The Red Court Farm: A Novel (Vol. 1 of 2)

by Mrs. Henry Wood

PART THE SECOND.

[CHAPTER XII.]

Coastdown.

Rushing through the streets of London, as if he were rushing for his life, went a gentleman in deep mourning. It was Robert Hunter. Very soon after we last saw her, he had followed the hearse that conveyed his wife to her long home in Katterley churchyard.

Putting aside his grief, his regret, his bitter repentance, her death made every difference to him. Had there been a child, the house and income would have remained his; being none, it all went from him. Of his own money but little remained: he had been extravagant during the brief period when he was Lieutenant Hunter, had spent right and left. One does not do these things without having to pay for it. Mrs. Chester, going over to offer a condoling visit, heard this, and spoke out her opinion with her usual want of reserve. She looked upon him as a man lost. "No," said he, "I am saved! I shall go to work now." "Hoping to redeem fortune?" she rejoined. "Yes," he said, "and something else besides."

Heavily lay the shadow of the past upon Robert Hunter. The drooping form of his loving and neglected wife, bright with hope once, mouldering in her grave now, was in his mind always; the years that he had wasted in frivolity, the money he had recklessly spent. Oh, the simpleton he was--as he thought now, looking back in his repentance. When he had become master of a good profession, why did he abandon it because a little money was left him? To become a gentleman amongst gentlemen, forsooth; to put away the soiling of his hands; to live a life of vanity and indolence. Heaven had recompensed him in its own just way: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap. His soldiership was gone; his wife was gone; money, the greater portion of it, was gone. Nothing left to him but remembrance, and the ever-present, bitter sense of his folly. He was beginning life anew: he must go back to the bottom of the tree of his engineering profession, lower than where he had left off: he would so begin it and take up his work daily, and untiringly persevere in it, so as--Heaven helping him--to atone for the past. Not all the past. The wasted years were gone for ever; the gentle wife, whom he had surely helped to send to the grave, could not be recalled to earth. Not so much on his wife were his musings bent as on the career of work lying before him. He had so grieved for her in the days before and immediately after her death, that it seemed as though the sorrow had, in a degree, spent itself, and reaction set in. If his handicraft's best skill, indifference to privation, unflagging industry, could redeem the past idleness, he would surely redeem that. Not in a pecuniary point of view, it was not of that he thought, but in the far graver one of wasted life. His eyes were opening a little; he saw how offensive on High must be a life of mere idle indulgence; a waste of that precious time, short at the best, bestowed upon him to use. This, this was what he had resolved to atone for: Heaven helping him, he once more aspirated in the sad but resolute earnestness of his heart.

Making an end of his affairs at Katterley, he came to London, presented himself at the office of the firm where he was formerly employed, and said he had come to ask for work. They remembered the clever, active, industrious young man, and were glad to have him again. And Robert Hunter--dropping his easy life, just as he dropped the name he had borne in it--entered on his career of toil and usefulness.

The spring was growing late when his employers intimated to him that he was going to be sent to Spain, to superintend some work there. Anywhere, he answered; he was quite ready, let them send him where they would.

On this morning that we see him splashing through the mud of London improvised by the water carts, he was busy making his preparations for departure, and was on his way to call on Professor Macpherson. He wanted some information in regard to the locality for which he was bound, and thought the professor could supply it. The previous night, sitting alone in his lodgings, he had been surprised, and rather annoyed, by the appearance of Mrs. Chester. That lady was in town on her own business, and found him out. Incautiously he let slip that he was going on the morrow to Dr. Macpherson's. She seized upon the occasion to make a visit also.

At this very moment Mrs. Chester was en route also. Pushing her way along, inquiring her road perpetually, getting into all sorts of odd nooks and turnings, she at length emerged on the more open squares of Bloomsbury, and there she saw her brother, who had been calling at places on his way, in front of her.

"You might have waited for me, Robert, I think."

"I did wait twenty minutes. I came on then. My time is not my own, you know, Penelope."

"Have you seen anything of Lady Ellis since you came to London?" inquired Mrs. Chester, as they walked on together.

"No, I should not be likely to see her."

"She is staying in London; she came to it direct when she left me. At least, she was staying here, but in a letter I had from her she said she thought of going on a visit to Coastdown. Her plans----"

"Excuse me, Penelope, I don't care to hear of Lady Ellis's plans."

"You have grown quite a bear, Robert! That's what work's doing for you."

He laughed pleasantly. "I think it is hurry that is doing it for me this morning, I feel as if I had no time for anything. Number fifteen. Here we are!"

It was a commodious house, this one in Bloomsbury, steps leading up to the entrance. He sent in his card, "Mr. Robert Hunter," and they were admitted.

"Lawk a' mercy! Is it you?" exclaimed Mrs. Macpherson, looking first at the card and then at its owner, as they were shown into a handsome room, and the professor's lady, in sky-blue silk, and a scarlet Garibaldi body elaborately braided with black, advanced to receive them. She did not wear the bird-of-paradise feather, but she wore something equivalent to it: some people might call it a cap and some a turban, the front ornament of which, perching on the forehead, was an artificial bird, with shining wings of green and gold.

Mrs. Macpherson took a hand of each, shaking them heartily. "And so you have put away your name?" she said.

"Strictly speaking, it never was my name," he answered. "It was my wife's. I had to assume it with her property, but when the property left me again, I thought it time to drop the name."

The professor came forward in his threadbare coat, with (it must be owned) a great stream of some sticky red liquid down the front of it, for they had fetched him from his experimenting laboratory. But his smile was bright, his welcome genial. Mrs. Macpherson, whose first thoughts were always of hospitality, ordered luncheon to be got ready. Robert Hunter, sitting down between them, quietly told them he had become a working man again, and where he was going, and what to do. Mrs. Macpherson heard him with a world of sympathy.

"It's just one o' them crosses in life that come to a many of us," remarked she. "Play first and work afterwards! it's out o' the order of things. But take heart. You've got your youth yet, and you'll grow reconciled."

"If you only knew how glad I am to be at work again!" he said, a faint light of earnestness crossing his face. "My years of idleness follow me as a reproach--as a waste of life."

"But for steady attention to my work and studies, I should never have been able to contribute my poor mite to further the cause of science," said the professor, meekly, speaking it as an encouragement to Robert Hunter.

"If he hadn't stuck at it late and early--burning the candle at both ends, as 'twere--he'd not have had his ologies at his fingers' tips," pursued Mrs. Macpherson, who often deemed it necessary to explain more lucidly her husband's meaning.

"And so you are about to migrate to Spain?" said the professor. "You----"

"He says he's going off to it by rail," interposed Mrs. Macpherson. "What are the people there? Blacks?"

"No, no, Betsy; they are white, as we are."

"I knew a Spanish man once, professor, and he was olive brown."

"They are dark from the effects of the sun. I thought you alluded to the race. The radiation of heat there is excessive; and----"

"That is, it's burning hot in the place," corrected Mrs. Macpherson. "I wish you joy of it, Mr. Hunter. You'll catch it full, a-laying down of your lines of rail."

"I think you have been in Spain?" observed Mr. Hunter to the doctor.

"I once stayed some months there. What do you say?--that you want some information that you think I can supply? I hope I can. What is it? Please to step into my room."

The professor passed out of the door by which he entered, Mr. Hunter following him. A short passage, and then they were in the square back room consecrated to the professor and his pursuits. It was not a museum, it was not a laboratory, it was not a library, or an aviary of stuffed birds, or an astronomical observatory; but it was something of all. Specimens of earth, of rock, of flowers, of plants, of weeds, of antiquarian walls; of animals, birds, fish, insects; books in cases, owls in cages; and a vast many more odd things too numerous to mention. Mrs. Macpherson thought it well to follow them.

"Law!" said she to Mrs. Chester, "did living mortal ever see the like o' the place?"

"What a confused mass of things it is!" was the answer, as Mrs. Chester's eyes went roving around in curiosity.

"He says it isn't. He has the face to tell me everything is in its place, and he could find it in the dark. The great beast there with its round eyes, is a owl that some of 'em caught and killed when they went out moralizing into Herefordshire."

"Not moralizing, Betsy. One of the excursions of the Geological Society----"

"It's all the same," interrupted Mrs. Macpherson; and the professor meekly turned to Mr. Hunter and continued an explanation he was giving him, a sort of earthenware pipe in his hand. The ladies drew near.

"You perceive, Mr. Hunter, there is a small aperture for the passing in of the atmospheric air?"

"That is, there's a hole where the wind goes out," explained the professor's wife.

"By these means, taking the precautions I have previously shown you, the pressure on the valve may be increased to almost any given extent! As a natural consequence----"

"Oh, bother consequences!" cried Mrs. Macpherson; "I'm sure young Robert Hunter don't care to waste his time with that rubbish, when there's cold beef and pickled salmon waiting."

"Just two minutes, Betsy, and Mr. Hunter shall be with you. Perhaps you and Mrs. Chester will oblige us by going on."

"Not if I know it," said the lady, resolutely. "I've had experience of your 'two minutes' before today, prefessor, and seen 'em swell into two mortal hours. Come! finish what you've got to say to him, and we'll all go together."

Dr. Macpherson continued his explanations in a low voice, possibly to avoid more interruptions. Five minutes or so, and they moved from the table, the doctor still talking in answer to a question.

"Not yet. I grieve to say we have not any certain clue to it, and opinions are much divided among us. It needs these checks to remind us of our finite nature, Mr. Hunter. So far shalt thou go, but no farther. That is a law of the Divine Creator, and we cannot break it."

Robert Hunter smiled. "The strangest thing of all is to hear one of you learned men acknowledge as much. The philosopher's stone; perpetual motion; the advancing and receding tides--do you not live in expectation of making the secret of these marvels yours?"

Professor Macpherson shook his head. "If we were permitted: but we never shall be. If. That word has been the arresting point of man in the past ages, as it will be in the future. Archimedes said he could move the world, you know, if he had but an outward spot to rest the fulcrum of his lever on."

"It's a lucky thing for us that Archimy didn't," was the comment of Mrs. Macpherson. "It wouldn't be pleasant to be swayed about promiscous, the earth tossing like a ship at sea."

Robert Hunter declined the luncheon; he had many things to do still, and his time in England was growing very short; so he said adieu to them both then, and to his sister.

"Now remember, Robert Hunter," said Mrs. Macpherson, taking both his hands, "when you visit England temporay, and want a friendly bed to put yourself into, come to us. Me and the prefessor took to you when we first saw you at Guild. You remember that night," she added, turning to Mrs. Chester: "we come up in a carriage and pair; I wore my orange brocade and my bird-o'-paradise; and there was a Lady Somebody there, one o' those folks that put on airs and graces; which isn't pretty in a my lady, any more than it is in a missis. You took our fancies, Mr. Hunter--though it does seem odd to be calling you that, and not Lake--and we'll look upon it as a favour if you'll come to us sometimes. The prefessor knows we shall, but he's never cute at compliments. He was born without gumption."

The professor's lingering shake of the hand, the welcoming look in his kindly eyes, said at least as much as his wife's words; and Robert Hunter went forth, knowing that they wished to be his friends.

So they sat down to their luncheon and he departed; and the same night went forth on his travels.

Coastdown lay low in the light of the morning sun. The skies were clear, the rippling sea was gay with its fishing boats. Spring had been very late that year, but this was a day warm and bright. The birds were singing, the lambs were sporting in the fields, the hedges were bursting into buds of green.

Swinging through the gate of the Red Court Farm, having been making a call there to fetch a newspaper, came Captain Copp: a sailor with a wooden leg, a pea jacket, and a black glazed hat. Captain Copp had been a merchant captain of the better class, as his father was before him. After his misfortune--the loss of his leg in an encounter with pirates--he gave up the sea, and settled at Coastdown on his small but sufficient income.

The captain's womenkind--as he was in the habit of calling the inmates of his house--consisted of his wife and a maid servant. The former was meek, yielding, gentle as those gentle lambs in the field; the latter, Sarah Ford, worth her weight in gold for honest capability, liked to manage the captain and the world on occasions. There were encounters between them. He was apt to call her a she-pirate and other affectionate names. She openly avowed her disbelief in his marvellous reminiscences, especially one that was a standing story with him concerning a sea-serpent that he saw with his own eyes in the Pacific Ocean. He had also seen a mermaid. Like many another sailor, the captain was a simple-minded man in land affairs, only great at sea and its surroundings; with implicit faith in all its marvels.

On occasions the captain's mother honoured him with a visit; a resolute, well-to-do lady, who used to voyage with her husband, and had now settled in Liverpool. When she came she ruled the house and the captain, for she thought him (forty, now) and his wife little better than children yet. In solid sense, if you believed herself, nobody could approach her.

Captain Copp came forth from his call at the Red Court Farm, letting the gate swing behind him, and stumped along quickly, his stout stick and his wooden leg keeping time on the ground. The captain's face was beaming with satisfaction, for he had contrived to lay hold of young Cyril Thornycroft, and recount to him (for the fiftieth time) the whole story of the sea-serpent from beginning to end. He was a short, wiry man, with the broad round shoulders of a sailor. The road branched off before him two ways, like an old-fashioned fork; the way on the right led direct to the village and the common beach; the way on the left to his home.

The captain halted. Sociably inclined, he was rather fond of taking himself to the Mermaid; that noted-public house where the sailors and the coastguard men congregated to watch the omnibus come in from Jutpoint. It must be getting near to the time of its arrival, half-past eleven, and the captain's leg moved a step forward in the direction; on the other hand, he wanted to say a word to that she-serpent Sarah (with whom he had enjoyed an encounter before coming out) about the dinner. The striking of the clock decided him, and he bore on for home, past the churchyard. Crossing part of the heath, he came to the houses, red brick, detached, cheerful, his own being the third. At the window of the first sat an old lady. Captain Copp went through the little gate and put his face without ceremony against the pane, close to Mrs. Connaught's.

"How's the master this morning?" he called out through the glass.

She answered by drawing aside and pointing to the fire. An asthmatical old gentleman, just recovering from a fit of the gout, sat there in a white cotton nightcap and dressing-gown made of yellow flannel.

"He's come down for the first time, Captain Copp. He looks brave this morning," was Mrs. Connaught's answer.

"Glad to see ye, comrade; I'll come in later," cried the captain through the window, flourishing his stick in token of congratulation. And old Mr. Connaught, who had not heard a word, nodded the tassel of the white cap by way of answer.

In the parlour at home, when Captain Copp entered it, sat his wife at work, a faded lady with a thin and fair face. Taking out the newspaper he had brought, he began to open it.

"Did you see the justice, Sam?" asked his wife in her gentle, loving tones.

"No, he was out. I only saw Cyril. There'll be a fine row when he comes home. Mary Anne has run away."

Mrs. Copp dropped her work. "Run away! oh, Sam! Run away from where?"

"From where?--why, from school," said the choleric captain, who was just as hot as his wife was calm. "She came bursting in upon them this morning at breakfast, having run home all the eight miles. And she says she won't go back."

Mrs. Samuel Copp, who had never in her life presumed to take a walk without express permission given for it, lifted her hands in dismay. "I feared she would never stay at school; I feared she would not."

"Old Connaught is downstairs today, Amy," observed the captain to her after a long interval of silence, as he turned his paper.

"I am glad of that. He suffers sadly, poor man."

"Well, he's getting old, you see; and he's one that has coddled himself all his life, which doesn't answer. I say! who's this?"

A vision of something bright had flashed in at the little garden gate, on its way to the door. Mrs. Copp started up, saying that it was Mary Anne Thornycroft.

"Not a bit of it," said the captain. "Mary Anne Thornycroft would come right in and not stand knocking at the door like a simpleton."

The knocking was very load and decisive, such as, one is apt to fancy in a simple country place, must herald the approach of a visitor of consequence. Sarah appeared showing in the stranger.

"Lady Ellis, ma'am," she said to her mistress.

A dress of rich black silk, a handsome India shawl, a girlish straw bonnet, with a great deal of bright mauve ribbon about it, a white veil, and delicate lavender gloves. My lady had got up herself well for her journey; stylish, but not too fine to travel. She had discarded her mourning, but it was convenient to wear her black silks. The captain and his wife rose.

Yes, it was Lady Ellis. But she had mistaken the direction given her, and had come to Captain Copp's instead of Mrs. Connaught's. When the explanation came, the gallant captain offered to take her in.

"Old Connaught is better today," observed he, volunteering the information. "He's downstairs in a nightcap and flannel gown."

Another minute, and Lady Ellis had the opportunity of making acquaintance with the articles of attire mentioned, and the old gentleman they adorned. Captain Copp, with his nautical disregard to ceremony, went into his neighbour's house as usual, without knocking, opened the sitting-room door, and sent the visitor in. Mrs. Connaught was not there, and he went to the kitchen in search of her. They were primitive-mannered, these worthy people of Coastdown, entering each others' kitchens or parlours at will.

Mr. Connaught, very excessively taken aback at the unexpected apparition, did nothing but look up with a stolid stare, as unable mentally to comprehend what the lady did there, and who she might be, as he was physically to rise and receive her. Lady Ellis lost her ready suavity for a moment, struck out of it by the curious old figure before her.

Mrs. Connaught was preparing some dainty little dish for her husband; sick people have fancies, and he liked her cooking better than the cook's. She heard the wooden leg coming along the passage.

"Here!" said the captain, "some lady wants you. Came by the omnibus from Jutpoint, I gather; got a white figure-head."

He stumped out the back way as he spoke, and Mrs. Connaught entered the parlour. When Lady Ellis was a girl of fifteen, twenty years before, and she an unmarried woman getting on for forty, they had seen a good deal of each other. Not having met since, each had some little difficulty in making the recognition of the other; but it dawned at last.

"I could not stay any longer from coming to see you," said Lady Ellis. "You seem to be the only link left of my early home and my dear parents. Forgive me for intruding on you today; had I waited longer I might not have been able to come at all."

She sat down and untied her bonnet, and laid hold of Mrs. Connaught's hand and kept it, letting fall some tears. Old Connaught stared more than ever; Mrs. Connaught, not a demonstrative woman, but simple and kindly, answered in kind.

"How long it seems ago! And you must have grown grand since then, Lady Ellis! But I never knew your people very much, you know."

"Ah, you forget! I grand!"--she went on, with a cheery laugh; "you will soon see how different I am from that. I came home to find nearly all those I cared for dead; you only are left, and I thought I must come down and find you out. Dear Mrs. Connaught, dear old friend, the longing for it got irrepressible."

Lady Ellis, it may be remembered, had pencilled down Mrs. Connaught's address at Mrs. Chester's, as supplied by Mr. Thornycroft. It might prove useful, she thought, on some future occasion. And the occasion had come.

The world, as she thought, had not dealt bountifully with her; quite the opposite. Not to mince the matter, she had to scheme to live, just as much as Mrs. Chester had, only in a different way. She liked good clothes, she liked ease and good living. Never, save for those few short days of her Indian marriage, had she known what it was to be free from care. Her father had liked play better than work; he and her mother, both, had a propensity to live beyond their income, to get into society that was above them, for they were not altogether gentlepeople. Extravagance, struggles, debts, pinching; all sorts of contrivances and care, outside show, meanness at home--such had been the experience of Angeline Finch, until some lucky chance took her to India as companion to a lady, and a still luckier introduced her to Sir George Ellis, an old man in his dotage. Two years of her reign as my lady--two blessed years; show, ease, life. Looking back upon them now, they seemed like a very haven. But Sir George died; it came to an end; and she home to Europe again, where she found herself a little embarrassed how to get along in the world.

Whether she had lost sight of her European acquaintances during her stay in India, or whether she had originally not possessed many, certain it was they seemed scarce now.

The vision, coming and going almost like a flash of lightning, of Mr. Thornycroft and his daughter, the gentleman's evident admiration of her, the tales she heard (perhaps exaggerated) of the style of living and the wealth at the Red Court, had set her mind a-longing. She thought often how desirable would be a visit there: what might it not lead to? The determination to effect it grew into a settled hope. It might almost have been called a prevision, as you will find from what came of it. Of all the ills that can possibly befal this life, Lady Ellis, perhaps from the circumstances of her early experience, regarded poverty as the most fatal. She had grown to dread it awfully. After that short interval of ease and luxury, the thought of having to relapse back to contrivances, debts, duns, difficulties, turned her sick. Ah, what a difference it is!--what a wide gap between!--a shoulder of mutton for dinner one day, cold the next, hashed the third, beer limited, a gown turned and turned again, shabby at the best; and a good dinner of three courses and wines, and the toilette of Madame Elise!

And so, Lady Ellis, working out her own plans, had come swooping down today on Coastdown and Mrs. Connaught.

She went up to Mr. Connaught and took his hand; she looked admiringly at him, as if a yellow flannel gown and cotton nightcap were the most charming articles of attire that fashion could produce; she expressed her sorrow for his ailments with a gentle voice. Certainly she did her best to win his heart and his wife's, and went three-parts of the way towards doing it.

Meanwhile things were in a commotion at the Red Court Farm. On the departure of Miss Derode at Christmas the justice had put his daughter to school, an eligible place eight miles only away. She had gone rebelliously; stayed rebelliously; and now finished up by running home again.

As the justice found when he got home. Mary Anne flatly refused to go back. She refused altogether to leave home.

Mr. Thornycroft, privately not knowing in the least what to do with his self-willed daughter, sat in his magisterial chair, the young lady carpeted before him. All he could say, and he said a great deal, did not move her in the least; back to school she would not go. It seemed that she had resumed at once old habits; had fed her birds, sang her songs to the grand piano, danced gleefully in and out amid the servants, and finally put on a most charming silk dress of delicate colour, that she would never have been permitted to wear at school, and was too good to have been taken there.

"I shall drive you back in an hour, Mary Anne."

"I will not go, papa."

"What's that, girl? Do you mean to tell me to my face you will not go when I say you shall? That's something new."

"Of course if you make me get into the carriage and drive me there yourself, I cannot help it; but I should ran away again tomorrow."

"It is enough disgrace to you to have run away once."

Mary Anne stood, half in contrition, half in defiance. Nearly seventeen now, tall and fair, very handsome, she scarcely looked one to be coerced to this step. Her clear blue eyes met those of her father; the very self-same eyes as his, the self-same will in them.

"As to disgrace, papa, I did nothing more than come straight home. It was the same thing as a morning walk, and I have often gone out for that."

"What do you suppose is to become of you?" questioned Mr. Thornycroft, the conviction seating itself within him that she would not be forced from home again. He ran away from school himself, and his father had never been able to get him back to it. Mary Anne had inherited his self-will.

"I can learn at home. Oh, papa, I will be very good and obedient if you let me stay."

"You are too old now to be at home alone. And you would not obey mademoiselle, you know."

"If you had wanted to place me at school, you should have done it when I was young, papa. I am too old to be sent there now, for the first time."

Inwardly the justice acknowledged the truth of this. He began thinking that he must keep her, and engage some strict governess. But he did not want to do this; he objected to having governesses at the Red Court Farm.

"You don't believe me perhaps, papa. Indeed, I will be good and obedient; but you must not send me away!"

He supposed it must be so. He did not see his way clearly out of the dilemma; she had been indulged always, she must be indulged still. Some signs of relenting in the blue eyes--handsome still as his daughter's--Mary Anne saw it, and flew into his arms with a shower of tears.

What an opportunity for Lady Ellis! She stayed on at Mrs. Connaught's, and went daily to the Red Court, and read with Mary Anne and saw to her studies; and was her charming companion and indulgent governess. Excursions abroad in plenty! Going to Jutpoint in Mr. Thornycroft's high carriage; sailing to sea in Tomlett's boat; here, there, everywhere! The young men happened to be away at this period, and Lady Ellis had the field open.

There were some weeks of it. My lady had made a private arrangement with Mrs. Connaught, insisting upon paying for herself while she stayed. The sea air was doing her so much good, she said. The sea air! My lady would have taken up her permanent abode in old Betts's boat rather than have removed herself to a distance from that desirable pile of buildings, the Red Court Farm. Looking at it from her little chamber window, that is, at its chimneys, and imagining the charming life underneath, it appeared to her as a very haven of refuge.

And Justice Thornycroft was becoming fascinated. He began to think there was not such another woman in the world.

Perhaps there was not. Let Harry Thornycroft be assured of one thing--that when these clever women set their minds to lay hold of a man, to bend him to their will, in nine cases out of ten they will carry it out, surrounding circumstances aiding and abetting.

One day when she was dining at the Red Court Farm, she suggested to Mr. Thornycroft that he should take a dame de compagnie for Mary Anne. She always appeared to have that young lady's best interest on her mind and heart and tongue. Mary Anne, accustomed to do what she liked, went out with the cheese.

"It is the only thing, as you will not have a governess. Believe me, my dear sir, it is the only thing for that dear child," she urged, her dark eyes going straight out to the honest blue ones of Harry Thornycroft.

He made no reply. He was thinking that a dame de compagnie might be more troublesome at the Red Court than even a governess.

"Mary Anne wants now some one who will train her mind and form her manners, Mr. Thornycroft. It is essential that it should be done. Wanting a mother, wanting a stepmother, I see only one alternative--a gentlewoman, who will be friend, governess, and companion in one. It is a pity, for her sake, that you did not marry again."

Mr. Thornycroft put out a glass of wine with a sudden movement, and drank it. Lady Ellis resumed, piteously.

"Ah, forgive me! I know I ought not to be so free; to say these things. I was but thinking of that dear child. You will forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive," said the justice. "I am exceedingly obliged for the interest you take in her, and for any suggestion you may make. The consideration is--what to do for the best? I don't see my way clear."

He sat with his fine head a little bent, the light of the wax chandelier falling on his fair, and still luxuriant, hair; his blue eyes went out to the opposite wall, seeing nothing; his fingers played with the wine glass on the table. Evidently there were considerations to be regarded of which Lady Ellis knew nothing.

"It has been partly out of love to my daughter that I have never given her a stepmother," said he, coming out of his reverie. "Second wives are apt to make the home unhappy for the first children; you often see it."

She smiled sweetly on him. "Dear Mr. Thornycroft! Make the home unhappy! Ah, then, yes, perhaps so! Women with a hard selfish nature. Still I do not see how even they could help loving Mary Anne. She is so----"

What she was, Mr. Thornycroft lost the pleasure of hearing. Sinnett the housekeeper came in at this juncture, and said the landlord of the Mermaid, John Pettipher, had come up, asking to see the justice. "Tomlett has been quarrelling with him, he says, sir," added Sinnett, "and he wants to have the law of him."

"Tomlett's a fool!" burst impulsively from the lips of Mr. Thornycroft. "Show him into the justice room, Sinnett."

He went out with a brief word of apology, and he never came back again. My lady sat and waited, and looked and hoped, but he did not return to gladden her with his presence. At length Sinnett came in with some tea.

"Is Mr. Thornycroft gone out?" she asked.

"Yes, my lady. He went out with John Pettipher."

She almost crushed the fragile cup of Sèvres china in her passionate fingers. Had Mr. John Pettipher heard the good wishes lavished upon him that evening, he might have stared considerably.

[CHAPTER XIII.]

What was the Fear?

The early buds had gone, the flowers of May were springing. Richard and Isaac Thornycroft were at home again, and the old profuse, irregular mode of life reigned at the Red Court Farm.

The skies are grey this afternoon; there is a chillness in the early summer air. Mr. Thornycroft, leaning lightly on the slender railings, that separate his grounds from the plateau, looks up to see whether rain will be falling.

There was trouble at home with Mary Anne. Uncontrolled as she was just now, no female friend to watch over her, she went her own way. Not any very bad way; only a little inexpedient. Masters came from the nearest town for her studies, taking up an hour or two each day; the rest of it she exercised her own will. The fear of school had subsided by this time, and she was growing wilful again--careering about on the heath; calling in at Captain Copp's and other houses; seated on some old timber on the beach, talking to the fishermen; riding off alone on her pony; jolting away (she had done it twice) in the omnibus to Jutpoint, without saying a word to anybody. Only on the previous day she had gone out in old Betts's tub of a boat, with the old man and his little son, got benighted, and frightened them at home. Clearly this was a state of things that could not be allowed to continue; and Mr. Thornycroft, leaning there on the railings, was revolving a question: should he ask Lady Ellis to come to the Red Court as dame de compagnie?--or as his wife?

"Of the two, a wife would be less dangerous than a companion," thought Justice Thornycroft, giving the light railings a shake with his strong hand "I'm not dying for either; but then--there's Mary Anne."

Almost as if she had heard the word, his daughter came out of the house and ran up to him. The justice put his hand on hers.

"What are you doing here, papa?"

"Thinking about you."

"About me?"

"Yes, about you. You are getting on for seventeen, Mary Anne; you have as much common sense as most people; therefore--listen, I want to speak to yon seriously."

She had turned her head at the ringing of the bell of the outer gate. But the injunction brought it round again.

"Therefore you must be quite well aware, without my having to reiterate it to you, that this kind of thing cannot be allowed to go on."

"I do no harm," said Mary Anne, knowing well to what the words tended.

"Harm or no harm, it cannot go on; it shall not. Now, which will you do--go to school again, or have a governess?"

"I don't want either," she answered, with a pout of her decisive lips.

"Or would you like--it is the one other alternative--a lady to come here as your friend and companion?"

"Frankly speaking, papa, I don't see what the difference would be between a companion and a governess. Of course, of the two I'd rather have a companion. To school I will not go. Lady Ellis was talking to me of this. I think she was fishing to be the companion herself."

"Fishing!" echoed the justice.

"Well, I do."

"Would you like her?"

"Not at all, papa."

"Who is it that you would like?" asked the justice, tartly.

"I should like nobody in that capacity. I might put up with it; but that is very different from liking."

"For my own part, if we decide upon a companion, there's no one I would so soon have as Lady Ellis," remarked Mr. Thornycroft. "Would you?"

"La la, la la!" sang Mary Anne, her eyes following a passing bird.

"Answer me without further trifling," sternly resumed Mr. Thornycroft, putting his hand on her shoulder.

The tone sobered her. "Of course, papa; if some one must come, why, let it be Lady Ellis."

Heaving a sort of relieved sigh, he released her, and she went away singing to herself a scrap of a pretty little French song, the refrain of which was, rendered in English--"If you come today, madam, you go tomorrow."

The misapprehension that arises in this world! None of us are perfectly open one with the other. Between the husband and the wife, the parents and the children, the brothers and the sisters, involuntary deceit reigns. Mr. Thornycroft assumed that Lady Ellis would be more acceptable to his daughter as a resident at the Red Court than any one else that could be found: had Miss Thornycroft spoken the truth boldly, she would have said that my Lady Ellis was her bête noire; the person she most disliked of all others on earth.

But the chief question was not solved yet in the mind of Justice Thornycroft. Should it be wife, or should it be only companion? He was quite sufficiently taken with my lady's fascinations to render the first alternative sufficiently agreeable in prospective; he deemed her a soft-hearted, yielding gentlewoman; he repeated over again to himself the mysterious words, "As a wife she would be less dangerous than a companion." But still, there were considerations against it that made him hesitate. And with good cause.

He went strolling towards the village, turning down the waste land, a right of way that was his own, past the plateau. The first house, at the corner of the street, was the Mermaid. He passed the end of it, and struck across to a low commodious cottage on the cliffs, whose rooms were all on the ground-floor. Tomlett lived in it; he was called the fishing-boat master, and was also employed occasionally on the farm of Mr. Thornycroft, as he had leisure. Mrs. Tomlett, a little woman with a red face and shrill voice, was hanging out linen on the lines to dry.

"Where's Tomlett today?" asked the justice. "He has not been to the farm."

Mrs. Tomlett turned sharply round, for she had not heard the approach, and dropped a curtsey to the justice. "He have gone to Dartfield, sir," she answered, lowering her voice to the key people use when talking secrets. "Mr. Richard he come in the first thing this morning and sent him."

Mr. Thornycroft nodded, and went away, muttering to himself exclusively something to the effect that Richard might have mentioned it. Passing round by the Mermaid again, he went towards home.

And he was charmingly rewarded. Standing on the waste land near the plateau, in her pretty and becoming bonnet of delicate primrose and white, her Indian shawl folded gracefully round her, her dress looped, was Lady Ellis.

"Do you know, Mr. Thornycroft," she said, as he took her hand, "I have never been on the plateau. Will you take me?"

Mr. Thornycroft hesitated visibly. "It is not a place for a lady to go to," he said, after a pause.

"But why not? Mary Anne told me one day you objected to her going on it."

"I do. The real objection is the danger. The cliff has a treacherous edge just there, and you might be over before you were aware. A sharp gust of wind, a footing too near or not quite secure, and the evil is done. Some accidents have occurred there; one, the last of them, was attended by very sad circumstances, and I then had these railings put round."

"You said the real objection was the danger; is there any other objection?" resumed Lady Ellis, who never lost a word or its emphasis.

"There are certain superstitious fancies connected with the plateau," answered Mr. Thornycroft, and very much to her surprise his face took a solemn look, his voice a subdued tone, just as if he himself believed in them: "a less tangible fear than the danger, but one that effectually scares visitors away, at night especially."

They were walking round towards the Red Court now, to which he had turned, and Mr. Thornycroft changed the subject. She could not fail to see that he wished it dropped. At the gates of the farm she wished him good afternoon, and took the road to the heath.

Justice Thornycroft did not enter the gates, but went round to the back entrance. Passing by the various outbuildings, he gained the yard, just as a man was driving out with a waggon and team.

"Where are you going?" asked the justice.

"After the oats, sir. Mr. Richard telled me."

"Is Mr. Richard about?"

"He be close to his own stables, sir."

Mr. Thornycroft went on across the yard, not to the house but to the stables at its end. This portion of the stables (as may be remembered) was detached from the rest, and had formed part of the old ruins. It was shut in by a wall. The horses of the two elder sons were kept there, and their dog-cart. It was their whim and pleasure that Hyde, the man-servant (who could turn his hand to anything indoors or out), should attend to this dog-cart and the horses used in it, and not the groom. Richard was sitting on the frame of the well just on this side the wall, doing something to the collar of his dog.

"Dicky," said the justice, without any sort of circumlocution, "I think I shall give the Red Court a mistress."

Richard lifted his dark stern face to see whether--as he verily thought--his father was joking. "Give it a what?" he asked.

"A mistress. I shall take a wife, I think."

"Are you mad, sir?" asked Richard, after a pause.

"Softly, softly, Dick."

Richard lifted his towering form to its full height. Every feeling within him, every sense of reason rebelled against the notion of the measure. A few sharp words ensued, and Richard went into a swearing fit.

"I knew it would be so; he was always hot and hasty," thought the justice to himself. "What behaviour do you call this?" he asked aloud. "Perhaps if you'll hear what I have to say you may cool down. Do you suppose I should be intending to marry for my own gratification?"

"I don't suppose you'd be marrying for that of anybody else," said the undaunted Richard.

"It is for the sake of Mary Anne. Some one must be here with her, and a wife will be less--less risk than a crafty, inquisitive governess."

"For the sake of Mary Anne!" ironically retorted Richard. "Send Mary Anne to school."

"I did send her; and she cane back again."

"I'd keep her there with cords. I said so at the time."

"Unfortunately she won't be kept. She has a touch of the Thornycroft will, Dick."

"Hang the Thornycroft will!" was Dick's angry answer. Not but what it was a stronger word he said.

"When you have cooled down from your passion I'll talk further with you," said the justice, some irritation arising in his own tone. "You have no right to display this temper to me. I am master here, remember, Dick; though sometimes, if appearances may be trusted, you like to act as if you forgot that."

Richard bit his dark lip. "You must know how inexpedient the measure would be, sir. Give yourself a wife!--the house a mistress! Why, the place might no longer be our own."

"Do you suppose I have not weighed the subject on all sides? I have been weeks considering it, and I have come to the conclusion that of the two--a wife or a governess--the former will be the less risk."

"No," said Richard; "a governess may be got rid of in an hour; a wife, never."

"But a governess might go out in the world and talk; a wife would not."

Richard dashed the dog's collar on the ground which he had held all the while. "Mark me, father"--he said, his stern eyes and resolute lips presenting a picture of angry warning rarely equalled--"this step, if you enter on it, will lead to what you have so long lived in dread of,--to what we are ever scheming to guard against. Mary Anne! Before that girl's puny interests should lead me to--to a measure that may bring ruin in its wake, I'd send her off to the wilds of Africa."

He strode away, haughty, imperious, rigid in his sharp condemnation. Mr. Thornycroft, one of those men whom opposition only hardens, turned to the fields, thinking of his brother Richard; Dick was so like him. There he found Isaac, stretched idly on the ground with a book. The young man rose at once in his respect to his father. His handsome velveteen coat, light summer trousers and white linen, his tall form with its nameless grace, his fair features, clear blue eyes and waving light hair, presenting as fine a picture as man ever made.

"That's one way of being useful," remarked Mr. Thornycroft.

Isaac laughed. "I confess I am idle this afternoon: and there's nothing particular to do."

"Isaac--" Mr. Thornycroft came to a long pause, and then went on rapidly, imparting the news that he had to tell. And it was a somewhat curious fact, that an embarrassment pervaded his manner in making this communication to his second son, quite contrasting with the easy coolness shown to his eldest. A bright flush rose to Isaac's fair Saxon face as he listened.

"A wife, sir! Will it be well that you should introduce one to the Red Court?"

"Don't make me go over the ground again, Isaac. I repeat that I think it will be well. Some lady must be had here--a wife or a governess, and the former in my judgment will be the lesser evil."

"As you please, of course, sir," returned Isaac, who could not forget the perfect respect and courtesy due to his father, however he might deplore the news. "I have heard you say--"

"Well? Speak out, Ikey."

"That had the time to come over again you would not have married my mother. I think it killed her, sir."

"My marrying her?" asked the justice in a joke. Isaac smiled.

"No, sir. You know what I mean; the constant state of fear she lived in."

"She was one of those sensitive, timid women that fear works upon; Cyril is the only one of you like her," said the justice, his thoughts reverting with some sadness to his departed wife. "But the error committed there, Isaac, lay in my disclosing it to her."

"In disclosing what, sir?" asked Isaac, rather at sea.

"The secret connected with the Red Court Farm," laconically answered Mr. Thornycroft.

There ensued a pause. Isaac put a straw in his lips and bit it like a man in pain. He had loved his mother with no common love; to hear that her place was to be occupied fell on him like a blow, putting aside other considerations against it.

"It is a great risk, sir."

"I don't see it, Isaac. But for an accident your mother would never have suspected. I then disclosed the truth to her, and I cursed myself for my folly afterwards. But for that she might have been with us now. As to risk, we run the same every day with Mary Anne. Ah me! your poor mother was too sensitive, and the fear killed her."

Isaac winced. He remembered how his mother had faded visibly, day by day; he could see, even now, the alarm in her soft eyes that the twilight often brought.

Mr. Thornycroft went away with the last words. Richard, who appeared to have been reconnoitring, came striding up to his brother, and let off a little of his superfluous anger, talking loud and fast.

"He is going out of his senses; you know it must be so, Isaac. Who is the woman? Did he tell you?"

"No," replied Isaac; "but I can give a pretty shrewd guess at her."

"Well?"

"Lady Ellis."

"Who?" roared Richard, as if too much surprised to hear the name distinctly.

"Lady Ellis. I have seen him walking with her two or three times lately."

"The devil take Lady Ellis!"

"So say I; rather than she should come into the Red Court."

"Lady Ellis!" repeated Richard, panic-stricken. "That beetle-browed, bold-eyed woman--with her soft, false words, and her stealthy step! 'Ware her, Isaac. Mark me, 'ware her, all of us, should she come home to the Red Court!"

---

The June roses were in bloom, and the nightingales sang in the green branches. Perfume was exhaled from the linden trees; butterflies floated in the air; insects hummed through the summer day. Out at sea the fishing-boats lay idly on the sparkling waves that gently rippled in the sun. And in this joyous time the new mistress came home to the Red Court Farm.

Lady Ellis had departed for London. Some three weeks afterwards Mr. Thornycroft went up one day, and was married the next, having said nothing at all at home. It came upon Mary Anne like a thunderbolt. She cried, she sobbed, she felt every feeling within her outraged.

"Isaac, I hate Lady Ellis!"

In that first moment, with the shock upon her, it was worse than useless to argue or persuade, and Isaac wisely left it. The mischief was done; and all that remained for them was to make the best of it. Mary Anne, with the independence of will that characterized her, wrote off a pressing mandate to France, which brought Mademoiselle Derode back again. In the girl's grief she instinctively turned to the little governess, her kind friend in the past years.

And now, after a fortnight's lapse, the mature bridegroom and bride were coming home. The Red Court had made its preparations to receive them. Mary Anne Thornycroft stood in the large drawing-room, in use this evening, wearing a pale blue silk of delicate brightness. Her hard opposition had yielded. Isaac persuaded, mademoiselle reasoned, Richard came down upon her with a short, stern command--and she stood ready, if not exactly to welcome, at least to receive civilly her father's wife. Richard appeared to have fallen in with Isaac's recommendation--that they should "make the best of it." At any rate he no longer showed anger; and he ordered his sister not to do it. So, apparently, all was smooth.

She stood there in her gleaming silk, with blue ribbons in her hair, and a deep flush in her fair face. Little Miss Derode, her dark brown eyes kindly and simple as ever, her small face browner, sat placidly working at a strip of embroidery. It was striking six, the hour for which Mr. Thornycroft had desired dinner to be ready.

Wheels were heard, the signal of the approach. They were pretty punctual, then. Isaac went out; it was evident that he at least intended to pay due respect to his father's wife. Presently Hyde, who had worn a long face ever since the wedding, threw open the drawing-room door.

"The justice and Lady Ellis."

The man had spoken her old name in his sore feeling, little thinking that she intended to retain it, in defiance of good taste. She approached Mary Anne, and kissed her. That ill-trained young lady submitted to it for an instant, and then burst into a passionate fit of angry sobs on her father's breast.

"Don't be a goose," whispered the justice, fondly kissing her. "Halloa! why, is it you, mademoiselle?" he cried out, his eyes falling on the governess. "When did you come over?"

"She came over because I sent for her, papa; and she has been here nine or ten days."

A few minutes and they went in to dinner. Richard's place was vacant.

"Where's your brother, Isaac?" asked the justice. "I believe he had to go out, sir."

Lady Ellis wondered a little at the profuseness of the dinner, but supposed it was in honour of herself, and felt gratified. It was, in fact, the usual style of dining at the Red Court, except at those quiet times (somewhat rare) when the two elder sons were away from home. But Lady Ellis did not suspect this.

Vastly agreeable did she make herself. Isaac, seated at her left elbow, was the most attractive man she had come in contact with since the advent of Mr. Lake, and Lady Ellis liked attractive men, even though they could be nothing more to her than step-sons. But she had come home to the Court really intending to be cordial with its inmates. And, as it has been already hinted, Richard and Isaac saw the policy of making the best of things.

If ever Mademoiselle Derode had been fascinated with a person at first sight, it was with Lady Ellis. The delicate attentions of that lady won her heart. When they crossed the hall to the drawing-room after dinner, and my lady linked her arm within that of her unwilling step-daughter, and extended the other to take the poor little withered hand of the Frenchwoman, mademoiselle's heart went out to her. Very far indeed was it from the intention of Lady Ellis to undertake the completion of Mary Anne's education, whatever might be the private expectation of Mr. Thornycroft: in the visit of the ex-governess she saw a solution of the difficulty--mademoiselle should remain and resume her situation. To bring this about by crafty means, her usual way of going to work, instead of open ones, my lady set out by being very charming with the governess. The very fact of mademoiselle's having been prejudiced by Miss Thornycroft against the stepmother who was coming home, served to augment within her the feeling of fascination. "A dark, ugly woman, poor and pretentious, who has not an iota of good feeling or of truth within her whole composition," spoke Miss Mary Anne, judging of her exactly as Richard did. Great was mademoiselle's surprise to see the handsome, fascinating, superbly dressed lady, who came in upon them with her soft smile and suave manners. She thought Miss Thornycroft had spoken in prejudice only, and almost resented it for the new lady's sake.

It was daylight still, and Lady Ellis stood for a minute at the window, open to the evening's loveliness. The sun had set, but some of its golden brightness lingered yet in the sky. Lady Ellis leaned from the window and plucked a rose from a tree within reach. Mademoiselle stood near; Mary Anne sat down on the music stool, her back to the room and her eyes busied with an uninteresting page of music, striking a bar of it now and again.

"Are you fond of flowers, miladi?" asked the simple little Frenchwoman. "I think there's nothing so good hardly in the world."

"You shall have this rose, then. Stay, let me place it in your waistband. There!--you will have the perfume now until it fades."

Mademoiselle caught the delicate hand and imprinted a kiss upon it. Single-minded, simple-hearted, possessing no discernment at the best of times, artless as a child, she took all the sweet looks and kind tones for real. Lady Ellis sat down on an ottoman in front of the window, and graciously drew mademoiselle beside her.

"Do you live in Paris?"

"I live in Paris now with my mother. We have a sweet little appartement near the Rue Montagne--one room and a cabinet de toilette and a very little kitchen, and we are happy. We go to the Champs Elysées with our work on fine days, to sit there and see the world:--the fine toilettes and the little ones at play. It was long to be separated from her, all the years that I was here."

"How many were they?"

"Seven. Yes, miladi, seven! But what will you? I had to gain. My mother she has a very small rente, and I came here. Mr. Thornycroft he was liberal to me--he is liberal to all,--and I saved enough to have on my side a little rente too. I went home when it was decided I should leave my pupil, and took my mother from the pension where she had stayed: and now we are happy together."

A thought crossed Lady Ellis that the charming apartment near the Rue Montague, and the mother in it, might prove some impediment to her scheme. Well--it would require the greater diplomacy.

"Is your mother old?"

"She will be sixty-five on the day of the All-Saints; and I was forty last month," added mademoiselle, with the candour as to age that is characteristic of a Frenchwoman. Suddenly, just as Lady Ellis was clasping the withered brown hand with a sweet smile, mademoiselle, without intending the least discourtesy, started up, her eyes fixed upon the plateau.

"Ah, bah," she said, sitting down again. "It is but the douanier--the preventive man."

Lady Ellis naturally looked out, and saw a man pacing along the border of the plateau. The superstition said to be connected with the place came into her mind, but did not stay there.

"You were here in the time of Mrs. Thornycroft, mademoiselle?"

"Ah, yes; she did not die for a long while after I came."

"She had years of ill health, I have heard. What was the matter with her?"

"It was but weakness, as we all thought," answered the Frenchwoman. "There was nothing to be told; no disease to be found.. She got thinner every week, and month, and year; like one who fades away. The doctor he came and came, and said the lungs were wrong; and so she died. Ah, she was so gentle, so patient; never murmuring, never complaining. Miladi, she was just an angel."

"What had she to complain of?" asked miladi.

"What to complain of? Why, her sickness; her waste of strength. Everything was done for her that could be, except one--and that was to go from home. It was urged upon her, but she would not listen; she used to shudder at the thought."

"But why?" wondered Lady Ellis.

"I never knew. My pupil, Miss Mary Anne, never knew. She would kneel at her mamma's feet, and beg her to go anywhere, and to take her; but the poor lady would shake her head, or say quietly, no; and that would end it."

Mademoiselle Virginie Derode was a capable woman in her vocation. She could do a vast many things useful, good, necessary to be done in the world. But there was one thing that she could not do, and that was--hold her tongue. Some people are born with the bump of reticence; my Lady Ellis was a case in point: some, it may be said, with the bump of communicativeness, though I don't know where it lies. Mademoiselle was an exemplification of the latter.

"There was some secret--some trouble on Madame Thornycroft's mind," said good mademoiselle in her open-heartedness. "Towards the last, when the weakness grew to worse and worse, she would--what do you call it?--wander a little; and I once heard her say that it had killed her. Mr. Isaac, he was in the room at the time, and he shook his mother--gently, you know, he loved her very much; and told her she was dreaming, and talking in her sleep. That aroused her; and she laid her head upon his shoulder, and thanked him for awaking her."

"And was she talking in her sleep?"

"Ah, no; she was not asleep. But I think Mr. Isaac said it because of me. I saw there was something, always from the time I first came; she used to start at shadows; if the window did but creak she would turn white, and stare at it; if the door but opened suddenly, she would turn all over in a cold sweat. It was like a great fear that never went away."

"But what fear was it?" reiterated Lady Ellis.

"I used to repeat to myself that same question--'What is it?' One day I said to Hyde, as I saw him watching his mistress, 'She has got some trouble upon her mind?' and he, that polite Hyde called me a French idiot to my face, saying she had no more trouble on her mind than he had on his. I never saw Hyde fierce but that one time. Ah, but yes; she certainly said it; that it had killed her."

"That what had killed her?" still questioned Lady Ellis, considerably at sea.

"I had to guess what; I knew it quite well as I listened; the secret trouble that had been upon her like a fright perpetual."

Lady Ellis threw her piercing eyes upon the soft and simple ones of the little Frenchwoman. All this was as food for her curious mind. "A perpetual fright!" she repeated musingly. "I never heard of such a thing. What was it connected with?"

"I don't know, unless it was connected with that horror of the plateau. Miladi, I used to think it might be."

Casting her thoughts back some few weeks, Lady Ellis remembered the little episode of her proposing to go on the plateau, and Mr. Thornycroft's words as he opposed it. She turned this to use now with mademoiselle in her clever way.

"Mr. Thornycroft was speaking to me about this--this mystery connected with the plateau, but we were interrupted, and I did not gather much. It is a mystery, is it not, mademoiselle?"

"But, yes; it might be called a mystery," was the answer.

"Will you recite it to me?"

Mademoiselle knew very little to recite; but that little she remembered with as much distinctness as though it had happened yesterday. One light evening in the bygone years, shortly after she came to the Red Court, she went out in the garden and strolled on to the plateau. There were no preventive railings round it then. It was fresh and pleasant there; the sea was calm, the moonbeams fell across the waves; and a vessel far away, lying apparently at anchor, showed its cheery white light. Mademoiselle strolled back towards the house, and was about to take another turn, when she saw a figure on the edge of the plateau, seemingly standing to look at the sea. To her sight it either wore some white garment, or else the rays of the moon caused it to appear so. At that moment Richard Thornycroft came up. In turning to speak to him mademoiselle lost sight of the plateau, and when she looked again, the figure was gone. "Was it a shadowy sort of figure?" Richard asked her, in a low voice, when she expressed her surprise at the disappearance; and mademoiselle answered after a moment's consideration that she thought it was shadowy. Mr. Richard looked up at the sky, and then down at her, and then far away; his countenance (it seemed to mademoiselle that she could see it now) wearing a curious expression of care and awe. "It must have been the ghost," he said; "it is apt to show itself when strangers appear at night on the plateau." The words nearly startled mademoiselle out of her seven senses; "ghosts" had been her one dread through life. She put her poor trembling fingers on Richard's coat sleeve, and humbly begged him to walk back with her as far as the house. Richard did so; giving her scraps of information on the way. He had never seen the figure himself, perhaps because he had specially looked for it, but many at Coastdown had seen it; nay, some even then living at the Red Court. Why did the ghost come there? Well, it was said that a murder had been committed on that very spot, the edge of the plateau, and the murderer, stung with remorse, killed himself within a few hours, and could not rest in his grave. Mademoiselle was too scared to hear all he said; she heard quite enough for her own peace; and she went into the presence of Mrs. Thornycroft, bursting into tears. When that lady heard what the matter was, she chided Richard in her gentle manner. "Was there need to have told her this?" she whispered to him with a strange sorrow, a great reproach, in her sad brown eyes. "I am sorry to have said it if it has alarmed mademoiselle," was Richard's answer. "It need not trouble her; let her keep off the plateau at night; it never comes in the day." That Richard believed in it himself appeared all too evident, and she remarked it to Mrs. Thornycroft as she left the room. That good lady poured a glass of wine out for her with her own hand, and begged her, in accents so imploring as to take a tone of wildness, never again to go on the plateau after dusk had fallen. No need of the injunction; mademoiselle had scuttered onwards ever since with her head down, if obliged to go abroad at night in attendance on Miss Thornycroft.

To hear her tell this in a low earnest whisper, her brown hands clasped, her scared eyes strained on the opposite plateau, whose edge stood out defined and clear against the line of sea beyond and the sky above, was the strangest of all to Lady Ellis.

"If there is one thing that I have feared in life it is a revenant," confessed mademoiselle. "Were I to see one, knowing it was one, I think I should die. There was a revenant in the convent where they put me when I was a little child; a white-faced nun who had died unshriven; and we used to hear her in the upper corridors on a windy night. Ah, me! I was sick with fear when I listened; I was but a poor little weak thing then, and the dread of revenants has always rested with me."

Lady Ellis suppressed her inclination to smile, and pressed the trembling brown fingers in her calm ones. With the matter-of-fact plateau lying there before her, with her own matter-of-fact mind so hard and real, the ghost story sounded like what it must be, simple delusion. But that something strange was connected with the plateau, she had little doubt.

"And what more did you hear of it?" she asked.

"Nothing--nothing more after that night. In a day or two, when my courage came to me, and I would have asked details, Mr. Thornycroft, who happened to be in the room, went into great anger. He told me to hold my tongue; never to speak or think of the subject again, or he should send me back to France. I obeyed him; I did not speak of it; even when there was talk in the village because of the accident, and he had the railings put up, I kept myself silent. I could not obey him in the other thing--not to think of it. I tried not; and I got dear Mrs. Thornycroft to put my bed in a back room, so that I did not see the plateau from my window. Well, to go back, miladi: I think it must have been this cause, or something connected with it, that brought the fear in which she lived to Mrs. Thornycroft."

Lady Ellis was silent. She could not think anything of the sort. Unless, indeed, the late Mrs. Thornycroft was of a kindred nature to mademoiselle; timorous and weak-minded.

"The preventive men pace there, do they not?"

"By day, yes; they walk on to it from their beat below, but not much at night. Ah, no! not since the accident; they do not like the ghost."

Mademoiselle rose; she was going to Mrs. Wilkinson's, on the heath, for the rest of her stay in Coastdown. Saying good night to my lady, she went in search of Mary Anne, and could not find her.

Mary Anne was with her brother Isaac. She had flown to him after quitting the presence of her stepmother, having had much ado to repress all the feelings that went well-nigh to choke her. With a crimson face and heaving bosom, with wild sobs, no longer checked, she threw herself on his neck.

"Now, Mary Anne!"

"It has been my place ever since mamma died. It is not right that she should take it."

He found she was speaking of the seat at table. Every little incident of this kind, that must inevitably occur when a second wife is brought home, did but add to the feeling of bitter grief, of wrong. Not for the place in itself did she care, but because a stranger had usurped what had been their mother's.

Letting the burst of grief spend itself, Isaac Thornycroft then sat down, put her in a chair near him, and gave her some wise counsel. It would be so much happier for her--for all of them--for papa--that they should unite in making the best of the new wife come amidst them; of her, and for her.

All he said was of little use. Anger, pain, bitter, bitter self-reproach sat passionately this night on the heart of Mary Anne Thornycroft.

"Don't talk, Isaac. I hope I shall not die of it."

"Die of it?"

"The fault is mine. I can see it well. Had I been obedient to Miss Derode; had I only stayed quietly at school, it never would have happened. Papa would not have brought her home, or thought of bringing her home, but for me."

That was very true. Mary Anne Thornycroft, in her strong good sense, saw the past in its right light. She could blame herself just as much as she could others when the cause of blame rested with her. Isaac strove to still her emotion; to speak comfort to her; but she only broke out again with the words that seemed to come from a bursting heart.

"I hope I shall not die of it!"

[CHAPTER XIV.]

Superstitious Tales.

With the morning Lady Ellis assumed her position as mistress of the Red Court. She took her breakfast in bed--a habit she favoured--but came down before ten, in a beautiful challi dress, delicate roses on a white ground, with some white net lace and pink ribbons in her hair. The usual breakfast hour was eight o'clock, at least it was always laid for that hour; and Mr. Thornycroft and his sons went out afterwards on their land.

Looking into the different rooms, my lady found no one, and found her way to the servants' offices.

The kitchen, a large square apartment, fitted up with every known apparatus for cooking, was the first room she came to. Its two sash windows looked on the side of the house towards the church. It had been built out, comparatively of late years, beyond the back of the dining-room, a sort of added wing, or projecting corner. But altogether the back of the house was irregular; a nook here, a projection there; rooms in angles; casements large or small as might happen. The sash windows of the kitchen alone were good and modern, but you could not see them from the back. Whatever the irregularity of the architecture, the premises were spacious; affording every accommodation necessary for a large household. A room near the kitchen was called the housekeeper's room; it was carpeted, and the servants sat in it when they pleased; but they were by no means fashionable servants, going in for style and ceremony, and as a rule preferred the kitchen. There were seven servants indoors; Sinnett being the housekeeper.

My lady--as she was to be called in the house--was gracious. The cook showed her the larder, the dairy, and anything else she chose to see, and then received the orders for dinner--a plain one--fish, a joint, pudding, and cream.

It was the intention of my lady to feel her way, rather than assume authority hurriedly. She saw, with some little surprise, that no remnant was left of the last day's dinner; at least none was to be seen. Not that day would she inquire after it, but keep a watchful eye on what went from table for the future. To say that her rule in the house was to have one guiding principle--economy--would be only stating the fact. There had been no marriage settlements, and my lady meant to line her pocket by dint of saving.

The rooms were still deserted when she returned to them. My lady stood a moment in the hall, wondering if everybody was out. The door at the end, shutting off the portion of the house used by the young men, caught her eye, and she resolved to go on an exploration tour. Opening the door softly, she saw Richard Thornycroft in the passage talking to Hyde. He raised his hat, as in courtesy bound; but his dark stern face never relaxed a muscle; and somehow it rather daunted her.

"My father's wife, I believe," said Richard. "To what am I indebted for the honour of this visit?"

Just as if the rooms at this end of the house were his! But my lady made the best of it.

"It is Mr. Richard, I am sure! Let us be friends." She held out her hand, and he touched the tips of her fingers.

"Certainly. If we are not friends the fault will lie on your side," he pointedly said. "I interfere with no one in the house. I expect no one to interfere with me. Let us observe this rule to each other, and I dare say we shall get on very well."

She gently slid her hand within his, encased in its rough coat. Hyde, recovering from his trance of amazement, touched his hat, and went out at the outer door.

"I have not been in this portion of the house. Will you show it to me?"

"I will show it to you with pleasure: what little there is of it to see," replied Richard. "But--once seen, I must request you to understand that these rooms are for gentlemen only. Ladies are out of place in them."

She had a great mind to ask why; but did not. Very poor rooms, as Richard said--one on either side the passage. Small and plain in comparison with the rest of the house. A strip of thick cocoa-nut matting ran along the passage to the outer door. It was open, and my lady advanced to it.

Looking at the most confined prospect she ever saw; in fact, at no prospect at all. A wall, in which there was a small door of egress, shut out all view of the sea and the plateau. Another wall, with wide gates of wood, hid the courtyard and the buildings beyond. Opposite, in almost close proximity, leaving just space for the dog-cart or other vehicles to come in and turn, was the room used as a coach-house, formerly part of the stables when the house was a castle. My lady walked across the gravel, and entered it. A half-smile crossed Richard's face.

"There's not much to see here," he said.

Certainly not much. The dog-cart stood in one corner; in another were some trusses of straw, and a dilapidated cart turned upside down. Adjoining was a stable for the two horses alternately used in the dog-cart. My lady stepped back to the house door, and took a deliberate survey of the whole.

"It strikes me as being the dreariest-looking spot possible," she said. "A dead wall on each side, and a shut-in coach-house opposite!"

"Yes. Those who planned it had not much regard to prospect," answered Richard. "But, then, prospect is not wanted here."

She turned into the rooms; the windows of both looking on this confined yard. In the one room, crowded with guns, fishing-rods, dog-collars, boxing gloves, and other implements used by the young men, she stood a minute, scanning it curiously. In the other, on the opposite side the passage, was a closed desk-table, a telescope and weather-glass, some armchairs, pipes, and tobacco.

"This is the room I have heard Mr. Thornycroft call his den," said she, quickly.

"It is. The other one is mine and my brother's."

A narrow twisting staircase led to the two rooms above. My lady, twisting up it, turned into one of the two--Richard's bed-chamber. The window looked to the dreary line of coast stretching forward in the distance.

"Who sleeps in the other room?" she asked.

"Hyde. This part of the house is lonely, and I choose to have him within call."

In her amazement to hear him say this--the brave strong man, whom no physical fear could daunt--a thought arose that the superstition obtaining at the Red Court, whatever it might be, was connected with these shut-in-rooms; shut in from within and without. Somehow the feeling was not pleasant to her, and she turned to descend the stairs.

"But, Mr. Richard, why do you sleep here yourself?"

"I would not change my room for another; I am used to it. At one time no one slept here, but my mother grew to think it was not safe at night. She was nervous at the last."

He held the passage-door open, and raised his hat, which he had worn all the while, as she went through it, then shut it with a loud, decisive click.

"A sort of intimation that I am not wanted there," thought she. "He need not fear; there's nothing so pleasant to go for, rather the contrary."

In the afternoon, tired of being alone, she put on her things to go out, and met Mr. Thornycroft. She began a shower of questions. Where had he been? What doing? Where were all of them--Isaac--Mary Anne? Not a soul had she seen the whole day, except Richard. Mr. Thornycroft lifted his finger to command attention, as he answered her.

It would be better that they should at once begin as they were to go on; and she, his lady wife, must not expect to get a categorical account of daily movements. He never presumed to ask his sons how their days were spent. Farmers--farming a large tract of land--had to be in fifty places at least in the course of the day; here, and there, and everywhere. This applied to himself as well as to his sons. When Cyril came home he could attend upon her; he had nothing to do with the out-door work, and never would have.

"Hyde said you rode out this morning."

"I had business at Dartfield: have just got home."

"Dartfield! where's that?"

"A place five or six miles away: with a dreary road to it, too," added the justice.

"Won't you walk with me?" she pleaded, in the soft manner that had, so attracted him before marriage.

"If you like. Let us go for a stroll on the heath."

"Where is Mary Anne?" she inquired, as they went on.

"Mary Anne is your concern now, not mine. Has she not been with you?"

"I have not seen her at all today. When I got down--it was before ten--all the world seemed flown. I found Richard. He took me over the rooms at the end of the passage; to your bureau (he called the room that, as the French do), and to his chamber and Hyde's, and to the place filled with their guns and things."

The justice gave a sort of grin. "That's quite a come-out for Dick. Showing you his chamber! You must have won his heart."

My lady's private opinion was that she had not won it; but she did not say so. Gracefully twitching up her expensive robe, lest it should gather harm in its contact with the common, she tripped on, and they reached the heath. Mr. Thornycroft proposed to make calls at the different houses in succession, beginning with Captain Copp's. She heard him with a little shriek of dismay. "It was not etiquette."

"Etiquette?" responded the justice.

"I am but just married. It is their place to call on me first."

Mr. Thornycroft laughed. Etiquette was about as much understood as Greek at Coastdown. "Come along!" cried he, heartily. "There's the sailor and his wooden leg opening the door to welcome us."

The sailor was doing it in a sailorly fashion,--flourishing his wooden leg, waving his glazed hat round and round, cheering and beckoning. The bride made a merit of necessity, and went in. Here they had news of Mary Anne. Mrs. Copp, Mademoiselle Derode, and Miss Thornycroft had gone to Jutpoint by omnibus under Isaac's convoy.

"And the women are coming back here to a tea-fight," said the plain sea-captain; "cold mackerel and shrimps and hot cakes; that she-pirate of ours is baking the cakes in the oven; so you need not expect your daughter home, justice."

Mr. Thornycroft nodded in answer. His daughter was welcome to stay.

The dinner-party at the Red Court that evening consisted of five. Its master and mistress, the two sons, and a stranger named Hopley from Dartfield, whom Richard brought in. He was not much of a gentleman, and none of them had dressed. My lady thought she was going in for a prosy sort of life--not exactly the one she had anticipated.

Very much to her surprise she found the dinner-courses much augmented; quite a different dinner altogether from that which she had ordered. Boiled fowls, roast ducklings, tarts, ice-creams, macaroni--all sorts of additions. My lady compressed her lips, and came to the conclusion that her orders had been misunderstood. There is more to be said yet about the dinners at the Red Court Farm; not for the especial benefit of the reader, he is requested to take notice, but because they bear upon the story.

At its conclusion she left the gentlemen and sat alone at the open window of the drawing-room;--sat there until the shades of evening darkened; the flowers on the lawn sent up their perfume, the evening star came twinkling out, the beautiful sea beyond the plateau lay calm and still. She supposed they had all gone out, or else were smoking in the dining-room. When Sinnett brought her a cup of tea, presenting it on a silver waiter, she said, in answer to an inquiry, that the gentlemen as a rule had not taken tea since the late Mrs. Thornycroft's time. Miss Thornycroft and her governess had it served for themselves, with Mr. Cyril when he was at home from his tutor's.

"That is it," muttered my lady to herself, as Sinnett left the room. "Since their mother's death there has been no one to enforce order in the house, and they have had the run like wild animals. It's not likely they would care to be with the girl and that soft French governess."

It was dull, sitting there alone, and she wound an Indian shawl round her shoulders, went out across the lawn, and crossed the railings to the banned plateau.

It was very dreary. Not a soul was in sight; the landscape lay still and grey, the sea dull and silent. A mist seemed to have come on. This plateau, bare in places, was a small weary waste. Standing as near to the dangerous edge as she dared, my lady stretched her neck and saw the outline of the Half-moon underneath, surrounded by its waters, for the tide was nearly at its height. The projecting rocks right and left seemed to clip nearly round it, hiding it from the sea beyond. The cliff, as she looked over, was almost perpendicular, its surface jagged, altogether dangerous to look upon, and she drew back with a slight shudder--drew back to find Richard Thornycroft gazing at her from the plateau's railings, on which he leaned. They met halfway.

"Were you watching me, Mr. Richard?"

"I was," he gravely answered. "And not daring to advance or make the least sound, lest I should startle you."

"It is a dangerous spot. Mr. Thornycroft was saying so to me one day. But I had never been here, and I thought I would have a look at it; it was lonely indoors. So I came. Braving the ghost," she added, with a slight laugh.

Richard looked at her, as much as to ask what she knew, but did not speak.

"Last evening, when we were sitting in the drawing-room, the plateau in view, your sister's governess plunged into the superstitious, telling me of a 'revenant' that appears. I had heard somewhat of it before. She thinks you believe in it."

Richard Thornycroft extended his hand to help her over the railings. "Revenant, or no revenant, I would very strongly advise you not to frequent the plateau at night," he said, as they walked on to the house. "Do not be tempted to risk the danger."

"Are you advising me against the ghostly danger or the tangible?"

"The tangible."

"What is the other tale? What gave rise to this superstition?"

Richard Thornycroft did not answer. He piloted her indoors as far as the drawing-room, all in silence. The room was so dusk now that she could scarcely see the outline of the furniture.

"Will you not tell it me, Mr. Richard? Mademoiselle's was but a lame tale."

"What was mademoiselle's tale?"

"That she saw a shadowy figure on the plateau, which disappeared almost as she looked at it. You gave her some explanation about a murderer that came again as a revenant, and she had lived in dread of seeing it ever since."

If my lady had expected Richard Thornycroft to laugh in answer to her laugh, she was entirely mistaken; his face remained stern, sad, solemn.

"I cannot tell you anything, Lady Ellis, that you might not hear from any soul at Coastdown," he said presently. "People, however, don't much care to talk of this."

"Why don't they?"

Richard lifted his dark eyebrows. "I scarcely know: a feeling undoubtedly exists against doing so. What is it you wish to hear?"

"All the story, from beginning to end. Was there a murder?"

"Yes; it took place on the plateau. I can give you no particulars, I was but a little fellow at the time, except that the man who committed the deed hung himself before the night was out. The superstition obtaining is, that he does not rest quietly in his unconsecrated grave, and comes abroad at times to haunt the plateau, especially the spot where the deed was done."

"And that spot?"

Richard extended his hand and pointed to the edge as nearly as possible in a line with the window.

"It was there; just above the place they call the Half-moon. The figure appears on the brink, and stands there looking out over the sea. I should have said is reported to appear," he corrected himself.

"Did you ever see it yourself?"

"I cannot tell you."

"Not tell me!"

"I have undoubtedly seen a figure hovering there; but whether ghostly or human it has never given me time to ascertain. Before I could well cross the railings even, it has gone."

"Gone where?"

"I never could detect where. And to tell you the truth, I have thought it strange."

"Have you seen it many times?"

"Three or four."

He was standing close against the side of the window as he spoke, his profile stern as ever, distinct in the nearly faded light. My lady sat and watched him.

"The superstition has caused an accident or two," he resumed. "A poor coastguard-man was on his beat there one moonlight night and discerned a figure coming towards him walking on the brink of the cliff, as he was. What he saw to induce him to take it for the apparition, or to impart fear, was never explained. With a wild cry he either leaped from the cliff in his fright, or fell from it."

"Was he killed on the spot?"

"So to say. He lived but a few minutes after help came: the tide was up, and they had to get to him in boats: just long enough to say some nearly incoherent words, to the effect of what I have told you. A night or two after that a man, living in the village, went on the plateau looking for the ghost, as was supposed, and he managed to miss his footing, fell over, and was killed. It was then that my father had the railings put; almost a superfluous caution, as it turned out, for the impression made on the neighbourhood by these two accidents was so great, and the plateau became so associated in men's minds with so much horror, that I think nobody would go on it at night unless compelled."

"Lest they should see three ghosts instead of one," interrupted a light, careless voice at the back of the room. My lady started, Richard turned.

It came from Isaac Thornycroft. He had come in unheard, the door was but half closed, and gathered the sense of what was passing.

"Quite an appropriate atmosphere for ghostly stories," he said; "you are all in the dark here. Shall I ring for lights?"

"Not yet," interposed my lady, hastily; "I want to hear more."

"There's no more to hear," said Richard.

"Yes there is. You cannot think how this interests me, Mr. Richard; but I want to know--I want to know what was the cause of the murder. Can't you tell me?"

Isaac Thornycroft had perched himself on the music-stool, his fair, gay, open face a very contrast just now to his brother's grave one. In the uncertain light he fancied that my lady looked to him with the last question, as if in appeal, and he answered it.

"Richard can tell it if he likes."

But it seemed that Richard aid not like. He had said the neighbourhood cared not to speak of this; most certainly he did not. It was remembered afterwards, when years had passed; and the strange fact was regarded as some subtle instinct lying far beyond the ken of man. But there was my lady casting her exacting looks towards him.

"They were two brothers, the disputants, and the cause was said to be jealousy. Both loved the same woman, and she played them off one on the other. Hence the murder. Had I been the Nemesis I should have slain the woman after them."

"Brothers!" repeated Lady Ellis. "It was a dreadful thing."

Richard, quitting his place by the window, left the room. Isaac, who had been softly humming a tune to himself, brought it to a close. A broad smile sat on his face: it appeared evident to my lady that the superstition was regarded by him as fun rather than otherwise. She fell into thought.

"You do not believe in the ghost, Mr. Isaac?"

"I don't say that. I do not fear it."

"Did you ever see it?"

"Never so much as its shadow; but it is currently believed, you know, that some people are born without the gift of seeing ghosts."

He laughed a merry laugh. My lady resumed in a low tone.

"Is it not thought that your mother feared it? That it--it helped to kill her?"

As if by magic, changed the mood of Isaac Thornycroft. He rose from the stool, and stood for a moment at the window in the faint rays of the light; his face was little less dark than his brother's, his voice as stern.

"By your leave, madam, we will not bring my mother's name up in connexion with this subject."

"I beg your pardon; but--there is one thing I should like to ask you. Do not look upon me as a stranger, but as one of yourselves from henceforth; come here, I hope, to make life pleasanter to all of us," she continued, in her sweetest tone. "Those rooms at the end of the house, with the high walls on either side--is there any superstition connected with them?"

Isaac Thornycroft simply stared at her.

"I cannot tell why I fancy it. To-day when Mr. Richard was showing me those rooms, the thought struck me that the superstition said to obtain at the Red Court Farm must be connected with them."

"Who says that superstition obtains at the Red Court Farm?" questioned Isaac sharply.

"I seem to have gathered that impression from one or another."

"Then I should think, for your own peace of mind, you had better ungather it--if you will allow me to coin a word," he answered. "The superstition of the plateau does not extend to the Red Court."

She gave a slight sniff. "Those rooms looked dull enough for it. And your brother--your strong, stern, resolute brother--confessed to feeling so lonely in them that he had Hyde to sleep in the chamber near him. There's not so much space between them and the plateau."

Isaac turned from the window and faced her; voice, eye, face resolute as Richard's.

"Mrs. Thornycroft--or Lady Ellis, whichever it may please you to be called--let me say a word of advice to you in all kindness. Forget these things; do not allow yourself to recur to them. For your own sake I would warn you never to go on the plateau after daylight; the edge is more treacherous than you imagine; and your roving there could not be meet or pleasant. As to the rooms you speak of, there is no superstition attaching to them that I am aware of; but there may be other reasons to render it inexpedient for ladies to enter them. They belong to me and my brother; to my father also, when he chooses to enter; and we like to know that they are private to us. Shall I ring for lights now?" he concluded, as he turned to quit the room.

"Yes, please. I wonder where Mr. Thornycroft can be?"

"Probably at the Mermaid," he stayed to say.

"At the Mermaid? Do you mean the public-house?"

"Yes. A smoking bout takes place in its best parlour occasionally. My father, Mr. Southall, Captain Copp, Dangerfield the superintendent of the coastguard, old Connaught, and a few other gentlemen, meet there."

"Oh!" she answered. "Where are you going?"

"To fetch my sister from Mrs. Copp's."

In the short interval that elapsed before the appearance of the lights, my lady took a rapid survey of matters in her mind. The conclusion she arrived at was, that there were some items of the recent conversation altogether curious; that a certain mysterious atmosphere enveloped the present as well as the past; not the least of which was Richard Thornycroft's manner and his too evident faith in mystery. Take it for all in all, the most incomprehensible place she had ever come in contact with was the Red Court Farm.

[CHAPTER XV.]

The New Mistress of the Red Court.

My lady was up betimes in the morning. Remembering the previous day's dinner, she went to seek the cook, intending to come down upon her with a reprimand. The servants were only just rising from breakfast, which afforded my lady an opportunity of seeing the style of that meal as served in the kitchen of the Red Court Farm.

Tea and coffee; part of a ham, cold; toasted bacon, hot; eggs boiled; watercress and radishes; a raised pie; cold beef; shrimps; hot rolls; toast and butter. The sight of all this so completely took Lady Ellis aback, that she could only stare and wonder.

"Is this your usual breakfast table?" she asked of the cook when the rest had left the kitchen.

"Yes, my lady."

"By whose permission?"

"By--I don't understand," said the cook, a stolid sort of woman in ordinary, with a placid face, though very great in her own department.

"Who is it that allows all this?"

Still the woman did not quite comprehend. The scale of living at the Red Court Farm was so profuse, that the servants in point of fact could eat what they pleased.

"Sometimes the eatables is varied, my lady."

"But--does Mr. Thornycroft know of this extravagance going on? Is he aware that you sit down to such a breakfast?"

Cook could not say. He did not trouble himself about the matter. Yes, now she remembered, the justice had come in when they were at breakfast and other meals.

"Who has been the manager here?--who has had the ordering of things?" inquired my lady, in a suppressed passion.

"Sinnett, chiefly. Once in a way the justice would give the orders for dinner; a'most never," was the reply.

Compressing her lips, determining to suppress all this ere many days should be over, my lady quitted the subject for the one she had chiefly come to speak upon.

"And now, cook, what did you mean by flying in the face of my orders yesterday?"

"Did I fly in the face of 'em?" asked the cook, simply.

"Did you! I ordered a plain dinner--fish, a joint, and pudding. You sent up--I know not what in addition to it."

"Oh, it's them extra dishes you mean. Yes, my lady, Sinnett ordered 'em."

"Sinnett!" echoed my lady. "Did you tell her I had desired the dinner should be plain--that I had fixed on it?" she asked after a pause.

"Sinnett said that sort of dinner wouldn't do for the justice, and I was to send up a better one."

My lady bit her thin lips. "Call Sinnett here if you please."

Sinnett, about her work upstairs, came in obedience to the summons. She was a little, pale-faced, dark woman, of about thirty-five, given to wear smart caps. My lady attacked her quietly enough, but with a manner authoritative.

"I beg you to understand at once that I am mistress here, Sinnett, and must be obeyed. When I give my orders, whether for dinner or for anything else, they are not to be improved upon."

"My lady, in regard to adding to the dinner yesterday, I did it for the best; not to act in opposition to you," replied Sinnett, respectfully. "A good dinner has to be sent in always: those are the general orders. The young gentlemen are so much in the habit of bringing in chance guests, that the contingency has to be provided for. I have known a party of eight or ten brought in before now, and we servants quite unaware of it until about to lay the cloth."

"Yes," said my lady, hastily, "that might be all very well when there was no controlling mistress here. Mr. Thornycroft's sons appear to have been allowed great license in the house; of course it will be different now. Remember one thing, if you please, Sinnett, that you do not interfere with my orders for dinner today."

"Very well, my lady."

Catching up her dress--a beautiful muslin that shone like gold--my lady turned to the larder, telling the cook to follow her. She had expected to see on its shelves the dishes that left the table yesterday; but she saw very little.

"What has become of the ducks, cook? They were scarcely touched at table."

"We had 'em for our suppers, my lady."

My lady had a wrathful word on the tip of her tongue; she did not speak it.

"Ducks for supper in the kitchen! Are you in the habit of taking your supper indiscriminately from the dinner dishes that come down?"

"Yes, my lady. Such is master's orders."

"It appears to me that a vast quantity of provisions must be consumed," remarked my lady.

"Pretty well," was the cook's answer. "It's a tolerable large family; and Mr. Thornycroft has a good deal given away."

"Provisions?"

"He do; he's a downright good man, my lady. Not a morning passes, but some poor family or other from the village comes up and carries home what's not wanted here."

"I wonder you don't have them up at night as well," said my lady, in sarcasm.

The cook took it literally.

"That's one of the few things not allowed at the Red Court Farm. Mr. Thornycroft won't have people coming here at night: and for the matter of that," added the woman, "they'd not care to come by the plateau after dark.--About today's dinner, my lady?"

Yes; about today's dinner. As if in aggravation of the powers that had been, my lady ordered soles, a piece of roast beef, the tart that had not been cut yesterday, and the remainder of the lemon cream.

As she went sailing away, the cook returned into the kitchen to Sinnett. The woman was really perplexed.

"I say, Sinnett, here's a start! A piece of ribs of beef, and nothing else. What's to be done?"

"Send it up," quietly replied Sinnett.

"But what on earth will the justice and the young masters say?"

"We shall see. I wash my hands of interfering. Exactly what she has ordered, cook, and no more, mind: she and the master must settle it between them."

Mary Anne Thornycroft had hoped she "should not die of it." Of that there was little chance; but that the girl had received a great blow, there was no disputing. Mr. Thornycroft had said a word to her that morning after breakfast in his authoritative manner, to remind her that she was not to run wild, now there was some one at home to be her friend, mother, companion. Smarting under the sense of wrongs that in her limited experience, her ignorance of the woes of the world, she believed had never fallen on anybody's head before, Mary Anne when left alone burst into a flood of tears; and Isaac surprised her in them. Half in vexation, half in pride, she dried them hastily. Isaac drew her before him, and stood holding her hands in his, looking down gravely into her face.

"What did you promise me, Mary Anne?"

No answer.

"That you would, for a time at least, make the best of things. That you would try the new rule before rebelling against it."

"But I can't. It is too hard, Isaac. Papa's beginning to interfere now."

"Interfere! Is that the right word to use?"

She looked down, pouting her pretty lips. It was a good sign, as Isaac knew.

"There was no harm in my walking to Mrs. Copp's after breakfast yesterday; or in my staying there; or in my going with you to Jutpoint."

"Did papa say there was harm?"

"He told me I was not to run wild now. He told me that I had a"--the poor chest heaved piteously--"a mother. A mother to control me!"

"Well!" said Isaac.

"She is not my mother--I will never call her so. Oh, Isaac! why can't the old days come back again, when mademoiselle was here?"

"Hush! don't cry. Richard or she may be coming in. There; be your own calm self, while I say a word to you. Listen. This calamity has been--"

"There!" she interrupted. "You say yourself it is a calamity."

"I have never thought it anything else; but it cannot be averted now, and therefore nothing remains but to try and lighten it. It has been brought about by you; by you alone, Mary Anne; and if I revert to that fact for a moment, my dear, it is not to pain you, but to draw an inference from it for the future. Do not rebel at first to the control of my lady. It would be unjust, ungracious, altogether wrong; it might lead to further trouble for you; we know not of what sort. Promise me," he added, kissing her lips, "that you will not be the one to make first mischief. It is for your own good that I urge it."

Her better judgment came to her, and she gave Isaac a little nod in answer.

My lady reaped the benefit of this lecture. Coming in from her somewhat unsatisfactory visit to the cook, she found the young lady dutifully practising the Moonlight sonata. My lady looked about the room, as if by good luck she might find something to avert weariness. Miss Thornycroft had hoped she should not die of her; my lady was beginning to hope she should not die of ennui.

"Do you never have any books here? Novels?"

"Sometimes," replied Mary Anne, turning round to speak. "We get them from the library at Jutpoint. There are some books upstairs in the book-case that used to be mamma's--Walter Scott's, and Dickens's, and others."

The Moonlight sonata went on again. My lady, who had no soul for music, thought it the most wofully dull piece she had ever listened to. She sat inert on the sofa. Life--this life at the Red Court Farm--was already looking indescribably dreary. And she had pictured it as a second Utopia! It is ever so; when anticipation becomes lost in possession, romance and desire are alike gone.

"How long has Sinnett lived here?" she suddenly asked, again interrupting Miss Thornycroft.

"Ever so long," was the young lady's reply. "She came just before mamma died."

"What are her precise functions here?--What does she call herself?"

"We don't call her anything in particular. She is a sort of general servant, overlooking everything. She is housekeeper and manager."

"Ah! she has taken a great deal of authority on herself, I can see."

"Has she?" replied Mary Anne. "I have heard papa say she is one of the best servants we ever had; thoroughly capable."

My lady gave her head a little defiant nod: and relapsed into silence and ennui.

Somehow the morning was got through. In the afternoon they set out to walk to the heath; it was rather late, for my lady, lying on the sofa in her bedroom, dropped off to sleep after luncheon. The dinner hour had been postponed to eight in the evening in consequence of a message from Mr. Thornycroft.

Winding round the churchyard, Mary Anne stood a moment and looked over the dwarf quickset hedge, on that side not much higher than her knee. My lady observed that her hands were clasped for a moment, that her lips moved.

"What are you doing, Mary Anne?"

"I never like to go by mamma's grave without staying a moment to look at it, and to say a word or two of prayer," was the simple answer.

My lady laughed, not kindly. "That comes of having a Roman Catholic governess."

"Does it!" answered the girl quietly, indignant at the laugh. "Mademoiselle happens to be a Protestant. I did not learn it from her, or from any one; it comes from my heart."

Turning abruptly on to the heath, Mary Anne saw Mademoiselle Derode coming towards them, and sprung off to meet her with a glad step.

Disappointment was in store for my lady's private dream of keeping Miss Derode as governess. Mademoiselle was then on her way to the Red Court to tell them she was leaving for France in two days.

"You cannot go," said Mary Anne, with the decisively authoritative manner peculiar to the Thornycrofts. "You must come and spend some weeks with me at the Red Court."

Mademoiselle shook her little brown head. It was not possible, she said; happy as she could be at the Red Court; much as she would have liked to stay again with her dear Miss Mary Anne. Her mother wanted her, and she must go.

Turning about and about, they paced the heath while she repeated the substance of her mother's letter. Madame, said she, was suffering from a cold, from the separation, from loneliness, and had written for her. The Champs Elysées had no charms without her dear daughter; the toilettes were miserable; the playing children hustled her, their bonnes were not polite. Virginie must return the very first hour it would be convenient to do so. The pot-au-feu got burnt, the appartement smoked; madame had been so long en pension that she had forgotten how to manage things; never clever at household affairs, the craft of her hand appeared to have gone from her utterly. She had not had a dinner, so to say, since Virginie left; she had not slept one whole night. While Monsieur and Madame--her pupil's parents--had been away on their wedding tour, she had said nothing of this, but now that they were home again she would no longer keep silence. Virginie must come; and her best prayers would be upon her on the journey.

A sort of mocking smile, covered on the instant by a sweet word, crossed my lady's lips.

"It was all very well," she said, "just what a good mother would write; but mademoiselle must write back, and explain that she was wanted yet for some weeks at the Red Court Farm."

"I cannot," said mademoiselle; "I wish I could. Miladi is very good to invite me; but my mother is my mother."

"You left your mother for seven years; she did well then."

"But, yes; that was different. Miladi can picture it. We have our ménage now."

"I have set my heart upon your coming to us, mademoiselle," was miladi's rejoinder, showing for a moment her white teeth.

"I should not need the pressing, if I could come," was the simple answer. "It is a holiday to me now to be at the Red Court Farm; but some things are practicable and others are not practicable, as miladi knows."

And the poor little governess in the cause of her mother was hard as adamant. They walked about until my lady's legs were tired, and then prepared to return.

"Of course you will come back with us, and dine for the last time?" said Mary Anne.

On any other occasion my lady might have interposed with an intimation that Mary Anne Thornycroft had no longer licence to invite whom she pleased to the table of the Red Court Farm. Without waiting for her to second the invitation, mademoiselle at once accepted it.

"For the last time," she repeated; "I shall be making my baggage tomorrow."

My lady did not change her dress for dinner. The odds and ends of what we are pleased to call full dinner-dress did not seem to be appreciated at the Red Court. Yesterday Richard and Isaac had sat down in their velveteen clothes. A moment before dinner Mr. Thornycroft came into the drawing-room, and said his sons had brought in two or three friends. My lady, meeting them in the hall, stared at their appearance and number.

"What is it? who are they?" she whispered to Mary Anne.

"Oh, it is only one of their impromptu dinner parties," carelessly replied Mary Anne. "I guessed they were thinking of it by their delaying the dinner. They have supper parties instead sometimes."

My lady thought she had never seen so rough a dinner party in her life, in the matter of dress. Richard and Isaac wore thin light clothes, loose and easy; the strangers' costume was, to say the least of it, varied. Old Connaught, temporarily abroad again, was wrapped in a suit of grey flannel; the superintendent of the coastguard wore brown; and Captain Copp had arrived in a pea-jacket. Mary Anne shook hands with them all; Miss Derode chattered; and Mr. Thornycroft introduced the superintendent by name to his wife--Mr. Dangerfield.

"Only six today," whispered Mary Anne to her stepmother. "Sometimes they have a dozen."

Quite enough for the fare provided. Before Mr. Thornycroft began to help the soles, he looked everywhere for a second dish--on the table, on the sideboard, on the dumb waiter. "There's more fish than this, Sinnett?" he exclaimed, hastily.

"No, sir. That's all."

Mr. Thornycroft stared his servants severally in the face, as if the fault were theirs. Three of them were in waiting: Sinnett, a maid, and Hyde. He then applied himself to the helping of the fish, and, by dint of contrivance, managed to make it go round.

Well and good. Some ribs of beef came on next, fortunately a large piece. Mr. Thornycroft let it get cold before him; he could not imagine what the hindrance meant. Presently it struck him that the three servants stood in their places waiting for the meat to be served. The guests waited.

"Where are the other things, Hyde?"

"There's only that, sir."

The justice looked up the table and down the table; never in his whole life had he felt ashamed of his hospitality until now. But by this time the curious aspect of affairs had penetrated to Richard.

"Is this all you have to give us for dinner?" he asked of Sinnett, in his deep, stern tones; and he did not think it necessary to lower his voice.

"Yes, sir."

"This! That piece of beef?"

"There's nothing else, sir."

"By whose management?--by whose fault? Speak, woman."

"My lady gave the orders, sir."

Richard turned his dark face on my lady, as if demanding whether Sinnett was not telling a lie; and Mr. Thornycroft began to cut the beef as fast as he could cut it.

"I did not anticipate that we should have friends with us," murmured the new mistress. She felt truly uncomfortable, really sorry for the contretemps; all eyes were turned upon her, following the dark condemning ones of Richard.

"We must make the best of our beef; there are worse misfortunes at sea," said Isaac, his good-natured voice breaking the silence. "You will judge of our appetites better when you get more used to us," he added to my lady with a kind smile.

"I should think there is worse misfortunes at sea," observed Captain Copp, forgetting his grammar in his wish to smooth the unpleasantness. "Bless and save my wooden leg! if us sailors had such a glorious piece of beef to sit down to of a day on the long voyages, we should not hear quite so much of hardships. I remember once--it was the very voyage before the one when I saw that sea-serpent in the Pacific--our tins of preserved meat turned bad, and an awful gale we met washed away our live stock. Ah, you should have been with us then, Mr. Richard; you'd never despise a piece of prime beef again."

Richard vouchsafed no answer: he had been thoroughly vexed. Captain Copp, seated at my lady's right hand, asked her to take wine with him, and then took it with the table generally.

My lady got away as soon as she could: hardly knowing whether to resent the advent of the visitors, the free and easy hospitality that appeared to prevail at the Red Court, or her own mistake in not having provided better. With that dark resolute face of power in her mind--Richard's--instinct whispered her that it would not answer to draw the reins too tight. At any rate, she felt uncomfortable at the table, and quitted it.

Leaving Miss Thornycroft and mademoiselle to go where they pleased, she went up at once to her chamber: a roomy apartment facing the sea. By its side was a small dressing-room, or boudoir; with a pleasant window to sit at on a summer's day. It was night now, but my lady threw up the window, and remained at it. A mist was arising out at sea: not much as yet. She was musing on the state of affairs. Had she made a mistake in coming to the Red Court for life? Early days as yet to think so, but a doubt of it lay upon her spirit.

The subdued tones of the piano underneath were echoing to the beautiful touch of Mademoiselle Derode; the soft, light touch that she had not been able to impart to her pupil. Mary Anne Thornycroft's playing, though clear, brilliant, and good, was, like herself, firm and decisive. You never heard the low melodious music from her that charms the heart to sweet sadness, rather than wins the ear and the admiration.

Suddenly, as my lady stood listening and musing, a figure, very dim and shadowy, appeared on the edge of the plateau, and she strained her eyes on it with a start.

Not of fear; she had no superstition in her hard composition, and all she felt was curiosity--surprise. Mademoiselle Derode might have given utterance to a faint scream, and scuttered away where she could not see the plateau, in dread belief that the ghost was walking. My lady had the good sense to know that a figure, shadowy by this light, might be very substantial by daylight. All in a moment she lost sight of it. It appeared to be standing still on the plateau's edge, whether looking this way or over the sea, her far sight, remarkably keen, could not tell her, but as she looked the figure disappeared. It was gone, so, far as she could see; certainly it did not walk either to the right or the left. For a brief instant my lady wondered whether it had fallen over the cliff--as the poor coastguard-man had once done.

Footsteps underneath. Some one was crossing the garden, apparently having come from the direction of the plateau, and making for the solitary door in the dead wall at the unused end of the house; the end that she had been warned could not welcome ladies. TO her intense surprise she recognised her husband, but dressed differently from what he had been at dinner. The black frock coat (his usual attire) was replaced by one of common velveteen, the gaiters were buttoned over the pantaloons, the customary hat by a disreputable wide-awake. Where could he have been?--when she had thought him busy with his guests!

The mist was extending to the land very rapidly; my lady shut down the window in haste and descended the stairs. The drawing-room windows were open, and she rang the bell for them to be closed. In those few moments the mist had increased so greatly that she could not see halfway across the garden. It was almost like an instantaneous cloud of blight.

"Mr. Thornycroft has left the dining-room," she observed to Hyde, as he was shutting the windows. "Have the people gone?"

"No, my lady. I have just taken in the pipes and spirits."

"Pipes and spirits! Do they smoke at these impromptu dinner gatherings--and drink spirits?"

"Generally," answered Hyde.

"But Mr. Thornycroft is not with them? I saw him out of doors."

Hyde, his windows and shutters closed, turned round to face her, and spoke with emphasis.

"The justice is in the dining-room, my lady. He does not quit it when he has friends with him."

Believing the man told her a lie, for her own sight was perfectly reliable sight--at least it had been so hitherto--she determined to satisfy herself. Waiting until he had gone, she crossed the hall, opened the dining-room door an inch and peeped in. Hyde was right. There sat Mr. Thornycroft in his place at the foot of the table, almost close to her, in the same dress he had worn at dinner, a long churchwarden's pipe in his mouth, and a steaming glass of something hot before him.

---

"What will you allow me for housekeeping, Mr. Thornycroft?" she asked in the morning.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing," repeated the justice in his firmest tone, decisive as Richard's. She was taking her breakfast languidly in her room. It was eleven o'clock, but she had a headache, she said: the truth being that my lady liked to lie in bed. Mr. Thornycroft, coming in, condoled with her in his hearty manner, never believing but the plea was genuine--the straightforward country gentleman would as soon have believed Captain Copp's wooden leg to be a real one, as a headache false. He entered on the matter he came to speak of, the dinner of yesterday. Kindly enough, but very emphatically, he warned her that such a thing must not occur a second time. It had been altogether a mistake.

"Any money you may wish for yourself, for your own purposes, is yours heartily," he resumed; "but in the housekeeping you must not interfere. The cost is my care, and Sinnett sees to it: she has been in the house so long as to know perfectly well how to provide. I would have given ten pounds out of my pocket rather than have had that happen last night," added the justice, giving a flick to his trousers' right-hand pocket in momentary irritation at the recollection.

"But to provide such dinners is most unreasonable," she remonstrated. "It is only for the servants to eat. I don't think you can have an idea of the extravagance that goes on in the kitchen."

"Pooh! Extravagance! I can afford it. The servants only eat what goes down from our table; and what they can't eat is given away to those who want food. It was my father's plan before me, and it is mine."

"It is sinful waste," retorted my lady. "If you choose to sit down to an outrageously profuse table yourself, the servants ought not to follow suit."

"What would you have done with the superfluous victuals?" demanded the justice. "Put up for auction of a morning and sold?"

"As you ask me what I would have done, I will answer--do not provide them. The housekeeping is altogether on too liberal a scale."

Mr. Thornycroft, who had been looking from the window over the sea, lying hot and clear and beautiful this morning, turned and stood before her; his fair, handsome face grave, his towering form raised to its full height, his voice, as he spoke, impressive in its calm decision.

"Lady Ellis, understand one thing--that this is a matter you must not interfere in. The housekeeping at the Red Court Farm that you are pleased to find cause of fault with--is an established rule; so to say, an institution. It cannot be changed. Sinnett will conduct it as hitherto without trouble to or interference from yourself. Whenever it does not please you to sit down to table, there are other rooms in which you can order your dinner served."

"And suppose I say that I must exert my right of authority--my privilege of controlling the dinners?" she rejoined, her voice getting just a little harsh with the opposition.

"You cannot say it. I am master of my own house and my own table."

"You have made me the mistress!"

"Just so; but not to alter the established usages."

Lady Ellis tapped her foot on the soft carpet. "Do you consider that there is any reason in keeping so large a table?"

"There may or may not be. My pleasure is that it shall be kept. My sons have been brought up to it; they would not have it curtailed."

"I think your sons have been brought up to a great deal that is unfitting. One would think they were lords."

"Handsome, noble fellows!" aspirated the justice, with perhaps a little spice of aggravation. "There are not many lords that can match them."

My lady bit her thin lips, a sure sign of rising temper. "It seems to me to be my duty, Mr. Thornycroft, exercising the authority you have vested in me by making me your wife, to control the extravagance hitherto running riot. Opposition, ill-feeling, in the house will not be seemly."

"Neither will I have it," put in the justice.

"I do not see that it can be avoided. I give certain orders. Sinnett, acting under you, opposes them. What can the result be but unseemly contention? How would you avoid it, I ask?"

"By going to live in one of the cottages on the heath, and leaving Isaac--I mean Richard--master of the Red Court Farm."

He spoke promptly--like a man whose mind is fully made up. The prospect of living in a cottage on the heath nearly took my lady's breath away.

"Mr. Thornycroft!" she passionately exclaimed, and then her tone changed to one of peevish remonstrance: "why do you bring up impossibilities? A cottage on the heath!"

Mr. Thornycroft brought down his hand, not in anger but emphasis, on the small breakfast table.

"Were the order of the Red Court upset by unnecessary interference on your part--were I to find that I could be no longer master of it without being subjected to continual opposition, I should surely quit it. If a cottage on the heath were distasteful to you I would take lodgings at Jutpoint."

Lady Ellis sipped her coffee. It did not appear safe to say more. A cottage on the heath, or lodgings at Jutpoint!

"I only wished to put a stop to unnecessary extravagance," she said, in a tone of conciliation.

"No doubt. I give you credit for good motives, of course; but these things must be left to me. The same gentlemen who dined here yesterday evening are coming to supper this. I have made out the bill of fare myself, and given it to Sinnett."

"Coming again to-night!" she could not help exclaiming.

"To atone for the shortcomings of yesterday's dinner," spoke the justice. "I never had occasion to feel ashamed of my table before."

"I cannot think what possible pleasure you can find in the society of such men," she said, after a pause. "Look at them, coming out to dinner in those rough coats!"

Mr. Thornycroft laughed. "We don't go in often for evening dress at Coastdown. As to the pleasure, they have been in the habit of sitting at my table for some years now, madam, and I enjoy the companionship."

"I fancied you left them early; I thought I saw you cross the garden, as if coming from the plateau," she said, resolving to speak of the matter which had so puzzled her.

"We did not leave the dining-room until eleven o'clock."

"Well--it was very strange. I was standing at this window, and certainly saw some one exactly like you; the same figure, the same face; but not in the same dress. He seemed to have on gaiters and a velveteen coat, and a low broad-brimmed hat, very ugly. What should you say it could have been?"

"I should say that you were dreaming."

"I was wide awake. It was just before that mist came on," she added.

"Ah, the fault must have lain in the mist. I have known it come as a mirage occasionally, bringing deception and confusion."

Did he really mean it? It seemed so, for there was seriousness on his face as he spoke. Quitting the room, he descended the stairs, and made his way to the fields. In the four-acre mead--as it was called in common parlance on the farm--he came upon Richard watching the hay-makers. Richard wished him good morning; abroad early, it was the first time he had seen his father that day.

"What was the failure, Dick?" asked the justice. "Fog," shortly answered Richard. "Couldn't see the light."

Mr. Thornycroft nodded.

"Are we to have a repetition, sir, of yesterday's dinner table?" resumed Richard. "If so, I think the sooner your wife is requested to take up her residence somewhere else, the better."

"You will not have it again. Sinnett holds my orders, and my wife has been made aware she does. There's no need for you to put yourself out."

With the injunction, spoken rather testily, Mr. Thornycroft left him. But a little later, when he met Isaac, he voluntarily entered on the subject; hinting his vexation at the past, promising that it would never again occur, almost as if he were tendering an apology for the accident.

"I'm afraid I made a mistake, Ikey; I'm afraid I made a mistake; but I meant it for the best."

It was ever thus. To his second son Mr. Thornycroft's behaviour was somewhat different from what it was to his eldest. It could not be said that he paid him more deference: but it was to Isaac he generally spoke of business, when speaking was needed; if an opinion was required, Isaac's was sought in preference to Richard's. It was just as though Isaac had been the eldest son. That Richard had brought this on himself, by his assumption of authority, was quite probable: and the little preference seemed to spring from the justice involuntarily.

The evening supper took place, and the guests were consoled by the ample table for the scantiness of the previous dinner. My lady was not invited to join it; nothing appeared further from Mr. Thornycroft's thoughts than to have ladies at table. She spent a solitary sort of evening; Mary Anne was at Mrs. Wilkinson's, taking leave of Miss Derode.

Was it, she asked herself, to go on like this always and always? Had she become the wife of Justice Thornycroft only to die of the dreary life at the Red Court Farm? Let us give her her due. When she married him she did intend to do her duty as an honest woman, and send ridiculous flirtations, such as that carried on with Robert Lake, to the winds. But she did not expect to be done to death of ennui.

A short while went on. Nearly open warfare set in between Mary Anne and her stepmother. To-day my lady would be harsh, exacting, almost cruel in her rule; tomorrow the girl would be wholly neglected--suffered to run wild. Mr. Thornycroft saw that things could not continue thus, and the refrain of the words he had spoken to Isaac beat ever on his brain, day by day bringing greater force to them: "I fear I made a mistake; I fear I made a mistake."

One morning Mary Anne astonished the justice by appearing before him in his bureau, in what she was pleased to call the uncivilized rooms. He sat there with Mr. Hopley, of Dartfield, some account books before them. Her dress, a beautiful muslin with a raised blue spot, was torn out at the gathers and trailed behind her. My lady had done it in a passion.

"Holloa! what do you do here?" cried the justice, emphatically; and Mr. Hopley went out whistling, with his hands in his pockets, and crossed over to stare at the idle dog-cart in the coach-house, as if to give privacy for the explanation.

She had come with one of her tales of woe. She had come to beg and pray to be sent to school. What a change! Mr. Thornycroft was nearly at his wits' end.

Ere the day was over, his wife brought a complaint to him on her own score: not altogether of Mary Anne. She simply said, incidentally, that ill-trained young lady was getting quite beyond her control, and therefore she must wash her hands of her. The complaint was of her own health; it appeared to be failing her in a rather remarkable manner, certainly a sudden one. This was true. She had concluded that the air of Coastdown was inimical to her, she wished it might be managed for her to live away--say Cheltenham, or some other healthy place.

How eagerly Mr. Thornycroft caught at the suggestion, he felt afterwards half ashamed to think of. In matters involving money he was always liberal, and he at once named a handsome sum per month that she might enjoy, at Cheltenham, or anywhere else that pleased her.