Bessy Rane: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"BESSY RANE.

AGED 31."

"But you have not put the date of the death, doctor!" cried Mrs. Gass, surprised at the omission.

"No? True. That's Thomas Hepburn's fault; I left it to him. The man is half-crazed just now, between grief for his brother and fear for himself. It will be put on the grave."

From Dr. Rane's Mrs. Gass went to Dallory Hall, knowing that madam was absent. Otherwise she would not have ventured there. And never was guest more welcome to its master. Poor Mr. North spoke out to her all his grief for Bessy without reservation.

But of all who felt this death, none were so affected by it as Jelly. She could not rest for the wild thoughts that tormented her day and night. The idea at first taken up kept floating through her head, and sometimes she could not get rid of it for hours: an idea that Mrs. Rane had been put into her coffin alive; that what she saw was Mrs. Rane herself, and not her spirit. Yet Jelly knew that this could not be, and her imagination would turn to another wild improbability, though she dared not follow it--that the poor lady had not died a natural death. One night there came surging into Jelly's brain the suggestive case put by Timothy Wilks, that some men might be found who would put their wives out of the way for the sake of the tontine money. Jelly tossed from side to side in her uneasy bed, and stared at the candle--for she no longer cared to sleep in the dark--and tried to get rid of the wicked notion. But she never got rid of it again; and when she rose in the morning, pale, and trembling, and weary, she believed that the dread mystery had solved itself to her, and would be found in this.

What ought she to do? Going about that day as one in a dream, the question continually presented itself to her. Jelly was at her wits' end with indecision: at night resolving to tell of the apparition, and of her suspicion of Dr. Rane; in the morning putting the thoughts from her, and call herself a fool for yielding to them. Dinah could not make out what ailed her, she was so strange and silent, but privately supposed it might be the condition of Mr. Timothy Wilks. For that gentleman was confined to his bed with some attack connected with the liver.

Wednesday, the day of the funeral, drew on. It had been a little retarded to allow of the return of Richard North. News had been received of him the morning after Bessy's death. It may readily be imagined what Richard's consternation and grief must have been to hear of his sister's death; whom he so recently left well, happy, and as likely to live as he himself.

The funeral was fixed for twelve o'clock. Richard only arrived the same morning at ten. He had been delayed twelve hours by the state of the sea, the Ostend boat not having been able to put out. Jelly, in her superstition, thought the elements had been conspiring to keep Richard North from following one to the grave who had not been sent to it by Heaven.

Long before twelve o'clock struck, groups had formed about the churchyard. The men, out on strike, and their wives, were there in full force: partly because it was a break to their monotonous idleness, partly out of respect to their master. The whole neighbourhood sincerely regretted Bessy Rane, who had never made an enemy in her life.

In the church people of the better class assembled, all in mourning. Mrs. Gass was in her pew, in an upright bonnet and crape flowers. Seeing Jelly come in looking very woebegone, she hospitably opened the pew door to her. And this was close upon the arrival of the funeral.

The first to make his appearance was Thomas Hepburn in his official capacity; quite as woebegone as Jelly, and far more sickly. The rest followed. The coffin, which Mrs. Gass had seen the other day, was placed on its stand; for the few last words of this world to be read over it. Dr. Rane, as white as a sheet; and Mr. North, leaning on his son Richard's arm, comprised the followers. No strangers were invited: Dr. Rane thought, considering what Bessy had died of, that they might not care to attend. People wondered whether Captain Bohun had been bidden to it. If so, he certainly had not come.

It seemed only a few minutes before they were moving out of the church again. The grave had been dug in the corner of the churchyard, near to Edmund North's: and he, as may be remembered, lay next to his mother. Mrs. Gass and Jelly took their seats on a remote bench, equally removed from the ceremony and the crowd. The latter stood at a respectful distance, not caring, from various considerations, to approach too near. Not a word had the two women as yet spoken to each other. The bench they sat on was low, and overshadowed by the trees that bordered the narrow walks. Not ten people in the churchyard were aware that any one sat there. Jelly was the first to break the silence.

"How white he looks!"

It was rather abrupt, as Mrs. Gass thought. They could see the clergyman in his surplice through the intervening trees, and the others standing bare-headed around him.

"Do you mean the doctor, Jelly?"

"Yes," said Jelly, "I mean him."

"And enough to make him, poor berefted man, when the one nearest and dearest to him is suddenly cut off by fever," gravely rejoined Mrs. Gass. "In the midst of life we are in death."

Now, or never. Sitting there alone with Mrs. Gass, surrounded by these solemn influences, Jelly thought the hour and the opportunity had come. Bear with the secret much longer, she could not; it would wear her to a skeleton, worry her into a fever perhaps; and she had said to herself several times that Mrs. Gass, with her plain common sense, would be the best person to confide in. Yes, she mentally repeated, now or never.

"Was it the fever that cut her off?" began Jelly, significantly.

"Was it the fever that cut her off?" echoed Mrs. Gass. "What d'you mean, Jelly?"

Jelly turned to the speaker, and plunged into her tale. Beginning, first of all, with the apparition she had certainly seen, and how it was--staying late at Ketler's, and Dinah's having left the blind undrawn--that she had come to see it. There she paused.

"Why, what on earth d'you mean?" sharply demanded Mrs. Gass. "Saw Mrs. Rane's ghost! Don't be an idiot, Jelly."

"Yes, I saw it," repeated Jelly, with quiet emphasis. "Saw it as sure as I see them standing there now to bury her. There could be no mistake. I never saw her plainer in life. It was at one o'clock in the morning, I say, Mrs. Gass; and she was screwed down at twelve: an hour before it."

"Had you taken a little too much beer?" asked Mrs. Gass, after a pause, staring at Jelly to make sure the question would not also apply to the present time. But the face that met hers was strangely earnest: too much so even to resent the insinuation.

"It was her ghost, poor thing: and I'm afraid it'll walk till justice lays it. I never knew but one ghost walk in all my life, Mrs. Gass: and he had been murdered."

Mrs. Gass made no rejoinder. She was absorbed in looking at Jelly. Jelly went on--

"It's said there's many that walk: the world's full of such tales; but I never knew but that one. When people are put to an untimely end, and buried away out of sight, and their secrets with 'em, it stands to reason that they can't rest quiet in their graves. She won't."

Mrs. Gass put her hand impressively on Jelly's black shawl, and kept it there. "Tell me why you are saying this?"

"It's what I want to do. If I don't tell it to some one, I shall soon be in the grave myself. Fancy me living at the very next door, and nobody in the house just now but Dinah!"

Jelly spoke out all: that she believed Dr. Rane might have "put his wife out of the way." Mrs. Gass was horrified. Not at the charge: she didn't believe a word of it; but at Jelly's presuming to imagine it. She gave Jelly a serious reprimand.

"It was him that wrote that anonymous letter, you know," whispered Jelly.

"Hush! Hold your tongue, girl. I've warned you before to let that alone."

"And I'm willing to do so."

"That is downright wicked of you, Jelly. Dr. Rane loved his wife. What motive do you suppose he could have had for killing her?"

"To get the tontine money," replied Jelly, in a whisper.

The two women gazed at each other; gaze meeting gaze. And then Mrs. Gass suddenly grew whiter than Dr. Rane, and began to shiver as though some strange chill had struck her.

[CHAPTER XVII.]

AT SIR NASH BOHUN'S

Reclining on the pillows of an invalid chair was Arthur Bohun, looking as yellow as gold, recovering from an attack of jaundice. The day of James Bohun's funeral it had poured with rain; and Arthur, standing at the grave, had caught a chill. This had terminated in the jaundice--his unhappy state of mind no doubt doing its part towards bringing on the malady. He was recovering now. Sir Nash, at whose house he lay, was everything that was kind.

Madam was kind also: at least she made a great profession of being so. Her object in life just now was to get her son to marry Miss Dallory. Madam cared no more for her son Arthur or his welfare than she did for Richard North; but she was shrewd enough to foresee that the source, whence her large supplies of money had hitherto been drawn, was now dried up: and she hoped to get supplies out of Arthur for the future. Marrying an heiress, wealthy as Miss Dallory, would wonderfully increase his power to help her. Moreover, she wished to be effectually relieved from that horrible nightmare that haunted her still--the possibility of his marrying Ellen Adair.

So madam laid her plans--as it was in her scheming nature ever to be laying them--and contrived to bring Miss Dallory, at that time in London with her aunt, to Sir Nash Bohun's for a few days' visit when Arthur was recovering. The young lady was there now: and Matilda North was there; and they both spent a good part of every day with Arthur; and Sir Nash made much of Mary Dallory, partly because he really liked her, and partly because he thought there was a probability that she would become Arthur's wife. During his illness, Captain Bohun had had time for reflection: not only time, but calmness, in the lassitude it brought to him mentally and physically: and he began to see his immediate way somewhat clearer. To give no explanation to the two ladies at Eastsea, to whom he was acting, as he felt, so base a part, was the very worst form of cowardice; and, though he could not explain to Ellen Adair, he was now anxious to do so to Mrs. Cumberland. Accordingly the first use he made of his partially-recovered health, was to ask for writing materials and write her a note in very shaky characters. He spoke of his serious illness, stated that certain "untoward circumstances" had occurred to intercept his plans, but that as soon as he was sufficiently well to travel he should beg of her to appoint a time when she could allow him a private conference.

The return post brought him a letter from Ellen. Rather to his consternation. Ellen assumed--not unnaturally, as the reader will find--that the sole cause of his mysterious absence was illness; that he had been ill from the first, and unable to travel. It ran as follows:--

"My Dearest Arthur,

"I cannot express to you what my feelings are this morning; so full of joy, yet full of pain. Oh I cannot tell you what the past two or three weeks have been to me; looking back, it almost seems a wonder that I lived through them. For I thought--I will not say here what I thought, and perhaps I could not say, only that you were never coming again; and that it was agony to me, worse than death. And to hear now that you could not come: that the cause of your silence and absence has been dangerous illness, brings to me a great sorrow and shame. Oh Arthur, my dearest, forgive me! Forgive also my writing to you thus freely; but it almost seems to me as though you were already my husband. Had you been called away only half-an-hour later you would have been, and perhaps even might have had me with you in your illness.

"I should like to write pages and pages, but you may be too ill yet to read very much, and so I will say no more. May God watch over you and bring you to health again.

"Ever yours, Arthur, yours only, with the great love of my heart,

"Ellen Adair."

And Captain Arthur Bohun, in spite of the cruel fate that had parted them, pressed the letter to his heart, and the sweet name, Ellen Adair--sweeter than any he would ever hear again--to his lips, and shed tears of anguish over it in the feebleness induced by illness.

They might take Mary Dallory to his room as much as they pleased; and Matilda might exert her little wiles in praising her, and madam hers to leave them "accidentally" together; but his heart was too full of another, and of its own bitter pain, to have room for as much as a responsive thought to Mary Dallory.

"Arthur is frightfully languid and apathetical!" spoke Miss North one day in a burst of resentment. "I'm sure he is quite rude to me and Mary: he lets us sit by him for an hour at a time, and never speaks."

"Consider how ill he has been--and is," remonstrated Sir Nash.

Mrs. Cumberland's span of life was drawing into a very narrow space: and it might be that she was beginning to suspect this. For some months she had been growing inwardly weaker; but the weakness had for a week or two been visibly and rapidly increasing. Captain Bohun's unaccountable behaviour had tried her--for Ellen's sake. She was responsible to Mr. Adair for the welfare of his daughter, and the matter was a source of daily and hourly annoyance to her. When this second tardy note arrived, she considered it, in one sense, a satisfactory explanation; in another, not so: since, if Captain Bohun had been too ill to write himself, why did he not get some one else to write to her and say so? However, she was willing to persuade herself that all would be right: and she told Ellen, without showing her the note, that Captain Bohun had been dangerously ill, unable to come or write. Hence Ellen's return letter.

But, apart from the progress of the illness in itself, nothing had done Mrs. Cumberland so much harm as the news of her daughter-in-law's death. It had been allowed to reach her abruptly, without the smallest warning. I suppose there is something in our common nature that urges us to impart sad tidings to others. Dinah, Jelly's friend and underling, was no exception to this rule. On the day after the death, she sat down and indited a letter to her fellow-servant, Ann, at Eastsea, in which she detailed the short progress of Mrs. Rane's illness, and her strangely sudden death. Ann, before she had well mastered the cramped lines, ran with white face to her mistress; and Miss Adair afterwards told her that she ought to have known better. That it was too great a shock for Mrs. Cumberland in her critical state, the girl in her repentance very soon saw. Mrs. Cumberland asked for the letter, and scarcely had it out of her hand for many hours. Dead! apparently from no sufficient cause; for the fever had lasted only a day, Dinah said, and had gone again. Mrs. Cumberland, in her bewilderment, began actually to think the whole thing was a fable.

Not for two or three days did she receive confirmation from Dr. Rane. Of course the doctor did not know or suppose that any one else would be writing to Eastsea; and he was perhaps willing to spare his mother the news as long as he could do so. He shortly described the illness--saying that he, himself, had entertained very little hope from the first, from the severity of the fever. But all this did not help to soothe Mrs. Cumberland; and in the two or three weeks that afterwards went on, she faded palpably. Little wonder the impression, that she was growing worse, made its way to Dallory.

[CHAPTER XVIII.]

JELLY'S TROUBLES

With the same rapidity that the sickness had appeared, so did it subside in Dallory. Mrs. Rane's was the last serious case: the last death; the very few cases afterwards were of the mildest description; and within a fortnight of the time that ill-fated lady was laid in the ground, people were restoring their houses and throwing their rooms open to the renewed air.

The inhabitants in general, rallying their courage, thought the sooner they forgot the episode the better. Excepting perhaps by the inmates of those houses from which some one had been taken, they did soon forget it. It was surprising--now that fear was at an end and matters could be summed up dispassionately--how few the losses were. With the exception of Henry Hepburn the undertaker and Mrs. Rane, they were entirely amongst the poor working people out on strike, and, even here, were principally amongst the children. Mrs. Gass told men to their faces that the fever had come of nothing but famine and poverty, and that they had only themselves to thank for it. She was in the habit, as the reader knows, of dealing some home truths out to them: but she had dealt out something else during the sickness, and that was wholesome food. She continued to do so still to those who had been weakened by it: but she gave them due warning that it was only temporary help, which, but for the fever, they would never have received from her. And so the visitation grew into a thing of the past, and Dallory was itself again.

One, there was, however, who could not forget: with whom that unhappy past was present night and day. Jelly. That Dr. Rane had in some way wilfully caused the death of his wife, Jelly was as sure of as though she had seen it done. Her suspicion pointed to laudanum; or to some equally fatal preparation. Suspicion? Nay, with her it had become a certainty. In that last day of Bessy Rane's life, when she was described as sleeping, sleeping, always sleeping; when her sole cry had been--"I am easy, only let me sleep," Jelly now felt that Dr. Rane knew she had been quietly sleeping away to death. Unerringly as though it had been written with the pen of truth, lay the conviction upon her heart. About that, there could be neither doubt nor hesitation: the difficulty was--what ought to be her own course in the matter?

In all Jelly's past life she had never been actually superstitious; if told that she was so now, she would have replied that it was because circumstances had forced it upon her. That Mrs. Rane's spirit had appeared to her that memorable night for one sole purpose--that she, Jelly, should avenge her dreadful end by publicly disclosing it, Jelly believed as implicitly as she believed in the Gospel. Not a soul in the whole wide world but herself (saving of course Dr. Rane) had the faintest idea that the death was not a natural one. Jelly moaned and groaned, and thought her fate unjustly hard that she should have been signalled out by Heaven--for so she solemnly put it--for the revelation, when there were so many others in the community of Dallory who might have done it better than herself. Jelly had periods of despondency, when she did not quite know whether her head was on or off, or whether her mind wouldn't "go." Why couldn't the ghost have appeared to some one else, she would mentally ask at these moments: to Phillis, say; or to Dinah; or to Seeley the surgeon? Just because she had been performing an act of charity in sitting up with Keller's sick child, it must show itself to her! And then Jelly's brain would go off into problems, that it might have puzzled one wiser than she to answer. Supposing she had not been at Ketler's that night, the staircase blind would have been drawn at dusk as usual, she would have gone to bed at her ordinary hour, have seen, nothing, and been spared all this misery. But no. It was not to be. And although Jelly, in her temper, might wish to throw the blame on Ketler for staying out, and on Dinah for her negligence, she recognized the finger of Destiny in all this, and knew she could not have turned aside from it.

What was she to do? Living in constant dread of again seeing the apparition, feeling a certainty within herself that she should see it, Jelly pondered the question every hour of the day. Things could not rest as they were. On the one hand, there was her natural repugnance to denounce Dr. Rane: just as there had been in the case of the anonymous letter: not only because she was in the service of his mother, but for his own sake; for Jelly, with all her faults, as to gossip and curiosity, had by no means a bad heart. On the other hand, there was the weighty secret revealed to her by the departed woman, and the obligation laid upon her in consequence. Yet--how could she speak?--when the faintest breath of such an accusation against her son, would assuredly kill Mrs. Cumberland in her present critical state! and to Jelly she was a good and kind mistress. No, she could never do it. With all this conflict going on within her, no wonder Jelly fell away: she had been thin enough before, she was like a veritable skeleton now. As to the revelation to Mrs. Gass, Jelly might just as well have made it to the moon. For that lady, after the first shock had passed, absolutely refused to put any faith in the tale: and had appeared ever since, by her manner, to ignore it as completely as though it had never been uttered.

Gradually Jelly grew disturbed by another fear: might she not be taken up as an accomplice after the fact? She was sure she had heard of such cases: and she tormented Tim Wilks almost out of patience--that gentleman having recovered from his temporary indisposition--by asking endless questions as to what the law might do to a person who found out that another had committed some crime, and kept back the knowledge: say stolen a purse, for instance, and appropriated the money.

One night, when Jelly, by some fortunate chance, had really got to sleep early--for she more often lay awake until morning--a ring at the door-bell suddenly roused her. Mrs. Cumberland had caused a night-bell to be put to the door: in case of fire, she had said. It hung on this first landing, not very far from Jelly's head, and it awoke her instantly. Dinah, sleeping above, might have heard it just as well as Jelly; but Dinah was a sound sleeper, and the bell, as Jelly knew, might ring for an hour before it awoke her. However, Jelly lay still, not caring to get up herself, hoping against hope, and wondering who in the world could be ringing, unless it was some one mistaking their house for Dr. Rane's. Such a thing had happened before.

Ring; ring; ring. Not a loud ring by any means; but a gentle peal, as if the applicant did it reluctantly. Jelly lay on. She was not afraid that it was connected with the sight she was always in dread of again seeing, since ghosts are not in the habit of ringing to announce their visits. In fact, surprise, and speculating as to who it could be, put all fear for the time being out of Jelly's head.

Ring; ring; ring. Rather a louder peal this time, as if a little impatience now mingled with the reluctance.

Flinging on a warm shawl, and putting her feet into her shoes, Jelly proceeded to the front-room--Mrs. Cumberland's chamber when she was at homo--threw up the window, and called to know who was there. A little man, stepping back from the door into the bright moonlight, looked up to answer--and Jelly recognized the form and voice of Ketler.

"It's me," said he.

"You!" interrupted Jelly, not allowing the man to continue. "What on earth do you want here at this hour?"

"I came to tell you the news about poor Cissy. She's dead."

"Couldn't it wait?" tartly returned Jelly, overlooking the sad nature of the tidings in her anger at having been disturbed. "Would it have run away, that you must come and knock folks up to tell it, as if you'd been the telegraph?"

"It was my wife made me come," spoke Ketler, with much humility. "She's in a peck o' grief, Jelly, and nothing would do but I must come right off and tell you; she thought, mayhap, you'd not be gone to bed."

"Not gone to bed at midnight!" retorted Jelly. "And there it is, striking: if you've any ears to hear. You must be a fool, Ketler."

"Well, I'm sorry to have disturbed you," said the man, with a sigh. "I wouldn't have done it myself; but poor Susan was taking on so, I couldn't deny her. We was all so fond of the child; and--and----"

Ketler broke down. The man had loved his child: and he was weak and faint with hunger. It a little appeased Jelly.

"I suppose you don't expect me to dress myself and come off to Susan at this hour?" she exclaimed, her tone, however, not quite so sharp as it had been.

"Law, bless you, no," answered Ketler. "What good would that do? It couldn't bring Cissy back to life again."

"Ketler, it's just this--instead of being upset with grief, you and Susan might be thankful the child's taken out of the trouble of this world. She won't be crying for food where she's gone, and find none."

The man's grief was renewed at the last suggestion. But Jelly had really meant it in the light of consolation.

"She was your god-child, Jelly."

"You needn't tell me that," answered Jelly. "Could I have saved her life at any trouble or cost, I would have done it. If I had a home of my own I'd have taken her to it, but I'm only in service, as you know. Ketler, it is the strike that has killed that child."

Ketler was silent.

"Cissy was a weakly child and required extra comforts; as long as you were in work she had them, but when that dropped off, of course the child suffered. And now she's gone. She is better off, Ketler."

"Yes," assented the man as if he were heartbroken. "If it wasn't for the thought of the rest, I should wish it was me that was gone instead."

"Well, give my love to Susan and say I'm sorry for it altogether, and I'll come down some time in the morning. And, look here, Ketler--what about the money for the burial? You've nothing towards it, I expect."

"Not a penny," moaned Ketler.

"Well, I know you wouldn't like the poor little thing to be buried by the parish, so I'll see what's to be done, tell Susan. Goodnight."

Jelly shut down the window sharply. She really looked upon the strike as having led to the child's death--and remotely possibly it had done so; so what with that, and the untimely disturbance, her anger was somewhat excusable.

In passing across the landing to her own chamber, the large window became suddenly illuminated. Jelly stopped. Her heart, as she would herself have expressed it, leaped into her mouth. The light came from the outside; no doubt from Dr. Rane's. Jelly stood motionless. And then--what desperate courage impelled her she never knew, but believed afterwards it must have been something akin to the fascination of the basilisk--she advanced to the window, and drew aside the white blind.

But she did not see Bessy Rane this time, as perhaps she had expected; only her husband. Dr. Rane had a candle in his hand, and was apparently picking up something he had dropped quite close to his own window. In another moment he lodged the candle on a chair that stood there, so as to have both hands at liberty. Jelly watched. What he had dropped appeared to be several articles of his deceased wife's clothing, some of which had unfolded in the fall. He soon had them within his arm again, caught up the candle, and went downstairs. Jelly saw and recognized one beautiful Indian shawl, which had been a present from her own mistress to Bessy.

"He is going to pack them up and sell them, the wicked man!" spoke Jelly in her conviction. And her ire grew very great against Dr. Rane. "I'd almost rather have seen the spirit of his poor wife again than this," was her comment, as she finally went into her room.

Putting aside all the solemn doubts and fears that were making havoc with Jelly's mind, her curiosity was insatiable. Perhaps no woman in all Dallory had so great a propensity for prying into other people's affairs as she. Not, it must be again acknowledged, to harm them, but simply to gratify her inquisitiveness.

On the following morning, when Jelly attired herself to go to Ketler's after breakfast--the meal being seasoned throughout with reproaches to Dinah for not hearing the night-bell--she bethought herself that she would first of all step into the next door. Ostensibly with the neighbourly object of informing Phillis of the death of the child; really, to pick up any items of information that might be floating about. Dr. Rane, it may be here remarked, had given Molly Green a character to get herself another situation, preferring to retain the elder servant, Phillis, who, however, only went to him by day. The doctor was alone in his house at night, and Jelly believed he dared not have even old Phillis in, knowing it was haunted. He made no secret now of his intention of quitting Dallory. As soon as his practice should be disposed of, and the tontine money paid over to him, away he would go.

Jelly coolly walked out of the window of Mrs. Cumberland's dining-room, and through that of the doctor's. She had seen him go out some little time before. Phillis was upstairs, putting her master's chamber to rights, and Jelly sought her there. She described the fright Ketler had given her by coming at midnight to bring the news about Cissy; and Phillis, whose heart was tender, dropped a tear or two to the child's memory. Cissy had been loved by every one.

"Miss Dallory will be sorry to hear this when she comes back," remarked Phillis.

"I say, Phillis, what does your master mean to do with Mrs. Rane's clothes?" abruptly asked Jelly.

Phillis, dusting the looking-glass at the moment, paused in her occupation, as if considering.

"I'm sure I don't know, Jelly, He pointed out a few of the plain things to me one day, and said I might divide them between myself and Molly Green, but that he wouldn't like to see us wear them till he was gone away. As of course we shouldn't, being in black for her."

"She had lots of beautiful clothes. I'm sure the shawls, and scarfs, and embroidered robes, and worked petticoats, and other valuable Indian things that my mistress was always giving her, would have set up any lady's wardrobe. What will he do with them?"

Phillis shook her head, and pointed to a high chest of drawers. Her heart was full yet when she spoke of her late mistress.

"They are all in there, Jelly."

Are they, thought Jelly. But Phillis was going down now, her occupation ended. Jelly lingered behind, and put her black bonnet out at the window, as if looking at something up the road. When Phillis had descended the stairs, Jelly tried the drawers. All were locked except one. That one, which Jelly softly drew open, was filled with articles belonging to the late Mrs. Rane; none of them, as far as Jelly could gather by the cursory glance, of much value.

"Yes," she said bitterly. "He keeps these open for show, but he is sending away the best. Those other drawers, if they could be looked into, are empty."

If ever Jelly had been startled in all her life at human footstep, it was to hear that of Dr. Rane on the stairs. How she closed the drawer, how she got her bonnet stretched out at the window again as far as it would stretch, she hardly knew. The doctor came in. Jelly, bringing in her head, apparently as much surprised as if a rhinoceros had walked into the room, apologized and explained rather lamely. She supposed Phillis must have gone down, she said, while she was watching that impudent butcher's boy; she had made bold to step up to tell Phillis about Ketler's little girl.

"Ah, she is gone," observed Dr. Rane, as Jelly was walking out. "There has been no hope of her for some time."

"No, sir, I know there hasn't," replied Jelly, somewhat recovering her equanimity. "I told Ketler that he may thank the strike for it."

Jelly got out with this, and was passing through the grey room, when the doctor spoke again.

"Have you heard from your mistress this morning, Jelly?"

"No, sir."

"Well, I have. I am very much afraid that she is exceedingly ill, Jelly?"

"Dinah had a letter from Ann a day or two ago, sir; she said that her missis was looking worse, and seemed lower than she had ever known her."

"Ay, I wish she would come home. Eastsea is far away, and I cannot be running there everlastingly," added the doctor, as he closed the chamber-door in Jelly's face.

[CHAPTER XIX.]

COMING HOME TO DIE

Time went on again; nearly a fortnight. Dallory had relapsed into its old routine; the fever was forgotten. Houses had recovered from the aroma of soap and scrubbing: their inhabitants were back again; and amongst them were Mrs. North and her daughter Matilda.

The principal news madam found to interest her was, that Richard North had opened the works again. The glow of hope it raised within her was very bright; for she considered it as an earnest that supplies would spring up again in the future as they had in the past. That she would find herself mistaken was exceedingly probable; Richard himself could have said a certainty. Madam had the grace to express some calm regret for the untimely death of Bessy Rane, in the hearing of Mr. North and Richard; she had put herself and Matilda into deeper mourning than they had assumed for James Bohun. It was all of the most fashionable and costly description; and the master of Dallory Hall, poor helpless man, had the pleasure of receiving the bills for it from the London court-milliners and dressmakers. But madam never inquired into the particulars of Bessy's illness and death; in her opinion the less fevers were talked about the better.

Yes: the North works were reopened. Or, to be quite correct, they were on the point of being reopened. Upon how small a scale he must begin again, Richard, remembering the extent of past operations, felt almost ashamed to contemplate. But, as he good-humouredly remarked, half a loaf was better than no bread. He must earn a living; he had no fortune to fly to; and he preferred doing this to seeking employment under other firms, if indeed anything worth having could have been found; but the trade of the country was in a most depressed state, and hundreds of gentlemen, like himself, had been thrown on their beam ends. It was the same thing as beginning life over again; a little venture, that might succeed or might fail; one in which he must plod on carefully and cautiously, even to keep it going.

The whole staff of operatives would at first number less than twenty. The old workmen, idly airing themselves still in North Inlet, laughed derisively when they heard this. They were pleasantly sarcastic over it, thinking perhaps to conceal their real bitterness of heart. The new measure did not find favour with them. How should it, when they stood out in the light of exclusion? Some eight or ten, who had never willingly upheld the strike, had all along been ready to return to work, would be taken on again; the rest were foreigners that Richard North was bringing over from abroad. And the anger of the disaffected may be imagined.

Mrs. Gass entered cordially into Richard's plans. She would have put unlimited money into his new undertaking; but Richard would not have it. Some portion of her capital that had been embarked in the firm of North and Gass, of necessity remained in it--all, in fact, that was not lost--but this she counted as nothing, and wanted to help Richard yet further. "It's of no good crying over spilt milk, Mr. Richard," she said to him, philosophically; "and I've still a great deal more than I shall ever want." But Richard was firm: he would receive no further help: it was a risk that he preferred to incur alone.

Perhaps there were few people living that Richard North liked better than Mrs. Gass. He even liked her homely language; it was honest and genuine; far more to be respected than if she had made a show of attempting what she could not have kept up. Richard had learned to know her worth: he recognized it more certainly day by day. In the discomfort of his home at Dallory Hall--which had long been anything but a home to him--he had fallen into the habit of almost making a second home with Mrs. Gass. Never a day passed but he spent an hour or two of it with her; and she would persuade him to remain for a meal as often as she could.

He sat one afternoon at her well-spread tea-table. His arrangements were very nearly organized now; and in a day the works would open. The foreign workmen had arrived, and were lodging with their families in the places appointed for them. Two policemen, employed by Richard, had also taken up their position in Dallory, purposely to protect them. Of course their mission was not known: Richard North would not be the one to provoke hostilities; but he was quite aware of the ill-feeling obtaining amongst his former workmen.

"Downright idiots, they be," said Mrs. Gass, confidentially, as she handed Richard a cup of tea. "They want a lesson read to 'em, Mr. Richard; that's what it is."

"I don't know about that," dissented Richard. "It seems to me they could hardly receive a better lesson than these last few months must have taught them."

"Ah, you don't know 'em as I do. I'm almost double your age, sir; and there's nothing gives experience like years."

Richard laughed. "Not double my age yet, Mrs. Gass."

"Anyway, I might have been your mother--if you'll excuse my saying it," she contended. "You're hard upon thirty-three, and I'm two years turned fifty."

In this homely manner Mrs. Gass usually liked to make her propositions undeniable. Certainly she might, in point of age, have been Richard's mother.

"I know the men better than you do, Mr. Richard; and I say they want a lesson read to 'em yet. And they'll get it, sir. But we'll leave the subject for a bit, if you please. I've been tired of it for some time past, and I'm sure you have. To watch once sensible men acting like fools, and persisting in doing it, in spite of everybody and everything, wearies one's patience. Is it tomorrow that you open?"

"The day after."

"Well, now, Mr. Richard, I should like to say another word upon a matter that you and me don't agree on--and it's not often our opinions differ, is it, sir? It's touching your capital. I know you'll want more than you can command: it would give me a real pleasure if you'll let me find it."

Richard smiled, and shook his head, "I cannot say more than I have said before," was his reply. "You know all I have urged."

"Promise me this, then," returned Mrs. Gass. "If ever you find yourself at a pinch as things go on, you'll come to me. I don't ask this, should the concern turn out a losing one, for in that case I know cords wouldn't draw you to me for help. But when you are getting on, and money would be useful, and its investment safe and sure, I shall expect you to come to me. Now, that's enough. I want to put a question, Mr. Richard, that delicacy has kept me from worrying you about before. What about the expenses at Dallory Hall? You can't pretend to keep 'em up yourself."

"Ah," said Richard, "that has been my nightmare. But I think I see a way through it at last. First of all, I have given notice to Miss Dallory that we shall not renew the lease: it will expire, you know, next March."

"Good," observed Mrs. Gass.

"My father knows nothing about it--it is of no use troubling him earlier than is necessary; and of course madam knows nothing. She imagines that the lease will be renewed as a matter of course. Miss Dallory will, at my request, keep counsel--or, rather, her brother Francis for her, for it is he who transacts her business."

"They know then that you are the real lessee of Dallory Hall? Lawk a mercy, what a simpleton I am!" broke off Mrs. Gass. "Of course they must have known it when the transfer was made."

Richard nodded. "As soon as Christmas is turned I shall look out for a moderate house in lieu of the Hall; one that I shall hope to be able to keep up. It shall have a good garden for my father's sake. There will be rebellion on the part of madam and Matilda, but I can't help that. I cannot do more than my means will allow me."

"See here, Mr. Richard; don't worry yourself about not being able to keep up a house for Mr. North. I'll do my part in that: do it all, if need be. He and my husband were partners and friends, and grew rich together. Mr. North has lost his savings, but I have kept mine; and I will never see him wanting comfort while he lives. We'll look out for a pretty villa with a lovely garden; and he'll be happier in it than he has ever been in that grand Hall. If madam doesn't like to bring her pride down to it, let her go off elsewhere--and a good riddance of bad rubbish.--Mr. Richard, have you heard the news about Mary Dallory?"

"What news?" he asked.

"That she's going to be married to Captain Bohun."

Richard North drank his tea to the dregs. His face had flushed a little.

"I hear that madam wishes it, and is working for it," he answered. "Miss Dallory was staying with them when they were at Sir Nash Bohun's."

"I know madam has given it out that they're going to marry," rejoined Mrs. Gass. "By the way, Mr. Richard, how is Captain Bohun getting on, after his illness?"

"He is better. Almost well."

Mrs. Gass helped herself to some buttered toast. "I shall believe in that marriage when it has taken place, Mr. Richard; not before. Unless I am uncommonly out, Captain Bohun cares for another young lady too well to think of Mary Dallory. Folks mayn't suspect it; and I believe don't. But I have had my eyes about me."

Richard knew that she alluded to Ellen Adair.

"They are both as sweet and good girls as ever lived, and a gentleman may think himself lucky to get either of 'em. Mr. Richard, your coat-sleeve is coming into contact with the potted-ham."

Richard smiled a little as he attended to his cuff. Mourning was always bad wearing, he remarked, and showed every little stain. And then he said a few words about her for whom it was worn. He had rarely alluded to the subject since she died.

"I cannot grow reconciled to her loss," he said in low tones. "At times can scarcely believe in it. To have been carried off after only a day's fever seems to me incredible."

And Mrs. Gass felt that the words startled her to pallor. She turned away lest he should see the change in her countenance.

Bad news arrived from Mrs. Cumberland. Only a morning or two later, a loud knock at the front-door disturbed Jelly and Dinah at their breakfast. Upon its being opened by the latter, Dr. Rane walked straight into the kitchen without ceremony, an open letter in his hand. Jelly rose and curtsied. She had been markedly respectful to the doctor of late, perhaps in very fear lest he should suspect the curious things that were troubling her mind.

"My mother will be home to-night, Jelly."

"To-night, sir!" exclaimed Jelly in her surprise.

"She is much worse. Very ill indeed. She says she is coming home to die."

Jelly was startled out of her equanimity.

"It is only three lines, and she writes herself," continued Dr. Rane, just showing the letter in his hand, as if in confirmation. "They were to go to London yesterday, remain there the night, and will come home to-day. Of course you will have everything in readiness."

"Yes, sir. And what about meeting my mistress at the station?"

"I shall go myself," said Dr. Rane.

He went away with the last words. Jelly sat still for a few minutes to digest the news, and came to the conclusion that "coming home to die" was a mere figure of speech of Mrs. Cumberland's. Then she rose up to begin her preparations, and overwhelmed and bewildered Dinah with a multitude of orders.

During the day, Jelly, in pursuance of something or other she wanted, was walking quickly towards Dallory, when in passing the Hall gates she found herself accosted by Mrs. North. Madam was taking her usual promenade in the grounds, and had extended it to the gates. Jelly stood still in sheer amazement; it was the first time within her recollection that madam had condescended to address her or any other inhabitant of the neighbourhood.

How was Mrs. Cumberland?--and where was she? madam graciously asked. And Jelly in the moment's haste, answered that she was at Eastsea.

"To stay the winter, I believe," went on madam. "And Miss Adair--is she with her?"

"I ought to have said was at Eastsea," corrected Jelly, who did not like madam well enough to be more than barely civil to her. "My mistress is worse, and is coming home to-day. Miss Adair is with her of course. I must wish you good-morning, madam; I've all my work before me to-day." And away went Jelly, leaving madam a mental compliment:

"Nasty proud cat! she had some sly motive for asking, I know."

And so the day went on.

The early twilight of the autumn evening was beginning to fall, together with a heavy shower of rain, when the carriage containing Mrs. Cumberland stopped at her door. Jelly ran out; and was met by Ellen Adair, who spoke in a startled whisper.

"Oh, Jelly, she is so ill! too ill to speak."

The doctor stood helping his mother out. Ann was gathering up small articles from beside the driver. Jelly caught one glimpse of her mistress's face and fell back in alarm. Surely that look was the look of death!

"She ought not to have come," murmured Dr. Rane in Jelly's ear. "Go and ask Seeley to step over--whilst I get my mother upstairs."

There was bustle and confusion for the moment. Mrs. Cumberland was placed in the easy-chair in her room, and her bonnet and travelling wraps were removed. She refused to go to bed. In half-an-hour or so, when she had somewhat recovered the fatigue, she looked and seemed much better, and spoke a little, expressing a wish for some tea. The doctors left her to take it, enjoining strict quiet. Jelly was near her mistress, holding the cup and saucer.

"What did she die of, Jelly?" came the unexpected question.

"Who?" asked Jelly, wonderingly.

Mrs. Cumberland motioned in the direction of her son's house: and her voice was subdued to faintness: "Bessy Rane."

Jelly gave a start that almost upset the teacup. She felt her face grow white; but she could not move to conceal it.

"Why don't you reply? What did she die of?"

"Ma'am, don't you know? She caught the fever."

"It troubles me, Jelly; it troubles me. I've done nothing but dream about her ever since. And what will Oliver do without her?"

The best he can, Jelly had a great mind to answer. But all she said, was, to beg her mistress to leave these questions until the morning.

"I don't think any morning will dawn for me," was Mrs. Cumberland's remark. "I sent you word I was coming home to die. I wanted to come for many reasons. I knew the journey would do me harm; I had put it off too long. But I had to come home: I could not die away from it."

Every consoling thing that Jelly could think of, she said, assuring her mistress it was nothing but the journey that had brought her into this state of depression.

"I want to see Mr. North," resumed Mrs. Cumberland. "You must bring him to me."

"Not to-night," said Jelly.

"To-night. At once. There is no time to be lost. To see him was one of the things I had to come home for."

And Mrs. Cumberland, ill though she was, was as resolute in being obeyed as she had ever been in the days of her health. Jelly had the sense to know that refusal would excite her more than any result from compliance, and prepared to obey. As she passed out of the presence of Mrs. Cumberland, she saw Ellen Adair sitting on the stairs, anxiously listening for any sound from the sick-room that might tell how all was going on within it.

"Oh, Miss Ellen! You should not be there."

"I cannot rest anywhere, Jelly. I want to know how she is. She is my only friend on this side of the wide world."

"Well now, Miss Ellen, look here--you may come in and stay with her, whilst I am away: I was going to call Ann. But mind you don't talk to her."

Hastily throwing on a shawl, Jelly started for Dallory Hall. It was an inclement night, pouring with rain. And Ellen Adair took up her place in silence by the side of the dying woman--for she was dying, however ignorant they might be of the fact. Apart from Ellen's natural grief for Mrs. Cumberland, thoughts of what her own situation would be, if she lost her, could but intrude on her mind, bringing all sorts of perplexity with them. It seemed to her that she would be left without home or protector in the wide world.

[CHAPTER XX.]

RICHARD NORTH'S REVELATION

For a wonder, the dinner-table at Dallory Hall included only the family-party. Madam headed it; Mr. North was at the foot; Richard on one side; Matilda on the other. Scarcely a word was being spoken. Madam was in one of her imperious humours--when, indeed, was she out of them?--the servants waited in silence.

Suddenly there rang out a loud peal from the hall-bell. Richard, who was already beginning to be disturbed by vague fears as to what his ex-workmen's hostilities might make them do, sat back in his chair absently, and turned his head.

"Are you expecting any one, Dick?" asked his father.

"No, sir. Unless it be a message to call me out."

It was, however, a message for Mr. North; not for Richard. Mrs. Cumberland wanted to see him. "On the instant," the servant added: for so Jelly had imperatively put it.

Mr. North laid down his knife and fork and looked at the man. He did not understand.

"Mrs. Cumberland is at Eastsea," he cried.

"No, sir, she has just got home, and she wants to see you very particular. It's the lady's maid who has brought the message."

"Mr. North cannot go," broke forth madam to the servant. "Go and say so."

But Jelly, to whom the words penetrated as she stood in the hall, had no notion of her mistress's wishes being set at nought by madam. Jelly had a great deal of calm moral and physical courage--in spite of the supernatural terrors that had recently influenced her--some persons might have said her share of calm impudence also: and she made no ceremony of putting her black bonnet inside the room.

"My mistress is dying, sir; I don't think there can be a doubt of it," she said, advancing to Mr. North. "She wishes to say a few last words to you, if you'll please to come. There's no time to be lost, sir."

"Bless me!--poor Fanny!" cried Mr. North, rising: his hands beginning to tremble a little. "I'll come at once, Jelly."

"You will not go," spoke madam, as if she were issuing an imperial edict.

"I must go," said Mr. North. "Don't you hear, madam, that she is dying?"

"I say you shall not go."

"The wishes of the dying must be respected by the living," interposed Jelly, still addressing Mr. North. "Otherwise there's no telling what ghosts might haunt 'em after."

The words were somewhat obscure, but their meaning was sufficiently plain. Mr. North took a step or two towards the door: madam came quickly round and placed herself before him.

"My will is law in this house, and out of it you do not go."

For a minute or two Mr. North looked utterly helpless; then cast an appealing look at his son. Richard rose, laying down his table-napkin.

"Leave the room for an instant," he quietly said to the servants, including Jelly. And they filed out.

"My dear father, is it your wish to see Mrs. Cumberland?"

"Oh, Dick, you know it is," spoke the poor brow-beaten man. "There's little left to me in life to care for now; but if I let her die without going to her there'll be less."

"Then you shall go," said Richard. Madam turned to him in furious anger.

"How dare you attempt to oppose me, Richard North? I say your father shall not go forth at the beck and call of this crazy woman."

"Madam, I say he shall," calmly spoke Richard.

"Do you defy me? Has it come to that?"

"Why yes, if you force it upon me: it is not my fault. Pardon me if I speak plainly--if I set you right upon one point, madam," he added. "You have just said your will is law in the house and out of it: in future it must, on some occasions, yield to mine. This is one of them. My father will go to Mrs. Cumberland's. Say no more, madam: it will be useless; and I am about to admit the servants."

From sheer amazement madam was silent. The resolution born of conscious power to will and to execute lay in every tone and glance of Richard North. Before she could rally her energies, the door was opened to the servants, and she heard Richard's order to make ready and bring round the close carriage. Instantly.

"Mr. North will be with your mistress as soon as you are, Jelly," said he. And Jelly curtsied as she took her departure.

But a scene ensued. Madam had called Mrs. Cumberland a crazy woman: she seemed nothing less herself. Whatever her private objection might have been to her husband's holding an interview with Mrs. Cumberland--and there could be no doubt that she had one--Richard fairly thought she was going mad in her frenzied attempts to prevent it. She stamped, she raved, she threatened Mr. North, she violently pushed him into his chair, she ordered the servants to bar the house doors against him; she was in fact as nearly mad, as a woman out of an asylum could be. Matilda cried: indifferent as that young lady remained in general to her mother's ordinary fits of temper, she was frightened now. The servants collected in dark nooks of the hall, and stood peeping; Mr. North stole into his parlour, and thence, by the window, to a bench in the garden, where he sat in the dark and the rain, trembling from head to foot. Of his own accord he had surely never dared to go, after this: but Richard was his sheet anchor. Richard alone maintained his calm equanimity, and carried matters through. The servants obeyed his slightest word; with sure instinct they saw who could be, and was, the Hall's real master: and the carriage came to the door.

But all this had caused delay. And yet more might have been caused--for what will an unrestrained and determined woman not do--but that just as the wheels, grating on the wet gravel struck on madam's ear, her violence culminated in a species of fainting-fit. For the time at least she could not move, and Richard took the opportunity to conduct his father to the carriage. It was astonishing how confidingly the old man trusted to Richard's protection.

"Won't you come also, Dick? I hardly dare go alone. She'd be capable of coming after me, you know."

Richard's answer was to step in beside his father. It was eight o'clock when they reached Mrs. Cumberland's. Jelly, with a reproachful face, showed them into a sitting-room.

"You can't go up now, sir; you will have to wait!" said she.

"Is she any better?" asked Richard.

"She's worse," replied Jelly; "getting weaker and weaker with every quarter-of-an-hour. Dr. Rane thinks she'll last till morning. I don't. The clergyman's up there now."

And when the time came for Mr. North to be introduced into the room, Mrs. Cumberland was almost beyond speaking to him. They were alone--for she motioned others away. Mr. North never afterwards settled with himself what the especial point could have been that she had wished to see him upon; unless it was the request that he should take charge of Ellen Adair.

Her words were faint and few, and apparently disjointed, at times seeming to have no connection one with another. Mr. North--sitting on a chair in front of her, holding one of her hands, bending down his ear to catch what fell from her white lips--thought her mind wandered a little. She asked him to protect Ellen Adair--to take her home to the Hall until she should be claimed by her husband or her father. It might be only a few days, she added, before the former came, and he would probably wish the marriage to take place at once; if so, it had better be done. Then she went on to say something about Arthur Bohun, which Mr. North could not catch at all. And then she passed abruptly to the matter of the anonymous letter.

"John, you will forgive it! You will forgive it!" she implored, feebly clasping the hand in which hers lay.

"Forgive it?" returned Mr. North, not in dissent but in surprise that she should allude to the subject.

"For my sake, John. We were friends and playfellows in the old days--though you were older than I. You will forgive it, John, for my sake; because I am dying, and because I ask it of you?"

"Yes, I will," said John North. "I don't think as much about it as I did," he added. "I should like to forgive every one and everything before I go, Fanny; and my turn mayn't be long now. I forgive it heartily; heartily," he repeated, thinking to content her. "Fanny, I never thought you'd go before me."

"God bless you! God reward you," she murmured. "There was no ill intention, you know, John."

John North did not see why he merited reward, neither could he follow what she was talking about. It might be, he supposed, one of the hallucinations that sometimes attend the dying.

"I'll take every care of Ellen Adair: she shall come to the Hall and stay there," he said, for that he could understand, "I promise it faithfully, Fanny."

"Then that is one of the weights off my mind," murmured the dying woman. "There were so many on it. I have left a document, John, naming you and Richard her guardians for the time being. She's of good family, and very precious to her father. There has been so short a time to act in: it was only three or four days ago that I knew the end was coming. I did not expect it would be quite so soon."

"It mostly come when it's not expected," murmured poor John North: "many of us seem to be going very near together. Edmund first; then Bessy; now you, Fanny: and the next will be me. God in His mercy grant that we may all meet in a happier world, and be together for ever!"

Richard North had remained below in the dining-room with Ellen Adair. The heavy crimson curtains were drawn before the large garden window, a bright fire blazed in the grate. Ellen in her black dress, worn for Bessy, sat in the warmth: she felt very chilly after her journey, was nervous at the turn the illness seemed to be taking; and every now and then a tear stole silently down her sweet face. Richard walked about a little as he glanced at her. He thought her looking, apart from the present sorrow, pale and ill. Richard North was deliberating whether to say a word or two upon a matter that puzzled him. He thought he would do so.

"I have been across the Channel, you know, Ellen, since you left for Eastsea," he began. He had grown sufficiently intimate at Mrs. Cumberland's since his enforced term of idleness, to drop the formal "Miss Adair" for her Christian name.

"Yes, we heard of it. You went to engage workmen, did you not?"

"For one thing. When I returned home, I found a letter or two awaiting me from Arthur Bohun, who was then at Eastsea. Madam had opened one of them."

Ellen looked up, and then looked down again immediately. Richard North saw a change pass over her face, as though she were startled.

"I could not quite understand the letters; I think Arthur intended me not to fully understand them. They spoke of some--some event that was coming off, at which he wished me to be present."

Ellen saw that he did understand: at least, that he believed he did. She rose from her seat and went close to him, speaking in agitation.

"Will you grant me a request, Richard? I know you can be a firm friend; you are very true. Do not ever think of it again--do not speak of it to living man or woman."

"I presume it did not take place, Ellen."

"No. And the sooner it is altogether forgotten, the better."

He took her hand between his, and drew her to the fire. They stood before it side by side.

"I am glad you know that I am your firm and true friend, Ellen; you may trust me always. It is neither idle curiosity nor impertinence that makes me speak. Madam stopped it, I conclude."

"I suppose so. She came and fetched him away; James Bohun was dying and wanted him. Since then I--I hardly know. He never came down again. He has been ill."

"Yes, very ill. Let him regain his health, and it will be all right. That's all, my dear. I should like to take care of you as though you were my sister."

"Care!" she replied. "Oh, Richard, I don't see what will become of me, or where I shall go. They say Mrs. Cumberland will not live till morning; and papa, you know, is so far away."

Jelly appeared with some coffee; and stayed for a minute or two to gossip, after the bent of her own heart. The carriage and the horses were waiting outside in the rain. Dr. Rane came in and out, in his restlessness. It was an anxious night for him. He would--how willingly!--have restored his mother for a time, had human skill alone been able to do it.

Before the interview with Mr. North was over--and it did not last twenty minutes--Mrs. Cumberland had changed considerably. Her son went into the room as Mr. North left it; and he saw at once how fallacious was the hope he had entertained of her lasting until morning.

Poor Mr. North, broken alike in health and heart, weak in spirit almost as a child, burst into tears as soon as he entered the dining-room. Richard spoke a few soothing words to him: Ellen Adair, who had rarely, if ever, seen a man shed tears, stood aghast.

"They are all going, Dick," he sobbed; "all going one by one. Fanny and I were almost boy and girl together. I loved the child; she was as pretty a little thing as you'd ever wish to see. She was younger than me by a good deal, and I never thought she'd go before me. There'll be only you left, Dick; only you."

Ellen touched Richard's arm: she held a cup of coffee in her hand. "If he can take it, it may do him good," she whispered.

Mr. North drank the coffee. Then he sat awhile, breaking out ever and anon with reminiscences of the old days. Presently Richard reminded him that the carriage was waiting; upon which Mr. North, who had quite forgotten the fact, rose in nervous agitation.

"I should like to know how she is before I go, Dick," he said. "Whether there's any change."

A change indeed. Even as the words left his lips, some slight commotion was heard in the house, following upon Dr. Rane's voice, who had come out of the chamber. The last moment was at hand. Ellen Adair went up, and Jelly went up. Mr. North said he must wait a little longer.

In five minutes all was over. Ellen Adair, brought down by Dr. Rane, was overcome with grief. Mr. North said she should go back with them to the Hall, and bade Jelly put up what she might immediately require. At first Ellen refused: it seemed strangely sudden, almost unseemly, to go out of the house thus hurriedly; but when she came to reflect how lonely and undesirable would be her position if she remained there, she grew eager to go. To tell the truth, she felt half afraid to remain: she had never been in personal contact with death, and the feeling lay upon her as a dread.

So a small portmanteau was hastily repacked--not an hour had elapsed since it was unpacked--and taken out to the carriage, Jelly undertaking to send the larger box in the morning. And Ellen was driven to the Hall with Mr. North and Richard.

"I am glad to come," she said to them, in her emotion. "It is so very kind of you to receive me in this extremity."

"Not at all, my dear," answered Mr. North. "The Hall will be your home until we receive instructions from your father. Mrs. Cumberland has appointed me and Richard as your temporary guardians: I was telling Dick so when you were upstairs."

Ellen broke down afresh, and said again and again how kind it was of them. Richard North felt that he loved her as dearly as a sister.

But there would be words to the bargain: they had not taken madam into consideration. The idea that she would object to it never occurred to Mr. North or Richard; madam was so very fond of having company at Dallory Hall. When the coachman, tired of being in the wet, dashed up to the door, and they descended and entered into the blaze of light, and madam, standing a little back, saw the young lady and the luggage, her face was a picture.

"What does this intrusion mean?" she demanded, slowly advancing.

"It means, madam, that Mrs. Cumberland is dead, and that she has left Miss Adair in my charge and in Dick's for a bit," answered Mr. North with trembling courtesy, remembering the frightful mood he had escaped from. Whilst Richard, catching madam's ominous expression, hastily took Ellen into the drawing-room, introduced her to Matilda, and closed the door on them.

"You say Mrs. Cumberland is dead!" had been madam's next words to Mr. North.

"Yes, she's dead. It has been terribly sudden."

"What did she want with you?" resumed madam, her voice lowered almost to a whisper; and, but that Mr. North was not an observant man, he might have seen her very lips grow white with some dread suspense.

"I don't know what she wanted," he replied--"unless it was a promise that I would take care of Miss Adair. She was almost past speaking when I went up to her; things had made me late, madam."

"Did she--did she---- By the commotion that woman, Jelly, made, one would have supposed her mistress had some great secret to impart," broke off madam. "Had she?"

"Had who?" asked Mr. North, rather losing the thread of the dialogue.

"Mrs. Cumberland," said madam, with a slight stamp. And, in spite of her assumed carelessness, she watched her husband's face for the answer as if she were watching for one of life or death. "Did she impart to you any--any private matter?"

"She had none to impart, madam, that I am aware of. I shouldn't think she had. She rambled in her talk a bit, as the dying will do; about our old days, and about the anonymous letter that killed Edmund. There was nothing else, except that she wanted me to take temporary charge of Miss Ellen Adair, until we can hear from her father."

Mr. North was too simply honest to deceive, and madam believed him. Her old arrogance resumed its sway as fear died out.

"What did she tell you about the father?"

"Nothing; not a word, madam: what should she? I tell you mind and speech were both all but gone. She rambled on about the old days and the anonymous letter and I couldn't follow her even in that, but she said nothing else."

All was right then. The old will and the old arrogance reasserted themselves; madam was herself again.

"Miss Adair goes back to Mrs. Cumberland's to-night," said she. "I do not receive her, or permit her to remain here."

"What?" cried Mr. North; and Richard, who had just entered, stood still to listen. "Why not, madam?"

"Because I do not choose to," said madam. "That's why."

"Madam, I wouldn't do it for the world. Send her back to the house with the dead lying in it, and where she'd have no protector! I couldn't do it. She's but a young thing. The neighbours would cry shame upon me."

"She goes back at once," spoke madam in her most decisive tones. "The carriage may take her, as it rains; but back she goes."

"It can't be, madam, it can't, indeed. I'm her guardian, now, and responsible for her. I promised that she should stay at Dallory Hall."

And madam went forth with into another of her furious rages; she stamped and shook with passion. Not at being thwarted: her will was always law, and she intended it to be so now; but at Mr. North's attempting to oppose it.

"You were a fool for bringing her at all, knowing as you might that I should not allow her to stay here," raved madam. "The hall is mine: so long as I am mistress of it, no girl that I don't choose to receive shall find admittance here. She goes lack at once."

Mr. North seemed ready to fall. The look of despair, piteous in its utter helplessness, came into his face. Richard drew nearer, and caught his expression. All this had taken place in the hall under the great lamp.

"Dick, what's to be done?" wailed Mr. North. "I should die of the shame of turning her out again. I wish I could die; I've been wishing it many times to-night. It's time I was gone, Dick, when I've no longer a roof to offer a poor young lady for a week or two's shelter."

"But you have one, my dear father. At least I have, which comes to the same thing," added Richard, composed as usual. "Madam"--politely, but nevertheless authoritatively, taking madam's hand to lead her into the dining-room--"will you pardon me if I interfere in this?"

"It is no business of yours," said madam.

"Excuse me, madam, but it is. I think I had better take it on myself exclusively, and relieve my father of all trouble--for really, what with one thing and another, he is not capable of bearing much more."

"Oh, Dick, do; do!" interposed poor Mr. North, timidly following them into the dining-room. "You are strong, Dick, and I am weak. But I was strong once."

"Madam," said Richard, "this young lady, Miss Adair, will remain at the Hall until we receive instructions from her father."

Madam was turning livid. Richard had never assumed such a tone until to-night. And this was the second time! She would have been glad to strike him. Had he been some worthless animal, her manner could not have expressed more gratuitous contempt.

"By what right, pray, do you interfere?"

"Well, madam, Mrs. Cumberland expressed a wish that I, as well as my father, should act as Miss Adair's guardian."

"There's a document left to that effect," eagerly put in Mr. North.

"And what though you were appointed fifty times over and and fifty to that; do you suppose it would give you the right to bring her here--to thrust her into my home?" shrieked madam. "Do not believe it, Richard North."

"Madam," said Richard, quietly, "the home is mine."

"On sufferance," was the scornful rejoinder. "But I think the sufferance has been allowed too long."

"You have known me now many years, madam: I do not think in all those years you have found me advance a proposition that I could not substantiate. In saying the home here was mine I spoke what is literally true. I am the lessee of Dallory Hall. You and my father----My dear father"--turning to him--"I know you will pardon me for the few plain words I must speak----are here on sufferance. My guests, as it were."

"It is every word Gospel truth," spoke up poor Mr. North, glad that the moment of enlightenment had at length come. "Dick holds the lease of Dallory Hall, and he is its real master. For several years now we have all been pensioners on his bounty. He has worked to keep us, madam, in this his own house; and he has done it nobly and generously."

It seemed to madam that her brain suddenly reeled, for the words brought conviction with them. Richard the master! Richard's money that they had been living upon!

"I am grieved to have been obliged to state this, madam," Richard resumed. "I shall wish never to allude to it again, and I will continue to do the best I can for all. But--in regard to Miss Ellen Adair, she must remain here, and she shall be made welcome."

[CHAPTER XXI.]

UNDER THE SAME ROOF

A crafty and worldly-wise woman, like Mrs. North, can change her tactics as readily as the wind changes its quarters. The avowal of Richard, that he was the master of Dallory Hall, so far as holding all power went--had been the greatest blow to her of any she had experienced in all these later years. It signed, as she perceived, the death-warrant of her own power; for she knew that she should never be allowed to rule again with an unjust and iron hand, as it had been her cruel pleasure to do. In all essential things, where it was needful to interfere, she felt that Richard's will and Richard's policy would henceforth outweigh her own.

Madam sat in her dressing-room that night, mentally looking into the future. It was very dim and misty. The sources whence she had drawn her exorbitant supplies were gone; her power was gone. Would it be worth while to remain at the Hall, she questioned, under the altered circumstances. Since the death of James Bohun, and her short sojourn with Sir Nash, an idea had occasionally crossed her mind that it might be desirable to take up her residence with the baronet--if she could only accomplish it. From some cause or other she had formerly not felt at ease when with Sir Nash; but that was wearing off. At any rate, a home in his well-appointed establishment would be far preferable to Dallory if its show and luxury could not be kept up; and all considerations gave way before madam's own selfish interest.

Already madam tasted of deposed power. Ellen Adair was to remain at the Hall, and--as Richard had emphatically enjoined--was to be made welcome. Madam gnashed her teeth as she thought of it. Ellen Adair, whom she so hated and dreaded! She lost herself in a speculation of what Richard might have done had she persisted in her refusal.

But as madam sat there, a doubt slowly loomed into her mind, whether it might not, after all, be the better policy for Ellen Adair to be at the Hall. The dread that Arthur Bohun might possibly renew his wish to marry her, in spite of all that had been said and done, occasionally troubled madam. In fact it had never left her. She could not make a child again of Arthur and keep him at her apron-string: he was free to go where he would; no matter in what spot of the habitable globe Ellen might be located, no earthly power could prevent his going to her if he wished to do so. Why then, surely it was better that the girl should be under her own eye, and in her own immediate presence. Madam laughed a little as she rose from her musings; she could have found it in her heart to thank Richard North for bringing this about.

And so, with the morning, madam was quite prepared to be gracious to Ellen Adair. Madam was one of those accommodating people who are ready, as we are told, to hold a candle to a certain nameless personage, if they think their interest may be served by doing it. Matilda North, who knew nothing whatever of madam's special reasons for disliking Miss Adair--saving that she had heard her mother once scornfully speak of her as a nameless young woman, a nobody--was coldly civil to her on Richard's introduction. But the sweet face, the gentle voice, the refined bearing, won even on her; and when the morning came Matilda felt rather glad that the monotony of the Hall was to be relieved by such an inmate, and asked her all about the death of Mrs. Cumberland.

And thus Ellen Adair became an inmate of Dallory Hall. But Mrs. North had not bargained for a cruel perplexity that was to fall upon her ere the day was over: no less than the return of Captain Bohun.

It has been mentioned that Sir Nash was ailing. In madam's new scheme, undefined though it was at present--that of possibly taking up her residence in his house--she had judged it well to inaugurate it by trying to ingratiate herself into his favour so far as she knew how. She would have liked to make herself necessary to him. Madam had heard a whisper of his going over to certain springs in Germany, and as she knew she should never get taken with him there, though Arthur might, she schemed a little to keep him in England. During the concluding days of her stay, Sir Nash had been overwhelmed with persuasions that he should come down to Dallory Hall, and get up his health there. To hear madam, never had so salubrious a spot been discovered on earth as Dallory; its water was pure, its air a tonic in itself; for rural quiet, for simple delight, it possessed attractions never before realized saving in Arcadia. Sir Nash, in answer to all this, had not given the least hope of trying its virtues; and madam had finally departed believing that Dallory would never see him.

But on the morning after Ellen Adair's arrival, madam, amongst other letters, received one addressed in her son Arthur's handwriting. According to her frequent habit of late--though why she had fallen into it she could not have told--she let her letters lie, unheeded, until very late in the morning. Just before luncheon she opened them; Arthur's the last: she never cared to hear from him. And then madam opened her eyes as well as her letter. She read, that Sir Nash had come to a sudden resolution to accept her hospitality for a short time, and that he and Arthur would be with her that day. At this very moment of reading, they were absolutely on their road to Dallory Hall.

Madam sat staring. Could she prevent it, was her first thought. It was very undesirable that they should come. Ellen Adair was there; and besides, after this new and startling revelation of Richard's, madam was not quite sure that she might continue to crowd the house with guests. But there was no help for it; ransack her fertile brain as she would, there seemed no possible chance of preventing the travellers' arrival. Had she known where a message would reach them, she might have telegraphed that the Hall was on fire, or that fever had broken out in it.

Mrs. North was not the first who has had to make the best of an unlucky combination of circumstances. She gave orders to her servants to prepare for the reception of the guests: and descended to the luncheon-table with a smooth face, saying not a word. Richard was out, or she might have told him: he was so busy over the reopening of those works of his, that he was now only at home night and morning. It happened, however that on this day he had occasion to come home for some deed that lay in his desk.

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon--a showery one--and Richard North was quickly approaching the gates of the Hall, when he saw some one approaching them more leisurely from the other side. It was Mary Dallory. He did not know she had returned; and his face had certainly a flush of surprise on it, as he lifted his hat to her.

"I arrived home yesterday evening," she said, smilingly. "Forced into it. Dear old Frank wrote the most woebegone letters imaginable, saying he could not get on without me."

"Did you come from Sir Nash Bohun's?" asked Richard.

"Sir Nash Bohun's! No. What put that into your head? I was at Sir Nash Bohun's for a few days some ages ago--weeks, at any rate, as it seems to me--but not lately. I have been with my aunt in South Audley Street."

"London must be lively at this time," remarked Richard rather sarcastically; as if, like Francis Dallory, he resented her having stayed there.

"Very. It is, for the tourists and people have all come back to it. I suppose you would have liked me to remain here and catch the fever. Very kind of you! I was going in to see your father."

He glanced at her with a half smile, and held out his arm after passing the gates.

"I am not sure that I shall take it. You have been quite rude, Mr. Richard."

Richard dropped it at once, begging her pardon. His air was that of a man who has received a disagreeable check. But Miss Dallory had only been joking; she glanced up at him, and a hot flush of vexation overspread her face. Richard held it out once more, and they began talking as they went along. Rain was beginning to fall, and he put up his umbrella.

He told her of Mrs. Cumberland's death. She had not heard of it, and expressed her sorrow. But she had had no acquaintance with Mrs. Cumberland, could not remember to have seen her more than once, and that was more than three years ago: and the subject passed.

"I hear you have begun business again," she said.

"Well--I might answer you as Green, my old timekeeper, answered me to-day. I happened to say to him, 'We have begun once more, Green.' 'Yes, in a sort of way, sir,' said he, gruffly. I have begun 'in a sort of way,' Miss Dallory."

"And what 'sort of way,' is it?"

"In as cautious and quiet a way as it is well possible for a poor man to begin," answered Richard. "I have no capital, as you must be aware; or at least, as good as none."

"I dare say you could get enough of that if you wanted it. Some of your friends have plenty of it, Mr. Richard."

"I know that. Mrs. Gass quarrels with me every day, because I will not take hers, and run the risk of making ducks and drakes of it. No. I prefer to feel my way; to stand or fall alone, Miss Dallory."

"I have heard Richard North called obstinate," remarked the young lady, looking into the air.

"When he believes he is in the right. I don't think it is a bad quality, Miss Dallory. My dear sister Bessy used to say----"

"Oh! Richard--what of Bessy?" interrupted Miss Dallory, all ceremony thrown to the winds. "I never was so painfully shocked in my life as when I opened Frank's letter telling me she was dead. What could have killed her?"

"It was the fever, you know," answered Richard, sadly. "I shall never forget what I felt when I heard it. I was in Belgium."

"It seemed very strange that she should die so quickly."

"It seems strange to me still. I have not cared to talk about her since: she was my only sister and very dear to me. Rane says it was a most violent attack: and I suppose she succumbed to it quickly, without much struggle."

"That poor little Cissy Ketler is gone, too."

"Yes."

"Is Ketler one of the few men who have gone back to work?"

"Oh dear, no!"

The rain had ceased: but they were walking on, unconsciously, under the umbrella. By-and-by the fact was discovered, and the umbrella put down.

"Who's this?" exclaimed Richard. "Visitors for madam, I suppose."

Richard alluded to the sound of carriage-wheels behind. He and Miss Dallory had certainly not walked as though they were winning a wager, but they were close to the house now; and reached its door as the carriage drew up. Richard stood in very amazement, when he saw its inmates--Arthur, thin and sallow: and Sir Nash Bohun.

There was a hasty greeting, a welcome, and then they all entered together. Madam, Matilda, and Miss Adair were in the drawing-room. Arthur came in side by side with Miss Dallory; they were talking together, and a slight flush illumined his thin face. Ellen, feeling shy amongst them all, remained in the background: she would not press forward: but a general change of position brought her and Arthur close to each other; and she held out her hand timidly, with a rosy blush.

He turned white as death. He staggered back as though he had seen a spectre. Just for a minute he was utterly unnerved; and then, some sort of presence of mind returning to him, he looked another way without further notice, and began talking again to Miss Dallory. But Miss Dallory had no longer leisure to waste on him. She had caught sight of Ellen, whom she had never seen, and was wonderfully struck by her. Never in her whole life had she found a face so unutterably lovely.

"Mr. Richard"--touching his arm, as he stood by Arthur Bohun--"who is that young lady?"

"Ellen Adair."

"Is that Ellen Adair? What a sweet face! I never saw one so lovely. Do take me to her, Richard."

Richard introduced them. Arthur Bohun, his bosom beating with shame and pain, turned to the window: a faintness was stealing over him; he was very weak still. How he loved her!--how he loved her! More; ay, ten times more, as it seemed to him, than of yore. And yet, he must only treat her with coldness; worse than if she and he were strangers. What untoward mystery could have brought her to Dallory Hall? He stole away, on the plea of looking for Mr. North. Madam, who had all her eyes about her and had been using them, followed him out.

There was a hasty colloquy. He asked why Miss Adair was there. Madam replied by telling (for once in her life) the simple truth. She favoured him with a short history of the previous night's events that had culminated in Richard's assertion of will. The girl was there, as he saw, concluded madam, and she could not help it.

"Did Mrs. Cumberland before she died reveal to Miss Adair what you told me about--about her father?" inquired Arthur, from between his dry and feverish lips.

"I have no means of knowing. I should think not, for the girl betrays no consciousness of it in her manner. Listen, Arthur," added madam, impressively laying her hand on his arm. "It is unfortunate that you are subjected to being in the same house with her; but I cannot, you perceive, send her away. All you have to do is to avoid her; never allow yourself to enter into conversation with her; never for a moment remain alone with her. You will be safe then."

"Yes, it will be the only plan," he mechanically answered, as he quitted madam, and went on his way.

Meanwhile Ellen Adair little thought what cruelty was in store for her. Shocked though she had been in the first moment by Arthur Bohun's apparent want of recognition, it was so improbable a rudeness from him, even to a stranger, that she soon decided he had purposely not greeted her until they should be alone, or else had really not recognized her.

In crossing the Hall an hour later, Ellen met him face to face. He was coming out of Mr. North's parlour as she was passing it. No one was about; they were quite alone.

"Arthur," she softly said, smiling at him and putting out her hand.

He went red and white, and hot and cold. He lifted his hat, which he was wearing, having come in through the glass-doors, and politely murmured some words that sounded like "I beg your pardon:" but he did not attempt to touch her offered hand. And then he turned and traversed the room back to the garden.

It seemed as though she had received her death-blow. There could no longer be any doubt or misapprehension after this, as to what the future was to be. And Ellen Adair crept into the empty drawing-room, and leaned her aching brow against the window frame.

Presently Matilda North entered. The young lady had her curiosity even as her mother, and fancied some one was in sight.

"What are you looking at, Miss Adair?"

"Nothing," answered Ellen, lifting her head. And in truth she had not been looking out at all.

"Ah! I see," significantly spoke Miss North.

Walking slowly side by side along a distant path, went Captain Bohun and Miss Dallory. Matilda, acting on a hint from madam, would not lose the opportunity.

"Captain Bohun is losing no time, is he?"

"In what way?" inquired Ellen.

"Don't you know that they are engaged? He is to marry Miss Dallory. We had all kinds of love passages, I assure you, when he was ill at my uncle's, and she was there helping me to nurse him."

It was a wicked and gratuitous lie: there had been no "love passages" or any semblance of them. But Ellen believed it.

"Do you say they are engaged?" she murmured.

"Of course they are. It will be a love match too, for he is very fond of her--and she of him. I think Richard was once a little bit touched in that quarter; but Arthur has won. Sir Nash is very pleased at Arthur's choice; and mamma is delighted. They are both very fond of Mary Dallory."

And that ceremony, all but completed, only a few weeks ago in the church at Eastsea!--and the ring and licence she held still!--and the deep, deep love they had owned to each other, and vowed to keep for ever--what did it all mean? Ellen Adair asked the question of herself in her agony. And as her heart returned the common-sense answer--fickleness: faithlessness--she felt as if a great sea were sweeping away hope and peace and happiness. The iron had entered into her soul.

[CHAPTER XXII.]

TANGLED THREADS

It was a curious position, that of some of the present inmates of Dallory Hall. Sir Nash Bohun, who went down to accompany Arthur more than anything else, and who had not intended to remain above a day or two, stayed on. The quiet life after the bustle of London was grateful to him; the sweet country air really seemed to possess some of the properties madam had ascribed to it. Sir Nash was to go abroad when the genial springtime should set in, and try the effect of some medicinal waters. Until then, he was grateful for any change, any society that served to pass away the time.

Sir Nash had been as much struck with the wonderful beauty of Ellen Adair as strangers generally were. That she was one of those unusually sweet girls, made specially to be loved, he could not fail to see. In the moment of their first arrival, he had not noticed her: there were so many besides her to be greeted; and the appearance of Miss Dallory amongst them was a most unexpected surprise. Not until they were assembling for dinner, did Sir Nash observe her. His eyes suddenly rested on a most beautiful girl in a simple black silk evening dress, its low body and sleeves edged with white tulle, and a black necklace on her pretty neck. He was wondering who she could be, when he heard Richard North speak of her as Ellen Adair. Sir Nash drew Arthur Bohun to the far end of the drawing-room, ostensibly to look at a rare Turner hanging on the walls.

"Arthur, who is she? It cannot be Adair's daughter?"

"Yes, sir, it is."

"Mercy be good to her!" cried Sir Nash in dismay. "What a calamity! She looks absolutely charming; fitted to mate with a prince of the blood-royal."

"And she is so."

"To have been born to an inheritance of shame!" continued Sir Nash. "Poor thing! Does she know about it?"

"No, I am sure she does not," replied Arthur warmly, his tone one of intense pain. "She believes her father to be as honourable and good as you are yourself, sir."

For the very fact of Ellen's having put out her hand to him in the hall with that bright and confiding smile, had convinced Arthur Bohun that at present she knew nothing.

It made his own position all the worse: for, to her, his behaviour must appear simply infamous. Yet, how tell her? Here they were, living in the same house; and yet they could only be to each other as strangers. An explanation was due to Ellen Adair; but from the very nature of the subject, he could not give it. If he had possessed the slightest idea that she was attributing his behaviour to a wrong cause--an engagement with Miss Dallory--he would at least have set that right. But who was likely to tell him? No one. Madam and Matilda, be very sure, would not do so: still less would Ellen herself. And so the complication would, and must, go on; just as unhappy complications do sometimes go on. But there is this much to be said--that to have set straight the only point on which they were at cross purposes would not have healed the true breach by which the two were hopelessly separated.

And Sir Nash Bohun never once entered into any sort of intercourse with Ellen Adair. He would not, had he known it beforehand, have taken up his sojourn under the same roof with one whose father had played so fatal a part with his long-deceased brother: but circumstances had brought it about. In herself the young lady was so unobjectionable--nay, so deserving of respect and homage--that Sir Nash was won out of his intended coldness; and he would smile pleasantly upon her when paying her the slight, unavoidable courtesies of everyday life. But he never lingered near her, never entered into prolonged conversation: a bow or two, a good-morning and goodnight, comprised their acquaintanceship. He grew to pity her; almost to love her; and he relieved his feelings at least once a day in private by sending sundry unorthodox epithets after the man, William Adair, for blighting the name held by this fair and sweet young lady.

It was not a very sociable party, taken on the whole. Sir Nash had a sitting-room assigned him, and remained much in it: his grief for his son was not over, and perhaps never would be. Mr. North was often shut up in his parlour, or walking with bent head about the garden paths. Madam kept very much aloof, no one knew where; Matilda was buried in her French and English novels, or chattering above to madam's French maid. Richard was at the works all day. Ellen Adair, feeling herself a sort of interloper, kept her chamber, or went to remote parts of the garden and sat there in solitude. As to Arthur Bohun, he was still an invalid, weak and ill, and would often not be seen until luncheon or dinner-time. There was a general meeting at meals, and a sociable evening closed the day.

Madam had not allowed matters to take their course without a word from herself. On the day after Sir Nash and Arthur arrived, she came, all smiles and suavity, knocking at Ellen's chamber-door. She found that young lady weeping bitter tears--who stammered out, as she strove for composure, some excuse about feeling so greatly the sudden death of Mrs. Cumberland. Madam was gracious and considerate; as she could be when it pleased her: she poured some scent on her own white handkerchief, and passed it over Miss Adair's forehead. Ellen thanked her and smoothed her hair back, and dried her tears, and rose up out of the emotion as a thing of the past.

"I am sorry it should have happened that Sir Nash chose this time for his visit," spoke madam; "you might just now have preferred to be alone with us. Captain Bohun is still so very unwell that Sir Nash says he could but bring him."

"Yes," mechanically replied Ellen, really not knowing what she was assenting to.

"And Arthur--of course he was anxious to come; he knew Miss Dallory would be at home again," went on madam, with candour, like a woman without guile. "We are all delighted at the prospect of his marrying her. Before he was heir to the baronetcy, of course it did not so much matter how he married, provided it was a gentlewoman of family equal to the Bohuns. But now that he has come into the succession through poor James's death, things have changed. Did you know that Sir Nash has cut off the entail?" abruptly broke off madam.

Ellen thought she did. The fact was, Arthur had told Mrs. Cumberland of it at Eastsea: but Ellen did not understand much about entails, so the matter had passed from her mind.

"Cutting off the entail has placed Arthur quite in his uncle's hands," continued madam. "If Arthur were to offend him, Sir Nash might not leave him a farthing. It is fortunate for us all that Mary is so charming: Sir Nash is almost as fond of her as is Arthur. And she is a great heiress, you know: she must have at the very least three or four thousand a-year. Some people say it is more; the minority of the Dallory children was a long one."

"It is a great deal," murmured Ellen.

"Yes. But it will be very acceptable. I'm sure, by the way affairs seem to be going on with Mr. North and Richard, it seems as though Arthur would have us all on his hands. It has been a great happiness to us, his choosing Miss Dallory. I don't believe he thought much of her before his illness. She was staying with us in town during that time, and so--so the love came, and Arthur made up his mind. He had the sense to see the responsibility that James Bohun's death has thrown upon him, the necessity for making a suitable choice in a wife."

Ellen had learnt a lesson lately in self-control, and maintained her calmness. She did not know madam--except by reputation--quite as well as some people did, and believed she spoke in all sincerity. One thing she could not decide--whether madam had known of the projected marriage at Eastsea. She felt inclined to fancy that she had not done so, and Ellen hoped it with her whole heart. Madam lingered yet to say a few more words. She drew an affecting picture of the consolation this projected union brought her; and--as if she were addressing an imaginary audience--turned up her eyes and clasped her hands, and declared she must put it to the honour and good feeling of the world in general not to attempt anything by word or deed that might tend to mar this happy state of things. With that she kissed Ellen Adair, and said, now that she had apologized for their not being quite alone at the Hall and had explained how it happened that Sir Nash had come, she would leave her to dress.

The days went on, and Mary Dallory came on a visit to the Hall. Her brother Frances left home to join a shooting party, and madam seized the occasion to invite his sister. She came, apparently nothing loth; and with her a great trunkful of paraphernalia. Matilda North had once said, when calling Mary Dallory a flirt, that she would come fast enough to the Hall when Richard and Arthur were there. At any rate, she came now. After this, Arthur Bohun would be more downstairs than he was before; and he and she would be often together in the grounds; sitting on benches under the evergreens or strolling about the walks side by side. Sometimes Arthur would take her arm with an invalid's privilege; his limp at the present time more perceptible than it ever had been; and sometimes she would take his. Ellen Adair would watch them through the windows, and press her trembling fingers on her aching heart. She saw it all: or thought she did. Arthur Bohun had found that his future prospects in life depended very much upon his wedding Miss Dallory, or some equally eligible young lady; and so he had resolved to forget the sweet romance of the past, and accept reality.

She thought he might have spoken to her. So much was certainly due to her, who had all but been made his wife. His present treatment of her was simply despicable; almost wicked. Better that he had explained only as madam had done: what was there to prevent his telling her the truth? He might have said, ever so briefly: "Such and such things have arisen, and my former plans are frustrated, and I cannot help myself." But no; all he did was to avoid her: he never attempted to touch her hand; his eyes never met hers if he could help it. It was as though he had grown to despise her, and sought to show it. Had he done so? When Ellen's fears suggested the question--and it was in her mind pretty often now--she would turn sick with despair, and wish to die.

The truth was really this. Arthur Bohun, fearing he should betray his still ardent love, was more studiously cold to Ellen than he need have been. A strange yearning would come over him to clasp her to his heart and sob out his grief and tenderness: and the very fear lest he might really do this some day, lest passion and nature should become too strong for prudence, made him shun her and seem to behave, as Ellen felt and thought, despicably. He knew this himself; and he called himself far harder names than Ellen could have called him: a coward, a knave, a miserably-dishonoured man. And so, in this way things went on at Dallory Hall: and were likely to continue.

One afternoon, a few days after Mrs. Cumberland had been interred, Ellen went to see her grave. Madam, Miss Dallory, Matilda, and Sir Nash had gone out driving: Arthur had been away somewhere since the morning, Mr. North was busy at the celery-bed with his head gardener. There was only Ellen: she was alone and lonely, and she put her things on and walked through Dallory to the churchyard. She happened to meet three or four people she knew, and stayed to talk to them. Mrs. Gass was one; the widow of Henry Hepburn was another. But she made way at last, feeling a little shy at being out alone. When walking as far as Dallory Mrs. Cumberland had always caused a servant to attend her.

The grave was not far from Bessy Rane's. Ellen had no difficulty in distinguishing the one from the other, though as yet there was no stone to mark either. Mrs. Cumberland's was near that of the late Thomas Gass; Bessy's was close to Edmund North's. A large winter tree, an evergreen, overshadowed this corner of the churchyard, and she sat down on the bench that encircled the trunk. Bessy's grave was only a very few yards away.

She leaned her face on her hand, and was still. The past, the present, the future; Mrs. Cumberland, Bessy Rane, Edmund North; her own bitter trouble, and other things--all seemed to be crowding together tumultuously in her brain. But, as she sat on, the tumult cleared a little, and she lost herself in imaginative thoughts of that heaven where pain and care shall be no more. Could they see her? Could Mrs. Cumberland look down and see her, Ellen Adair, sitting there in her sorrow? A fanciful idea came to her that perhaps the dead were the guardian angels appointed to watch the living: to be "in charge over them, to keep them in all their ways." If so, who then was watching her?--It must be her own mother, Mary Adair. Could these guardian angels pray for them?--intercede with the mighty God and the Saviour that their sins here might be blotted out? How long Ellen was lost in these thoughts she never knew: but she wound up by crying quietly to herself, and she wondered how long it would be before she joined them all in heaven.

Some one, approaching from behind the tree, came round with a slow step and sat down on the bench. It was a gentleman in mourning; she could see so much, though he was almost on the other side of the tree, and had his back to her. Ellen found she had not been observed, and prepared to leave. Twilight had fallen on the dull evening. As she stooped to pick up her handkerchief, which had fallen, the intruder turned and saw her. Saw as well the tears on her face. It was Captain Bohun. He got up more quickly than he had sat down, intending no doubt to move away. But in his haste he dropped the stick that he had used for support in walking since his illness--and it fell close to Ellen's feet. She stooped in some confusion to pick it up, and so did he.

"Thank you--I beg your pardon," he said, with an air of humiliation so great that it might have wrung a tender heart to witness. And then he felt that he could not for very shame go off without some notice, as he had been attempting to do. Though why he stayed to speak and what he said, it might have puzzled him at the moment to tell. Instinct, more than reason, prompted the words.

"She was taken off very suddenly."

Though standing close to Bessy's grave, Ellen thought he looked across at Mrs. Cumberland's. And the latter had been last in her thoughts.

"Yes. I feared we should not get her home in time. And I feel sure that the journey was fatal to her. If she had remained quiet, she would not have died quite so soon."

"It was of Bessy I spoke."

"Oh--I thought you alluded to Mrs. Cumberland. Mrs. Cumberland's death has made so much difference to me, that I suppose my mind is much occupied with thoughts of her. This is the first time I have been here."

Both were agitated to pain: both could fain have pressed their hearts tightly to still the frightful beating there.

"Ellen, I should like to say a word to you," he suddenly exclaimed, turning his face to her for a moment, and then turning it away again. "I am aware that nothing can excuse the deep shame of my conduct in not having attempted any explanation before. To you I cannot attempt it. I should have given it to Mrs. Cumberland if she had not died."

Ellen made no answer. Her eyes were bent on the ground.

"The subject was so intensely painful and--and awkward--that at first I did not think I could have mentioned it even to Mrs. Cumberland. Then came my illness. After that, whilst I lay day after day, left to my own reflections, things began to present themselves in rather a different light; and I saw that to maintain silence would be the most wretched shame of all. I resolved to disclose everything to Mrs. Cumberland, and leave her to repeat it to you if she thought it well to do so--as much of it, at least, as would give you some clue to my strange and apparently unjustifiable conduct."

Ellen's eyes were still lowered, but her hands trembled with the violence of her emotion. She did not speak.

"Mrs. Cumberland's death, I say, prevented this," continued Captain Bohun, who had gathered a little courage now that the matter was opened: "and I have felt since in a frightful dilemma, from which I see no escape. To you I cannot enter on any explanation: nor yet am I able to tell you why I cannot. The subject is altogether so very painful----"

Ellen lifted her head suddenly. Every drop of blood had deserted her face, leaving it of an ashen whiteness. The movement caused him to pause.

"I know what it is," she managed to say from between her white and trembling lips.

"You--know it?"

"Yes. All."

Alas for the misapprehensions of this world. He was thinking only of the strange disclosure made to him concerning Mr. Adair; she only of his engagement to Miss Dallory. At her avowal a multitude of thoughts came surging through his brain. All! She knew all!

"Have you known it long?" he questioned in low tones.

"The time may be counted by days."

He jumped to the conclusion that Mrs. Cumberland had disclosed it to her on her death-bed. And Ellen's knowledge of it improved his position just a little. But, looking at her, at her pale sweet face and downcast eyes, at the anguish betrayed in every line of her countenance, and which she could not conceal, Arthur Bohun's heart was filled to overflowing with a strange pity, that seemed almost to reach the point of breaking. He drew nearer to her.

"Thank God that you understand, Ellen--that at least you do not think me the shameless scoundrel I must otherwise have appeared," he whispered, his voice trembling with its deep emotion. "I cannot help myself: you must see that I cannot, as you know all. The blow nearly killed me. My fate--our fate, if I may dare still so far to couple your name with mine--is a very bitter one."

Ellen had begun to shiver. Something in his words grated terribly on her ear: and pride enabled her to keep down outward emotion.

"You left the ring and licence with me," she abruptly said, in perhaps a sudden bitterness of temper. "What am I to do with them?"

"Burn them--destroy them," he fiercely replied. "They are worthless to us now."

But he so spoke only in his anguish. Ellen interpreted it differently.

"God help us both, Ellen! A cruel fate has parted us for this world: but we may be permitted to be together in the next. It is all my hope now. Heaven bless you, Ellen! Our paths in life must lie apart, but I pray always that yours may be a happy one."

Without further word, without touching her hand, thus he left her. Limping on to the broad path, and then down it towards the churchyard gate.

There are moments into which a whole lifetime of agony seems to be compressed. Such a moment was this for Ellen Adair. Darkness was coming on rapidly now, but she sat on, her head bent low on her hands. They were, then, separated for ever; there was no further hope for her!--he himself had confirmed it. She wondered whether the pain would kill her; whether she should be able to battle with it, or must die of the humiliation it brought. The pain and the humiliation were strong and sharp now--now as she sat there. By-and-by there stole again into her mind those thoughts which Captain Bohun's appearance had interrupted--the heavenly place of rest to which Bessy and Mrs. Cumberland had passed. Insensibly it soothed her: and imagination went roving away unchecked. She seemed to see the white robes of the Redeemed; she saw the golden harps in their hands, the soft sweet light around them, the love and peace. The thoughts served to show her how poor and worthless, as compared with the joys of that Better Land, were the trials and pains of this world: how short a moment, even at the longest, they had to be endured: how quickly and surely all here must pass away! Yes, she might endure with patience for the time! And when she lifted her head, it was to break into a flood of violent yet soothing tears, that she could not have shed before.

"Father in heaven, Thou seest all my trouble and my agony. I have no one in the world to turn to for shelter--and the blast is strong. Vouchsafe to guide and cover me!"

But night was falling, and she rose to make her way out of the churchyard. In a sheltered nook that she passed, sat a man: and Ellen started a little, and quickened her pace. It was Captain Bohun. Instead of going away, he had turned back to wait. She understood it at once: at that hour he would not leave her alone. He wished to be chivalrous to her still, for all his utter faithlessness. In the very teeth of his avowed desertion, his words and manner had proved that he loved her yet. Loved her, and not another. It brought its own comfort to Ellen Adair. Of course it ought not to have done so, but it did: for the human heart at best is frail and faulty.

Captain Bohun followed her out of the churchyard, and kept her in sight all the way home, every feeling he possessed aching for her. He had seen the signs and traces of her weeping; he knew what must be the amount of her anguish. He might have been ready to shoot himself could it have restored her to peace; he felt that he should very much like to shoot Mr. Adair, whose bad deeds had entailed this misery upon them.

At the Hall gates he was overtaken by Richard, striding home hastily to dinner. Richard, passing his arm through Arthur's, began telling him that he feared he was going to have some trouble with his ex-workmen.

And as they, the once fond lovers, sat together afterwards at table, and in the lighted drawing-room, Arthur as far from her as he could place himself, none present suspected the scene that had taken place in the churchyard. Ellen Adair's eyes looked heavy; but that was nothing unusual now. It was known that she grieved much for Mrs. Cumberland.

[CHAPTER XXIII.]

JELLY'S TWO EVENING VISITS

Jelly--to whom we are obliged to refer rather frequently, as she holds some important threads of the story in her hands--found times went very hard with her. A death within the house in addition to the death close without it, was almost more than Jelly could well put up with in her present state of mind. The startling circumstances that had characterized Mrs. Rane's demise did not attend Mrs. Cumberland's: but it had been very sudden at last, and Jelly was sincerely attached to her mistress.

Dr. Rane was left sole executor to his mother's will. It was a very simple one: she bequeathed to him all she had. That was not much; for a portion of her income died with her. He found that he had two hundred a-year--as he had always known that he should have--and her household furniture. Of ready money there was little. When he should have discharged trifling claims and paid the funeral expenses, some twenty or thirty pounds would remain over, that was all.

Dr. Rane acted promptly. He discharged two of the servants, Ann and Dinah, retaining Jelly for the present to look after the house. He wished, if he could, to get the furniture taken with the house; so he advertised it in the local papers. He had been advertising his practice--I think this has been already said--but nothing satisfactory had come of it. Inquiries had been made, but they all dropped through. Perhaps Dr. Rane was too honest to say his practice was worth much, or to conceal the fact that Mr. Seeley had the best of it in Dallory. Neither was the tontine money as yet paid over to him; and, putting out of consideration all other business, the doctor must have waited for that.

Now, of all things that could have happened, Jelly most disliked and dreaded being left alone in the house. From having been as physically brave as a woman can be, she had latterly become one of the most timid. She started at her own shadow; she would not for the world have entered alone at night the room in which Mrs. Cumberland died. Having seen one ghost, Jelly could not feel sure that she should not see two. Some people hold a theory that to a very few persons in this world--and not to others--is given the faculty, or whatever you may please to call it, of discerning supernatural sights or visions. Jelly had heard this: and she became possessed of the idea that for some wise purpose she had been suddenly endowed with it. To remain in the house alone was more than her brain would bear; and she selected Ketler's eldest girl, a starved damsel of thirteen, called "Riah," to come and keep her company. As it was one less to feed, and they had tried in vain to get Riah a place--for the strike and badness of trade had affected all classes, and less servants seemed to be wanted everywhere--Ketler and his wife were very glad to let her go.

How do rumours get about? Can any one tell? How did a certain rumour get about and begin to be whispered in Dallory? Certainly no one there could have told. Jelly could have been upon her Bible oath if necessary (or thought she could) that she had not set it floating. It was a very ugly one, whoever had done it.

Late one afternoon Jelly received a call from Mrs. Gass's smart housemaid. The girl brought a letter from her mistress; Mrs. Gass wanted very particularly to see Jelly, and had sent to say that Jelly was to go there as soon as she could. Jelly made no sort of objection. She had been confined to the house much more closely of late than she approved of: partly because Dr. Rane had charged her to be in the way in case people called to look over it: partly because she had found out that Miss Riah had a tendency to walk off, herself, if she could get Jelly's back turned.

"Now, mind you sit still in the kitchen and attend to the fire, and listen to the door; and perhaps I'll bring you home a pair of strings for that bonnet of yours," said Jelly to the girl, when she was ready to start. "The doctor will be in by-and-by, so don't attempt to get out of the way."

With these injunctions, Jelly began her walk. She had on her best new mourning--and was in a complaisant mood. It looked inclined to rain--the weather had been uncertain of late--but Jelly had her umbrella: a silk one that had belonged to her mistress, and that Dr. Rane had given, with many other things, to Jelly. She rather wondered what Mrs. Gass wanted with her, but supposed it was to tell her of a situation. It had been arranged that if an eligible one offered, Jelly should be at liberty to depart, and a woman might be placed in the house to take care of it. Mrs. Gass had said she would let Jelly know if she heard of anything desirable. So away went Jelly with a fleet foot, little thinking what was in store for her.

Mrs. Gass, wearing mourning also, was in her usual sitting-room, the dining-room. As Jelly entered, the smart maid was carrying out the tea-tray. Mrs. Gass stirred up her fire, and bade Jelly to a chair near it, drawing her own pretty closely to her.

"Just see whether that girl have shut the door fast before I begin," suggested Mrs. Gass. "It won't do to have ears listening to me."

Jelly went, saw the door was closed, came back and sat down again. She noticed that Mrs. Gass looked keenly at her, as if studying her face before speaking.

"Jelly, what is it that you have been saying about Dr. Rane?"

The question was so unexpected that Jelly did not immediately answer it. Quite a change, this, from an offer of a nice situation.

"I've said nothing," she replied.

"Now don't you repeat that to me. You have. And it would have been a'most as well for you that you had cut your tongue out before doing it."

"I said--what I did--to you, Mrs. Gass. To nobody else."

"Look here, Jelly--the mischiefs done, and you'd a great deal better look it full in the face than deny it. There's reports getting up about Dr. Rane, in regard to his wife's death, and no mortal woman or man can have set 'em afloat but you. This morning I was in North Inlet, looking a bit after them scamps of workmen that won't work, and won't let others work if they can help it: and after I had given a taste of my mind to as many of 'em as was standing about, I stepped into Mother Green's. She has the rheumatics--and he has a touch of 'em. Talking with her of one thing and another, we got on to the subject of Dr. Rane and the tontine; and she said two or three words that frightened me; frightened me, Jelly; for they pointed to a suspicion that the doctor had sacrificed his wife to get it. I pretended to understand nothing--she didn't speak out broad enough for me to take it up and answer her--and it was the best plan not to understand----"

"For an old woman, Mother Green has the longest tongue I know," interrupted Jelly.

"You've a longer," retorted Mrs. Gass. "Just wait till I've finished, girl. 'Twas a tolerable fine morning, and after that I went walking on, and struck off down by the Wheatsheaf. Packerton's wife was standing at the door with cherry ribbons in her cap, and I stopped to talk to her. She brought up Dr. Rane; and lowered her voice as if it was high treason; asking me if I'd heard what was being said about his wife's not having died a natural death. I did give it the woman; and I think I frightened her. She acknowledged that she only spoke from a hint dropped by Timothy Wilks, and said she had thought at the time it couldn't have anything in it. But what I have to say to you is this," continued Mrs. Gass to Jelly more emphatically, "whether it's Tim Wilks that's spreading the report, or whether it's Mother Green, they both had it in the first place from you."

Jelly sat in discomfort. She did not like this. It is nothing to be charged with a fault when you are wholly innocent; but when conscience says you are partly guilty it is another thing. Jelly was aware that one night at Mother Green's, taking supper with that old matron and Timothy, she had so far yielded to the seductions of social gossip as to forget her usual reticence; and had said rather more than she ought. Still, at the worst, it had been only a word or two: a hint, not a specific charge.

"I may have let fall an incautious word there," confessed Jelly. "But it was nothing anybody can take hold of."

"Don't you make sure of that," reprimanded Mrs. Gass. "We are told in the sacred writings--which it's not well to mention in ordinary talk, and I'd only do it with reverence--of a grain of mustard seed, that's the least of all seeds when it's sown, and grows into the greatest tree. You remember Who it is says that, Jelly, so it's not for me to enlarge upon it. But I may say this much, girl, that that's an apt exemplification of gossip. You drop one word, or maybe only half a one, and it goes spreading out pretty nigh over the world."

"I'm sure, what with the weight and worry this dreadful secret has been on my mind, almost driving me mad, the wonder is that I've been able to keep as silent as I have," put in Jelly, who was growing cross. Mrs. Gass resumed.

"If the thing is what you think it to be---a dreadful secret, and it is brought to light through you, why, I don't know that you'd get blamed--though there's many a one will say you might have spared your mistress's son and left it for others to charge him. But suppose it turns out to be no dreadful secret; suppose poor Bessy Rane died a natural death of the fever, what then?--where would you be?"

Jelly took off her black gloves as if they had grown suddenly hot for her hands. She said nothing.

"Look here, girl. My belief is that you've just set a brand on fire! one that won't be put out until it's burnt out. My firm belief also is, that you be altogether mistaken. I have thought the matter over with myself hour after hour; and, except at the first moment when you whispered it to me in the churchyard, and I own I was startled, I have never been able to bring my common sense to believe in it. Oliver Rane loved his wife too well to hurt a hair of her head."

"There was that anonymous letter," cried Jelly.

"Whatever hand he might have had in that anonymous letter--and nobody knows the truth of it whether he had or whether he hadn't--I don't believe he was the man to hurt a hair of his wife's head," repeated Mrs. Gass. "And for you to be spreading it about that he murdered her!"

"The circumstances all point to it," said Jelly.

"They don't."

"Why, Mrs. Gass, they do."

"Let's go over 'em, and see," said Mrs. Gass, who had a plain way of convincing people. "Let's begin at the beginning. Hear me out, Jelly."

She went over the past minutely. Jelly listened, growing more uncomfortable every moment. There was absolutely not one fact inconsistent with a natural death. It is true the demise had been speedy, but the cause assigned, exhaustion, might have been the real one; and the hasty fastening down of the coffin was no doubt a simple measure of precaution, taken out of regard for the living. No; as Mrs. Gass put it in her sensible way, there was positively not a single fact that could be urged for supposing that Mrs. Rane came to an untimely end. Jelly twirled her gloves, and twisted her hands, and grew hot and uncomfortable.

"There was what I saw--the ghost," she said.

But Mrs. Gass ridiculed the ghost--that is, the idea of it--beyond everything earthly. Jelly, however, would not give way there; and they had some sparring.

"Ghost, indeed! and you come to this age! It was the beer, girl; the beer."

"I hadn't had a drop of beer," protested Jelly, almost crying. "How was I to get beer at Ketler's? They've none for themselves. I had had nothing inside my lips but tea."

"Well; beer or no beer, ghost or no ghost, it strikes me, Jelly, that you have done a pretty thing. This story is as sure to get wind now as them geraniums of mine will have air when I open the window tomorrow morning. You'll be called upon to substantiate your story; and when you can't--and I'm sure you know that you can't--the law may have you up to answer for it. I once knew a man that rose a bad charge against another; he was tried for it, and got seven years' transportation. You may come to the same."

A very agreeable prospect! If Jelly's bonnet had not been on, her hair might have risen up on end with horror. There could be no doubt that it was she who had started the report; and in this moment of repentance she sat really wishing she had first cut her foolish tongue out.

"Nothing can be done now," concluded Mrs. Gass. "There's just one chance for you--that the rumour may die away. If it will, let it; and take warning to be more cautious in future. The probability is that Mother Green and Tim Wilks have mentioned it to others besides me and Packerton's wife: if so, nothing will keep it under. You have been a great fool, Jelly."

Jelly went away in terrible fright. Mrs. Gass had laid the matter before her in its true light. Suspect as she might, she had no proof; and if questioned by authority could not have advanced one.

"Dr. Rane have been in here three times after you," was young Riah's salutation when Jelly reached home.

"Dr. Rane has?"

"And he said the last time you oughtn't to be away from the house so long with only me in it," added the damsel, who felt aggrieved, on her own score, at having been left.

"Oh, did he!" carelessly returned Jelly.

But she began considering what Dr. Rane could want. For her parting charge to Riah, that Dr. Rane was coming in, had been a slight invention of her own, meant to keep that young person up to her duty. Just as she had decided that it might refer to this same report, which he might have heard, and Jelly was growing more and more ill at ease in consequence, he came in. She went to him in the dining-room.

"Jelly," said the doctor, "I think I have let the house."

"Have you, sir?" returned Jelly, blithely, in the agreeable revulsion of feeling. "I'm sure I am glad."

"But only for a short time," continued Dr. Rane. "Two ladies of Whitborough are wanting temporary change of air, and will take it if it suits them. They are coming tomorrow to look at it."

"Very well, sir."

"They will occupy the house for a month, and perhaps take it for longer. This will give me time to let it for a permanency. If you feel inclined to take service with them, I believe there will be room for you."

"Who are they?" asked Jelly.

"Mrs. and Miss Beverage. Quakers."

She knew the name. Very respectable people; plenty of money.

"You'll show them over it tomorrow when they come: I may or may not be in the way at the time," concluded Dr. Rane.

Jelly attended him to the door. It was evident he had not heard the rumour that had reached Mrs. Gass; or, at least, did not connect Jelly in any way with it. But how was he likely to hear it? The probability was, that all Dallory would be full of it before it reached him.

Jelly could not eat her supper. Mrs. Gass's communication had left no room for appetite. Neither did she get any sleep. Tossing and turning on her bed, lay she: the past doubt and present dread troubling her brain until morning.

But, when Jelly had thus tormented herself and regarded the matter in all its aspects, the result was, that she still believed her own version of the tale--namely, that Mrs. Rane had not come fairly by her death. True, she had no proof: but she began wondering whether proof might not be found. At any rate, she resolved to search for it. Not openly; not to be used; but quietly and cautiously: to hold, as it were, in case of need. She could not tell how to look for this, or where to begin. No one had seen Mrs. Rane after death--excepting of course the undertakers. Jelly resolved to question them: perhaps something might be gleaned in this way.

It was afternoon before the expected ladies arrived. Two pleasant women, dressed after the sober fashion of their sect. Mrs. Beverage, a widow, was sixty; her daughter nearly forty. They liked the house, and said they should take it; and they liked Jelly, and engaged her as upper maid, intending to bring two servants of their own. After their departure, Jelly had to wait for Dr. Rane: it would not do for him to find only Riah again. He came in whilst Jelly was at tea. She told him the ladies wished to enter as soon as convenient; and the doctor said he would at once go over to Whitborough and see them.

This left Jelly at liberty. It was growing late when she set out on her expedition, and she started at the hedge shadows as she went along. Jelly's thoughts were full of all kinds of uncanny and unpleasant things. Jelly's disposition was not a secretive one; rather the contrary; and she hated to have to do with anything that might not be discussed in the broad light of day.

The commencement of her task was at any rate not difficult: she could enter the Hepburns' house without excuse or apology, knowing them sufficiently well to do so. When they were young, Thomas Hepburn, his wife, and Jelly had all been companions at the same day-school. Walking through the shop without ceremony, saving a nod to young Charley, who was minding it, Jelly turned into the little parlour: a narrow room with the fireplace in the corner surmounted by a high old-fashioned wainscoting of wood, painted stone-colour. Thomas Hepburn, who seemed to be always ailing with something or other, had an inflammation on his left arm, and his wife was binding bruised lily leaves round it. Jelly, drawing near, at once expressed her disapprobation of the treatment.

"I can't think how it should have come, or what it is," he observed. "I don't remember to have hurt it in any way."

Jelly took the seat on the other side the fireplace, and Mrs. Hepburn, a stout healthy woman, sat down at the small round table and began working by lamplight. Thomas Hepburn, nursing his arm, which pained him, led all unconsciously to the subject Jelly had come to speak about. Saying that if his arm was not better in the morning, he should show it to Dr. Rane, he thence went on to express his sorrow that the doctor should talk of leaving Dallory, for they liked him so much both as a gentleman and a doctor.

"But after such a loss as he has experienced in his wife, poor lady, no wonder the place is distasteful to him," went on Hepburn. And Jelly felt silently obliged for the words that helped her in her task.

"Ah, that was a dreadful thing," she observed. "I shall never forget the morning I heard of it, and the shock it gave me."

"I'm sure I can never forget the night he came down here, and said she was dead," rejoined the undertaker. "It was like a blow. Although I was in a degree prepared for it, for the doctor had told me in the afternoon what a dangerous state she was in--and I didn't like his manner when he spoke: it seemed to say more than his words. I came home and told Martha here that I feared it was all over with Mrs. Rane. Poor Henry was lying dead at the same time."

"And the answer I made to Thomas was, that she'd get over it," said Mrs. Hepburn, looking up from her sewing at Jelly. "I thought she would: Bessy North was always hearty and healthy. You might have taken a lease of her life."

"We had shut up the shops for the night, though the men were at work still next door, when the doctor came," resumed Thomas Hepburn, as if he found satisfaction in recalling the circumstances for Jelly's benefit. "It was past eleven o'clock; but we had to work late during that sad time; and Henry's illness and death seemed to make a difference of nearly as much as two hands to us. I was in the yard with the men when there came a knocking at the shop-door: I went to open it, and there stood the doctor. 'Hepburn,' said he, 'my poor wife is gone.' Well, I did feel it."

Jelly gave a groan by way of sympathy. She was inwardly deliberating how she could best lead on to what she wanted to ask. But she was never at fault long.

"I have heard you express distaste to some of the things that make up your trade, Thomas Hepburn, but at least they give you the opportunity of taking last looks at people," began Jelly. "I'd have given I don't know how much out of my pocket to have had a farewell look at Mrs. Rane."

"That doesn't always bring the pleasure you might suppose," was the answer of the undertaker.

"Did you go to her?" asked Jelly.

"No. I sent the two men: Clark and Dobson. They took the coffin at once: the doctor had brought the measure."

"And they screwed her down at once," retorted Jelly, more eagerly than she had intended to speak.

"Ay! It was best. We did it in some other cases that died of the same."

"Did the men notice how she looked--whether there was much change in her?" resumed Jelly, in a low tone. "Some faces are very sweet and placid after death: so much so that one can't help thinking they are happy. Was Mrs. Rane's so?"

"The men didn't see her," said Hepburn.

"Didn't see her!"

"No. The doctor managed that they should not. It was very kind of him. Dobson had had an awful dread all along of catching the fever; and Clark was beginning to fear it a little: Dr. Rane knew this, and said he'd not expose them to more risk than could be helped. The men carried the coffin up to the ante-room, and he said he would manage all the rest."

Jelly sat with open mouth and eyes staring. The undertaker put it down to surprise.

"Medical men are used to these things, Jelly. It comes as natural to them as to us. Dr. Rane said to Clark that he would call Seeley over if he found he wanted help. I don't suppose he would want it: she was small and light, poor young lady."

Jelly found her speech. "Then they--Clark and Dobson--never saw her at all!"

"Not at all. She was in the far room. The door was close shut, and well covered besides with a sheet wet with disinfecting fluid. There was no danger, Dr. Rane assured them, so long as they did not go into the room where she lay. The men came away wishing other people would take these precautions; but then, you see, doctors understand things. He gave them each a glass of brandy-and-water too."

"And--then--nobody saw her!" persisted Jelly, as if she could not get over the fact.

"I dare say not," replied Thomas Hepburn.

"He must have hammered her down himself!" cried the amazed Jelly.

"He could do it as well as the men could. They left the nails and hammer."

"Well--it--it--seems dreadful work for a man to have to do for his wife," observed Jelly, after a pause, staring over Mr. Hepburn's head into vacancy.

"He did violence to his own feelings out of consideration to the men," said the undertaker. "And I must say it was very good of him. But, as I've observed, doctors know what's what, and how necessary it is to keep away from danger in perilous times."

"Did he manage the lead coffin as well as the first one?" continued Jelly, in a hard, sarcastic tone, which she found it impossible to suppress. "And then there was the third coffin, after that?"

"I went and soldered down the lead myself. The men took up the last one and made all ready."

"Were you not afraid to run the risk, Thomas Hepburn?" asked Jelly, tauntingly, for she despised the man for being so unsuspicious.

"The rooms had been well disinfected then, the doctor said. Any way, we took no harm."

That Thomas Hepburn had never discerned cause for the slightest suspicion of unfair play on the part of Dr. Rane was evident. Jelly, in her superior knowledge, could have shaken him for it. In his place she felt sure she should not have been so obtuse. Jelly forgot that it was only that superior knowledge that enabled her to see what was hidden from others: and that whilst matters, from Hepburn's point of view, looked all right; from her own, they were all wrong.

"Well, I must be wishing you good-evening, I suppose," she said. "I've left only Riah in the house--and she's of no mortal use to anybody, except for company. With people dying about one like this, one gets to feel dull, all alone."

"So one does," answered the undertaker. "Don't go yet."

Jelly had not risen. She sat looking at the fire, evidently deep in thought. Presently she turned her keen eyes on the man again.

"Thomas Hepburn, did you ever see a ghost?"

He received the question as calmly and seriously as though she had said, Did you ever see a funeral? And shook his head negatively.

"I can't say I ever saw one myself. I've known those who have. That is, who say and believe they have. And I'm sure I've no reason to say they haven't. One hears curious tales now and then."

"They are not pleasant things to see," remarked Jelly a little dreamily.

"Well, no; I dare say not."

"For my part, I don't put faith in ghosts," said hearty Mrs. Hepburn, looking up with a laugh. "None will ever come near me, I'll answer for it. I've too many children about me, and too much work to do, for pastime of that sort. Ghosts come from nothing but nervous fancies."

Jelly could not contradict this as positively as she would have liked, so it was best to say nothing at all. She finally rose up to go--Riah might be falling asleep with her head in the candle.

And in spite of the suggested attractions of a supper of toasted cheese and ale, Jelly departed. Things had become as clear as daylight to her.

"I don't so much care now if it does come out," she said to herself as she hastened along. "What Thomas Hepburn can tell as good as proves the doctor's guilt. I knew it was so. And I wish that old Dame Gass had been smothered before she sent me into that doubt and fright last night!"

But the road seemed terribly lonely now; and Jelly more nervous than ever of the shadows.

[CHAPTER XXIV.]

MISCHIEF BREWING IN NORTH INLET

Morning, noon and night, whenever the small body of fresh workmen had to pass to and from the works, they were accompanied by the two policemen specially engaged to protect them, whilst others hovered within call. North Inlet, the ill-feeling of its old inhabitants increasing day by day, had become dangerous. It was not that all the men would have done violence. Ketler, for instance, and others, well-disposed men by nature, sensible and quiet, would not have lifted a hand against those who had, in one sense of the word, displaced them. But they did this: they stood tamely by, knowing quite well that some of their comrades only waited their opportunity to kill, or disable--as might be--Richard North's new followers. North Inlet was not quite so full as it used to be: for some of the old inhabitants, weary and out of patience with hope deferred: hope they hardly knew of what, unless for the good time promised by the Trades' Union: had departed on the tramp, with their wives and little ones, seeking a corner of the earth where work sufficient to give them a crust of bread and a roof, might be found. Others had decamped without their wives and children: and were in consequence being sought by the parish. North Inlet, taken on the whole, was in a sore plight. The men and women, reduced by want and despair to apply for parish relief, found none accorded them. They had brought themselves to this condition; had refused work when work was to be had; and to come and ask to be supported in idleness by the parish was a procedure not to be tolerated or entertained; as one resolute guardian, sitting at the head of a table, fiercely told them. Not as much as a loaf of bread would be given them, added another. If it came to the pass that they were in danger of dying of hunger--as the applicants urged--why they must come into the house with their wives and families: and a humiliating shame that would be for able-bodied men, the guardian added: but they would receive no relief out-of-doors. So North Inlet, not choosing to go into that unpopular refuge for the destitute, kept out of it. And to terrible straits were they reduced!

Looking back upon their past life of plenty, and their present empty homes and famished faces, little wonder that this misguided body of men grew to find that something of the old Satan was in them yet. A great deal of it, too. Perhaps remorse held its full share with them. They had intended that it should be so entirely for the better when they threw up work; and it had turned out so surprisingly for the worse. They had meant to return to work on their own terms; earning more and toiling less: they had been led to believe that this result lay in their own hands, and was as safe and certain as that the sun shone overhead at noonday. Instead of that--here they were, in as deplorable a condition as human beings could well be; Time had been, not very long ago either, that the false step might have been redeemed; Richard North had offered them work again on the old terms. Ay, and he had once conceded a portion of their demands--as they remembered well. But that time and that offer had gone by for ever. Fresh men (few though they were) had taken their places, and they themselves were starving and helpless.

The feeling against these new men was bitter enough; it was far more bitter against the small number of old workmen who had gone back again. We are told that the heart of man is desperately wicked: our own experience shows us that it is desperately selfish. They saw the employed men doing the work which once was theirs; they saw them wearing good coats, eating good food. They themselves had neither one nor the other; and work they had rejected. It would not have seemed quite so hard had the work altogether left the place: but to see these others doing it and living in comfort was more than mortal temper could brook.

This was not all. The men unreasonably held to it that these others having taken work again, was the cause why they themselves were kept out of it. Richard North would ha' come-to, they said, if these curs hadn't went sneaking back again to lick his hand. If all had held out, Dick North must ha' given in. And this they repeated so constantly, in their ire, one to another, that at last they grew to believe it. It was quite wrong, and they were wholly mistaken: for had Richard North not begun again cautiously as he did, and on the old terms, he would not have recommenced at all: but the men refused to see this, and held to their idea, making it a greater grievance than the want of food. It is so convenient to have something substantial on which to throw blame: and unlimited power and permission to punch the obnoxious head would have afforded intense gratification. Oh, it was very hard to bear. To see this small knot of men re-established in work, and to know that it was their own work once, and might have been theirs still! Peeping through hedges, hiding within doorways, standing sulkily or derisively in the open ground, they would watch the men going to and fro, guarded by the two policemen. Many a bitter word, many a silent threat was levelled at the small band. Murder had been done from a state of mind not half as bad as they were cherishing.

"What be you looking at, with those evil frowns on your faces?"

A group of malcontents, gazing from a corner of North Inlet at the daily procession, found this question suddenly sounding on their ears. Mrs. Gass had stepped out of a dwelling close by, and put it to them. Their eyes were following the escorted men coming home to their twelve-o'clock dinner, so that they had not observed her.

They turned to her, and dropped their threatening expression. A man named Poole, not too much respected in the most prosperous times, and one of the worst of the malcontents, answered boldly too.

"We was taking the measure o' that small lot o' convic's. Wishing we could brand 'em."

"Ah," said Mrs. Gass. "It strikes me some of you have been wishing it before to-day. I should like to give you a bit of advice, my men; and you, especially, Poole. Take care you don't become convicts yourselves."

"For two pins, I'd do what 'ud make me one," was the rejoinder of Poole, who was in a more defiant mood than even he often dared exhibit. He was a large, thick-set man, with shaggy light hair and a brick-dust complexion. His clothes, originally fustian, had been worn and torn and patched until they now hardly held together.

"You are a nice jail-bird, Poole! I don't think you ever were much better than one," added Mrs. Gass. To which candid avowal Poole only replied by a growl.

"These hard times be enough to make jail-birds of all of us," interposed another, Foster; but speaking civilly. "Why don't the Government come down and interfere, and prevent our work being took out of our hands by these rascals?"

"You put the work out of your own hands," said Mrs. Gass. "As to interference, I should have thought you'd had about enough of that, by this time. If you had not suffered them fine Trades' Unionists to interfere with you, my men, you'd have been in full work now, happy and contented as the day's long."

"What we did, we did for the best."

"What you did, you did in defiance of common sense, and of the best counsels of your best friends," she said. "How many times did your master show you what the upshot would be if you persisted in throwing up your work?--how much breath did I waste upon you, as I'm doing now, asking you all to avoid a strike--and after the strike had come, day after day begging you to end it?--could any picture be truer than mine when I said what you'd bring yourselves to?--rags, and famine, and desolate homes. Could any plight be worse than this that you've dropped into now?"

"No, it couldn't," answered Foster. "It's so bad that I say Government ought to interfere for us."

"If I was Government, I should interfere on one point--and that's with them agitating Unionists," bravely spoke Mrs. Gass. "I should put them down a bit."

"This is a free country, ma'am," struck in Ketler, who made one of the group.

"Well, I used to think it was, Ketler," she said; "but old ways seem to be turned upside down. What sort of freedom do you enjoy just now?--how much have you had of it since you bound yourselves sworn members of the Trades' Unions? You have wanted to work and they haven't let you: you'd like to be clothed and fed as you used to be and to clothe and feed your folks at home, and they prevent your exercising the means by which you may do it. What freedom or liberty is there in that?--Come, Ketler, tell me, as a reasonable man."

"If the Trades' Unions could do as they wish, there'd be work and comfort for all of us."

"I doubt that, Ketler."

"But they can't do it," added Ketler. "The masters be obstinate and won't let 'em."

"That's just it," said Mrs. Gass. "If the Trades' Unions held the world in their hands, and there were no such things as masters and capital, why then they might have their own way. But the masters have their own interests to look after, their business and capital to defend: and the two sides are totally opposed one to the other, and squabbling is all that comes of it, or that ever will come of it. You lose your work, the masters lose their trade, the Unionists fight it out fiercer than ever--and, between it all, the commerce of the country is coming to an end. Now, my men, that is the bare truth; and you can't deny it if you talk till midnight."

"'Twouldn't be no longer much of a free country, if the Government put down the Trades' Unions," spoke a man satirically; one Cattleton.

"But it ought to put down their arbitrary way of preventing others working that want to work," maintained Mrs. Gass. "The Unionists be your worst enemies. I'm speaking, as you know I have been all along, of the heads among 'em who make laws for the rest; not of poor sheep like yourselves who have joined the society in innocence. If the heads like to live without work themselves, and can point out a way by which others can live without it, well and good; there's no law against that, nor oughtn't to be; but what I say Government ought to put down is this--their forcing you men to reject work when it's offered you. It's a sin and a shame that, through them, the country should be brought to imbecility, and you, its once free and brave workmen, to beggary."

"The thought has come over me at times that under the new state of things we are no better than slaves," confessed Ketler, his eyes wearing an excited look.

"Now you've just said it, Ketler," cried Mrs. Gass, triumphantly. "Slaves. That's exactly what you are; and I wish to my heart all the workmen in England could open their eyes to the truth of it. You took a vow to obey the dictates of the Trades' Union; it has bound you hand and foot, body and soul. If a job of work lay to your hand, you dare not take it up; no, not though you saw your little ones dying of famine before your eyes. It's the worst kind of slavery that ever fell on the land. Press-gangs used to be bad enough, but this beats 'em hollow."

There was no reply from any of the men. Mrs. Gass had been a good friend to their families even recently; and the old habits of respect to her, their mistress, still held sway. Perhaps some of them, too, silently assented to her reasoning.

"It's that that I'd have put down," she resumed. "Let every workman be free to act on his own judgment, to take work or to leave it. Not but what it's too late to say so: as far as I believe, the mischief has gone too far to be remedied."

"It be mighty fine for the masters to cry out and say the Trades' Unions is our enemies! Suppose we choose to call 'em our friends?" spoke Poole.

"Put it so, Poole, if you like," said Mrs. Gass equably. "The society's your friend, let's say. How has it showed its friendship? what has it done for you?"

Mr. Poole did not condescend to say.

"It's not hard to answer, Poole. The proofs, lie on the surface; not one of you but may read 'em off-hand. It threw you all out of good work that you had held for years under a good master, that you might probably have held, to the last day of your lives. It dismantled your homes and sent your things to the pawnshop. It has reduced you to a crust of bread, where you used to have good joints of beef; it has taken your warm shoes and coats, and sent you abroad half naked. Your children are starving, some of them are dead; your wives are worn out with trouble and discontent. And this not for a time, but for good: for, there's no prospect open to you. No prospect, that I can see, as I am a living woman. That's what your friends, as you call 'em, have done for you; and for thousands and thousands beside you. I don't care what they meant: let it be that they meant well by you, and that you meant well--as I'm sure you did--in listening to 'em: the result is as I've said. And you are standing here this day, ruined men."

Mr. Poole looked fierce.

"What is to become of you, and of others ruined like you, the Lord in heaven only knows. It's a solemn question. When the best trade of the country's driven from it, there's no longer any place for workmen. Emigration, suggest some of the newspapers. Others say emigration's overdone for the present. We don't know what to believe. Any way, it's a hard thing that a good workman should find no employment in his native land, but must be packed off, very much as if he was transported, to be an exile for ever."

Poole, not liking the picture, broke into an oath or two. The other men looked sad enough.

"You have been drinking, Poole," said Mrs. Gass with dignity, "Keep a civil tongue in your head before me if, you please."

"I've not had no more than half-a-pint," growled Poole.

"And that was half-a-pint too much," said Mrs. Gass. "When people's insides are reduced by famine, half-a-pint is enough to upset their brains in a morning."

"What business have Richard North to go and engage them frogs o' Frenchmen?" demanded Poole who had in truth taken too much for his good. "What business have them other fellows, as ought to have stuck by us, to go back to him? It's Richard North as wants to be transported."

"Richard North was a good master to you. The world never saw a better."

"He's a rank bad man now."

"No, no--hold th' tongue!" put in Ketler. "No good to abuse him."

"If you men had had a spark of gratitude, you'd have listened to Mr. Richard North, when he prayed you to go back to him," said Mrs. Gass. "No, you wouldn't; and what has it done for him? Why, just ruined him, my men: almost as bare as you are ruined. It has took his hopes from him; wasted what little money he had; played the very dickens with his prospects. The business he once had never will and never can come back. If once you break a mirror to pieces, you can't put it together again. Mr. Richard has a life of work to look forward to; he may earn a living, but he won't do much more. You men have at least the satisfaction of knowing that whilst you ruined your own prosperity, you also ruined his."

They had talked so long--for all that passed cannot be recorded--that it was close upon one o'clock, and the small band of workmen and the two policemen were seen coming back again towards the works. The malignant look rose again on Poole's face: and he gave forth a savage growl.

"There'll be mischief yet," thought Mrs. Gass, as she turned away.

Sounds of a woman's sobbing were proceeding from an open door as she went down North Inlet, and Mrs. Gass stepped in to see what might be the matter. They came from Dawson's wife. Dawson had been beating her. The unhappy state to which they were reduced tried the tempers of the men--of the women also, for that matter--rendering some of them little better than ferocious beasts. In the old days, when Dawson could keep himself and his family in comfort, never a cross word had been heard from him: but all that was changed; and under the new order of things, it often came to blows. The wife had now been struck in the eye. Smarting under ills of body and ills of mind, the woman enlarged on her wrongs to Mrs. Gass, and displayed the mark; all of which at another time she would certainly have concealed. The home was miserably bare; the children, wan and thin, were in tatters like their mother; it was a comprehensive picture of wretchedness.

"And all through those idiots having thrown up their work at the dictates of the Trades' Union!" was the wrathful comment of Mrs. Gass, as she departed. "They've done for themselves in this world: and, to judge by the unchristian lives they are living, seem to be in a fair way of doing for themselves in the next."

As she reached her own house, the smart housemaid was showing Miss Dallory out of it. That young lady, making a call on Mrs. Gass, had waited for her a short time, and was departing. They now went in together. Mrs. Gass, entering her handsome drawing-room, began recounting the events of the morning; what she had heard and seen.

"There'll be mischief, as sure as a gun," she concluded. "My belief is, that some of them would kill Mr. Richard if they had only got the chance."

Mary Dallory looked startled. "Kill him!" she cried. "Why, he has always been their friend. He would have been so still, had they only been willing."

"He's a better friend to them still than they are aware of," said Mrs. Gass, nodding her head wisely. "Miss Mary, if ever there was a Christian man on earth, it is Richard North. His whole life has been one long thought for others. Who else has kept up Dallory Hall? Who would have worked and slaved on, and on, not for himself, but to maintain his father's home, finding money for madam's wicked extravagance, to save his poor father pain, knowing that the old man had already more than he could bear. At Mr. Richard's age, he ought, before this, to have been making a home and marrying: he would have done so under happier circumstances: but he has had to sacrifice himself to others. He has done more for the men than they think for; ay, even at the time that they were bringing ruin upon him--as they have done--and ever since. Richard North is worth his weight in gold. Heaven, that sees all, knows that he is; and he will sometime surely be rewarded for it. It may not be in this world, my dear; for a great many of God's own best people go down to their very graves in nothing but disappointment and sorrow: but he'll find it in the next."

Miss Dallory made no reply. All she said was, that she must go. And Mrs. Gass escorted her to the front-door. They had almost reached it, when Miss Dallory stopped to ask a question, lowering her voice as she did so.

"Have you heard any rumour about Dr. Rane?"

Mrs. Gass knew what must be meant as certainly as though it had been spoken. She turned cold, and hot, and cold again. For once language failed her.

"It is something very dreadful," continued Miss Dallory. "I do not like to give utterance to it. It--it has frightened me."

"Law, my dear, don't pay no attention to such rubbish as rumours," returned Mrs. Gass, heartily. "I don't. Folk say all sorts of things of me, I make little doubt; just as they are ready to do of other people. Let 'em! We shan't sleep none the worse for it. Goodbye. I wish you'd have stayed and taken some dinner with me--as lovely a turkey-poult as ever you saw, and a jam dumpling."

[CHAPTER XXV.]

DAYS OF PAIN

Pacing the shrubbery walk at Dallory Hall, a grey woollen shawl wrapped closely round her flowing black silk dress, her pale, sweet, sad face turned up to the lowering sky, was Ellen Adair. The weather, cold and dull, gave signs of approaching winter. The last leaves left on the trees fell fluttering to the earth; the wind, sighing through the bare branches, bore a melancholy sound. All things seemed to speak of death and decay.

This ungenial weather had brought complication with it. Just as Sir Nash Bohun was about to quit Dallory Hall, taking Arthur with him, the wind caught him in an unguarded moment, and laid him up with inflammation of the chest. Sir Nash took to his bed. One of the results was, that Arthur Bohun must remain at the Hall, and knew not how long he might be a fixture there. Sir Nash would not part with him. He had come to regard him quite as his son.

Ellen Adair thought Fate was cruel to her, taking one thing with another. And so it was; very cruel. Whilst they were together, she could not begin to forget him: and, to see him so continually with Mary Dallory, brought her the keenest pain. She was but human: jealousy swayed her just as it sways other people.

Another thing was beginning to trouble her--she did not hear from Mr. Adair. It was very strange. Not a letter had come from him since that containing the permission to marry Arthur Bohun;--as Mrs. Cumberland had interpreted it--received at Eastsea. Ellen could not understand the silence at all. Her father had always written so regularly.

"He ought not to remain here," she murmured passionately as she walked, alluding to Arthur Bohun. "I cannot help myself; I have nowhere else to go: but he ought to leave, in spite of Sir Nash."

A greyer tinge seemed to creep over the sky. The shrubbery seemed to grow darker. It was only the first advent of twilight, falling early that melancholy evening.

"Will there ever be any brightness in my life again?" she continued, clasping her hands in pain. "Is this misery to last for ever? Did any one, I wonder, ever go through such a trial and live? Scarcely. I am afraid I am not very strong to bear things. But oh--who could bear it?"

She sat down on one of the benches, and bent her aching brow on her hands. What with the surrounding gloom, and her dark dress, some one who had turned into the walk, came sauntering on without observing her. It was Arthur Bohun. He started when she raised her head: his face was every whit as pale and sad as hers; but he could not help seeing how ill and woebegone she looked.

"I fear you are not well," he stopped to say.

"Oh--thank you--not very," was the confused answer.

"This is a trying time. Heaven knows I would save you from it, if I could. I would have died to spare you. I would die still, if by that means things for you could be made right. But it may not be. Time alone must be the healer."

He had said this in a somewhat hard tone, as if he were angry with some one or other; perhaps with Fate; and went on his way with a quicker step, leaving never a touch of the hand, never a loving word, never a tender look behind him; just as it had been that day in Dallory Churchyard. Poor girl! her heart felt as though it were breaking there and then.

When the echo of his footsteps had died away, she drew her shawl closer round her slender throat and passed out of the shrubbery. Hovering in a side walk, unseen and unsuspected, was madam. Not often did madam allow herself to be off the watch. She had seen the exit of Captain Bohun; she now saw Ellen's; and madam's evil spirit rose up within her, and she advanced with a dark frown.

"Have you been walking with Captain Bohun, Miss Adair?"

"No, madam."

"I--thought--I heard him talking to you."

"He came through the shrubbery when I was sitting there, and spoke to me in passing."

"Ah," said madam. "It is well to be careful. Captain Bohun is to marry Miss Dallory: the less any other young woman has to say to him, the better."

To this speech--remarkable as coming from one who professed to be a gentlewoman--Ellen made no reply, saving a bow as she passed onwards, with erect head and self-possessed step, leaving madam to her devices.

She seemed to be tormented on every side. There was no comfort, no solace anywhere. Ellen could have envied Bessy Rane in her grave.

And the farce that had to be kept up before the world. That very evening, as fate had it, Captain Bohun took Miss Adair in to dinner and sat next her, through some well-intentioned blundering of Richard's. It had pleased madam to invite seven or eight people; it did not please Mr. North to come in to dinner as he had been expected to do. Richard had to be host, and to take in a stout lady in green velvet, who was to have fallen to his father. There was a moment's confusion; madam had gone on; Richard mixed up the wrong people together, and finally said aloud, "Arthur, will you take in Miss Adair?" And so they sat, side by side, and no one observed that they did not converse together, or that anything was wrong. It is curious how long two people may have lived estranged from each other in a household, and the rest suspect it not. Have you over noticed this?--or tried it? It is remarkable, but very true.

After dinner came the drawing-room; and the evening was a more social one than had been known of late. Music, cards, conversation. Young Mr. Ticknell, a relative of the old bankers' at Whitborough, was there; he had one of the sweetest voices ever given to man, and delighted them with his unaffected singing. One song, that he chose after a few jesting words with Ellen, in allusion to her name, two of them at least had not bargained for. "Ellen Adair." Neither had heard it since that evening at Eastsea; so long past now, in the events that had followed, that it seemed to be removed from them by ages.

They had to listen. They could not do otherwise. Ellen sat at the corner of the sofa in her black net dress with its one white flower, that Mr. North had given her, in the middle of the corsage, and nothing, as usual, in her smooth brown hair; he was leaning against the wall, not far from her, his arms folded. And the verses went on to the last one.

"But now thou art cold to me,

Ellen Adair:

But now thou art cold to me,

Ellen my dear.

Yet her I loved so well,

Still in my heart shall dwell,

Oh! I shall ne'er forget

Ellen Adair."

She could not help it. Had it been to save her life, she could not have helped lifting her face and glancing at him as the refrain died away. His eyes were fixed on her, a wistful, yearning expression in their depths; an expression so sad that in itself it was all that can be conceived of pain. Ellen bent her face again; her agitation at that moment seeming greater than she knew how to suppress. Lifting her hand to shade her eyes, the plain gold ring, still worn on it, was conspicuously visible.

"You look as though you had all the cares of the nation on your shoulders, Arthur."

He started at the address, which came from Miss Dallory. She had gone close up to him. Rallying his senses, he smiled and answered carelessly. The next minute Ellen saw them walking across the room together, her hand within his arm.

The next morning, Jelly made her appearance at the Hall, with two letters. They were from Australia, and from Mr. Adair. One was addressed to Mrs. Cumberland, the other to Ellen. Dr. Rane had desired Jelly to take both of them to Miss Adair, whom he now considered the most proper person to open Mrs. Cumberland's. Ellen carried it to Mr. North, asking if she ought to open it. Certainly, Mr. North answered, confirming Dr. Rane's view of the matter.

Ellen carried the letters to a remote and solitary spot in the garden, one that she was fond of frequenting, and in which she had never yet been intruded upon. She opened her own first: and there read what astonished her.

It appeared that after despatching his last letter to Mrs. Cumberland: the one already alluded to, that she had read with so much satisfaction to Arthur Bohun at Eastsea: Mr. Adair had been called from his station on business, and had remained absent some two or three months. Upon his return he found other letters awaiting him from Mrs. Cumberland, and learnt, to his astonishment, that the gentleman proposing for Ellen was Arthur Bohun, son of the Major Bohun with whom Mr. Adair had once been intimate. (The reader has not forgotten how Mrs. Cumberland confused matters in her mind, or that in her first letter she omitted to mention any name.) In a few peremptory lines written to Ellen--these that she was now reading--Mr. Adair retracted his former consent. He absolutely forbade her to marry, or ever think of marrying, Arthur Bohun: a union between them would be nothing less than a calamity for both, he wrote, and also for himself. He added that in consequence of an unexpected death he had become the head of his family, and was making preparations to return to Europe.

Wondering, agitated, Ellen dropped the letter, and opened Mrs. Cumberland's. An enclosure fell from it: a draft for a sum of money, which, as it appeared, Mrs. Cumberland was in the habit of receiving every half-year for her charge of Ellen. Mr. Adair wrote in still more explicit terms on the subject of the proposed marriage to Mrs. Cumberland--almost in angry terms. She, of all people, he said, ought to know that a marriage between his daughter and the late Major Bohun's son would be unsuitable, improper, and most distasteful to himself. He did not understand how Mrs. Cumberland could have laid such a proposal before him, or have permitted herself to entertain it for a moment: unless indeed she had never been made acquainted with certain facts of the past, connected with himself and Major Bohun and Major Bohun's wife, which Cumberland had known well. He concluded by saying, as he had said to Ellen, that he hoped shortly to be in England. Both letters had evidently been written in haste and in agitation: all minor matters being accounted as nothing, compared with the distinct and stern embargo laid upon the marriage.

"So it has happened for the best," murmured Ellen to her breaking heart, as she folded the letters and put them away.

She took the draft to Mr. North's parlour. He put on his spectacles, and mastered its meaning by the help of some questions to Ellen.

"A hundred and fifty pounds!" exclaimed he. "But surely, my dear, Mrs. Cumberland did not receive three hundred a-year with you! It's a large sum--for so small a service.

"She had two hundred, I think," said Ellen. "I did not know the exact sum until to-day: Mrs. Cumberland never talked to me about these matters. Papa allows me for my own purse fifty pounds every half-year. Mrs. Cumberland always gave me that."

"Ah," said Mr. North. "That's a good deal, too."

"Will you take the draft, sir; and let me have the fifty pounds at your convenience?"

Mr. North looked up as one who does not understand.

"The money is not for me, child."

"But I am staying here," she said, deprecatingly.

He shook his head as he put back the paper.

"Give it to Richard, my dear. He will know what to do about it, and what's right to be done. And so your father is coming home! We shall be sorry to lose you, Ellen. I am getting to love you, child. It seems as if you had come in the place of my poor lost Bessy."

But Ellen was not sorry. The arrival of Mr. Adair would at least remove her from her present position, where every hour, as it passed, could only bring fresh pain to her.

[CHAPTER XXVI.]

MRS. GASS AT HOME.

It was a warm and sunny day in Dallory. Mrs. Gass threw open her window and sat behind the geraniums enjoying the sunshine, exchanging salutations and gossip with as many of her acquaintances as happened to pass her windows.

"How d'ye do, doctor? Isn't this a lovely day?"

It was Dr. Rane who was hurrying past now. He turned for an instant to the window, his brow clearing. For some time now a curious look of care and perplexity had sat upon it.

"Indeed it is," he answered. "I hope it will last. Are you pretty well, Mrs. Gass?"

"I'm first-rate," said that lady. "A fine day, with the wind in the north, always sets me up. Doctor, have they paid you the tontine money yet?"

"No," said Dr. Rane, somewhat angrily. "There are all sorts of forms to be gone through, apparently; and the Brothers Ticknell do not hurry for any one. The two old men are past business, in my opinion. They were always slow and tiresome; it is something more than that now."

"Do you stir 'em well up?" questioned Mrs. Gass.

"When I have the chance of doing it; but that's very rarely. Go when I will, I can scarcely ever see any one except the confidential clerk, old Latham; and he is as slow and methodical as his master. I suppose the money will come sometime, but I am tired of waiting for it."

"And what about your plans when you get it, doctor? Are they all cut and dried?"

"Time enough to decide on them when I do get the money," replied the doctor, shortly.

"But you still intend to leave Dallory Ham?"

"Oh yes, I shall do that."

"You won't be going to America?"

"I think I shall. It is more than likely."

"Well, I wouldn't banish myself from my native country for the best practice that ever shoes dropped into. You might be getting nothing but Red Indians for patients."

Dr. Rane laughed a little; and there was an eager sort of light in his eyes that seemed to speak of anticipation and hope. Only he knew how thankful he would be to get to another country and find himself clear of this.

"I wonder," soliloquized Mrs. Gass, as he walked on his way, "whether it is all straight-for'ard about that tontine money? Have the Ticknells heard any of these ugly rumours that's flying about; and are they keeping it back in consequence? If not, why it ought to have been paid over to him before this. The delay is odd--say the least of it. How d'ye do, sir? A nice day."

A gentleman, passing, had raised his hat to Mrs. Gass. She resumed her reflections.

"The rumours be spreading wider and getting uglier. They'll go up presently, like a bomb-shell. I'm heartily sorry for him; for I don't believe--no, I don't--that he'd do such a frightful thing. If it should turn out that he did--why, then I shall blame myself ever after for having procrastinated my intentions."

Mrs. Gass paused, and began to go over those intentions, with a view, possibly, to seeing whether she was very much to blame.

"Finding Oliver and his wife couldn't get the tontine money paid to them--and a hard case it was!--I had it in my mind to say, 'I'll advance it to you. You'll both be the better for something in my will when I'm gone--the doctor being my late husband's own nephew, and the nearest relation left of him--and if two thousand pounds of it will be of real good to you now, you shall have it. But I didn't say it at once--who was to suppose there was such need for hurry--and then she died. If the man's innocent--and I believe he is--that Jelly ought to have her mouth sewn up for good. She---- Why, there you are! Talk of the dickens and he's sure to appear."

"Were you talking of me?" asked Jelly: for Mrs. Gass had raised her voice with surprise and brought it within Jelly's hearing. She carried a small basket on her arm, under her black shawl, and turned to the window.

"I was thinking of you," responded Mrs. Gass. "Be you come out marketing?"

"I'm taking a few scraps to Ketler's," replied Jelly, just showing the basket. "My mistress has given me general leave to give them any trifles not likely to be wanted at home. The cook's good-natured too. This is a jar of dripping, and some bones and bread."

"And how do you like the Beverages, Jelly?"

"Oh, very well. They are good ladies; but so serious and particular."

Mrs. Gass rose from her seat, pushed the geraniums aside, and leaning her arms upon the window-sill, brought her good-natured red face very near to Jelly's bonnet.

"I'll tell you what I was thinking of, girl: it was about these awful whispers that's flying round. Go where you will, you may hear 'em. Within dwelling-houses or at street corners, people's tongues are cackling secretly about Dr. Rane's wife, and asking what she died of. I knew it would be so, Jelly."

Jelly turned a little paler. "They'll die away again, perhaps," she said.

"Perhaps," repeated Mrs. Gass, sarcastically. "It's to be hoped they will, for your sake. Jelly, I wouldn't stand in your shoes to be made a queen tomorrow."

"I wouldn't stand in somebody else's," returned Jelly, irritated into the avowal. "I shall have pretty good proof at hand, if I'm forced to bring it out."

"What proof?"

"Well, I'd rather not say. You'd only ridicule it, Mrs. Gass, and blow me up into the bargain. I must be going."

"I guess it's moonshine, Jelly--like the ghost you saw. Good-morning."

Jelly went away with a hard and anything but a happy look, and Mrs. Gass resumed her seat again. Very shortly there came creeping by, following the same direction as Jelly, a poor shivering woman, with a ragged shawl on her thin shoulders, and a white, pinched, hopeless face.

"Is that you, Susan Ketler?"

Susan Ketler turned and dropped a curtsy. Some of the women of North Inlet were even worse off than she was. She did have help now and then from Jelly.

"Yes, ma'am, it's me."

"How long do you think you North Inlet people will be able to keep going--as things be at present?" demanded Mrs. Gass.

"The Lord above only knows," said the woman, looking upwards with a pitiful shiver. "Here's the winter a-coming on."

"What does Ketler think of affairs now?"

Ketler's wife shook her head. The men were not fond of disclosing what they might think, unless it was to one another. Ketler had never told her what he thought.

"Is he still in love with the Trades' Unions, and what they've done for him? My opinion is this, Susan Ketler," continued Mrs. Gass, after a pause: "that in every place where distress reigns, as it does here, and where it can be proved that the men have lost their work through the dictates of the society, the parish ought to go upon the society and make it keep the men and the families. If a law was passed to that effect, we should hear less of the doings of the Trades' Union people than we do now. They'd draw in a bit, Susan; they'd not give the gaping public quite so many of their procession-shows, and their flags, and their speeches. It would be a downright good law to make, mind you. A just one, too. If the society forbids men to work, and so takes the bread necessary for life out of their mouths, it is only fair they should find them bread to replace it."

An almost hopeful look came into the woman's eyes. "Ma'am, I said as good as this to Ketler only yesterday. Seeing that it was the society that had took the bread from us, and that the consequences had been bad instead of good, for we were starving, the society ought to put us into work again. It might bestir itself to do that: or else support us while we got into something."

Mrs. Gass smiled pityingly. "You must be credulous, Susan Ketler, to fancy the society can put 'em into work again. Where's the work to come from? Well, it's not your fault, my poor woman, and there's more people than me sorry for you all. And now, tell me," Mrs. Gass lowered her voice, "be any of the men talking treason still? You know what I mean."

Mrs. Ketler glanced over both her shoulders to see that no one was within hearing, before she whispered in answer.

"They be always a-talking it. I can see it in their faces as they stand together. Not Ketler, ma'am; he'd stop it if he could: he don't wish harm to none."

"Ah. I wish to goodness they'd all betake themselves off from the place. Though it's hard to say so, for there's no other open to them that I see. Well, you go on home, Susan. Jelly has just gone there with a basket of scraps for you. Stay a minute, though."

Mrs. Gass quitted the room, calling to one of her servants. When she returned she produced a half-pint physic bottle corked up.

"It's a drop of beer," she said. "For yourself, mind, not for Ketler. You want it, I know. Put it under your shawl. It will help down Jelly's scraps."

The woman went away with grateful tears in her eyes. And Mrs. Gass sat on and enjoyed the sunshine. Just then Mary Dallory came by in her little low pony-carriage. She often drove about in it alone. Seeing Mrs. Gass, she drew up. That lady, without any ceremony, went out in her cap and stood talking.

"I hear you have left the Hall, my dear," she said, when the gossip was coming to an end.

"Ages ago," replied Miss Dallory. "Frank is at home again, and wanted me."

"How did you enjoy your visit on the whole?"

"Pretty well. It was not very lively, especially after Sir Nash was taken ill."

"He is better, Mr. Richard tells me," said the elder lady.

"Yes; he sits up now. I went to see him yesterday."

"Captain Bohun looks but poorly still."

"His illness was a bad one. Fancy his having jaundice. I thought it was only old people who had that."

"My dear, it attacks young and old. Once the liver gets out of order, there's no telling. Captain Bohun was born in India; and they are more liable to liver complaint, it's said, than others. You are driving alone to-day, as usual," continued Mrs. Gass.

"I like to be independent. Frank won't show himself in this little chaise; he says it is no better than a respectable wheelbarrow; and I'm sure I am not going to be troubled with a groom at my side."

"If all tales told are true, you'll soon run a chance of losing your independence," rejoined Mrs. Gass. "People say a certain young lady, not a hundred miles at this moment from, my elbow, is likely to give her heart away."

Instead of replying, Mary Dallory blushed violently. Observant Mrs. Gass saw and noticed it.

"Then it is true!" she exclaimed.

"What's true?" asked Mary.

"That you are likely to be married."

"No, it is not."

"My dear, you may as well tell me. You know me well; I'll keep good counsel."

"But I have nothing to tell you. How can I imagine what you mean?"

"'Twasn't more than a hint I had: that Captain Bohun--Sir Arthur as he will be--was making up his mind to have Miss Dallory, and she to have him. Miss Mary, is it so?"

"Did madam tell you that?"

"Madam wouldn't be likely to tell me--all of us in Dallory are so much dust under her feet; quite beneath being spoken to. No: 'twas her maid, Parrit, dropped it to me. She had heard it through madam, though."

Mary Dallory laughed a little and flicked the ear of the rough Welsh pony. "I fancy madam would like it," she said.

"Who wouldn't?" rejoined Mrs. Gass. "I put the question to Richard North--Whether there was anything in it? He answered there might be; he knew it was wished for."

"Richard North said that, did he? Of course, so it might be--and may be--for anything he can tell."

"But, my dear Miss Mary, is it so?"

"Well--to tell you the truth, the offer has not yet been made. When it comes, why then--I dare say it will be all right."

"Meaning that you'll accept him."

"Meaning that--oh, but it is not right to tell tales beforehand, even to you, Mrs. Gass," she broke off, with a laugh. "Let the offer come. I wish it would."

"You would like it to come, child?"

"Yes, I think I should."

"Then be sure it will come. And God bless you, my dear, and bring you happiness whatever turns out. Though it is not just the marriage I had carved out in my own mind for one of the two of you."

She meant Arthur Bohun. Mary Dallory thought she meant herself; and laughed again as the pony trotted away.

The next friend to pass the window after Mrs. Gass had again resumed her seat, was Richard North. He did not stop at the window, but went in. Certain matters connected with the winding-up of the old firm of North and Gass, had arisen, rendering it necessary that he should see Mrs. Gass.

"Do as you think best, Mr. Richard," she said, after they had talked together for a few minutes. "Please yourself, sir, and you'll please me. We'll leave it at that: I know it's all safe in your hands."

"Then I will do as I propose," said Richard.

"I've had Miss Dallory here--that is, in her pony-chay before the door," observed Mrs. Gass. "I taxed her with what I'd heard about her and Captain Bohun; She didn't say it was, and she didn't say it wasn't: but Mr. Richard, I think there's truth in it. She as good as said she'd like him to make her an offer: and she did say madam wished it. So I suppose we shall have wedding cards before a year's gone over our heads. In their case--he next step to a baronet, and she rolling in money--there's nothing, to wait for."

"Nothing," mechanically-answered Richard North.

"But I did think, as to him, that it would have been Ellen Adair. Talking of that, Mr. Richard, what is it that's amiss with her?"

"With her?--with whom?" cried Richard, starting out of a reverie.

"With that sweet young lady, Ellen Adair?"

"There's nothing amiss with her that I know of."

"Isn't there! There is, Mr. Richard, if my judgment and eyes are to be trusted. Each time I see her, she strikes me as looking worse and worse. You notice her, sir. Perhaps now the clue has been given you'll see it too. I once knew a young girl, Mr. Richard, that was dying quietly under her friends' very eyes, and they never saw it. Never saw it at all, till an aunt came over from another country. She started back when she saw the child, and says: 'Why, what have yon been doing with her? She's dying.' They were took aback at that, and called in the first doctor: but it was too late. I don't say Ellen Adair is dying, Mr. Richard; 'tisn't likely; but I'm sure she is not all right. Whether it's the mind, or whether it's the body, or whether it's the nerves, I'm not prepared to say; but it's something."

"I will find out," said Richard.

"Anything fresh about the men, Mr. Richard?"

"Nothing. Except that my workmen are getting afraid to stir out at night, and the disaffection increases amongst the others. I cannot see what is to be the end of it," he continued. "I do not mean of this rivalry, but of the sad state to which the men and their families are reduced. I often wish I did not think of it so much: it is like a chain about me from which I cannot escape. I wish I could help them to find work elsewhere."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Gass, "work elsewhere is very nice to think about in dreamland; but I'm afraid it'll never be seen for them in reality. It's not as if work was going a-begging: it has broken up everywhere, Mr. Richard; and shoals and shoals of men, destitute as our own, are tramping about at this minute, like so many old ravens with their mouths open, ready to pick up anything that may fall."

Richard North went home, his mind full of what Mrs. Gass had said about Ellen Adair. Was she indeed looking so ill? He found her sitting in the open seat near what would be in spring the tulip bed. Mr. North had just left her and gone in. Yes: Richard saw that she looked very ill; the face was wan, the eyes were sad and weary. She was coughing as he went up to her: a short, hacking cough. Some time ago she had caught cold, and it seemed to hang about her still.

"Are you well, Ellen?" he asked, as he sat down beside her.

"Yes, I believe so," was her reply. "Why?"

"Because I don't think you look well."

A soft colour, like the pink on a sea-shell, stole over her face as Richard said this. But she kept silence.

"You know, Ellen, we agreed to be as brother and sister. I wish to take care of you as such: to shield you from all ill as far as I possibly can. Are you happy here?"

A moment's pause, and then Ellen took courage to say that she was not happy.

"I should like to go elsewhere," she said. "Oh, Richard, if it could only be managed!"

"But it cannot," he answered.

"I have sufficient money, Richard."

"My dear, it is not that. Of course you have sufficient. I fancy, by sundry signs, that you will be a very rich young lady," he added, slightly laughing. "But you have no near friends in England, and we could not entrust you to strangers."

"If I could go for a time into some clergyman's family, or something of that sort."

"Ellen!"

She raised her hand from beneath the grey shawl--her favourite outdoor covering, for the shawl was warm--and passed it across her brow. In every movement there was a languor that spoke weariness of body or of spirit.

"When Mr. Adair comes home, if he found you had gone into 'some clergyman's family,' what would he think and say of us, Ellen?"

"I would tell him I went of my own accord."

"But, my dear, you cannot be allowed to do things of your own accord, if they are not wise. I and my father are appointed to take charge of you, and you must remain with us, Ellen, until Mr. Adair returns to England."

It was even so. Ellen's better judgment acknowledged it, in the midst of her great wish to be away. A wish: and not a wish. To be where Arthur Bohun was, still brought her the most intense happiness; and this, in spite of the pain surrounding it, she would not willingly have relinquished: but the cruelty of his conduct--of their estrangement--was more than she knew how to bear. It was making her ill, and she felt that it was. There was, however, no help for it. As Richard said, she had no friends to whom they could entrust her. The lady in whose house she was educated had recently died, and the establishment was being broken up.

Ten times a-day she longed to say to Arthur Bohun, "You are ungenerous to remain here. I cannot help myself, but you might." But pride withheld her.

"It may be months before papa arrives, Richard."

"And if it should be! We must try to make you happier with us."

"I think I must go in," she said, after a pause. "The day has been very fine, but it is growing cold now."

Folding the shawl closer to her throat, as if she felt chilly, and coughing a little as she walked, Ellen went round to the hall-door and entered. Richard, occupied in watching her and busy with his own thoughts, did not perceive the almost silent approach of Arthur Bohun, who came slowly up from behind.

"Well, Dick, old fellow!"

"Why, where did you spring from?" asked Richard, as Arthur flung himself down in the place vacated by Ellen.

"I have been under yonder tree, smoking a cigar. It has a good broad trunk to lean against."

"I thought the doctors had forbidden you to smoke."

"So they have. Until I grew stronger. One can't strictly obey orders. I don't suppose it matters much one way or the other. You have been enjoying a confidential chat, Dick."

"Yes," replied Richard. He had not felt very friendly in his heart towards Arthur for some time past. What was the meaning of his changed behaviour to Ellen Adair?--what of the new friendship with Mary Dallory? Richard North could not forgive dishonour; and he believed Arthur Bohun was steeping himself in it to the backbone.

"Were you making love, Dick?"

Richard turned his eyes in silence on the questioner.

"She and I have had to part, Dick. I always thought you admired and esteemed her almost more, perhaps quite more, than you do any other woman. So if you are thinking of her----"

"Be silent," sternly interrupted Richard, rising in anger. "Are you a man?--are you a gentleman? Or are you what I have been thinking you lately--a false-hearted, despicable knave?"

Whatever Arthur Bohun might be, he was just then in desperate agitation. Rising too, he seized Richard's hands.

"Don't you see that it was but sorry jesting, Richard? Pretending to a bit of pleasantry, to wile away for a moment my weight of torment. I am all that you say of me; and I cannot help myself."

"Not help yourself?"

"As Heaven is my witness, No! If I could take you into my confidence--and perhaps I may do so one of these days, for I long to do it--you would see that I tell you the truth."

"Why have you parted from Ellen Adair?--she and you have parted? You have just said so."

"We have parted for life. For ever."

"You were on the point of marriage with her only a short time ago?"

"No two people could have been nearer marriage than she and I were. We were within half-an-hour of it, Dick; and yet we have parted."

"By your doing, or hers?"

"By mine."

"I thought so."

"Dick, I have been compelled to do it. When you shall know all, you will acknowledge that I could not do otherwise. And yet, in spite of this, I feel that to her I have been but a false-hearted knave, as you aptly style me: a despicable, dishonourable man. My father fell into dishonour--or rather had it forced upon him by another--and he could not survive it; he shot himself. Did you know it, Dick?"

"Shot himself!" repeated Richard, in his surprise. "No, I never knew that. I thought he died of sunstroke."

"My father shot himself," cried Arthur. "He could not live dishonoured. Dick, old fellow, there are moments when I feel tempted to do as he did."

"What--because you have parted from Ellen?"

"No. That's bitter enough to bear; but I can battle with it. It is the other thing, the dishonour. That is always present with me, always haunting me night and day; I know not how to live under it."

"I do not understand at all," said Richard. "You are master of your own actions."

"In this case I have not been: my line of conduct was forced upon me. I cannot explain. Don't judge me too harshly, my friend. I am bad enough, Heaven knows, but not quite as bad, perhaps, as you have been thinking me."

And Arthur Bohun turned and went limping away, leaving Richard lost in wonder.

He limped away to indulge his pain where no mortal eye could see him. Parted from Ellen Adair, the whole world was to him as nothing. A sense of dishonour lay ever upon him, the shame of his conduct towards her was present to him night and day. With all his heart he wished James Bohun had not died, that there might have been no question of his succession. He would then have gone somewhere away with her, have changed his name, and been happy in obscurity. But there was no place unfrequented by man; he could not change his wife's face; and she might be recognized as the daughter of Adair the convict. Besides, would it not be an offence against Heaven if he wedded the daughter of the man who had caused the death of his father? No; happiness could never be his. Look where he would, there was nothing around him but pain and misery.

[CHAPTER XXVII.]

ONCE AGAIN

Jelly lived, so to say, on a volcano. She felt that, figuratively speaking, there was not an hour of the day or night but she might be blown into fragments. The rumours as to the death of Mrs. Rane were becoming more terrible. They stole up and down Dallory like a scorching tongue of fire, and Jelly had the satisfaction of knowing that it was she who had first set light to the flame. It was all very well to say that she had made herself safe by securing the evidence of Thomas Hepburn: in her secret conscience she knew that she was not safe; and that, even in spite of that evidence, Dr. Rane might chance to be innocent. If so, why, a pretty dilemma she would find herself in. There was no help for it; she could do nothing. The creeping, scorching tongue went twisting itself in and out, and she could not quench it.

One night Jelly was lying awake, according to custom now, buried deep in some horrible visions that had lately begun to haunt her: now of working in chains; now of stepping incessantly up a treadmill; now of picking oakum and living upon gruel. Turning in the bed, to escape, if possible, these imaginary pictures, she suddenly heard a knock at her door. A loud hasty knock; and now a louder. Jelly turned hot then cold as ice. Had the officers of the law come to arrest her?

"Who's there?--what is it?" she asked faintly, not daring to sit up in bed.

"Art thee awake, Jelly?" came the gentle response, as her door was opened a few inches. "I am very sorry to have to ask thee to get up, but my mother is worse. Make haste, please."

Had Miss Beverage's voice been that of an angel, it could not have sounded sweeter to Jelly just then. The relief was great.

"I'll get up instantly, ma'am," was the ready answer--and Miss Beverage wondered it should have in it a tone as of gratitude. "I'll be with you at once."

Mrs. Beverage was subject to violent but rare attacks of spasms. She had felt ill before going to bed, but hoped it would pass off. Jelly and her own two servants were soon at her bedside. She was very ill indeed. Some of them ran to get hot water ready; Jelly thought it would be well to call in Dr. Rane.

"I should like the doctor to see her; at the same time, I grieve to arouse him from sleep," said Miss Beverage.

"Law, ma'am, that's nothing to doctors; they are used to it," cried Jelly.

"Mother, would thee like Oliver Rane sent for?" asked Miss Beverage, bending over the suffering lady. "Yes--yes," was the feeble answer. "I am very ill, Sarah."

"Thee go, then, Jelly."

Away went Jelly. Unbarring their own front-door, she passed out of it, and approached Dr. Rane's. The doctor's professional lamp burnt clearly, and, to her great surprise, Jelly saw that the door was not closed.

"He cannot have gone to bed to-night," she thought, as she walked in without ringing. It was past three o'clock.

But the house seemed to be still and dark. Jelly left the front-door open, and the light shone a little way into the passage. She tried the surgery-door; it was locked; she tried the dining-room; the key of that was also turned; the kitchen-door stood open, but it was all in darkness.

"He has gone to bed and forgotten to shut up," was the conclusion Jelly now arrived at. "I'll go up and call him."

Groping her way upstairs, she had almost reached the top, when a pale white light suddenly illumined the landing--just the same faint sort of light that Jelly had seen once before, and remembered all too well. Raising her head hastily, there stood--what?

Not quite at the moment did Jelly know what. Not in the first access of terror did she clearly recognize the features of Bessy Rane. It was she, all too surely; that is, the image of what she had been. She seemed to stand almost face to face with Jelly: Jelly nearly at the top of the staircase, she facing it before her. The light was even more faint before the figure than behind: but there was no mistaking it. What it was dressed in or whence it came, Jelly never knew: there it was--the form and face of Bessy Rane. With a cry of agony, that echoed to the ends of the empty house in the night's silence, Jelly turned and flew down again.

She never looked behind. Out at the front-door went she, slamming it, in her terror, to keep in what might be following her; and she almost gave forth another scream when she found herself touched by some one coming in at the gate, and saw that it was Dr. Rane.

"I am called out to a country patient," he quietly said. "Whilst I was putting the horse to the gig, an impression came over me that I had left my house-door open, so I thought I had better come back and see. What are you doing here at this hour, Jelly? Any one ill?"

Jelly was in terrible distress and confusion of mind. Clutching his arm as if for protection, she sobbed for an instant or two hysterically. Dr. Rane stared at her, not knowing what to make of it. He began to think she must require his services herself.

"Sir--do you know--do you know who is in the house?"

"Nobody's there: unless they've come in these last few minutes--for I suppose I did leave the door open," was Dr. Rane's rejoinder, and his composure contrasted strongly with Jelly's emotion. "When I leave my house at night, I carry my household with me, Jelly."

"Your wife's there," she whispered, with a burst of agony. "Sir, it's as true as that I am living to tell it."

"What do you say?"

Jelly's answer was to relate what she had seen. When Dr. Rane had gathered in her full meaning, he grew very angry.

"Why, you must be mad, woman," he cried in a low concentrated voice. "This is the second time. How dare you invent such folly?"

"I swear that her ghost walks, and that it is in there now," exclaimed Jelly, almost beside herself. "It is on the landing, exactly where I saw it before. Why should she come again?--why should she haunt that one particular spot? Sir, don't look at me like that. You know I would not invent such a thing."

"Your fancy invents it, and then you speak of it as if were fact. How dare you do so?"

"But he could not appease Jelly: he could not persuade her out of her belief. And the doctor saw that it was useless to attempt it.

"Why, why should her poor ghost walk?" wailed Jelly, wringing her hands in distress.

"I'm sure I don't know why it should walk," returned the doctor, as if he would humour Jelly and at the same time ridicule her words. "It never walks when I am in the house." But the ridicule was lost on Jelly.

"She can't lie quiet in her grave. What reason is there for it?--oh, what dreadful mystery is in it?"

Dr. Rane looked as though he would have liked to annihilate Jelly. "I begin to think that you are either a fool or a knave," he cried. "What brought you in my house at three o'clock in the morning?"

The question, together with his unconcealed anger, recalled Jelly's scattered senses. She told him about the illness of Mrs. Beverage, and asked if he would come in.

"No, I cannot come," said Dr. Rane quite savagely, for it seemed that he could not get the better of his anger. "I am called out to a case of emergency, and have no time to waste over Mrs. Beverage. If she wants a doctor, send for Seeley."

He opened his door with his latch-key, and shut it loudly after him. However, it seemed that he reconsidered the matter, for when Jelly was slowly walking across the road towards Mr. Seeley's, Dr. Rane came out again, called her back, and said he would spare a minute or two.

With a stern caution to Jelly not to make the same foolish exhibition of herself to others that she had to him, he went up to Mrs. Beverage--who was then easier, and had dozed off to sleep. Giving a few general directions in case the paroxysm should return, Dr. Rane departed. About ten minutes afterwards, Jelly was in her room, which looked towards the lane, when she heard his gig come driving down and stop at his garden-door. After waiting there a short time--he had probably come in for some case of instruments--it went away quickly across country.

The horse and gig used by the doctor belonged to the neighbouring public-house. Dr. Rane had a key to the stables, so that if he wanted to go out during the night, he could harness the horse to the gig without disturbing any one.

"If he had not said beforehand that he was putting the horse to, I should have thought he'd gone out because he daredn't stay in the house," muttered Jelly, as she glued her face to the window pane, to look after the doctor and the gig. She could see neither; the night was very dark.

Jelly's mind was in a chaos. What she had witnessed caused her still to shiver and tremble as though she had an ague; and she fully believed that she was really in danger of becoming what the doctor had told her she was already--mad.

Suddenly, a cry arose in the house. Mrs. Beverage was worse again. The paroxysm had returned so violently that it seemed to the frightened beholders as though she would die. Dr. Rane was not attainable, and Miss Beverage sent one of the under-servants for Mr. Seeley. He came promptly.

In about an hour the danger had passed; the house was quiet again, and Mr. Seeley was at liberty to return to his rest. He had crossed the road to his own door when he heard a step following him. Turning he saw Jelly.

"Surely she is not ill again!" he hastily exclaimed.

"No, sir, she is all right I think now. Mr. Seeley," added Jelly in agitation so marked that he could not help noticing it, "I want to speak to you: I want to tell you something. I must tell somebody, or I shall never live till morning."

"Are you ill?" questioned Mr. Seeley.

"When I was holding the flannels just now, and otherwise helping you, sir, you might have seen that I hadn't all my wits about me. Miss Beverage looked at me once or twice, as much as to ask what had become of them. Mr. Seeley, I have the weight of a most awful secret upon me, and I can't any longer bear with it."

"A secret!" repeated Mr. Seeley.

Jelly drew near to him. She pointed to the house of Dr. Rane, and lowered her voice to a whisper.

"Mrs. Rane's there."

He looked across at the house--so apparently still and peaceful behind its white blinds; he turned and looked at Jelly. Not a syllable did he understand of her assertion.

"Mrs. Rane comes again, sir. She haunts the house. I have seen her twice with my own eyes. Once, the night of her death, just after she had been put into her coffin; and again this very night."

"Why, what on earth do you mean?" questioned Mr. Seeley in amazement. "Mrs. Rane haunts the house?--I don't understand you."

"Her ghost does, sir. It is there now."

The surgeon leaned against his door-post, and stared at Jelly as if he thought her mind was wandering. A minute or two passed in utter silence.

"My good woman, you need a composing draught as badly as Friend Beverage did just now. What is the matter with you, Jelly?"

In reply, Jelly told her story--as to the appearance of Mrs. Rane--from the beginning. But she cautiously avoided all mention of suspicion as to unfair play: in fact she did not mention Dr. Rane's name at all. Mr. Seeley listened quietly, as though he were hearing a fairy tale.

"Have you spoken of this to Dr. Rane?" was his first question.

"Yes, sir: both times. To-night I met him as I was rushing out of the house in my terror."

"What does he say to it?"

"He ridicules it. He says it's my fancy, and is in a towering rage with me. Mrs. Gass asked whether I had been taking too much beer. People are hard of belief as to such things."

"You told Mrs. Gass, then?"

"I told her the first time. I was in great distress and perplexity, and I mentioned it to her as we sat together in the churchyard looking at Mrs. Rane's funeral."

"What did Mrs. Gass say?"

"She cautioned me never to speak of it again to living soul. Neither of that, nor of--of anything. But this very night, sir, I have seen it again: and if it is to go on like this, I shall soon be in a lunatic asylum."

Mr. Seeley had no faith in ghosts. At the same time he saw how implicit was Jelly's belief in what she fancied she had seen, and the distressed state of mind it had induced. What to answer for the best, he did not know. If he threw ridicule on the story, it would make no impression upon her: if he pretended to receive it as truth, it could bring her no relief.

"Jelly," said he, "I should not believe in a ghost if I saw one."

"I didn't believe in them once," answered Jelly. "But seeing brings belief."

"I'm sure I don't know what to say to you," was his candid avowal. "You are evidently so imbued with your own view of the matter, that any argument to the contrary would be useless."

"What troubles me is this," resumed Jelly, as if she had not heard him. "Why is she unable to rest, poor thing? What's the reason for it?"

"I should say there was no reason," observed Mr. Seeley.

"Should you, sir?"

Jelly spoke significantly, and he looked at her keenly. There was a professional lamp over the door, as there was over Dr. Rane's; and their faces were visible to each other. The significant tone had slipped out in the heat of argument, and Jelly grew cautious again.

"What am I to do, sir?"

"Indeed I cannot tell you, Jelly. There is only one thing to be done, I should say--get rid of the fancy again as quickly as you can."

"You think I did not see it!"

"I think all ghost-stories proceed purely from an excited imagination," said the surgeon.

"You have not lived here very long, sir, but you have been here quite long enough to know that I've not much imagination. I don't remember that, before this happened, I ever felt excited in my whole life. My nature's not that way. The first time I saw her, I had come in, as I say, from Ketler's; and all I was thinking of was Dinah's negligence in not putting out the matches for me. I declare that when I saw her, poor thing, that night, I was as cool as a cucumber. She stood there some time, looking at me with a fixed stare, as it seemed, and I stood in the dark, looking at her. I thought it was herself, Mr. Seeley, and felt glad that she was able to be out of bed. In the morning, when I heard she was dead and shut up in her coffin, I thought she must have been shut in alive. You were the first I asked whether it was true that she was dead," added Jelly, warming with the sudden recollection, "I saw you standing here at the door after Dinah had told me, and I stepped over to you."

The surgeon nodded. He remembered it

"To-night when I went for Dr. Rane, there was not a thought or particle of superstition in my mind. I was troubled about Mrs. Beverage, and wondering what carelessness brought the doctor's front-door open. And there she stood!--facing me as I went up the stairs--just in the same identical spot that she had stood in the time before. Ugh!" broke off Jelly, with a shudder. "But don't say again, sir, please, that it was my excited imagination."

"I could tell you stories of the imagination that would surprise you, Jelly."

"If it was not Mrs. Rane--that is, her apparition--that appeared to me to-night, sir, and that appeared to me the other night, I wish these eyes may never behold anything again," spoke Jelly solemnly. And Mr. Seeley saw how worse than useless would be any further contention.

"Jelly, why have you told me this? I do not see how I can help you."

"I've told you because the weight of keeping it to myself was greater than I could bear," she replied. "It's an awful thing, and a cruel thing, that it should be just me that's singled out for it. I think I know why: and I am nearly torn to pieces with the responsibility. As to helping me, sir, I don't think that you or anybody else can do that. Did you see Mrs. Rane after she died?"

The question was put abruptly, but in a tone that Jelly meant to be indifferent. Mr. Seeley replied in a very matter-of-fact manner.

"No."

"Well, I'll wish you goodnight, sir. Keeping you talking here will do no good."

"Good-morning, I should say," returned the surgeon.

Jelly had reached her own gate, when she paused for a moment and then turned back across the road. The surgeon had not moved. He was still leaning against his door-post, apparently gazing at Dr. Rane's house. Jelly said what she had returned to say.

"You will please not speak of this again to any one, Mr. Seeley. There are reasons why."

"Not I, Jelly," was the hearty rejoinder. "I don't want to be laughed at in Dallory as a retailer of a ghost-story."

"Thank you, sir."

With that, the surgeon passed into his dwelling, and Jelly went over to hers. And the winter's night wore on to its close.

In the favourable reaction that had fallen on Mrs. Beverage, Jelly might have gone to rest again had she so chosen. But she did not do so. There could be neither rest nor sleep for her. She sat by the kitchen-fire, and drank sundry cups of tea: and rather thought, what with one perplexity and another, that it was not sinful to wish herself dead.

In the morning about seven o'clock, when she was upstairs in her chamber, she heard the sound of a gig in the lane, and looked out. It was Dr. Rane, returning from his visit to his patient. His face was white and troubled. An ordinary passer-by would have said the doctor was cold: Jelly drew a different conclusion.

"It's his conscience," she mentally whispered. "It's the thought of having to live in his house now that he knows what's in it. He might have set it down to my fancy the first time: he can't this. Who knows, either, but what she appears to him?--who knows? but it strikes me his nerves are made of iron. He must have been driving like mad, too, by the way the gig's splashed!" added Jelly, catching a glimpse of the state of the vehicle as it whirled round the corner towards the stables. "Good Heavens! what is to be done?--what is to be done about this dreadful secret? Why should it have fallen on ME of all people in the world?"

[CHAPTER XXVIII.]

COMING VERY NEAR

When rumours of this grave character arise, they do not come suddenly to a climax. Time must be given them to grow and settle down. It came at length, however, here. Doubts ripened into convictions: suppressed breathings widened into broad assertions: Oliver Rane had certainly murdered his wife for the sake of the tontine money. People affirmed it one to another as they met in the street--or rather, to avoid compromising themselves, said that others affirmed it. Old Phillis heard it one day, and almost fell down in a fit. She did not altogether believe it: nevertheless from that time she could not speak to her master without visibly trembling. The doctor thought she must be suffering from nervous derangement. At length it penetrated to Dallory Hall and the ears of madam; and upon madam it produced an extraordinary effect.

It has been stated throughout that Mrs. North had conceived a violent dislike to Dr. Rane; or at least, that she persistently acted in a manner that produced the impression that she had done so. As if she had only waited for this rumour to accuse him of something tangible, madam made the cause her own. She never appeared to doubt the truth of the report, or to inquire as to its grounds; she drove about, here, there, and everywhere, unequivocally asserting that Bessy Rane had been poisoned, and that her husband, Oliver Rane, had done the deed.

In truth Mrs. North had been in a state of mental ferment ever since she had become cognizant of the expected return of Mr. Adair to England. Why she should dread this, and why it should excite her in no measured degree she alone knew. No one around her had the least idea that the home-coming of Mr. Adair would be more to her than the arrival of any stranger might be. Restless, nervous, anxious, with an evil and crafty look in her eyes, with ears that were ever open, with hands that could never be still, waited madam. The household saw nothing--only that her tyranny became more unbearable day by day.

It almost seemed as though she took up the whispered accusation against Dr. Rane as a vent for some of her other and terrible uneasiness. He must be brought to the bar of justice to answer for his crime, avowed madam. She drove to the houses of the different county magistrates, urging this view upon them; she besieged the county coroner in his office, and bade him get the necessary authority and issue his orders for the exhumation of the body.

The coroner was Mr. Dale. There had recently been a sharp contest for the coronership, which had become vacant, between a doctor and a lawyer: the latter was Dale, of Whitborough, and he had gained the day. To say that madam, swooping down upon him with this command, startled him, would be saying little, as describing his state of astonishment. Occupied very much just now with the proceedings attaching to his new honour, Lawyer Dale had found less time for gossiping about his neighbours' affairs than usual; and not a syllable of the flying rumour had reached him. So little did he at first believe it, and so badly did he think of madam for the part she was playing, that, had she been a man, he would have given her the lie direct. But she was persistent, repeating the charge over and over to him in the most obnoxious and least delicate manner possible: Oliver Rane had poisoned his wife during her attack of fever, and he had done it to get possession of the tontine money. She went over the grounds of suspicion, dwelling on them one by one; and perhaps the lawyer's belief in Dr. Rane's innocence was just a trifle shaken--which, however, he did not acknowledge. After some sparring between them--Mr. Dale holding back from interference, she pressing it on--the coroner was obliged to admit that if a demand for an inquest were formally made to him he should have no resource but to call one. Finally he undertook to institute some private inquiries into the matter, and see whether there were sufficient grounds to justify so extreme a course. Madam sharply replied that if he showed the smallest disposition to stifle the inquiry, she should at once cause the Home Secretary to be communicated with. And with that she swept down to her carriage.

Perhaps, of all classes of men, lawyers are most brought into contact with the crimes and follies committed by the human race. Mr. Dale had not been at all scrupulous as to what he undertook; and many curious matters had come under his experience. Leaning back in his chair after madam's visit, revolving the various points of the story, his opinion changed, and he came to the conclusion that, on the face of things, it did look very much as though Dr. Rane had been guilty. Lawyer Dale had no reason to wish the doctor harm; especially the fearful harm a public investigation might entail upon him: had the choice lain with him, he would have remained quiescent, and left the doctor to his conscience. But he saw clearly that Mrs. North would not suffer this, and that it was more than probable he would have to act.

The first move he made, in his undertaking to institute some private inquiry, was to seek an interview with Mr. Seeley. He went himself; the matter was of too delicate a nature to be confided to a clerk. In his questions he was reticent, after the custom of a man of law, giving no clue, and intending to give none, as to why he put them; but Mr. Seeley had heard of the rumoured accusation, and spoke out freely.

"I confess that I could not quite understand the death," he avowed: "but I do not suspect that Dr. Rane, or any one else had any hand in it. She died naturally, as I believe. Mr. Dale, this is a horrible thing for you to bring against him."

"I bring it!" cried Mr. Dale. "I don't bring it; I'd rather let the doubt die out. It is forced upon me."

"Who by? These confounded scandalmongers?"

"By Mrs. North."

"Mrs. North!" echoed the surgeon, in surprise. "You don't mean to say the North family are taking it up."

"I don't know about the family. Madam is, with a vengeance. She won't let it rest. There is an evident animus in her mind against Dr. Rane, and she means to pursue the charge to its extremity."

Mr. Seeley felt vexed to hear it. When these rare and grave charges are brought against one of the medical body, the rest, as a rule, would rather resent than entertain it. And, besides, the surgeon liked Dr. Rane.

"Come; you may as well tell me the truth," cried the lawyer, breaking the silence. "You'll have to do it publicly, I fancy."

"Mr. Dale," was the answer, "I have told you the truth according to my belief. Never a suspicion of foul play crossed my mind in regard to Mrs. Rane's death. I saw nothing to give rise to it."

"You did not see her after she died: nor for some hours before it?"

"No."

"You think she went off naturally."

"Most certainly I think so."

"But, see here--we lawyers have to probe opinions, you know, so excuse me. If it were to be proved that she went off in--in a different way, you would not be surprised; eh, Seeley?"

"I should be very much surprised."

"From your recollection of the facts, you would not be able to bring forth any proof to the contrary?"

"Well, no; I should not be able."

"There's the difficulty, you see," resumed the lawyer; "there's where it will lie. You believe Rane was innocent, I may believe him innocent; but no one can furnish sufficient proof to stop the inquiry. It will have to go on as sure as fate."

"Cannot you stop it, Mr. Dale?"

"I promise you this: that I will throw as many difficulties in the way of it as I possibly can. But when once I am publicly called upon to act, I shall have to obey."

That was the end of the interview. It had a little strengthened the lawyer's doubts, if anything. Mr. Seeley had not seen her after death. What he was going to do next Mr. Dale did not say.

By the day following this, perhaps the only two people accustomed to walk up and down the streets of Dallory who still remained in blissful ignorance of the trouble afloat, were Dr. Rane himself, and Richard North. No one had dared to mention it to either of them. Richard, however, was soon to be enlightened.

Business took him to his bankers' in Whitborough. It was of a private nature, requiring to be transacted between himself and one of the old brothers at the head of the firm. After it was over they began talking about things in general, and Richard asked incidentally whether much further delay would take place in paying the tontine money to Dr. Rane.

"I am not sure that we shall be able to pay it at all," replied Sir Thomas Ticknell.

"Why not?" asked Richard, in surprise.

For answer, the old gentleman looked significantly at Richard for a moment, and then demanded whether he was still in ignorance of what had become the chief topic of the place.

Bit by bit, it all came out. The Brothers Ticknell, it appeared, had heard the report quite at the first: friends are always to be found when there is an opportunity of doing a fellow-man an injury; and some one had hastened to the bankers with the news. Richard North sat aghast as he listened. His sister was supposed to have come by her death unfairly! For once in his life he changed to the hue of the grave, and his strong frame trembled.

"We hear the new coroner, Dale, has the matter in hand now," remarked Sir Thomas. "I fear it will be a terrible scandal."

Recovering the shock in some degree, Richard North took his departure, and went over to Dale's, whose offices were nearly opposite the bank. The lawyer was there, and made no scruple of disclosing what he knew to Richard.

"It's a pity that I have to take the matter up," said Dale. "Considering the uncertainty at present attending it--considering that also it cannot bring the dead to life, and that it will be a most painful thing for old Mr. North--and for you too, Mr. Richard--I think it would be as well to let it alone."

"But who is stirring in it?" asked Richard.

"Madam."

"Madam! Do you mean Mrs. North?"

"To be sure I do. I don't say that public commotion and officious people would not soon have brought it to the same issue; but, any way, Mrs. North has forestalled them." And he told Richard of madam's visit to him.

"You say you have been making some private inquiries," observed Richard.

Mr. Dale nodded.

"And what is your candid opinion? Tell me, Dale."

But the lawyer hesitated to say he feared Dr. Rane might have been guilty. Not only because it was an unpleasant assertion to make to Dr. Rane's brother-in-law, but also because he really had doubts as to whether it was so or not.

"I hold no decided opinion as yet," he said. "I may not be able to form one until the post-mortem examination has taken place----"

"You do not mean to say that they will--that they will disturb my sister!" interrupted Richard North, his eyes full of horror.

"Why, that's the first thing they will do--if the investigation goes on at all," cried the lawyer. "That's always the preliminary step in these cases. You are forgetting."

"I suppose I am," groaned Richard. "This has been a great shock to me. Dale, you cannot believe him guilty!"

"Well, I can't tell; and that's the fact," candidly avowed the lawyer. "There are certainly some suspicious circumstances attending the case: but at the same time, they are only what Dr. Rane may be able to explain satisfactorily away."

"How have the doubts arisen?" questioned Richard. "There were none--I suppose--at the time."

"As far as I can at present ascertain, they have sprung from some words incautiously dropped by Jelly, the late Mrs. Cumberland's maid. Whether Jelly saw anything at the time of Mrs. Rane's illness to give rise to suspicion I don't know. I have not yet seen her. It is necessary to go about this business cautiously; and Jelly, I expect, will not prove a willing witness."

"Did madam tell you this arose from Jelly?"

"Oh dear, no. Madam does not concern herself as to the source of the suspicions; she said to me: 'There they are, and you must deal with them.' I had the information from my clerk, Timothy Wilks. In striving to trace the rumours to their source, I traced them to him. Carpeting him before me in this room, I insisted upon his telling me where he obtained them from. He answered readily enough, 'From Jelly.' It seems Jelly was spending an evening at his aunt's, or cousin's, or grandmother's--whatever it is. I mean the wife of your timekeeper, Mr. Richard North. Wilks was present: only those three; the conversation turned upon Mrs. Rane's death, and Jelly said a few words that startled them. I quite believe that was the beginning of the scandal."

"What can Jelly know?" exclaimed Richard, dreamily.

"I can't tell. The report is, that Mrs. Rane had something wrong given to her by her husband the last day of her life: and that his object was to get the tontine money, which he could not touch whilst she lived. A curious thing that the husband and wife should be the two last left in that tontine!" added the lawyer. "I've often said so."

"But even"--Richard paused--"if this had been so, how could Jelly have learnt it?"

"Well, things come out in strange ways sometimes; especially if they are things that ought to be kept secret. I've noticed it. Jelly's mistress was away, and she may have gone in to help nurse Mrs. Rane in her illness: we don't yet know how it was."

Richard North rose to depart. "At any rate, I do not see that it was madam's place to take it up," he remarked. "She should have left that to the discretion of my father and myself."

"She was in a perfect fever over it," cried Mr. Dale. "She talked of sending an application to the Home Secretary. I shouldn't wonder but what it has already gone up."

From the lawyer's house, Richard went direct to that of the late Mrs. Cumberland. The darkness of evening was then drawing on. As he reached the door, Miss Beverage, in her dove-coloured Quaker's bonnet, approached it from an opposite direction. Raising his hat, he asked whether he could be allowed a five minutes' interview with Jelly. Miss Beverage, who knew Richard by sight, was very chatty and pleasant: she took him into the drawing-room and sent Jelly to him. And Jelly felt half inclined to faint as she shut the door, for she well knew what must be coming.

But, after some fencing with Richard's questions, Jelly gave in. He was resolute in hearing all she could tell, and at length she made a clean breast of it. She related what she knew, and what she suspected, from beginning to end; and before she had finished, a strange relief, that Richard should know it, grew upon her.

"For I shall consider that the responsibility is now taken off my shoulders, sir," she said. "And perhaps it has been nothing but this that the ill-fated lady has wanted me to do, in coming again."

In the whole narrative, the part that most struck Richard North was Jelly's positive assertion that she had since twice seen Mrs. Rane. He was simply astounded. And, to tell the truth, he did not attempt to cast ridicule or disbelief on it. Richard North was an educated and practical man, possessed of an abundance of good common sense, with no more tendency to believe in supernatural appearances than men have in general; but his mind had been so unhinged since the interview with Sir Thomas Ticknell, that he almost felt inclined to admit the possibility of his sister's not resting in her grave.

He sat with his head leaning on his hand. Collecting in some degree his scattered senses, he strove to go over the grounds of suspicion. But he could make nothing more of them than Dale had said. Grounds there certainly were, but none that Dr. Rane might not be able to explain away. Jelly drew her own deductions, and called them proofs: but Richard saw that of proofs as yet there were none.

"Ever since that first night, I've lived in mortal horror of seeing it again," said Jelly, interrupting his reverie. "Nobody can imagine, sir, what a dreadful time it has been. And when I was least thinking of it, it came the second time."

"To whom have you repeated this story of having seen her?" asked Richard.

"The first time I told Dr. Rane and Mrs. Gass. This last time I told the doctor and Mr. Seeley."

"Jelly," said Richard quietly, "there is no proof that anything was wrong, except in your fancy."

"And the hasty manner that she was hid out of the way, sir--no woman called in to do anything for her; no soul allowed to see her!" urged Jelly. "If it wanted proof positive before, it can't want it since what Thomas Hepburn related to me."

"All that may have been done out of regard to the welfare of the living," said Richard.

Jelly shook her head. To her mind it was clearer than daylight.

But at this juncture, a servant came in to know if she should bring lights. Richard took the opportunity to depart. Of what use to prolong his stay? As he went out he saw Mr. Seeley standing at his door. Richard crossed over and asked to speak with him: he knew of Dale's interview with the surgeon.

"Can Rane have been guilty of this thing, or not?" questioned Richard, when they were closeted together.

But not even here could Richard get at any decided opinion. It might have been so, or it might not, Seeley replied. For himself, he was inclined to think it was not so: that Mrs. Rane's death was natural.

Leaving again, Richard paced up and down the dark road. His mind was in a tumult. He, with Seeley, could not think Dr. Rane guilty. And, even though he were so, he began to question whether it would not be better for his father's sake, for all their sakes, to let the matter lie. Richard put the two aspects together, and compared them. On the one side there would be the merited punishment of Oliver Rane and vengeance on Bessy's wrongs; the other would bring a terrible amount of pain, exposure, almost disgrace. And Richard feared for the effect it might have on Mr. North. Before his walk was over, he decided that it would be infinitely best to hush up the scandal, should that still be possible.

But, for his own satisfaction, he wished to get at the truth. It seemed to him that he could hardly live in the uncertainty. Taking a rapid resolution, he approached Dr. Rane's; knocked at the door, and asked old Phillis if he could see her master.

She at once showed him into the dining-room. Dr. Rane, weary, perhaps, with the cares of the day, had fallen asleep in his chair. He sprang up at the interruption; a startled, almost frightened expression appeared in his face. Richard North could but notice it, and his heart failed him, for it seemed to speak of guilt. Phillis shut them in together.

How Richard opened the interview, he scarcely knew, and could never afterwards recall. He soon found that Dr. Rane remained as yet in ignorance of the stir that was abroad; and this rendered his task all the more difficult. Richard entered on the communication in the most delicate manner that the subject admitted of. Dr. Rane did not receive it kindly. He first swore a great oath, and then--his anger checked suddenly as if by some latent thought or fear--he sank back in his chair and bent his head on his hands, as a man struck dumb with tribulation.

"I think you need not have given credit to this report against me, Richard North," he presently spoke in reproachful accents. "But I believe you lost confidence in me a year and a half ago."

He so evidently alluded to the anonymous letter that Richard did not affect to misunderstand him. It might be better to speak openly.

"I believe you wrote that, Rane."

"True. I did. But not to injure your brother. I thought Alexander must be a bad man--that he must be leading Edmund North into difficulties to serve himself. I had no cause to spare him, but the contrary, for he had injured me, was injuring me daily; and I wrote what I did to Mr. North, hoping it might expose Alexander and damage him. There: you have it. I would rather have had my hand cut off than have hurt your brother. I wished afterwards that it had been cut off first. But it was too late then."

And because of that anonymous letter Dr. Rane knew, and Richard felt, that the accusation, now made, gathered weight. When a man has been guilty of one thing, we think it a reason why he may be guilty of another.

A silence ensued. They sat, the table between them. The room was rather dark. The lamp was shaded, the fire had burned low; before the large window wore stretched the sombre curtains. Richard North would have given some years of his life for this most distressing business never to have come into it.

He went on with what he had to say. Dr. Rane, motionless now, kept his hand over his face whilst he listened. Richard told of the public commotion; of the unparalleled shock it had been to himself, of the worse shock he feared it might be to his father. Again there was an interruption: but Dr. Rane in speaking did not raise his face.

"Is my liberty in danger?"

"Not yet--in one sense of the word. I believe you are under the surveillance of the police."

"Watched by them?"

"Yes. But only to see that you do not get away."

"That is--they track me out and home, I am to understand? I am watched in and out of my patients' houses. If I have occasion to pay country visits, these stealthy bloodhounds are at my heels, night or day?"

"I conclude it is so," answered Richard.

"Since when has this been?"

"Since--I think since the day before yesterday. There is a probability, as I hear, that the Home Secretary will be applied to. If----"

"For what purpose?"

"For authority to disturb the grave," said Richard, in low tones.

Dr. Rane started up, a frenzy of terror apparent in his face.

"They--they--surely they are not talking of doing that?" he cried, turning white as death.

"Yes they are. To have her disturbed will be to us the most painful of all."

"Stop it, for Heaven's sake!" came the imploring cry. "Stop it, Richard North! Stop it!"

But at that moment there broke upon their ears a frightful commotion outside the door. Richard opened it. Dr. Rane, who had sunk on to his seat again, never stirred. Old Phillis, coming in from the scullery after a cleaning excursion, had accidentally dropped a small cartload of pots and pans.

[CHAPTER XXIX.]

IN THE SHRUBBERY

Wintry weather set in again. The past few days had been intensely cold and bleak. Ellen Adair sat in one of her favourite outdoor seats. Sheltered from the wind by artificial rocks and clustering evergreens, and well wrapped-up besides, she did not seem to feel the frost.

Her later days had been one long trial. Compelled constantly to meet Arthur Bohun, yet shunned by him as far as it was possible without attracting the observation of others, there were times when she felt as though her position at the Hall were killing her. Something, in fact, was killing her. Her state of mind was a mixture of despair, shame, and self-reproach. Captain Bohun's conduct brought her the bitterest humiliation. Looking back on the past, she thought he despised her for her ready acquiescence in his wish for a private marriage: and the repentance, the humiliation it entailed on her was of all things the hardest to bear. She almost felt that she could die of the memory--just as other poor creatures, whose sin has been different, have died of their shame. The thought embittered her peace by night and by day: it was doing her more harm than all the rest. To one so sensitively organized as Ellen Adair, reared in all the graces of refined feeling, this enforced sojourn at Dallory Hall could indeed be nothing less than a fiery ordeal, from which there might be no escape to former health and strength.

Very still she sat to-day, nursing her pain. Her face was wan, her breathing laboured: that past cold she had caught seemed to hang about her strangely. No further news had been received from Mr. Adair, and Ellen supposed he was on his way home. After to-day her position would not be quite so trying, for Arthur Bohun was quitting Dallory. Sir Nash had decided that he was strong enough now to travel, and they were to depart together at two o'clock. It was past twelve now. And so--the sunshine of Ellen Adair's life had gone out. Never, as she believed, would a gleam come into it again.

In spite of the commotion beyond the walls of the Hall now increasing daily and hourly to a climax, in spite of madam's unceasing exertions to urge it on, and to crush Oliver Rane, no word of the dreadful accusation had as yet transpired within to its chief inmates. Mr. North, his daughter Matilda, Ellen Adair, Sir Nash Bohun, and Arthur; all were alike in ignorance. The servants of course knew of it, going out to Dallory, as they often did: but madam had issued her sharp orders that they should keep silence; and Richard had begged them not to speak of it for their master's sake. As to Sir Nash and Arthur Bohun, Richard was only too glad that they should depart without hearing the scandal.

He himself was doing all he could to stop proceedings and allay excitement. Since the night of his interviews with Jelly, Mr. Seeley, and Dr. Rane, Richard had devoted his best energies to the work of suppression. He did not venture to see any official person, the coroner excepted, or impress his views on the magistrates; but he went about amongst the populace, and poured oil on the troubled waters. "For my father's sake, do not press this on," he said to them; "let my sister's grave rest in peace."

He said the same in effect to the coroner; begging of him, if possible, to hush it up; and he implied to all, though not absolutely asserting it, that Dr. Rane could not be guilty. So that Ellen Adair, sitting there, had not the knowledge of this to give her additional trouble.

A little blue flower suddenly caught her eye, peeping from a mossy nook at the foot of the rocks. She rose, and stooped. It was a winter violet. Plucking it, she sat down again, and fell into thought.

For it had brought vividly before her memory that long-past day when she had played with her violets in the garden at Mrs. Cumberland's. "Est-ce qu'il m'aime? Oui. Non. Un peu. Beaucoup. Pas du tout. Passionnément. Il m'aime passionnément." False augurs, those flowers had been! Deceitful blossoms which had combined to mock and sting her. The contrast between that time and this brought to Ellen Adair a whole flood-tide of misery. And those foolish violets were hidden away still! Should she take this indoors and add it to them?

By-and-by she began to walk towards the house. Turning a corner presently she came suddenly upon three excited people: Captain Bohun, Miss Dallory, and Matilda North. The two former had met accidentally in the walk. Miss Dallory's morning errand at the Hall was to say goodbye to Sir Nash; and before she and Captain Bohun had well exchanged greetings, Matilda bore down upon them in a state of agitation, calling wildly to Arthur to stay and hear the tidings she had just heard.

The tidings were those that had been so marvellously kept from her and from others at the Hall--the accusation against Dr. Rane. Matilda North had just learnt them accidentally, and in her horror and surprise she hurried to her half-brother, Arthur, to repeat the story. Ellen Adair found her talking in wild excitement. Arthur turned pale as he listened; to Mary Dallory the rumour was not new.

But Arthur Bohun and Matilda North were strong enough to bear the shock. Ellen Adair was not so. As she drank in the meaning of the dreadful words--that Bessy had been murdered--a deadly sickness seized upon her heart; and she had only time to sit down on a garden-bench before she fainted away.

"You should not have told it so abruptly, Matilda," cried Arthur, almost passionately. "It has made even me feel ill. Get some water: you'll go quicker than I should."

Alarmed at Ellen's state, and eager to be of service, both Matilda and Miss Dallory ran in search of the water. Arthur Bohun sat down on the bench to support her.

Her head lay on his breast, as he placed it. She was without consciousness. His arm encircled her waist; he took one of her lifeless hands between his. Thus he sat, gazing down at the pale, thin face so near to his; the face which he had helped to rob of its bloom.

Yet he loved her still! loved her better than he did all the rest of the world put together! Holding her to his beating heart, he knew it. He knew that he only loved her the more truly for their estrangement. His pulses were thrilling with the rapture this momentary contact brought him. If he might but embrace her, as of old! An irrepressible yearning to press her lips to his, came into his heart. He slightly lifted the pale sweet face, and bent down his own.

"Oh, my darling! My lost darling!"

Lips, cheeks, brow were kissed again and again, with impassioned tenderness. It was so long since he had touched them! A sigh escaped him; and he knew not whether it contained most of bliss or of agony.

This treatment was more effective than the water could have been. Ellen drew a deep breath, and stirred uneasily. As soon as she began really to revive, he managed to get his coat off and fold it across the head and arm of the bench. When Ellen awoke to consciousness, she had her head leaning on it; and Captain Bohun stood at a very respectful distance from her. Never a suspicion crossed her mind of what he had been doing.

"You are better," he said. "I am glad!"

The words, the voice, aroused her fully. She lifted her head and opened her eyes and gazed around her in bewilderment. Then what Matilda had said came back with a rush.

"Is it true?" she exclaimed, looking piteously at him. "It never can be true!"

"I don't know," he answered. "If false, it is almost as dreadful to us who hear it. Poor Bessy! I loved her as a sister."

Ellen, exhausted by the fainting-fit, her nerves unstrung by the news, burst into tears. Matilda and Miss Dallory came hastening up with water, wine, and smelling-salts. But she soon recovered her equanimity, so far as outward calmness went, without the aid of remedies, which she declined. Rising from the bench, she turned towards the house, her steps a little uncertain.

"Pray give your arm to Miss Adair, Captain Bohun," spoke Mary Dallory in sharp, quick tones, surprised perhaps that he did not do so. And upon that, Captain Bohun went to Ellen's side, and held it out.

"Thank you," she answered, and refused it with a slight movement of the head.

They walked on at first all together, as it were. But Matilda and Miss Dallory were soon far ahead, the former talking excitedly about Bessy Rane and the terrible accusation regarding her. Ellen's steps were slower; she could not help it; and Captain Bohun kept by her side.

"May I wish you goodbye here, Ellen?" he suddenly asked, stopping towards the end of the shrubbery, through which they had been passing.

"Goodbye," she faintly answered.

He took her hand. That is, he held out his own, and Ellen almost mechanically put hers into it. To have made a scene by refusing, would have wounded her pride more than all. He kept it within his own, clasping his other hand upon it. For a moment his eyes met hers.

"It may be, that we shall never again cross each other's path in life, Ellen. God bless you, my love, and keep you always! I wish to Heaven, for both our sakes, that we had never met!"

"Goodbye," she coldly repeated as he dropped her hand. And they walked on in silence and gained the lawn, where the two in advance had turned to wait for them.

But this was destined to be an eventful day: to others, at least, if not to them. At the appointed time, Sir Nash Bohun and Arthur took their departure; Richard North, who had paid the baronet the attention of coming home to luncheon--for there was no longer any concealment now as to the true host of Dallory Hall--seeing them into their carriage.

"You have promised to come and stay with me, Richard," said the baronet, at the farewell hand-shake.

"Conditionally. When my work allows me leisure," answered Richard, laughing.

"Can't you go with us to the station, Dick?" put in Arthur.

"Not to-day, I fear. I must hold an immediate interview with madam; it is important. If you waited for me you might lose the train."

Arthur bent his face--one of pain now--to Dick's, and whispered.

"Is it money-trouble again, Richard?"

"No; not this time."

"If she brings anything of that sort on you in future, refer her to me. Yes, Richard: I must deal with it now."

Farewells were exchanged, and the carriage drove away. Richard, stepping backwards, came into contact with Miss Dallory.

"I beg your pardon!" he exclaimed. "Have I hurt you? I did not know you were there."

"Of course you have not hurt me: and I had no business to be there. I stood to wave to them. Good-afternoon, Mr. Richard."

"Are you going?" he asked.

"I have promised to spend the afternoon and take tea with Mrs. Gass. Luncheon was my dinner. I saw you looking at me as if you thought my appetite remarkable."

"Miss Dallory!"

She laughed slightly.

"To confess the truth, I don't think I noticed whether you took anything or nothing," said Richard. "I have a great deal to trouble me just now. Good-afternoon."

He would be returning to Dallory himself in perhaps a few minutes, but he never said to her, "Stay, and I will walk with you." Miss Dallory thought of it as she went away. It had indeed crossed Richard's mind to say so: but he arrested the words as they were about to leave his lips. If she was to be Arthur Bohun's wife, the less Richard saw of her the better.

Inquiring for madam when he went indoors, he found she was ensconced in her boudoir. Richard went up, knocked at the door, and opened it. Madam appeared not to approve of the procedure; she bore down on him with a swoop, and would have bade him retire.

"What do you want here, Richard North? I am not at liberty. I cannot admit you."

"Pardon me, madam, I must speak with you for five minutes," he answered, passing quietly in.

By something he had heard that morning from Dale, Richard had reason to suppose that Mrs. North was still actively pursuing the charge against Dr. Rane; was urging in high quarters the necessity for an investigation. Richard had come to ask her whether this was the case, and to beg her, once for all, to be still. He sat down uninvited whilst he put the question.

But madam would acknowledge nothing. In fact, she led him to believe that it was altogether untrue; that she had not stirred in it at all since the caution Richard had given her, not to do so, some days ago. It was simply impossible to know whether what she said might be depended on--for she was habitually more false than true. Richard could only hope she was true on this occasion.

"It would be a terrible exposure," he urged. "Madam, I beg you; I beg you for all our sakes, to be still. You know not what you would do."

She nodded an ungracious acquiescence: and Richard departed for his works, casually mentioning to Mr. North, as he passed him in the garden, that he should not return home until night. Like Miss Dallory, he had intended the midday meal to be his dinner.

"Dick," cried Mr. North, arresting him, "what's the matter with Matilda? She seems to be in a great commotion over something or other."

Richard know not what to answer. If his father had to be told, why, better that he himself should break it to him. There was still a chance that it might be kept from him.

"Something or other gone wrong, I suppose, sir. Never mind. How well those new borders look!"

"Don't they, Dick! I'm glad I decided upon them."

And Richard went on to his works.

[CHAPTER XXX.]

LYING IN WAIT

Night had fallen: not a bright or pleasant night.

A few skulkers had gathered behind the dwarf hedge, that skirted the piece of waste land near the North Works. An ill-looking set of men, as seen at present: for they had knelt so as to bring themselves almost on a level with the top of the hedge. Poole was in the middle; his face savage, a pistol in his right hand.

Of all the men who had returned to work, the most obnoxious to the old hands was one named Ralley. It was not so much because he had been a turn-coat--that is, after holding out to the eleventh moment, had finally gone back at the twelfth--that the men hated him, as because they believed him to be treacherous. Ralley had been red-hot for the strike; had done more by his agitation than any one man to bring it about. He had resolutely refused all the overtures made by Richard North: and yet--he had gone back when the works were finally reopened. For this the men heartily despised him--far more than they did those who had been ready to go back from the first. In addition to this, they had been suspecting--and lately had felt sure--that he was a snake in the grass. That he had laid himself out to pick up, fairly or stealthily, as might be, bits of information about them, their doings and sayings, their wretched condition and threats of revenge, and had carried them to the works and to Richard North. And so--the contents of the pistol that Poole held in his hand were meant for Ralley.

For a long time the malcontents of North Inlet had been burning to take vengeance on some one: some new treachery on Ralley's part, or suspected treachery, had come to light, and they determined to shoot him. Poor, misguided, foolish men! As if it would improve things for them! Suppose they killed Ralley, how would it better their condition? Ralley had not suffered half what they suffered. He was unmarried; and, during the strike, he had been helped by his relatives, who were pretty well off, so that he had known neither starvation nor tattered clothing, as they had: and this made his returning to work all the worse in their eyes. Ralley was about the age of Richard North, and not unlike him in height and figure: so much like him, indeed, that since their evil act had been determined on, one of the others had bade Poole take care he did not mistake the master for him in the dark. Poole's sullen rejoinder was, that it would not much matter if he did.

The night was dark; a drizzling rain had come on, and the part where they were was not too well lighted. The small band, about to issue from the gates of the works, would pass this waste land within some fifteen yards of them. Poole had been a famous marksman in his day, and felt sure of his aim. John Allen knelt on his right, one Denton on his left, and one on either side beyond: five in all.

Five o'clock struck. Almost simultaneously the bell at the works was heard, giving warning that it was time for the men to go to tea. Three or four sharp, quick strokes: nothing more.

"That's Green, I'll swear," cried Denton, alluding to the ringer. "I didn't know he was back again: his rheumatics must be better."

"Hush--sh--sh!" was all Denton received in answer. And a death-like silence ensued. Poole broke it.

"Where the devil are they? Why don't they come?"

Ay, why did they not come? Simply because there had been scarcely sufficient time for them to do so. But every moment, to these would-be murderers, kneeling there, seemed like a long-drawn-out period.

"Here they are," whispered Denton.

It was so. The men were coming out at the gate, about twenty of them; two and two; the policemen to-night heading the string. Sometimes the officers were behind, at other times at the side of the men. Poole rose cautiously and prepared to take aim. They were crossing from the gates, and presently would pass the hedge. This was the second night the men had thus lain in ambush. The previous night they had waited in like manner; but Ralley happened to be then on the other side his companion in the march, and so for the time was saved.

Allen stretched up his head. His sight was keen as a sailor's.

"Which side's he on, Jack?" whispered Poole. "I don't see him yet."

For answer John Allen put his hand quickly on Poole's arm to lower the pistol. "No good again, mates," said he. "Ralley ain't there."

"Not there!" retorted Poole with a strong oath.

"I'm as nigh sure of it as I can be," said Allen. "Wait till they come nearer."

It proved to be so. Ralley for some reason or other was not with the men. Denton again gave vent to a furious oath.

Tramp, tramp, tramp; their regular tread sounded in the stillness of the night as they passed. Poole had crouched down again.

The steps died away in the distance, and the conspirators ventured to raise their heads. Allen happened to look in the direction of the gates.

"Here he is!" burst forth Allen, with almost a suppressed scream. "Something must have kept him back. Now's our time, mates. Here's Ralley."

"That ain't his hat, Jack Allen," dissented one.

"Hat be smothered! it's himself," said John Allen.

Ralley was coming on quickly, a dark, low-crowned hat somewhat drawn over his brows. A minute's silence, during which you might have heard their hearts beat, and then----

Poole fired. Ralley gave a cry: staggered, and walked on. He was struck, no doubt, but not killed.

"Your boasted aim has failed, Poole," cried Denton with a savage oath.

Not more savage than Poole's, though, as he broke through the low hedge. What the bullet had not done, the pistol itself should. Suddenly, with a startled cry, Allen broke after him, shouting to him to stay his hand.

"It's the master, Poole; it's not Ralley. Stop, you fool!--it's the master."

Too late. It was, indeed, Richard North. And Mr. Poole had felled him by a wicked blow on the temple.

Mrs. Gass and Mary Dallory were seated at tea in a sad and sorrowful mood--for the conversation had turned on those dreadful rumours that, in spite of Richard North, would not be hushed. Mrs. Gass was stoutly asserting that she had more faith in Dr. Rane than to believe them, when some commotion in the street dawned on their ears. Mrs. Gass stopped in the midst of an emphatic sentence.

"What's that?" she cried.

Fleet steps seemed to be running to and fro; voices were raised in excitement. They distinctly heard the words, "Mr. Richard," "Richard North." Mrs. Gass drew aside her crimson curtains, and opened the window.

"Smith--is it you?" she said, arresting a man who was running in the wake of others. "What's the matter?"

"I don't rightly know, ma'am," he answered. "They are saying that Mr. Richard North has been shot dead."

"Lord help us!" cried Mrs. Gass. She shut down the window and brought her face round to the light again. Every vestige of colour had left it. Mary Dallory stood rigidly upright, her hands clasped, as one who had been turned to stone.

"Did you hear what he said, child?"

"I heard," was the scarcely murmured answer.

Mrs. Gass caught up a bonnet, which happened to lie on a chair, and went into the street. At the entrance to North Inlet a crowd of men and women had gathered. As in all similar cases, reports varied. Some said it had taken place in the high-road to Whitborough, some at the works, others near Dallory Hall. So the mob was puzzled which way to go and not miss the excitement. Thoms was talking at the top of his voice as Mrs. Gass arrived, anxious, perhaps, to disclaim complicity on his own score.

"They've had it in their heads to do it, some o' them bad uns have. I could name names, but I won't. If the master had knowed all, he'd ha' went about in fear of his life this long while past."

This was enough for Mrs. Gass. Gathering her black silk skirts in her hands, and her face paler than the assemblage had ever seen it, she stood, unmindful of the rain, and told them what she thought.

"If you've shot Richard North, you have shot the best and bravest man you'll ever know in this life. You'll never find such a friend again. Ay, he was brave. Brave for good in the midst of difficulties, brave to forbear. Don't you boast, Thoms, with your ready tongue. None of you men round me now may be the one that's shot him, but you've been all rowing in the same boat. Yes, you have. You mayn't have planned out murder yourselves--I wouldn't answer for it that you've not--but, any way, you knew that others was a-planning it, and you winked at it and kept silence. Who has been the friend to you that Richard North has been? Since you've been half starving, and your wives and children's been half starving, where has all the help come from, d'you suppose, that has kept you from starving outright? Why, from him. The most has come from him. The money I gave was his, the things I bought was mostly paid for by him. A little came from me; not much; I was too angry with your folly; but he couldn't see you quite clam, and he took care you shouldn't. Look at how you were all helped through the fever; and meat, and bread, and beer given you to get up your strength a bit, after it! Who did all that? Why, Richard North. You thought it was me; but it was him; only he wouldn't have it known. That was his return for all the black ingratitude you'd showed, in refusing to work for him and bringing him to ruin. Pray God he may not be dead! but if he is, a good man has gone to his reward.--Is that you, Ketler?"

"Yes, it's me," answered Ketler, who was standing in shadow, his face wearing a deeper gloom than the night could cast.

"When that child of yours died, Cissy--and many a little help did she have in life from him--who but Richard North took care that she shouldn't be buried by the parish? He met Fanny Jelly, and he put some money into her hand, and charged her to let it be thought it was hers. 'They are in distress and trouble, I know, Jelly,' he said; 'let this be used in the way that's best for them.' Go and ask Jelly, if you don't believe me: I had it from her. And that's the master you've been conspirating together to kill, Ketler!"

Ketler swallowed down a groan. "I'd never have raised a hand again the master; no, nor countenanced it. If anybody has said I would, it's a lie."

"There's not one of you but knew what mischief was in the wind, or might have known it; and you've countenanced it by keeping silence," retorted Mrs. Gass. "You are a pack of cowards. First of all you ruin him by throwing up his work, and when you find yourselves all clamming together, or nigh upon it, you turn round on him and kill him. May the Lord forgive you! I never will."

Some disturbance. A tramping of feet, and a shouting of running boys. Poole, Denton, John Allen, and one more were marching by in handcuffs, marshalled by some policemen. A hiss greeted them.

"'Twas a mistake," said Jack Allen, in answer to the hiss, reckless under his untoward fate. "'Twas meant for Ralley, not for the master."

"Is he dead?" called out Mrs. Gass.

But amidst the confusion she received no answer. And at that moment she became aware of a pale countenance near her, peeping out from a cloud of wool.

"Good gracious, Miss Mary, child! You shouldn't be out here."

"I have been with you all the time."

"Then, my dear, you just betake yourself home again. I'll come in as soon as I can learn the truth of it all."

Mrs. Gass had not long to wait. Almost as she spoke, Richard North appeared: and thereupon ensued more excitement than ever. Blood was trickling from his temple, but he appeared quite sensible, and was walking slowly, helped by two men.

"Thank God!" said Mrs. Gass aloud: and the words were heartily echoed. "To my house, men. Mr. Richard, sir, it is but a few steps more, and we'll soon have the doctor. A fine night's work, this is!" she concluded, leading the way to her home.

Little Barrington, the druggist, came out of his shop, and helped to place Richard on Mrs. Gass's sofa. They managed to get off his coat. The left arm was injured, as well as the temple. Barrington staunched the blood trickling from the latter; but preferred not to meddle with the arm. "He had better be kept quite quiet, until the surgeon comes," said the druggist to Mrs. Gass.

Mrs. Gass cleared the room. A dozen excited messengers had run to the Ham for Mr. Seeley or Dr. Rane, or both if they should be found at home. She stood at the front-door, watching and waiting.

Richard North, weak and faint, lay with his eyes closed. Opening them in the quiet room, he saw Mary Dallory kneeling by the sofa, pale and sad.

"Don't be alarmed," he whispered. "It might have been worse."

"I would have given my life to save yours, Richard," she impetuously exclaimed in the sorrow and terror of the moment.

His right hand went out a little and met hers.

"Richard, I wish I might stay and nurse you. You have no sister. Matilda is useless in a sick-room."

Richard North nervously pressed her fingers. "Don't try me too much, Mary. I care for you already more than is good for my peace. Don't tempt me."

"And if I were to tempt you? Though I don't quite know what you mean," she rejoined softly and nervously. "What then?"

"I might say what I ought not to say."

He paused.

"It would make it all the harder for me," he continued, after a moment's silence. "I am a man of the people; a man of work. You will belong to--to one of a different order."

She knew he alluded to Arthur Bohun, and laughed slightly.

But, though she said no more, she left her hand in his. Richard thought it was done solely out of compassion.

And now there was a bustle heard, and in came Mr. Seeley, warm with hastening. The hands parted, and Mary Dallory went round to the other side of the table, and stood there in all due decorum.

[CHAPTER XXXI.]

DISTURBING THE GRAVE

By twos and threes, by fours and fives and tens, the curious and excited groups were wending their way towards Dallory churchyard. For a certain work was going on there, which had never been performed in it within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.

Richard North was lying incapacitated at Dallory Hall. When Mr. Seeley--assisted by Dr. Rane, who had come in--examined into his injuries at Mrs. Gass's, he pronounced them not to be of a grave character. The bullet had struck a fleshy part of the arm, and passed off from it, inflicting a wound. Care and rest only would be necessary to heal it; and the same might be said with regard to the blow on the temple. Perfect rest was essential to guard against any after consequences. Mrs. Gass wished Richard to remain at her house and be nursed there; but he thought of the trouble it would cause her regular household, and said he preferred to be taken home. Mr. Seeley continued to attend him by Richard's own wish; not Dr. Rane. The public thought the rejection of the latter significant, in spite of Richard's recent exertions to do away with any impression of his guilt.

"Absolute quiet both of body and mind," enjoined Mr. Seeley, not only to Richard himself but to the family and servants. "If you have it, Mr. Richard, you will be about again in a short time: if you do not have it, I cannot answer for the result."

But Richard North, with his good common sense, was an obedient patient. He knew how necessary it was for his business, that he should not long be laid by, and he kept as quiet as Mr. Seeley could desire. No stranger was allowed to disturb him; none of the household presumed to carry him the smallest item of public or domestic news. It was during this confinement of Richard's that Ellen Adair received her summons for departure. Her father had arrived in London, and wrote to Mrs. Cumberland--unconscious of that lady's death--begging that she and Ellen would at once join him there. He apologized for not coming to Dallory, but said that family business required his presence in London. Mr. North at first proposed to take Ellen up herself: but he was really not able to do it: and it was decided that madam's maid should attend her thither.

Ellen was allowed to go in and bid goodbye to Richard before her departure. She burst into tears as she strove to thank him for his kindness.

"You must come and see papa as soon as you are well enough, Richard. When I tell him how kind you have been, he will want to see and thank you."

"Goodbye, my dear," said Richard, releasing her hand. "I trust you will soon get up all your spirits again, now your father has come."

She smiled faintly. It was not on her father--so imperfectly, if at all, remembered--that her spirits depended. As Ellen was passing through the hall to enter the carriage that would take her to the station, she found herself touched by madam, and drawn into the dining-room.

"You have not seemed very happy with us, Miss Adair. But I have tried to make you so."

"Yes, madam, I am sure you have; and I thank you," returned Ellen gratefully--for madam really did appear to have been very kind to her of late. "I trust papa will have an opportunity of thanking you and Mr. North personally."

Madam coughed. "If you think I deserve thanks, I wish you would do me a slight favour in return."

"If I can. Certainly."

"Some years ago, when we were in India," proceeded madam, "my late husband, Major Bohun, and your father were acquainted with each other. Some unpleasant circumstances took place between them: a quarrel in fact. Major Bohun considered he was injured; Mr. Adair thought it was himself who was so. It was altogether very painful, and I would not for the world have that old matter raked up again; it would cost me too much pain. Will you, then, guard from Mr. Adair's knowledge that I, Mrs. North, am she who was once Mrs. Bohun?"

"Yes, I will," said Ellen, in the impulse of the moment, without pausing to consider whether circumstances would allow her to do so.

"You promise me this?"

"Yes, certainly. I will never speak of it to him, madam."

"Thank you, my dear." And madam kissed her, and led her out to the carriage.

Day by day Richard North never failed to question the surgeon as to whether anything fresh was arising in regard to the accusation against Dr. Rane. The answer was invariably No. In point of fact, Mr. Seeley, not hearing more of it himself, supposed there was not; and at length, partly in good faith, partly to calm his patient, who was restless on the subject, he said it had dropped through altogether.

But the surgeon was wrong. During Richard's active opposition, madam had found her power somewhat crippled; she scarcely deemed it might be altogether to her own interest at the Hall to set him at defiance; but the moment he was laid up, she was at work again more actively than ever. It was nothing but providential, madam considered, that Richard had been put out of the way for a time: and could madam have released Poole from the consequences of his act, and sent him on his road rewarded, she had certainly done it. She gained her point. Poor Mrs. Rane was to be taken up from her grave.

Dale, who had it in hand, went about the proceedings as quietly and secretly as possible. He was sorry to have to do it, for he bore no ill-will to Richard North, but the contrary, and he knew how anxious he was that this should not be done; whilst at the same time the lawyer hated madam. But, he had no alternative: he had received his orders, as coroner, to call an inquest, and could not evade it. He issued his instructions in private, strictly charging the few who must act, to keep silence abroad. And not a syllable transpired beforehand.

The work was commenced in the darkness of the winter's morning. By ten o'clock, however, the men had been seen in the churchyard, and secrecy was no longer possible. The news ran like wildfire to all parts of Dallory--Mrs. Rane was being taken up. Never had there been such excitement as this. The street was in an uproar, windows were alive with heads: had Dallory suddenly found itself invaded by a destroying army, the commotion could not have been greater.

Then began the exodus to the churchyard. Mr. Dale had foreseen this probability, and was prepared for it. A body of police appeared in the churchyard, and the people found they could only approach the actual spot within a very respectful distance. Resenting this, they relieved their feelings by talking the louder.

Jelly was there. Never nearer losing her reason than now. Between dismay at what she had set afloat, and horror at the crime about to be revealed, Jelly was not clear whether she stood on her head or her heels. When the news was carried to her of what was going on, Jelly very nearly fainted. Now that it had come to the point, she felt that she would have given the world never to have meddled with it. It was not so much the responsibility to herself that she thought of, as the dreadful aspect of the thing altogether. She went into a violent fit of trembling, and sought her chamber to hide it. When somewhat recovered, she asked leave of Mrs. Beverage to be allowed to go out for a few hours. To have been compelled to remain indoors would have driven her quite mad. The morning was growing late when Jelly arrived at the scene, and the first person she specially noticed there was Mrs. Gass.

But Mrs. Gass had not come forth in idle curiosity as most others had done--and there were some of the better classes amongst the mob. Mrs. Gass was inexpressibly shocked and dismayed that it should really have come to this. Oliver Rane was her late husband's nephew; she did not think he could have been guilty: and she had hastened to see whether any argument or persuasion might avail at the twelfth hour, to arrest proceedings and spare disgrace to the North and Gass families.

But no. Stepping over the barrier-line the police had drawn, without the smallest regard to the remonstrance of a red-faced inspector, who was directing things, Mrs. Gass approached the small throng around the grave. She might have spared herself the pains. In answer to her urgent appeal she was told that no one here had any power now; it had passed out of their hands. In returning, Mrs. Gass encountered Jelly.

"Well," said she, regarding Jelly sternly, "be you satisfied with your work?"

Jelly never answered. In her shame, her regret, her humiliation at what she had done, she could almost have wished herself labouring at the treadmill that had so long haunted her dreams.

"Anyway, you might have had the decency to keep away," went on Mrs. Gass.

"I couldn't," said Jelly, meekly. "I couldn't stop at home and bear it."

"Then I'd have gone a mile or two the other way," retorted Mrs. Gass. "You must be quite brazen, to show your face here. And you must have a conscience too."

A frightful noise interrupted them: a suppressed shout of horror. The heavy coffin was at length deposited on the ground with the pick-axes beside it, and the populace were expressing their mixed sentiments at the sight: some in applause at this great advance in the show: others in a groan meant for Dr. Rane, who had caused it all. Mrs. Gass, what with the yelling, the coffin and pick-axes, and the crush, had never felt so humiliated in all her days; and she retired behind a remote tree to hide her emotion.

At that moment Thomas Hepburn appeared in sight, his face sad and pale.

"Hepburn," said Mrs. Gass, "I can't think they'll find anything wrong there. My belief is she died naturally. Unless there were better grounds to go upon than I know of, they ought not to have gone to this shameful length."

"Ma'am, I don't think it, either," assented the man. "I'm sure it has been more like a dream to me than anything else, since I heard it. Folks say it is madam at the Hall that has forced it on."

Had Mrs. Gass been a man, she might have felt tempted to give madam a very strong word. What right had she, in her wicked malice, to inflict this pain on others?

"Whatever may be the upshot of this, Thomas Hepburn, it will come home to her as sure as that we two are talking here. What are you going there for?" added Mrs. Gass, for he was preparing to make his way towards the grave.

"I've had orders to be here, ma'am. Some of those law officials don't understand this sort of work as well as I do."

He crossed over, the police making way for him, Inspector Jekyll giving him a nod. Jelly was standing against a tree not far from Mrs. Gass, straining her eyes upon the scene. By the eagerness displayed by the crowd, it might have been supposed they thought that they had only to see the face of the dead, lying within, to have all suspicion of Dr. Rane turned into fact.

The work went on. The leaden covering came off amidst a tumult, and the common deal shell alone remained.

It was at this juncture that another spectator came slowly up. The mob, their excited faces turned to the grave and to Thomas Hepburn, who was already at his work, did not see his approach. Perhaps it was as well: for the new arrival was Dr. Rane.

Even from him had these proceedings been kept secret; perhaps especially from him: and it was only now, upon coming forth to visit a patient in Dallory, that he learnt what was taking place in the churchyard. He came to it at once: his countenance stern, his face white as death.

Mrs. Gass saw him; Jelly also. Mrs. Gass silently moved to prevent his further approach, spreading her portly black silk skirts. Her intentions were good.

"Go back," she whispered. "Steal away before you are seen. Look at this unruly mob. They might tear you to pieces, doctor, in the humour they are in."

"Let them--when I have stopped that," he recklessly answered, pointing to what Thomas Hepburn was doing.

"You are mad," cried Mrs. Gass in excitement. "Stop that! Why, sir, how impossible it would be, even with the best wish, to stop it now. A nail or two more, sir, and the lid's off."

It was as she said. Dr. Rane saw it. He took out his handkerchief, and passed it over his damp face.

"Richard North gave me his word that he would stop it, if it came to this," he murmured more to himself than to Mrs. Gass.

"Richard North knows no more of this than it seems, you knew of it," she said. "He is shut up in his room at the Hall, and hears nothing. Doctor, take advice and get away," she whispered imploringly. "There's still time."

"No," he doggedly said. "As it has gone so far, I'll stand my ground now."

Mrs. Gass groaned. The sound was lost in a rush--police contending against King Mob, King Mob against the police. Even Mrs. Gass turned pale. Dr. Rane voluntarily arrested his advancing steps. Jelly's troubled face was peering out from the distant tree.

The lid had been lifted, and the open shell stood exposed. It was more than the excited numbers could witness, and be quiet. Inspector Jekyll and his fellows keep them back from looking into it? Never. A short, sharp struggle, and the police and their staves were nowhere. With a triumphant whoop the crowd advanced.

But a strange hush, apparently of consternation, had fallen on those who stood at the grave; a hush fell on these interlopers as they reached it. The coffin was empty.

Of all unexpected stoppages to proceedings, official or otherwise, one more complete than this had never fallen. An old magistrate who was present, the coroner--who had just come striding over the ground, to see how things were going on--Thomas Hepburn, and others generally, stared at the empty coffin in profound perplexity.

And the mob, when it had duly stared also, elbowing each other in the process,18 and fighting ruefully for precedence, burst out into a howl. Not at all a complimentary one to Dr. Rane.

He had sold her for dissection! He had never put her in at all! He had had a sham funeral! 'Twasn't enough to poison of her, but he must sell her afterwards!

To accuse a man of those heinous offences behind his back, is one thing, but it is not felt to be quite so convenient to do it in his presence. The sight of Dr. Rane walking calmly, not to say impudently, across the churchyard into their very midst, struck a certain timidity on the spirits of the roarers. Silence ensued. They even parted to allow him to pass. Dr. Rane threw his glance on the empty coffin, and then on those who stood around it.

"Well," said he, "why don't you take me?"

And not a soul ventured to reply.

"I have murdered my wife, have I? If I have done so, why, you know I deserve no quarter. Come, Mr. Coroner, why don't you issue your orders to arrest me? You have your officers at hand."

The independence with which this was spoken, the freedom of Dr. Rane's demeanour, the mockery of his tone, could not be surpassed. He had the best of it now; might say what he pleased, and laugh derisively at them at will: and they knew it. Even Dale, the coroner, felt small--which is saying a good deal of a lawyer.

Turning round, the doctor walked slowly back again, his head in the air. Mrs. Gass met him.

"Tell me the truth for the love of goodness, doctor. I have never believed it of you. You did not help her to her death?"

"Help her to her death?" he retorted. "No: my wife was too dear to me for that. I'd have killed the whole world rather than her--if it must have come to killing at all."

"And I believe you," was the hearty response. "And I have told everybody, from the first, that the charge was wicked and preposterous."

"Thank you, Mrs. Gass."

He broke away from any further questions she might have put, and stalked on towards Dallory, coolly saying that he had a patient to see.

As to the crowd, they really did not know what to make of it: it was a shameful cheat. The small staff of officials, including the police, seemed to know as little. To be enabled to take Oliver Rane into custody for poisoning his wife they must first find the wife, and ascertain whether she really had been poisoned. Lawyer Dale had never met with so bewildering a check in the long course of his practice; the red-faced Inspector stroked his chin, and the old magistrate clearly had not recovered his proper mind yet.

By the appearance of the shell, it seemed evident that the body had never been there at all. What had he done with it?--where could he have hidden it? A thought crossed Mr. Jekyll, experienced in crime, that the doctor might have concealed it in his house--or buried it in his garden.

"How was it you did not feel the lightness of the shell when you put it into the lead, you and your men?" asked the Inspector, turning sharply upon Thomas Hepburn.

"We did not do it," was the undertaker's answer. "Dr. Rane undertook that himself, on account of the danger of infection. We went and soldered the lead down, but it was all ready for us."

A clearer proof of guilt, than this fact conveyed, could not well be found: as they all murmured one to another. The old magistrate rubbed up his hair, as if by that means he could also rub up his intellect.

"I don't understand," he said, still bewildered. "Why should he have kept her out of the coffin? If he did what was wrong--surely to bury her out of sight would be the safest place to hide away his crime. What do you think about it, Jekyll?"

"Well, your worship, I can only think that he might have feared some such proceeding as this, and so secured himself against it," was the Inspector's answer. "I don't know, of course: it is only an idea."

"But where is the body, Jekyll?" persisted the magistrate. "What could he have done with it?"

"It must be our business to find out, your worship."

"Did he cut her up?" demanded the mob. For which interruption they were chased backwards by the army of discomfited policemen.

"She may be about his premises still, your worship," said the Inspector, hazarding the opinion. "If so, I should say she is lying a few feet below the surface somewhere in the garden."

"Bless my heart, what a frightful thing!" cried his worship. "And about this? What is going to be done?"

He pointed to the coffins and the open grave. Yes: what was to be done? Lawyer Dale searched his legal memory and could not remember any precedent to guide him. A short counsel was held.

"When her bones is found, poor lady, they'll want Chris'an bur'al: as good let the grave lie open," interposed one of the grave-diggers respectfully--who no doubt wished to be spared the present labour of filling-in the earth. To which opinion the gentlemen, consulting there, condescended to listen.

And, finally, that course was decided upon: Thomas Hepburn being requested to have the coffins removed to his place, pending inquiry. And the gentlemen dispersed, and the mob after them.

A very dissatisfied mob tramping out of the churchyard. They seldom had much pleasure now, poor things, in their enforced idleness and starvation: and to be balked in this way was about as mortifying a termination to the day as could have happened. Only one greater evil could be imagined--and that was a possibility not to be glanced at: that it should have been discovered that poor Mrs. Rane had died a natural death.

The last person left in the churchyard--excepting a man or two who remained to guard the coffins, whilst means were being brought to take them away--was Jelly. To watch Jelly's countenance when the empty shell stood revealed, was as good as a play. The jaw dropped, the eyes were strained. It was worse than even Jelly had supposed, Dr. Rane a greater villain. Not content with taking his wife's life, he had also made away with her body. Whether he had disposed of it in the manner affirmed by the mob, in that suggested by the Inspector, or in any other way, the doctor must be one of the most hardened criminals breathing--his brazen demeanour just now in the graveyard was alone sufficient evidence of that. And now the trouble was no nearer being brought to light than before, and Jelly almost wished, as she had wished many a time lately, that she might die. Hiding from the spectators stood she, her heart faint within her. When the echoes of the tramping mob had died away in the distance, Jelly turned to depart also, drawing her black shawl around her with a shudder.

"That's why she can't rest, poor lady; she's not laid in consecrated ground. At the worst, I never suspected this."

[CHAPTER XXXII.]

A NIGHT EXPEDITION

Seven o'clock was striking out on a dark winter's night, as a hired carriage with a pair of post-horses drew up near to the gates of Dallory Hall. Apparently the special hour had been agreed upon as a rendezvous; for before the clock had well told its numbers, a small group of people might have been seen approaching the carriage from different ways.

There issued out from the Hall gates, Mr. North, leaning on the right arm of his son Richard. Richard had quitted his chamber to join in this expedition. His left arm was in a sling, and he looked pale; but he was fast progressing towards recovery; and Mr. Seeley, confidentially consulted, had given him permission to go forth. Mrs. Gass came up from the direction of Dallory; and Dr. Rane came striding from the Ham. A red-faced, portly gentleman in plain clothes, standing near the carriage, greeted them: without his official costume and in the dark night, few would have recognized him for Inspector Jekyll, who had been directing affairs in the churchyard the previous day. Mrs. Gass, Mr. North and Richard, entered the carriage. The Inspector was about to ascend the box, the postillion being on the horses, but Dr. Rane said he would himself prefer to sit outside. So Mr. Jekyll got inside, and the doctor mounted; and the carriage drove away down Dallory Ham.

Peering after it, in the dark night, behind the gates, was Mrs. North. Some one beside her--it was only a servant-boy--ran off, at a signal, towards the stables with a message, as fast as his legs would carry him. There came back in answer madam's carriage--which must have been awaiting the signal---with a pair of fresh fleet horses.

"Catch it up, and keep it in sight at a distance," were her orders to the coachman, as she stepped in. So the post-carriage was being tracked and followed: a fact none of its inmates had the slightest notion of.

In her habit of peeping and prying, of listening at doors, of glancing surreptitiously into other people's letters, and of ferreting generally, madam had become aware during the last twenty-four hours that something unusual was troubling the equanimity of Mr. North and Richard: that some journey, to be taken in secret by Mr. North, and kept secret, was being decided upon. Conscience--when it is not an easy one--is apt to suggest all sorts of unpleasant things, and madam's whispered to her that this hidden expedition had reference to herself; and--perhaps--to a gentleman who had recently arrived in England--William Adair.

Madam's cheeks turned pale through rouge and powder, and she bit her lips in impotent rage. She could have found means, no doubt, to keep Mr. North within doors, though she had broken his leg to accomplish it; she could have found means to keep Richard also, had she known he was to be of the party: but of what avail? Never a cleverer woman lived, than madam, and she had the sense to know that a meeting with Mr. Adair (and she believed the journey had reference to nothing else) could not thus be prevented: it must take place sooner or later.

A carriage was to be in waiting near the Hall gates after dark, at seven o'clock--madam had learned so much. Where was it going to? In which direction? For what purpose? That at least madam could ascertain. She gave private orders of her own: and as night approached, retired to her room with a headache, forbidding the household to disturb her. Mr. North, as he dined quietly in his parlour, thought how well things were turning out. He had been haunted with a fear of madam's pouncing upon him, at the moment of departure, with a demand to know the why and the wherefore of his secret expedition.

Madam, likewise attired for a journey, had escaped from the Hall long before seven, and taken up her place amidst the shrubs near the entrance-gates, her position commanding both the way from the house and the road without. On the stroke of seven, steps were heard advancing; and madam strained her gaze.

Richard! Who had not yet left his sick-room! But for his voice, as he spoke to his father, madam would have thought the night was playing tricks with her eyesight.

She could not see who else got into the carriage: but she did see Dr. Rane come striding by; and she thought it was he upon the box when the carriage passed. Dr. Rane? Madam, catching her breath, wondered what private histories Mrs. Cumberland had confided to him, and how much he was now on his way to bear witness to. Madam was altogether on the wrong scent--the result of her suggestive conscience.

Almost in a twinkling, she was shut up in her own carriage, as described, her coachman alone outside it.

The man had no difficulty in obeying orders. The post-carriage was not as light as madam's. Keeping at a safe distance, he followed in its wake, unsuspected. First of all, from the Ham down the back lane, and then through all sorts of frequented, cross-country by-ways. Altogether, as both drivers thought, fifteen or sixteen miles.

The post-carriage drew up at a solitary house, on the outskirts of a small hamlet. Madam's carriage halted also, further away. Alighting, she desired her coachman to wait: and stole cautiously along under cover of the hedge, to watch proceedings. It was then about nine o'clock.

They were all going into the house: a little crowd, as it seemed to madam; and the post-carriage went slowly away, perhaps to an inn. What had they gone to that house for? Was Mr. Adair within it? Madam was determined to see. She partly lost sight of prudence in her desperation, and was at the door just as it closed after them. Half a minute and she knocked softly with her knuckles. It was opened by a young girl with a broad country face, and red elbows.

"Law!" said she. "I thought they was all in. Do you belong to 'em?"

"Yes," said Mrs. North.

So she went in also, and crept up the dark staircase, after them, directed by the girl. "Fust door you comes to at the top." Madam's face was growing ghastly: she fully expected to see William Adair.

The voices alone would have guided her. Several were heard talking within the room: her husband's she distinguished plainly: and, she thought, madam certainly thought, he was sobbing. Madam went into a heat at the sound. What revelation had Mr. Adair been already making? He had lost no time apparently.

The door was not latched. Madam cautiously pushed it an inch or two open so as to enable her to see in. She looked very ugly just now, her lips drawn back from her teeth with emotion, something like a hyena's. Madam looked in: and saw, not Mr. Adair, but--Bessy Rane.

Bessy Rane. She was standing near the table, whilst Dr. Rane was talking. Standing quite still, with her placid face, her pretty curls falling, and wearing a violet-coloured merino gown, that madam had seen her in a dozen times. In short, it was just like Bessy Rane in life. On the table, near the one solitary candle, lay some white work, as if just put out of hand.

In all madam's life she had perhaps never been so frightened as now. The truth did not occur to her. She surely thought it an apparition, as Jelly had thought before; or that--or that Bessy had in some mysterious manner been conveyed hither from that disturbed grave. In these confused moments the mind is apt to run away with itself. Madam's was not strong enough to endure the shock, and be silent. With a piercing shriek, she turned to fly, and fell against the whitewashed chimney that the architect of the old-fashioned house had seen fit to carry up through the centre of it. The next moment she was in hysterics.

Bessy was the first to run to attend her. Bessy herself, you understand, not her ghost. In a corner of the capacious old room, built when ground was to be had for an old song, was Bessy's bed; and on this they placed Mrs. North. Madam was not long in recovering her equanimity: but she continued where she was, making believe to be exhausted, and put a corner of her shawl up to her face. For once in her life that face had a spark of shame in it.

Yes: Bessy was not dead. Humanly speaking, there had never been any more probability of Bessy's demise than there was of madam's at this moment. Dr. Rane is giving the explanation, and the others are standing to listen; excepting Mr. North, who has sat down in an old-fashioned elbow-chair, whilst Richard leans the weight of his undamaged arm behind it. Mrs. Gass has pushed back her bonnet from her beaming face; the inspector looks impassive as befits his calling, but on the whole pleased.

"I am not ashamed of what I have done," said Dr. Rane, standing by Bessy's side; "and I only regret it for the pain my wife's supposed death caused her best friends, Mr. North and Richard. I would have given much to tell the truth to Mr. North, but I knew it would not be safe to trust him, and so I wished it to wait until we should have left the country. For all that has occurred you must blame the tontine. That is, blame the Ticknells, who obstinately, wrongfully, cruelly kept the money from us. There were reasons--my want of professional success one of them--why I wished to quit Dallory, and start afresh in another place; I and my wife talked of it until it grew, with me, into a disease; and I believe Bessy grew to wish for it at last almost as I did."

"Yes, I did, Oliver," she put in.

"Look at the circumstances," resumed Dr. Rane, in his sternest tones, and not at all as though he were on his defence. "There was the sum of two thousand pounds belonging to me and my wife conjointly, and they denied our right to touch it until one of us should be dead and gone! It was monstrously unjust. You must acknowledge that much, Mr. Inspector."

"Well--it did seem hard," acknowledged that functionary.

"I know I thought it so," said Mrs. Gass.

"It was more than hard," spoke the doctor passionately. "I used to say to my wife that if I could get it out of the old trustees' hands by force, or stratagem, I should think it no shame to do it. Idle talk! never meant to be anything else. But to get on. The fever broke out in Dallory, and Bessy was taken ill. She thought it was the fever, and so did I. I had fancied her a little afraid of it, and was in my heart secretly thankful to Mr. North for inviting her to the Hall. But for putting off her visit for a day--through the absence of Molly Green--what happened later could never have taken place."

Dr. Rane paused, as if considering how he should go on with his story. After a moment he resumed it, looking straight at them, as he had been looking all along.

"I wish you to understand that every word I am telling you--and shall tell you--is the strict truth. The truth, upon my honour, and before Heaven. And yet, perhaps, even after this, you will scarcely credit me when I say--that I did believe my wife's illness was the fever. All that first day--she had been taken ill during the night with sickness and shivering--I thought it was the fever. Seeley thought it also. She was in a very high state of feverishness, and no doubt fear for her served somewhat to bias our judgment. Bessy herself said it was the fever, and would not hear a word to the contrary. But at night--the first night, remember--she had nearly an hour of sickness; and was so relieved by it, and grew so cool and collected, that I detected the nature of the case. It was nothing but a bad bilious attack, accompanied by an unusual degree of fever; but it was not the fever. 'You have cheated me, my darling,' I said jestingly, as I kissed her, 'I shall not get the tontine money.'--Here she stands by my side to confirm it," broke off Dr. Rane, but indeed they could all see he was relating the simple truth. "'Can you not pretend that I am dead?' she answered faintly, for she was still exceedingly ill; 'I will go away, and you can say I died.' Now, of course Bessy spoke jestingly, as I had done: nevertheless the words led to what afterwards took place. I proposed it--do not lay the blame on Bessy--that she really should go away, and I should give it out that she had died."

A slight groan from the region of the bed. Dr. Rane continued.

"It seemed very easy of accomplishment--very. But had I foreseen all the disagreeable proceedings, the artifice, the trouble, that must inevitably attend such an attempted deceit, I should never have entered upon it. Had I properly reflected, I might of course have foreseen it: but I did not reflect. Nearly all that night Bessy and I conversed together: chiefly planning how she should get away and where she should stay. By morning, what with the fatigue induced by this prolonged vigil, and the exhaustion left by her illness, she was thoroughly worn out. It had been agreed between us that she should simulate weariness and a desire to sleep, the better to avert a discovery of her restoration; but there was no need for simulation; she was both sleepy and exhausted."

"I never was so sleepy before in all my life," interrupted Bessy.

"The day went on. At ten o'clock, when Phillis left, I went up to my wife's room, and told her the time for acting had come," pursued Dr. Rane. "Next I crossed over to Seeley's with the news that my wife was gone: and I strove to exhibit the grief I should have felt had it been true. Crossing to my home again, I saw Frank Dallory, and told him. 'The play has begun,' I said to Bossy when I went in--and then I went forth to Mr. North's; and then on to Hepburn's. Do you remember, sir, how I tried to soothe your grief?--speaking persistently of hope--though of course you could not see that any hope remained," asked Dr. Rane, turning to Mr. North. "I dared not speak more plainly, though I longed to do so."

"Ay, I remember," answered Mr. North.

"The worst part of all the business was the next; bringing in the shell," continued the doctor. "Worse, because I had a horror of my wife seeing it. I contrived that she did not see it. Hepburn's men brought it up to the ante-room: Bessy was still in bed in the front-room, and heard them: I could not help that. When they left, I put it down by the wall with the trestles, threw some coats carelessly upon it, and so hid it out of sight. It was time then for Bessy to get up. Whilst she was dressing, I went round to the stables, where the horse and gig I use are kept, to make sure that the ostler had gone to bed--for he had a habit sometimes of sitting up late. It was during this absence of mine that Bessy went to the landing to listen whether or not I had come in. The chamber-door was open, so that light shone on to the landing. It happened to be at that moment that Jelly was at the opposite window, and--later--thought it was Mrs. Rane's ghost that she had seen."

Mrs. Gass's amused face was something good to witness. She nodded in triumph.

"I thought it might have been the effects of beer," said she. "I told Jelly what an idiot she was. I knew it was no ghost!"

"Bessy made herself ready, took some refreshment, and I brought the gig to the garden-door and drove my wife away. The only place open at that time of night--or rather morning--would be some insignificant railway-station. We fixed on Hewley. I drove her there; and there left her sitting under cover in solitary state--for I had to get back with the horse and gig before people were astir. As soon as the morning was pretty well on, Bessy walked to Churchend, about five miles' distance, and took a lodging in this very house--this very same room. Here she has been ever since--and it is a great deal longer time than we either of us ever anticipated. Poison my wife!" added Dr. Rane, with some emotion, as he involuntarily drew her towards him, with a gesture of genuine affection. "She is rather too precious to me for that. You know; don't you, my darling."

The happy tears stood in her eyes as she met his. He stooped and kissed her, very fondly.

"If my wife were taken from me, the Ticknells might keep the tontine money, and welcome; I should not care for it without Bessy. It was chiefly for her sake that my desire to possess it arose," he added emphatically. "I could not bear that she should be reduced to so poor a home after the luxury of Dallory Hall. Bessy constantly said that she did not mind it, but I did; minded it for her and for her alone."

"Couldn't you have managed all this without the funeral?" asked Richard North, speaking for the first time.

"How could I?" returned Dr. Rane. "It was not possible. When my wife was given out as dead, she had to be buried, or Mr. Inspector Jekyll, there, might have been coming in to ask the reason why. Had I properly thought of all that must be done, I should, as I say, never have attempted it. It was hateful to me; and I declare that I don't know how I could, or did, carry it through. Once or twice I thought I must give in, and confess, to my shame, that Bessy was living--but I felt that might be worse, of the two, than going on with it to the end. I hope the Ticknells will suffer for what they have cost me."

"Jelly says she saw the ghost twice," observed Mrs. Gass,

"Ah! that was Bessy's fault," said Dr. Rane, shaking his head at his wife, in mock reproval, as we do at a beloved child when it is naughty. "She was so imprudent as to come home for a few hours--walking across country by easy stages and getting in after nightfall. It was about her wardrobe. I have been over twice at night--or three times, is it not, Bessy?--and brought her things each time. But Bessy said she must have others; and at last, as I tell you, she came over herself. I think the clothes were nothing but an excuse--eh, Bessy?"

"Partly," acknowledged Bessy. "For, oh! I longed for a sight of home. Just one more sight as a farewell. I had quitted it in so bewildered a hurry. It again led to Jelly's seeing me. I was at my large chest-of-drawers, papa," she continued, addressing Mr. North. "Oliver had gone round for the gig to bring me back again; I thought I heard him come in again, and went to the landing to listen. It was not he, but Jelly; and we met face to face. I assure you she frightened me quite as much as I frightened her."

"And Bessy, my dear, what have the people here thought about it, all the time?" inquired Mrs. North. "Do they know who you are?"

"Why of course not, papa. They think I am a lady in bad health; staying here for the sake of country air--and I did feel and look very ill when I came. An old widow lady has the house, and the girl you saw is her servant. They are not at all inquisitive. They know us only as Mr. and Mrs. Oliver, and think we live at Bletchley. I want to know who pushed matters to extremities in regard to these proceedings against my husband," added Mrs. Rane, after a pause. "It was not you, papa: and Richard was doing his best to hush it all up. Richard had known the truth since an interview he held with Oliver. Who was it, papa?"

Madam tumbled off the bed, moaning a little, as if she were weak and ill. Bessy had not the slightest idea that madam had been the culprit.

"Who was it, Mr. Jekyll?" continued Bessy.

The Inspector looked up to the ceiling and down to the floor; and then thought the candle wanted snuffing. Which it certainly did. Madam cried in a shrill voice as he was putting down the snuffers, that she must depart. If the others chose to stay and countenance all this unparalleled iniquity, she could not do so.

She stood, upright as ever, tossing back her head, all her impudence returning to her. Dr. Rane quietly put himself in her path as she was gaining the door.

"Mrs. North, pardon me if I request you to give me a little information ere you depart, as it is probably the last time we shall ever meet. What has been the cause of the long-continued and persistent animosity you have borne towards me?"

"Animosity towards you!" returned madam, flippantly. "I have borne none."

The coolness of the avowal, in the very face of facts, struck them as almost ludicrous. Mr. North raised his head and gazed at her in surprise.

"You have pursued me with the most bitter animosity since the first moment that I came to Dallory, madam," said Dr. Rane, quietly and steadily. "You have kept practice from me; you have done what you can to crush me. It is you who urged on this recent charge against me--a very present proof of what I assert. But for you it might never have been made."

Madam was slightly at bay: she seemed just a little flurried. Rallying her powers, she confronted Dr. Rane and told him that she did not think him skilful and did not personally like him; if she had been biassed against him, the feeling must have taken its rise in that--there was nothing else to cause it.

Another of her shuffling untruths--and they all knew it for one. But they would get nothing better from her.

The fact was this. Madam had feared that Mrs. Cumberland could, and perhaps would, throw light on a certain episode of the past years: a contingency madam had dreaded above anything earthly: for this she had wished and hoped to drive Mrs. Cumberland from the place, and had thought that if she could drive away Oliver Rane, his mother would follow him. That was the actual truth: but no living person, excepting madam, suspected it.

She quitted the room with the last denial, conscious that she did not just now appear to advantage--for the sneaking act of tracking them this night, madam, with all her sophistry, could not plead an excuse. They let her go. Even the Inspector did not pay her the courtesy of opening the door for her, or of lighting her down the crooked old wooden stairs. It was Bessy who ran to do it.

"When you found things were going against you, sir, why did you not declare the truth?" asked the Inspector of Dr. Rane.

"I knew that the moment I declared the truth, all hope of the tontine money would be at an end; I should have done what I had done for nothing," answered Dr. Rane. "Richard North undertook to give me timely notice if things went too far; but he was disabled, you know, and could not do so. Until they were in the act of disturbing the grave, I had no warning of it whatever."

A silence followed the answer. Dr. Rane resumed.

"Ill-luck seems to have attended it from the first. Perhaps nothing else was to be expected. Jelly's having seen my wife was a great misfortune. And then look at the delay as to the tontine money! Had the trustees paid it over at once, Bessy and I should have been safe away long ago."

"Where gone?" asked Mrs. Gass.

"To America. It is where we shall go now, in any case. As I have not the money to join Dr. Jones as partner, I dare say he will take me as an assistant."

"See here," said Mrs. Gass. "I don't say that what you've done is anything but very wrong, doctor; but it might have been worse: and, compared to what a lot of fools were saying, it seems a trifle. I was once about to make you an offer of money. Finding you couldn't get the tontine paid to you and your wife; which, as I've told you, I thought was a shame, all things considered; I resolved to advance it to you myself. Mrs. Rane's death stopped me from doing it; I mean, her reported death. You won't get it now, doctor, from the Ticknells--for I suppose they'll have to be told the truth: and so you shall have it from me. Two thousand pounds is ready for you, at your command."

The red flush of emotion mounted to Dr. Rane's pale face. He gazed eagerly at Mrs. Gass, as if asking whether it could be true.

"It's all right, doctor. You are my late husband's nephew, you know, and all the money was his. You'll find yourself and your wife substantially remembered in my will; and as two thousand pounds of it may do you good now, it shall be advanced to you."

Bessy stole round to Mrs. Gass, and burst into tears on her bosom. Happy, grateful tears. The doctor, the flush deepening on his face, took Mrs. Gass's hand and clasped it.

"And I wish to my very heart I had made no delay in the offer at first," cried Mrs. Gass. "It'll always be a warning to me not to put off till tomorrow what should be done to-day. And so, doctor, there's the money ready; and Bessy, my dear, I don't see why you and he need banish yourselves to America. You might find a good practice, doctor, and not go further than London."

"I must go to America; I must," said the doctor, hastily. "Neither I nor Bessy would like now to remain in England."

"Well, perhaps you may be right," acquiesced Mrs. Gass.

"But it's a long way off," said Mr. North.

"It may not be for ever, sir," observed Dr. Rane, cheerfully. "I know I shall do well there; and when I have made a fortune perhaps we may come back and live in London. Never again in Dallory. The old and the new world are brought very near each other now, sir."

Is it of any use pursuing the interview to its close? When they went out again, after it was over, madam's carriage was only then driving off. Madam's coachman had put up his horses somewhere; and neither he nor they could readily be found. There was apparently no house open in the primitive village, and madam had the pleasure of undergoing an hour or two's soaking in a good, sound, down-pouring rain.

"I shall have to make things right with the authorities; and I suppose Hepburn may keep the coffins for his pains," quaintly remarked Mr. Inspector Jekyll.

But the carriage took back one less than it had brought. For Dr. Rane did not return again to Dallory.

[PART THE THIRD]

[CHAPTER I.]

IN GROSVENOR PLACE

A well-spread dessert-table glittered under the rays of the chandelier in the dining-room of Sir Nash Bohun's town-house. Sir Nash and his nephew Arthur were seated at it, a guest between them. It was General Strachan; an old officer, Scotch by birth, who had just come home, after passing the best part of his life in India.

The winter was departing. Arthur Bohun looked better, Sir Nash pretty well. In a month or two both intended to depart for the German springs that were to renovate Sir Nash's life.

General Strachan had been intimate with Sir Nash Bohun in early life, before he went out to India. After he had gone out he had been equally intimate with Major Bohun: but he was only Captain Strachan in those days.

"And so you think Arthur like his father," observed Sir Nash, as he passed the claret.

"His very image," replied the general. "I'm sure I should have known him for Tom Bohun's son had I met him accidentally in the street. Adair saw the likeness, too."

"What Adair's that?" carelessly asked Sir Nash.

"William Adair. You saw him with me at the club-door this morning. We were going in at the moment you came up."

Perhaps Sir Nash was a little struck by the name. He called to mind a good-looking, slender, gentlemanly man, who had been arm-in-arm with the general at the time mentioned.

"But what Adair is it, Strachan?"

"What Adair? Why, the one who was in India when--when poor Tom died. He was Tom's greatest friend. Perhaps you have never heard of him?"

"Yes I have, to my sorrow," said Sir Nash. "It was he who caused poor Tom's death."

General Strachan apparently did not understand. "Who caused poor Tom's death?"

"Adair."

"Why, bless me, where could you have picked that up?" cried the general in surprise. "If Adair could have saved Tom's life by any sacrifice to himself he'd have done it. They were firm friends to the last."

Sir Nash seemed to be listening as though he heard not. "Of course we never heard the particulars of my brother's death, over here, as we should have heard them had we been on the spot," he remarked. "We were glad, rather, to hush it up for the sake of Arthur. Poor Tom fell into some trouble or disgrace, and Adair led him into it. That's what we were ever told."

"Then you were told wrong, Bohun," said the general somewhat bluntly. "Tom fell into debt, and I don't know what all, but it was not Adair who led him into it. Who could have told you so?"

"Mrs. Bohun, Tom's widow."

"Oh, she," returned the general, in accents of contempt that spoke volumes. "Why she--but never mind now," he broke off, suddenly glancing at Arthur as he remembered that she was his mother. "Let bygones be bygones," he added, sipping his claret; "no good recalling them. Only don't continue to think anything against William Adair. He is one of the best men living, and always has been."

Arthur Bohun, who had sat still as a stone, leaned his pale face a little towards the general, and spoke.

"Did not this Mr. Adair, after my father's death, get into disgrace, and--and undergo its punishment?"

"Never. Adair got into no disgrace."

"Has he not been a convict?" continued Arthur in low, clear tones.

"A WHAT?" cried the general, putting down his glass and staring at Arthur in amazement. "My good young fellow, you cannot know of whom you are speaking. William Adair has been a respected man all his life: he is just as honourable as your father was--and the world knew pretty well what poor Tom's fastidious notions of honour were. Adair is a gentleman amongst gentlemen; I can't say better of him than that, though I talked for an hour. He has come into all the family honours and fortune; which he never expected to do. A good old Scotch family it is, too; better than mine. There; we'll drop the subject now; no good reaping up things that are past and done with."

Sir Nash asked no more: neither did Arthur. Some instinct lay within both that, for their own sakes, it might be better not to do so.

But when the general left--which he did very soon, having an evening engagement--Arthur went out with him. Arthur Bohun knew, as well as though he had been told, that his wicked mother--he could only so think of her in that moment--had dealt treacherously with him; to answer some end of her own she had calumniated Mr. Adair. Cost him what pain and shame it might, he would clear it up now.

"Will you give me the particulars that you would not give to my uncle," began Arthur in agitation, the moment they were out of the house, as he placed his hand on the general's arm. "No matter what they are, I must know them."

"I would give them to your uncle, and welcome," said the plain old soldier. "It was to you I would not give them."

"But I must learn them."

"Not from me."

"If you will not give them to me, I shall apply to William Adair."

"William Adair can give them to you if he pleases. I shall not do so. Take advice, my dear young friend, and don't inquire into them."

"I will tell you what I suspect--that if any one had a hand in driving my father to--to do what he did do, it was his wife; my mother. You may tell me now."

"No. Because she is your mother."

"But I have the most urgent reason for wishing to arrive at the particulars."

"Well, Arthur Bohun, I would rather not tell you, and that's the truth. If poor Tom could hear me in his grave, I don't think he would like it, you see. No, I can't tell you. Ask Adair, first of all, whether he'd advise it, or not."

"Where is he staying?"

"In Grosvenor Place. He and his daughter are in a furnished house there. She is very delicate."

"And--you say--I beg your pardon, general," added Arthur in agitation, detaining him as he was going away--"You say that he is honoured, and a gentleman."

"Who? Adair? As much so as you or I, my young friend. You must be dreaming. Goodnight."

In his mind's tumult any delay seemed dreadful, and Arthur Bohun turned at once to the house in Grosvenor Place. He asked if he could see Mr. Adair.

The servant hesitated. "There is no Mr. Adair here, sir," he said.

Arthur looked up at the number. "Are you sure?" he asked of the man. "I was informed by General Strachan that Mr. Adair had taken this house, and was living here."

"The general must have said Sir William, sir. Sir William Adair lives here."

"Oh--Sir William," spoke Arthur, "I--I was not aware Mr. Adair had been knighted."

"Knighted, sir! My master has not been knighted," cried the man, as if indignant at the charge. "Sir William has succeeded to the baronetcy through the death of his uncle, Sir Archibald."

What with one thing and another, Arthur's senses seemed deserting him. Sir Archibald Adair had been well known to him by reputation: a proud old Scotch baronet, of a grand old lineage. And so this was Ellen's family! And he had been deeming her not fitting to mate with him, a Bohun!

"Can I see Sir William? Is he at home?"

"He is at home, sir. I think you can see him."

In his dining-room sat Sir William Adair when Arthur was shown in--some coffee on a stand by his side, a newspaper in his hand. He was a slight man of rather more than middle height, with an attractive countenance. The features were good, their expression noble and pleasing. It was impossible to associate such a face and bearing with anything like dishonour.

"I believe my name is not altogether strange to you, sir," said Arthur as the servant closed the door. "I hope you will pardon my intrusion--and especially that it should be at this late hour."

Sir William had risen to receive him. He could but mark the agitation with which the words were spoken. A moment's hesitation, and then he took Arthur's hand and clasped it within his own.

"If I wished to be distant with you I could not," he said warmly. "For, to me, you appear as your father come to life again. He and I were fast friends."

"And did you wish to be distant with me?" asked Arthur.

"I have felt cold towards you this many a year. More than that."

"But why, Sir William?"

"Ah--why. I cannot tell you. For one thing, I have pictured you as resembling another, more than my lost friend."

"You mean my mother."

Sir William looked at Arthur Bohun before replying. "Yes, I do. Will you take a seat: and some coffee?"

Arthur sat down, but it may be questioned whether he as much as heard that coffee was mentioned. Sir William rang the bell and ordered it to be brought in. Arthur leaned forward; his blue eyes solemnly earnest, his hand a little outstretched. Sir William almost started.

"How strangely like!" he exclaimed. "The look, the gesture, the voice, all are your father's over again. I could fancy that you were Thomas Bohun--as I last saw him in life."

"You knew him well--and my mother? You knew all about them?"

"Quite well. I knew you too when you were a little child."

"Then tell me one thing," said Arthur, his emotion increasing. "Was she my mother?"

The question surprised Sir William Adair. "She was certainly your mother, and your father's wife. Why do you ask it?"

"Because--she has so acted--that I--have many a time wished she was not. I have almost hoped it. I wish I could hope it now."

"Ah," cried Sir William. It was all he said.

"Did you care much, for my father, Sir William?"

"More than I ever cared for any other man. I have never cared for one since as I cared for him. We were young fellows then, he and I; not much older than you are now; but ours was a true friendship."

"Then I conjure you, by that friendship, to disclose to me the whole history of the past: the circumstances attending my father's death, and its cause. Speak of things as though my mother existed not. I wish to Heaven she never had been my mother!"

"I think you must know something of the circumstances," spoke Sir William. "Or why should you say this?"

"It is because I know part that I must know the whole. My mother has--has lied to me," he concluded, bringing out the word with a painful effort. "She has thrust a false story upon me, and--I cannot rest until I know the truth."

"Arthur Bohun, although you conjure me by your late father: and for his sake I would do a great deal: I fear that I ought not to do this."

"General Strachan bade me come to you. I begged him to tell me all, but he said no. Does he know all?" broke off Arthur.

"Every tittle. I think he and I and your mother are nearly the only three left who do know it. There were only some half-dozen of us altogether."

"And do you not think that I, Major Bohun's only son, should at least be made acquainted with as much as others know? Tell me all, Sir William: for my lost father's sake."

"The only difficulty is--that you must hear ill of your mother."

"I cannot hear worse of her than I already know," impetuously returned Arthur. "Perhaps it was less bad than I am imagining it may have been."

But Sir William held back. Arthur seemed on the brink of a fever in his impatience. And, whether it was that, or to clear the memory of Major Bohun, or that he deemed it a righteous thing to satisfy Major Bohun's son, or that he yielded to overpersuasion, Sir William Adair at last spoke out.

They sat very close together, only the small coffee-table between them. Whether the room was in light or darkness neither remembered. It was a miserable tale they were absorbed in; one that need not be elaborated here.

William Adair, when a young man, quarrelled with his family, or they with him, and an estrangement took place. His father and mother were dead, but his uncle, Sir Archibald, and other relatives, were left. He, the young man, went to the Madras Presidency, appointed to some post there in the civil service. His family made a boast of discarding him; he, in return, was so incensed against them, that had it been practicable, he would have abandoned the very name of Adair. Never a word did he breathe to any one of who or what his family was; his Scotch accent betrayed his country, but people knew no more. That he was a gentleman was apparent, and that was sufficient.

A strong friendship ensued between him and Major Bohun. During one hot season it happened that both went up in search of health to the Blue Mountains, as Indians call the beautiful region of the Neilgherry Hills. Mrs. Bohun accompanied her husband; Mr. Adair was not married. There they made the acquaintance of the Reverend George Cumberland, who was stationed at Ootacamund with his wife. Ootacamund was at that time filled, and a good deal of gaiety was going on; Mrs. Bohun was noted for it. There was some gambling nightly: and no votary joined in it more persistently than she. Major Bohun removed with her to a little place at a short distance, and a few others went also; the chaplain, George Cumberland, was one of them.

There came a frightful day for Major Bohun. Certain claims suddenly swooped down upon him; debts; promissory notes, bearing his signature in conjunction with William Adair's. Neither understood what it meant, for they had given nothing of the sort. A momentary thought arose to Major Bohun--that his wife was implicated in it; but only so far as that she might have joined in this high play; nothing worse. He had become aware that she had a passion for gambling, and the discovery had alarmed him: in fact, it was to wean her from undesirable associates and pursuits that he had come away on this holiday; health, the ostensible plea, was not the true one. But this was not known even to his best friend, William Adair. "Let me deal with this," said the major to Mr. Adair. But Mr. Adair, not choosing to allow a man to forge his name with impunity--and he had no suspicion that it was a woman--did not heed the injunction, but addressed himself to the investigation. And a nest of iniquity he found it. He traced the affair home to one Rabbetson--in all probability an assumed name--a bad man in every way; no better than a blackleg; who had wormed himself into society to prey upon it, and upon men and women's failings. This man Mr. Adair confronted with Major Bohun: and then--the fellow, brought to bay, braved it out by disclosing that his helpmate was Mrs. Bohun.

It was even so. Mr. Adair sat aghast at the revelation. Had he suspected this, he would have kept it to himself. How far she had connected herself with this man, it was best not to inquire: and they never did inquire, and never knew. One thing was certain--the man could afford to take a high ground. He went out from the interview bidding them do their worst--which with him would not be much, he affirmed; for it was not he who had issued the false bills, but the major's wife. And they saw that he spoke the truth.

Arthur Bohun listened to this now, motionless as a statue.

"I never saw any man so overcome as Bohun," continued Sir William Adair. "He took it to heart; to heart. 'And she is the mother of my child!' he said to me; and then he gave way, and held my hands in his, and sobbed aloud. 'We will hush it up; we will take up the bills and other obligations,' I said to him: though in truth I did not see how I should do my part in it, for I was a poor man. He was poor also; his expenses and his wife kept him so. 'It cannot be hushed up, Adair,' he answered; 'it has gone too far.' Those were the last words he ever said to me; it was the last time I saw him alive."

"Go on," said Arthur, without raising his head.

"Mrs. Bohun came into the room, and I quitted it. I saw by her face that she knew what had happened; it was full of evil as she turned it on me. Rabbetson had met her when he was going out, and whispered some words in her ear. What passed between her and Major Bohun I never knew. Before I had been five minutes in my rooms she stood before me; had followed me down. Of all the vituperation that a woman's tongue can utter, hers lavished about the worst on me. It was I who had brought on the crisis, she said; it was I who had taken Rabbetson to her husband. I quietly told her that when I took Rabbetson to Major Bohun, I had not the remotest idea that she was mixed up with the affair in any way; and that if I had known it, known what Rabbetson could say, I never should have taken him, but have striven to deal with it myself, and keep it dark for my friend Bohun's sake. She would hear nothing; she was as a mad woman; she swore that not a word of it was true; that Rabbetson did not say it, could not have said it, but that I and Major Bohun had concocted the tale between us. In short, I think she was really mad for the time being."

"Stay a moment, Sir William," interrupted Arthur. "Who was she? I have never known. I don't think my father's family ever did know."

"Neither did I ever know, to a certainty. A cousin, or sister, or some relative of hers, had married a doctor in practice at Madras, and she was out there on a visit to them. Captain Bohun--as he was then--caught by her face and figure, both fine in those days, fell in love with her and married her. He afterwards found that her father kept an hotel somewhere in England."

So! This was the high-born lady who had set up for being above all Dallory. But for the utmost self-control Arthur Bohun would have groaned aloud.

"Go on, please," was all he said. "Get it finished."

"There is not much more to tell," returned Sir William. "I went looking about for Bohun everywhere that afternoon; and could not find him. Just before sun-down he was found--found as--as I dare say you have heard. The spot was retired and shady, his pistol lay beside him. He had not suffered: death must have been instantaneous."

"The report here was that he died of sunstroke," said Arthur, breaking a long pause.

"No doubt. Mrs. Bohun caused it to be so reported. The real facts transpired to very few: Cumberland, Captain Strachan, myself, and two or three others."

"Did Mrs. Cumberland know them?" suddenly asked Arthur, a thought striking him.

"I dare say not. I don't suppose her husband would disclose the shameful tale to her. She was not on the spot at the time; had gone to nurse some friend who was ill. I respected both the Cumberlands highly. We made a sort of compact amongst ourselves, we men, never to speak of this story, unless it should be to defend Bohun, or for some other good purpose. We wished to give Mrs. Bohun a chance of redeeming her acts and doings in her own land, for which she at once sailed. Arthur, if I have had to say this to you, it is to vindicate your dead father. I believe that your mother has dreaded me ever since."

Dreaded him! Ay! and foully aspersed him in her insane dread. Arthur thought of the wicked invention she had raised, and passed his hands upon his face as if he could shut out its remembrance.

"What became of Rabbetson?" he asked, in low tones.

"He disappeared. Or I think I should surely have shot him in his turn, or kicked him to death. I saw him afterwards in Australia dying in the most abject misery."

"And the claims?--the bills?"

"I took them upon myself; and contrived to pay all--with time."

"You left India for Australia?" continued Arthur, after a pause.

"My health failed, and I petitioned government to remove me to a different climate. They complied, and sent me to Australia. I stayed there, trying to accumulate a competency that should enable me to live at home with Ellen as befitted my family: little supposing that I was destined to become its head. My two cousins, Sir Archibald's sons, have died one after the other."

Arthur Bohun had heard all he wished to know, perhaps all there was to tell. If--if he could make his peace with Ellen, the old relations between them might yet be renewed. But whilst his heart bounded with the hope, the red of shame crimsoned his brow as he thought of the past. Glancing at the timepiece on the mantel-shelf, he saw it was only half-past nine; not too late yet.

"May I see your daughter, sir?" he asked. "We used to be good friends."

"So I suppose," replied Sir William. "You made love to her, Arthur Bohun. You would have married her, I believe, but that I stopped it."

"You--stopped it!" exclaimed Arthur, at sea: for he had known nothing of the letter received by Ellen.

"I wrote to Ellen, telling her I must forbid her to marry you. I feared at the time of writing that the interdict might arrive too late. But it seems that it did not do so."

"Yes," abstractedly returned Arthur, letting pass what he did not understand.

"You see, I had been thinking of you always as belonging to her--your mother--more than to him. That mistake is over. I shall value you now as his son; more I dare say than I shall ever value any other young man in this world."

Arthur's breath came fast and thick. "Then--you--you would give her to me, sir!"

Sir William shook his head in sadness. Arthur misunderstood the meaning.

"The probability is, sir, that I shall succeed my uncle in the baronetcy. Would it not satisfy you?"

"You can see her if you will," was Sir William's answer, but there was the same sad sort of denial in his manner. "I would not say No now for your father's sake. She is in the drawing-room, upstairs. I will join you as soon as I have written a note."

Arthur found his way by instinct. Ellen was lying back in an easy-chair; the brilliant light of the chandelier on her face. Opening the door softly, it--that face--was the first object that met his sight. And he started back in terror.

Was it death that he saw written there? All too surely conviction came home to him.

It was a more momentous interview than the one just over. Explaining he knew not how, explaining he knew not what, excepting that his love had never left her, Arthur Bohun knelt at her feet, and they mingled their tears together. For some minutes neither could understand the other: but elucidation came at last. Arthur told her that the wicked tale, the frightful treachery which had parted them was only a concocted fable on his mother's part, and then he found that Ellen had never known, never heard anything, about it.

"What then did you think was the matter with me?" he asked.

And she told him. She told him without reserve, now that she found how untrue it was: she thought he had given her up for another. Madam had informed her he was about to marry Miss Dallory.

He took in the full sense of what the words implied: the very abject light in which his conduct must have appeared to her. A groan burst from him: he covered his face to hide its shame and trouble.

"Ellen! Ellen! You could not have thought it of me."

"It was what I did think. How was I to think anything else? Your mother had said it."

"Heaven forgive her her sins!" he wailed, in his despair. "It was enough to kill you, Ellen. No wonder you look like this."

She was panting a little. Her breathing seemed very laboured.

"Pray Heaven I may be enabled to make it up to you when you are my wife. I will try hard, my darling."

"I shall not live for it, Arthur."

His heart seemed to stand still. The words struck him as being so very real.

"Arthur, I have known it for some time now. You must not grieve for me. I even think that death is rather near."

"What has killed you? I?"

A flush passed over her wan face. Yes, he had killed her. That is, his conduct had done so: the sensitive crimson betrayed it.

"The probability is that I should not in any case have lived long," she said, aloud. "I believe they feared something of the sort for me years ago. Arthur, don't! Don't weep; I cannot bear it."

Sir William Adair had just told him how his father had wept in his misery. And before Arthur could well collect himself, Sir William entered.

"You see," he whispered aside to Arthur, "why it may not be. There will be no marriage for her in this life. I am not surprised. I seem to have always expected it: my wife, her mother, died of decline."

Arthur Bohun quitted the house, overwhelmed with shame and sorrow. What regret is there like unto that for past mistaken conduct which can never be remedied in this world?

[CHAPTER II.]

NO HOPE.

Once more the scene changes to Dallory.

Seated on a lawn-bench at Dallory Hall in the sweet spring sunshine--for the time has again gone on--was Ellen Adair. Sir William Adair and Arthur Bohun were pacing amidst the flower-beds that used to be Mr. North's. Arthur stooped and plucked a magnificent pink hyacinth.

"It is not treason, sir?" he asked, smiling.

"What is not treason?" returned the elder man.

"To pick this."

"Pick as many as you like," said Sir William.

"Mr. North never liked us to pluck his flowers. Now and then madam would make a ruthless swoop upon them for her entertainments. It grieved his heart."

"No wonder," said Sir William.

The restoration to the old happiness, the disappearance of the dreadful cloud that had told so fatally upon her, seemed to infuse new vigour into Ellen's shortening span of life. With the exception of her father, every one thought she was recovering: the doctors admitted, rather dubiously, that it "might be so." She passed wonderfully well through the winter, went out and about almost as of old; and when more genial weather set in, it was suggested by friends that she should be taken to a warmer climate. Ellen opposed it; she knew it would not avail, perhaps only hasten the end; and after a private interview Sir William had with the doctors, even he did not second it. Her great wish was to go back to Dallory: and arrangements for their removal were made.

Dallory Hall was empty, and Sir William found that he could occupy it for the present if he pleased. Mr. North had removed to the house that had been Mrs. Cumberland's, leaving his own furniture: in point of fact it was Richard's: at the Hall, hoping the next tenant, whoever that might prove to be, would take to it. Miss Dallory seemed undecided what to do with the Hall, whether to let it for a term again, or not, But she was quite willing that Sir William Adair should have it for a month or two.

And so he came down with Ellen, bringing his own servants with him. This was only the third day after their arrival, and Arthur Bohun had arrived. Sir William had told him he might come when he would.

The change seemed to have improved Ellen, and she had received a few visitors. Mrs. Gass had been there; Mr. North had come down; and Richard ran in for a few minutes every day. Sir William welcomed them all; Mrs. Gass warmly; for she was sister-in-law to Mrs. Cumberland, and Ellen had told him of Mrs. Gass's goodness of heart. She had unfastened her bonnet, and stayed luncheon with them.

Mr. North was alone in his new home, and was likely to be so; for his wife had relieved him of her society. Violently indignant at the prospect of removal from such a habitation as the Hall to that small home of the late Mrs. Cumberland's, madam went off to London with Matilda, and took Sir Nash Bohun's house by storm. Not an hour, however, had she been in it, when madam found all her golden dreams must be scattered to the winds. Never again would Sir Nash receive her as a guest or tolerate her presence. The long hidden truth, as connected with his unfortunate brother's death, had been made clear to him: first of all by General Strachan, next by Sir William Adair, with whom he became intimate.

Of what use to tell of the interview between Arthur and his mother? It was of a painful character. There was no outspoken reproach, no voice was raised. In a subdued manner, striving for calmness, Arthur told her she had wilfully destroyed both himself and Ellen Adair; her life, for she was dying; his happiness for ever. He recapitulated all that had been disclosed to him relating to his father's death; and madam, brought to bay, never attempted to deny its accuracy.

"But that I dare not fly in the face of one of Heaven's Commandments, I would now cast you off for ever," he concluded in his bitter pain. "Look upon you again as my mother, I cannot. I will help you when you need help; so far will I act the part of a son towards you; but all respect for you has been forced out of me; and I would prefer that we should not meet very often."

Madam departed the same day for Germany, Matilda and the maid Parrit in her wake. Letters came from her to say she should never return to Dallory; never; probably never set her foot again on British soil; and therefore she desired that a suitable income might be secured to her abroad.

And so Mr. North had his new residence all to himself--saving Richard. Jelly had taken up her post as his housekeeper, with a boy and a maid under her; and there was one outdoor gardener. She domineered over all to her heart's content. Jelly was regaining some of her lost flesh, and more than her lost spirits. Set at rest in a confidential interview with Mr. Richard, as to the very tangible nature of the apparition she had seen, Jelly was herself again. Mr. North thought his garden lovely, more compact than the extensive one at the Hall; he was out in it all day long, and felt at peace. Mrs. Gass came to see him often; Mary Dallory almost daily: he had his good son Richard to bear him company of an evening. Altogether Mr. North was in much comfort. Dr. Rane's house remained empty: old Phillis, to whom the truth had also been disclosed, taking care of it. The doctor's personal effects had been sent to him by Richard.

"Ellen looks much better, sir," remarked Arthur Bohun, as he twirled the pink hyacinth he had plucked.

"A little fresher, perhaps, from the country air," answered Sir William.

"I have not lost hope: she may yet be mine," he murmured.

Sir William did not answer. He would give her to Arthur now with his whole heart, had her health permitted it. Arthur himself looked ill; in the last few months he seemed to have aged years. A terrible remorse was ever upon him; his life, in its unavailing regret, seemed as one long agony.

They turned to where she was sitting. "Would you not like to walk a little, Ellen?" asked her father.

She rose at once. Arthur held out his arm, and she took it. Sir William was quite content that it should be so: Arthur, and not himself. The three paced the lawn. Ellen wore a lilac silk gown and warm white cloak. An elegant girl yet, though worn almost to a shadow, with the same sweet face as of yore.

But she was soon tired, and sat down again, Arthur by her side. One of the gardeners came up for some orders, and Sir William went away with him.

"I have not been so happy for many a day, Ellen, as I am now," began Captain Bohun. "You are looking quite yourself again. I think--in a little time--that you may be mine."

A blush, beautiful as the rose-flush of old, sat for a moment on her cheeks. She knew how fallacious was the hope.

"I am nearly sure that Sir William thinks so, and will soon give you to me," he added.

"Arthur," she said, putting her wan and wasted hand on his, "don't take the hope to heart. The--disappointment, when it came, would be all the harder to bear."

"But, my darling, you are surely better!"

"Yes, I seem so, just for a little time. But I fear that I shall never be well enough to be your wife."

"It was so very near once, you know," was all he whispered.

There was no one within view, and they sat, her hand clasped in his. The old expressive silence that used to lie between them of old, ensued now. They could not tell to each other more than they had told already. In the unexpected reconciliation that had come, in the bliss it brought, all had been disclosed. Arthur had heard all about her self-humiliation and anguish; he knew of the treasured violets, and their supposed treachery: she had listened to his recital of the weeks of despair; she had seen the letter, written to him from Eastsea, worn with his kisses, blotted with his tsars, and kept in his bosom still. No: of the past there was nothing more to tell each other; so far, they were at rest.

Arthur Bohun was still unconsciously twirling that pink hyacinth in his fingers. Becoming aware of the fact, he offered it to her. A wan smile parted her lips.

"You should not have given it, to me, Arthur."

"Why?"

Ellen took it up. The perfume was very strong.

"Why should I not have given it to you?"

"Don't you know what the hyacinth is an emblem of?"

"No."

"Death."

One quick, pained glance at her. She was smiling yet, and looking rather fondly at the flower. Captain Bohun took both flower and hand into his.

"I always thought you liked hyacinths, Ellen."

"I have always liked them very much indeed. And I like the perfume--although it is somewhat faint and sickly."

He quietly flung the flower on the grass, and put his boot on it to stamp out its beauty. A truer emblem of death, now, than it was before; but he did not think of that.

"I'll find you a sweeter flower presently, Ellen. And you know----"

A visitor was crossing the lawn to approach them. It was Miss Dallory. She had not yet been to see Ellen. Something said by Mrs. Gass had sent her now. Happening to call on Mrs. Gass that morning, Mary heard for the first time of the love that had so long existed between Captain Bohun and Miss Adair, and that the course of the love had been forcibly interrupted by madam, who had put forth the plea that her son was engaged to Miss Dallory.

Mary sat before Mrs. Gass in mute surprise, recalling facts and fancies. "I know that madam would have liked her son to marry me; the hints she gave me on the point were too broad to be mistaken," she observed to Mrs. Gass. "Neither I nor Captain Bohun had any thought or intention of the sort; we understood each other too well."

"Yet you once took me in," said Mrs. Gass.

Mary laughed. "It was only in sport: I did not think you were serious."

"They believed it at the Hall."

"Oh, did they? So much the better."

"My dear, I am afraid it was not for the better," dissented Mrs. Gass rather solemnly. "They say that it has killed Miss Ellen Adair."

"What?" exclaimed Mary.

"Ever since that time when she first went to the Hall after Mrs. Cumberland's death, she has been wasting and wasting away. Her father, Sir William, has now brought her to Dallory, not to try if the change might restore her, for nothing but a miracle would do that, but because she took a whim to come. Did you hear that she was very ill?"

"Yes, I heard so."

"Well, then, I believe it is nothing but this business that has made her ill--Captain Bohun's deserting her for you. She was led to believe it was so--and until then, they had been wrapt up in each other."

Mary Dallory felt her face grow hot and cold. She had been altogether innocent of ill intention; but the words struck a strange chill of repentance to her heart.

"I--don't understand," she said in frightened tones. "Captain Bohun knew there was nothing between us; not even a shadow of pretence of it: why did he not tell her so?"

"Because he and she had parted on another score; they had been parted through a lie of madam's, who wanted him to marry you. I don't rightly know what the lie was; something frightfully grave; something he could not repeat again to Miss Adair; and Ellen Adair never heard it, and thought it was as madam said--that his love had gone over to you."

Mary sat in silence, thinking of the past. There was a long pause.

"How did you get to know this?" she breathed.

"Ah, well--partly through Mr. Richard. And I sat an hour talking with poor Miss Ellen yesterday, and caught a hint or two then."

"I will set it straight," said Mary; feeling, though without much cause, bitterly repentant.

"My dear, it has been all set straight since the winter. Nevertheless, Miss Mary, it was too late. Madam had done her crafty work well."

"Madam deserves to be put in the stocks," was the impulsive rejoinder of Miss Dallory.

She went to the Hall there and then. And this explains her present approach. Things had cleared very much to her as she walked along. She had never been able to account for the manner in which Ellen seemed to shun her, to avoid all approach to intimacy or friendship. That Mary Dallory had favoured the impression abroad of Arthur Bohun's possible engagement to her, she was now all too conscious of; or, at any rate, had not attempted to contradict it. But it had never occurred to her that she was doing harm to any one.

Just as Arthur Bohun had started when he first saw Ellen in the winter, so did Miss Dallory start now. Wan and wasted? ay, indeed. Mary felt half faint in thinking of the share she had had in it.

She said nothing at first. Room was made for her on the bench, and they talked of indifferent matters. Sir William came up, and was introduced. Presently he and Arthur strolled to a distance.

Then Mary spoke. Just a word or two of the misapprehension that had existed; then a burst of exculpation.

"Ellen, I would have died rather than have caused you pain. Oh if I had only known! Arthur and I were familiar with each other as brother and sister: never a thought of anything else was in our minds. If I let people think there was, why--it was done in coquetry. I had some one else in my head, you see, all the time; and that's the truth. And I am afraid I enjoyed the disappointment that would ensue for madam."

Ellen smiled faintly. "It seems to have been a complication altogether. A sort of ill-fate that I suppose there was no avoiding."

"You must get well, and be his wife."

"Ay. I wish I could."

But none could be wishing that as Arthur did. Hope deceived him; he confidently thought that a month or two would see her his. Just for a few days the deceitful improvement in her continued.

One afternoon they drove to Dallory churchyard. Ellen and her father; Arthur sitting opposite them in the carriage. A fancy had taken her that she would once more look on Mrs. Cumberland's grave; and Sir William said he should himself like to see it.

The marble stone was up now, with its inscription: "Fanny, widow of the Reverend George Cumberland, Government Chaplain, and daughter of the late William Gass, Esq., of Whitborough." There was no mention of her marriage to Captain Rane. Perhaps Dr. Rane fancied the name was not in very good odour just now, and so omitted it. The place where the ground had been disturbed, to take up those other coffins, had been filled in again with earth.

Ellen drew Sir William's attention to a green spot near, overshadowed by the branches of a tree that waved in the breeze, and flickered the grass beneath with ever-changing light and shade.

"It is the prettiest spot in the churchyard," she said, touching his arm. "And yet no one has ever chosen it."

"It is very pretty, Ellen; but solitary."

"Will you let it be here, papa?"

He understood the soft whisper, and slightly nodded, compressing his lips. Sir William was not deceived. Years had elapsed, but, to him, it seemed to be his wife's case over again. There had been no hope for her; there was none for Ellen.

[CHAPTER III.]

BROUGHT HOME TO HIM

She lay back in an easy-chair, in the little room that was once Mr. North's parlour. The window was thrown open to the sweet flowers, the balmy air; and Ellen Adair drank in their beauty and perfume.

She took to this room as her own sitting-room the day she came back to the Hall. She had always liked it. Sir William had caused the shabby old carpet and chairs and tables to be replaced by fresh bright furniture. How willingly, had it been possible, would he have kept her in life!

Just for a few days had hope lasted--no more. The change had come suddenly, and was unmistakable. She wore a white gown, tied round the waist with a pink girdle, and a little bow of pink ribbon--her favourite colour--at the neck. She wished to look well yet; her toilet was attended to, her bright hair was arranged carefully as ever. But the maid did all that. The wan face was very sweet still, the soft brown eyes had all their old lustre. Very listless was the worn white hand lying on her lap; loosely sat the plain gold ring on it--the ring that, through all the toil and trouble, had never been taken off. Ellen was alone. Sir William had gone by appointment to see over Richard North's works.

A sound as of steps on the gravel. Her father could not have come back yet! A moment's listening, and then the hectic flushed to her face; for she knew the step too well. Captain Bohun had returned!

Captain Bohun had gone to London to see Sir Nash off on his projected Continental journey to the springs that were to make him young again. Sir Nash had expected Arthur to accompany him, but he now acknowledged that Ellen's claims were paramount to his. Ellen had thought he might have been back again yesterday.

He came in at the glass-doors, knowing he should probably find her in the room. But his joyous smile died away when he saw her face. His step halted: his hand dropped at his side.

"Ellen!"

In timid, wailing tones was the word spoken. Only three days' absence, and she had faded like this! Was it a relapse?--or what had she been doing to cause the change?

For a few minutes, perhaps neither of them was sufficiently collected to know what passed. In his abandonment, he knelt by the chair, holding her hands, his eyes dropping tears. The remorse ever gnawing at his heart was very cruel just then. Ellen bent towards him, and whispered that he must be calm--must bear like a man: things were only drawing a little nearer.

"I should have been down yesterday, but I waited in town to make sundry purchases and preparations," he said. "Ellen, I thought that--perhaps--next month--your father would have given you over to me."

"Did you?" she faintly answered.

"You must be mine," he continued, in too deep emotion to weigh his words. "If you were to die first, I--I think it would kill me."

"Look at me," was all she answered. "See whether it is possible."

"There's no knowing. It might restore you. Fresh scenes, the warm pure climate that I would take you to--we would find one somewhere--might do wonders. I pointed this out to Sir William in the winter."

"But I have not been well enough for it, Arthur."

"Ellen, it must be! Why, you know that you were almost my wife. Half-an-hour later, and you would have been."

She released one of her hands, and put it up to her face.

Captain Bohun grew more earnest in his pleading; he was really thinking this thing might be.

"I shall declare the truth to Sir William--and I know that I ought to have done so before, Ellen. When he knows how very near we were to being man and wife, he will make no further objection to giving you to me now. My care and love will restore you, if anything can."

She had put down her hand again, and was looking at him, a little startled and her cheeks hectic.

"Arthur, hush. Papa must never know this while I live. Do as you will afterwards."

"I shall tell him before the day's out," persisted Captain Bohun. And she began to tremble with agitation.

"No, no. I say no. I should die with the shame."

"What shame?" he rejoined.

"The shame that--that--fell upon me. The shame of--after having consented to a secret marriage, you should have left me as you did, and not fulfilled it, and never told me why. It lies upon me still, and I cannot help it. I think it is that that has helped to kill me more than all the rest. Oh, Arthur, forgive me for saying this! But do not renew the shame now."

Never had his past conduct been brought so forcibly home to him. Never had his heart so ached with its repentance and pain.

"The fear, lest the secret should be discovered, lay upon me always," she whispered. "Whilst I was staying here that time it seemed to me one long mental torment. Had the humiliation come, I could never have borne it. Spare me still, Arthur."

Every word she spoke was like a dagger thrusting its sharp point into his heart. She was going--going rapidly--where neither pain nor humiliation could reach her. But he had, in all probability, a long life before him, and must live out his bitter repentance.

"Oh, my love, my love! I wish I could die for you!"

"Don't grieve, Arthur; I shall be better off. You and papa must comfort one another."

He was unconsciously turning round the plain gold ring on her wasted hand, a sob now and again breaking from him. How real the past was seeming to him; even the hour when he had put that ring on, and the words he spoke with it, were very present. What remained of it all? Nothing, except that she was dying.

"I should like to give you this key now, whilst I am well enough to remember," she suddenly said, detaching a small key from her watch-chain. "It belongs to my treasure-box, as I used to call it at school. They will give it you when I am dead."

"Oh, Ellen!"

"The other ring is in it, and the licence--for I did not burn it, as you bade me that day in the churchyard; and the two or three letters you ever wrote to me; and my journal, and some withered flowers, and other foolish trifles. You can do what you like with them, Arthur; they will be yours then. And oh, Arthur! if you grieve any more now, like this, you will hurt me, for I cannot bear that you should suffer pain. God bless you, my darling, my almost husband! We should have been very happy with one another."

Lower and lower bent he his aching brow, striving to suppress the anguish that well-nigh unmanned him. Her own tears were falling.

"Be comforted," she whispered; "Arthur, be comforted! It will not be for so many years, even at the most; and then we shall be together again, in heaven!"

* * * * *

And so she died. A week or two more of pain and suffering, and she was at rest. And that was the ending of Ellen Adair--one of the sweetest girls this world has ever known.

[CHAPTER IV.]

CONCLUSION

The genial spring gave place to a hot summer; and summer, in its turn, was giving place to autumn. There is little to record of the interval.

Dallory, as regards North Inlet, was no longer crowded. The poor workmen, with their wives and families, had for the most part drifted away from it; some few were emigrating, some had brought themselves to accepting that last and hated refuge, the workhouse; and they seemed likely, so far as present prospects looked, to be permanent recipients of its hospitality. The greater portion, however, had wandered away to different parts of the country, seeking for that employment they could no longer find in their native place. Poole and the other conspirators had been tried at the March assizes. Richard North pleaded earnestly for a lenient sentence: and he was listened to. Poole received a term of penal servitude, shorter than it would otherwise have been, and the others hard labour. One and all, including Mr. Poole, declared that they would not willingly have injured Richard North.

So, what with one thing and another, North Inlet had too much empty space in it, and was now at peace. There was no longer any need of special policemen. As to Richard, he was going on steadily and quietly; progressing a little, though not very much. Five or six men had been added to his number, of whom Ketler was one; Ketler having, as Jelly said, come to his senses. But the works would never be what they had been. For one thing, Richard had no capital; and if he had, perhaps he might not now have cared to embark it in this manner. Provided he could gain a sufficient income for expenses, and so employ his time and energies, it was all he asked.

Madam lived permanently abroad. Mr. North--Richard in reality--allowed her two hundred a-year; her son Arthur two; Sir Nash two. Six hundred a-year; but it was pretty plainly intimated to madam that this income was only guaranteed so long as she kept herself aloof from them. Madam retorted that she liked the Continent too well to leave it for disagreeable old England.

Matilda North had married a French count, whom they had met at Baden-Baden. She, herself, made the announcement to her stepbrother Arthur in a self-possessed letter, telling him that as the count's fortune was not equal to his merits, she should depend upon Arthur to assist them yearly. Sidney North had also married. Tired, possibly, with his most uncertain existence, finding supplies from home were now the exception rather than the rule, and not daring to show his face on English soil to entreat for more, Mr. Sidney North entered into the bonds of matrimony with a wealthy American dame a few years older than himself; the widow of a great man who had made his fortune by the oil springs. It was to be hoped he would keep himself straight now.

And Mr. North, feeling that he was freed from madam, was happy as a prince, and confidentially told people that he thought he was growing young again. Bessy wrote to him weekly; pleasant, happy letters. She liked her home in the new world very much indeed; and she said Oliver seemed not to have a single care. The new firm, Jones and Rane, had more patients than they could attend to, and all things were well with them. In short, Dr. and Mrs. Rane were evidently both prosperous and happy. No one was more pleased to know this than Mrs. Gass. She flourished; and her beaming face was more beaming than ever when seen abroad, setting the wives of Richard North's workmen to rights, or looking out from behind her geraniums.

Dallory Hall was empty again. William Adair had quitted it, his mission there over. Richard North was thinking about removing the furniture; but in truth he did not know what to do with it. There was no hurry, for Miss Dallory said she did not intend to let it again at present.

Perhaps the only one not just now in a state of bliss was Jelly. Jelly had made a frightful discovery--Tim Wilks was faithless. For several months--as it came out--Mr. Wilks had transferred his allegiance from herself to Molly Green, whom he was secretly courting at Whitborough. At least, he was keeping it from Jelly. The truth was, poor Tim did not dare to tell her. Jelly heard of it in a manner that astounded her. Spending a Sunday at Whitborough with Mrs. Beverage's servants, Jelly went to morning service at one of the churches. "Pate" took her to a particular church, she said. And there she heard the banns of marriage read out, for the first time of asking, between Timothy Wilks, bachelor, and Mary Green, spinster. Jelly very nearly shrieked aloud in her indignation. Had the culprits been present, she might have felt compelled to box their ears in coming out. It proved to be true. Tim and Molly were going to be married, and Tim was furnishing a pretty cottage at Whitborough.

And that is how matters at present stood in Dallory.

One autumn day, when the woods were glowing with their many colours, and the guns might be heard making war on the partridges, Richard North overtook one of his Flemish workmen at the base of a hill about half-a-mile from his works. The man was wheeling a wheelbarrow that contained sand, but not in the handy manner that an Englishman would have done it, and Richard took it himself.

"Can't you learn, Snaude?" he said, addressing the man. "See here; you should stoop: you must not get the barrow nearly upright. See how you've spilt the sand."

Wheeling it along and paying attention to nothing else, Richard took no notice of a basket-carriage that was coming down the opposite hill. It pulled up when it reached him. Looking up, Richard saw Miss Dallory. Resigning the wheelbarrow to the man, Richard took the hand she held out.

"Yes," he said laughing, "you stop to shake hands with me now, but you won't do it soon."

"No? Why not?" she questioned.

"You saw me wheeling the barrow along?"

"Yes. It did not look very heavy."

"I have to put my hands to all sorts of things now, you perceive, Miss Dallory."

"Just so. I hope you like doing it."

"Well, I do."

"But I want to know what you mean by saying I shall soon not stop to speak to you."

"When you become a great lady. Report says you are about to marry."

"Does it? Do you still think, sir, I am going to accept a Bohun?"

"There has been some lord down at your brother's place, once or twice. The gossips in Dallory say that he comes for you."

"Then you can tell the gossips that they are a great deal wiser than I am. Stand still, Gyp"--to the shaggy pony. "I would not have him; and I'm sure he has not the remotest idea of having me. Why, he is hardly out of his teens! I dare say he thinks me old enough to be his godmother."

Miss Dallory played with the reins, and then glanced at Richard. He was looking at her earnestly, as he leaned on the low carriage.

"That young man has come down for the shooting, Mr. Richard. Frank takes him out every day. As for me, I do not intend to marry at all. Never."

"What shall you do, then?"

"Live at Dallory Hall. Frank is going to be married, to the lord's sister. Now there's some information for you, but you need not proclaim it. It is true. I shall remove myself and my chattels to the Hall, and live there till I die."

"It will be very lonely for you."

"Yes, I know that," she answered sadly. "Most old maids are lonely. There will be Frank's children, perhaps, to come and stay with me sometimes."

Their eyes met. Each understood the other as exactly as though a host of words had been spoken. She would have one man for a husband, and only one--if he would have her.

Richard went nearer. His lips were pale, his tones husky with emotion.

"Mary, it would be most unsuitable. Think of your money; your birth. I told you once before not to tempt me. Why, you know--you know that I have loved you, all along, too well for my own peace. In the old days when those works of ours"--pointing to the distant chimneys--"were of note, and we were wealthy, I allowed myself to cherish dreams that I should be ashamed to confess to now: but that's all over and done with. It would never do."

She blushed and smiled; and turned her head away from him to study the opposite hedge while she spoke.

"For my part, I think there never was anything so suitable since the world was made."

"Mary, I cannot."

"If you will please get off my basket-chaise, sir, I'll drive on."

But he did not stir. Miss Dallory played with the reins again.

"Mary, how can I? If you had nothing, it would be different. I cannot live at Dallory Hall.

"No one else ever shall." But Richard had to bend to catch the whisper.

"The community would cry shame upon me. Upon that poor working man, Richard North."

"How dare you call yourself names, Mr. Richard? You are a gentleman."

"What would John and Francis say?"

"What they pleased. Francis likes you better than any one in the world; better than--well, yes, sir--better than I do."

He had taken one of her hands now. She knew, she had known a long while, how it was with him--that he loved her passionately, but would never, under his altered circumstances, tell her so. And, moreover, she knew that he was aware she knew it.

"But Mary, since--since before you returned from Switzerland up to this hour, I have not dared to think the old hopes could be carried out, even in my own heart."

"You think it better that I should grow into an old maid, and you into an old bachelor. Very well. Thank you. Perhaps we shall both be happier for it. Let me drive on, Mr. Richard."

He drew nearer to her; made her turn to him. The great love of his heart shone in his face and eyes. A face of emotion then. She dropped the reins, regardless of what the rough pony might do, and put her other hand upon his.

"Oh, Richard, don't let us carry on the farce any longer! We have been playing it all these months and years. Let us at least be honest with each other: and then, if you decide for separation, why--it must be so."

But, as it seemed, Richard did not mean to decide for it. He glanced round to make sure that no one was in the lonely road: and, drawing her face to his, left some strangely ardent kisses on it.

"I could not give up my works, Mary."

"No one asked you to do so, sir."

"It is just as though I had left the furniture in the Hall for the purpose."

"Perhaps you did."

"Mary!"

"There's the pony going. Stand still, Gyp. I won't give up Gyp, mind, Richard. I know he is frightfully ragged and ugly, and that you despise him; but I won't give him up. He can be the set-off bargain against your works, sir."

"Agreed," answered Richard, laughing. And he sealed the bargain.

Mary said again that she must drive on; and did not. How long they would really have stayed there it was impossible to say, had not the man come back from the works with the empty wheelbarrow for more sand.

* * * * *

When the next spring came round, Richard North and his wife were established at Dallory Hall. Somewhere about the time of the marriage, there occurred a little warfare. Mary, who owned a great amount of accumulated money, wanted Richard to take it into his business. Richard steadily refused. A small amount would be useful to him; that he would take; but no more.

"Richard," she said to him one day, before they had been married a week, "I do think you are more obstinate upon this point than any other. You should hear what Mrs. Gass says about it."

"She says it to me," returned Richard, laughing. "There's not my equal for obstinacy in the world, she tells me."

"And you know it's true, sir."

But the next minute he grew strangely serious. "I cannot give up business, Mary; I have already said so----"

"I should despise you if you did, Richard," she interrupted. "I have money and gentility--I beg you'll not laugh, sir; you have work, and brains to work with; so we are equally matched. But I wish you would take the money."

"No," said Richard. "I will never again enter on gigantic operations, and be at the beck and call of the Trades' Unions. There's another reason against it--that it would require closer supervision on my part. And as I have now divided duties to attend to; I shall not add to them. I should not choose to neglect my works; I should not choose to neglect my wife."

"A wilful man must have his way," quoth Mary.

"And a wilful woman shall have hers in all things, excepting when I see that it would not be for her good," rejoined Richard, holding his wife before him by the waist.

"I dare say I shall!" she saucily answered. "Is that a bargain, Richard?"

"To be sure it is." And Richard sealed it as he had sealed the other some months before.

And so we leave Dallory and its people at peace. Even Jelly was in feather. Jelly, ruling Mr. North indoors, and giving her opinion, unasked, in a free-and-easy manner whenever she chose, as to the interests of the garden: an opinion poor Mr. North enjoyed instead of reproved, and grew to look for. Jelly had taken on another "young man," in the person of Mr. Francis Dallory's head-gardener. He was a staid young Scotchman; very respectful to Jelly, and quite attentive. Mr. Seeley had moved into Dr. Rane's old house, and old Phillis was his housekeeper; so that Jelly's neighbourly relations with the next door were continued as of old.

On Arthur Bohun there remained the greatest traces of the past. Sir Nash was restored to health; and Arthur, in his unceasing remorse, would sometimes hope that he would marry again: he should almost hate to succeed to the rank and wealth to which he had, in a degree, sacrificed one who had been far dearer to him than life. Arthur's ostensible home was with Sir Nash; but he was fond of coming to Dallory. He had stayed twice with Mr. North; and Richard's home, the Hall, would be always open to him. The most bitter moments of Arthur Bohun's life were those that he spent with Sir William Adair: never could he lose the consciousness of having wronged him, of having helped to make him childless. Sir William had grown to love him as a son, but it was only an additional stab to Arthur's aching heart.

And whenever Arthur Bohun came to Dallory, he would pay a visit to a certain white tomb in the churchyard. Choosing a solitary evening for it, after twilight had fallen, and remaining near it for hours, there he indulged his grief. Who can tell how he called upon her?--who can tell how he poured out all the misery of his repentant heart, praying to be forgiven? Neither she nor Heaven could answer him in this world. She was gone; gone: all his regret was unavailing to recall her: there remained nothing but the marble stone, and the simple name upon it: