obliged to stop. The pain returned; but he still kept the vivacious happy look that lightened his plain features and made them beautiful. The Colonel had heard every word, smiling a little, a very little, but not interrupting. His eyes now met Hippolyta's. She went over to him and kissed him. 'Father,' she said, 'why did you keep such a pleasant thing from me as the knowledge that I had a brother all those years? Had I known it I should have been saved. But do not trouble now. The lost can be saved as well as those that never went astray. I am not miserable; oh no, I wish others were as happy.' Her thoughts turned to Rupert and Lady May, and she ended with a sigh. Then, recovering herself, she persuaded her brother to take some of the morphia prescribed. It soothed the pain; it did not make him sleep. He would have continued talking, but she put her finger on her lip, and sat near him, and they were again in the sweet heaven where all that we love is restored. He turned his head on the pillow, and, looking at her, said, 'I do not think I shall die to-night. But watch, and if I seem to be losing consciousness, tell me, and send for the others. I should like to see Rupert. He was in the room last night when I could not speak. Is—?' he stopped.

'Dear,' she said, 'you must not hurt yourself. When the good God wills, He will take you. I know you are not afraid. That is right. We shall not be lost to one another.'

'Oh, I am not afraid,' was the simple answer; 'I believe in God. My God is light and goodness. How should I fear? But,' he went on, making an effort, 'I wanted to ask—something. Is May—is Rupert's wife with him?'

Hippolyta looked at him in complete surprise. Did he not know whom he had rescued? She was afraid to reply. How to question him without giving him a shock? It was a most unexpected difficulty.

'You are a long while answering, sister?' he said, smiling. He liked to call her sister. She must speak.

'Would it hurt you to talk about yesterday?' she began.

'In what way?' he inquired.

'About—about the accident,' she said hesitatingly. 'I know you and father were the two visitors that arrived. But how came you to be on the terrace?'

'Simply enough. You were a long time coming, father was impatient to see you, and so was I, you may be sure. And our combined impatience made sitting in a bare room impossible. We went out and walked up and down. Then I saw some one in a boat, a woman, rowing across the lake, and she stopped all at once, put down the oars, stood up,—she gave a wild scream which seemed to go up [278] into the sky, and the next minute she was in the water. I ran down as fast as I could and jumped in. I remember nothing else except the weight round my neck as I sank.'

'But you rescued her; you saved her life,' said Hippolyta. His eyes were very pleasant to see. 'And don't you know who it was?' she went on, with a meaning look which he somehow failed to make out.

'No; how should I?' He caught the look now, stopped, grasped Hippolyta's hand tighter, and said, with a most innocent confusion, blushing like a girl, 'No, don't tell me it was—'

'It was Lady May,' she whispered gently.

'Ah, God be praised,' he said. 'And I shall die! I rescued her and I shall die! I could not return to the common life after such a thing. Why, it is better than dying in battle, which is but putting your life against another's. Oh, how good God is! Did I not tell you, Hippolyta, that He is light and goodness.'

'Hush,' said his sister, pointing to Colonel Valence. Her heart was torn at the expectation of so near a calamity, but she dreaded even more for her father than herself. She knew what ardent passions were concealed under that imperturbable appearance of calm. It was lava beneath snow, and in a moment the surface might melt. But Colonel Valence, who sat a silent listener while Ivor gloried in death, now broke in upon their dangerous conversation. 'I did [279] not know it was Lord Trelingham's daughter,' he said, 'and I could wish it had been some one else. Must you be sacrificed for the house of Davenant, alive and dead?' he asked bitterly. 'But for them you would have always had a father, and I should not be losing a son.' He controlled himself with a strong effort. 'Never mind me, Ivor,' he said; 'I talk at random. Do not look so excited. The danger is great, but we must, we will hope.'

'What should I hope for, except to die?' said he; 'but I will not be excited. I will try to sleep; and to-morrow you are to send for them all.' His head fell on the pillow and he slept, breathing heavily at times and starting with pain, but with an expression of the most perfect happiness on lips and brow. Hippolyta watched him, her own lips moving occasionally in prayer. She thought of Electra in the touching story, who did the like office for a stricken brother. 'But here are no Furies,' she said.

For him there could be none. Was it so as regarded Rupert and the other poor thing, who had nearly cast away her life and had sacrificed Ivor's? The next morning brought Hippolyta a task which she would have deemed the most malignant stroke of destiny had she not learned, like her brother, to believe in God. As she came from the early mass, celebrated where San Lucar's shrine had formerly stood, Tom Davenant, waiting in the cloister bareheaded, besought a moment's audience. She had conventual duties to perform, but his speech was [280] urgent, and she had leave to hear him. Taking her out on the terrace, he said abruptly, 'Miss Valence, I am not in the secret of Thursday's accident, and I do not know who is. But things are in a deplorable way between my cousin and her husband. Mr. Glanville, after spending many hours in his room, sent a message last night requesting permission to see Lady May. That was extraordinary enough from a husband to his wife. But, more extraordinary still, May refused to see him. The message was repeated, and a more peremptory denial returned. This morning, not an hour ago, my cousin rose, in spite of the doctor's orders, dressed herself, and insisted on the Earl's taking her back to the Fonda. Lord Trelingham could not but consent, and they at once went over in the very boat from which she fell into the stream. But that is not all. Before going she said in my presence that she had done with Mr. Glanville for ever, and looked upon herself as divorced. What, in Heaven's name, is it all about, and what are we to do? I cannot take such a message as that to Rupert.'

This was the longest speech Tom had made in his life. To Hippolyta its import was overwhelming. She lost all sense of her situation. It was the suicide over again; her own sin avenged on Rupert by Lady May. She stared at Tom Davenant without replying. 'I see you are as perplexed as myself,' said the kind-hearted young man; 'but you are the only person I can speak to. In these things one woman can influence [281] another, and we men are no use. Go to Lady May, ask her to confide in you. And—I once thought you could persuade Mr. Glanville more easily than most. Try to get matters clear between them. It will kill her father.'

'Do nothing,' said Hippolyta, 'till I come back. Where is Mr. Glanville?' and she drew herself together as for a violent effort.

'He is in his room,' said Tom; 'let me show you the way.' He led her along the passages, up several flights of stairs, and into the disused wing. 'It is there,' he said, and made his way back to the terrace, leaving her tremulous and undecided before the door. She knocked. Rupert's voice said 'Come in,' and she entered.

He was sitting at a table, his head bent down, a picture of fatigue and misery. Since the accident, though he had eaten what was set before him, he seemed to have neither slept nor washed. He was haggard and forlorn,—a contrast indeed to the brilliant Rupert Glanville for whom nothing could be too refined, and no living too delicate. Hippolyta looked at him with unspeakable pity. He started on seeing her. 'What!' he cried, 'has May sent you to tell me our marriage is broken? It would be a rare piece of wit,' and he laughed. The sound was like a knife driven into her side.

'For God's sake, Rupert,' she exclaimed, 'do not give way to the tempter. Pity me. Pity yourself.'

'I do,' he said grimly. 'Look, Hippolyta. Last [282] night, after thinking till my head was ready to burst, I resolved that I would be a man, as you said,—I should be pleasing you, at any rate,—and I sent to that wife of mine, to the—the suicide, you know, saying I wanted to see her. I meant to beg her pardon, make peace, and leave you. That was fair, I suppose?'

She could not understand that Rupert, Rupert Glanville, was saying such things Whither had the man vanished to whom she once gave herself? This was not he. 'Yes, it was fair,' she said, trembling.

He laughed again, and struck his hand on the table. 'Ay, one would have thought so,' he cried, 'but not she. She sent me back a dog's message, take it or leave it, all the same to her. She said no, I might go where I pleased, but I should not be in the room where Lady May Davenant found herself. I was humble; I sent again. Her answer was contempt. Have I done enough? If you like we will go away together. But you have changed too. You were the first to change. The woman's fashion, not the man's. Ivor is worth a thousand of you. And he must die because of Lady May Davenant. Well, I can follow him.'

'Rupert,' she said once more, in the gentlest tones she had ever used towards him, 'look at me.' The subdued tenderness effected more than a torrent of eloquence would have done. He stopped in the midst of his wild words and fixed his eyes on Hippolyta's grief-stained face. 'You are suffering,' he said more quietly.

She put her hand to her heart. 'Were it not for resolution,' she said, 'I should be dying. Do you believe that a woman can give up all that I have given up and not feel it? I might rave, like you, if I thought only of myself. It is my fault,—mine, I confess it before God and man. These deaths, these suicides, these divisions of heart from heart, I did it all, unclean as I am. But help me, Rupert, to make amends. Ivor, my brother Ivor, must die. Be it so. I surrender him to God. He is innocent. He can afford to die. But you must live. Lady May shall not lose her soul for me. Help me, help me to set these things right. Be patient, it is all I ask. And when Lady May relents, accept her affection. If you do not, Rupert,' she continued sorrowfully, 'my punishment will be greater than I can bear. It will kill me. Have you no compassion for Hippolyta?'

She could speak no more. But Rupert was coming to himself, and he began to see the character of the woman who, if she had sinned, was nobly repentant, in the divine light which shone round it. Rising from his seat with a sudden motion, and passing his hand over his forehead as though to brush away the illusions which had clouded his fancy, he said, taking her hand,—nor did she refuse it,— 'Count on me in life and death. You have brought the true Rupert Glanville from the tomb. I will wait for you.'

'No; come with me,' she said. And they went down to the river side.

Several boats were lying there, into one of which Hippolyta entered, signing to Rupert that he should take the oars. He did so, not reluctantly, for he had now determined that he would obey, at all costs, whatever directions she should give. But a great wonder came upon him when she bade him row towards the Fonda d'Oro. He was not aware of Lady May's departure. Tom Davenant, standing at an upper window, saw them push off from shore; but, mindful of Hippolyta's command, made no attempt to follow them. Rupert, pulling a silent stroke, thought of the one occasion, and one only, on which he had conveyed Hippolyta over a broad sheet of water like this, after their first meeting in the Hermitage. They had been as voiceless and recollected then, her eyes directed towards the bank, and eager to gain it. When they touched land, at the side of the hotel, he thought it was time to ask the reason of their crossing; but she did not reply. She left him to fasten the boat; put a question to the hotel-keeper who had come forth to welcome them, and, on hearing his answer, motioned Rupert to enter the house, which he did in the same state of amazement as before. She pushed a door open. It was the dining-room. 'Stay here,' she said, 'and, above all, keep perfectly quiet until I send to you.'

'Will it be long?' he inquired.

She shook her head. 'I cannot say,' was her answer; 'but wait.' She went noiselessly upstairs.

Again she was venturing a hazardous experiment. [285] She tapped at Lady May's door. There seemed to be no answer, but without hesitation she opened and went in. The woman she sought was lying on the coarse sofa which the place afforded as a couch, half-asleep, and sprang up at her entrance. When she saw Colonel Valence's daughter, she pointed imperiously to the door. 'How came you in, Miss Valence?' she said in her haughtiest tones; 'you are intruding. Have the goodness to leave me.'

'When I have done what I came for,' answered her visitor firmly, taking no offence at the rudeness of her reception.

'And pray what is that? The sooner you explain, the sooner will your visit be over.'

Hippolyta coloured. 'You are very cruel,' she said; 'what have I done to you? I never wronged you.'

'What, never wronged me!' exclaimed Lady May. 'You take my husband's love, you drive me to death, and—it is no wrong! You desolate a home, you come to gloat over the work of your hands, but still you do not wrong me! I wrong myself to talk with Mr. Glanville's discarded concubine. Go to him. He may take you back again. It will save you from the streets, which would be your other alternative. But leave me. Your presence is an insult.'

Shame burnt in her victim's face, crimson, hectic. Hot tears rained from her eyes, and the heart of Hippolyta seemed almost broken as she sobbed aloud. Rupert's step made itself audible in the room [286] below. He could not help fancying that a quarrel was going on somewhere in the house, though he knew not where; and it made him uneasy. He began to walk up and down. At the sound Hippolyta stilled her weeping. She was afraid he would come up. It was no time to think of herself. But she understood the character of Lady May, and she replied deliberately, 'If I were a thousand times what you call me, and what I am, you would still be in the wrong, and not I. Was it your husband that I loved or followed? Did Rupert Glanville love you first? And when I had once forsaken him, did I, by word or token, acquaint him with my existence till the day he came upon me in the church of San Lucar? I have sinned against all women, but not against you, Lady May. I ask pardon of the womanhood I have stained and shamed, but not of you. When I feared you were dying, I asked your forgiveness; the disaster, though not my fault, was yet by my occasion. Now you are saved; my brother has given his life for yours, and you owe me thanks, not pardon.'

'Your brother! I did not know you had one,' said Lady May, feeling unexpectedly weak where she had thought to be irresistible. It is the way with these proud natures. They must be attacked in front if you would conquer them. May Davenant was accustomed to follow her own will, to think every one weak compared with herself, and to take their compliance for granted. Even Rupert, since their marriage, had been as yielding as the rest.

But Hippolyta had not studied her rival in vain. She knew that she must strike hard. And she went on, 'Yes, my brother, and your cousin,—Ivor Mardol, as he is called,—but he is the son of Lady Alice, with the blood of Davenant in his veins. He is dying, and you are saved. What will you do for him? Will you be ungrateful and unjust?'

'But what can I do?' replied May, with a strange feeling of perplexity, sitting down on the sofa from which she had risen. There was a soft expression in Hippolyta's looks which troubled her. 'What can I do?' she repeated.

'You can make your husband happy,' said Ivor's sister; 'dear Lady May, try to understand. You have a noble heart; you have not wronged me or any one. It is only that you think I stand between you and Rupert. But I do not. I have given him up,' her voice trembled, sank, and grew firm again, as she continued, 'Is it not three years since I left him? A few weeks hence and I shall be sailing for India. What can prevent you from being happy as before. Ivor asks it. I ask it. See, I kneel to you.'

She was there, kneeling on the ground, an image of humble supplication. May did not know what to say or think. Was this the woman she had insulted? She was overcome; she had no argument left. Putting her arms round Hippolyta, with a burst of weeping, she whispered faintly, as she bent down her face to the other, 'But he will always love you.'

'No, no,' answered the noble creature, making a [288] supreme act of self-renunciation; 'it is over, and the Hippolyta Valence he cared for is dead and buried. When you leave this place, it will be like a dream. I shall die in the East; that is in my vow.'

She rose, but continued longer in the same strain, pleading as if for her own soul. The scales fell from May Davenant's eyes; and in the moment that she was humbled she saw light. 'We have both sinned,' she said at last, 'but my sin was the greater. Advise me what to do. Shall I send for Rupert? Perhaps he will not come. Are there any words that will bring him, after the message I sent last night?'

'He is here,' replied Hippolyta in a soft whisper.

Lady May flushed with delight. 'Oh, tell him to come,' she cried.

'Nay,' said Hippolyta, smiling mournfully, 'it is the wife's duty to seek the husband. He is lord and master. Come, he is downstairs.' She took Lady May by the hand. They descended the stairs with beating hearts, united, yet how different from one another! When they reached the door of the dining-room Hippolyta opened it, and pushing Lady May gently forward, said, 'Go in, and speak as your heart bids you.'

She saw the door close, and grasping her crucifix tightly, went down to the boat. Lady May, on entering and seeing Rupert, threw herself into his arms. They held one another fast for a long while without speaking. It seemed as if a cloud had melted and left them face to face and soul to soul. [289] As they stood in that silent embrace, the sound of plashing oars broke upon them. They looked out, still holding one another, and beheld the veiled figure in the boat, which one of the hotel servants was rowing to San Lucar. Hippolyta's face was turned from them and her head bent. The great solemn light seemed to move with her. It was almost noon.

'She is an angel,' said Rupert devoutly. And he told how she had come to him and brought him to the Fonda d'Oro.

'She has saved me as well as you,' answered Lady May. 'Is she not the noblest woman on earth?'

'She is in heaven,' he murmured. And his wife understood now what was meant by the feeling that transcended love, of which she had dreamt long ago in the picture-gallery at Trelingham. The love was her own. The something higher had been given to Hippolyta.

They spent the evening in quiet, restored to one another. Lord Trelingham, exhausted by all he had gone through, and unable to comprehend his daughter's abrupt changes of disposition, looked on, mildly thankful that husband and wife were again as he had seen them before coming to San Lucar. Late at night Tom Davenant came in. He had been informed of the reconciliation by Hippolyta, learning at the same time, to his great amaze, the relation in which they all stood to Ivor. He begged earnestly for admittance to his friend's presence. He could not be refused; and the [290] meeting was another draught of happiness to the agonised patient, whose sufferings increased from hour to hour, but whose joy could not be diminished. Tom sat by him till the clock struck ten. He then bethought himself of the party at the Fonda d'Oro, who would be waiting for intelligence from the sick chamber; and he rowed across in the moonlight. By that time Lord Trelingham had learnt nearly all that they could tell him of Ivor's life and parentage. It was an utter surprise, but an equal pleasure. He was ready to love the young man, for whom he had conceived a high esteem at Trelingham; and his daughter's preserver could not be too near or too dear to him. The news which Tom brought of his sufferings threw a gloom over their lately-restored happiness. He left them, for he would not stay from Ivor a moment more than he could help. Lady May began to dread the Nemesis of her ill deeds which seemed to threaten; her nerves were shattered by continual emotion; she passed a feverish night, and could not rise next morning.

It was Sunday. A cloudless tranquil sky overhead, the water rippling on the lake, the church bells sounding from Sepúlveda and San Lucar, the gardens and the cornfields rejoicing together, made a world in which sorrow might seem to have no place. Rupert tended Lady May with the exceeding gentleness he knew how to use; Lord Trelingham came and went, said little, but was happy. Several times they cast anxious glances towards the convent. What was [291] going on within its walls? But the afternoon passed, and they had no tidings. Was their friend better? Why did not Tom Davenant come? Rupert and May knew well, though they could not whisper it, that Hippolyta would come no more.

As the lovely sunset was flushing the waters and irradiating height and hollow, they saw a boat traversing the stream. When it touched, a messenger sprang out and ran up to them where they sat in the verandah. They must come at once. Ivor Mardol was dying.

CHAPTER XXXVII NOT DEATH BUT LOVE

He looked up as they entered, knew them, and smiled, but could not speak. For many hours the pain had been intense; and though drenched with narcotics, he lay wide awake and conscious. Now he was lying supported with pillows on the low bed, his head resting in Colonel Valence's arms. It gave him a little relief to stay in this position. His father neither moved nor spoke, though on seeing Lord Trelingham a mist came over his eyes, and his lips quivered. Hippolyta, who was seated on the other side of the bed, came round and took the Earl's hand; she seemed not to observe the two that accompanied him. But when Lady May took the hand that was disengaged and pressed it warmly, she smiled without raising her eyes. Tom Davenant stood at the foot of the bed. He had a tired expression, not having slept the previous night and being more affected than he was aware at the sight of [293] Ivor's sufferings. The chaplain, Don Ramiro, was likewise in the room, but they scarcely observed his presence, and he did not come forward.

'Give me something to drink,' said Ivor, 'not a sleeping-draught.' Hippolyta moistened his lips. 'Now let me sit up,' he went on, clenching his fingers like a man who is intent on some difficult task. The pillows were rearranged. It was slow work, for the least movement caused him exquisite agony. 'I wish I had more time,' he said, and he smiled a little, fixing his gaze, which was bright and clear, on Colonel Valence. 'Father,' he continued, 'will you not tell them who I am? Do they all know?'

'Too late, too late,' said his father; and then, turning to the Earl, 'Davenant, this is Alice's child. You know. He is the last, the youngest. His two sisters died when they were children, before he was born. Alice,—she is dead too. They are all gone, and Ivor did not know I was his father. I would never tell him. I did not want him to be a Davenant, to go back to his mother's people and their ways. But all is at an end.'

Lord Trelingham put forth a trembling hand. 'Can we be friends, Valence?' he said; 'it is forty-four years since we met. And Alice would wish us to forgive one another, for her child's sake.'

Colonel Valence touched the hand held out to him. 'Forty-four years!' he repeated, 'and Alice died when Ivor was born. He is not thirty-four. It [294] is young to die, isn't it, my boy?' turning to his son.

'But I have lived,' was the contented answer. 'And I have all that I love around me. What more do I want?—Ah, there is one thing.' A shade of sadness came over his countenance.

'What is it?' said Colonel Valence, stooping to kiss him. 'I will do it. Only speak.'

The dying eyes, still bright, glanced towards Rupert. 'Do you remember,' said Ivor, trying not to seem over-agitated, 'the night you and I met my father in Denzil Lane?'

Rupert looked at him in surprise. 'Yes, Ivor,' he said; 'what of it?'

'I want father—to promise me—to be on my side, not on the other.' The words were slow in coming. Colonel Valence was silent. 'Promise me,' pleaded his son; 'I shall not die happy unless you promise.' The others, except Rupert, thought he was wandering.

'Ivor,' said the old man, with an evident struggle to keep down his feelings, 'do you want me to renounce the Revolution?'

'Oh no, it is not the Revolution I want you to renounce,' answered his son; 'only the counterfeit—the violence, the shedding blood for blood.' His voice failed him. Again Hippolyta moistened his lips; she stroked his cheek and smiled at him. The caress seemed to give him courage. 'You know, father,' he said, his strength returning as it sometimes will at the last, and his accents growing [295] clear, 'when I was a boy you gave me to Mr. Mardol; and he taught me to have a feeling for every one, high as well as low. He believed in the victory of right—and you did once.'

'It was when Alice lived,' murmured his father, 'not after I lost her. Forty years ago—when I was younger than you—I believed that all would come right; that the world was made right. But my life is a ruin.'

'No, no,' cried Ivor; 'the old creed was the true one, when you believed in life and love. See, father, here is love. There will be life too. These are shadows. Somewhere there is the reality. Have I not overcome death?' His face glowed, and he saw Lady May looking at him. 'Stand on my side, father. Trust in the good that comes out of suffering, of martyrdom, if you will. But do not deny the hope in which you had me brought up; do not harden your heart. It was always loving, I know. Hippolyta knows.'

'Listen to Ivor, father,' she said tremulously.

He looked long at them both. 'I will,' he said, and the tears ran down his cheeks.

'Now let me die,' said Ivor, sinking back. 'I did not think death could be so sweet. Rupert, good-bye. Tom, my dear fellow, Rupert will be your friend instead of me. I was very fond of you. And Lady May—' She was weeping silently. He closed his eyes and lay still. They waited for the coming of death, voiceless, recollected, as when [296] a great storm is gathering in the distance. Not a leaf stirred at the window; the sunset light was streaming in. But there remained something else. He called Rupert faintly. 'When you go home,' he said, 'search in my desk. You will find'—how slowly the words drop from dying lips!-'find pages I have written—a diary. There is a secret in them. Read, but do not tell any one.' Rupert whispered assent. Another pause. 'May was my cousin,' his voice murmured more faintly, and a smile lit up the darkling eyes. 'May—Hippolyta—remember—' The voice failed altogether. He was gone. A great calm lay on the dead face.

·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·

They buried him outside the convent walls, in a sheltered nook by the stream. It was unconsecrated ground, and there was no burial service. 'Was your brother a Christian?' inquired Don Ramiro, when Hippolyta told him a little of their story, and asked what should be done. 'He was never baptized,' she said. 'Then he cannot lie in consecrated soil,' replied the priest. 'Never mind,' she said absently. He thought she was grieving over it, and he added with the kindness which was a part of him—for he was a feeling man—'But you need not distress yourself so much; all the land is consecrated; wherever he lies will be holy ground; it is la tierra de Maria Santisima , this Andalusia of ours.' She smiled and said nothing. She had no trouble on that account.

Another grave may be seen near Ivor's, which was dug only a few weeks after he had been laid to rest. It is that of Lord Trelingham. The shock of that terrible moment when he beheld his daughter flinging herself into the lake, proved more than his enfeebled frame could bear. One morning when he was called he did not answer. They entered his room; he was dead. The heart had stopped beating many hours, and his limbs were cold.

On the day of the funeral, when the clergyman summoned from Seville had read over the Earl of Trelingham that solemn service, musical and heart-subduing, which the Liturgy of the English Church has consecrated to the dead, Hippolyta sent for May and Rupert. They came in their deep mourning, which vied in colour with the religious habit she wore. Standing in the guest-room she said to them, 'You are leaving San Lucar, and I am setting out for India. We shall never meet again, until they come back to us'—she pointed towards the sheltered nook where the nightingales were singing, and the scattered rays of sunlight making their way in among the leaves. 'Never again,' she said. 'I have only one thing to ask. Rupert, you remember Annie Dauris.' He assented silently, and she continued, 'Annie Dauris was taken, and I am left; but God's mercies are infinite. What I had to say was this. Take care of her father and the children when you go home. Their mother died while I was at the convent. For my sake be good to Willie and Charlie; they are [298] loving boys. Charlie has a talent for drawing. Let him be with you in the studio. That is all.' She held out her hands to both of them, gave them one last look of farewell, and went out of the room.

·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·

The new Earl of Trelingham does not live at the Court. It is shown to visitors, and the frescoes of the Great Hall have won universal admiration, and will hand down the artist's name to a late posterity. But since their return to England Tom Davenant is much with Rupert and his cousin. I fancy he will sooner or later accept the devotion of the Countess Lutenieff, and that Karina's one sincere and enduring affection will meet with its reward.

Lady May is an artist's wife, and seems to have forgotten that she was once an Earl's daughter. She is happy. Rupert's genius, chastened and glorified, promises to achieve greater things than ever; but he has deep thoughts which he does not share with any one.

Colonel Valence, reconciled to Lord Trelingham, returned after his death to Falside, and lives there a lonely man, but not altogether unhappy. He spends many hours near Lady Alice's tomb in the gray old churchyard by the sea, and they bring him strange thoughts. Faith? Ah no, he does not believe yet in divine realities, but in his ears the Percy motto, Espérance , seems often ringing. Hippolyta writes to him from the Far East, where she is fulfilling her vow.

Looking in at Rupert's studio one afternoon, the Duke of Adullam found him absorbed in Ivor's diary, with the picture of Hippolyta lying before him. Charlie Dauris, seated at the farther end of the room, was drawing and did not look up or attend to the conversation which ensued. The Duke recognised Ivor's handwriting. He asked about the portrait, and Rupert, who remembered the familiar interchange of thought which had passed between them on a certain evening, told him how both portrait and diary had been discovered in a desk at Grafton Place. 'Ah,' replied the Duke, with a peculiar expression of countenance, 'it is a pitiable story. You have lost the noblest friend, the most enchanting mistress, that ever a man had. Will you not join us now? You know what I mean; the doors of the smoking-room are open. A more melancholy experience than yours it is impossible to conceive.'

Rupert smiled gravely and shook his head. 'There is no sadness in the story,' he replied, 'as you imagine. It is something higher and better than sadness. I seem to apprehend its meaning,— not all, but so much that it leaves the stars shining in heaven. May and I never speak of Ivor or Hippolyta, but their memory is to us a religion. How should we have known true affection but for them? Till that day at San Lucar she cared for me in the passionate way that brings neither happiness nor calm. And I hardly cared for her at all; my love had on it the shadow of a felt bereavement, [300] and was faint, phantasmal rather than a living thing. Now the stars look down out of their serene heaven, the flowers bloom at our feet. Call on Lady May, and watch the delight she has in our first child. See,' he went on, pointing across the studio, 'there is the boy's portrait, with his mother's eyes and smile.'

It was a lovely sketch, the cherub in the dawn of existence, glowing with infantine joy; fair-haired, dark-eyed, rosy. He seemed to look out on the future as if it were a sunlit prospect, with hope and laughter on his murmuring lips.

'Ah!' said the Duke, while he fixed his searching gaze on the picture; 'you are right. Do not come to us. Your spirit has deepened, it has been touched to the finest issues. I see that the memory of the past, the fire you have both come through, has made for you a new life and a true marriage. Your Hippolyta, your Ivor, have saved you from losing the one thing that men like my friends—that I—have lost for ever. But that one thing, I suspect, is the secret of existence, let the world change as it will.'

'And what is it?' inquired the artist.

'Can you doubt?' said the Duke of Adullam, his proud lips trembling a little and a slight blush over-spreading his features; 'you that find it in the stars of heaven and the flowers that spring up from the earth? What can it be, but love?'

A tender light came into Rupert's eyes. The [301] sound of a carriage was heard outside, and voices at the door.

'Who is it?' said the Duke.

It was Lady May, leading her child by the hand. They had come to pay a visit to his father's studio.