St. Martin's Eve: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Extract From Miss Carr's Diary.

Dec. 10th.--Oh this deceitful disease! all the dreadful weakness has returned. Adeline cannot go downstairs now. She just comes from her chamber into the front room, and lies on the sofa the best part of the day. Madame de Castella, who fully believed in the amendment, giving way more than any one of us to the false hopes it excited, is nearly beside herself with grief and despair. She is perpetually reproaching herself for allowing Nurse Brayford to leave. The woman stayed here for a few days, but Adeline was so well it seemed a farce to keep her, and now she has taken another place and cannot return. I am glad she's gone, for my part. She could not do Adeline the slightest good, and she and the garde kept up an incessant chatter in strange French. Brayford's French was something curious to listen to: 'Le feu est sorti,' she said one day, and sent Rose into a screaming fit. Signor de Castella we rarely see, except at dinner; now and then at the second déjeûner; but he is mostly shut up in his cabinet. Is it that the sight of his fading child is more than he can bear? Cold and reserved as he has always been, there's no doubt that he loves Adeline with the deepest love.

15th.--Five days, and Adeline not out of her bedroom! The cough has come back again, and the doctors say she must have taken cold. I don't see how she could; but Dr. Dorré's as cross as can be over it.

A fancy has taken her these last few days to hear Rose sing English songs. On the first evening, Rose was in the front room, the intervening door being open, singing in a sweet, low voice to amuse herself; but Adeline listened and asked for more. More songs, only they must be English.

"I think I have come to the end of my stock," answered Rose; "that is, all I can remember. Stay!--what was that long song so much in request this year at school? Do you remember the words, Mary Carr?"

"How am I to know what song you mean?" I asked.

"Some of us set it to music,--a low, soft chant. Last spring it was, after Adeline had left. You must remember it. It was strummed over for everlasting weeks by the whole set of us. It begins thus," added Rose, striking a few chords.

I recollected then. They were lines we saw in a book belonging to that Emma Mowbray, an old, torn magazine, which had neither covers nor title-page. Some of the girls took a violent fancy to them, and somebody--Janet Duff, was it?--set them to music.

"I have it," cried Rose, striking boldly into the song. Nearly with the first words Adeline rose into a sitting posture, her eyes strained in the direction of Rose though she could not see her, and eagerly listening.

"When woman's eye grows dim,

And her cheek paleth;

When fades the beautiful,

Then man's love faileth.

He sits not beside her chair,

Clasps not her fingers,

Entwines not the damp hair

That o'er her brow lingers.

"He comes but a moment in,

Though her eye lightens,

Though the hectic flush

Feverishly heightens.

He stays but a moment near,

While that flush fadeth;

Though disappointment's tear

Her dim eye shadeth.

"He goes from her chamber, straight

Into life's jostle:

He meets, at the very gate,

Business and bustle.

He thinks not of her, within,

Silently sighing;

He forgets, in that noisy din,

That she is dying."

"There is another verse," I called out, for Rose had ceased.

"I know, there is," she said, "but I cannot recollect it. Only its purport!"

"Try, try," exclaimed Adeline; "sing it all."

Rose looked round, astonished at the anxious tone, as was I. What was the matter with her?--she who never took interest in anything.

"Mary Carr," said Rose, "do you recollect the last verse?"

"Not a word of it."

Rose struck the notes of the chant upon the piano, murmuring some words to herself, and stopping now and then. Presently she burst out, something after the manner of an improvisatrice--

"And when the last scene's o'er,

And cold, cold her cheek,

His mind's then all despair,

And his heart like to break.

But, a few months on,--

His constancy to prove--

He forgets her who is gone,

And seeks another love."

"They are not exactly the original words," said Rose, "but they will do."

"They will do, they will do," murmured Adeline, falling back on the sofa. "Sing it all again, Rose."

And every evening since has this song been sung two or three times to please her. What is it she sees in it?

23rd.--I fear the day of life is about to close for Adeline. All the ominous symptoms of the disease have returned: pain oppresses her continually, and now she experiences a difficulty in breathing. Ah, Mr. St. John, if you were to come now and comfort her with all your love, as of yore, you could not restore her to health, or prolong her life by one single day. How strange it is we never hear of him! Is he in London?--is he at Castle Wafer?--is he abroad?--where is he?

26th.--It is astonishing that Madame de Castella continues to cheat herself as to Adeline's state--or, rather, make believe to cheat herself, as the children do at their play. She was determined there should be only one dinner-table yesterday, Christmas Day; so it was laid in the drawing-room, and Adeline went in, the nurse and Louise making a show of dressing her up for it. But all the dress, and the dinner, and the ceremony, could not conceal the truth--that she was dying. Madame de Castella was in most wretched spirits; her silent tears fell, in spite of her efforts, with every morsel she put into her mouth. The Signor was gloomy and reserved; latterly he had never been otherwise. Had it not been for Rose, there would have been no attempt at conversation; but Rose, with all her faults, is a downright treasure in a house, always gay and cheerful. We gathered round the fire after dinner, Rose cracking filberts for us all.

"Do you remember our Christmas dinner last year?" she said to Adeline.

"At Madame de Nino's? Quite well."

"And our sly draw at night at Janet Duff's cards, and the French marigold falling, as usual, to you?"

Adeline answered by a faint gesture, it may have been of assent, it may have been of denial, and Rose bit her repentant tongue. She had spoken without reflection: does she ever speak with it?

29th.--A dark, murky day has this been, but one of event for Adeline. The lights were brought in early in the afternoon, for Rose was reading to her, and it grew too dusk to see. It was the second volume of a new English novel, and Rose was so deeply interested in it, that when Susanne came in with a letter for her, she told her to "put it down anywhere," and read on.

"Not so," said Adeline, looking eagerly up; "open your letter first. Who is it from?"

"From Mary Anne, of course: Margaret never writes to me, and mamma but seldom," replied Rose, breaking the seal. And, not to lose time, she read it out at once. Mrs. Darling and her family are spending Christmas with old Mrs. Darling, in Berkshire.

"My Dear Rose,

"We arrived here on Christmas Eve, but I have found no time to write to you until now. Grandmamma is breaking fast; it is apparent to us all: she has aged much in the past twelve months. She was disappointed you did not make one of us, and particularly hopes you have grown steady, and are endeavouring to acquire the reserve of manner essential to a gentlewoman." ("Or an old maid," ejaculated Rose, in a parenthesis.) "Charlotte is here: she has recovered her spirits wonderfully, and is as handsome as ever. Frank joined us on Christmas morning: he has only got leave for a fortnight. He reports Ireland--the part he is now quartered in--as being in a shocking state. For my part, I never listen to anything he may have to say about such a set of savages. Frank lays down the law beautifully--says he only wishes they would make him Viceroy for a spell: he'd do this, and he'd do that. I don't doubt he does wish it.

"In your last letter you ask about Frederick St. John----" Rose looked off, and hesitated; but Adeline's flushed, eager gaze, the parted lips, the breathless interest, told her there was nothing for it but to continue. "We met him lately at one of the Dowager Revel's assemblies--very crowded it was, considering the season. It was whispered last year that he was ruined, obliged to leave the country, and I don't know what. People ought to be punished for inventing such falsehoods. Instead of being ruined, he enjoys a splendid income, and has not a single debt in the world. It is reported that his brother has made over to him Castle Wafer, which I should think to be only a report: it may be true, though, now he has come into Alnwick. He is again the shadow of Sarah Beauclerc; at least he was her shadow this evening at Lady Revel's, and I should think it will inevitably be a match. I wish we knew him; but did not dare ask for an introduction, he looks so haughty, and mamma was not there. Grandmamma sends her love, and----"

I went forward and raised Adeline on her pillows. The emotion that she would have concealed was struggling with her will for mastery. Once more the burning red spot we thought gone for ever shone on her hollow cheeks, and her hands were fighting with the air, and the breath had stopped.

"Oh, Adeline!" cried Rose, pushing me aside without ceremony, "forgive, forgive me! Indeed I did not know what there was in the letter until I had entered upon the words: I did not know his name was mentioned. What is to be done, Mary? this excitement is enough to kill her. La garde, la garde!" called out Rose in terror; "que faut-il faire. Mademoiselle se trouve malade!"

The nurse, who was in the next room, glided up with a rapid step; but, in regaining her breath, Adeline's self-possession returned to her. "It is nothing," she panted; "only a spasm." And down she sank on her pillow, whispering for them to remove the lights.

"Into the next room--for a little while--they hurt my eyes."

The nurse went out with the tapers, one in each hand, and I knelt down by the sofa.

"What of your deductions now, Mary?" she whispered, after a while, referring to a former conversation. "He is with his early love, and I am here, dying."

"Adeline," I said, "have you no wish to see him again? Did I do wrong in asking it?"

She turned her face to the wall and did not answer.

"I know that you parted in anger, but it all seems to me a great mystery. Whatever cause he may have had for estranging himself, I did not think Mr. St. John was one to forsake you in this heartless way, with the grave so near."

"He forsook me in health," she said, and her voice now had assumed that hollow tone it would never lose in this world; "you might admit there was an excuse for him if you knew all. But--all this time--never to make inquiry after me--never to seek to know if I am dead, or living, or married to another! Whilst to hear of him, to see him, I would forfeit what life is left to me."

New Year's Day.--And a fearful commotion the house has been in, by way of welcome. This morning Adeline was taken alarmingly worse; we thought she was dying, and doctors, priests, friends and servants, jostled each other in the sick chamber. The doctors gained possession, expelled us all in a body, and enforced quiet. She will not die yet, they say, if she is allowed tranquillity--not for some days, perhaps weeks, but will rally again. I think they are right, for she is much better this evening. Adeline is nineteen today. This time last year! this time last year! it was the scene and hour of her brilliant ball-night. How things have changed since then!

Yesterday Adeline showed her hands to young Docteur H----. It has struck her as being very singular that their nails should have turned white. It strikes me so too. He seemed to intimate that it was a very uncommon occurrence, but said he had seen it happen from intense anxiety of mind. "Which," he added, "cannot be your case, my dear Mademoiselle de Castella." Adeline hastily drew her hands under the blue silk sofa cover, and spoke of something else.

Jan. 5th.--"Could you not wheel the chair into the other room--to the window?" Adeline asked suddenly today. "I should like to look out on the world once more."

Louise glanced round at me, and I at the nurse, not knowing what to do. But the nurse made no objection, and she and Louise wheeled the large chair, with as little motion as possible, to one of the drawing-room windows, and then raised her up, and supported her while she stood.

It was no cheering prospect that she gazed upon. A slow, small rain was falling; the snow, fast melting on the housetops, was running down in streams of water, and patches of snow lay in the streets, but they were fast turning into mud and slop. Through an open space a glimpse of the distant country was obtained, and there the snow lay bleak, white, and dreary. What few people were passing in the street hurried along under large cotton umbrellas, some as red and round as Louise's, the women with their heads tied up in blue and yellow kerchiefs. "Dreary, dreary!" she murmured as she gazed; "dreary and void of hope, as my later life has been!"

Old Madame G----'s cook came out of their house with an earthen pan, and placed it underneath the spout to catch the water.

"Is that Madame G---- herself?" cried Adeline, watching the movement. "Where can her two servants be?"

"It's nobody but old Nannette, with white bows in her cap," said Louise, laughing. "Mademoiselle's eyes are deceiving her."

"Is not that M. de Fraconville?" resumed Adeline, pointing to a gentleman who had just come in view, round the opposite corner.

"Something must have taken your eyesight today, Adeline," exclaimed Rose, who was at the other window; "it's a head and half too tall for M. de Fraconville."

"You say right," meekly sighed Adeline; "my sight is dim, and looking on the white snow has rendered it more so. Take me back again."

It will be her last look at outdoor life.

They wheeled her into the other room, and settled her comfortably on her chair, near the fire, her head on the pillows and her feet on a footstool. Rose followed, and took up a light work to read to her.

"Not that," said Adeline, motioning away the volume in Rose's hands; "it is time I had done with such. There is ANOTHER Book there, Rose."

In coming in from church last Sunday, I laid my Bible and Prayer-book down in Adeline's room, and forgot them. It was towards these she pointed. Rose took up the Bible.

"Where shall I read?" she asked, sitting down. Adeline could not tell her. The one was almost as ignorant as the other. The Bible, to Adeline, has been a sealed book, and Rose never opens it but as a matter of form. Rose turned over its leaves in indecision. "So many chapters!" she whispered to me, pleadingly, "Tell me which to fix upon."

"Take the Prayer-book," interrupted Adeline, "and read me your Service for the Burial of the Dead."

Rose found the place at once, for she knew it was close to the Marriage Service, and began:

"'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.'"

There she stopped, for the tears were falling, and she could not see the page; and, just then, Miss de Beaufoy came into the room, and saw what Rose was reading. For the first time, in our hearing, she interfered, beseeching Adeline to remember she was a Roman Catholic, and recommending that a priest should be sent for.

"Dear Aunt Agnes," exclaimed Adeline, impressively, "when you shall be as near to death as I am, you will see the fallacy of these earthly differences,--how worse than useless they must appear in the sight of our universal Father, of our loving Saviour. There is but one heaven, and I believe it is of little moment which form of worship we pursue, so that we pray and strive earnestly in it to arrive there. I shall be none the worse for listening to the prayers from this English book: they are all truth and beauty, and they soothe me. The priests will come later."

A bold avowal for a Roman Catholic, and Agnes de Beaufoy crossed herself as she left the room. Rose read the Burial Service to the end.

And so, existence hanging as it were upon a thread, the days still struggle on.

There will be no more extracts from this young lady's diary. And indeed but little more of anything; this portion of the history, like Adeline's life, draws near its close.

[CHAPTER XXIX.]

LOUISE'S WHISPERED WORDS.

You ould see at a first glance that it was only a temporary bed-chamber--a drawing-room converted into one, to serve some special occasion. Its carpet was of unusual richness; its chairs and sofa, handsomely carved, were covered with embossed purple velvet; its window-curtains, of white flowered muslin, were surmounted by purple velvet and glittering yellow cornices; and fine paintings adorned the walls. The bed alone seemed out of place. It was of plain mahogany, a French bed, without curtains, and was placed in the corner which made the angle between the two doors, one of which opened on the corridor, the other on the adjoining room, a large, magnificent drawing-room, furnished en suite with the one in which the bed was.

On a couch, drawn before the fire, she lay, her sweet face white and wasted. The sick-nurse sat near the sofa, and the lady's-maid, Louise, was busy with the pillows of the bed. Adeline was about to be moved into it, but as they were disrobing her, she suddenly fell back, apparently without life or motion.

"She has fainted," screamed Louise.

"She is taken for death," whispered the nurse.

Louise flew into a fit of anger and tears, abusing the nurse for her hard-hearted ideas. But the nurse was right.

"You had better summon the family, Mademoiselle Louise," persisted the nurse; "they must have done dinner; and let the doctors be sent to,--though they can do nothing for her, poor young lady."

"She has not fainted," whispered Louise. "She is conscious."

"No, no, it is no fainting-fit," was the brief answer. "I have seen more of these things than you have. She will rally a little, I dare say."

No one went to bed that night at Signor de Castella's: it was a general scene of weeping, suspense, and agitation. Adeline was tranquil, except for her laboured breathing.

Early in the morning, she asked to see her father. He remained with her about twenty minutes, shut up with her alone. What passed at the interview none can tell. Did she beg forgiveness for the rebellion she had unintentionally been guilty of in loving one whom, perhaps, she ought not to have loved? Or did he implore pardon of her, for having been instrumental in condemning her to misery? None will ever know. When Signor de Castella left the chamber, he passed along the corridor on his way to his cabinet with his usual measured, stately step; but there were traces of emotion on his face--they saw it as he strode by the drawing-room door. Mary Carr opened the door between the two rooms, and went in, knowing that Adeline was alone, and she gathered a little of the interview. Adeline was sobbing wildly. She had heard the last words of impassioned tenderness from her much-loved father--always deeply loved by her; tenderness that he would never have given vent to in the presence of a third person, or under any circumstances of less excitement: but when these outwardly-cold natures are aroused, whether for anger or for tenderness, their emotion is as that of the rushing whirlwind. Adeline had clung round him with the feeble remnant of her strength, whispering how very dear he had always been to her, dearer far than he had ever suspected: and the Signor had given his consent (now that it was too late) to the true facts of the separation being disclosed to Frederick St. John.

The day grew later. The nurse, for the twentieth time, was arranging the uneasy pillows, when Susanne went in to tell her to go to dinner, taking herself the nurse's place, as she in general did, during her absence. Madame de Castella, quite exhausted with grief, had just gone away for a little repose. Adeline, though comparatively free from pain, was restless to an extreme degree, as many persons are, in dying. When not dozing, and that was rare, she was never still for two minutes together, and the pillows and bedclothes were continually misplaced. Scarcely had the nurse left the room, when Miss Carr had to lean over her to put them straight.

"Who is that?" inquired Adeline, in her hollow voice, her face being turned to the wall. She detected, probably, the difference of touch, for in this the sick are very quick.

"It is I--Mary. Nurse has gone down to her dinner."

She took Miss Carr's hand, and held it for some time in silence. "I have been wanting--all day--to speak to you--Mary--but I--have waited." She could say now but few words consecutively.

"What is it you would say, dearest Adeline?"

"Who is in the room?"

"Susanne. No one else."

"Tell her to go. I want you alone."

"She does not understand our language."

"Alone, alone," repeated Adeline. "Susanne."

The lady's-maid heard the call, and went to the bedside.

"Help me to turn round, Susanne. I have not strength."

With some difficulty they turned her, for they were not so clever at it as the nurse. Adeline then lay looking at them, as she panted for breath. Susanne wiped the cold dew from her pale forehead, and some tears from her own face.

"Leave us alone, Susanne. I have something to say to Mademoiselle Carr."

"Stay in the next room, within call, Susanne," whispered Miss Carr to the servant. It may seem strange, but dearly as Mary Carr loved Adeline, she experienced an indescribable awe at being left alone with her. She did not stay to analyze the sensation, but it must have had its rise in that nameless terror which, in the mind of the young, attaches itself to the presence of the dead and dying.

"I am about to entrust you with a commission to him, Mary," she panted. "You will faithfully execute it?"

"Faithfully and truly."

And, stretching out her white and wasted hand, she held out the key of her writing-desk. "There is a secret spring in the desk, on the right, as you put in your hand," she continued; "press it."

With some awkwardness, Mary Carr did as she was desired, and several love-tokens were disclosed to view. Two or three trinkets of value, a few dried flowers, and some letters, the edges much worn.

"Throw the flowers in the fire," murmured Adeline, "and put all the rest in a parcel, and seal it up."

"How the notes are worn, Adeline!" exclaimed Mary. "One would think them twenty years old."

"Yes," she said, "until I took to my bed I carried them here," touching her bosom. "They are his letters."

Miss Carr speedily made up the packet, and was about to seal it.

"Not that seal," said Adeline. "Take my own; the small one, that has my initials on it. Mary, do you think I could direct it?"

"You direct it!" exclaimed Miss Carr, in surprise. "I don't see how."

"If you could raise me up--and hold me--it would not take more than a minute. I wish to write the address myself."

"Let me call Susanne."

"No, no, I will have no one else here. Put the letter before me on a book, and try and raise me."

It was accomplished after some trouble, Mary Carr was nervous, and feared, besides, that the raising her up might do some injury: but she knew not how to resist Adeline's beseeching looks. She supported her up in bed, and held her, whilst she wrote his name, "Frederick St. John." No "Mr.," no "Esquire;" and written in a straggling hand, all shakes and angles, bearing not any resemblance to what Adeline's had been. Mary laid her down again, and Adeline, in a few words, explained the secret of their being parted, and charged her to enlighten him.

"Tell him I have returned all except the ring, and that will be buried with me. That it has never been off my finger since he placed it there."

"What ring?" exclaimed Mary Carr, surprised, even at such a moment, into curiosity. "The ring you wear is de la Chasse's engagement-ring," she continued, looking down at the plain circlet of gold, that was only kept on Adeline's emaciated finger by the smaller guard worn to protect it.

She shook her head feebly. "He will know."

"What else, Adeline?"

"Tell him my heart will be faithful to him in death, as it ever was in life. Nothing more."

"Why did you not write to him--" asked Mary Carr, "a last letter?"

"He might not have cared to receive it. There is another now."

The close of the afternoon came on. The nurse was sitting in her chair on one side the fireplace; Louise silently seesawed herself backwards and forwards upon another; Mary Carr was standing, in a listless attitude, before the fire, her elbow lodging on the mantelpiece; and Rose Darling sat on a low stool, half asleep, her head resting against Adeline's bed. They were all fatigued. In the next room were heard murmurings of conversation: M. de Castella talking with one of the medical men. Adeline, just then, was quiet, and appeared to be dozing.

"I say, la garde," began Louise, in a low whisper, "is it true that mademoiselle asked old H---- this morning how many hours she should live?"

The nurse nodded.

"Chère enfant!" apostrophized Louise, through her tears. "And what did he say?"

"What should he say?" retorted the nurse. "He does not know any more than we do."

"What do you think?"

The nurse shook her head, rose from her seat, and bent over the bed to look at Adeline, who was lying with her face turned away.

"She sleeps, I think, nurse," observed Rose, whom the movement had disturbed; and her own eyes closed again as she spoke.

"I suppose she does, mademoiselle. I can't see her face; but, if she were not asleep, she wouldn't remain so quiet."

"I heard a word dropped today," cried Louise, in a mysterious voice, as the nurse resumed her chair.

"What word?"

But there Louise stopped, pursed up her mouth, and dried her eyes, which, for the last fortnight or so, had been generally overflowing.

"I don't know," resumed Louise. "It mayn't be true, and I am sure, if it should turn out not to be, I shouldn't choose to say anything about it. So I had better hold my tongue."

Now the most effectual way to induce Louise not to hold her tongue, was to exhibit no curiosity as to anything she might appear disposed to communicate. The garde knew this, and for that reason, probably, sat silent. After awhile, Louise began again.

"But it can do no harm to mention it amongst ourselves. It was Susanne told me, and of course she must have gathered it from madame. She said--you are sure she's asleep?" broke off Louise, looking round at the bed.

"She's asleep, fast enough," repeated the nurse; "she is too quiet to be awake." And Louise resumed, in the hushed, peculiar tone she had been using; it sounded awfully mysterious, taken in conjunction with her subject, through the space of that dying room.

"Susanne thinks that mademoiselle will be exhibited."

"What?" ejaculated the nurse, in a startled tone.

"Qu'elle sera exposée après sa mort." (I prefer to give this sentence in the language in which the conversation was carried on.)

"What in the world do you mean?" demanded Rose, waking up from her semi-sleep.

"That Mademoiselle Adeline will hold a reception after death, mademoiselle."

"Louise, what do you mean?" persisted Rose, opening her eyes to their utmost width.

But Mary Carr had taken in, and understood, the full meaning of the words; she was more generally acquainted with French manners and customs than Rose: and as her eye caught the reflection of her own face in the large pier-glass, she saw that it had turned of a ghastly whiteness.

"You don't follow this fashion in your country, mademoiselle, so I have learnt," whispered the nurse, addressing Rose. "Neither is it kept up here as it used to be. We scarcely ever meet with a case now. But I have heard my mother say--she was a sage-femme, mademoiselle, as well as a garde-malade--that when she was a girl there was scarcely a young gentlewoman of good family, who died unmarried, but what held her reception after death. And in my time, also, I have seen many splendid exhibitions."

"Oh, nurse, nurse," shivered Mary Carr, "don't talk so."

"What's the matter, mademoiselle?" asked the woman, kindly gazing at Miss Carr's scared face. "You look ill."

"I feel sick," was Mary Carr's faint answer. "I cannot help it. I think what you are talking of is horrible."

"Do explain what it is you are talking of," interrupted Rose, impatiently. "La garde! what is it all?"

"I will tell you one instance, mademoiselle," said the woman, "and that will explain the rest. My aunt was housekeeper in Madame Marsac's family. Madame was a widow with three children, and lived in a grand old château near to our village. The eldest, Mademoiselle Marsac, was married to an officer in the army, and had gone away with him, the Saints know where, but a long way off, for it was in the time of Napoleon, and we were at war with half Europe then. Young Marsac, the only son, was a captain in the same regiment; he was also away with it; and Mademoiselle Emma was the only one left at home, and madame her mother doted on her. A fine, blooming young lady she was, with a colour like a rose: you might have taken a lease of her life. But, poor thing, she fell suddenly ill. Some said she had taken cold, others thought she had eaten something that did her harm, but an inward inflammation came on, and she was dead in a week. Madame was nearly crazed, and my aunt said it was pitiful to hear her shrieks the night after the death, and her prayers to the good Virgin to be taken with her child. But madame's sister came to the château with the early light, and she forthwith gave orders that poor Mademoiselle Emma should be exhibited."

"Do go on, nurse," pleaded Rose, whose cheek was getting as white as Mary Carr's, the woman having stopped, in thought.

"I was but a little child then, mademoiselle, as you may suppose, for it was in 1812; but my aunt suddenly sent for me up to the château, to assist. They did not keep many servants; my aunt had only one under her, besides the old gardener, for Madame Marsac was not rich; so I was put to do what I could. My faith! I shall never forget it: it was the first thing of the sort I had seen. They dressed the corpse up in rich white robes, as if for her bridal, with flowers and jewels, and white gloves, and white satin shoes. And then she was placed upright at the end of the grand salon, and all the neighbouring people for miles round, all the rich, and as many of the poor as could get admission, came to visit her. My aunt slipped me into the room, and I was there for, I should think, five minutes. It had the strangest effect! That dressed-up dead thing, at one end, and the live people, all dressed up in their best too, and mostly looking white and awestruck, coming in at the other. There was a long table going down the room, and they walked once round it, looking at her as they passed, and going out in silence. I don't think it was the thing, mademoiselle, for that aunt of mine to send a timid young child of five or so, as I was then, to see such a sight; but she was always indulgent to me, and thought it would be a treat. I could scarcely keep down my terror whilst I stayed in the room, and I am sure I must have looked as white and shocking as Mam'selle Mary looks just now. I did not dare to go about in the dark for long afterwards, and I could not overcome the feeling for years. Though I have seen many such a sight since, none have stayed upon my memory as that first did. I did not seem to see much, at the time, either: I never looked, but once, to--to that part of the room where the bridal robes were."

"But why dress them in bridal robes?" questioned Rose, breathlessly.

"As a symbol that they are going to be the bride of Heaven. At least, that is the interpretation I have always put upon it, mademoiselle," answered the woman.

"The first one I ever saw," interposed Louise, jealous that the nurse should have all the talking, "was a young priest who died at Guines. Stay--I don't think he was quite a priest, but would have been one if he had lived. His name was Theodore Borne. He died of an accident to his hand, and they made him hold a reception after death. I have never seen but two beside him. One was the sister of the Count Plessit, a lady about forty, but she had never been married; and the other was a young girl in this very town, the daughter of a couple who kept a general-furnishing shop, hired out, and sold furniture, and that; and a mint of money they had made. Wasn't she dressed out, that girl! She was an only child, poor thing, and they spared no money on her reception. Her veil was real Brussels; and her dress was half covered with Brussels lace, and little sprigs of orange-blossoms, and bows of white satin ribbon. Their shop faced the market-place, and they stuck her up at the window, looking down on to the Place.[2] It was market-day, and the Place was full of people; crowds of them, for the news spread, and everybody came. It was a wet day, too. Many children were frightened at the sight. Susanne had not met with the custom till she came to these parts: she says they never heard of it where she comes from, just beyond Paris; at least, she never did. That Théodore Borne----"

---

[2]. A fact.

---

At this moment, Adeline stirred. Louise's tongue stopped as still as if it had been shot through, and the nurse made a quiet rush to the side of the bed. She was awake, and wanted her mouth moistened.

As the nurse was putting down the tea and the teaspoon, Dr. Dorré, who had been talking in the other room, came in to look at Adeline before he quitted the house. She was quite sensible, and said she felt easy. In the bustle of his leaving, the nurse going out to attend him to the staircase, Adeline put out her hand and touched Mary Carr, who was now standing by the bed. Her voice was very faint, and Mary had to lean close to hear.

"I--was not asleep--when Louise said--that. I heard it. Mary! do not let it be done."

Miss Carr felt much distressed. She knew not what to say.

"I--I am sure nothing will be done that you do not wish, Adeline," she stammered. "I think it must have been a misapprehension on the part of Louise. Shall I speak to Madame de Castella?"

"Not now. When I am dead--you will see if they are making preparations--speak to mamma then."

"Do not let this distress you, Adeline," proceeded Mary, wishing Louise had been at the bottom of the sea before she had introduced so unfitting a subject in Adeline's hearing. "Rely upon it, every wish of yours will be sacredly respected."

"It does not distress me," was the feeble reply. "But I would rather be left in peace after death."

Madame de Castella came down, but soon went away to her chamber again, for her hysterical grief disturbed Adeline; Agnes de Beaufoy remained with her sister, endeavouring, by persuasions and remonstrances, to keep her there. Old Madame de Beaufoy was expected; and, a little before five, M. de Castella went to the railway station to receive her. Rose and Mary were in the drawing-room then, drinking some tea, when the old servant, Silva, came in with a letter on a salver.

"Pour qui!" demanded Mary.

"Pour Mademoiselle Rose Darling," responded the old man.

Rose, who was sitting before the fire, her feet on the fender, took the letter, without turning her head to look at it, and threw it on the table.

"That worrying Mary Anne! There's no end to her letters: and they are nothing but prosy lectures of admonition. If they think I am going to answer all she chooses to write, they'll find their mistake. If mamma made it a condition for a double allowance for me, I wouldn't do it."

"It is not your sister's handwriting," observed Mary Carr.

"No?" And Rose condescended languidly to turn her eyes towards the epistle. "Why, I do believe it is from Frank!" she exclaimed, snatching it out of Mary's hand. "What can he have to write about? Perhaps grandmamma's dead, and has left us all a fortune! But it's a red seal."

And, breaking the red seal, she skimmed hastily over it.

"Good Heavens! how singular! Mary! Mary!"

Miss Carr looked at her in wonder. Her countenance, which had been pale all day with anxiety and the previous night's watching, was now glowing with colour and excitement.

"He is coming to Belport. How passing strange! Mary, can it be some unknown sympathy that attracts him hither at this hour?"

"Your brother!"

"He! Do you think his coming here could put me out like this? What a stupid you are, Mary Carr! Do listen:--

"My Dear Rose,

"'Our dear and venerable grandmother, whom may all good angels preserve--though her long life does keep us an unreasonable time out of our own--entrusted me with a mission concerning you upon my coming to London two days ago. She had made, or purchased, or in some way prepared for you, a splendid article, but whether it is intended to represent a purse or a bag, I am unable to say, being, in my uninitiated opinion, too large for the one, and too small for the other. A magnificent affair it is, redolent of silver beads and gleaming silks, and it was lined with her usual Christmas present to you. Being in a generous mood myself, I slipped in another lining, knowing your partiality for feathers and laces, and any other sort of trumpery that costs money. This cadeau, duly prepared for transportation, and directed for you to the care of Madame de Nino, I brought to town, and was to have handed over to a quondam schoolfellow of yours, Miss Singleton, who was returning to Belport. Now you have frequently honoured me by saying I have a head that can retain nothing, and in this instance certainly the bag and the commission slipped clean out of it. In packing my carpet-bag this morning, preparatory to starting for Ireland, for which delectable spot of the globe I am bound, what should I come upon but this unlucky parcel. What was to be done? I called a hansom, and galloped to Miss Singleton's address, invoking blessings on my forgetfulness all the way. No result. Miss Singleton and the archdeacon had started for Belport. I was walking down Brook Street, on my return, wondering what I should do with the money, and who, amongst my fair friends in Ireland, would come in for the bag, when I nearly ran over Fred St. John, or he over me, coming out of Mivart's.'

"'Why, where have you been buried?' said I.

"'At Castle Wafer, for nearly the last month. And I am off tomorrow for Paris. Any commands?'

"'I should just think I had, if your route lies through Belport.' And forthwith I delivered to him the unlucky parcel and its history.

"So the long and short of it is, Rose, that you may expect to receive your bag safe and sound. Not so sure, though, as to the day, for St. John is proverbially uncertain in his movements.

"I hope your friend Mademoiselle de Castella's health is improving. I would beg my remembrance to her, but have no doubt I have long since gone out of hers. She has my best wishes for her recovery.

"Your affectionate brother, dear Rose,

"F. Darling."

"What news for Adeline! Get out of the way, Mary Carr."

"Rose," said Miss Carr, in a tone of remonstrance, "it will not do to tell her."

"Not tell her!" exclaimed Rose.

"She is resigned and quiet now. Let her die in peace. News of him will only excite and disturb her."

"Don't talk to me! Let me go!" for Mary had laid hold of her dress to detain her.

"Rose, you are doing very wrong. She is almost in the last agony. Earthly hopes and interests have flitted away."

"You don't understand these things," rejoined Rose, with a curl upon her lip--"how should you? Has she not for months been yearning to see him--has not the pain of his cold neglect, his silence, his absence, hastened her to the grave--and, now that he is coming, you would keep it from her? Why, I tell you, Mary Carr, it will soothe her heart in dying."

She broke away impetuously, and went into the bed-chamber. Adeline unclosed her eyes at her approach. What Rose said, as she leaned over her and whispered, Mary Carr could not hear; but even in that last hour, it brought the red hectic to her faded cheek. How wildly and eagerly she looked up!

"But it is too late," she sighed, in a troubled whisper--"it is too late; I shall be gone. If he had but come a day earlier!"

She closed her eyes again, and remained silent. The next words she uttered, some time afterwards, were to Miss Carr.

"Mary--you--that which Louise was saying today----"

"Yes. I understand."

"If mamma wishes it--do not prevent it. I--I--should like him to see me--the wreck I am. And then he could come--you would bring him."

Rose assented eagerly, before Mary Carr could speak.

"And otherwise--if he had not been here--I have been reflecting--that it would answer no end to oppose my mother--what can it matter to me, then? If I--had a child--and she died--it is possible I might wish the same. Don't interfere. But--you will bring him?"

"Dearest Adeline, YES," cried Rose, "if he is to be found. I promise it to you solemnly."

"And now--dear friends of my girlhood, Rose! Mary!" she breathed, holding out her hands, "I have but to say farewell. All things are growing dim around me. You know not how grateful I have been for your care of me. You will think of me sometimes in after-life."

The pause that ensued was only broken by Rose's sobs. Mary Carr's aching grief was silent.

"Remember--you especially, Rose--that life--will not last for ever--but--there is one beyond it; that will. Endeavour to inherit it. Will you not kiss me for the last time?"

They leaned over her, one by one, their aching hearts beating against the counterpane, the tears raining from their eyes.

"You--will--come--to me--in heaven?"

Barely had the words left her lips--and they were the last that either of them heard her utter--when Louise, with a solemn face, full of mighty importance, threw the corridor door wide open, and whispered something which only the nurse caught. She jumped up, thrust her chair behind her, and dropped down upon her knees where she stood.

"What in the world has taken her?" ejaculated Rose.

"Don't you understand?" was Mary's hurried answer, drawing Rose after her, and escaping to the drawing-room.

They saw it through the open door. The line of priests, in their white robes, coming up the stairs; the silver crucifix borne before them; the "Bon Dieu" sacredly covered from observation. Louise sank on her knees in the passage, as the nurse had done in the room, and they swept past her with solemn step, towards Adeline's chamber, looking neither to the right nor left. They had come to bestow absolution, according to the rights of the Roman Catholic faith--to administer to her the Sacrament of the dying.

[CHAPTER XXX.]

THE RECEPTION OF THE DEAD

It was a sad day to describe--that next one. Adeline had died a little before midnight, fully conscious to the last, and quite peaceful; all her relatives, and they only, surrounding her bed.

Not only a sad day to describe, but a strange one; and I hardly know how to do it. You may look upon its chief incident as a disagreeable fiction; but it was sober fact, truthful reality. Perhaps you have never met with the like in your experience? I will transcribe it for you as exactly and faithfully as I can. The anecdotes of the same nature mentioned in the last chapter, were all facts too.

Louise was right: the corpse of Adeline de Castella was to hold a reception.

It was rumoured in the house that Signor de Castella was averse to the exhibition, but yielded the concession to his broken-hearted wife. Old Madame de Beaufoy made no secret of being against it; every English idea within her revolted from it. But Madame de Castella carried her point. There was perhaps a negative soothing to her wild grief in the reflection that before her beautiful and idolized child should be hidden away for all time, the world would once more look upon her, arrayed in all the pomp and splendour of life.

Early in the morning--the printers had been set to work betimes--the black-bordered death-circulars went forth to Belport.

"Monsieur et Madame de Castella; Madame de Beaufoy; Mademoiselle de Beaufoy:

"Ont l'honneur de vous faire part de la perte douloureuse qu'ils viennent de faire en la personne de Mademoiselle Adeline Luisa de Castella, leur fille, petite fille, et nièce; décédée à Belport le 8 Janvier, à l'age de 19 ans.

"Priez pour elle."

The invitations to the reception--or it may be more correct to say the intimations that it was to be held, for no invitations went out--were conveyed privately to the houses of friends by one or other of the Castella servants; by word of mouth, not officially. And I can tell you that it caused a commotion in the town, not forgotten yet.

It was about midday when Silva came to a little boudoir on the ground-floor, tenanted by Rose and Mary only, for the family kept their chambers. He said one of Madame de Nino's maid-servants was asking to see Miss Darling.

"She can come in, Silva," said Rose, getting up from her low chair by the fire, and passing her hand across her heavy eyes.

The woman came in--Julie. She handed a packet to Rose, which the latter divined at once must be the one her brother had written about. "It was left at the school for you this morning, mademoiselle."

"Who left it?" asked Rose.

"A tall handsome Englishman, for I happened to answer the gate myself," responded Julie. "He inquired for you, mademoiselle, and when I said you were not with us now, but visiting in the town, he handed in his card. You'll see it if you turn the parcel, Mademoiselle Rose: I slipped it inside the string for safety, coming along."

Rose scarcely needed to look at the card. She knew it was Frederick St. John's.

"Did he say where he was staying?--at what hotel?"

"He said nothing else, mademoiselle, but just left the parcel and card, with his compliments. Madame charged me to ask you, mesdemoiselles, at what hour it would be best for her to come to see the poor young lady?" continued Julie, dropping her voice.

"It begins at two, Julie. Any time between that hour and five."

"I wish I might come and see her too!" cried Julie. "I think us servants who served her so long at Madame de Nino's, might be allowed it."

"I dare say you might," said Rose. "Of course, you might. Tell Madame I say so."

"Julie," interposed Mary Carr, "I shall see her, of course; it would be looked upon as a slight in the house if I did not; but I can tell you I would rather walk ten miles away from it."

"But think of the beautiful sight it will be, Mademoiselle Carr!" remonstrated Julie. "We hear she is to wear her real wedding-dress--to be adorned with flowers and jewels. Ah, poor, poor thing!" broke off the girl, giving way to her ready tears. "But a few months ago, well and happy, and going to be married; and now, dead."

"Mary," said Rose, when they were alone, "I shall go out and find him, now I know he is in the town. Will you come?"

Mary Carr hesitated. "Would it be a proper thing, Rose, for us to go about to hotels, inquiring after gentlemen? I don't much like it."

"We have to do many things in this life that we 'don't like,'" was Rose's sarcastic answer. "Do you fear the hotels would eat you?"

"It is not the thing."

"Not for you, I dare say, so you can stay away: I'm sorry I asked. I promised that poor girl I would bring him to see her, were there any possibility of doing it; and I will."

"Then I shall go with you."

"Oh," retorted Rose.

The preparations for the great event were all but completed. The preparations! I feel nearly as ill, now that I am writing it, as I felt then; and some years have gone by. The large salon, next to the room in which she died, was laid out for the visitors, part of the furniture removed, and a barrier placed down the middle--a space being left clear at either end. It was a very long, large room, and so far suitable. She--Adeline--was placed against the wall at the far end, upright, standing, facing the company who were to come in, as if waiting to receive them and give them welcome. I cannot tell you how they fixed and supported her: I never asked then; I would as little ask now; I knew none of the details; the broad facts were enough.

As Mary Carr went creeping upstairs to put on her bonnet, she heard voices in the death-chamber, and looked in. They were dressing Adeline. The French nurse was standing before the upright corpse, supporting it on her shoulder, her own face turned aside from it; and the hairdresser stood behind, dressing the hair. Louise seemed to be helping to hold the dead weight; Susanne handed hair-pins to the man. If ever there was a revolting task on earth, that seemed one; and Mary Carr turned sick as she hastily closed the door again, and leaned against the wall to recover, if that might be, from her faintness.

"What hotel do you mean to try?" she inquired, when she went out with Rose into the broad daylight, a welcome relief from the darkened house and what was being transacted in it.

"I shall try them all in succession, until I find him," returned Rose. "I think he must use the Hôtel des Bains. I know Frank does."

Rose bent her steps towards that renowned hostelry, and turned boldly into the yard. A man came forward with a cloth on his arm, waiter fashion.

"Monsieur de Saint John," she began, "est-il descendu ici?"

The man stammered something in wretched French, "comprenais pas," and Rose found he was a very native Englishman.

Mr. St. John was staying there, but was going on to Paris in the evening. He was out just then.

"Out!" cried Rose, not expecting this check to her impatience. "Where's he gone?"

Of course the waiter could not say where. Rose intimated that her business was of importance; that she must see him. The group stood looking at each other in indecision.

"If you would like to go to his room and wait, ladies, I have the key," suggested the man. "It is only on the first floor."

"What is to be done, Mary Carr?" cried Rose, tapping her foot in pettish annoyance.

"Don't ask me. It is your expedition, not mine."

What Rose would have done, is uncertain. She was looking at the man in hesitation, perhaps thinking of the room and the key, when who should turn into the yard with a light quick step but Mr. St. John himself.

Not changed--not a whit changed. The same high bearing, the same distinguished form and face, the same frank manners, possessing for all so irresistible a fascination.

Rose, in a somewhat confused, anything but an explanatory, greeting--for she would not tell him the truth of what she wanted, lest he should decline it--said she had come to request him to accompany her for a short time. He answered that he was at her service, and in another moment the three were walking down the street together.

"Of all the sticklers for etiquette, I think Mary Carr's the worst," began Rose. "I wonder she does not apply for a post as maid-of-honour at court. The man asked us to go and wait in your rooms, and I should have gone had you not come in. She looked fit to faint at the bare idea."

Mr. St. John laughed; his old low musical laugh.

"Where would have been the harm?" went on Rose. "We are cousins, you know."

"Of course we are," said Mr. St. John. "I thought you both expected to have been in England before this?"

"We shall be there shortly now. At least, I shall. Mary, I believe, is going first to Holland. And you? You are going to Paris, we hear."

"Yes, but not to stay. My old roving love of travel has come upon me, and I think I shall gratify it. A friend of mine leaves Paris next week for a prolonged exploration of the Holy Land, and I feel inclined to accompany him."

"It does not look as though he were on the point of marrying Sarah Beauclerc," thought Rose to herself. For a wonder, she did not put the question.

But not a word of inquiry from him after Adeline! And yet, only a few months before, they had been on the nearest and dearest terms, but a few hours removed from the closest tie that can exist in this world--that of man and wife. Oh, the changes that take place in this transitory world of ours. She was dead, sleeping well after life's fitful fever; and he was walking there in all the pomp and pride of existence, haughtily indifferent, never unbending so far as to ask whether she was married to another, whether she was living or dead.

And so they reached the residence of Signor de Castella, and entered the courtyard, St. John unconscious where he was going. He had never gone to the house but once, and then it was at night, and in Sir Sandy Maxwell's carriage. The hall-door was placed wide open. Silva stood on one side of it, bareheaded, another servant opposite to him, and as the various visitors passed between them, they bowed to each group in silence. It was the manner of receiving them. Mr. St. John, talking with Rose, advanced close to the door; but when he caught sight of Silva, he drew back. The old man looked at him with a pleasant look: St. John had always been a favourite with the Castella servants. Mary Carr left them then, and ran upstairs.

"Why have you brought me here?" he demanded of Rose. "This is Signor de Castella's!"

"I have not brought you without a motive, Mr. St. John. Pray come in with me."

"You must excuse me," he said, very coldly.

"I cannot," answered Rose. "Do you think I should go dancing after you to the hotels, shocking Mary Carr and the waiters out of their notions of propriety, without an urgent motive? Pray come along: we are obstructing the entrance."

Mr. St. John indeed saw that a group of several ladies were gathered close behind him, waiting to go in. He stepped inside the hall--he had no other alternative--and so allowed them to pass. They moved noiselessly towards the broad staircase; but he drew aside with Rose.

"Rose, this is beyond a joke," he said. "Why did you bring me here? I will wish you good morning."

"Indeed," she murmured, clasping her agitated hands on his arm, in her fear lest, after all, he should escape her, "this is no joke. Do you suppose Mary Carr would lend herself to one? and she came with me. Pray come upstairs with me, Mr. St. John."

"You forget," he began, in answer more to her evident excitement than to her words, "that--putting aside any objection I may experience--my presence here may not be acceptable to the family."

"You will not see the family. They are not visible today."

"Who are all these people going up the stairs?" he said, looking on in amazement, as more groups were silently bowed in by Silva. "It seems like a reception."

"It is one," said Rose: "nevertheless the family do not hold it. There comes Madame de Nino! She is directing those strict eyes of hers towards us, and I shall catch a sharp lecture for standing whispering with you. Do come, Mr. St. John."

"I cannot understand this, Rose. These visitors, flocking to the house, while, you say, the family are not visible! Why do they come, then? Why do you wish me to go up?"

"There's--there's--a show upstairs today," stammered Rose "That is why they come. And I want you to see it."

"A flower-show?" said Mr. St. John, somewhat mockingly.

"A faded one," murmured Rose, as she took his hand, and drew him towards the staircase.

His manner was hesitating, his step reluctant; and but for the young lady's pertinacity, which he could not resist without downright rudeness, he had certainly retreated. Involuntarily, he could not tell why or wherefore, the remembrance of a past scene came rushing to his mind; when he, Frederick St. John, had in like manner forced a resisting spirit up the stairs and into the room of a college-boy who was dying.

At the head of the stairs they met Mary Carr, who held out a small sealed packet.

"A commission was intrusted to me yesterday, Mr. St. John," she said, "that I would deliver this into your own hands. I have also a message----"

"Which you can give him presently," interrupted Rose.

He glanced at the packet; he glanced at the seal, "A.L. de C.;" he looked at the other side, at the strange, sprawling address.

"Not a very elegant superscription," he observed, carelessly, as he slipped the parcel into the breast-pocket of his coat. "I don't recognize the handwriting."

"Yet you were once familiar with it, Mr. St. John."

"Oh, never!" answered he. "Not, certainly, to my recollection."

They were now at the door of the drawing-room. Rose, feeling a sick terror at the thought of what she was going to behold, laid her hand momentarily on Mr. St. John, as if doubting her own capability to support herself.

"Are you ill?" he inquired, looking at her pale face.

"A slight faintness," she murmured. "It will go off."

It was in front of them, at the other end of the room as they entered. It! But they could not see it distinctly for a moment together, so many persons were pushing on before them. Mr. St. John, who was taller than most persons present, obtained a more distinct view than Rose.

"Who is that--standing yonder--receiving the company?" he asked hastily. "It looks like no; it cannot be. Is it Adeline?"

"Yes, it is Adeline de Castella," replied Rose, under her breath, her teeth chattering. "She is holding her reception."

Adeline de Castella. Did the name strike oddly upon Mr. St. John? But if it did, how then came he not to ask why it was not Adeline de la Chasse?

"You have deceived me, Miss Darling," he said in severe tones; "you assured me the family were not here. What means all this?"

"They are not here," whispered Rose, whose face and lips were now as white as those of the dead.

"Not here! There stands Adeline."

"Yes, true; Adeline," she murmured. "But she will not speak to you. You--you will pass and look at her: as we look at a picture. You can't go back now, if you would: see the throng. Trust me for once," she added, as she seized his arm: "Adeline will not speak to you--she will not, as I live and breathe."

Partly from the extreme difficulty of retreating, for they were in the line of advance, not in that formed for returning according to the arrangements of the room, partly in compliance with Rose Darling's agitated earnestness, and partly yielding to his own curiosity, which was becoming intensely excited, Mr. St. John continued his way, ever and anon catching a glimpse of the rigid form opposite, before which all were filing.

"It cannot be Adeline!" he exclaimed, involuntarily. "And yet it is like her! Who is it? What is it? How strange she looks!"

"She has been ill, you see," shivered Rose, "and is much attenuated. But it is Adeline."

They were nearly up with her. Rose, in her faintness, not having yet dared to look at the sight, clung to the arm of Mr. St. John. He was gazing on her--Adeline; and his face, never very rosy, had turned of a yet paler hue than common.

Oh, the rich and flowing robes in which they had decked her! white satin, covered with costly lace; white ribbons, white flowers, everything about her white; the festive attire of a bride adorning the upright dead, and that dead worn and wasted! A narrow band of white satin was passed tightly under the chin, to keep the jaw from falling, but it was partly hidden by the hair and the wreath of flowers, and the veil that floated behind her. Never, in health, had those beautiful ringlets been seen on Adeline as they were set forth now, to shade those hollow cheeks: but all the richness of her dress and the flowing hair, all the flowers and the costly lace, could not conceal the ghastliness of the features, or soften the fixed stare of the glazed eyes. Yet, in the contour of the face, there was something still inexpressibly beautiful. To a stranger entering the room, unsuspecting the truth, as Mr. St. John, she looked like one fearfully ill, fearfully strange: and how was Mr. St. John, who had never heard of the custom, to divine the truth? Did the idea occur to him that Adeline was standing in the very spot where he had first met her, a year before, when the French marigold in his button-hole was accidentally caught by her? Did the strange gloomy silence strike ominously upon him; putting him in mind of a funeral or a lying-in-state, rather than a gay reception?

He went close up, and halted in front of her: Rose by him, shaking from head to foot. Forgetting, probably, what Rose had said, that she would not speak to him, or else obeying the impulse of the moment, he mechanically held out his hand to Adeline: but there was no answering impulse on her part.

He stood rooted to the spot, his eyes running rapidly over her. They glanced down on the flounces of the rich lace dress, they wandered up to her face--it was the first close, full view he had obtained of it. He saw the set, rigid features, the unmistakable stare of the glassy eye; and, with a rushing sensation of sickening awe and terror, the terrible truth burst upon his brain.

That it was not Adeline de Castella, but her CORPSE which stood there.

He was a strong-minded man--a man little given to betray his feelings, or to suffer them to escape beyond his own control: yet he staggered now against the wall by her side, in what seemed a fainting-fit. Rose, alarmed for the consequences of what she had done, burst into tears, knelt down, and began to rub his hands.

"Open the windows--give some air here," called out little Monsieur Durante, who had come all the way from Ostrohove to see the sight. "Here's a gentleman in an attack."

"Nothing of the sort," returned an Englishman, who made one of the company; "he has nearly fainted, that's all. There's no cause for alarm, young lady. I suppose he came in, not knowing what he was going to see, and the shock overpowered him. It is an odd fashion, this. See: he revives already."

Consciousness came to Mr. St. John. He rose slowly, shook himself out of a shuddering-fit, and with a last wild yearning glance at the dead, fell into the line of the retreaters. But it was Miss Carr who now detained him: Adeline's message had yet to be given.

"The address on the packet was in her handwriting, Mr. St. John," she whispered; "she wrote it yesterday, only a few hours before she died She charged me to say that everything is there, except the ring, which has never been off her finger since you placed it there, and will be buried with her; and to tell you that she had been ever faithful to you; as in life, so unto death."

Mr. St. John listened, and nodded in reply, with the abstracted air of one who answers what he does not hear, touching unconsciously the breast-pocket of his coat, where lay the packet.

"There was something else," continued she, "but I dare not venture to breathe that here. Later, perhaps?"

Again he nodded with the same look of abstraction, never speaking; and began to follow in the wake of the crowd, who had taken their fill of gazing, and were making their way from the room.

"He is a fine young man, though," exclaimed M. Durante, looking after St. John with eyes of admiration. "But he is very pale: he has scarcely recovered himself."

"To think that he should have dropped at seeing a corpse, just as one might drop a stone, a fine strong man like him!" responded a neighbouring chemist, who had stepped in to have a look at the reception. "Qu'ils sont drôles, ces Anglais-là!"

[CHAPTER XXXI.]

UNAVAILING REPENTANCE

Rose Darling struggled out of the room with Mr. St. John: not caring to remain in it, possibly, without his sheltering presence. They went downstairs with the crowd--all silent and well-behaved, but still a crowd--and then Rose drew him into the small snug room that had been her abiding place and Mary's for the day.

Mr. St. John sat down, and leaned his head upon his hand. In a shock like this, he could not make believe not to feel it, or to gloss it over; indeed he was an independent man at all times, utterly refusing to give in to the false artificialities of society. Rose slipped away, and brought him a glass of wine; but he shook his head, declining to take it. Mary Carr had not come with them; it turned out afterwards that she thought he had left the house.

"When did she die?" was the first question he presently asked.

"Last night; a few minutes before twelve."

"Just as I was stepping on board the steamer at Folkestone," he murmured to himself. "Why is she--there, Rose?--dressed--in that form? Are they mad?"

"It is a custom they have in France, as it seems; but I had never before heard of it," answered Rose. "Hark at the people passing up still!"

A shiver of remembrance took him, but it was conquered immediately. Rose untied the black string of her straw bonnet, and put it on the table.

"I suppose we are both in mourning for the same person," she remarked, in allusion to the narrow band of crape on his hat: "little George St. John."

"Yes," he shortly answered. "What did she die of?"

"Of consumption: at least, that is what the doctors would tell you. I won't say anything about a broken heart." Mr. St. John made no reply. Rose resumed: "From the moment that blood-vessel burst, there has been, I suppose, no real hope, no possibility of cure. But she rallied so greatly, and seemed so well, that I, for one, believed in it." He looked at Rose; the words seemed to arouse his curiosity. "When did she burst a blood-vessel?"

"It was at Beaufoy. It was--why, yes, it was the very day you were last there, Mr. St. John, almost in your sight. You remember the morning you quitted the house, and never came back again?--did you notice Adeline running down the steps of the colonnade after you, imploring you to stop?--did you notice that she sank down on the grass, as if from fatigue?"

"I think I did," he answered, in allusion to the last question. "I know she followed me down the steps."

"It was then the blood-vessel broke; through emotion, no doubt. Had you but looked back once again, you might have seen what was amiss. I never shall forget the sight. Just at first I had thought her foot slipped and threw her down, next I thought she was kneeling for a joke: but when I reached her, I saw what it was. One minute longer, and you would have seen the whole house gathered round her on the lawn. She was got indoors, and the doctors were sent for. What a house it was! She thought she was dying; and I believe the chiefest wish of her heart then was to see you."

"Why did you not send for me?"

"We did send. I wrote to you, and Louise took the note at once to the Lodge. But you had already gone--turning Madame Baret's brains upside down with the shock."

"You might have sent it after me to England."

"Of course I might--if I had only known you were gone to England. How was I to know it? I might be wishing to get a note to some one in the moon, but not see my way clear to writing the address. It was weeks, and weeks, and weeks, Mr. St. John, before we ever heard a syllable of you, whether you were in England or in any other part of the known world, or whether you were at the bottom of the sea."

"And she never married de la Chasse?"

The words seemed spoken as a remark, not as a question. Rose, who seemed to have a touch of one of her ironical moods coming on, answered it:

"Would you have had her marry him when death had set in? After the doctors had met that day, it was known throughout the house that nothing could save her. At least, they said so. The old malady of the spring had but been lying dormant; it was in her still; and the terrible trouble she went through had brought it forth again. Under the very happiest circumstances, had she married you, even--and I suppose that might have been her idea of happiness," added Rose, satirically--"she could not have lived long. De la Chasse saw her for a few minutes on the day they were to have been married, and expressed himself very much concerned, and all that, as a matter of course; I don't suppose he broke his heart over it."

"And she has been ill ever since?"

"Ever since. The disease has fluctuated, as you may imagine; some weeks she would be at death's door, some weeks comparatively well; but it has all the while been progressing on gradually to the ending. Frederick St. John"--and Rose stepped up to him in her excitement--"I don't believe you were ever absent for one minute from her mind; by day and by night it was filled with that miserable love for you; and the yearning wish, destined not to be gratified, was ever upon her--that you would come and see her before she died."

"Why did you not let me know it?--why could you not have written to me?" he asked, in a sharp tone of pain.

"For one thing, I tell you, I did not know where to write. For another, Adeline would not have let me. She had an idea that you did not care to come to her--that you perhaps would not, if summoned. And I"--Rose paused a moment, and angrily compressed her repentant lips--"I could wish my tongue had been bitten out for a share I took in the past. There's not the least doubt that one ingredient in Adeline's cup of bitterness was worse than all the rest--the thought of Sarah Beauclerc."

He uttered an exclamation.

"And of your love for her. And I say I wish Sarah Beauclerc had been smothered, and I with her, if you like, before I had ever breathed her name to Adeline. But for that, but for deeming that she was your true love, and would some time be your wife, Adeline would have sent to the far ends of the earth after you for a parting interview."

He sat, leaning his head upon his fingers, looking into the fire.

"What a miserable business it seems altogether! Nothing but cross-purposes, the one with the other. Sarah Beauclerc!"

"Are you still engaged--perhaps at a moment like this I may be pardoned for asking it--to Sarah Beauclerc?"

"I never was engaged to Sarah Beauclerc. I had once a sort of passing fancy for her; I don't know that it was more. I have had no thought of her, or of any one else, since I parted from Adeline."

"In a letter I had from London, not very long ago," resumed Rose, slowly, "your name was coupled with Miss Sarah Beauclerc's. It said you were her shadow."

"Who said it?"

"Never mind. It was a lady."

"Your correspondent laboured under a mistake, Rose; you may tell her so, for her satisfaction. Sarah Beauclerc will very soon be a wife, but not mine."

"Who is she going to marry?"

"Lord Raynor."

Rose exhausted her surprise in ejaculations. She had thought Sarah Beauclerc would be Frederick St. John's chosen wife; had felt utterly certain of it in her own mind. He sat in silence, never heeding her. Remembrances of the past were crowding upon him. That he had been very near loving Sarah Beauclerc, was indisputable: and but for the meeting with Adeline, this might have come to fruition: there was no knowing now. At Lady Revel's--the evening spoken of to Rose by Miss Mary Anne Darling--he had learnt that she, Sarah, was going to be married to the Viscount Raynor, a man who, as Captain Budd, had been attached to her for years. She herself told him of this. In her calm, cold, cutting manner, she spoke of his contemplated marriage to Mademoiselle de Castella: was any covert reproof intended in this? any secret intimation that that justified her own engagement? However that might be, all chance of their being one in this world, had any such chance ever existed, was at an end; and Frederick St. John had no regret left in regard to it. All his regrets were for another.

"If Adeline had but known it!" murmured Rose, genuine tears of vexation filling her eyes. "Did you not know she was dying, Mr. St. John?"

"No. I knew nothing about her."

"Have you been in England ever since you quitted us that day?"

"I went straight to London from Beaufoy, saw my brother Isaac, explained matters to him, and then accompanied him to Castle Wafer. Subsequently I went to Scotland, deer-stalking; running over once to London from thence, to see my mother. Before Christmas, I was again for a week in London, and then I escorted my mother to Castle Wafer. Now you know what my movements have been, Rose. I heard nothing of Adeline."

"Perhaps you kept yourself out of the way of hearing of her?"

"I did."

"That was your temper!"

"Just so. Our faults generally bring their own punishment."

"We heard you were in an awful passion at Madame Baret's," remarked Rose, who plunged into things irrelevant without mercy.

"I thought I had cause to be. I thought so then. I do not know the reason now why she rejected me."

"Mary Carr will tell you that. Ill-fated Adeline! She would have given her poor life to have been allowed to whisper it to you then, to justify herself in your eyes. The fact is," added Rose, after a pause, "the Church interfered to prevent the marriage, and Adeline was sworn to silence on the crucifix. I did not know it until today. She thought of you until the last, Mr. St. John, and in her dying moments got permission from her father for the truth to be disclosed to you. Mary was charged with it."

Mr. St. John's eyes blazed up with an angry light. "Then I know that was the work of Father Marc!"

"I dare say it was. He was very fond of Adeline, and no doubt thought her marriage with a heretic would be perdition here and hereafter. I don't see that you can blame him: you would have done the same in his place, had you been true to your creed. Father Marc's one of the best gossipers living. We saw a great deal of him in Adeline's sick-room, after you left. I fell in love with the charming old père."

Would she ever be serious! The question might have crossed Mr. St. John at a less bitter moment.

"And I think his gossip did Adeline good," continued Rose. "It was a sort of break to her misery. How could you have doubted her--have doubted for a single moment, whatever your passionate rage might have been, that her whole love was yours?"

How indeed? But perhaps in his inmost heart he never had doubted it. He sat there now, bearing the bitter weight of remembrance as he best might, his eyes looking back into the past, his delicate lips drawn in to pain.

"They have no portrait of her," went on Rose, not in her mercilessness, but in her giddy, gossiping lightness. "And the one you took of her, you defaced."

"Don't, Rose!"

The words came from him with a wail. His remorse wanted no feeding; it was already as great as he well knew how to bear. Rose was not quite without feeling, and the words and their tone checked her. She sat thinking how unkind she had been, and began flirting the strings of her bonnet about, as it lay near her on the table.

But it was not in her nature to remain silent long. Something, perhaps the black ribbon, took her thoughts to another subject: and in truth she did not like to say more of Adeline.

"Does it not seem like a fatality? All three of them to have died, one after the other!"

Mr. St. John came slowly out of his pain, and looked at her for an explanation. "Three of whom?"

"Oh, I was thinking of Alnwick. Mr. Carleton St. John first and then his two boys. I suppose you have inherited?"

"My brother has. Yes, it is a very sad thing. Quite a fatality, as you say."

"What fortune has Charlotte now? Much?"

"I really do not know. I fear not much."

"She reckoned so surely--I know she did--upon being Lady St. John!"

"That seems to be a chief portion of life's business, I think," he remarked: "the reckoning upon things that never come to pass."

"I suppose you have not seen her since?"

"Mrs. Carleton St. John? Yes, I have. I heard she was staying with Mrs. Darling in town, the week I spent there before Christmas, and I called."

"How was she looking? How did she seem?" asked Rose, rather eagerly.

"She seemed quite well, and she looked well. Very thin: but in good health and spirits."

"There was no--excitement in her manner, was there?"

"On the contrary. She struck me as being one of the calmest, quietest-mannered women I ever saw."

"Did you think her pretty?"

"No. I thought her handsome."

"What did mamma say to you about me?--and Margaret and Mary Anne? No good, I know. They are always abusing me."

"I did not see them. Mrs. Carleton St. John said they had all gone out to call on some old friend."

"You had no loss. Mamma you know; I don't say anything against her, though it was a shame of her to keep me at school so long; but Mary Anne and Margaret are the primmest old creatures you can picture. Why, they are going on for thirty! I sent them over a cap apiece the other day, in return for a little interference of theirs. Lottie Singleton took the parcel. Didn't it make them wild!"

A faint smile parted his lips.

"Where is Charlotte going to live?" resumed Rose. "Have you heard?"

"I have heard nothing. I believe my brother wrote to beg of her to go back to Alnwick, and remain there as long as she chose. But she declined."

"I know one thing--that I hope she'll not live with us," cried Rose, tossing back her golden curls. "Charlotte always was so domineering, and now--especially---- You are sure you observed no undue excitement of manner?" she broke off, after a pause.

"Why do you ask it? To me she appeared to be almost unnaturally calm."

"I think I'll tell you why," said thoughtless Rose. And forthwith she disclosed to Mr. St. John all she had heard from Nurse Brayford. It was lamentably imprudent of her, without doubt; but she meant no harm. And the notion she herself had gathered from the story was, that the trouble had temporarily touched Charlotte's brain, just as a passing fever will touch it. That was all the real thought of her heart; but her expressions were exaggerated as usual, meaning less than they implied. It had the effect of fully arousing Frederick St. John from his own care: and Rose was surprised to see him make so much of it.

"That Charlotte--that your sister at the time of the child's death was mad!" he repeated. "Surely not, Rose!"

"It was nothing less. How else could she fancy she saw all sorts of visions of the child? Not her child; I don't mean him: the little heir, Benja. He was always walking before her with the lighted toy, the church; the one that caused his death, you know. She had awful fits of this terror, frightening Georgy nearly to death."

Mr. St. John made no reply. His eyes were fixed on Rose, and he was revolving what she said.

"It was Mrs. Brayford told me this; the nurse who was with Adeline in the spring. You heard that she had gone from Belport with Mrs. Carleton St. John to watch George. But I don't think the woman told me quite all," added Rose, casting her thoughts back: "she seemed to reserve something. At least, so it struck me."

"It must have been a sort of brain fever," remarked Mr. St. John.

"It must have been downright madness," returned Rose. "They hold a curious custom, it seems, in one of the towns of France: on St. Martin's Eve every one turns out at night with horns and lighted paper lanterns, which they parade about the streets for a couple of hours. It happened that Charlotte was there this very night: she had gone to the town to take the steamer for London. The lanterns were of various forms and devices, many of them being churches; and Charlotte was in her room when the show began, and saw it all. She had a sort of fit from terror," continued Rose in a whisper. "She was quite mad when she came to, fancying it was a thousand Benjas coming after her to torment her. Prance had always locked Brayford out of the room before, when these attacks came on; but she couldn't do it that night, for Charlotte had to be held; she was raving."

"It is very strange," said Mr. St. John.

"That is why I asked you whether you saw anything unusual in her manner,--any excitement. Of course I can't write and ask; I can't hint at it. They say Charlotte is well, but if she were not I know they would never tell me, and I like to be at the top and bottom of everything. I'm mamma's true daughter for that."

"Rose, I wish you had not told me this."

"Why?" exclaimed Rose, opening her eyes very wide.

He seemed to have spoken involuntarily. The retort and its surprised tone woke him from his dream, and all his senses were in full play again.

"It is not pleasant to hear of women suffering. I can't bear it. Your sister must have gone through a great deal."

"Oh, poor thing, yes she must. I'll not call her hard names again. And I do hope and trust the brain trouble has really left her." /

"She seemed quite well. I saw no trace whatever of the mind's being affected. It must have been a sort of temporary fever. Rose, were I you, I think I would never talk of this."

"I don't. I only said it to you. I assure you I wouldn't say a word of it to mamma to be made Empress tomorrow. She'd box my ears for me, as she used to do when I was a little girl."

Mr. St. John rose to leave. "There's nothing more you have to say, Rose?"

She knew as well as he that he alluded to Adeline. "There was nothing more, just then," she answered. "Mary Carr would, no doubt, see him later."

He shook hands with Rose and was leaving the room, when Miss Carr came in. She uttered an exclamation of surprise.

"I thought you had gone," she said. "Will you come with me and see old Madame de Beaufoy? I was in her room just now, and told her you had been here; she thought I ought to have taken you up to her; and she cried when she said how great a favourite you had been in those happy days, now gone by for ever."

With some hesitation--for he did not care to see the family again, especially on that day--Mr. St. John suffered himself to be conducted to her room. The show people were still silently jostling each other on the staircase, passing up and down it.

Madame de Beaufoy was in her chamber: it is the custom you know to receive visitors in the bed-chambers in France: a handsomely furnished room, the counterpane a blue satin, richly quilted, and the large square pillows, lying on it, of the finest cambric edged with choice Mechlin lace. As she held Mr. St. John's hand in greeting and drew him to the fire, the tears coursed freely down the fine old face.

"Ah, my friend, my friend!" she said, speaking in English, "if they had but suffered her to marry you, she might not be lying low this day. A hundred times I have said to Maria, that she should not have been severed from Frederick St. John. But Maria, poor thing, had no hand in it; she is not a dévote; it was the Church that did it. And we must suppose all's for the best, though it sacrificed her."

No tears shone in his eyes, his grief was too deep for that. It could be read in every line of his face, of his rigid features.

"I wish to Heaven things had been allowed to take a different course," he answered in low tones. "But they tell me that no care, no amount of happiness could have saved her."

"Tush!" returned the old lady. "The greatest mistake they made was in not taking her to a warmer climate while they had the opportunity. Had that been done, and had you been allowed to marry her, she might have enjoyed years of life. I don't say she could have lived to be old: they insist upon it that she could not: but she would have had some enjoyment of this world, poor child, and not have been cut off from it, as she is now."

The thought crossed him--and it came in spite of his regrets, and he could not help it--that all things might still be for the best. Had she lived to bear him children--and to entail upon them her fragility of constitution----

"You did love her, Mr. St. John."

"With my whole heart and soul."

"Ay, ay; and she was bound up in you, I don't see why you should have been parted--and we all liked you. For my part," continued the tolerant old lady--"but you know it doesn't do to avow such sentiments to the world--I think one religion is as good as another, provided people do their duty in it. She had as sure a chance of going to heaven as your wife, as she had if she had married that de la Chasse, whom I never liked."

"Indeed I trust so."

"I became a Roman Catholic to please my husband and his family, but I was just as near to heaven when I was a Protestant. And I say that Adeline need not have been sacrificed. You have been in to see her, I hear."

"Yes. Not knowing what I was going to see."

"Was ever such a barbarous custom heard of! But Maria would listen to no sort of reason: and Agnes upheld her. I wonder the Signor allowed it. They will not get me in. I shall see the dear lost one in her coffin tonight; but I will not see her the actor in all that mummery."

The old lady was interrupted by the entrance of Madame de Castella. She did not know St. John was there; and her first surprised movement was that of retreat. But a different feeling came over her, and she stepped forward sobbing, holding out both her hands.

A few broken sentences of mutual sorrow, and then the scene became disagreeably painful to Mr. St. John. Madame de Castella's sobs were loud and hysterical, her mother's tears rained down quietly. He took his leave almost in silence.

"Would you like to attend the funeral?" asked the old lady. "It takes place tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!" he echoed: the haste striking upon his English ideas as unseemly.

"Tomorrow at eleven."

"Perhaps Mr. St. John would not like it?" interposed Madame de Castella between her sobs. "The Baron de la Chasse is coming for it."

"And what if he is!" cried her mother. "Surely their animosities must have ended now. Be here a quarter before eleven, my friend, if it would be any satisfaction to you to see the last of her."

Ah yes, all animosities had ended then, and St. John did not fail to be there. It was one of the grandest funerals ever seen in Belport. Amidst the long line of priests was Father Marc: and he recognized St. John and saluted him courteously and cordially, as if entirely oblivious of the past, and of the share he had taken in it. Signor de Castella walked bareheaded after the coffin; de la Chasse and another near friend were next. St. John was lost amid the crowd of followers, and his companion was Monsieur le Comte le Coq de Monty.

"So happy to have the honour of meeting you again, though it is upon this melancholy occasion!" cried the Comte, who was very fond of talking and had hastened to fasten himself on Mr. St. John. "What a sad thing that consumption is! And de la Chasse is here! How he must feel her loss! the engaging, beautiful demoiselle that she was!"

The procession moved on. To the church first, and then to the grave. But amidst all its pomp and show, amidst the tall candles, the glittering crucifixes, the banners of silver and black, amidst the array of priests and their imposing vestments; through the low murmurs of their soothing chant, lost in the echoes of the streets; even beyond that one dark mass, the chief feature of the pageant, borne by eight men with measured tread, through his regrets for what was in it--his buried love--there came something else, totally foreign to all this, and uncalled for by will, floating through the mind of Mr. St. John.

The curious tale whispered to him by Rose Darling the previous day, touching the fancies of Mrs. Carleton St. John, was connecting itself, in a haunting fashion, with certain words he had heard dropped by Honour at Castle Wafer.

[CHAPTER XXXII.]

SOME MONTHS ONWARDS

It was August weather. The glowing sunlight of the day had faded, and the drawing-rooms were lighted at Castle Wafer. A small group of guests had gathered there; it may almost be said a family group; had been spending there some five or six weeks. Changes have taken place since you met them last. Its master has come into the inheritance so coveted by Mrs. Carleton St. John for her own child: and he is also in stronger health than he has been for years. Look at him as he sits in the remotest corner of the room, his table covered with books and bearing a small shaded reading-lamp. But he is not reading now; he is listening with a fond smile to a charming girl in white evening attire, as she sits close to him and talks in a low voice. Her great eyes, of a blue grey, are raised to his face, and the gold chain glistens on her fair white shoulders as she bends towards him, and she seems to be petitioning some favour; for he keeps shaking his head in the negative, as if to tantalize her; but the kindly look in his eyes, and the sweet smile on his face are very conspicuous. You have met her before: it is Miss Beauclerc, the daughter of the Dean of Westerbury.

Unpleasantly conspicuous, that smile and that tender look, to one of the distant group. The glittering chandelier--and only one chandelier has been lighted tonight, as is usual on these quiet evenings--is reflected as in a thousand prisms by the wax-lights, and the glitter shines full on the face of this one lady, who sits back in the satin chair unnoticed, her dark eyes disagreeably fierce and eager. Is she a young girl? She really looks like one, in her black silk dress with its low simple body and short sleeves, edged only with a narrow ruching of white crape; looks almost as young as Miss Beauclerc. But she is not young; she has passed her thirtieth year, and more than that; and you have met her before, for she is the widow of George Carleton St. John of Alnwick. They call her here at Castle Wafer Mrs. Carleton, in a general way, as her additional name would interfere with Mrs. St. John's. We had better do the same. Sometimes they call her Charlotte; and she likes that best, for she hates the name of Carleton, simply because it was the name of her late husband's first wife.

Right underneath the chandelier, both of them at some sort of work, sit Mrs. St. John and Mrs. Darling. Mrs. St. John has recovered the accident of a year ago; it left a languor upon her which she is rather too fond of indulging. Isaac St. John is glad that visitors should be staying at Castle Wafer, for they divert his stepmother, whom he greatly esteems and respects, from her own fancied ailments. That accident would seem to have aged her ten years, and you would take her to be nearly sixty. Lastly, talking and laughing at the open glass doors, now halting inside, now stepping forth on the terrace in the balmy summer's night, are Rose Darling and Frederick St John. Frederick has been but a few days arrived, after an absence of many months, chiefly spent in the Holy Land; the rest have been for six weeks at Castle Wafer.

Six weeks, and they went for only one! Isaac pressed the visit upon Mrs. Carleton, whose position he much pitied, and politely invited Mrs. Darling to accompany her with any of the Miss Darlings she might like to bring. Mrs. Darling accepted the invitation and brought Rose. The other two were staying with old Mrs. Darling in Berkshire, who was flourishing and seemed likely to live to be a hundred. It almost seemed to Isaac St. John, in his refined sensitiveness, that he had committed a wrong on Charlotte St. John, by succeeding to the property that would have been her husband's and then her son's, had they lived. Could he have done it with any sort of delicacy, he had made over to her a handsome yearly income. Indeed, he had hinted at this to Mrs. Darling, but that lady said she felt sure it could not be done with Charlotte's proud spirit. Isaac hoped still: and meanwhile he pressed Charlotte to stay with them at Castle Wafer, not to run away, as her mother talked of doing. Mrs. Darling had been talking of it this month past; and her departure was now really fixed for the morrow. She was going with Rose to Paris; but Charlotte had accepted the invitation to remain.

Her fate really deserved sympathy. Bereft of her husband, of her cherished son, bereft not only of the fortune but also of the position she had thought to secure in marrying the master of Alnwick, she had perforce retired into a very humble individual again, who could not keep up much of an establishment of her own. In health she was perfectly well: all that dark time seemed to have passed away as a dream: she was better-looking than ever, and the inward fever that used to consume her and render her a very shadow, did not waste her now. Mrs. Darling had spoken to her seriously of what her future plans should be: that lady herself would probably have desired nothing better than to keep her favourite daughter with her always: but her other daughters rose rather rebelliously against it, and some unpleasantness had been the result.

Rose spoke out freely, as was her custom. If Charlotte did remain with them, she should not stand any domineering; and Mary Anne and Margaret Darling intimated that they should not leave grandmamma until home was free for them. Charlotte had brought this ill-will upon herself by the very line of conduct Rose spoke openly about--domineering. Mrs. Darling was a little perplexed: but she was an easy-tempered woman, and was content to let trifles take their chance. There was no immediate hurry: Charlotte's visit at Castle Wafer was to be extended, against the wish of Mrs. Darling, and might be continued for an indefinite time. Who knew but that Charlotte might captivate its bachelor master? And who knew but Charlotte herself was entertaining the same possibility? Mrs. Darling feared so; and, in all cases where Charlotte was concerned, she was a keen observer. What, though Isaac St. John had a hump upon his back, he was, apart from that, a lovable man--a man that even an attractive woman might covet for her own.

Mrs. Darling's employment this evening was some intricate working of gold beads on canvas. And every time she looked off to take up a bead upon the long needle, she seized the opportunity to glance at Charlotte. How entirely still she was!--leaning back in the armchair; her delicate hands lying motionless on her lap. But for the eyes, directed to one part of the room, and the angry glare beginning now to shine in them, Mrs. Darling had deemed her entirely at rest. She, Mrs. Darling, moved her chair, apparently to get some better light for the beads, and the change of position enabled her to look towards the spot herself.

Miss Beauclerc, her fair face bending forward in its eagerness, her wide open, fine grey eyes raised to his, had laid her two hands on Isaac St. John's; and he had playfully made prisoner of them and was keeping them fast. In the stillness of the room their voices were distinctly heard.

"You will promise it to me, then!"

Isaac laughed and shook his head. "You don't know how incorrigible the man has been, Georgie."

"All the more reason for your forgiving him."

"If the dean were here, I'm not sure that he would say so. He has had the greatest trouble with him, Georgina."

"That's just why I'm asking you," cried the girl prettily and saucily. "Papa might refuse me; you must not. You know you can't."

"What will you give if I say yes?"

"I'll give you----" she dropped her voice and laughed. Isaac bent and kissed her crimson cheek. Kissed it as a father might kiss a child; but she drew back shyly, and blushed to her fingers' ends, half glancing towards the window.

Something like a faint sound of anger came from Charlotte. It was smothered beneath a sudden cough. No ears heard it save those of the anxious mother; no eyes, save hers, saw the involuntary clenching of the impassive hands. She--Mrs. Darling--sat upright in her chair and turned her eyes in the direction where her daughter's were fixed.

"Did you obtain that information today, Sir Isaac?"

Sir Isaac was again laughing--oh, how much better in health was he now than of yore!--and did not hear the question.

"Are you speaking to me, Mrs. Darling?"

"That information you said you would obtain for me about the conjunction of the trains. Did you do so?"

"Brumm did. I thought he had given you the paper. He has all particulars set down, I know, in black and white. Perhaps he gave it to Miss Rose?"

"Who is taking my name in vain?" cried Rose, looking in, her bright face aglow with mirth.

Mr. St. John had been standing for the last few minutes inside the room, Rose on the threshold. As he talked to her, his eyes had unconsciously rested on the face of Mrs. Carleton; and the strange expression in hers, their look of fierce anger, had struck him with amazement; even the movement of the hands, telling of suppressed pain, was not wholly hidden from him. With a rush and a whirl there came back to his mind certain facts connected with Mrs. Carleton St. John, which had almost faded out of his remembrance. But what could be the cause of her antipathy to Miss Beauclerc? And there was antipathy in those eyes, if he ever read eyes in this world.

It was over directly,--quick as a flash of lightning,--and the relative situations of the parties changed. Georgina Beauclerc came to the table with a light step, as gay and careless as Rose; Sir Isaac followed more slowly, and sat down by Mrs. Carleton.

"You look pleased, my dear," observed Mrs. St. John, glancing up at Georgina.

"I have been teasing Sir Isaac, and I have gained my wish. But--you didn't see"--and she bent her lips with a smile--"I had to give him a kiss for the concession."

"Rather a hazardous favour to grant in a general way," observed Mrs. Darling, whose ears the whispered words had reached. "Some gentlemen, in the bachelor position of Sir Isaac, might deem the gift significant."

She put down her beads and her canvas, and looked full at Georgina, expecting a protest against such motives. But in this she was mistaken. Georgina only threw back her pretty head with a laugh; and in it--at least to Mrs. Darling's ears--there was a sound of triumph.

"What was your petition to him, my dear?" asked Mrs. St. John.

"Ah, that's a secret; it's something between himself and me;" and Miss Georgina Beauclerc went dancing towards the window, as if desiring a breath of the fresh night air.

The scene was almost more lovely than by day, with that moon, brighter than you often see it in August, shining on the landscape, and bringing out its light and its shade. Mrs. Carleton, every vestige of dissatisfaction removed, talked to Sir Isaac St. John. The tones of her voice were low and tender; the pale, passive countenance was singularly attractive. Sir Isaac had grown to like her very much indeed; and she knew it. But, what perhaps she did not know, liking with him had hitherto been confined to respect, esteem, friendship,--as the case might be. Never had the probability of its going further occurred to any one. He had always expressed a determination to live and die unmarried, and it was accepted as a matter of certainty.

Mr. St. John leaned against the wall, partly shaded by the blue satin window-curtains. He was watching her keenly. All that old gossip which had reached him, creating a strange suspicion in his mind, was rising up, bit by bit. She mad! Surely not! In that low, modulated voice; in that composed, self-controlled countenance; in those dark eyes, lighted now with a pleasant smile, there was no madness to be traced, past, present, or to come,--not a symptom of it. What had Rose meant by taking up the idea seriously?--by speaking of it to him? Nay, his was the fault for having listened to her. Rose! vain, giddy, careless as of old. Mr. St. John had wondered two or three times this past week what she was coming to.

As he looked, an idea flashed over him. He had noticed this last week, since his residence with them, little odds and ends in Mrs. Carleton's conduct. How she strove incessantly to make herself agreeable to Sir Isaac; how she walked out with him, drove out with him, sat with him oftentimes in his morning-room, how suave she was to Mr. Brumm; how, in short, she seemed to have one object in life--and that, to devote herself to Sir Isaac. It was very kind of her--very considerate, had been Frederick's only thought until now, and he felt grateful to her, though rather wondering; he felt grateful to any one who appreciated his brother; but now the truth seemed to have opened his eyes, and removed the scales that were before them. She was hoping to become Lady St. John.

Every feeling of Frederick St. John rose up in arms against it. Not against his brother marrying. If it would be for his comfort and happiness, Frederick would have been glad to see him marry on the morrow. But to marry her--with that possibility of taint in her blood? Any one in the wide world, rather than Charlotte Carleton. The room suddenly felt too hot for him, and he turned from it impetuously, his hand lifted to his brow.

"Who's this? Don't run over me, Mr. St. John."

He had nearly run over her; she was so still; gathered there against the wall, just beyond the window.

"I beg your pardon, Georgina; I was deep in thought."

"Is it not a lovely night?"

"Yes, I suppose so. How long"--he dropped his voice--"is Mrs. Carleton going to remain here? Do you know?"

"Not I. How should I? Mrs. Darling and Rose leave tomorrow."

There was a pause. He held out his arm to Georgina, and began slowly to pace the terrace with her. She looked very fair, very lovely in the moonlight.

"How came Mrs. Carleton to prolong her stay beyond that of her mother and sister?"

"As if I knew! Sir Isaac pressed it, I think I heard him say to her one day that as Mrs. St. John intended to spend the winter at Castle Wafer, she could not do better than promise him to remain also. Don't you like her?"

"Not very much, I think."

"I did like her. I cannot tell you how much I pitied her. It seems so hard a fate to lose her husband and her two children, and now to have lost Alnwick. But she won't let me like her; she is so very distant with me; repellant might be the better word; and so I think she is making me dislike her. I like Rose."

He laughed. "No one can help liking Rose; with all her faults she is open as the day. Do you know, Georgina, I used at times to think Rose very much like you."

"In face?"

"No. And yet there may be a certain resemblance even there: both of you are fair, and both--pretty. You need not fling away from me as if it were treason to say so. But I meant in manner. You were once as wild as Rose is now."

"You saw a great deal of her this time last year, did you not, when she was staying with Adeline de Castella?"

"Yes," he laconically answered.

Georgina Beauclerc turned to the terrace railings, and leaned over them, looking far away. He stood by her side in silence.

"Do you think I am wild in manner now?" she presently asked.

"No; you have greatly changed."

"Those old, old days in Westerbury--and I know I was wild in them--have faded away as a dream. It seems so long ago!--and yet, marked by the calendar, it is only a short time. One may live years in a few months, Mr. St. John."

With the privileged freedom of his boyhood he turned her face towards him, and saw what he had suspected. The blue eyes were filled with tears.

"What is it, child?"

"Nothing. Past days are often sad to look back to."

"Do you know that you have changed--wonderfully changed?"

"From my wildness? Yes, I think I have been tamed."

"And what has tamed you?"

"Oh,"--there was a slight pause--"nothing but my own good sense."

"And now please tell me why you call me Mr. St. John. You have been doing it all the week."

The tears vanished, and a slight smile parted the pretty lips.

"You are Mr. St. John now."

"Not to you, I should have thought."

"I remember the lecture you once gave me for calling you Fred."

"No doubt. I gave you little else than lectures then; some of them in earnest, some in fun. The lecture you speak of was of the latter description."

"I know how vexed you used to pet with me. You must have hated me very much."

"Wrong, young lady. Had I cared for you less, I should not have lectured you. We don't get vexed with those we dislike. I should lecture you still, if I saw cause to do it."

Georgina laughed. They were again pacing the terrace, for he had placed her arm in his.

"I always believed in you, Georgina, though you did require so much keeping in order. You were as wild a young damsel as I ever wish to see. It is well your mood has changed."

"I dare say you mean to say my manners."

"Call it what you will. I like you best as you are. What's that, shooting up like a bonfire?"

They paused and watched the appearance he spoke of: a flaming light in a distant field.

"I know," cried Georgina. "Old Phipps is burning that dead tree of his. Sir Isaac told him this morning not to let it lie there across the path."

"Were you there with Isaac this morning? So far off as that!"

"He and I and Mrs. Carleton had walked there. He is a famous walker now."

"A little bird whispered a tale to me about you, Georgina, as I came through London," he said, resuming their walk. "Shall I tell it?"

"Tell it if you like. What is it?"

"That you might, at no very distant time, be mistress of Hawkhurst. His lordship----"

"What a wicked untruth," she burst forth, as impulsively as ever she had spoken in former days. "Who told it you? It was Sarah, I'm sure; and she knows I refused him."

"I'm sure he is a well-meaning young man; easy, good-tempered, and very fond of you."

"He is as stupid as an owl," returned Georgina, in her anger. "Oh--I see: you are only laughing at me."

"Tell me why you would not have him. We used to tell each other mutual secrets in bygone days. Do you remember that real secret--that accident--when you nearly set the deanery on fire, by placing the lamp too close to the window-curtains, and I burnt my hands in putting the fire out, and then took down the curtains afterwards, to remove all traces of fire from them? I suppose the dean does not know the truth to this day."

"Mamma does not; and that is a great deal more to the purpose. She still believes the curtains were mysteriously stolen. They were fortunately very beautiful."

"Fortunately! But you have not told me why you dismissed Hawkhurst and his coronet."

"I wouldn't have him if he had ten coronets. I wouldn't have any one."

"Do you intend never to marry, Miss Georgina?"

"Never, never. Papa and mamma have no one but me, and I shall not leave them."

Her blushes were conspicuous even in the moonlight. But she raised her head, as if in defiance of the emotion, and looked straight out before her.

"So you did see Sarah as you came through London! She has made a good marriage, has she not?"

"Very good, in all senses of the word. She has rank, wealth; and her husband, for a Viscount, is really a superior man."

"For a Viscount! What next? Is Sarah as beautiful as ever?"

"Well--no. She was both thin and pale. She'll get up her looks again by-and-by, I dare say."

"I'm sure she's happy, and that's the chief thing. They are to come to us at Westerbury next winter. Talking of Westerbury," continued Georgina, "Rose Darling had a letter from Westerbury this morning."

"Indeed! I was not aware that Rose was acquainted with Westerbury, or any one in it. Here she comes."

She had been standing outside the window, and came forward as he spoke. She had caught the sound of her own name, and wanted to know--as she had just before, in the drawing-room--why they were taking it in vain.

"Miss Beauclerc says you heard from Westerbury this morning."

"Well, so I did," cried Rose. "The letter was from Mary Carr. She is staying with some friends there: what's their name?--Mr. and Mrs. Travice Arkell."

"Ah, yes," said Mr. St. John. "I heard from Travice not long ago."

"Did he mention Lucy?" asked Georgina.

"He said Lucy had sent her love to me, and that that was all he could get out of her, for she was rapturously absorbed in her new toy, the baby."

"Mary Carr says you are to be its godfather," remarked Rose.

"Oh, are you?" cried Georgina. "Which is it--a boy or a girl?"

Mr. St. John considered, and then laughed. "I declare I don't know," he said; "it's one of the two. Travice told me, I think, but I forget. Knowing who the godmother is to be, I forgot all about the baby."

"And who is it to be--Mrs. Dundyke?"

"Not at all. It is a lady of a great deal more importance--in size, at any rate. Miss Fauntleroy."

Georgina laughed. Rose was a little puzzled: the bygone histories were strange to her. And she was feeling cross besides. Where Rose took a fancy--and she had taken one long ago to Frederick St. John--she did not like to see attentions given to any one but her own sweet self. She tossed her head, throwing back her blue ribbons and golden curls.

"Is your sister going to make a long stay with us, Rose?" he quietly asked.

"My opinion is, that she'll make it just as long as you choose to ask her: for ever and a day if Sir Isaac should please. Take care of her, Frederick St. John! I never saw Charlotte put forth her attractions as she is doing now."

She spoke at random--in her wild carelessness: she had never given a suspicion to the truth--that her sister was purposely trying to attract Isaac St. John. Cold, proud, arrogant; to do so, would be against Charlotte's nature, as Rose had always believed.

Mrs. Darling and Rose took their departure from Castle Wafer, leaving Charlotte and Georgina Beauclerc its only guests. It was lovely weather, and the weeks went on. The mornings were chiefly spent out of doors. Isaac St. John, so much stronger than he used to be, had never gone about his grounds as he was going now. His companions were always Charlotte Carleton and Georgina; Frederick often strolling by their side. In the afternoon one or other of them would be driven, out by Sir Isaac in his low pony-carriage, and the other would be with Mrs. St. John, sitting at home with her or going out in the close carriage, as the case might be. As to Frederick, he was apparently leading a very idle life. In point of fact, he was secretly busy as ever was a London detective, watching Mrs. Carleton. He had been watching her closely ever since the departure of Mrs. Darling and Rose, now three weeks ago, and he persuaded himself that he did detect signs of incipient madness.

One thing he detected in which there could be no mistake--her hatred of Georgina Beauclerc. Not by any ordinary signs was this displayed, by rudeness, by slight, or anything of that sort. On the contrary, she was studiously polite to Georgina, even cordial at times. But every now and then, when Georgina crossed her, there would blaze forth a wild, revengeful fire in the eye, there would be an involuntary contraction of the long thin fingers, as though they were tightening on somebody's throat. It would all pass in a moment and was imperceptible to general observation: but Frederick was watching.

He also observed that whenever she was put out in this way, it was always with reference to Isaac. One day in particular, it almost came to open warfare.

Sir Isaac had ordered round his pony-carriage in the morning, having to go farther than he could walk. Frederick and Mrs. Carleton were in the morning-room, and it was somehow arranged, in haste, that Mrs. Carleton should accompany him. Frederick had not been particularly attentive at the moment: he was writing letters: but he thought it was Mrs. Carleton herself who offered to go, not Isaac who asked her. Be that as it might, she put on her things, and came back to the room. At almost the same moment, Georgina flew in, a mantle and bonnet in her hand.

"Are you going out?" asked Mrs. Carleton, drawing her shawl more closely around her slender and stately form.

"I am going with Sir Isaac," replied Georgina: and Mrs. Carleton made an almost imperceptible pause before she spoke again.

"I am going with Sir Isaac."

"That I'm sure you are not," cried Georgina, in her spoilt, girlish way. "Sir Isaac is going to Hatherton, and knows why I must go there with him: why he must take me in preference to any one else. Don't you, Sir Isaac?" she added, entwining her arm within his.

"You petted child!" he fondly said. "Who told you I was going to Hatherton?"

"Brumm. I asked him what the pony-carriage had come round for this morning. You will take me?" she continued, her voice and manner irresistible in their sweetness.

"I suppose I must," he answered. "If Mrs. Carleton will allow me--will excuse the trouble she has had in putting on her things. There! put on your bonnet, my wilful, troublesome child; you would charm a bird from its nest."

That any feeling of rivalry could be entertained by either, never once crossed the brain of Sir Isaac St. John. He had watched Georgina Beauclerc grow up from a baby, and he looked upon her still as a child: he gave way to her moods as we give way to those of a child who is very dear to us. He loved her fondly; he would have liked her for his daughter: and since the project of marrying Frederick to Lady Anne St. John had failed, he had cherished a secret and silent wish down deep in his heart, that Lady Anne might be supplanted by the dean's daughter. But he was cautious not to breathe a hint of this, not to further it by so much as lifting a finger. If it came to pass, well and good, but he would never again plot and plan, and be made miserable by failure, as he had been in the case of Lady Anne. That Mrs. Carleton could be seriously annoyed at his disappointing her for Georgina, did not occur to him: it never would have occurred to him that she could look on the young lady as anything but a lovable and loving child.

They went out to the pony-carriage, Georgina on his arm and prattling in her pretty way. Sir Isaac placed her in, solicitous for her comfort, and took his seat beside her. Her bright face and its sparkling grey eyes were beaming with triumph, and she turned back with a saucy farewell.

"Don't expect us home until you see us."

Let us give Georgina Beauclerc her due. She never suspected, any more than did Sir Isaac, that Mrs. Carleton could by any possibility regard her as a rival. Had she been told that Mrs. Carleton was laying siege to the master of Castle Wafer, Georgina had retired to a respectful distance and looked on. From her light-hearted youth, they appeared very old to her. Mrs. Carleton was a widow, who had lost all she cared for in life; Sir Isaac was a second father to her, looking older, in his hump, than her own, and she was at liberty to be free and familiar with him as a daughter.

Mrs. Carleton stood at the window as they drove off. She was wholly mistaking matters, as we all do when ill-nature or prejudice is upon us. The triumphant look in the girl's face and eyes, really shining forth in her warm-hearted joyousness, and unsuspicious of offence to any, was regarded by Charlotte Carleton as a displayed triumph over her; the saucy farewell, which was more saucy in tone than in words, and which was meant for no one in particular, but for Frederick if any one, was taken by the unhappy lady to herself. That strange evil look arose in her eyes as she gazed after the carriage, and a shiver passed through her frame.

Frederick St. John was half frightened. If ever a woman looked mad, she looked so in that moment. Her long fingers quivered, her lips were drawn, her face was white as death. He rose silently.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Carleton: you are dropping your shawl."

In truth the shawl, which had become unfastened, was falling from her shoulders, and he made it an excuse for interfering, speaking in quiet, soothing tones, to be near her and prepared, should there be any act of violence. She turned and glared at him. No other word will express the blaze that was in her eyes at the moment. One whole minute did she so stand before she recollected herself, or seemed to know what she was looking at or where she was. Then she gathered up the shawl on her arm, and sat down quietly.

"Thank you," she said; "this silk shawl is given to slipping off."

In a moment she had obtained perfect mastery of herself: her pale face was calm again, nay, impassive; her eyes had lost their frightful expression, and were ordinary eyes once more. Frederick asked whether he should drive her out; there was Mrs. St. John's basket-carriage: if she would like a little fresh air, he was at her service.

At first she said no; but recalled the negative and thought she would trouble him. It was so quiet indoors this morning without Sir Isaac, and that gay, foolish girl, Georgina. Yes; if not interrupting those apparently important letters, she would accept his offer.

So the basket-carriage--rather a rickety affair, for Mrs. St. John never used it now, and it was given over to neglect--was ordered round. Mrs. Carleton put on her shawl again, and they started. And there he was, driving this, as he verily believed, half-mad woman, who was calm as an angel now; conversing with him sensibly and placidly, a pleasant smile in her dark eyes.

But this morning's doings were an exception. In a general way it was Mrs. Carleton who was the companion of Isaac St. John. She walked with him in the morning; Georgina and Frederick generally falling into the background; she drove out with him in the afternoon; she sat by his side, speaking in soft whispers, at night. That she was either really in love with Isaac St. John, or striving to make him in love with her, there could no longer be any doubt on the mind of Frederick. He wondered whether it was apparent to others; but he could not tell.

Over and over again he asked himself the question--were these signs of madness, or not? People were rather in the habit of turning white with passion; he himself, to wit, on occasion; and jealousy and dislike of a pretty girl were nothing new. All that was as nothing: but he could not forget that awful look in the eyes, that movement of the hands, that peculiar shiver of the frame; and he believed that she, Charlotte Carleton, was either mad or in danger of becoming so. You see, the doubt had been already implanted in him by Rose Darling; but for that, he might never have so much as glanced at the possibility; and he very seriously pondered the question, whether this fear arose solely from that whispered communication, and had no place in reality.

It is possible the affair altogether might not have continued to trouble him, but for a word dropped by his mother. Mrs. Carleton sat by Sir Isaac that evening in the drawing-room, her low words breathed in the softest whisper. She was trying to learn, so ladylike and candid all the while, what business he and Georgina had had at Hatherton. Isaac made no very particular reply: and indeed there was none to make. A man lived at Hatherton who had been a protégé of the dean's, but he fell into evil habits, ill-treated his poor sick wife, and finally was discarded. It was for this man Georgina had been begging grace of Isaac--that Sir Isaac would take him on, and give him a trial; and it was to see the wife that Georgina went to Hatherton. No great news to tell; and Sir Isaac did not perceive that Mrs. Carleton was anxious to hear it. Presently Sir Isaac rose, went out, and sat down on the terrace; it was a sultry night, and every breath of air was grateful. Mrs. Carleton also went out and sat by him.

"Frederick," whispered Mrs. St. John, in the impulse of the moment, "should you be very much disappointed were Isaac to give Castle Wafer a mistress?"

So his mother had noticed it! "Not if the mistress were suitable."

"He might give it a worse, Frederick; I like her."

Frederick St. John drew in his breath. A worse! Surely, never a worse, if his fears were correct, than she; not though Isaac searched the whole world through. Mrs. St. John looked up at her son.

"You are silent, Frederick. Should you not like her?"

"I think not."

"It is only a suggestion that crossed me; it does seem next door to an impossibility that Isaac should marry, after all. Don't let it make you uncomfortable."

"Nay, mother mine, you mistake me," he said. "None would more heartily welcome the thought of a wife for Isaac, should such be his own desire; but I--I think I should not like the wife to be Mrs. Carleton."

He spoke calmly, but a flush passed over his brow at the thought, a chill to his heart. He quitted his mother and strolled outside.

Georgina was with Isaac then. She had edged herself between him and the arm of the bench, and was taking up his attention, to the exclusion of Mrs. Carleton. If the girl had only known the sin she was committing in that lady's sight! Luring him away in her pretty wilfulness to walk with her on the lower walks under the bright stars; and he went without so much as a word of apology or regret to Mrs. Carleton: and the sound of their voices as they paced together, came up with a joyous ring on the still night air. Frederick St. John watched her attentively under cover of the darkness; he saw the distorted countenance, the fearful eyes, and he decided that she was mad, and was meditating some revenge on Miss Beauclerc.

It troubled him greatly. At one moment he recalled all the queer and horrible tales he had heard of people killing or injuring others in their madness, previously unsuspected; the next, he asked himself whether he were awake or dreaming, that he should call up ideas so unlikely and fantastical. By-and-by, when they were all indoors again, Mrs. Carleton sat down to the piano, and sang some low, sweet music, charming their ears, winning their hearts. Had all the doctors connected with Bethlehem Hospital come forward then to declare her mad, people would have laughed at them for their pains; and Mr. St. John amidst the rest.

Have you ever observed with what a different aspect we see things in the morning from what we saw them at night? In the broad light of the bustling day, if we by chance glance back at our evening fancies--seeming true enough then--it is with a shrug of compassion at their folly. All the time Mr. St. John was dressing, the sun shining gaily into his chamber, he was feeling rather ashamed of himself. How could he have allowed those horrible thoughts to obtain a moment's ascendency the previous night? Was he not doing Mrs. Carleton an unpardonable injury? He had positively no grounds whatever to go upon, except that past communication made by Rose, which might have had no truth in it. "I've a great mind to go away!" quoth Mr. St. John, "and pick up some common sense before I come back again."

As he went along the corridor, Mrs. Carleton was coming out of her own room, pale, quiet, handsome, her head raised a little haughtily as usual. She held out her hand to Mr. St. John with a smile; and he, in his new fit of repentance, placed it within his arm, and led her downstairs.

"I have had a letter from Rose," she said. "Would you like to see it? She speaks of Paris as of an elysium."

She sat down to preside at the breakfast-table. Mrs. St. John rarely quitted her room until midday. The windows opened to the terrace, and he went out, the letter in his hand. Georgina was leaning on some railings, and did not turn to greet him. He asked her what she was looking at.

"I'm not looking: I am thinking. I was trying to recollect whether I really had an adventure in the night, or whether it was only a dream."

The words, without perhaps sufficient cause, seemed to sharpen every faculty he possessed. Crushing Rose's letter in his hand, as a thing of no moment, he asked Georgina to explain what she meant.

"Something awoke me in the middle of the night," she said; "and I saw, or thought I saw, a face bending over my bed, close to mine. I called out, 'Who is it? What do you want?' but there was no answer, only the curtain seemed to stir, and then the door closed very quietly, as if whoever it was had left the room. I don't think I was yet quite awake, but I ran to the door, opened it, and looked out. I saw--at least I fancied I saw--that quiet maid of Mrs. Carleton's, Prance; she was standing in the corridor in a white petticoat or night dress, and I could have declared that I heard her speaking in an angry whisper. But the next moment I could see no trace of any one; and when my eyes grew accustomed to the grey light, I saw that all the chamber doors were shut."

He paused an instant before replying. "Are you sure it was Prance in the corridor? Did you see her distinctly?"

"I saw only the white things she was wrapped in; the outline of her figure. It was by that outline I took it to be Prance, and because she was standing at Mrs. Carleton's door, which was then open, or seemed to be."

"Could it have been Mrs. Carleton herself, standing there?"

"No. It was nothing like tall enough. If it was anybody, it was Prance; that is, if anything of the sort did take place, and it was not a dream; and she was speaking angrily to some one inside Mrs. Carleton's room."

"Do you, yourself, think it was a dream, Georgina?"

"I should have felt quite certain that it was not a dream, that it was all reality, only that Prance positively denies it. She says she never was out of the room at all last night after Mrs. Carleton came up to bed. She says, she thinks I must, have had a nightmare."

"Where does Prance sleep? Somewhere at the back, I suppose."

"She sleeps in Mrs. Carleton's room. Did you not know it? There was a little bed put into the room for her the day they came. Mrs. Carleton does not like sleeping in a room alone."

"When did you speak to Prance about it?"

"Just now I saw her in the corridor. I asked whether anything was the matter last night, but she did not seem to know what I meant, and I explained. She quite laughed at me, saying I must have been suffering from nightmare."

"And denying that she was in the corridor?"

"Entirely. She says it's not possible any one could have been there, for she slept very badly last night, and must have heard the slightest movement outside, had there been any, her bed being close to the door. What do you think?" concluded Georgina.

Mr. St. John did not say what he thought: he chose rather to treat it lightly. "It might have been a sort of nightmare."

"But I never had nightmare before in my life. I seemed to see the outline of a head and face over me, though indistinctly."

"Did you think the face was Prance's?"

"It seemed to belong to somebody taller than Prance. I dare say it was a dream, after all. Don't laugh at me."

"A dream, no doubt," he said. "But Georgina, I would not mention this if I were you. I'll not laugh at it, but others might: and Mrs. Carleton would not like the idea of her door being open, or supposed to have been open in the middle of the night. If Prance has to sleep in her room, I suppose she must be of a timid nature, and she might be getting thieves and robbers into her head should she hear of this."

"I did not intend to say anything to her. But Prance most likely will."

"Prance can do as she chooses. There is another thing--I would advise you to lock your chamber door just at present."

She looked up at him with surprise. "Lock my chamber-door! What for?"

"Well," he answered, after a brief hesitation, "you could not then fancy that any one came in."

"I could not sleep with my door locked. If a fire took place in the house, I might be burnt up before any one could arouse me."

"Georgina, trust me," he said, impressively, and he laid his hand upon her shoulder, "I will take care of you in case of fire, and if your door is locked, burst it open. Turn the key of your door just now, to oblige me."

"Tell me what you suspect--that you should thus caution me."

"I--think it--just possible--that some one may walk in their sleep. Perhaps one of the maids."

"Oh! I should not like that," exclaimed Georgina, unsuspiciously. "I should be far more frightened if some one asleep came into my room in the night, than if they were awake."

"Just so: therefore you will lock your door. Promise me."

"I promise, Frederick."

He turned from her, and crossed the terrace to enter the breakfast-room, she looking after him, a whole world of love shining unconsciously from her wistful eyes. No, it was of no use: she had striven against her love; but it was all in vain. Passionately as she had loved Frederick St. John in the old days, before he had given signs of liking any one--unless it had been her cousin Sarah,--before he ever saw Adeline de Castella, so passionately she loved him still.

[CHAPTER XXXIII.]

A TELEGRAM

Georgina Beauclerc's revelation was a complete overthrow to Mr. St. John's more tolerant feelings of the morning. He fully believed it. He believed that the face leaning over the girl's bed must have been Mrs. Carleton's, that she had glided away when Georgina awoke; and that Prance, who must have suddenly discovered her absence from the room, had then come in search of her. Why did Prance sleep in her chamber? That seemed rather an odd thing to Mr. St. John. And--assuming that it was Mrs. Carleton--what motive could have taken her to Georgina's room?--have caused her to hang over her when asleep? Had she done it in restlessness?--become weary, and so have risen and prowled about the corridor and the rooms to while away the hours? Mr. St. John strove to think so: perhaps, rather, to deceive his own heart into thinking so. As to her having any intention of injuring Georgina, his mind shrank from entertaining the idea. He could not bear even to glance at it: apart from the horror of the thing, it partook too much of the sensational and romantic.

And how, indeed, could he think it? Look at her now. Sitting there so calm, so gentle, by Georgina's side, handing the cup of tea to Isaac she had just poured out, speaking with a sunny smile.

"I won't transgress this time, Sir Isaac, and give you too much sugar. Indeed, I forgot before. I must have thought I was sweetening for Mr. St. John."

"Ay, no doubt," replied Sir Isaac. "He can take any amount of sugar. Do you remember when you were a little fellow, Fred, I would half melt the lumps in my tea, and you would eat them for me?"

Frederick laughed. "I remember you indulged me in many things a great deal more than I deserved."

"I have had a letter from Alnwick this morning," observed Sir Isaac, turning to Mrs. Carleton. "Drake remonstrates against the Hall being left empty any longer. He says if I would only go to it for a week, it would be an earnest that it will sometime be occupied again. What should you all say to a week's visit there--provided Mrs. St. John shall think herself well enough to undertake the journey?"

No one replied. Mrs. Carleton gave one startled glance upwards, and then busied herself with her tea-making.

"The alterations in the conservatory are finished," continued Isaac: "a very nice thing they have made of it, Drake says. You remember that awkward-looking corner by the stove, Mrs. Carleton? That also has been remedied."

Mrs. Carleton looked up now, her face quietly impassive. "Sir Isaac, I would rather not hear anything about Alnwick. I try to put my past happiness from me as much as possible, and do not care to be reminded of it."

"I beg your pardon," cried Sir Isaac, in warm, considerate tones; "I ought to have remembered. Then you would not like to go there?"

"No. Not yet."

Of course that ended it, Sir Isaac intimated, and the conversation dropped. He was ever solicitous for the comfort of Mrs. Carleton, in small things as in great. This may have arisen solely from his sympathy with her position, from the feeling that he was in possession of the revenues she had once expected would be hers: but that she attributed it to a warmer sentiment, there could be little doubt.

"Will you go out with me in the pony-carriage this morning?" asked Sir Isaac. "I have not felt so strong the last day or two, and think, perhaps, I have been walking too much."

"I will go with you, dear St. Isaac," was Mrs. Carleton's honeyed answer; and Frederick St. John did not like to see the gratified look that illumined his brother's face as he thanked her.

They went out. Georgina disappeared within the apartments of Mrs. St. John, to write a long-delayed letter to her mother; and Frederick buried himself and his thoughts in the shadiest nook of his painting-room--for he had one at Castle Wafer. He had intended to go out shooting that morning, after breakfast, in his lazy fashion, for September was passing; but he felt in no mood for it now. A horrible dread had taken possession of him--that, not interfered with, his brother would be led on to marry her.

Not interfered with! Who was to interfere? In moments of difficulty we always think, "If the case were different, I could meet it." He was thinking so. "If I were not Isaac's heir, then I might speak out fearlessly. As it is--it would appear as though I interfered from interested motives; and I cannot do it."

Perhaps he was right. He might have seen his way more clearly, had there been tangible proof to bring forward concerning Mrs. Carleton's state of mind; but there was none. To say, "I fear she is not quite sane, or that she may hereafter become insane," would naturally be met by the question, "What grounds have you for thinking so?"--and he had really no good grounds to advance. And yet he felt that Isaac ought to be warned, lest he should compromise himself.

Grumbling at the untowardness of things, tired to death with worry, flinging a palette here, a painting there, striding the room with slow and uneven steps, Mr. St. John contrived somehow to live through the morning. Suddenly, when he was stretching himself, and rather wishing for wings that he might fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, it occurred to him that he would speak to Honour. The girl had once dropped some inadvertent words in his hearing, and she might be able to tell him more. It seemed that he would give half his own undoubted inheritance to set the question at rest.

He rang the bell, and told the servant who answered it to send Honour to him. He had not seen the girl, as far as he remembered, since his present sojourn at home. The fact was, Honour's duties had been changed, and lay downstairs now, instead of above. She had given up the place of housemaid, which she found did not suit her, to become assistant to the housekeeper, and was learning cooking and confectionery. Not once in six months now would her duties take her up the grand staircase, or bring her in contact with the guests.

"Where have you been hiding yourself?" asked Mr. St. John, when she appeared in obedience to his orders. "I never see you by any chance."

Honour explained now. She looked just the same as ever, and she still wore mourning for her beloved Benja.

"Honour, I want to ask you a question. And you must answer it, for it is essential that you should do so. But you may rely upon my discretion, and no trouble shall accrue to you from it. You once spoke a word or two which led me to infer that your late mistress, Mrs. Carleton St. John, was not altogether of sound mind. Did you mean what you said?"

Honour paused. Not from fear of speaking, but in doubt what to say. Mr. St. John, attributing it to the former motive, again assured her that she might trust him.

"It is not that, sir; it is that I don't well know how to answer you. I remember what I said--you were asking me about that dreadful night, saying that from the manner in which he had been burnt to death it looked as though somebody had done it for the purpose; and I answered, in the moment's haste, that nobody could have done that, unless it was Mrs. St. John in her madness."

"But did you mean anything, Honour? That is the point to be considered now."

"I did, and I didn't, sir. I had seen my mistress two or three times in a most awful passion; a passion, sir, that you would hardly believe possible in a lady, and I meant that if she had done it, it must have been in one of those mad fits of passion. But I did not really mean that she had done it," resumed Honour, "and I could have bitten my tongue out afterwards for answering so carelessly; it was the very thing Mrs. Darling warned me against. There was no reason for supposing the calamity to have been anything but pure accident."

"What had Mrs. Darling warned you against?"

"It occurred in this way, sir. After it was all over and the poor lamb buried, I had brain fever; and they tell me I made all sorts of wild accusations in it, amidst others that my mistress had set fire to Benja and bolted the door upon him. After I got well, Mrs. Darling told me of this. Nothing could be kinder than what she said, but she warned me never to breathe such words again. I should not have had such a thought, even in my delirium, but for the bolted doors; I couldn't get over that at the time; but I came to the same conclusion at last as other people--that poor Benja must have fastened the one to keep me out, and that the other was not bolted at all. It's likely enough, for I never was in such a flurry before, smelling the burning so strong."

"And in your delirium you accused your mistress of having caused the mischief?"

"So they tell me, sir. How I came to fancy such wicked thoughts is the wonder. It's true that she was always jealous of Benja after her own child was born, always hated him; and I suppose I remembered that, even in my unconsciousness. Not an hour before the accident she had beaten him cruelly."

"Beaten him!" interrupted Mr. St. John.

"She did, sir. It's over now, and I said nothing about it: where was the use? Well, all these things must have got jumbled together in my poor fevered brain, and caused me to say what I did. I was very sorry for it, sir, when I got well; I should never have thought of such a thing in my senses."

"Then--although you used the word 'madness,' you never had cause to think her really insane?"

"Oh no, never. In those frightful passions she was as one mad, sir, but they were over directly. I hope you'll pardon me, sir, for having been so foolish as to say it."

"Nay, Honour, it is nothing to me. We all make slips occasionally in talking. That's all I wanted to ask you."

She turned to leave the room. Mr. St. John took a rapid summary in his mind of what he had heard. It seemed only to increase his difficulties. There was not the slightest corroborative testimony as to her possible insanity; but there were other hints which tended to render her a most unfit wife for Isaac. If----

His reflections were brought to a sudden conclusion by a scream outside. This studio of his was situated in an angle of the staircase, where it was rather dark. Honour had not yet closed the door: but the scream did not appear to have come from her. He hastened out.

It had come from Mrs. Carleton. Standing in the opposite angle, gathered closely against the wall, as if hiding from a ghost, her eyes were fixed with a glare of terror upon Honour, her face was white as death. She had just come in from the drive with Sir Isaac, and was on her way to her room to take off her bonnet for luncheon. Honour saw the effect her appearance caused, and stood irresolute, curtseying, not liking to go down, because she would have to brush past Mrs. Carleton. Before Mr. St. John had recovered from his astonishment, Prance came gliding up and took her mistress by the arm.

"It's only Honour Tritton, ma'am; do you not know her? You fool, why did you put yourself in her sight!" added the woman to Honour in whispered exasperation. "I told you to keep out of it--that she didn't know you were here. The sight of you cannot be pleasant to her remembrance."

Almost by force, as it seemed, she led her mistress away to her bedroom and closed the door. A good way down the corridor Mrs. Carleton's white face was turned back on Honour, with its look of wild, desperate fear.

Mr. St. John seemed equally stunned with Honour. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked.

"I'm sure I don't know, sir," was the girl's answer, as she burst into tears.

"Prance said she had warned you to keep out of Mrs. Carleton's sight. Is that true?"

"Yes, sir, it's true. She said her mistress did not know I was at Castle Wafer, and I had better take care and not show myself to her."

"But why?"

"I don't know, sir. All she said was that Mrs. Carleton St. John was fearfully angry with me still, knowing that, but for my carelessness in leaving the child he would be alive now. I had kept out of her sight until today. But it seemed to me now that she looked more terrified than angry."

As it had to Mr. St. John. Honour went out about her business, and he felt bewildered with the complication of events that seemed to be arising. There came down an apology to the luncheon-room from Mrs. Carleton, delivered by Prance. Her lady had a headache, brought on by being so long in the hot sun without a parasol, and was now lying down.

"How sorry I am!" exclaimed Sir Isaac. "She complained of the sun when we were out."

Late in the afternoon, she came into the drawing-room, dressed for dinner. Frederick happened to be there alone. As a matter of politeness, he condoled with her on her indisposition, hoping it was gone.

"Not quite. To tell you the truth, Mr. St. John," she continued in quiet, confidential tones, "the sight of that woman, Honour Tritton, had as much to do with my headache as the heat. You know who she was, I presume--nurse to my poor little stepson; the woman to whose unpardonable carelessness his death was attributable. I have never been able to think of the woman since without horror, and the unexpected sight of her--for I had no idea she was at Castle Wafer--was almost too much for me."

"She is one of the servants here," observed Frederick, not very well knowing what else to answer.

"As I hear. I wonder Sir Isaac should have engaged her. However, of course, that is no business of mine. I hope she will not come into my way again, for I have a perfect horror of her. But for her wickedness, we might all still have been happy at Alnwick."

She rose as she spoke, and went on the lawn. Mrs. St. John was there. Sir Isaac was then in his own sitting-room, and Frederick went in to him. The table was strewed with papers, and he was writing rapidly.

"Look at this," he said to Frederick, holding out a letter, and in his voice might be traced a sound of annoyance. "It is incomprehensible how people can be so stupid."

"Are you writing to stop it?" asked Frederick, when he had read the note.

"I am writing; but whether it will be in time to stop it, is another matter. The letter only came by this afternoon's post."

"I should telegraph," said Frederick. Sir Isaac laid down his pen. "It might be the better plan, But you can say so little in a message."

"Do both," advised the younger brother. "I will go off at once and send the message, and you can post your letter afterwards. You will then have the satisfaction of knowing that all has been done that can be done."

"Yes, that will be better. If you don't mind the trouble. But you will hardly be back by dinner-time."

"Yes I shall. And as to trouble, Isaac, I think it's doing me a kindness. I have been in a cross-grained mood all day, for want perhaps of something to do."

Sir Isaac wrote the message, and Frederick started with it, leaping down the slopes buoyant as a schoolboy. It was a sensible relief, perhaps, to what he had called his cross-grained mood. He had only a short walk; for the railway had now been extended from Lexington, and its small station was not far from the lodge gates of Castle Wafer.

Mr. St. John entered the little telegraph office. He gave in his message, and was exchanging a few words with the clerk, when the rustle of petticoats was heard, and a female voice addressed the clerk in hurried accents. Mr. St. John at the moment was behind the partition, and unseen by the newcomer.

"Young man, can I send a telegraph off at once? It's in a hurry."

"You can send a telegram," responded the clerk. "Where's it to?"

"Paris."

"What's the message?"

"I've wrote it down here, so that there may be no mistake. It's quite private, if you please, and must be kept so: a little matter that don't concern anybody. And be particular, for it's from Castle Wafer. Will it be in Paris tonight?"

"Yes," said the clerk, confidently, as he counted the words.

"What's to pay?"

"Twelve-and-sixpence."

"Twelve-and-sixpence!" repeated the voice. "What a swindle."

"You needn't pay it if you don't like."

"But then the telegram would not go?"

"Of course it wouldn't."

The clink of silver was heard, dashed down upon the counter. "I can't stop to argue about the charge, so I must pay it," grumbled the voice. "But it's a great shame, young man."

"The charges ain't of my fixing," responded the young man. "Good afternoon, ma'am."

She bustled out again as hurriedly as she had come in, not having seen Mr. St. John, or suspected that the wooden partition had any one behind it. He went to the door, looked after her, and recognized Prance: he thought he had not been mistaken in the voice. She was walking very fast indeed in the direction of Castle Wafer.

"I must see that message, Jones," said Mr. St. John, turning back into the little room.

Mr. Jones hesitated; but there was an air of quiet command in the words--and the speaker was the heir of Castle Wafer. He laid the written message on the desk.

"Mary Prance to Mrs. Darling.

"Please come back as quick as you can. I don't like her symptoms. I am afraid of something that I had better not write down here."

"Is it to go, sir?" asked the clerk.

"Oh yes, it is to go. Thank you. It's all right. I had a reason for wishing to see it."

He walked back to the house; not quickly, as Prance was doing, but slowly and reflectively. Sufficient food for reflection he had, in truth. They had not gone in to dinner; and Georgina Beauclerc, her beautiful grey eyes sparkling with excitement, crossed the lawn to meet him, wearing a blue silk evening dress, and pearls in her hair.

"Oh, Frederick, guess the news! It has come to me only now. I won't tell it you unless you guess it."

He took both her hands in his, and gazed steadfastly into her excited face. The blushes began to rise.

"News--and I am to guess it? Perhaps it is that you are going to be a sober girl."

She laughed, and would have drawn her hands away. But he held them still.

"I can't wait: I must tell you. Papa and mamma are on their way home. They will be at the Rectory tomorrow night."

"How have you heard it?"

"They have had news at the Rectory and sent up to tell me, I am so glad! It seems ages and ages since I saw papa. Only think how I might have been spared the trouble of writing that long letter to mamma today, had I known?"

"I am glad too," he said, his tone changing to seriousness. "We shall get rid of you now."

One hasty glance at his face. What she saw there puzzled her. He really did look as though he meant it.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it's the truth. I shall be glad when you are away from here, safe in the dean's charge again."

There was an earnestness in his tone which caused her large eyes to open.

"You have not been rude to me once this time until now," she pouted. "Sir Isaac would not say that."

"Rude?"

"It is rude to tell me you want to get rid of me. I never said a ruder thing to you than that, in my wildest days."

"I do want it," he answered, laughing. But he laid his hand upon her head as he spoke, and looked fondly at her. Her eyelids fell.

"You know I don't care for you, Georgina."

But the words were spoken as though he did care for her. Georgina ran away from him into the drawing-room. He followed, and found them going in to dinner, Charlotte Carleton leaning on the arm of Sir Isaac.

"What are you going to do with Alnwick, Sir Isaac?"

The question came from Mrs. Carleton, and it may be that it took Sir Isaac somewhat by surprise, after her previous avoidance of the subject. They were at dessert, not on this same day, but on the next, for four-and-twenty hours have gone on.

"In what way do you mean?" Sir Isaac asked, consideration very distinguishable in his tone. But it was called up by the subject alone.

"Shall you ever live at it?"

"I am not sure. I have a place in the North, you know, hitherto held in reserve should I leave Castle Wafer."

"But you would never leave Castle Wafer!"

"As its master, yes, should Frederick marry. It has always been my intention to resign it to him. But I dare say they would have me as their guest for six months of the year."

Her handsome face was bent downwards; her raven hair, with the perfumed white rose in it, was very close to her host.

"Is he likely to marry?"

"Not that I am aware of. I wish he was!"

"Let him take Alnwick as a residence, and remain yourself at Castle Wafer. The idea of your having to quit this beautiful place when you have made it what it is!"

Sir Isaac smiled. "Frederick says as you do, Mrs. Carleton. He protests he will never reign at Castle Wafer so long as I live. It may end in our living here together, two old bachelors; or, rather, an old bachelor and a young one."

"But shall you never marry?" she softly asked. "Why should you not form ties of your own? Oh, Sir Isaac, it is what every one would wish you to do."

Sir Isaac slightly shook his head. Frederick St. John's ears were strained to catch the conversation, although he was giving his attention to Miss Beauclerc.

"Do you know what I should like to do with Alnwick?"--and Sir Isaac's voice dropped to a whisper. "I should like to see you in it."

A streak of crimson crossed her cheek at the words. "I never, never could live again at Alnwick. Oh, Sir Isaac"--and the handsome face was raised pathetically to his--"think of the trouble it brought me! You could not expect me to go back to it."

He answered the look with eyes as pitying as her own.

"Give Alnwick to your brother, Sir Isaac. Remain yourself at Castle Wafer: never think of leaving it."

"You like Castle Wafer?"

"I never was in any place that I liked so much."

"Then you must not run away from it," said Sir Isaac, smiling.

"I don't want to run away from it," she answered, her eyes lifted pleadingly to his. "I have nowhere to run to. It is so hard--so very hard to make a fresh home! And I have so little to make one with. I lost all when I lost Alnwick."

A movement. Mrs. St. John was rising, and Frederick gave his mother a mental blessing as he opened the door. Sir Isaac passed the claret to him as he sat down, and he poured out a glass mechanically, but did not touch it. In the last twenty-four hours his doubts, as to Mrs. Carleton's designs on Sir Isaac, had become certainties, and his spirit was troubled.

"You have been inviting Mrs. Carleton to prolong her stay here, Isaac?"

"I invited her, when she first came, to stay as long as she liked," was Sir Isaac's reply. "I hope she will do so."

"Do you like her?"

"Very much indeed. I liked her the first time I ever saw her. Poor thing! so meek, so gentle, and so unfortunate! she has all my sympathy."

Frederick St. John took up his dessert-knife and balanced it on one of his fingers, supremely unconscious of his actions. He by no means saw his way clear to saying what he should like to say.

"She urges me to give you Alnwick as a residence, Fred."

"She is very generous," returned Fred: and Sir Isaac did not detect the irony of the remark. "I heard her say it would be a sin for you to quit Castle Wafer; or something to that effect. It has been always my own opinion, you know, Isaac."

"We shall see."

"Isaac, I am going to be rather bold, and attack one of your--I had almost said prejudices. You like Charlotte Carleton. I don't like her."

"Not like her!"

"No, I don't. And I am annoyed beyond measure at her staying on here, with no chance, as far as I can see, of her leaving. Annoyed, for--for your sake."

The words evidently surprised Sir Isaac. He turned his keen eyes upon the speaker. Frederick's were not lifted from the balancing knife.

"What do you see in her to dislike?"

"For one thing, I don't think she's sincere. For another----"

Down fell the knife on the dessert-plate, chipping a piece off its edge. The culprit was vexed. Sir Isaac smiled.

"The old action, Fred. Do you remember breaking that beautiful plate of Worcester porcelain in the same way?"

"I do: and how it vexed my mother, for it spoilt the set. They had better not put me a knife and fork; make me go without, as they do the children. I am sure to get playing with them."

"But about Mrs. Carleton? Go on with your catalogue of grievances against her."

When the mind is hovering in the balance, how a word, a tone, will turn it either way! The slight sound of amusement, apparent in Isaac's voice, was a very mockery to his listener; and he went on, hating his task more than before, almost inclined to give it up.

"For another thing, I was going to say, Isaac--I am not sure that she is sane."

"You are not sure of--what?"

"That Charlotte Carleton is quite in her sane senses."

Sir Isaac stared at his brother as though asking whether he was in his.

"Are you jesting, Frederick?"

"No. I am in sober earnest."

"Then perhaps you will tell me what grounds you have for saying this."

And here was Frederick's dilemma. What grounds had he? None. The reasons that seemed weighty enough to his own mind, were as nothing when spoken; and it suddenly struck him that he was not justified in repeating the gossip of a girl as careless as Rose.

"I have seen a strange look in her face more than once," he said; "a wild, awful expression in her eyes, that I don't believe could visit the perfectly sane. Isaac, on my honour I don't speak without believing that I have good reason--and that it lies in my duty to do so."

"I think you speak without grounds, Frederick," said Sir Isaac, gravely. "Many of us look wild enough at times. I have noticed nothing of this."

"She is on her guard before you."

"That is nonsense. Insane people are no more on their guard before one person than another. Did you go to sleep and dream this?"

Frederick winced. He saw that Isaac was laughing at him. "There are other indications," he said.

"What are they?"

Could he answer? Could he tell the doubt, spoken by Georgina--that the lady had been in her room in the night? Could he tell of the meeting with Honour on the stairs? Of the telegram he had surreptitiously read? And if he did, what proofs were they? Georgina might have had nightmare: Mrs. Carleton's horror at sight of Honour was not unnatural: and Prance's telegram need not refer to her mistress. No; it was of no use mentioning these: they might weaken rather than strengthen Isaac's belief.

"Isaac, I am almost sorry that I spoke to you," he resumed. "To my own mind, things are pretty conclusive, but I suppose they would not be so to yours."

"Certainly not, unless you have other grounds than 'looks' to go upon. Why did you mention the matter at all?"

Frederick was silent. The true motive--the fear that Isaac might be drawn into marrying her--he could not reveal. He might have been misconstrued.

"Did you enter on this to prejudice me against her?"

"Well--yes; in a sense I did."

"That you might get her away from Castle Wafer?"

"Yes, also."

"Then all I can say is, I don't understand you: unless, indeed, you are more insane than she is. She may stop here for ever if she likes. Remember, I enjoy the revenues that were once hers. And please don't attempt anything of this sort again, Frederick."

Sir Isaac left the dining-room as he spoke, and Frederick took his hat and went out, his veins tingling with a sense of shame and failure. He could not speak to more effect than he had spoken now; that wretched self-consciousness withheld him: and yet he felt that Isaac ought to be warned. Were he indeed to marry her, and find out afterwards that she was insane, Frederick believed that it would kill him.

Ill at ease, he strode on towards the Rectory, Georgina having exacted a promise from him that he would go and learn at what hour Dr. and Mrs. Beauclerc were expected. They had already arrived. The dean was in his study alone, his genial face bent over sundry letters he was opening. A few threads of silver mingled now with his light auburn hair, and his shoulders were slightly stooping; but his eyes, the very counterpart of his daughter's, were frank and benevolent as ever, and his hand was as cordial.

Losing his own father at an early age, and being much with Dean Beauclerc, it is possible that Frederick St. John had insensibly grown to look upon him almost in the light of a father. Certain it was, that as he shook hands now with the dean, an impulse came over him to confide his trouble to him. None would give him wiser and more honest counsel than this good man. With Frederick St. John to think of a thing was to do it impulsively; and, without an instant's deliberation, he entered on his story. Not, however, mentioning Georgina as in any way connected with it.

The dean listened attentively to its conclusion, and shook his head. "Very slight grounds indeed, my young friend, on which to suspect a woman of insanity."

"I know it," answered Frederick; "there lies my stumbling-block. Were they only a little stronger, I should feel more at liberty to pursue any course of action that might appear advisable."

"Your chief fear is--if I take your meaning--that this lady is making herself too agreeable to Sir Isaac."

"Yes; but pray don't misunderstand me, Dr. Beauclerc," was the eager rejoinder. "Were she a person likely to bring Isaac happiness, I would further the matter to the utmost; I would indeed. Do you not see how difficult it is for me to interfere? Ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would say I did so from interested motives; a fear of losing the inheritance. I declare before Heaven, that it is not so: and that I have only my brother's happiness at heart. He is one of the justest men living, and if he were to marry, I know he would first of all secure me an ample fortune."

"My opinion is that he never will marry," said the dean.

"I don't know. I have the fear upon me; the fear of her. Were he to marry her, and afterwards discover that she was not quite right, I believe it would kill him. You know, sir, his great sensitiveness."

"Just go over again what you have said," returned the dean. "I mean as to Mrs. Carleton's symptoms."

Frederick St. John did so. He related what Rose had told him; he mentioned the wild and excited looks he had himself observed in Mrs. Carleton; he spoke of meeting Honour on the stairs; of the telegram sent by Prance. Somewhat suspicious circumstances, perhaps, when taken together, but each one nothing by itself. "Nevertheless, I believe in them," he concluded. "I believe that she is not sane."

"I wonder if there has ever been insanity in her family?" mused the dean--who by no means saw things with Frederick's eyes. "Let me see--who was she?"

"She was a Miss Norris. Daughter of Norris, of Norris Court. Mrs. Darling."

"Oh, to be sure," interrupted the dean, as recollection came to him. "I knew her father. I was once a curate in that neighbourhood."

Mr. St. John looked up at the high-church dignitary before him. "You once a curate!"

The dean laughed. "We must all begin as curates, Frederick."

The young man laughed also. "You knew Mr. Norris, then?"

"Yes; slightly. I once dined at his house. My church was on the confines of Alnwick parish, not very far from Norris Court. Mr. Norris died just as I was leaving. He died rather suddenly, I think. I know it took the neighbourhood by surprise. And, if I remember rightly, there seemed to be some mystery attaching to his death."

"What did he die of?"

"No one knew. It was in that that the mystery lay. Report said he died of fever, but Mr. Pym, the surgeon who attended him, told me it was not fever; though he did not say what it was."

"Is that Pym of Alnwick?"

"Mr. Pym was in practice then at Alnwick. He may be still, for aught I know."

"He is. I met him twice at Alnwick Hall when I went down to the funerals; George St. John's and poor Benja's. Isaac was too ill to go each time, and I had to represent him. Do you"--he paused a moment in hesitation, and then went on--"think it likely that Mr. Norris died insane? I am sure there is no insanity on Mrs. Darling's side."

"I have no reason for thinking so," replied the dean. "I was in want of a servant at the time, and a man who had lived with Mr. Norris applied to me for the situation. It was the surgeon, Pym, who spoke to his character: Mrs. Norris was ill and could not be seen. I engaged him. He had been the personal attendant of Mr. Norris in his last illness."

"Did he ever say what Mr. Norris's disease was?"

"No. He was very reserved. A good servant, but one of the closest men I ever came across. I once asked him what illness his master had died of, and he said fever. I observed that Mr. Pym had told me it was not fever. He replied he believed the illness had a little puzzled Mr. Pym, but he himself felt sure it was fever of some description; there could be no doubt whatever about it."

"Is he with you now?"

"No, poor fellow, he is dead. My place was too hard for him, for I kept only one man then, and he left me for a lighter one. After that he went back to his late mistress, who had just married Colonel Darling. A little later I heard of his death."

Frederick St. John was paying no attention to this last item of explanation: he had fallen into a train of thought. The dean looked at him.

"Dr. Beauclerc, if any one could throw light upon this subject, it is Pym. I wish you would write and ask him."

"Ask him what?"

"What Mr. Norris really died of. It might have been insanity."

"People don't generally die of insanity."

"But there's no harm in writing. If you have no objection."

"I'll think it over," said the dean.

"And now I must go back," said Frederick, rising. "Will you walk with me, and see Georgina?"

"Ah, Frederick, you know how to tempt me! I would walk further than to Castle Wafer to see her. My only darling: I believe no one in the world knows her real worth."

They went out together. Looking into the drawing-room for a minute first of all, to tell Mrs. Beauclerc. She was there with Miss Denison, a middle-aged lady who had come home with them for a long visit, and who was one of the bêtes noires of Georgina's life.

Georgina was watching: whether for the possible sight of her father, or for the more certain one of his companion--there she stood, half in, half out of the open French window. Frederick stole a march upon her. He made the dean creep round the corner of the house, so that she did not see them until they were close upon her. He watched the meeting; he saw the clinging, heartfelt embrace, the glad tears rising to her eyes: never after that could he doubt the girl's loving nature. Perhaps, with all her lightness, he had not doubted it before.

"And where's mamma. Could she not also come?"

"I left her to entertain Miss Denison."

Georgina gave a scream. "Papa! You have never brought her home!"

"Mamma has done so. She has come for two months, Georgie."

Georgie groaned. "Then I shall remain at Castle Wafer."

"No, you won't," cried Frederick, and then hastened to turn his apparent discourtesy into a laugh. "We wouldn't keep you, Georgina."

"And I could not spare you," said the dean.

They entered the room, Georgina--who so proud as she?--on her father's arm. Sir Isaac, who was playing chess with Mrs. Carleton, rose to welcome him. Mrs. Carleton rose also. She had never seen the Dean of Westerbury, and the introduction took place. Calm, impassive, perfectly self-possessed, she stood; exchanging a few words of courtesy with the dean, her handsome features looking singularly attractive, one of the beautiful crystal chessmen held between her slender fingers. Not a woman in the world could look much less insane than did Charlotte Carleton; and the dean turned his eyes on Frederick, in momentary wonder at that gentleman's hallucination.

Georgina stole up to the master of Castle Wafer.

"You'll let me stay here, won't you, Sir Isaac?"

"You know I will. Let you stay!"

"But you'll ask papa to let me stay?"

"My dear, yes. Does he want to take you away?"

"Of course he will want it. And--do you know what mamma has done? Brought home with her that horrible Miss Denison. I wonder papa let her. The last time she was with us--but that was at Westerbury--there was no peace in the house for her. She was always quarrelling with me, and of course I quarrelled with her again. Nothing that I did was right; and one day she actually got mamma to lock me in my room for two hours, because she said I had been insolent to her. You'll get leave for me to stay, Sir Isaac?"

He gave her a reassuring smile, and sat down to chess again. The dean talked with Mrs. St. John, Georgina flitted incessantly from them to the chess-players, making every one as merry as she was; Frederick alone seemed quiet and abstracted. He sat apart, near the tea-table, a cup before him, as if tea-drinking was his whole business in life.

The evening wore on. When ten o'clock struck, the dean rose, saying he had not supposed it to be so late.

"You will spare Georgina to us a little longer?" said Sir Isaac. They were still at chess, of which it seemed Mrs. Carleton never tired; and he rose as he spoke to the dean.

"Until tomorrow. She must come home then."

"Oh, papa!" broke in the really earnest voice, "do let me stay longer. You know why I wish to--it's because of that Miss Denison."

The dean looked grave.

"Only a few days longer, papa; just a few days. Then I will come home. It will take me all that time to get over the shock."

But there was a merry twinkle in her eye; and the dean smiled. Whilst he was shaking hands with Mrs. Carleton, Georgina turned suddenly to Frederick. "Won't you say a word for me? You once called Miss Denison an old hag yourself."

"It must have been when I was a rude boy," he answered.

"But won't you?"

"No," he said, in a low and unmistakably serious tone. "I would rather you did not stay, Georgina."

While Georgina was recovering from her surprise, she became conscious of some commotion in the room. Turning, she saw a lady in travelling costume, and recognized Mrs. Darling. Her appearance was exciting universal astonishment: Frederick in particular rubbed his eyes to be sure he was not dreaming. How quickly she had answered the telegram!

It happened that the dean, the only one of the party not pressing forward either in surprise or welcome, was close to Mrs. Carleton, and had leisure to note her looks, though indeed chance alone caused his glance to fall upon her in the first instance. Instead of pressing forward, Mrs. Carleton drew back, seemed to stagger; her face turned livid, her eyes were ablaze with a wild, curious light; and one of the costly chessmen fell and was broken in pieces. It almost seemed to have been crushed in her hand. Another had seen it too, Frederick St. John. Was it a habit, then, of hers to be so unpleasantly excited under any surprise? Or were these indeed signs of incipient insanity? If the crystal had broken in her hand and not in the fall, she must possess a strength beyond that of ordinary women. He, Frederick St. John, had just time to see that the dean's gaze was riveted upon her, before the stir became universal, every one talking at once, Mrs. Darling laughing gaily.

She knew she should take them by surprise, she was saying, as she shook hands with one and another; had been enjoying it in anticipation the whole day. From a communication received from her cottage at Alnwick, she found her orders were wanted in some repairs that were being done; so had started quite on a moment's impulse; and--here she was, having determined to take Castle Wafer on her way, and see whether Charlotte was ready to return home. Rose? Oh, Rose was quite well, and staying with some friends in Paris, the Castellas. Darling Charlotte! How well she was looking!

Darling Charlotte had recovered from her emotion, and was herself again,--calm, sweet, impassive Charlotte. After submitting to the embrace of her mother, she turned in contrition to Sir Isaac. Frederick and Georgina were both stooping to gather up the broken crystal.

Would Sir Isaac ever forgive her? That lovely set of chessmen! And how it came to slip out of her hand, she could not imagine: how it came to break on the soft carpet (unless indeed it struck against the foot of the chess-table) she could not tell. In vain Sir Isaac begged her not to think more of so trifling a misfortune: it seemed that she could not cease her excuses.

"Mrs. Carleton! look at your hand. You must have broken the bishop yourself."

The words came from Georgina Beauclerc. The fair white hand had sundry cuts within it, and the red spots oozing from them had caught Georgina's gaze as she rose from the carpet. One angry, evil glance from Mrs. Carleton's eyes at the outspoken young lady, and then she resigned the white hand to Sir Isaac to be bound up.

"Strange, that we rarely can tell how these things happen," she said, with a genial smile. "Miss Beauclerc must have a curious idea of strength, to suppose my fingers could have broken that bishop. Thank you very much, Sir Isaac."

Frederick St. John went out with the dean. "I do hope you will write to Mr. Pym?" he said.

"I intend to," answered the dean.

[CHAPTER XXXIV.]

WALKING OUT TO DINNER

If Mrs. Darling's hurried visit to England was caused by the fact of the repairs in progress at her cottage, being at a standstill, the repairs must be at a standstill yet; for the lady did not go farther than Castle Wafer. On the morning following her arrival, Sir Isaac politely asked whether she would not remain a few days with them before going on; and Mrs. Darling took him at his word and did remain. Georgina also remained, and things seemed to go on very smoothly and quietly, but Mrs. Carleton remained a great deal in her own room; and to Mr. Frederick St. John's eyes her mother's face wore a strangely haggard, anxious look.

"Is Mrs. Carleton well?" he asked her one day.

"Quite well, thank you," responded Mrs. Darling, stooping, as she spoke, to pluck a geranium.

"I have not liked her look at times," continued Frederick, boldly. "I was fearing she was not in--altogether good health."

"She is in excellent health," was the reply, and Mrs. Darling faced the speaker with a look intended to express surprise. "Charlotte was always strong. She and Rose are like myself, blessed with rude health: I cannot say as much for the other two. I want to take Charlotte away with me; but she does not feel inclined to come, and was quite angry when she saw me arrive. She is very happy here."

No more was said, for Mrs. Darling sauntered leisurely away. Frederick St. John had gained nothing by his move.

The dean, who had written to Mr. Pym, received in due course that gentleman's answer. Mr. Norris, of Norris Court, had died mad. The widow, subsequently Mrs. Darling, had hushed the matter up for the sake of her child, and succeeded in keeping it secret. He, Mr. Pym, had never disclosed it to mortal ears; but the high character of the Dean of Westerbury was such that he knew he might safely confide the fact to him. Indeed, from the tenour of the dean's letter, he felt there might be some essential reason for not remaining silent.

"You see," cried Frederick, when the dean showed him the letter, "I was right."

"Nay," dissented the dean. "Right as to your suspicion that madness was in the family; but this does not prove that it has yet attacked Mrs. Carleton."

"I suppose it would not prove it to most minds; it does to mine, in a very great degree. You will at least admit that this renders her a most undesirable wife for Isaac."

"Granted. But, Frederick, my opinion is that Sir Isaac is in just as much danger from her as you are, and no more. Rely upon it he has no idea of marrying."

Frederick was silent. In a sense he agreed with the dean; but he knew how subtle is the constant companionship of a designing and attractive woman; and that the danger was all the greater where that companionship had been previously held aloof from, as in the case of Sir Isaac.

Two or three days passed on, and nothing occurred to disturb the peace even of fanciful Frederick St. John. The old routine of life was observed at Castle Wafer, varied with visits to the Rectory, or with the Rectory's visits back again. But for the suspicion he was making so great a trouble of, Mr. St. John would have felt supremely happy. A strangely bright feeling was stealing over him; a feeling whose source he did not question or analyze. The influence of Georgina was quietly making its way in his heart; perhaps, unconsciously to himself, it had ever in a degree lain there.

Mrs. Darling sat in her room, writing letters. Mrs. Carleton was with her, looking from the window, the folds of her silver-grey brocade rustling with every movement. She wore very slight mourning now.

"Charlotte, my dear child," suddenly cried Mrs. Darling, "I am writing to the cottage. Let me once again ask you when you will be ready to go with me?"

"Never--to Alnwick. When I left the cottage to become George St. John's wife, I left it, as a residence, for ever."

"Where will you go? Will you go into Berkshire?--will you go to London?--to Brighton?--to Paris? Only say where--I don't wish to force you to Alnwick."

"Mamma, I beg you not to worry me on this point. I am very comfortable at Castle Wafer, and you need not try to force me away from it. It is lost labour."

Mrs. Darling made no reply. It would have been useless. All her life she had found it "lost labour" to endeavour to force Charlotte to do anything against her will; and sometimes she felt the yoke upon her was a very heavy one. She bent over her writing again in silence. Presently Charlotte spoke, abruptly:

"How long is that girl going to remain here?" Mrs. Darling's train of thought just then was roaming to many things, pleasant or unpleasant, and she thought "that girl" must mean Honour Tritton. Charlotte's eyes were ablaze with light at the mistake; and Mrs. Darling could have bitten her tongue out for her incaution in mentioning the name. What she next said, did not mend it.

"Charlotte, my darling, I really beg your pardon. I'm sure I don't know how I came to think of her, unless it was that I was talking to her this morning. You----"

"Talking to her!" came the imperative interruption. "I should like to know, mamma, what you can have to say to her. If every one had their deserts, Honour Tritton would be--would be---- What did she presume to say of me?"

"My dear Charlotte!" cried the unfortunate mother, half aghast at the tone in which the last sentence was spoken, "she did not presume to speak of you at all. It was only a casual meeting in one of the lower passages. She just dropped a curtsey, and asked how I was: that was all."

"She presumed to put herself in my way the other day, that woman; I know that," scornfully returned Mrs. Carleton. "But that it might be said I made too much of a trifle utterly beneath me, I should ask Sir Isaac to banish her from Castle Wafer."

"Oh, Charlotte! What, because she--she happened to meet you?"

"No. For the misery she wrought in the years gone by. I wonder what brought her here--why she came?"

Mrs. Darling had heard of the meeting with Honour on the stairs, and knew as much of the scene as though she had been present. She passed to another topic.

"Then it was of Miss Beauclerc you spoke, Charlotte?"

"It was of Miss Beauclerc. I want to know what she stops here for."

The low, impressive whisper in which this was spoken, astonished Mrs. Darling. What had Charlotte got in her head now?

"My dear, it cannot matter to you whether she stays here or whether she goes home."

"But it does matter: it matters very much. She is staying as a spy upon me."

"A spy? Charlotte!"

"She is. She is doing what she can to turn Sir Isaac against me."

"Oh, Charlotte! Indeed you are mistaken. I am quite sure she is doing nothing of the sort."

"I tell you yes. Look there!"

Mrs. Darling rose in obedience, and glanced from the window in the direction in which Charlotte had pointed. Georgina Beauclerc, in her flowing dinner-dress of a clear white muslin, was marching about with Sir Isaac, both her hands clasped upon his arm, her pretty head and its silken hair almost touching his face as she talked to him. That Sir Isaac was bending down to the fair head, a great deal of tender love in his face, might be discerned even at this distance.

"He promised to ride out with me this afternoon; he was going on his pony, and I was to try Mr. St. John's grey horse, and she came and took him from me. He gave me up for her with scarcely a word of apology, and they have been away together for hours somewhere on foot. She cannot let him rest. The moment she is dressed for dinner, you see, she lures him to her side again. And you say she is not plotting against me?"

What could Mrs. Darling reply? The idea had taken possession of Charlotte, and she knew that no earthly argument would turn it by so much as a hair's-breadth. The shadow of a trouble that she should not have strength to combat fell upon her; and as Charlotte abruptly left the room, she took a letter from her pocket and read it with a gleam of thankfulness, for it told of the speedy arrival of one who might be of use.

Mrs. Carleton descended, glancing to the left and right of the broad staircase, into all its angles, over the gilded balustrades down on the inner hall, as had been her custom since that encounter with Honour. Not with open look, but with stealthy glance, as if she dreaded meeting the woman again. She went into the drawing-room, and stood gazing through the open window with covert glances, partially shielding herself behind the blue satin curtains. Georgina was on the terrace with Sir Isaac, and on them her regard was fixed. A gaze, evil, bitter, menacing. Her eyes shone with a lurid light, her lips were pale, and her hands were contracted as with irrepressible anger. In the midst of these unwholesome signs, as if instinct whispered to her that she was not alone, she turned and saw, quietly seated at a table near, and as quietly regarding her, Frederick St. John.

She came up to him at once, her brow smoothed to its ordinary impassiveness.

"What a warm afternoon it has been, Mr. St. John!"

"Very warm."

"You are ready for dinner early," she said, in allusion to his notably late appearance for that meal; often coming in after they had sat down to table.

"I don't dine at home today. I am going with Miss Beauclerc to the Rectory."

"And Sir Isaac also?" she quickly asked.

"I think not."

Sir Isaac and Georgina approached the window. They, with Frederick, had walked to the Rectory that afternoon, and the dean asked them to come in to dinner. It was very dull, he said, with only Miss Denison, who generally contrived to act as a wet blanket. So it was arranged that Georgina and Frederick should go; but Sir Isaac could not promise. It appeared that Georgina was now urging him to accompany them. Her voice was heard in the room.

"It is very uncharitable of you, Sir Isaac. You know what papa said it was for him, with that statue of a woman there. If you were shut up in a house with a female Hottentot, and you asked papa to come in as a relief, he would not think of refusing."

"But I can't go," returned Sir Isaac, in laughing tones. "I told the dean that Mrs. St. John was not well enough to come down."

"And you will let me walk all that way without you! It's not kind, Sir Isaac. Suppose I get run away with? There may be kidnappers in the shrubbery."

"You will have a more efficient protector with you than I could make; one young and powerful--I am old and weak."

"Never old to me--never old to me. Oh, I wish you would come!"

"I wish I could, Georgina; you know that when you leave me, half my sunshine goes also. But I must head the table at home, in the absence of Mrs. St. John: I cannot leave my visitors."

"Tiresome people!" apostrophized Georgina, in allusion to the lady visitors. "I know you would rather be with us. I shall tell papa that if he is fixed with Miss Denison, you are fixed with Mrs. Carleton. I don't see how you would get through your days with her just now, if it were not for me."

She stepped into the room, a saucy expression on her charming face; a loving smile on Sir Isaac's. Mrs. Carleton was in time to catch a glimpse of each as she swiftly glided away in the distance; and neither had the remotest suspicion that their conversation had been overheard.

Frederick St. John rose. "I think we shall be late, Georgina."

"Shall we! I shall say it was your fault," cried the happy girl, as she caught up her white mantle and straw hat from a chair. "I'm ready now."

"Won't you put your cloak on?"

"No. I am only taking it to come back in tonight. You may carry it for me."

She placed it on his arm; and with her face shaded only by her little dainty parasol, they went out. Mrs. Carleton was at one of the other windows watching the departure.

"Do you know the time, Georgina?" he asked.

"Oh--more than five, I suppose."

He held his watch towards her. It wanted only twenty-five minutes to six. "Of course you can say it is my fault if you like; but Mrs. Beauclerc will be excessively angry with both of us."

"Not as angry as Miss Denison will be," returned Georgina, laughingly. "Fanciful old creature! saying she gets indigestion if she dines later than half-past five. If I were papa, I should let her dine alone, and order the regular dinner at seven. See how quickly she'd come to her senses."

"If you were your papa you'd do just as he does" cried Frederick. "And when you have a house of your own, Georgina, you will be just as courteous as he is."

"Shall I? Not to Miss Denison. But I should take care not to have disagreeable people staying with me. I wouldn't have Mrs. Carleton, for instance."

"Do you think Mrs. Carleton disagreeable?" he asked. "I have heard you say you liked her."

"So I did at first. I pitied her. But she gets very disagreeable. She looks at me sometimes as if she would like to kill me, and--see what she did yesterday."

Georgina extended her wrist towards her companion. There was a blue mark upon it, as from pressure.

"How did she do this!" he exclaimed, examining the wrist.

"Not purposely, of course; that is, not intending to hurt me, I differed from her: it was about going out with Sir Isaac. She said it was too hot for me, and I said the hotter the pleasanter; and she caught me by the wrist as I was running away. I cried out with the pain; indeed it was very sharp; and Sir Isaac heard it outside and looked back. She laughed then, and so did I, and I ran away. This morning I saw that my wrist had turned blue."

"Did you tell Isaac of this?"

"I don't remember. Stay, though--I think I told him Mrs. Carleton had been preaching morality to me, as connected with sunstrokes and freckles," continued the careless girl "Please loose my hand, Mr. St. John."

He released her hand, saying nothing. Georgina floated on by his side, her blue ribbons and her fair hair flashing in the setting sun as they passed through the shrubbery.

"I think she must be frequently out of temper," continued Georgina, alluding still to Mrs. Carleton. "Did you see her as we passed the window just now? She looked so cross at me."

"I presume she thinks she has cause for it," observed Mr. St. John.

"What cause?"

"She is jealous of you."

"Jealous of me?"

"Of you and Sir Isaac."

Georgina's grey eyes opened to their utmost width as she stared at the speaker.

"Jealous of me and Sir Isaac? Why, what could put such an idea into her stupid head? How could she be jealous of me, in relation to Sir Isaac? She might as well be jealous of papa."

"I suppose she thinks that she, as chief guest, ought to receive more of the host's attention than any one else," he said, not caring to be more explanatory. "And therefore she does not like your monopolizing Isaac."

"Oh!" cried Georgina, turning up her pretty nose. "I declare I thought you meant it in another light. I'll take up Sir Isaac's attention all tomorrow, just to tease her."

He made no reply. He was thinking. It had not been his fault that Georgina's stay at Castle Wafer was prolonged; but he had seen no feasible way of preventing it. And yet there was always an undercurrent in his heart--a wish that she was away from it, beyond the risk of any possible harm.

"Please put the mantle over my shoulders, Mr. St. John."

"Ah, you are getting cold! You should have put it on at first."

"Getting cold this warm afternoon! Indeed no. But in one minute we shall be in the Rectory grounds, liable to meet mamma or her charming guest. They would sing a duet all dinner-time at my walking here in nothing but my dinner-dress. Miss Denison comes out before dinner, and creeps round the paths for half-an-hour. She calls it 'taking her constitutional.' Thank you; she can't find fault now."

Mrs. Beauclerc was a fretful lady of forty-five; Miss Denison was a fretful lady of somewhat more: and Georgina was greeted with a shower of reproaches, for having kept dinner waiting. She laid the blame on Mr. St. John; and Miss Denison looked daggers at him to her heart's content.

"I could not make him believe you were dining at the gothic hour of half-past five," cried the imperturbable girl. "The more I told him to hasten the less he did so. And, mamma, Mrs. St. John says will we all go to Castle Wafer for the evening."

She stole a glance at him. He was standing calm, upright; a half-tender, half-reproving look cast upon her for her nonsense. But he contradicted nothing.

The dean and Mr. St. John were sitting alone after dinner, when a servant came in and said a gentleman was asking if he could see Dr. Beauclerc. The dean inquired who it was, but the servant did not know: when he requested the name, the gentleman said he would tell it himself to the doctor.

"You can show him in here," said the dean, who was one of the most accessible men living.

The servant retired, and ushered in a little grey-haired man in spectacles. The dean did not recognize him: Frederick St. John did, and with some astonishment. It was Mr. Pym of Alnwick.

He explained to the dean that a little matter of business had brought him into the neighbourhood, and he had taken the opportunity (following on the slight correspondence which had just taken place between them) to call on Dr. Beauclerc. Dr. Beauclerc--who was not addressed as "Mr. Dean" out of his cathedral city as much as he was in it--inquired how long he had been in the neighbourhood, and found he had only just arrived by the evening train,--had come straight to the Rectory from the station.

A suspicion crossed the dean's mind, and he spoke in accordance with it. "Did Mr. Pym come from Alnwick on purpose to see him?"

"No," said the little surgeon, taking the glass of wine the dean passed to him, but declining other refreshment. "I have been summoned to the neighbourhood of Lexington to see a patient; and as I was on the spot, I thought I would call upon you, Dr. Beauclerc. My chief motive in doing so," he added, after a brief pause, "was to inquire whether you had any particular reason for asking me those questions."

The dean looked at Frederick St. John, as much as to say, Shall we, or shall we not confide in this medical man?

"I do not inquire from motives of idle curiosity, Dr. Beauclerc," resumed the surgeon, marking the dean's hesitation. "Believe me, I have an urgent reason for wishing to know."

"Better tell him everything," cried Frederick, who had read the dean's look, and was vehement in his earnestness. "I am sure Mr. Pym may be trusted; and perhaps he can help us with his advice."

"Very well," said the dean. "But you know, Frederick, the suspicion is more yours than mine."

"Yes, yes; I take it all upon myself," was the young man's impatient answer, so fearful was he of losing this new ally. "Mr. Pym, you have known Mrs. Carleton St. John all her life, have you not? She was Charlotte Norris."

"Yes, it may be said that I have known her all her life. I brought her into the world."

"Well, a disagreeable suspicion has recently come upon us in regard to her--upon me, that is. An awful suspicion; one that I do not like to mention."

"What is it?" cried the surgeon.

"I fear that she is showing symptoms of insanity."

Frederick St. John looked at Mr. Pym as he spoke, expecting a start of surprise. Far from evincing any, that gentleman quietly raised his wine to his lips, sipped it, and put the glass down again.

"Ah," said he. "Well?"

Then Mr. St. John poured forth his tale. He who was usually almost coldly impassive, who had every tone of his voice, every pulse of his veins under control, seemed this evening to have become all impulse and excitement. But in telling his story, he grew gradually calm and cool.

Mr. Pym listened in silence. At the conclusion of the story he waited a minute or two, apparently expecting to hear more, but the narrator had ceased. He spoke then.

"You are sure about that telegram--that it was Prance who sent it?"

"Quite sure. There can be no mistake about that."

"A cautious woman," observed the surgeon. "She mentioned no name. You see it might have applied to any one as much as to Mrs. Carleton."

"The very remark I made," interposed the dean, and it was the first word he had spoken. "I tell Mr. St. John that the symptoms and facts he thinks so much of are very slight."

"Too slight to pronounce any one insane upon," said the doctor. "Will you be so good as tell me, Mr. St. John, what first gave rise to suspicion in your mind? It is a rare thing, however eccentric our friends' actions may be, for us to take up the notion that they are insane."

"What first gave rise to the suspicion in my mind?" repeated Frederick. "Why, I don't suppose I ever should have thought of it but for--but I forgot to tell you that," he broke off, suddenly remembering that he had omitted to mention what Rose Darling had told him at Belport.

He related it now. The assertions of the nurse Brayford that Mrs. Carleton was mad; her terror at the sight of the lighted lanterns in the Flemish town on St. Martin's Eve. Still Mr. Pym said nothing: he only took out a note-book and entered something in it.

"Can you not help us, Mr. Pym? Do you not think she must be insane?"

"I cannot say that. But I may tell you that I have always feared it for her."

"Her father died mad, you wrote word to the dean."

"He died raving mad. You have confided in me, and I see no reason why I should not tell you all I know--premising, of course, that it must not be repeated. His madness, as I gathered at the time, was hereditary; but he had been (unlike his daughter) perfectly well all his life, betraying no symptoms of it. I was sent for in haste one night to Norris Court. I was only a young man then--thirty, perhaps; I'm turned sixty now. My predecessor and late partner, Mr. Jevons, had been the usual attendant there, but he had retired from business, and was very infirm. I thought I was wanted for Mrs. Norris, whom I was to attend in her approaching confinement; but when I reached the Court, I found what it was. Mr. Norris had suddenly become mad; utterly, unmistakably mad; and Mrs. Norris, poor thing, was nearly as much so with terror. He had always been of a remarkably jealous disposition; some slight incident had caused him to become that day jealous of his wife, without, I am certain, the least foundation, and after an awful scene, he attempted her life with his razor. In her endeavour to escape from him, she dashed her hand through a mirror, whether accidentally or purposely she could not afterwards remember. Never shall I forget her dismay and terror when I reached the Court. Her husband was tolerably quiet then; exhausted, no doubt, from violence; and his own man, James, was keeping guard over him. That night we had to put him into a strait-waistcoat. Mrs. Norris, poor young lady--and she was not twenty then--cried most bitterly as she told me the tale of her husband's jealousy. She could not imagine what had given rise to it. She had only received some gentleman, a friend of theirs who had often called, and had sat and talked with him in the drawing-room, as she would with any other visitor; but the jealousy, as I explained to her, preceded the attack of madness. In three or four days the child Charlotte was born. I took the baby in to Mr. Norris, thinking it might possibly have a soothing effect upon him. It had just the contrary--though it is unnecessary to recall minor particulars now. He had seemed better that day, quite collected, and his servant had removed the strait-waistcoat. An accession of violence came on at sight of the child; he sprang out of bed and attempted to seize it; I put the baby down under the bed, while I helped James to overpower his master; but it was the hardest struggle I had ever been engaged in. Mr. Norris never was calm afterwards, and died in a few days, raving mad."

"But," interrupted the dean, "how was it possible to keep this state of things from transpiring in the house? The domestics understood, I believe, that their master died of fever."

"True, Dr. Beauclerc. Fortunately the room to which Mr. Norris was taken was shut in by other surrounding apartments, and no sound penetrated beyond it. The servants were kept away by a hint of infection; a confidential man from an asylum was had in to assist James and take turn in watching--the servants supposing him to be merely a sick-nurse. Poor Mrs. Norris entreated for her child's sake that the nature of its father's malady might be suppressed, if possible; and the secret was kept. Whether it was well in the long-run that it should be so kept, I have often asked myself."

Mr. Pym paused in thought. Frederick St. John interrupted it.

"You say this madness was hereditary?"

"Mr. Jevons managed to get to the Court when he found what had happened. It appeared that some near relatives of Mr. Norris--two, I think--had died abroad, insane. Mr. Norris was aware of this, and had been fond of talking of it to Mr. Jevons: the latter thought he had feared the malady for himself. He had used to say that he should never marry; and that resolution Mr. Jevons emphatically endorsed. However, he did marry, and, of course, Mr. Jevons had no power to prevent it. These particulars I learned of Mr. Jevons as I was driving him to the Court. Mrs. Norris begged to be made acquainted with all details; and after her husband's death Mr. Jevons disclosed them to her, suppressing nothing. What a changed woman she was from that time! and I believe would then have been thankful had her baby died. 'It must be my care to prevent its marrying, should it live to grow up,' she said to Mr. Jevons in my presence; and ten times over during that one interview she begged him to tell her whether he thought the child would inherit the fatal disease."

"But the child did marry," interrupted the dean. "Married Mr. Carleton St. John."

"Yes. I believe Mrs. Darling did try to prevent it, but it was of no use. Whilst she concealed the reason, arguments could not fail to prove powerless. It might have been better--I don't know--had she allowed her daughter to become acquainted with the truth. My opinion is, that Charlotte has more than once, even before her marriage, been on the verge of insanity. In her attacks of temper the violence displayed was very great for a person perfectly sane."

"Did Mrs. Darling ever attempt to excuse this violence to you?"

"Mrs. Darling has never spoken to me on the subject at all since her first husband's death," replied Mr. Pym. "She has ignored it. But for an expression at times in her face, I might suppose she fancied that all recollection of the tragedy had faded from my mind. When I heard that George St. John was about to marry Miss Norris, I called on Mrs. Darling, and in the course of conversation I said, incidentally, as it were, 'Will this marriage be for your daughter's benefit, think you?' and she seemed offended, and said, Of course it would--what did I mean?"

"Could you not"--Frederick St. John hesitated as he spoke--"have whispered a word of warning to Mr. George St. John?"

"I suppose not. The thought crossed me, but I could not see that I was justified in carrying it out. Had Mrs. Darling met me in a different manner, I might have ventured. I don't think it would have done any good, though. George St. John was in love with Miss Norris, or fancied himself so; and would most likely have married her in spite of caution."

"In her life, subsequently to her marriage, were there at any time indications of insanity?"

"I feel tempted to say there were, though I could not bear witness to it in a court of law," was the reply of Mr. Pym. "One thing is indisputable--that she inherited her father's jealousy of disposition. I don't know what it might have been in him; but in her it was in excess so great as to be in itself a species of madness. She was not, that I ever heard, jealous of her husband; it displayed itself in her jealous love for her child. Until he was born, I don't think she had one of those paroxysms of violence that those about her called 'temper.' George St. John could not understand them. These fits of passion, coupled with the fierce jealousy that was beyond all reason, all parallel in my experience, were very like madness."

There was a pause. Frederick St. John broke it with a question.

"Did you suspect--I mean, was there any cause to suspect--that she had a hand in the little boy's death--Benja's?"

"I did suspect it. That is, I doubted whether it might not be so," said Mr. Pym, in low tones. "There was an ugly point in the matter that I have never liked--that of the doors being fastened. But I am bound to say there was no proof against her. Still I could not get rid of my doubts, and I think her mother entertained them also."

"Mrs. Darling!"

"I think so. We both caught each other in the act of trying whether the bolt would slip when the door closed, in the manner asserted. You see, when a suspicion of insanity attaches to a man or woman, we are prone to imagine things that we should never think of doing under ordinary circumstances."

"Very true," emphatically assented the dean.

"The most bitter person upon the tragedy was Honour; it was only natural she should be so; but even she did not suspect Mrs. Carleton. She spoke against her in her ravings, but ravings go for nothing. If Honour suspected any one, it was Prance rather than Mrs. Carleton."

"Prance!" echoed Mr. St. John.

"She told some tale, at the time, of having seen Prance hiding in a niche of the corridor, opposite the nursery door. I did not think much of it, from the state of confusion in which Honour must then have been; and Prance denied it in toto: said she had never been there."

"Then you cannot give me any help?" said Frederick St. John, in tones of disappointment. "You are unable to bear out my suspicions of her present madness?"

"How can I bear them out?" asked Mr. Pym. "I have not seen her."

Frederick drummed for a minute on the table. "Don't you think it strange that Prance should telegraph for Mrs. Darling in the manner she did, and that Mrs. Darling should hasten to respond to it--on the wings of the wind, as one may say--and stay on at Castle Wafer?"

"I do," was the surgeon's reply: "assuming that the message related to Mrs. Carleton, of which I suppose there can be no doubt. Mrs. Carleton is not ill in body; therefore it must have had reference to her mind."

"I wish you could see her!" impulsively spoke Frederick, "and watch her as I have done."

"I intend to see her," said Mr. Pym. "I thought of calling at once on Mrs. Darling; now, as I leave you."

"Do so," cried Frederick. "Contrive to remain a few days at Castle Wafer. You can say that you are my guest. Stay; I'll give you the invitation in a careless sort of way before them all tonight, and you can accept it."

"We will see about that," said the surgeon, rising. "I had better be going, if Dr. Beauclerc will excuse me, or it may look late to call. Perhaps you will direct me the nearest way to Castle Wafer."

"I will go with you," said Mr. St. John. "The nearest way is through the shrubberies. We shall be there in five minutes."

They went out together, the dean saying he would follow with the ladies, as they were all to spend the evening at Castle Wafer. But when the dean reached the drawing-room he found they had already gone, and he did not hurry himself.

It was a lovely moonlight night, clear and bright, and Mr. St. John and the surgeon commenced their walk, talking eagerly. Mr. St. John told him, what he had not liked to mention before the dean--Mrs. Carleton's jealousy of Miss Beauclerc; the occasional wildness of her eyes when she looked at her, and the little adventure in Georgina's chamber at midnight. "It is an awful responsibility that rests upon us," he remarked. "I feel it so, Mr. Pym, now that I have heard your story tonight. If her father went mad from jealousy, and attempted the life of his wife, Mrs. Carleton may be attempting some violence to Miss Beauclerc."

"Miss Beauclerc is young and good-looking, I suppose."

"Both; and her manners are perfectly charming. She is just the girl that would be obnoxious to a rival."

"It is all fancy, I presume, on Mrs. Carleton's part. There is nothing between Miss Beauclerc and Sir Isaac?"

Frederick St. John broke into a laugh. "Sir Isaac loves her as he would a child of his own; and she venerates him as a father. There is no other sort of love between them, Mr. Pym."

Mr. Pym took a side glance at the speaker. Something in the tone had struck him that some one else might be a lover of Miss Beauclerc's, if Sir Isaac was not.

"Even allowing that Mrs. Carleton has been sane hitherto, and my suspicion a myth, it would never do for her to marry Sir Isaac," resumed Frederick. "You would say so if you knew my brother and his extreme sensitiveness. The very thought of his wife being liable to insanity would be to him perfectly horrible."

"It would be to most people," said the doctor.

"I think he must be told now. I have abstained from speaking out hitherto, from a fear that my motives might be misconstrued. My brother, a confirmed old bachelor, has brought me up to consider myself his heir; and it would look as though I were swayed by self-interest."

"I understand," said the surgeon. "But he must be saved from Mrs. Carleton."

"I cannot bring myself to think that he is in real danger; I believe still that he has no thought of marrying, and never will have. But Mrs. Carleton is undeniably attractive, and stranger things have been known."

"The better plan would be to lay the whole case before Sir Isaac. It need not be yourself. I should suggest Dr. Beauclerc. And then----"

The surgeon ceased, arrested by the warning hand of Frederick. They had turned into the dark labyrinth of a place where the artificial rocks rose on the confines of the Rectory grounds. Georgina Beauclerc was walking very deliberately towards them. Not at her did Frederick lift his hand; but at a swift, dark figure, who was following her silently as a shadow, stealthily as an omen of evil. Frederick St. John sprang forward and clasped Georgina in his arms.

The dark figure turned suddenly and vanished; but not before its glaring eyes and its white teeth had been seen by the unwelcome intruder. He recognized Mrs. Carleton, her black lace shawl thrown over her head.

"Well, I'm sure!" exclaimed Georgina.

It all passed in an instant. Georgina had heard nothing, seen nothing; and she felt inclined to resent Mr. St. John's extraordinary movement, when the first surprise was over. He held her for a moment against his beating heart; beating more perceptibly than usual just then.

"What did you do that for? Were you going to smother me?"

"I did it to shield you from harm, my darling," he whispered, unconscious, perhaps, that he used the endearing term. Rarely had Frederick St. John been less himself than he was at that moment. Miss Beauclerc looked at him in surprise; in the midst of her bounding pulses, her glowing blushes, she saw that something had disturbed his equanimity.

"What are you doing out here alone?"

"You need not be cross"--and indeed his sharp quick question had sounded so. "As if I could not take a stroll by moonlight if I like! Perhaps you are afraid of the moon, as mamma is."

"But what were you doing? Had you come from Castle Wafer? You must not go out at night alone, Georgina."

"Oh indeed; who says so?" she returned, with wilful impertinence; but it was all put on to hide the ecstatic rapture his one word had brought to her. "If you must know, mamma and Miss Denison kept up such a chorus of abuse of me as we went to Castle Wafer, that I would not go on with them. I came slowly back to meet you and papa."

He had drawn her arm within his own, and was leading her back to the Rectory. She could hardly keep up with him.

"Where are you hurrying me to?"

"To the dean. He will take care of you to Castle Wafer."

It may be that she thought some one else might have taken care of her. But she said nothing. Just before they reached the Rectory door, Mr. St. John stopped under the shade of the laurels.

"Georgina, I must say a serious word to you. Put away nonsense for a minute, and hear me. I think I have saved you from a great danger; Will you make me a promise in return?"

"From a great danger!" she repeated, the words rendering her as serious as he was. "What danger? What can you mean?"

"I cannot tell precisely what danger, neither can I say more particularly what I mean. Nevertheless I think I am right. It is not good for you to be about alone just now, whether before nightfall or after it. You must give me your promise not to be so."

"What is there to harm me?" she whispered, involuntarily clinging more closely to his arm.

"Leave that with me for the present. Only trust me, and do as I say. Will you promise?"

"Yes, if there is a necessity for it. I promise you."

Her earnest face was raised in the moonlight. She had never seen him so solemn as now. He bent his head.

"Will you seal the compact, Georgina?"

Instinct, and the grave tender tone, told her what he meant. Her eyes filled with tears; but she did not draw her face away, and he left a kiss upon her lips.

"Mind, Georgina, that's as binding as an oath," he said, as he walked on. "Take care that you strictly keep your promise. There is urgent necessity why you should do so. Sometime I may tell you why, if you are good. I may be telling you all sorts of things besides."

Her face was bent to conceal its hot blushes. Heaven seemed suddenly to have opened for Georgina Beauclerc.

"Halloa!" cried the dean, as he met them in the hall. "I thought you had gone on with your mamma, Georgina."

"She came back to walk with you, sir," said Mr. St. John, only waiting to speak the words and then hastening away again.

Mr. Pym was standing near the rocks as he got up to him. "Where did you hide yourself?" cried Frederick. "You seemed to vanish into air. I could see you nowhere."

"I slipped behind here," answered the surgeon, indicating the rocks. "Was not one of those ladies Mrs. Carleton?"

"Yes."

"Well, I thought it might be as well for her not to see me here. I wish to call at Castle Wafer by accident, you understand."

Frederick St. John nodded. "Could you see her teeth and her glistening eyes? She was stealthily following Miss Beauclerc. For what purpose? I am thankful we were here."

"Where is Miss Beauclerc now?"

"She is coming on with the dean. I have cautioned her not to go out alone. Mr. Pym, what is to be done? This state of things cannot be allowed to go on. I call upon you, as a good and true man, to aid us, if it be in your power."

Mr. Pym made no reply. He walked on in his favourite attitude, his hands clasped behind his back, just as he was walking in that sorrowful chamber, the evening you first beheld him; and his face wore, to Mr. St. John's thinking, a strangely troubled look in the moonlight.

[CHAPTER XXXV.]

ON THE TERRACE

Mr. Pym went to the house alone. Frederick St. John met him in the hall as if by accident, and took him at once into the dining-room. Any suspicion that they had met before at the Rectory and come away from it together, was as far from the minds of the assembled company, as that they had both dropped from the clouds.

Mrs. St. John, who was better and had come down since dinner, Mrs. Beauclerc, Mrs. Carleton, and Sir Isaac, had sat down to whist. Mrs. Darling and Miss Denison were talking to each other at the centre table; Miss Denison abusing Georgina as the wildest girl in Christendom, Mrs. Darling protesting that she could not be half so wild as her own daughter Rose. Mrs. Darling was all wonder and astonishment when Mr. Pym came in. What could have brought him to Lexington?--how very kind of him to call and see her. And it was she who took him up to introduce him to Sir Isaac.

One moment's recoil, one startled look at the face, and Mrs. Carleton held out her hand to the little surgeon, and was her own calm and gracious self. Seated at whist there, opposite to Sir Isaac, her voice low and sweet, her manner so gentle and collected, it would never have entered into any one's mind to imagine that she had been gliding about stealthily in the moonlight like a ghost, or a female poacher on forbidden ground: and perhaps the surgeon might have been excused his momentary doubt whether it was really Mrs. Carleton that they had seen.

"How well you are looking!" he exclaimed, as he shook hands with her.

And it was no hollow compliment. The woman he saw before him now, radiant in beauty, was no more like the distressing shadow he had visited at Ypres, than he himself was like a lamp-post. Mrs. Carleton laughed. Yes, she said, she was quite well now.

Mr. Pym begged he might not interrupt the game, and drew away. Close upon that, the dean and his daughter came in, and then came tea. Ere the surgeon had well swallowed his, he was pacing the terrace outside with Mrs. Darling, no one paying attention to them.

"You see I have obeyed your summons, Mrs. Darling," he began; "have called at Castle Wafer by accident, as you desired. What is the business that you wish to consult me upon?"

Mrs. Darling had caught up her daughter's black lace shawl as she left the room, and put it over her head; just as Charlotte had so recently worn it upon hers. She pulled it tightly round her silk gown as she answered--

"I wish to speak to you about my daughter: I fear she is ill."

"In body, or in mind?"

A moment's struggle with herself ere she should answer. But no; even now, although she had summoned the surgeon, at a great cost and trouble, to her aid, she could not bring her lips to admit a hint of the fatal malady.

"In mind!" she echoed, rather indignantly. "I don't know what you mean, Mr. Pym. What should be wrong with Mrs. Carleton's mind?"

"As you please," he said, with indifference. "I can go back tonight if I am not wanted."

They had come to the end of the gravel walk, and Mrs. Darling stood still, apparently contemplating the lovely prospect to be seen from Castle Wafer. How anxious looked her face in the moonlight; but for those betraying beams the surgeon might not have read the struggle that was going on within her breast.

"Why should you think anything was wrong with her mind?" she again asked, but this time the tones were of pain, not of resentment.

"Mrs. Darling, it may be as well that we should understand each other," said he. "I did not come here to be trifled with. Either let there be confidence between us, or let me go back whence I came. It may facilitate matters if I tell you I have cause to suspect your daughter's mind to be at present not altogether in a healthy state. If I do go back, I fear it will be my duty to intimate as much beforehand to Sir Isaac St. John."

She looked perfectly aghast. "What do you mean, Mr. Pym?"

"I mean just what I say, and no more. Oh, Mrs. Darling, what nonsense this is--you and I to play at bo-peep with each other! We have been doing it all the years of your daughter's life. You cannot forget how much I know of the past: do you think I have drowned my memory in a draught of Lethe's waters? Surely if there is one man on earth whom you might consult confidentially, it is myself. I know as much as you know."

Mrs. Darling burst into tears, and sobbed for some minutes. "I shall be better now," she said; "it will do me good. Heaven alone knows what the tension has been."

"And now just tell me the whole, from beginning to end," said Mr. Pym, in a more kindly tone, "you ought to have done it years ago. You may be sure I will do what I can for the best: and there may be safety in counsel."

Now that the ice was broken, she entered pretty freely into details, and soon experienced that relief, and it may also be said that satisfaction in talking, which this confidential disclosure of some long-secret trouble is sure to bring. She told Mr. Pym how, ever since Benja's death, she had had her doubts of Charlotte's perfect sanity: and she freely confessed that her hasty return to Castle Wafer was caused by a telegraphic message from Prance, who was growing alarmed at her mistress's symptoms.

"What symptoms were they?" inquired the doctor.

"I don't know that I can enumerate them to you; they were little odds and ends of things that Prance has noticed. Not much, taken separately, but curious in the aggregate. Of course the message did not contain them: I have learnt them since I arrived. One thing I disliked more than all the rest--Prance awoke one night and found her mistress was out of the room. She was hastening away in search of her, and saw her coming out of Miss Beauclerc's chamber. Now, for some reason or other, Charlotte has taken a prejudice against Miss Beauclerc----."

"A moment, Mrs. Darling. If I am to help you with advice, you must speak without disguise. Do not say 'for some reason or other;' tell the reason, if you know it."

Another struggle with herself: must she confess? Mrs. Darling clasped her hands in pain.

"Oh, how cruel it is to have to say these things! And of Charlotte, who has always been so reticent, so honourable, whatever her other failings. There! let me speak out and have done with it. I believe she is jealous of Miss Beauclerc: of Miss Beauclerc and of Sir Isaac St. John."

"Your daughter would like to remain here for ever--mistress of Castle Wafer, and Sir Isaac's wife?"

"Yes, I do believe it is so. And I could have believed such planning of any one in the world rather than of Charlotte. I have striven to persuade her to leave with me, and it is of no use. I would not for the world that she should marry again."

"She ought not to have married at all," remarked the surgeon.

"I could not help it. I did my best. You don't know what a care Charlotte has always been to me!"

"To return to Miss Beauclerc. Do you fear Mrs. Carleton might injure her?"

"Not if she retains her reason. But--should that leave her, even momentarily,--Mr. Pym," she broke off, "it was because I found myself incompetent to deal with these troubles that I wrote for you."

"You must take her away from Castle Wafer without delay."

"But she will not be taken away. In all ordinary matters she is as sane as I am; as capable of judging, of arguing, and of sensibly acting. It is only now and then that a sort of paroxysm comes over her. It may be only violent passion, to which you know she has ever been subject; but, it may be something worse. She is then, as I believe, incapable of controlling her actions; and should she find an opportunity of doing an injury at these times he might do it. There are two people in this house against whom I can see she is desperately incensed: Miss Beauclerc and Honour Tritton. Should she find herself alone with either of them in one of these paroxysms----"

Mrs. Darling stopped. The subject was too painful to continue. But the surgeon took up the thread in a quiet tone.

"We might have a second edition of the Alnwick tragedy."

Mrs. Darling--he could see it in the bright night--seemed to recoil a step. But she strove to answer with more than customary calmness.

"The Alnwick tragedy! I do not understand."

"When Alnwick's heir was--killed."

"Oh, Mr. Pym, Mr. Pym! you cannot think that was anything but a miserable accident?" cried the unfortunate mother. "It was nothing else. Honour alone was in fault."

"It may be that we shall never know," he answered. "My impression--nay, my belief--you and I had better be outspoken now, Mrs. Darling--always was, that Mrs. Carleton had something to do with that. I think at the time you entertained the same opinion."

Mrs. Darling made no answer. She walked on, her scared face raised in that tell-tale moonlight; her very lips white.

"I thought the probabilities, knowing what you and I know, were greatly against her at the time," repeated the surgeon; "I think them greater now. You are aware, I presume, that the imaginary image of Benja and the lighted church haunted her for months? And in that show of lanterns in France, on St. Martin's Eve----"

"How did you hear of that?" interrupted Mrs. Darling. "Oh, I get to hear of many things," was the reply. "It does not matter how. I fear this terror, in one so cold and impassive as your daughter has always been, is rather suggestive of a guilty conscience."

"Why recall this?" asked Mrs. Darling, with a sob. "I think you are wrong in your suspicions."

"I do not recall it to give you pain. Only to impress upon you how essential it is, with these doubts upon our minds, that Mrs. Carleton should be removed from Castle Wafer."

"Indeed, I see it as strongly as you do. But you know what her will has always been. And if our suspicion of her state of mind is wrong, and she is really sane, we are not justified in forcing her actions. Can you remain a few days and watch her, so as to form an opinion of her state? There's a plain, comfortable inn at hand, the Barley Mow, and you could be here very much in the daytime."

"For the matter of that, I could contrive to get invited to stay here," observed the surgeon, with a cough. "That good-natured brother of Sir Isaac's is sure to ask me. And, to tell you the truth, Mrs. Darling, if I undertake to watch her at all, it must be a close and uninterrupted watch."

"Close and uninterrupted!" repeated Mrs. Darling, whom the words did not altogether please. "I am so very fearful of any suspicion being excited abroad as to Charlotte's state."

"That suspicion already exists," remarked the doctor. "Your daughter's manners--these paroxysms that you speak of--have been observed and commented on. It was only a post or two before I got your summons, that I received a letter from this neighbourhood, implying doubts of Mrs. Carleton's state of mind, and inquiring if I could inform the writer whether insanity had been in her family."

Mrs. Darling's breath was nearly taken away with astonishment. "Who could have sent the letter? Surely, not Sir Isaac!"

"The letter was a confidential letter, and I cannot name the writer."

"If it was not Sir Isaac, it must have been Frederick St. John. Why need he meddle?"

"It was neither Frederick St. John nor Sir Isaac: I may tell you that much. I only mention this to prove to you that even were we willing to allow matters to go on as they have been going, it is now impossible. A weighty responsibility lies upon me, Mrs. Darling: and something must be done in one shape or another. Had I received no summons from you, I think I should still have come to Lexington."

Mrs. Darling walked to the end of the terrace before replying. Matters seemed to be growing complicated. Was the time of exposure really come? It had always lain upon her with an awful dread.

"But what can you do?" she asked. "Suppose, after watching Charlotte, you come to the conclusion that there's nothing really the matter with her----"

"But I should not come to that conclusion," he interrupted. "Were I to remain in the house a month, and see no proof whatever of insanity, I could not be sure that it did not exist. We know how cunning these people are, and----"

"Oh, Mr. Pym, how cruelly you speak!"

"I am sorry to do so. What I was about to say, in answer to your question, is this. Allowing that I perceive no present grounds for alarm, I must still assume that such grounds do exist; in short, both you and I know they do: and there will be one of two courses to pursue. Either you must remove your daughter from Castle Wafer before I quit it: or I must get rid of my responsibility by disclosing my fears to Sir Isaac St. John."

"No, no; not to him--not to any one if it can be prevented," implored Mrs. Darling. "I will get Charlotte away. Anything rather than make the dread public. Think how long I have succeeded in concealing it."

"To speak to Sir Isaac would not be to make it public. And I have already told you, Mrs. Darling, it is not so entirely a secret as you have supposed. However, if you remove Charlotte, undertaking that she does not return, there will be no cause for my speaking to any one."

"I'll do it all; I'll try and do it," said Mrs. Darling. "And now about your own stay at Castle Wafer. How shall you manage it?"

"Leave it to me," replied Mr. Pym. "We medical men often possess a pass-key in an emergency. I think Mrs. Carleton will not like my staying. She did not seem pleased to see me."

"No?"

"It struck me that she did not. I observed a strange sort of shiver, a look of terror, pass over her face when she saw me."

"How observant you are!" was Mrs. Darling's comment, "I saw nothing of it."

"It is our business to be observant."

"Of course. And very useful I dare say you find the habit."

"You spoke of Honour Tritton," resumed the surgeon, passing by the other remark. "Why do you suppose----"

"Hush!" breathed Mrs. Darling in a warning voice, and she laid her hand upon his arm to enforce the caution more emphatically. "Is that Charlotte?"

Some one had cautiously raised the window of an upper room, and was peeping out. Mr. Pym's quick eyes saw at once that it was not Charlotte, but Prance. Mrs. Prance had her share of curiosity as well as more demonstrative people.

"We had better go in, Mrs. Darling," remarked the surgeon. "Should Mrs. Carleton come out and see us talking together, she might fancy my visit here had reference to her, and be forthwith on her guard accordingly. As she was--I know she was--on her guard when I went to Ypres."

The evening was not quite over, when the anxious pacers on the terrace re-entered the drawing-room; the whist players were just rising. Mrs. Carleton came over at once to Mr. Pym. Handsome and stately did she look, her rich dress sweeping the ground; her face calm, her manner gracious, she seemed just as sane as Mr. Pym himself. He happened to be looking with some interest at Miss Beauclerc; a fair, lovely, attractive girl, in her pretty white dress, and with her grey-blue honest eyes.

"When did you come to Lexington, Mr. Pym?"

The question proceeded from Mrs. Carleton, who had slipped into a seat beside him. He answered that he had arrived only that evening; had been sent for to see a patient.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"A young man suffering from heart disease," promptly responded Mr. Pym, deeming this positive evasion justifiable under the circumstances.

"And so you took the opportunity to call at Castle Wafer!" she said. And there might have been the slightest possible resentment perceptible in the tone, though not to an ear less quick than the surgeon's.

"Just so," he answered. "When we have nothing particular to do with ourselves, we are apt to make use of any past civilities that may be available. I remembered that Mr. Frederick St. John, when I met him at Alnwick, proffered me an invitation to call at Castle Wafer, should I ever travel to its vicinity."

"Oh!" she said. "Fred St. John's rather fond of those impromptu invitations. Do you go back tomorrow?"

"Not unless my patient shall have done with me."

Mr. Pym remained at Castle Wafer, a temporary guest. In the most natural manner conceivable, Frederick St. John, without being suspected of any ulterior motive, pressed the invitation on the little surgeon. Castle Wafer would be a more comfortable roof for him than the Barley Mow, and his sojourn there would afford him, Frederick, an opportunity of improving the acquaintance begun at Alnwick, he graciously observed, when they had met at the funeral of Mr. Carleton St. John. Mr. Pym suffered himself to be persuaded. And thus the surgeon took up his task of watching Mrs. Carleton, a very private-detective; installed thereunto by two anxious parties, neither of whom suspected the connivance of the other. What wheels within wheels there are in this world!

In one sense of the word, the step might have been dispensed with, for it did not serve to prevent the disclosure to Sir Isaac St. John. Mrs. Darling's great hope from the respite of the two or three days' watching, was, that she should in the meanwhile succeed in inducing Charlotte to bid adieu to Castle Wafer, and thus obviate the necessity for any appeal to Sir Isaac. It might have proved so, so far as Mr. Pym was concerned; but the initiative was taken by the dean.

Very disagreeably impressed by the fresh doubts of Mrs. Carleton's sanity, acquired during the evening visit of Mr. Pym to the Rectory, the dean considered that there was now sufficient matter to justify a communication to Sir Isaac. He resolved to make it himself; and on the following morning, the one succeeding Mr. Pym's arrival, he went up for that purpose to Castle Wafer, and procured a private interview with Sir Isaac in his sitting-room.

A very different story, this, from the one sought to be told the other evening by Frederick. As the dean, calm, sensible, reliable, went through the whole, point by point, concluding with the fact that Mr. Pym was at Castle Wafer for no other purpose than to watch Charlotte Carleton, Sir Isaac listened with increasing wonder.

"And you say Frederick knew of this!" he exclaimed. "Why did he not tell me?"

"He did attempt to tell you; but failed. I suppose his ultra self-consciousness and the fear that even you might misconstrue his motives, withheld him from saying more."

"How could I be likely to misconstrue them?"

The dean said how. Which certainly did not tend to decrease the wonder of Sir Isaac.

"He has been assuming that Mrs. Carleton was looking after me! That she had designs upon me! Me! You must be mistaking me for Frederick."

"Certainly not for Frederick. Frederick's private opinion is, that the young woman hates him. I fancy there's not much doubt that she would have no objection to your making her Lady St. John."

When Sir Isaac fully comprehended this hypothesis as to himself, which he had little difficulty in doing, he burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. The dean saw how it was: Isaac St. John had been so firmly fixed in his resolution never to marry, had lived so in it, that the very notion of his breaking it, or of any woman's thinking she could induce him to break it, seemed to him nothing less than an impossibility.

"Then you never had an idea of Mrs. Carleton?" observed the dean.

"I never had an idea of Mrs. Carleton in that sense of the word, or of any one else," answered Sir Isaac. "I should as soon think of getting hanged as of getting married. And I do believe you must be wrong in supposing she has entertained such a notion. A young and pretty woman want to tie herself to me! Why, look at me; at what I am. No, no: it is not likely. And it was only the other day she lost her husband and her child; her heart must be buried with them for some time yet to come."

"Well, there lay the cause of Frederick's hesitation," said the dean. "With this idea upon him, no wonder he was tenacious of speaking. I confess I did not agree with him. I thought you were no more likely to take a wife than I am--who possess one already.

"It will be a joke against Frederick for the rest of my days," said Sir Isaac. "I marry? I wish, by the way, he would marry! But about poor Mrs. Carleton? I should like to see Mr. Pym."

The surgeon was summoned to the conference. And after the dean's departure, he disclosed to Sir Isaac the fear of her attempting some injury to Miss Beauclerc or to Honour: of which the dean remained in ignorance.

"There is only one thing to do," was the conclusion, come to by Sir Isaac. "Inhospitable though any such measure may seem, Mrs. Carleton must this day quit Castle Wafer."

[CHAPTER XXXVI.]

LOCKED IN

Mr. Pym appeared to make himself at home at Castle Wafer. One of the best chambers had been assigned him, its door opening exactly opposite to the room occupied by Mrs. Carleton and by Prance. And that gentleman retired to rest with his door propped back, and his gaze on the corridor. Perhaps he slept with his eyes open.

In the morning he was up betimes. Going downstairs, he sought Honour, and sat in the housekeeper's room while he talked to her. He had really no ulterior motive in this; but he was a sociable man, and he merely wished to be civil to the girl, whom he had once seen so much of as Benja's nurse.

Honour was excessively gratified. In the first place at seeing the surgeon again; in the next at indulging her gossiping propensities. She had heard little or nothing of Alnwick since she quitted it: Mrs. Tritton having left the Hall and the neighbourhood soon after herself. Question after question did she ask Mr. Pym of the changes, and would probably have gone on for an hour of her own good will, but that Mr. Pym, who was remarkably quick of sight and hearing, and why he wore glasses no one ever could make out--detected some faint sound or movement at the partially closed door, as if somebody were listening at it.

"Is any one wanting to come in, Honour?"

Honour pulled the door open, and saw nothing. But a faint rustling, as of some person turning from the door as soon as he spoke, had caught Mr. Pym's ears.

"Look out," said he, sharply.

Honour looked out, and was just in time to see the petticoats of a lady disappearing round the corner of the passage, and to recognize them as Mrs. Carleton's.

"Mrs. Carleton, was it?" observed the surgeon carelessly, as she made the remark. "Does she often pay you a visit here, Honour?"

"I never saw her here before, sir. Perhaps she was coming in search of you."

"Ah, perhaps so," replied Mr. Pym, carelessly. "What were you saying, Honour?--that you heard I went over to Germany to see the boy? Well, it's true. Whether it was Germany or France, or any other habitable part of the globe, though, I can't take upon myself to say. I could not do him any good. He was at death's-door then. How did you hear it?"

"From Mrs. Darling, sir. She often said a word to me when she was staying here the last time, and she mentioned that you had been had over to Master George, but it was of no use. What a sad thing it was that the child could not be cured!"

"Ay. There are many sad things in the world, Honour; sadder even than that. Well, I must go, or I shall keep breakfast waiting. You'll see me again before I leave."

He made his way to the breakfast-room, and sat down to breakfast with the rest. Mrs. Carleton's face was impassive as usual: but the surgeon saw that she watched him just as keenly as he did her. After breakfast, as if to defeat the purpose for which he was staying at Castle Wafer, she shut herself up in Mrs. St. John's room, and no one could get near her. It was during this time that the interview took place between the dean and Sir Isaac.

"I entrust it all to you, Mr. Pym," Sir Isaac had said. "Perhaps speaking to Mrs. Darling will be sufficient: but--you know the laws of hospitality--I would rather not appear at all in this matter if I can help it. Let the departure be your doing--you understand. Only in case of necessity bring in my name."

Mr. Pym's first step was to seek Mrs. Darling. She was shut up in her room too; so, after waiting for some time, he sent a message to her, and she came to him. The observant surgeon saw that there was a blank, disappointed look in her face.

"I can do nothing with Charlotte," she exclaimed. "She refuses most positively to quit Castle Wafer: and when I urged it, she put an end to the colloquy by leaving me. What is to be done?"

The surgeon could not say what was to be done. Only that to get away Mrs. Carleton that day was indispensable.

Mrs. Darling, poor woman, began to temporize. Charlotte was perfectly well now, she was sure, and a day or two's delay could make no difference. Tomorrow, perhaps, or the next day, she might be induced to hear reason. At length Mr. Pym--for Mrs. Darling seemed inclined to become obstinate in her turn--was obliged to hint at the commands of Sir Isaac.

Mrs. Darling was bitterly incensed, believing that Mr. Pym had been the informant. "I did not think you would have been so treacherous," she exclaimed. "You promised me not to speak to Sir Isaac until all means had been tried to get Charlotte away."

"I did not speak to him. He spoke to me."

"He spoke to you! First?"

"Yes. He sent for me into his room, and entered upon it."

"Who could have told him?" cried Mrs. Darling, after a mortified pause. And Mr. Pym remained silent: it was not his business to speak of the dean.

"The less we discuss this matter the better, Mrs. Darling. It would bring no profit. All we have to do is to remove your daughter. And if I were you I would let this hint about Sir Isaac be as if it had not been spoken. It would be painful to you to show consciousness of it; doubly painful to him. He is a true gentleman: but tales have been carried to him of Mrs. Carleton's state of mind, and he deems it necessary that she should not remain."

"I would give half I am worth to know who it is that has been meddling!" exclaimed Mrs. Darling. "What is to be done? Will you speak to Charlotte?"

"Of course I will. If you cannot persuade her, I must try my powers. It will be a very awkward thing if we have to get her away by force or stratagem."

"By stratagem we shall never accomplish it," said Mrs. Darling. "Charlotte is too keen to be imposed upon."

He waited until luncheon-time. He thought it better to lead to an interview with Mrs. Carleton, than to send and demand it. She came down with Mrs. St. John, and the luncheon passed off as usual, every one being at table except Sir Isaac. Mr. Brumm said his master was taking luncheon in his room, but offered no other apology for his absence, and Georgina went boldly in to him.

But Mr. Pym was destined to be defeated, at least in a degree. He whispered to Mrs. Carleton to come and walk with him on the terrace as they rose from table, and drew her hand within his arm and went out with her. It was a dull lowering day, threatening rain, and she looked up at the skies with rather a vacant look. Mr. Pym told her as gently as he could, that it was deemed necessary she should have change of air; that he and Mrs. Darling were both anxious on the score of her health, and thought immediate change of scene essential. She laughed in his face; she set him and her mother at defiance; she spoke of appealing to Sir Isaac: and then Mr. Pym hinted--as he had done to her mother--that Sir Isaac acquiesced in the measure.

No sooner had the words left his lips, than a change passed over her face. Medical man though he was, Mr. Pym shrank from it: never had its aspect been more livid, its expression so wildly terrible. He caught her arm, put it within his, and began to speak words of soothing kindness. But she broke from him; muttered something incoherently about the plot against her, which those in the house had been planning to carry out, and escaped indoors. Mr. Pym had little doubt that by "those in the house," she meant Miss Beauclerc and Honour. It is very likely she included himself and Mrs. Darling.

He followed her; he called Mrs. Darling to his aid. That she had secreted herself in her own room, they found at once, since the door was fastened inside, and no reply was given to their knocks. The surgeon grew alarmed. This state of things was more than likely to end in a paroxysm of insanity. By-and-by mutterings were heard inside; violent pacings of the room; short derisive laughs; and one shrill scream. Mrs. Darling was nearly beside herself; and Prance--Prance the impassive--for once betrayed terror.

"I shall break open the door," said Mr. Pym.

But he went first of all to apprise Sir Isaac of what he was going to do. Sir Isaac gave him carte blanche to do what he pleased; but urged that poor Mrs. Carleton's comfort should be studied as much as was practicable. And under the circumstances he did not press for her departure; only stipulating that Mr. Pym should undertake the charge of her until she did leave.

When Mr. Pym got back to the corridor, he found the dismayed watchers and waiters outside it, Mrs. Darling and Prance, had been joined by another--Honour Tritton.

It is not possible for a commotion such as this to occur in a house without its sounds transpiring to the household. Quietly as these knockings and callings had been carried on, news of them penetrated to the servants below. "Mrs. Carleton had bolted herself in her chamber, and could not be got at." Honour, in her interest, it may be in her curiosity, went upstairs at once. Perhaps she deemed she had a sort of right to do so, from her former relations with Mrs. Carleton.

Mr. Pym scarcely noticed her. The noise inside the room had increased; that is, the pacings to and fro were louder and quicker. Mrs. Darling clasped her hands in helpless dismay: she lifted her imploring face to the surgeon; she put her lips to the key-hole for the twentieth time.

"Charlotte! my darling Charlotte! I want to come in. I must come in. I--I have left a key in your room. It will soon be time to dress for dinner."

There was no response. But the pacings increased to a run. The dull day had become darker, and Honour turned into Miss Beauclerc's room, and brought out a tall wax candle, lighted, in a silver candlestick.

"Mrs. Carleton, I must beg of you to unlock the door," cried out the surgeon. "If you do not, I shall be compelled to break it open. Pray undo it."

It was of no avail. A mocking laugh was again heard, but there was no other response.

"Take care of yourselves," said Mr. Pym.

The door flew open with a burst. The first object they saw was Mrs. Carleton, standing against the opposite wall and glaring at them. Glaring! the word has been used often in regard to her eyes at times, but there is no other so applicable. Mr. Pym went straight up to her. She eluded him with a spring, pounced upon the unsuspecting and terrified Honour, and in another moment was grappling with her, a fight for dear life.

Poor lady! What her thoughts had been during that self-imprisonment she alone knew. That they had tended rapidly to increase the mind's confusion, to speed her on to the great gulf of insanity, already so near at hand, perhaps to have been its very turning-point, there could be no doubt of. And it may be that the sight of Honour amidst her enemies, of Honour bearing a lighted candle, recalled her mind to that dreadful night not yet two years gone by.

Whatever it may have been, whether any single cause, or many causes combined: the mortification of being turned from Castle Wafer, the visit of Mr. Pym, the seeing him that morning with Honour, or the opposition and confusion of this one afternoon: certain it was, that the moment her mother and Prance had been dreading in secret so long, had come. Mrs. Carleton was insane.

It took all three, the surgeon, Mrs. Darling, and Prance, to secure her in her violence: just as it had taken more than one to secure her father in the years gone by. Honour was released, terrified nearly to death, bruises on her arms, and a bite on her cheek, of which she would never lose the mark.

When she was secured from doing harm to herself or others, Mr. Pym touched Prance, and motioned her to a room apart. Had Prance been capable of astonishment at anything, she might have felt it then. He closed the door and pointed to a chair.

"The time for evasion has gone by," he began. "Tomorrow will see your mistress in an asylum, Prance, from which she can never more be released in safety. And--do you know for what cause I have brought you here?"

"No, sir," answered Prance; but in some hesitation, as if she half-divined what the cause might be.

"I am about to speak of that past night at Alnwick; the burning of Benja. I feel as sure"--and he raised his finger to her impressively--"that your mistress had something to do with that, and that you knew it, as I am that you are before me there. Few persons can deceive me; and your manner that night and subsequent to it, clever as you may have thought yourself, convinced me there was a tale to tell. I did not press for it then; I had my reasons; but I must hear it now."

"I had nothing to do with it, sir," replied Prance, not daring to equivocate; feeling perhaps, with him, that the time for suppression had gone by.

"I don't suppose you had," returned Mr. Pym. "But you were in that niche, where Honour saw you, for all that. Come! You must acquaint me with the particulars of that night: they may be a guide to my treatment of your mistress. I must know them, whether or not. Did she set the child on fire?"

"No, sir, I don't think she did. At least, not intentionally."

"At any rate, she was in the room at the time?"

"Yes, she was. But I think he caught fire accidentally. There was some scuffle, and I fancy his white pinafore set alight."

"But she bolted the door upon him?"

Prance actually for a moment looked distressed. "I'm afraid she did, sir: the one door. The other, I have always believed, and always shall believe, the child fastened himself."

"She bolted it on him when he was burning?"

"Ah, I don't know that, sir; I don't know it for certain."

"You have feared it."

"Yes; only that."

Mr. Pym sat down in a chair opposite Prance, the table being between them. "Begin at the beginning, Prance," he said. "This is a waste of time. How much of that night's occurrences did you see and hear?"

"You--you are not asking for the purpose of proving the crime against her, are you, sir?" demanded Prance.

"Of proving the crime against her, woman!" echoed Mr. Pym,served wrathfully. "Your mistress is past having anything of that sort proved against her: past its consequences, for that is, I presume, what you mean. Had I wished to bring it home to her, I should have stirred in it at the time. I have been as quiet and careful as you. Now then, begin. Let us hear what you had to do with it, and what brought you in the niche. You have not forgotten, I suppose?"

"No, indeed, sir! I have thought of it all a great deal too often to be pleasant," she said, leaning her head upon her hand. "The account I gave before had very much of truth in it: though not the whole of the truth," she added, after a pause.

"Then tell the whole now," said Mr. Pym, growing impatient at the delay.

The substance of Prance's communication was as follows. After she had been in the herb-room, she went upstairs to wash her hands, which had become soiled from picking the herbs. Whilst in her chamber, which was next to Mrs. Carleton's, she heard her mistress come up from the dining-room and go into her chamber, and she followed her in, to ask whether she wanted a light or anything, for it was getting quite dusk. Mrs. Carleton was not in her room, but had gone through the dressing-room, and was standing in the nursery, just inside the door, apparently gazing at something, as one transfixed: a dull sort of light came from the nursery, enabling Prance to see her distinctly. Being rather curious, she peeped in, and saw Master Benja slowly parading a lighted church about, which he carried before him: it was on this her mistress's eyes were fixed. It was really a pretty object, Prance said, lighted up in the dark room. The child was speaking; words calculated to irritate Mrs. Carleton----

"What were they!" interrupted Mr. Pym, when Prance had got thus far in her narrative. "Can you repeat them?"

"'I'll tell you what I shall do, Honour, when I am master of Alnwick,'" repeated Prance. "'You shall be mistress, and give all the orders, and we'll have a great wall built up, so that mamma can't come near us. But we'll have Georgy, and keep him to ourselves.'" Those were the words, Prance continued, and they seemed to irritate her mistress: she darted forward, and gave the child a sharp blow on the ear. She (Prance) went away, leaving a sound of noise and crying behind her. Declared, if it were the last word she had to speak, that she had no thought of real injury. She went through the dressing-room, through the bedroom, which door she shut, and went down into the dining-room. Georgy was asleep on the large chair, his legs hanging down. A very short while--immediately, indeed--her mistress followed her down; noticed, and thought it very singular, that she bolted the dining-room door after her. Seemed greatly excited; walked about in a strange manner; Prance thought she must have been quarrelling with Honour. Presently she sat down, and took Georgy's feet upon her lap. This gave Prance an opportunity of slipping back the bolt, and quitting the room. Had not liked to do so before; must have been there at least a quarter-of-an-hour. Went up to her room; heard no noise whatever; never supposed but that Honour was in the nursery with Master Benja. Stood a minute or two in the passage, listening; thought she might hear them speaking of the quarrel. Heard nothing--all was quite still, and then supposed Honour had taken Master Benja down to the servants' hall, which had been forbidden by Mrs. Carleton. Was stealing along the passage to find this out, intending to tell of her, when Honour came running up the backstairs, and Prance, not to be seen, slipped into the niche until Honour should have entered the nursery. Found then that Master Benja was in the nursery. Honour could not open the door, and called out to ask why he had turned the button. Was peeping out of the niche, and saw Honour drop a load of things from her apron, and come flying past her into the dressing-room. Did not think at the time she was seen; passage was pretty dark. Took the opportunity to escape into her own room, and was lighting a candle when Honour's cries startled her. Came out of her room, saw Honour running down the front staircase, her cries awful. It brought the servants from the kitchen, it brought Mrs. Carleton and Georgy out of the dining-room; and then she (Prance) found out what had happened. That was all.

"And you mean to tell me you did not suspect anything wrong until then?" asked Mr. Pym, as she concluded.

"As I am a living, breathing woman, sir, I never suspected it," answered Prance, showing for once some emotion. "I don't think Honour herself was more shocked than I was."

"And why did you not tell the truth about your being in the niche?"

"Ah, sir, I did not dare. Might it not, in the questioning that would have ensued, have directed suspicion to my mistress? The moment I discovered that Honour was not in the room when my mistress attacked Master Benja, I felt frightened to death, fearing she had done it. I----"

"Stay a minute. I don't understand," interrupted Mr. Pym. "You say you looked into the nursery. You must have seen that Honour was not there."

"Indeed, sir, I did not. I saw but a very small portion of the room; the door opens inwards to the wall, and obstructs the best part of the room to any one standing as I did. I never supposed but that Honour was present in her usual seat; otherwise I should not have left my mistress alone with the child. The boy himself, helped to mislead me: those few words he said appeared to be spoken to Honour. I concluded afterwards, that when he heard his mamma enter, he must have thought it was Honour who had gone in, and was too much occupied with his toy to turn his head to look."

"It's an awful thing!" ejaculated Mr. Pym.

"It has driven my mistress mad," returned Prance. "But, sir--she did not purposely set him on fire: she did not. I have gathered a great deal from words she has let drop in her paroxysms, and I know it was not done purposely. 'The church fell and set fire to his pinafore, in blazing up,' she said one night when she was moaning: and I am sure it did."

"But she bolted the door on him."

"Ah, yes, she did that; bolted it upon him, knowing he was on fire; there's no doubt of it. I have gathered that much. I think at the moment she was mad, unconscious of what she did. She is not naturally cruel, only in these uncontrollable attacks. And then--and then----"

"And then, what?" asked the surgeon.

"She had taken too much wine that afternoon," continued Prance, lowering her voice. "Not intentionally; not from the love of drinking: unthinkingly, as it were. You see, sir, she had dined at the hour when she usually took her luncheon, and she did not eat much, I noticed; made a luncheon more than a dinner. But she seemed to have a great thirst upon her, and drank a good deal of wine; champagne, and sherry, and port; altogether, I think her head was a little confused; indeed, I'm sure it was. She would not have beaten Benja in the dining-room, but for that. Oh, the remorse that has been hers!"

"I suppose so."

"It is remorse that has turned her brain. I thought in Flanders it would come on then; it did in a measure; but she got over it. Over and over again would she have given her own life to recall the boy's; I think she would even have given Georgy's. What she did, she did in a moment of passion; of aberration; and she has repented it ever since, and lived in dread of detection. Her horror of Honour has arisen from the feeling that had the girl not left Benja alone, it could not have happened, and she had not had the sin upon her. Indeed, sir, she is to be pitied; to be pitied more than condemned."

"Let us think so, at any rate, Prance," remarked Mr. Pym. "Does Mrs. Darling know this?"

"Well, sir, no; not exactly. I have dropped a word or two, and I know she guesses the rest; but I have not said it."

"Best not, perhaps," said the surgeon. "It is a secret that may remain between you and me."

[CHAPTER XXXVII.]

A MEETING IN PARIS

"I Wonder why I am kept a prisoner here?" exclaimed Georgina Beauclerc.

She stood at the open French window of the Rectory drawing-room as she said it, partly indoors, partly out, and her auditor was Frederick St. John, who was coming along the gravel path, in the twilight of the autumn evening, on his road from Castle Wafer. Georgina had happened to walk over to the Rectory early in the afternoon, and a message followed her from Sir Isaac, that she was not to go back to Castle Wafer until sent for. The young lady was surprised, indignant, and excessively curious. The message had arrived about three o'clock: it was now very nearly dinner-time, and she was not released. The dean, Mrs. Beauclerc, and their guest were at Lexington; consequently, Miss Georgina had passed the hours by herself, and very dull they had been.

He came up, taking off his hat as he approached, as if he were warm from fast walking. Georgina retreated inside the room, but waited for him at the window.

"I have come to release you," he said, in answer to her question. "I am glad you obeyed me, and stayed."

"Obeyed you! I obeyed Sir Isaac."

"It was I who sent the message, Georgina."

"I wish I had known that!" she exclaimed, after a breathless pause. "I never should have stayed."

He laughed. "That's why I used Isaac's name. I thought you might not be obedient to me."

"Obedient to you, indeed, Mr. St. John! I should think not. Things would have come to a pretty pass!"

She tossed back her shapely head, to show her indignation. Mr. St. John only laughed again.

"Are they all out, Georgina?"

"Yes, they are out, and I have been alone all these hours. I wonder you don't take contrition to yourself."

"I wonder at it too."

"I should like to know the reason of my having been kept here? In all the course of my experience I never met with so outrageous a thing."

"Your experience has been so long a one, Georgie!"

"Well, I am not going to be ridiculed. I shall go back to Castle Wafer: perhaps Sir Isaac will be able to enlighten me. You can stay behind here; they'll be home sometime."

She tied her bonnet, fastened her mantle--having stood in them all the afternoon, momentarily expecting to be released, as he had called it--and was hastening through the window. Frederick laid a detaining hand upon her.

"Not yet, Georgina. I have come to stop your return to Castle Wafer."

"I thought you said you had come to release me!"

"I meant release you from suspense--to satisfy your curiosity, which has, I suppose, been on the rack. You are not to come back to Castle Wafer at all: we won't have you."

"You can let things alone," returned Georgina, throwing off her bonnet. "But I think you might have told me before now--keeping me with my things on all these hours!"

"I could not conveniently come before. Well, shall I relieve that curiosity of yours?"

Again she threw up her face petulantly. "That's just as you like. I don't care to hear it."

"You know you do care to hear it," he said. "But indeed, Georgina"--and his half-mocking, half-tender tone changed to seriousness--"it is a subject that I shrink from entering upon. Mrs. Carleton is ill. That is the reason we are banishing you for the present from Castle Wafer."

Georgina's mood changed also: the past one had been all make-believe, not real.

"Ill! I am so sorry. Is it anything infectious?"

"I will tell you what it is, Georgina: it is insanity. That she was not quite sane, I have suspected some little time; but this afternoon she has become very much worse. She locked herself in her room, and Mr. Pym was obliged to burst the door open, and now she is--very excited indeed. Mr. Pym told me he feared some crisis was approaching. This was just after she fastened herself in her room; and I sent that message to you at once. Isaac agrees with me that you had better remain at home tonight: Castle Wafer will not be a very sociable place this evening; and we must respect Mrs. Darling's feelings."

"Oh, I see, I see!" impulsively interrupted Georgina, all her good qualities in full play. "Of course it would not be right for strangers to be there. Poor Mrs. Darling! But is it true, Frederick? Insane!"

"I fear so."

"Perhaps it is some temporary fever that will pass off?"

"Well--we must hope for the best. And now--will you regard this as a confidential communication?"

"Yes, certainly; if you wish it."

"I think it is better to do so. She may recover; and in that case it would be very sad for the report to have been spread abroad. I knew I might trust you; otherwise I should not have spoken. We have had secrets together before."

"Shall you not tell papa?"

"I shall tell him, because he knows of the matter already. No one else. Should her malady be confirmed, of course it will become generally known."

"Do you know, I thought you had bad news when I saw your face," resumed Georgina. "You looked so worn and anxious. But you have looked so for some days past."

"Have I? I've been tired, I suppose, from want of sleep. I have not been in bed for some nights. I have been, watching."

"Watching! Where?"

"In the corridor at home."

Georgina looked at him in surprise. "What were you watching for?"

"Oh--for ghosts."

"Please be serious. Do tell me what you mean. I don't understand you in the least."

"It is so pleasant to share a secret that I think I must tell it you, Georgina. You remember your nightmare?"

"My nightmare? Oh yes, when I fancied some one came into my room. Well?"

"Well--I thought it just possible, that instead of a nightmare it might have been reality. That Mrs. Carleton, in her restlessness, had wandered out of her room. It was not an agreeable thought, so I have watched every night since, lest there should be a repetition of it."

Georgina was as quick as lightning at catching an idea. "You were afraid for me! You watched to take care of me!"

"Something of that sort. Did you lock your door as I desired?"

"Yes: all but one night, when I forgot to do it."

"Just so. Knowing what a forgetful, careless young lady I had to deal with, I concluded that I must depend upon myself, instead of her. A pretty thing, if Mrs. Carleton had run away with you!"

A few bright rays were perceptible in the western horizon, illumining the twilight of the hitherto dull day. Georgina Beauclerc was gazing straight out to them, a very conscious look in her face. Suddenly she turned it to Mr. St. John.

"Will you tell me--had your words to me last evening, warning me not to be abroad, anything to do with this?"

He nodded. "Suspecting Mrs. Carleton's malady, I did not know who might be safe from her, who not: and I saw her in the grounds then."

"Last night?"

"Last night. She was close to you."

A moment's thought, which was a revelation to Georgina, and she drew nearer to him with a start. "I see it all, Frederick. I remember what you said about her jealousy: you have been protecting me."

"Trying to do it."

"How shall I thank you? And I have been so impertinent and cross! Perhaps I owe even my life to you!"

"I have not done it for nothing, I can tell you, young lady. I have been thinking of my repayment all through it."

He put his arm round her before she could get away, and drew her close to him. His voice became low and tender; his face, bent to hers, was radiant with persuasive eloquence.

"I told you last night that I thought I had saved you from a great danger----"

"And you repaid yourself," interrupted Georgina, with a dash of her native sauciness, and a glow on her blushing cheeks.

"No, I did not. I--don't know whether it's this watching after your safety, or what else it may be; but I have arrived at the conviction, that I shall have to take care of you for life. Georgina, we might have known years ago that it would come to this."

"Known that! When you only hated me!"

"If I hated you then--which I did not--I love you now. I cannot part with you. Georgina, my darling, I shall never part with you. I don't think you would like to part with me."

Her heart beat as it had never beaten before in her life; her eyes were blinded with tears. Joy so great as this had never been foreshadowed, except in some rare dream. He kissed the tears away.

"But it cannot be that you love me," she whispered.

"I love you dearly; although I once told a friend of yours that I would not marry Georgina Beauclerc though there were not another English girl extant. He saw into the future, it may be also into my heart, more clearly than I did."

"You said that? To a friend of mine! Who was it?"

"One who lies buried in the cloisters at Westerbury."

Her eyes went far out again to that light in the west. The words carried her back again to those past days,--to the handsome boy who had so loved her.

"You never cared for him, poor fellow!" observed Mr. St. John.

"No; I never cared but for one in my life," she softly whispered.

"I know that. He was the first to tell me of it. Not that I--as I believe now--needed telling. Georgina, they say marriages are made in heaven; I think we might have seen, even then, that we were destined for each other---- What's the matter?"

Georgina darted away from him as if she had been shot. Her ears were quicker than his. The dean's carriage was approaching; was close upon them.

"I suppose I may speak to him, Georgina?"

"Perhaps if I said no, you wouldn't listen to me. You always did contrive to have your own way, and I suppose you will take it still. But I think you are very unfeeling--very cruel; and I am as bad."

"I know what you mean: that we should allow--this--to ensue upon the news I came to tell you. Poor Mrs. Carleton! We shall have time and to spare, I fear, for all our best sympathies. Oh, child! you don't know what my anxiety on your score has been! But it has served to show me, what I was only half convinced of before: my love for you."

The dean came in. Georgina escaped to her mother and Miss Denison. The latter spoke crossly to her. "Ah," thought Georgina, "would she dare to abuse me if she only knew whose wife I am going to be?" and she actually kissed the astonished Miss Denison, in her great happiness.

Mr. St. John spoke to the dean. Of Mrs. Carleton first: and the dean was both shocked and surprised to find the crisis had come on so quickly. He then said that he and Sir Isaac thought it better that Georgina should for the moment quit Castle Wafer.

"Quite right," said the dean. "She ought not to have stayed there so long. Of course she should not, had I been aware of this. The fact is, she would not come home; you heard her; she has a great affection for Castle Wafer."

"Would you very much mind, sir, if she some time came back to it for good?"

"Eh?" said the dean, turning his surprised eyes sharply on Mr. St. John. "Who wants that?"

"I do. I have been asking her if she will do so."

"And what does she say?"

A smile crossed Mr. St. John's lips. "She said I generally contrived to have my own way, and she supposed I should have it now."

"Ah, well; I have thought it might come to that! But I cannot bear to part with her. Frederick St. John"--and the dean spoke with emotion as he wrung his hand--"I would rather you took her from me than any other man in the world."

It was a lovely day in the following spring, and Paris was gay and bright. In a handsome house in one of its best quarters, its drawing-rooms presenting that blended aspect of magnificence and lightness which you rarely see out of the French capital, were a group of three people; two ladies, both brides of a week or two, and a gentleman. Never did eye gaze on two more charming brides, than Madame de la Chasse, that house's mistress, and Mrs. Frederick St. John.

Are you prepared to hear that that mistress was Rose? She sat laughing gaily, throwing back, as was her wont of old, that mass of golden curls. Her marriage had taken many by surprise, Frederick St. John for one; and he was now joking her about it.

"It was quite impossible to believe it, you know, Rose. I thought you would not have condescended to marry a Frenchman."

"I'd rather have married you," freely confessed Rose, and they all laughed. "But he has changed now; he has become presentable, thanks to me; and I don't intend to let him lapse again."

"I am sure you are happy!" said Georgina. "I see it in your face."

"Well, the truth is, I do like him a little bit," answered Rose, with a shy sort of blush, which spoke more plainly than her words. "And then he is so fond and proud of me; and heaps such luxuries upon me. It all arose through my staying at the Castellas' last autumn; he was always coming there."

"You know, Rose"--and Mr. St. John took her hand and spoke in all seriousness,--"that I wish you both, from my very heart, every happiness."

"And I'm sure I wish it to you," she said. "And I think you might have told me when I used to tease you about Sarah Beauclerc, that I was wrong in the Christian name. I suspected it last year when I saw you both together at Castle Wafer."

"Not then," interrupted Georgina; "you could not have seen it then."

"I did, though; I'm clever in that line, Mrs. St. John. I used to see his eyes follow you about, and he would leave me at any moment for you. How is Sir Isaac?"

"Quite well," answered Mr. St. John, "and as happy in my marriage as a child. Our ostensible home, after all, is to be Alnwick; but I dare say we shall spend with him eight months out of every year at Castle Wafer."

"And my ill-fated half-sister, Mrs. Carleton St. John?" asked Rose, a deep shade of sadness clouding her radiant face. "Is there no hope of her restoration?"

"I fear none," he replied.

"I wonder sometimes whether they are quite kind to her in that private asylum?"

"There's no doubt they are. Mr. Pym sees her sometimes; your mamma often. But that of course you know better than I do."

"I wanted mamma to take me to see her before I left England for good; but she would not."

"And so much the better," said Mr. St. John. "It could not be well for you, Madame de la Chasse."

"'Madame de la Chasse!'" she echoed. "Well, it sounds curious to hear you call me so. Ah! how strange! that he should have married me; and you--Poor Adeline! Does your wife know about her?" suddenly questioned Rose, in her careless way.

"Yes," spoke up Georgina.

"Old loves go for nothing when we come to be married. We laugh at the past then, and think what love-sick silly children we were. I have settled down into the most sober wife living."

"It looks like it," cried Mr. St. John.

"I have," retorted Rose, "whether it looks like it or not. I shall be as good and steady a matron as your wife there, who loves you to her fingers' ends."

Georgina laughed and blushed as they rose to leave, promising plenty of visits to the young Baroness during their stay in Paris.

In going out, they met the Baron. Georgina was surprised to see so good-looking a man; for Mr. St. John had described to her his close-cut hair and his curled moustache. That was altered now; the hair was in light waves; the moustache reduced to propriety: Rose said she had made him presentable.

He was very cordial; had apparently forgotten old scores against Mr. St. John, and pressed the hospitality of his house upon them as long as they were in Paris. Their frequent presence in it, he said, would complete the bliss of himself and his wife.

"Frederick," exclaimed Georgina, thoughtfully, when they had returned to their hotel, "should you think the Baron ever loved Adeline as he does Rose? He is evidently very fond of her."

"Perhaps he did not. His intended marriage with Adeline was a contract; with Rose he had time to fall in love."

"And--perhaps--you never loved her so very, very deeply!" timidly rejoined Georgina, raising to him her grey-blue eyes.

"I must say one thing," he answered, smiling; "that if a certain young lady of my particular acquaintance is not satisfied with her husband's love----"

She did not let him go on; she threw herself into his sheltering arms, the tears of emotion falling from her eyes.

"Oh, my husband, my darling; you know, you know! I think you must have loved me a little all through; even when we used to quarrel at Westerbury."

"I think I did, Georgina. Of one fact you may be very sure, that I would not exchange my wife for any other, living or dead. I hope, I believe, under Heaven's blessing, that I may so love her to the end."

"Amen," softly breathed Georgina.