A Poor Gentleman

by Mrs. Oliphant

A POOR GENTLEMAN.

CHAPTER XXV.
AN ENCOUNTER UNFORESEEN.

The young people drove from Penton to the Hook very silent and overawed, the two girls close together, and Walter opposite to them, looking very heavy and dull, his eyes red with want of sleep and the air of one who has been up all night in every line of him. It is curious what an air of neglect this gives even to the clothes. He felt shabby, out of order, in every way uncomfortable in body and dazed in mind, not feeling that he knew anything about what had happened, nor that he cared to think of that. He almost went to sleep with the closeness and the motion of the carriage, and took no more notice of the presence of the stranger opposite to him than if she had been another sister. It had annoyed him for the first moment, to have her there, but by this time he was quite indifferent to the fact, indifferent to everything, dazed with sleep and agitation and the weakening influence of a struggle past. But there came a moment as they neared home when his senses returned to him with a bound. He was looking vaguely out of the carriage-window seeing nothing, when suddenly, vaguely, there appeared at a distance, going up a road which led away from the main road deep into the quiet of the fields, a solitary figure. It was little more than a speck upon the road, a little shadow almost like that of a child; but it woke Walter fully up in a moment and made his heart beat. He called to the coachman to stop, to the great astonishment of Ally, who thought that something more must have happened in a day so full of fate, and cried out,

“What is it, Wat, what is the matter?” with anxiety in her tone.

“Nothing,” he said, opening the door as the horses drew up; “but I should prefer to walk if you don’t mind; I think I shall go to sleep altogether if I stay here.”

“Shall I come too?” said Ally; but a glance at her companion, showed her that this was impracticable.

“Oh, Wat, don’t be long! Mother will want to ask you—she will want to know—”

“You can tell her as much as I can,” he said, taking off his hat in honor of Mab, who looked out with much surprise at this sudden interruption of the drive, which was so dreary and yet so full of novelty and interest. And then the carriage went on.

Ally looking out of the window saw with great perplexity and distress that he turned back along the road. Was he going back to Penton? where was he going? Mab by her side immediately interposed with a reason.

“Men don’t like close carriages,” she said; “they always prefer walking coming home from places. I don’t wonder; I should walk if I might.”

“We might if we were to go together,” said Ally; “we always walk with Walter, Anne and I. He likes it too. Let us—” But then she remembered that Wat had given no sort of invitation. And when she looked out again he had vanished from the road. Where had he gone? This was very startling, not to be explained by anything that occurred to Ally. She added quickly, “But it is very cold, and mother will be anxious.” And the carriage rolled on without any further interruption through the village and down the steep and stony way.

Walter could not have restrained himself even had the occasion of his leaving them been now apparent. He felt as if all his life were involved in getting speech of her, in receiving her sympathy and hearing her voice. He had never had such an opportunity before, never met her, scarcely in daylight seen her face, and to see her pursuing the loneliest road, where nobody ever appeared, which led nowhere in particular, where he could have her all to himself without the possibility of being sent away! He hurried along after her, striking across a field and dropping over a low wall, which brought him immediately in front of her as she strolled along. She gave a little cry at sight of him, or rather at the suddenness of the apparition, not distinguishing at first who it was. She was dressed in very dark stuff with some rough fur about her throat and a thick gauze veil shrouding the upper part of her face. The little outline was so slim and pretty that any imperfection in costume or appearance was lost in the daintiness of the trim form. Indeed, how should Walter have seen any imperfection? She was not like anybody he had ever known. What was different could not but be an added grace.

“You didn’t expect to see me,” he said, coming up to her with his hat in his hand.

“How should I? I thought no one knew this path but I. It is so quiet. And I saw no one on the road, nothing but a carriage. Ah, I know! You jumped out of the carriage. It was hot and stifling, and there were ladies in it who made you do propriety. I know.”

“There was my sister,” said Walter, “but I saw you. That was my reason, and the best one a man could have.”

“You are only a boy,” she said, shaking her head with a smile. Only her chin and lips were clear of that envious thick veil. The rest of her face was as if behind a mask, but how sweet the mouth was, and the smile that curved it! “And how could you tell it was I? Everybody wears the same sort of thing, tweed frock, and jacket, and—”

“There is nobody like you; it is cruel to ask me how I knew. If you would only understand—”

“I have heard that sort of thing before, Mr. Penton.”

“Yes, I don’t doubt every fellow would say it, of course; but nobody could mean it so much as I.”

“That’s what you all say; but I don’t believe it a bit; only I suppose it amuses you to say it, and it does, a little, amuse me. There are so few things,” she said, with a sigh, “to amuse one here.”

“That is what I feel,” cried the lad; “nothing—we have nothing to keep you here. It is all so humdrum and paltry—a little country place. There is nothing in it good enough for you.”

She laughed with an air of keen amusement, which in his present condition slightly jarred upon Walter.

“It is a great deal too good for me,” she said, “old Crockford’s niece. If anybody speaks to me I courtesy and say, ‘Yes, ma’am, it’s doing me good, it is indeed, this fine fresh air.’”

“I wish,” said the boy, “you would drop this, and tell me once for all who you really are. I’m not happy to-day. We are all in great trouble. I wish you would not laugh, but just be serious once.”

“Oh, no, sir, I’ll not laugh if you don’t like it—nor nothing else as you don’t like. I knows my place and how to behave to my betters. I’m Emmy, old Crockford’s niece.” And she paused in the middle of the road to make him a courtesy. “I’ve never said nothing else, now ’ave I, sir?”

He looked at her with irritation beyond expression. Could not she see that he was in no humor for jest to-day? And yet he could not but feel that the tone of her imitation was perfect, and that as she said these latter words it was certainly in the voice and with the manner which old Crockford’s niece would have employed.

“You don’t know,” he said, “how you fret me with all that. I thought when I saw you that I’d fly to you and get comforted a little. I don’t want to have jokes put upon me just now. All this is very amusing—it’s so well done—and it’s so droll to think that it’s you; but I have been through a great fight this morning,” said Walter, with that self-pity which is so warm at his age. He felt his eyes moisten, something was in his throat—he was so sorry for himself; and he almost thought it would be best, after all, to hurry home to his mother, who always understood a man, instead of lingering out here in the cold, even with the most delightful, the most enthralling of women, who would do nothing but laugh. He was in this mood, with his eyes cast down, his head bent, standing still, yet with a sort of movement in his figure as if he would have gone away again, when suddenly a shock, a thrill of sweeter consciousness went through him—and his whole being seemed rapt in delicious softness, comprehension, consolation. She had put her hand suddenly on his arm with a quick, impulsive movement.

“Poor boy!” she said. “You have been in a great fight? Tell me all about it.”

Her voice had changed to the tenderest, coaxing tone.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, in sudden ecstasy, holding close to his side the hand that had stolen within his arm—and for some time could say no more.

“Well?”

“Yes, yes!” cried Walter, “I’ll tell you presently. I don’t know that I want to tell you at all. I want you to take an interest in me.”

“Oh, if that is all!” she said; then, after a moment, drew her arm away. “If we should meet any one, Mr. Walter Penton, it would not look at all pretty to see you walking arm in arm with a—girl who lives in the village; a girl whom nobody knows, and, of course, whom everybody thinks ill of; but I can hear you quite well without that. Come, tell me what it is. Did you say a fright or a fight?”

“Both,” said Walter. He made various attempts to recover the hand again, but they were all fruitless. The mere touch, however, had somehow—how he could not tell—made things more natural, harmonized all the contrarieties in life, brought back a better state of affairs. The fumes of sleep and fatigue seemed to die away from his brain: the atmosphere grew lighter. It did not occur to him that to disclose the most private affairs of his family to this little stranger was anything extraordinary. He told her all about the bargain between his father and his cousin, and how he himself had been left out, and his consent never asked, though he was the heir; and what had happened this morning—how he had been sent to fetch the parties to this bargain, and the papers, and how he had been tempted to delay or not to go.

“If I had not answered from my room when I heard them, if I had pretended not to hear, if I had only held back, which would have been no sin! Should I have done it? Shouldn’t I have done it?” cried Walter, quite unaware of the absurdity of his appeal.

The girl listened to all this with her head raised to him in an attitude of attention, but in reality with the most divided interest and a mind full of perplexed impatience. What did she care about his doubts—doubts and difficulties which she could not understand—which did not concern her? Her attention even flagged, though her looks did not. She wanted none of this grave talk: it was only the lighter kind of intercourse which she fully understood.

“Then it was you,” she said, seizing the only tangible point in all this outburst, “that I heard thundering past the cottage just before daylight? I couldn’t think what it could be!”

“Did you hear me? I looked up at the windows, but they were all closed and shut up. I wish,” cried the young man, “I had known you were awake, I should not have felt so desolate.”

“Oh!” she cried, with a little toss of her head, “what good could that have done you?” Then, seeing the cloud come over his face again which had lifted for a moment, “And how has it all ended?” she asked.

“Ended?” He looked at her with surprise. He had not even asked himself that question, or realized that there was a question at all. “How could it end but in one way?”

“It is so good of you to tell me,” she resumed, “when I am only a stranger and know nothing; but I hope they won’t succeed in cheating you out of your money.”

“My money? oh, there is nothing about money. Money is not the question.”

“I know,” she said, with a pretty air of confusion—“your property I mean; but they couldn’t really take it from you, could they? Tell me what you will do when you come into your own. I should like to know.”

Walter’s heart stood still for the moment. He felt as if he had suddenly come up against a blank world. Was this all she understood or would take notice of, of the struggle he had gone through? Had she no feeling for his moral difficulties or sympathy; or was it perhaps that she thought that struggle too private to be discussed, and thus rebuked him by turning the conversation aside from that too delicate channel? In the shock of feeling himself misunderstood he paused, bewildered, and seized upon the idea that she understood him too clearly, and checked him with a more exquisite perception of her own. “You think I should not speak of it?” he said. “You think I should not blame—you think—Oh, I understand. A delicate mind would not say a word. But I would not, except to you. It is only to you.”

“Now I wonder,” said the girl, “why it should be to me? for I don’t understand anything about it. And all that you’ve been telling me about wanting one thing and doing another, I can’t tell what you mean—except that I hope it will end very well, and that you will get what you want and be able to live very happy at the end. That’s how all the stories end, don’t you know. And tell me, when you came into all that fine property, what will you do?”

She wanted nothing but to bring him back to the badinage which she understood and could play her part in. All this grave talk and discussion of what he ought or ought not to have done embarrassed her. She did not understand it, and yet she knew by instinct that to show how little she understood would be to lose something of her attraction; for though she was scarcely capable of comprehending the ideal woman whom the youth supposed he had found in her, yet she divined that it was not herself but an imaginary being who was so sweet in Walter’s eyes. Perhaps it was even with a dull pang and sense of her inferiority that she discovered this; but she could not make herself other than she was. At any risk she had to regain that lighter tone which was alone possible to her. She put up her veil a little and looked at him with a sort of laughing provocation in her eyes. It was a vulgar version of the “Come, woo me,” of the most delightful of heroines. She could understand him or any man on that ground. She knew how to reply, to elude, or to lead on; but in other regions she was not so well prepared; she preferred to lead the conversation back to herself and him.

“I do not suppose,” he said, in a subdued tone, “that there will be any property to come in to.”

“Oh, that is nonsense,” she said, putting this denial lightly away; “of course there will be property some time or other. And when you come into your fortune, tell me, what shall you do?”

Walter gave up with a sigh his hope of receiving support and consolation; but even now he was not able to follow her lead. “I suppose,” he said, very uncheerfully, “I shall have to go to Oxford. That’s the only thing I shall be allowed to do.”

“Oh, to Oxford!” she cried, with disdain.

“I don’t know that I wish it, only it’s the right thing to do, I suppose,” said Walter, with another sigh. “Don’t you think so?”

“I think so? No, indeed! If I were you—oh, if I were you! That’s what I should like to be, a young gentleman with plenty of money and able to do whatever I pleased.”

“Oh,” he said, with a shudder, “don’t say so; you who are so much finer a thing—so much—don’t you know—it is a sort of sacrilege to talk so.”

At this she laughed with frank contempt. “That’s nonsense,” she said; “but I should not go to Oxford. I’d go into the Guards. It is they that have the best of it: almost always in London, and going everywhere. I should not marry, not for years and years!”

“Marry!” cried Walter, and blushed, which it did not occur to his companion to do.

“No, I should not marry,” said the girl; “I should have my fun, that is, if I were a gentleman. I should make the money go; I should go in for horses and all sorts of things. I should just go to the other extremity and do everything the reverse of what I have to do now. That’s because I can do so little now. Come, tell me, Mr. Penton, what should you do?”

Walter was much discomposed by this inquiry. He was disturbed altogether by the turn the conversation had taken. It was not at all what he had intended. He felt baffled and put aside out of the way; but yet there was an attraction in it, and in the arch look which was in her eyes. He felt the challenge and it moved him, notwithstanding that in his heart he was deeply disappointed that she had thrown back his confidences and not allowed herself to be drawn into his thoughts. He half understood, too, whither she wanted to lead him—into those encounters of wit in which she had so easily the mastery, in which he was so serious, pleading for her grace, and she so capricious, so full of mystery, holding him at bay. But he could not all at once, after all the experiences of the morning, begin to laugh again.

“I am stupid to-day,” he said. “I can’t think of fortune or anything else. I dare say I should do just the reverse of what you say.”

“What! marry?” she said. “Oh, silly! You should not think of that for years.”

“I should do more than think of it,” cried Walter, “if I—if you—if there was any chance—” The boy blushed again, half with the shy emotion of his years, the sudden leaping of his blood toward future wonders unknown. And then he stopped short, breathing hard. “You tempt me to say things only to mock me,” he said. “You think it is all fun; but I am in earnest, deep in earnest, and I mean what I—”

He stopped suddenly, the words cut short on his lips. They had turned a corner of the road, and close to them, so close that Walter stumbled over the stones on which he was seated, slowly chipping away with his hammer, was old Crockford, with ruddy old face, and white hair, and his red comforter twisted about his neck.

“Is that you, baggage?” said the old man, who saw the girl first as they came round the corner. “What mischief are ye after now? I never see one like you for mischief. Why can’t ye let the lads alone? Why, Master Walter!” he cried, in consternation, letting the hammer fall out of his hand.

“Yes, Crockford. What’s the matter? Do you think I am a ghost?” said Walter, in some confusion. It was cowardly, it was miserable, it was the smallest thing in the world. Was he ashamed to be seen with her, she who was (he said to himself) the most perfect creature, the sweetest and fairest? No, it could not be that; it was only what every young man feels when a vulgar eye spies upon his most sacred feelings. But he grew very red, looking the old stone-breaker, the road-mender, humblest of all functionaries, in the face as he spoke.

“Ghost!” said old Crockford, “a deal worse than that. A ghost could do me no harm. I don’t believe in ’em. But the likes of hur, that’s another pair o’ shoes. I know’d as she’d get me into trouble the moment I set eyes on her. Be off with you home, and let the young gentleman alone. You’ve made him think you’re a lady, I shouldn’t wonder. And if Mr. Penton found out he’d put me out of my cottage. Don’t give me none of your sauce, but run home.”

“I have done no harm,” said the girl. “Mr. Penton couldn’t put you out of your cottage because I took a walk. And you can send me away when you please. You know I’m not afraid of that.”

“I know you’re always up to mischief,” said the old man, “and that if it isn’t one it’s another. I’ve had enough of you. There’s good and there’s bad of women just like other creatures, but for making mischief there’s naught like them, neither beasts nor man. Be off with you home.”

“Crockford, you forget yourself. That’s not a way to speak to a—to a young lady,” cried Walter, wavering between boyish shame and boyish passion. “And as for my father—”

“A young lady; that’s all you know! Do you know who she is, Mr. Walter?” cried the old man.

“I am old Crockford’s niece,” said the girl, “and I know my place. I’ve never given myself out for any more than I am; now have I, sir? Thank you for walking up the hill with me, and talking so kind. But it’s time I was going home. He’s quite right, is the old man; and my duty to you, sir, and good-day; and I hope you will come into your fortune all the same.”

How was it that she turned, standing before him there in the road in all her prettiness and cleverness, into Crockford’s niece, with the diction and the air proper to her “place,” was what Walter could not tell. She cast him a glance as she turned round which transfixed him in the midst of his wonder and trouble, then turned and took the short cut across the field, running, getting over the stile like a bird. Which was she, one or the other? Walter stood and gazed stupidly after her, not knowing what to think or say.

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE NEW STATE OF AFFAIRS.

When Mr. Penton in the dog-cart was heard coming down the steep path to the open gates there was a universal rush to door and window to receive him. The delay in his coming had held the household in a high state of tension, which the arrival of the carriage with Ally and the young visitor increased. The girls could give no information except that Sir Walter was very ill, and that Mr. Russell Penton himself had put them into the carriage and sanctioned their coming away. Ally took her mother anxiously aside to explain.

“I didn’t know what to do. She is Mr. Russell Penton’s niece; she has no father or mother. She wanted to come, and he seemed to want her to come. Oh, I hope I haven’t done wrong! I couldn’t tell what to do.”

“Of course, there is the spare room,” said Mrs. Penton, but she was not delighted by the appearance of the stranger. “Tell Martha to light a fire in the spare room. But you must amuse her yourselves, you and Anne; your father must not be troubled with a visitor in the house.”

“Oh, she will not be like a visitor, she will be like one of ourselves,” said Ally.

The father, however, observed the little fair curled head at the drawing-room window as he drove up, and it annoyed him. A stranger among them was like a spy at such a moment. The girls were at the window, and Walter, newly returned, had been standing at the gate, and Mrs. Penton was at the door. He jumped down, scarcely noticing the anxious look of inquiry with which she met him, and stopped on the step to take a sovereign from his waistcoat-pocket, which he handed to the groom who had driven him.

“Thank you, Sir Edward,” said the man, touching his hat with great obsequiousness.

“Sir Edward!” and a sovereign! The two things together set Mrs. Penton’s heart beating as it scarcely ever had beat before. She did not understand it for the moment. “Sir Edward:” and a sovereign! This perhaps was the most impressive incident of all.

Then he took her by the arm without a word of explanation. “Come with me into the book-room, Anne.” He had not a word even for little Molly, who came fluttering like a little bird across the hall and embraced his leg, and cried, “Fader, fader!” in that little sweet twitter of a voice which was generally music to his ears.

“Take her away,” was all he said, with a hasty pat of her little shining head. His face was as grave as if the profoundest trouble had come upon him, and wore that vague air of resentment which was natural to him. Fate or Fortune or Providence, however you like to call it, had been doing something to Edward Penton again. As a matter of course, it was always doing something to him—crossing his plans, setting them all wrong, paying no attention to his feelings. There was no conscious profanity in this thought, nor did the good man even suppose that he was arraigning the Supreme Disposer of all events. He felt this sincerely, with a sense of injury which was half comic, half tragic. Mrs. Penton was used to it, and used to being upbraided for it, as if she had somehow a secret influence, and if she pleased might have arrested the decisions of fate.

“Well, Edward?” she said, breathless, as he closed the book-room door.

“Well,” he replied. The fire was low, and he took up the poker violently in the first place and poked and raked till he made an end of it altogether. “I think,” he said, “after being out all the morning, I might at least find a decent fire.”

“I’ll make it up in a moment, Edward. A little wood will make it all right.”

“A little wood! and you’ll have to ring the bell for it, and have half a dozen people running and the whole house disturbed, just when I have so much to say to you! No, better freeze than that.” He turned his back to the fire, which, after all, was not quite without warmth, and added, after a moment, not looking at her, contracting his brows, and with a sort of belligerent shiver to let her see that he was cold, and that it was her fault. “My uncle is dead.”

“Is it all over, Edward? I fancied that it must be soon;” and then she added, with a little timidity, “were you in time?

“In time! I was there for hours.” He knew very well what she meant, but it was a sort of pleasure to him to prolong the suspense. “Of course,” he said, slowly, “he could not be expected to recover at his age. Alicia should have known better than to have had—dances and things at his age.”

“Dances! I have had no time to speak to Ally. I didn’t know; oh, how dreadful, Edward, and the old man dying!”

“The old man wasn’t dying then,” he said, pettishly. “How were they to suppose he was going to die? He has often been a great deal worse. He was an old man who looked as if he might have lived forever.”

After this his wife made no remark, but furtively—her housewifely instincts not permitting her to see it go out before her eyes—stooped to the coal-box standing by to put something on the fire.

“Let it alone!” he said, angrily. “At such a moment to be poking among the coals! Do you know what has happened? Can’t you realize it a little? Here we have Penton on our hands—Penton! That place to be furnished, fitted out, and lived in! How are we to do it? I am in such a perplexity I think as never man was. And instead of helping me, all your thoughts are taken up with mending the fire!”

Mrs. Penton sat down suddenly in the first chair. She put her hand upon her heart, which had begun to jump. “Then you were not in time? Oh, I thought so from the first. To go on wasting day after day, and he such an old man!”

And in the extreme excitement of the moment she began to cry a little, holding her hand upon her fluttering heart: “It was what I always feared: when there is a thing that is troublesome and difficult, that is always the thing that happens,” she cried.

Her husband did not make any immediate reply. He wheeled round in his turn and took up the poker, but presently threw it down again. “It is no use making a fuss over that now. It’s that fellow Rochford’s fault. By the way,” he said, turning round again sharply, “mind, Annie, I won’t have that young fellow coming here so much. It might not have mattered before, but now it’s out of character—entirely out of character. Mind what I say.”

Mrs. Penton took no notice of this. She went on with a little murmur of her own: “No, it is of no use making a fuss. We can’t undo it now. To think it might have been settled yesterday, or any day! and now it never can be settled whatever we may do.”

“I don’t know what you mean by settled,” he said, hastily; “nothing can be more settled; it is as clear as daylight: not that there could be any doubt at any time. The thing we’ve got to think of is what we are to do.”

“With all the children,” said Mrs. Penton, “and that great empty house, and no ready money or anything. Oh, Edward, how can I tell what we are to do? It has been before me for years. And then I thought when your cousin spoke that all was going to be right.”

“There’s no use speaking of that now.”

“No, I don’t suppose there’s any use. Still, when one thinks—which of course I can’t help doing; when your cousin came I thought it was all right. Though you never would listen to me, I knew that you would listen to her. And now here it is again just as if that had never been!”

It was, perhaps, not generous of Mrs. Penton to indulge in these regrets, but it was expecting from her something more than humanity is capable of, to suppose that she would instantly turn into a consoler, and forget that she had ever prophesied woe. That is very well for an ideal heroine, a sweet young wife who is of the order of the embodied angel. But Mrs. Penton was the mother of a large family, and she had other things to think of than merely keeping her husband in a tranquillity which perhaps he did not desire. When there are so many interests involved, it is not easy for a woman to behave in this angelic way. Perhaps her husband did not expect it from her. He stood leaning his back upon the mantel-piece with a countenance which had relapsed into its usual half-resentful quiet. He was not angry nor surprised, nor did he look as if he were paying much attention. It gave him a little time to collect his own thoughts while she got her little plaint and irrestrainable reflections over. Sympathy is in this as much as in other more demonstrative ways. If she had got over it in a moment without any expression of feeling, he would probably have been shocked, and felt that nothing mattered to her; but he got calm, while she, too, had her little grumble and complaint against fate.

“The thing,” he said, “now, is to think what we must do. I sha’n’t hurry the Russell Pentons; they can take their time; and in the meantime we must look about us. The thing is there will be no rents coming in till Lady-day, and it’s only Christmas. I never thought I should have seen it in this light. To succeed to Penton seemed always the thing to look forward to. It is you that have put it in this light.”

“What other light could I put it in, Edward? Penton is very different from this, and we have never been much at our ease here. I was always frightened for what would happen when you began to realize—But, dear me,” she added, “what is the use of talking? We must just make the best of it. Nothing is quite so bad as it seems likely to be. With prudence and taking care, perhaps, after all, we may do—”

“Do!” he said, “to go to Penton, the great house of the family, and to be the head of the family, and to have nothing better before one than a hope that we shall be able to do—” And then there was a pause between this careful and troubled pair; and of all things in the world, any stranger who had seen them, would have imagined last of all that they had succeeded to a great inheritance, and that the man at least had attained to what had been his hope and dream for years.

“Well,” she said at last, “I can’t do you any good, Edward, and the bell for dinner will be ringing directly. You must have had an agitating morning, and I dare say eat no breakfast, and you will be the better for your dinner. I suppose we ought to draw down all the blinds.”

“Why should you draw down the blinds? There is not too much light.”

“I should not like,” said Mrs. Penton, “to be wanting in any mark of respect. And after all, Sir Walter was your nearest relation, and you are his successor, so that it is really a death in the family.”

She walked to the window as she spoke, and began to draw down the blind. He followed her hastily, and stopped her with an impatient hand.

“My windows look into the garden. Who is coming into the garden to see whether we pay respect or not? I won’t have it anywhere. On the funeral day if you please, but no more. I won’t have it!” It did him a little good to have an object for his irritation. She turned round upon him with some surprise, feeling the imperative grasp of his hand upon her arm. Perhaps that close encounter and her startled look affected him; perhaps only the disturbed state in which he was, with all emotions close to the surface. He put his other hand upon her further shoulder, and held her for a moment, looking at her. “My dear,” he said, “do you know you’re Lady Penton now?”

She gave him another look, full of surprise and almost consternation.

“I never thought of that,” she said.

“No, I never supposed you did—but so it is. There has not been a Lady Penton for thirty years. There couldn’t be a better one,” he said, with a little emotion, kissing her on the forehead. The look, the caress, the little solemnity of the announcement overcame her. Lady Penton! How could she ever accustom herself to that name, or think it was she who was meant by it? It drove other matters for the moment out of her head. And then the bell rang for dinner—the solid family meal in the middle of the day, which had suited all the habits of the family at Penton Hook. Already it seemed to be out of place. She dried her eyes with a tremulous, half-apologetic hand, and said,

“You know, Edward, the children—must always have their dinner at this hour.”

“To be sure,” he replied. “I never supposed there could be any change in that respect.”

“And you must want some food,” she said, “and a little comfort”—then as she went before him to the door, she paused with a little hesitation, “you know they brought a little girl with them, a niece of Russell Penton’s? It is a pity to have a stranger to-day, but they could not help it.”

“No, I don’t suppose they could help it,” said Sir Edward. Neither he nor she knew anything more of their visitor than that she was a little girl, Russell Penton’s niece.

They all met round the table in the usual way, but yet in a way which was not at all usual. The father and mother came in arm-in-arm, after the children had gathered in the dining-room—that is to say, he had taken her arm, placing his hand within it, and pushing her in a little before him into the room. The little children had clambered into their high chairs, and little Molly sat at the lower end, which was her usual place, close to her father’s chair, flourishing a spoon in the air, and singing her little song of “Fader, fader!” Molly was always the one that called him to dinner when he was busy, and thus the cry of “fader!” had become associated with dinner in her small mind. The elder ones stood about waiting for their parents, Mab between Ally and Anne, looking curiously on at all the manners and customs of this new country in which she found herself—the unknown habits of a large family, who were not rich—all of which particulars were wonderful in her eyes. Walter, as his mother at once saw, bore a strange aspect—abstracted and far-away—as if his mind were full of anything in the world except the scene around him. Perhaps it was fatigue, for the poor boy had been up all night; perhaps the crisis, which was so extraordinary, and which contradicted everything they had been planning and thinking of. The elder children were all grave, disturbed, a little overawed by all that was coming to pass. And for some time there was scarcely any thing said. The little bustle of carving, of serving the children, of keeping them all in order, soon absorbed the mother as if it had been an ordinary day; but at the other end of the table, neither Ally, looking at him with anxious eyes on the one side, nor Molly on the other, got much attention from their father, who was occupied by such different thoughts. Mab was the only one who was free of all arrière pensée. She had scarcely known Sir Walter; how could she be overwhelmed by his death? and it made no difference to her: whereas this plunge into novelty and the undiscovered, was more wonderful to her than anything she had ever known. She watched the children and all their ways—the little clamor of one, the steady perseverance of another, the watchful way in which Horry devoured and kept the lead, observing lest any of the brotherhood should get before him as he worked through his meal—with delighted interest.

“Are they always like that?” she whispered to Anne. “Do you remember all their names? Do they all always eat as much? Oh, the little pigs, what darlings they are!” cried Mab under her breath.

Anne did not like to hear the children called little pigs, even though the other word was added.

“They don’t eat any more than other children,” she said. And Anne, too, if she was not anxious, was at least very curious and eager to hear all that had happened, which only father knew. And father’s brow was full of care. They all turned it over in their minds in their different fashions, and asked each other what could possibly have happened worse than had been expected; for already experience had made even these young creatures feel that something worse happening was the most likely, a great deal more probable, than that there was something better. The mother was the most fortunate, who divided and arranged everything, and had to make allowances for Horry’s third help when she first put a spoon into the pudding, a matter of severe and abstruse calculation which left little space in the thoughts for lesser things.

When dinner was over, the children all rushed out with that superfluity of spirits which is naturally produced by a full meal—but also a little quarrelsome as well, making a great noise in the hall, and requiring a great deal of management before they could be diverted into the natural channels in which human energy between the ages of twelve and two has to dissipate itself in the difficult moment of the afternoon. When the weather was good they all scampered out into the garden, where indeed Horry and his brothers rushed now with the shouts of the well-fed and self-satisfied. To recover these rebels on one hand, and to get the little tumult of smaller children dancing about in all the passages dispersed and quiet, was a piece of work which employed all the energies of the ladies. Mab Russell looked on admiring in the midst of that little rabble. She would have liked, above all things, to head an insurrection and besiege the mother and sisters in their own stronghold. She went so far as to hold out her skirts over Horry, who took refuge behind her, seeing the face of an ally where he expected it least. They were all anxious to get the riot over, but Mab, who knew no better, interrupted the course of justice. Oh, how awkward it is to have a stranger in the house when the family affairs are trembling in the balance, and no one knows what is going to happen! This was what Ally and Anne said to each other, almost weeping over that contrariety of fortune, when they were compelled, instead of hearing all about it, to go round the grounds with Mab and show how high the water had come up last year.

CHAPTER XXVII.
NEW PLANS.

Notwithstanding all the hinderances that envious fate could send, the news so important to the family got itself circulated among them at last, with the result that the strangest excitement, elation, and despondency, a complication of feelings utterly unknown in their healthful history, took possession of the Penton family. They had made up their minds to one thing—they now found themselves and all their projects and plans swallowed up in another. They had adapted themselves, the young ones with the flexibility of youth, to the supposed change in their fortunes. They had now to go back again, to forget all those innumerable consultations, arrangements, conclusions of all kinds, and take up their old plans where they had been abandoned. It had been dreadful to give up Penton. It was scarcely more agreeable to take it back again. And yet an elation, an elevation was in all their minds. Penton was theirs, that palace of the gods. They were no longer nobodies, they were people of importance. The girls found it beyond measure uncomfortable, distracting, insupportable, that on this day of all others, when they had a thousand things to say to each other—questions to ask, suggestions to make, the most amazing revolution to talk over, there should be a stranger always between them, one whom, with that civility which was born with them, and in which they had been trained, they felt themselves constrained to explain everything to, whom they would not leave out of their conversation or permit to feel that she was an intruder. She was an intruder all the same. She was in the way, horribly in the way, at this eventful moment. The family was dissolved by her presence. The father and mother retired together to the book-room to talk there, a thing they never would have done but for the stranger. And Walter strolled off on his side, scarcely saying a word to his sisters, whom he could not approach or communicate his sentiments to in consequence of Mab. It was a heavy task to the two girls to have to entertain her, to go round and round the garden with her, to point out the views of Penton, to explain to her what it was about, when one or another would burst out into some irrestrainable exclamation or remark; but the fate of womankind in general was upon these devoted young women. They had to entertain the visitor, to occupy themselves with the keeping up of appearances, and to put everything that interested them most aside in their hearts.

“We put this seat here because it is the best view of Penton. No, it isn’t very shady in summer, it is a little exposed to the wind, but then Penton—”

“We used to be so much interested in every view. Is this the best, or the one from the top of the hill?”

“Oh, the one on the top of the hill. Oh, I wish Penton was at the bottom of the sea!”

“I don’t,” cried Anne. “After all it is only the confusion with having changed our minds. It is so much better not to change one’s mind, that lets so many new thoughts come in.”

“And most likely the old thoughts were the best,” said Ally, softly, with a little sigh. Then she added, “You must think us so strange: but it is only just to-day, for we are all excited and put out.”

“One would think you did not like coming into your fortune,” said Mab. “Is it because of old Sir Walter? But Aunt Gerald said you scarcely knew him.”

“We never saw him: but it is terrible to think of being better off because some one has died—”

“And it is more than that. It is because we thought we were to give it all up, and now it seems it is all ours—”

“And we were always brought up to think so very much of it,” Ally said. And then she added, “Shouldn’t you like to come round and see where the children have their gardens? it is quite high and dry, it is beyond the highest mark. No flood has ever come up here.”

This was the supreme distinction of the terrace and that part of the garden that lay beyond it. They were quite proud to point out its immunity from the floods: as they passed they had a glimpse through the windows of the book-room of Mr. and Mrs.—nay, of Sir Edward and Lady Penton, sitting together, he with a pencil in his hand jotting down something upon a piece of paper, she apparently reckoning up upon the outstretched fingers of her hand. Ally and Anne looked at each other; they would all have been deep in these calculations together if Mab had not been there.

Walter went upon his own way. Perhaps had the visitor been a man he might have had the same confinement, the same embarrassment: but probably he would have undertaken nothing of the sort. Probably he would have thrown over his guest upon the girls. What were girls good for but to undertake this sort of thing, and set more important persons free? For himself he did not feel able for anything but to realize the new position; to turn everything over in his mind, to hurry away to the neighborhood, at least, of the one creature in the world who (he thought) might look at it from his point of view and care what he felt. Could he still think, after the reception she had given him that morning, after the blank which he had found in her, the incapacity to understand him—could he believe still that his tumultuous feelings now and all the ferment in his mind would awaken in her that ideal sympathy and understanding of which he had dreamed? Alas, poor Walter! he knew so little in reality of her: what he knew was his own imagination of her—a perfect thing, incapable of failure, sure to sympathize and console. What he had learned from the failure of the morning was only this, that it must have been his fault, who had not known how to explain—how to make his story clear. It was not she who was to blame. He rushed up the hill with his heart a-flame, thinking of everything. He was now no disinherited knight, no neglected youth whose fate his elders decided without consulting him. Oh, no; very different. He was the heir of Penton! He had attained what he had looked for all his life. He stood trembling upon the verge of a new existence, full of the tumultuous projects, the unformed resolves that surge upward and boil in the mind of a youth emancipated, whose life has come to such promotion, whose career lies all before him. And to what creature in the world after himself could this be of the same importance as to her who might—oh, wonderful thought!—share it with him? He had been far from having this thought in the morning. Then he was but a boy, without any definite plan, with only education before him and vague beginnings, and no certainty of anything. Now he was Walter Penton of Penton, with a position which no man could take from him—not his father even! Nobody could touch him in his rights. Not an acre could be alienated without his consent; nothing could be taken away. And then there was that story about “providing for the boy” which his father had touched on very lightly, but which came back in the strongest sense to the mind of the boy who was to be provided for. He felt the wildest impatience to tell her all this. She would understand him now. She did not know what he meant in the morning, which was, no doubt, his fault. How could she be expected to understand the fantastic discontent that was in his mind? But she would understand now. He had a certainty of this, which was beyond all possibility of mistake, and though he knew that it was very unlikely he should see her at this hour, yet the impulse of his heart was such that nothing else was possible to him but to hurry to the spot where she was—to be near her, to put himself in the way if perchance she should pass by. The painful impression with which in the morning he had seen her in a moment change herself and her aspect, and step down from the position on which she met him to that of Crockford’s niece, passed altogether from his mind—or rather it remained as a keen stimulant forcing him to a solution of the mystery which intertwined the harmony with a discord as is the wont of musicians. There could not be any such jarring note. He must account for the jarring note; it was a tone of enchantment the more, a charm disguised.

These were the things he said to himself—or rather he said nothing to himself, but such were the gleams that flew across his mind like glimmers of light out of the sky. He went quickly up the steep hill, breasting it as if his fortune lay at the top, and a moment’s delay might risk it all—until he came within sight of Crockford’s cottage, its upper windows twinkling over the rugged bit of hedge that fenced off the little grass-plot in front. Then his pace slackened—the goal was in sight; there was no need for haste—in short, even had she been visible, Walter would have dallied, with that fantastic instinct of the lover which prolongs by deferring the moment of enjoyment. And then at a little distance he could examine the windows, he could watch for some sign or token of her, as he could not do near at hand. He lingered, he stood still on a pretense of looking at the hedge-rows, of examining a piece of lichen on a tree, his eyes all the time furtively turning toward that rude little temple of his soul. What a place to be called by such a name! And yet the place was not so much to be found fault with. The hedge was irregular and broken, raised a little above the path, with a rough little bit of wall, all ferns and mosses, supporting the bank of earth from which it grew; above it, glistening in the low red rays of the afternoon sun, were the lattice windows of the upper story, with the eaves of an uneven roof—old tiles covered with every kind of growth—overshadowing them; a cottage as unlike as possible to those dreadful dwellings of the poor which are the result of sanitary science and economy combined; a little human habitation harmonized by age and use with all its surroundings, and which no one need be ashamed to call home. So Walter said to himself as he stood and looked at it in the light of romance and the afternoon sun. It was as venerable as Penton itself, and had many features in common with the great house. It was more respectable and more lovely than the damp gentility of Penton Hook, which was old-new, with plaster peeling off, and a shabby modernism in its vulgar walls. Crockford’s cottage pretended to nothing, it was all it meant to be. It was in its way a beautiful place, being so harmonized by nature, so well adapted to its uses. Walter’s estimate of it increased as the moments went on. He felt at last that to bring his bride from such an abode was next door to bringing her from an ideal palace of romance; perhaps better even than that, seeing that there would be all the pleasure of setting her in the sphere which she would adorn; for would not she adorn—it was an old-fashioned phrase, yet one that suited the occasion—any sphere?

He was interrupted in these thoughts by the sound of steps approaching. All was silent, alas! in the cottage. The door was shut, for it was very cold weather, and no one appeared at a window; there was not a movement of life about. Walter knew that the room in which they lived (i. e. the kitchen) looked to the back. The approaching passenger, therefore, did not convey any hopes to his mind, but only annoyed him, making him leave off that silent contemplation of the shrine of his love, which he had elaborately concealed, by a pretended examination of the lichens on the tree. If any one was coming, that pretense, he felt, was not enough, and he accordingly continued his walk very slowly up the hill in order to meet the new-comer whoever he might be. When he came in sight he was not, as Walter had expected, a recognizable figure, but unmistakably a stranger—a man whose dress and appearance were as unlike as possible to anything which belonged to the village. He was a young man, rather undersized, in a coat with a fur collar, a tall hat, a muffler of a bright color, a large cigar, and a stick of the newest fashion. He was indeed all of the newest fashion, fit for Bond Street, and much more like that locality than a village street. Walter was not very learned in Bond Street, but he laughed to himself as he made this conclusion, feeling that Bond Street would not acknowledge such a glass of fashion. The stranger was looking at Crockford’s cottage with a glass stuck in his eye, and a sort of contemptuous examination, which proved that he made a very different estimate of it from that which Walter had just done. When he in his turn heard Walter’s step upon the road, he seemed to wake up to the consciousness of being looked at, in a way which aroused the contempt of the young native. He gave himself various little pulls together, took his cigar from his mouth with an energetic puff, put up his disengaged hand to his cravat with an involuntary movement to arrange something, and settled his shoulders into his coat—gestures corresponding to the little shake and shuffle with which some women prepare themselves to be seen, however elaborate their toilet may have been before. Then he quickened his steps a little to meet Walter, who came toward him slowly, with a quite uncalled-for sentiment of contempt. Why should a youth in knickerbockers, in the rough roads of his native parish, feel himself superior to a gentleman visitor in the apparel of the higher orders, coming (presumably) out of Bond Street? Who can explain this mystery? No doubt it was balanced by a still stronger feeling of the same kind on the other side. The stranger came forward evidently with the intention of asking information. He was a sandy-haired and rather florid young man, with a badly grown mustache and little tufts of colorless beard. His hat was a little on one side, and the hair upon which it was poised glistened and shone. The level sun came in his eyes and made him blink; it threw a light which was not flattering over all his imperfections of color and form.

“Beg your pardon,” he said, with a slight stammer as they approached each other, “you couldn’t tell me, could you, where one—Crockton or Croaker, or some such name, lives about here?”

“Croaker?” said Walter. With Crockford’s cottage before his eyes, what could be more simple? The suggestion was too evident to be mistaken, as was also the other suggestion, which came like a flash of lightning, and made his eyes shine with angry fire. “I know nobody of the name,” he said, quietly, making a rapid step forward; and then it occurred to him that the information thus sought might be supplied easily by any uninterested passer-by, and he paused, feeling that it was necessary to plant himself there on the defense. “What sort of a man do you want? What is he?” he asked.

“Ah, no sort of a man at all—it’s—it’s a cottage, I believe. He may be a cobbler or a plow-boy, or a—anything you please. Am I the sort of person to know such people’s trades? It’s a—it’s a—Look here, I’ll make it worth your while if you’ll help me. It’s a lady I want.”

“Oh, a lady!” said Walter. He felt the blood flush to his face; but this the inquirer, occupied with his own business, did not remark. He came close, turning off the smoke of his cigar with his hand.

“Look here,” he said, in a loud whisper, “I’ll make it worth your while. It’ll be as good as a suv—, well, I may say if you’ll really find out what I want, as good as a fiver in your pocket. Oh, I say, what’s the matter: I don’t mean no harm.”

“I wonder who you take me for,” cried Walter, whose sudden move forward had thrown the other back in mingled astonishment and alarm.

The stranger eyed him from head to foot with a puzzled look, which finally awoke a little amusement in Walter’s angry soul. “Don’t know you from Adam,” he said, “and I ain’t used to fellows in knickerbockers. Swells wear them, and gamekeepers wear them. If you’re a swell I beg your pardon, that’s all I can say.”

This prayer it pleased Walter graciously to grant. He began to enter into the humor of the situation. And then, to save her from some vulgar persecutor, was not that worth a little trouble? “Never mind,” he said, “who I am. I know all the ladies that live here. Which of them is it that you want?”

“Well, she don’t live here,” said the other. “Yes, to be sure, she’s here for the moment, with one Croaker, or something like that. But she’s not one of the ladies of the place; she’s not, perhaps, exactly what you would call a—Yes, she is though—she’s awfully well educated. She talks—oh, a great deal better than most of the swellest people you meet about. I’ve met a good few in my day,” he said, with an air, caressing his mustache. “I don’t know nobody that comes up to her, for my part.”

He was a little beast—he was a cad—he was a vulgar little beggar: he was not a gentleman, nor anything like it. But still he seemed to have a certain comprehension. Walter’s heart softened to him in spite of all provocations. “I don’t think,” he said, but more gently than he could have thought possible, “that you will meet any one of that sort here.”

“No? you don’t think so. But they’d keep her very close, don’t you see. Fact is, she was sent off to keep her out of a young fellar’s way. A young swell you know, a—a friend of mine, with a good bit of money coming to him, and his people didn’t think her good enough. Oh, I don’t think so—not a bit. I’m all on the true love side. But where there’s money, don’t you know, there’s always difficulties made.”

“I suppose so,” said Walter, with momentary gravity. And there came before him for a moment a horrible realization—something he had never thought of before. “But I don’t think,” he added, “that you will find any such lady here.” He was so young and simple that it was a certain ease to his conscience to put it in this way. He said to himself that he was telling no lie. He was not saying that there was no such lady here, only that he didn’t think the other would find her—which he shouldn’t, at least so long as Walter could help it. This little equivocation gave great comfort and ease to his mind.

“Don’t you, though?” said the stranger, discouraged. “But I’m almost sure this was the village, near the river, and not far from—it answers to all the directions—if only I could find Croaker—or Crockton, or a name like that. I’m a dreadful fellow for muddling names.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Walter, “it may be Endsleigh, about two miles further on; that’s near the river, and not far from Reading, which I suppose is what you mean—a pretty little village where people go in summer. And, to be sure, there’s some people named Croaker there; I remember the name—over a shop—with lodgings to let—that’s the place,” he cried, with a little excitement. For all this was quite true, and yet elaborately false in intention, a combination to delight any such young deceiver. “Come along,” he cried, “I’ll show you the way. It lies straight before you, and Croaker’s is just as you go into the village. You can’t miss it. I’ve earned that fiver,” he said, with a laugh, “but you’re welcome to the information—for love.”

“For love!” cried the other; and he gave the young fellow a very doubtful look, then threw a suspicious glance around as if he might possibly find some reasons lying about on the road why this young stranger should attempt to deceive him. But after all, why should a young swell in knickerbockers desire to deceive the man of Bond Street? There could be no reason. He took out his cigar-case, and offered a large and solid article of that description to Walter’s acceptance, who took it with great gravity. “I can’t thank you any way else—they’re prime ones I can tell you,” he said, and with a flourish of his stick, by way of farewell, took the way pointed out to him. Walter stood and watched him with a curious mingling of satisfaction and mischief. He threw the cigar into the ditch. It was a bad one, he had no doubt, which, perhaps, made it less a sacrifice to throw away this reward of guile.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
A DECISIVE MOMENT.

But when this little adventure was over, it made no difference to the longing and eagerness in the boy’s heart. Indeed, he wanted to see her more than ever, to find out from her who this fellow was, what he had to do with her, why he was seeking her. Could it be possible that she felt any interest in such a creature? that she—might have married him, perhaps. Could this be? He had spoken as if it was he who had been the prize. She had been sent away in order not to be a danger for him. Walter snapped the branch of a tree he had seized hold of as if it had been a twig, as the thought passed through his mind. And then he was seized with a half-hysterical fit of laughter. Him, that fellow! that little beast! that cad! that—There were no words that could express his contempt and scorn and merriment, but it was not merriment of a comfortable kind. When his laugh was over, he went round and round the house without seeing any one—all was closed, the doors shut, nobody at the windows, nothing at all stirring. One or two people passed, and looked wondering to see him wander about, up and down like a ghost; but he neither saw her nor any trace of her. The red glitter went out of the windows, the sun sunk lower and lower, and then went out, leaving nothing but the winter gray which so soon settled toward night. And by and by Walter found himself compelled by the force of circumstances to turn his back upon the cottage, and go down the steep road again toward home. The force of circumstances at this particular moment meant the family tea—and the strange, tragical, foolish complication of his own high romance and enthusiasm of love, for which he was ready to defy anything—and the youthfulness and childishness of his position, which made it criminal for him not to be in for tea—was one of those things which confuse with ridicule all that is most serious in the world. He saw with an acute pang how absurd it was; but he could not emancipate himself. The thought of the family consternation, the question on all sides, Where is Wat? his father’s irritation, and his mother’s wonder, and the apologies of the girls, and the suggestions of accident, of some catastrophe, something terrible to account for his non-appearance, were all quite visible and apparent to him; and the grotesque incompatibility of these bonds, with the passionate indulgence of his own will and wish upon which his mind was fixed. He saw all these circumstances also with a curious faculty, half of sympathy, half of repulsion, through the eyes of the little visitor, the little intruder, the girl who had suddenly become a member of the household, and who was there observing everything. She would remark the unwillingness with which he appeared, and she would remark, he felt certain, his absence both before and after, and would ask herself where he went, a question which, so far as Walter was aware, not even his mother had begun to ask as yet. He had an instinctive conviction that Mab would ask it, that she would see through him, that she would divine what was in heart. And when they all met about the homely table once more,—the children intent upon their bread-and-butter, the mother apportioning all the cups of tea, the milk-and-water to some, the portions of cake,—Walter seemed to himself to be taking part in some scene of a comedy curiously interposed between the acts of an exciting drama.

A cold world, out of doors, spreading all around, with the strangest encounters in it, with understandings and misunderstandings which made the blood run cold, and sent the heart up bounding into high passion and excitement, into feverish resolve and wild daring, and the madness of desperation—and in the very midst a sudden pause, the opening of a door, and then the confused chatter of the children, the sound of the teacups, the lamp which smelled of paraffin, the bread-and-butter,—how laughable it was, how ridiculous, what a contrast, what a slavery, how petty in the midst of all the passions and agitations that lay around!

Presently, Walter, in his boyish ingenuousness, began to feel a little proud that he, so simple as he sat there in the fumes of the household tea, was in reality a distracted yet well-nigh triumphant lover, meaning to put his fortune to the touch that very night, to pledge his new life and all it might bring. They thought him nothing more than a lad to be sent to school again, to be guided at their will, when he was a man and on the eve of an all-important decision, about to dispose of his existence.

He caught Mab’s eyes as this thought swelled in his mind. They were not penetrating or keen eyes; they were blue, very soft, smiling, child-like, lighted up with amused observation, noticing everything. But Walter felt them go through him as none of the other accustomed familiar eyes did. She saw there was something more than usual about him. She would divine when he disappeared that his going away meant something. The family took no heed of his absence—he had gone out to take a turn, they would say; perhaps his father would grumble that he ought to be at his books. But only that little stranger would divine that Walter’s absence meant a great deal more—that it meant a romance, a poem, a drama, and that it consumed his entire life.

The dispersing of the children, the game of play permitted to Horry and the small brothers, the going to bed of the rest, made a moment of tumult and agitation. And in the midst of this Walter stole out unperceived into the clear air of the night. It was clear as a crystal, the sky shining, almost crackling with a sudden frost, the stars twinkling out of their profound blue, with such a sharp and icy brilliancy as occurs only now and then in the hardest winter. The air was so clear and exhilarating that Walter did not find it cold; indeed he was too much excited to be sensible of anything save the refreshment and keen restorative pinch of that nipping and eager atmosphere.

As he hurried up the hill the blood ran riot in his veins, his heart seemed to bound and leap forward as if it had an independent life. He found himself under the hedge of Crockford’s cottage in a few minutes, with the feeling that he had flown or floated there, though his panting breath told of the rush he had actually made. The moon, which had but newly risen, was behind the cottage, and consequently all was black under the hedge, concealing him in the profoundest darkness.

He was glad to pause there in that covert and ante-chamber of nature to regain command of himself, to get his breath and collect his thoughts—to think how he was to make his presence known. She had somehow divined that he was there on other nights, but this was a more important occasion, and he felt that he would be justified in defying all the restrictions put upon him, and letting even the Crockfords, the old people of the house, know that he was there. It was true that the idea of old Crockford daunted him a little. The old man had a way of saying things; he had a penetrating, cynical look. But it would be strange indeed, Walter reflected, if he who was not afraid of fate, who was about to defy the world in arms, should be afraid of an old stone-breaker on the roads.

The thought passed through his mind, and brought a smile to his face as he stood in the dark, recovering his breath. All was perfectly silent in the night around. The village had shut itself up against the cold. There was nobody near. The heat and passion in Walter’s being seemed to stand like an image of self-concentrated humanity, independent of all the influences about, indifferent, even antagonistic, throbbing with a tremendous interest in the midst of those petty personal concerns of which the world thought nothing, but in himself a world higher than nature, altogether distinct from it. The little bit of shadow swallowed him up, yet neither shadow nor light made any difference to the mind which felt all moons and stars and the whole system of the universe inferior to its own burning purpose and intense tumultuous thoughts.

But while he stood there, indifferent to the whole earth about him, a little sound of the most trivial character suddenly caught his ear, and made every nerve tingle. It was a sound no more important than the click of the latch of the cottage door. Had she heard him, then, though he was not aware of having made any sound? Had she divined him with a mind so much more sensitive than that of ordinary mankind? He stood holding his breath, listening for her step, imagining it to himself, the little skim along the pavement, the touch when she paused, firm yet so light. He heard it in his thoughts, in anticipation: but in reality that was not what he heard. Something else sounded in his ears which made his veins swell and his heart bound, yet not with pleasure—a voice which seemed to affront the stillness and offend the night, a voice without any softness or grace either of tone or words—something alive and hostile to every feeling in his heart, and which seemed to Walter’s angry fancy to jar upon the very air. And then there followed a sound of steps; they were coming to the gate. She was with him, accompanying him, seeing him off. Was it possible? Walter made a step forward and clinched his fist; he then changed his mind and drew back.

“Anyhow, you’ll think it over,” said the voice of the man whom he had met on the road. “It’s a good offer. It ain’t every day you’ll get as good. A good blow-out and a good breakfast, and all that, would suit me just as well as you. I ain’t ashamed of what I’m doing; and you’d look stunning in a veil and all that. But what’s the good of making a fuss? It’s fun, too, doing a thing on the sly.”

And was it her voice that replied?

“Yes, it’s fun. I don’t mind that, not a bit. I should just like to see it put on the stage. You and me coming in, and your mother’s look. Oh, her look! that’s what fetches me!”

It could not be her, not her! and yet the voice was hers; and the subdued peal of laughter had in it a tone which he had felt to thrill the air with delight on other occasions; but not now. The man laughed more harshly, more loudly; and then they appeared at the gate in the moonlight. He so near them, unable to stir without betraying himself, was invisible in the gloom. But the light caught a great white shawl in which she had muffled herself, and made a sort of reflection in the tall shiny hat.

They stood for a minute there, almost within reach of his hand.

“Don’t you stand chattering,” she said; “it’s time for your train; and I tell you it’s a mile off, and you’ll have to run.”

“There’s plenty of time,” said he. “I should just like to know who was that young spark that sent me off out of my way to-day. I believe it’s some one that’s sweet upon you too, and as you’re holding in hand—”

“Nonsense,” she said, “I see nobody here.”

“Oh, tell that to—them that knows no better; see nobody; only every fellow about that’s worth looking at; as if I didn’t know your little ways!”

She laughed a little, not displeased; and then said, “There’s nobody worth looking at; but let me again say, go; the old man will be out after me. He won’t believe you’ve got a message from mother; he doesn’t now. He doesn’t believe a word I say.”

“No more should I if I was in his place. Oh, I know your little ways. You’ll have to give them over when we’re married, Em. It’s a capital joke now, don’t you know, but when we’re married—”

“We’re not married yet,” she said, “and perhaps never will be, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, I say! When we’ve just settled how it’s to be done, and all about it! But look here, don’t you have anything to say to that young ’un in the knickerbockers. He’s cute, whoever he is. He might have put me off the scent altogether. I couldn’t have done it cleverer myself. Don’t let him guess what’s going on. He’s just the one, that fellow is, to let the old folks know, and spoil our fun.”

“Look here,” said the girl, “I warn you, Ned, you’ll lose your train.”

“Not I. I’ll make a run for it. Good-bye, Em!”

Great heavens! did he dare to touch her, to approach his head with the shiny hat still poised upon it to hers. The grotesque horror overwhelmed Walter as he stood trembling with rage and misery. There was a little murmuring of hushed words and laughter, and then a sudden movement: “Be off with you,” she said, and the man rushed away through the gleams of the moonlight, his steps echoing along the road. She stood and looked after him, with her white shawl wrapped round her head and shoulders, moving from one foot to the other with a light buoyant movement as if to keep herself warm. The motion, the poise of her figure, the lingering, all seemed to speak of pleasure. Walter stood in the dark with his teeth set and his hand clinched, and misery fierce and cruel in his soul. It seemed impossible to him to suffer more. He had touched the very bottom of the deepest sea of wretchedness; the bitterness of death he thought had gone over him, quenching his very soul and all his projects. His love, his hopes, his wishes seemed all to have melted into one flame of fury, fierce rage, and hate, which shook his very being. It seemed to Walter that he could almost have murdered her where she stood within three paces of him; and if the veil of darkness had been suddenly withdrawn the boldest might have shuddered at the sight of that impersonation of wrath, standing drawn back to keep himself quiet, his hand clinched by his side, his eyes blazing as they fixed upon her, within reach of the unconscious watcher, so light and pleased and easy, not knowing the danger that was so near. Her head was turned away from him watching her lover—her lover!—as he rattled along the road; and when Walter made a sudden step forward out of the shade, she started with a suppressed alarmed cry and wail of terror.

“Mr. Penton! you here!”

“Yes. I’ve been here—too long.”

“Oh, Mr. Penton,” cried the girl, “you’ve heard what we’ve been saying! Do you call that like a gentleman to listen to what people are saying? You have no right to make any use of it. You did not put us on our guard. You have no right to make any use of what you heard when we didn’t know.”

Walter came up to her, close to her, and put his hand upon the fleecy whiteness of her shawl, into which it seemed to sink as into snow.

“Will you tell me this?” he said. “You are one person to old Crockford, another to him, another to me. Which is you?”

A man who has been injured acquires an importance, a gravity, which no other circumstances can give him; and the tone of his misery was in Walter’s voice. He imposed upon her and subdued her in spite of herself. She shrunk a little away from him and began to cry.

“It is not my fault! I never asked you to notice me. I never pretended I was any one—not your equal—not—”

“Which is you?’ he said. Through the soft shawl he reached her arm at last, and grasped it firmly, yet with a weakening, a softening. How could he help it when he felt her in his power? Through her shawl, and through the mist of rage and bitterness about him, the quick-witted creature felt how the poor boy’s heart was touched, and began to melt at the contact of her arm.

“Which—is me? Oh,” she cried, “you don’t know me—you don’t know my circumstances, or you would not ask. You don’t know what I come from, nor how I have been surrounded all my life. It is the best that is me! It is, whatever you may think.”

Her arm quivered in his grasp; her slight figure seemed to vibrate so near to him. It appeared to his confused brain that her whole being swayed and wavered with the appeal he made to her. She lifted her face to his, and that too was quivering in every line. She was entirely in his power, to be shaken, to be annihilated at his will, and he had the power over her of right as well as of strength.

“The best—I don’t know which is the best. I came up to tell you—to ask you—to let you decide. And I find you with a man who—is going to marry you.”

“He thinks so, perhaps; but a man can’t marry one without one’s own consent.”

“Your consent! You seemed to agree to everything he said!” cried the young man in his rage. “A fellow like that! A cad—a—And I waiting here—waiting to see you—oh!” He flung her arm from him, almost throwing her off her balance. But when he saw her totter, compunction seized the unhappy boy. “You make me a brute!” he cried; “I’ve hurt you!” and felt as if, in the stillness of the night, and the despair of his heart, his voice sounded like a wild beast’s cry.

“You have hurt me—only in my heart,” she said. “Oh, but listen. I know it all looks bad enough; but you listened to him, and you must listen to me. You think he’s not good enough for me, Mr. Penton; but a little while ago he was thought far too good, and I—perhaps I thought so, too. Not—oh, not now. Wait a minute before you cry out. Who had I ever seen that was better? I had heard of other kind of people in books, but either I thought they didn’t live now, or at least they were far, far out of my reach. I never knew a gentleman till—till—”

“Her voice died away; it had been getting lower, softer, complaining, pleading—now it seemed to die away altogether, fluttering in her throat.

“Till?” Waiter’s voice too was choked by emotion and excitement. The strong current of his thoughts and wishes, so violently interrupted, found a new channel and flooded all the obstructions away. Till—! Could anything be more pathetic than this confusion and self-revelation? “You did not tell him so,” he said, with a remnant of his wrath—a sort of rag of resentment, which he caught at as it flew away. “You let him believe it was he; you made him understand—”

“Mr. Penton,” she cried, “listen. What am I to do? You’ve sought me out, you’ve been far too kind; but I can’t let myself be a danger to you too. You know it never, never would be allowed if it were known you were coming here to me. And now that I’ve known you, how can I bear living here and not seeing you? It was the only charm, the only pleasure—Oh, I’m shameless to tell you, but it’s true.”

“Emmy,” said the lad, in his infatuation, laying once more his hand on her arm, but this time trembling himself with feeling and tenderness, “if it’s true, how could you—how could you let that man—”

“Mr. Penton, just hear me out. He can take me away from this, and give me a home, and take me out of the way of harming you. Oh, don’t you see how I am torn asunder! If I throw him over there’s no hope for me. Oh, what am I to do? What am I to do?”

Walter was moved beyond himself with an impulse of enthusiasm, of devotion, which seemed to turn his feeling in a moment into something sacred—not the indulgence of his own will, but the most generous of inspirations. He put his arm round her, and supported her in her trembling and weakness.

“Emmy,” he said, his young voice ineffably soft and full of tears—“Emmy, darling, we’ll find a better way.”

CHAPTER XXIX.
THE FUNERAL DAY.

The day of Sir Walter Penton’s funeral was a great if gloomy holiday for the whole country about. A man so old, and so little known to the neighborhood, could not be greatly mourned. He had kept up, no doubt, the large charities which it is the worthy privilege of a great family to maintain for the benefit of the country, but he had never appeared in them, and few people associated a personal kindness with the image of the stately old man who had been seen so seldom for years past. The people in the village and all the houses scattered along the road were full of excitement and curiosity. The carriages which kept arriving all the morning gradually raised the interest of the spectators toward the great climax of the funeral procession, which it was expected would be half a mile long, and embraced everybody of any importance in the neighborhood, besides the long line of the tenantry. And then the flowers—that new evidence of somber vanity and extravagant fashion. To see these alone was enough to draw a crowd. In the heart of the winter, just after Christmas, what masses of snowy blossoms, piled up, crushing and spoiling each other—flowers that cost as much as would have fed a parish! The villagers stood with open mouths of wonder. No one there in all their experiences of life—all the weddings, christenings, summer festivals of their recollection—had seen such a display. The procession, headed by no black mournful hearse, such as would have seemed natural to the lookers-on, but by a sort of triumphal car, covered with flowers, drew forth crowds all along the way.

The Pentons, who were now the lords of all—or rather of as little as was practicable, for all that was unentailed naturally went without question to Sir Walter’s daughter—had not a carriage of their own in which to swell the procession. And though they were now naturally in the chief place, they were perhaps the least known of all the rural potentates, great and small, who shook hands in silence, with looks of sympathy more or less solemn, with Mr. Russell Penton after the ceremony was over. Sir Edward, indeed, the new baronet, had known them all in his day; but Walter looked on with a half-defiant shyness, with scarcely an acquaintance in the multitude. And the sensation was very strange to both father and son when all the train had dispersed and they came back to the great house which was henceforward theirs. Mrs. Russell Penton had not since the moment of her father’s death made any show of her grief. She had been entirely stricken down on that day. A frightful combination and mingling of emotions had prostrated her. Grief for her father; ah, yes! He had been perhaps the one individual in the world upon whose full comprehension she had leaned; but in his dying even this had failed her, and she felt that he comprehended her and she him no longer, and that at the last moment his steps had strayed from hers. A more bitter and terrible discovery could not be; and when with that came the sense that all her hopes had failed—that the plans so nearly brought to some practical possibility had all come to nothing—that everything was too late—that, instead of securing her home for an eternal possession, which was what her eager spirit desired, she had only presented herself to the world in the aspect of a grasping woman, endeavoring to take advantage of a poor man and seize his inheritance—when all this became apparent to her, Alicia covered her face and withdrew from the light of day. The loss of one who had been the chief object in her life for so long, the father whom she had loved, was not much more than a pretense (and she felt this too to the bottom of her heart) for the misery that overwhelmed her; which was not grief only, but disappointment almost more bitter than grief; disenchantment and failure mingled with the sorrow and loss, and made them more keen and poignant than words can tell. And she was ashamed that it should be so—ashamed that, when all around her gave her credit for thus profoundly mourning her father, she was mourning in him her own disappointed hopes, her disgust, her failure, as well as the loss her heart had sustained. This consciousness was in itself one of the bitterest parts of her burden. Her husband came into the room with sympathetic looks, her maid stole about on tiptoe, everything was kept in darkness and quiet to soothe her grief. And yet her grief was but a small part of what her proud spirit was suffering. To feel that this was so was almost more than she could bear.

After the first day she would indeed bear it no longer. She would permit no more of that obsequious tenderness which is given to sorrow, but got up and came forth to take her usual place in the house and fulfill her ordinary duties, refusing as much as she could the praises lavished upon her for her self-control and unselfishness and regard for others. She “bore up” wonderfully, everybody said; but Alicia, to do her justice, would have none of the applause which was murmured about her. “I did not expect my father would live forever,” she said, with a tone of impatience to her husband; “and to lie there and think everything over again, is that to be desired? I would rather feel I had some duty still and claims upon me.”

“Oh, many claims,” he said; “but you must not overtask your strength.”

She had no fear of overtasking her strength, but rather a feeling that if she could get to work—as her maid did, as the house-maids did, to prepare for her departure and the entry of the other family—that would be the thing which would do her good. After the funeral she came out in her deep mourning, out of the library, in which she had been spending that solemn hour, to meet the chief mourners when they returned. It would have pleased her better to have been chief mourner herself; but it had been said on all hands that it would be “too much for her.” So she had spent the time while the slow cortege was winding along the country road and all the gloomy formulas were being fulfilled, by herself in the old man’s favorite room, where everything spoke of him, reading the funeral service over and over, thinking—now they will be there, and there; now arrived at the grave; now leaving him—beside the boys. It was that thought that brought the tears. Beside the boys! They had lain there for twenty years and more, but she could still shed tears for them; for all the rest her eyes were dry. And when the carriages came back she came out quite composed, though so pale, in all the solemnity of her mourning, covered with crape, to the drawing-room to receive them. She had bidden her husband to bring the new proprietor back with him, that everything might at once be said which remained to say. She gave her hand to Edward, who came forward to meet her, he too in deep mourning; but her eye went beyond him to “the boy” who stood behind, and whose slight young figure seemed to hold itself more erect, and with an air of greater self-belief than when she saw him last. What wonder! he was the heir.

“I wanted to see you,” she said. “Gerald will have told you—that everything might be put at once on the footing we wish it to be.”

“I told you, Alicia, that your cousin would not hurry you. He is as anxious as I am that you should have no trouble. We have talked it all over—”

“Why shouldn’t I have trouble?” she said. “There is no reason in the world for sparing me my share of the roughness. I am better so. Edward, if you should wish to get possession soon, you and your wife, you may be sure I will put no obstacles in your way.”

“I wish you would believe that we have no wish, no desire. We want you to act exactly as may suit you best—to consider yourself still in your own house.”

“That is impossible,” she said, quickly; “mine it is not, nor ever was; and now that he is gone who was its natural master—I know perfectly well how considerate you will be. What I am expressing is my own wish—not to be in your way—not to put off your settling down. You have a large family—you will want to settle everything.”

At this Sir Edward began to clear his throat, and it took him some time to get out the next words.

“Alicia,” he said, “we have been thinking a great deal about it, my wife and I.”

“Yes, you must naturally have thought about it. Mrs. Penton”—here the speaker paused, grew red, hesitated a little, and then went on—“she must wish to have everything decided about the removal, and to know what furniture will be wanted, and a great deal besides. If you would like to bring her to see for herself, and judge what is necessary—I hope you understand me—my husband and I will give every facility.”

“My dear, your cousin knows all that,” said Russell Penton, not without impatience.

“It was something else I wanted to say. My wife—is a woman of great sense, Alicia.”

Mrs. Russell Penton made a slight bow of assent. She had nothing to do with his wife. She did not like to hear of her at all, the woman who was now Lady Penton, and yet was a woman of no account, an insignificant mother of a family. This description, which the person to whom it belongs is generally somewhat proud of, is often to women without that distinction a contemptuous way of dismissing an individual of whom nothing else can be said. Edward Penton’s wife was no more than that. Sense! Oh, yes, she might have sense, so far as her brood and its wants were concerned.

“She always thought—an opinion which, however, she did not express till very lately, and in which I did not agree—that this house, which you and my poor uncle kept up so splendidly—”

Alicia gave an impatient wave of her hand. She could not see why Sir Walter should be called poor because he was dead.

“Yes,” said Sir Edward, “it has been splendidly kept up; nothing could be more beautiful, or in better taste. You always had admirable taste, Alicia; and my poor dear uncle—”

“Don’t,” she cried; “what is it you want to say? I beg your pardon, Edward, if I am impatient. For Heaven’s sake come to the point.”

“I know,” he said, with a compassionate look, “grief is irritable. My wife has always been of opinion that for us, with our large family, the possession of Penton would be no advantage. We could not keep it up as it has been kept up. The entailed estates by themselves are not—you must have a little patience with me, my dear Alicia, or I never can get out what I have to say.”

She seated herself with a sigh of endurance. All this was intolerable to her. She wanted nothing to be said, but simply that she should go away, who no longer could keep possession, and that they who had the right should come in—no struggle about it, not a word said, not a lament on her side, and if possible not a flourish of trumpets on theirs—at least, not anything that she should hear. It was like Edward to maunder on, though he must have known that she could not endure it. And his wife with her sense! But an appearance of dignity must be kept up, and she must, she knew, hear out what he had to say.

“Go on,” said Russell Penton, “you can understand that she is not able for very much.” And he came and stood by the back of his wife’s chair with his usual undemonstrative self-forgetfulness, full of sympathy for her, though he did not approve of her—all of which things she knew.

“It comes to this,” said Edward Penton, a little confused in his story; “I did not agree with her at all. When we entered into the negotiations—which have come to nothing—I did it without any heart. It was only on the morning I spent here, you know, the morning that—it was only then I perceived that my wife was right. We have talked it over since, Alicia, and I have a proposal to make you. If you like to remain—”

She got up from her chair suddenly, clinching her hands in impatience. “No, no, no, no,” she cried, almost violently, “I want to hear nothing more about it. There is nothing, nothing more to say.”

“If you would but hear me out, Alicia! this that I’m speaking of would really be a favor to us. We have not the means to keep it up. We have things to think of, of far more importance than the gardens and glass and all that. We have our children to think of. The house is a great deal to you—and—and it’s something to me that know it so well; but to them—to them it doesn’t matter,” he said, with a sort of contempt for the Pentons who were only half Pentons though they were his children. “I would rather a great deal you kept it and lived in it, and remained as you have been.”

There was a curious little by-play going on in the meantime. Walter listened to his father with consternation, moving a step nearer, looking on eagerly as if desiring to interfere in his own person—while over the face of Russell Penton there came a shade of anxiety, suspense, and annoyance. He was sufficiently calm to put out his hand keeping Walter back; but he was no longer a mere spectator of the interview. Alarm was in his face; he had thought he had escaped, and here was the chain again ready to drag him back. Sir Edward turned to him at the end of his little speech with a direct appeal, “Speak to her, Russell; I make the offer in a friendly spirit. There’s nothing behind,” he said.

“That I am sure of, but it is for Alicia to answer. She must decide, not me.”

“I have decided,” said Mrs. Penton, with something like suppressed passion. “No; if it had been mine I should have been glad, why should I deny it? I was born here. I like it better than any other place in the world. But there are some things more important than even the house in which one was born. Go back to your wife, Edward, and tell her I dare say she understands many things, but me she doesn’t understand. To owe my house to your civility and hers, to hold it at your pleasure, no, no—a thousand times. Perhaps you mean well—I will say I am sure you mean well; but I couldn’t do it. Gerald, there’s been enough of this, I should like to go away.”

Over Russell’s face there shot a gleam of satisfaction; but he did not let it appear in what he said. “Alicia, you must not be hasty. Your cousin can mean nothing but kindness. Let me tell him you will think of it. He does not want an immediate answer. You might be sorry after—”

“Gerald! it is not a thing you have ever wished.”

“No, I am like your cousin’s wife,” he said, with a slight laugh. “But what has that to do with it? It is for you to judge; and you might repent—”

She cast a glance round the stately room, with all the beautiful furniture so carefully chosen to enhance and embellish it. Can one help the hideous thoughts that against one’s will come into one’s mind? Swift as lightning there flashed before her a picture of what it would be—the pictures gone, the rich carpets, in which the foot sunk, the hangings of satin and velvet—and the whole furnished as an upholsterer would do it, called in in a hurry, and kept to the lowest possible estimate; and then the children of all ages, rampant, running over everything. She saw this in her imagination, and with it at the same instant felt a shrinking of horror from the desecration, and a horrible momentary exultation. Yes, exultation! over the difference, over the contrast. It was better so; the stateliness and splendor must sink with her reign. With the others, her supplanters, would come in squalor, pettiness, all the unlovely details of poverty. It gave her a sense almost of guilty pleasure that the contrast should be so marked beyond all possibility of mistake.

“No,” she said, with forced composure, “I shall not repent. This chapter of life is over. It has been long, far longer than is usually permitted to a woman. I shall not interfere with you, Edward; it is your place, and you must take it. Good-bye; it was only to tell you that no hinderance should be raised on my part—that as soon almost as you please—as soon as it is possible—”

“There was something else, Alicia, you meant to say.”

“What else?” Her eyes followed her husband’s to where Walter stood; then a sudden flush covered her pale face. “Yes, that is true—it is concerning your son. Mr. Rochford will give you the papers, and my husband will explain. My father had an idea, I can not think how it arose; but he had an idea, and it is my business to carry it out.”

“Then is this all?” cried Edward Penton; for his part, he was not even curious as to what had been done for Walter. He almost resented it as she did. “Is this all? You will not allow us to offer—you will not listen. After all, if I am my poor uncle’s successor I am still your cousin, Alicia. It is not my fault.”

“It is no one’s fault,” she said.

“And we all feel for you. Even were it a sacrifice we should be glad to make it. My wife—”

Mrs. Russell Penton rose hurriedly. “You are very kind,” she said. “Good-bye, Edward; I have had a great deal to try me, and I don’t think I can bear any more.”

She hurried out of the room as the servant came in with a message. She could not bear to hear the new title, and yet how could she avoid hearing it? Sir Edward—it was in her ears all the time. And when her husband had said in that cumbrous way, “your cousin’s wife,” there had passed through her mind the “Lady Penton” which he would not say, which she could not say, which seemed to choke her. Lady Penton, her mother’s name! And it was all perfectly just and right. This was what made it so intolerable. They had a right to the name. They had a right to the position. And nothing could be more wretched, envious, miserable than the exasperation in her soul.

CHAPTER XXX.
AFTERWARD.

Everything was very quiet at the Hook on the funeral day; all the blinds were drawn down, even those which could be seen only from the garden and the river, and Mrs. Penton—nay, Lady Penton, though she did not easily fall into the title, and, indeed, until Sir Walter was buried scarcely felt it right to bear it—had quite a little festival of mourning all to herself with the girls, who had no inclination to gainsay her. They knew nothing of the vagaries of girls of the present epoch, and it never occurred to them to go against anything she proposed or to doubt its propriety, though if there was an absurd side to it they saw that too later on, and made their little criticisms, no doubt, with little jokes to each other, not to be ventilated till long, long after. There is perhaps a natural liking in the feminine heart for all those little exhibitions of importance which the great crises of life make natural. To stand in the privileged position of those who are immersed in sorrow, yet not to be immersed in sorrow; to have all the consequence which is derived from fresh mourning and nearness to “a death;” yet to have the heart untouched, and no real trouble in it—this is something which pleases, which almost exhilarates in a somber way. It is so good to think that the death is not one which touches us, that we are only lightly moved by it, sitting in a voluntary gloom to please ourselves and compliment the other, not in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Lady Penton in her way enjoyed all this, especially after her husband had gone. She put on her mourning, and made the girls dress themselves in the black frocks which had just come home, and then sitting down in the midst of them she too read the funeral service. It was very soothing, she said—all the more that she had so little real need of being soothed. The girls were full of awe and acquiescence; the new thought that some one had died, though it was only an old man, touched them, and the idea of all his death would bring about increased the subduing, half-compunctious sentiment. It was not their fault that he had died, yet they seemed somehow involved in it—almost to blame.

Little Mab put on a black frock also, though she had no intention of going into mourning, and made one of the little audience to whom the mother read the burial service. She was the spectator amid the group who felt themselves more immediately concerned, and it was all very strange to her—almost droll, it must be allowed. She was not wise enough to see how far the sentiment was real, and sprung out of the confused emotions of this critical period, and she was too sympathetic to pronounce that it was all false, which to a little woman of the world would have been the reasonable thing. She did not, in fact, at all understand these innocent people, though they were so easily understood. Her education made her look for motives in what they did; and they had no motives, but acted on the simple instinct of nature. Her keen little blue eyes, which were so child-like and full of laughter, scintillated with interest and the endeavor to understand. It was all so strange to her, so novel—the large family, the homely living, the community of feeling, everybody moving together, which was puzzling beyond description. She had seen so much of the world in her wealthy orphanhood, even though she was so young, that a sphere so simple and action so single-minded, were altogether beyond her understanding. She kept looking out for the secret, the rift within the lute, the point at which this unanimity would break up, but it did not appear. She had been taught a great deal about fortune-hunting, and the necessity of taking care of herself, and she had heard those side-whispers of society which can not escape the ears even of children—those insinuations of evil underneath and selfishness always rampant. She would not have been surprised had she found that Ally and Anne had schemes of their own, or their mother some deep-laid plan which nobody suspected. And when she found that there was nothing of the sort—so far, at least, as her keen inspection could find out—Mab was far more puzzled than if she had made any number of discoveries. There was but one particular in which she felt that there might be an opening into the unknown, and that was Walter—not, however, in the way in which she had been prepared for delinquency. He paid no attention to herself, neither did any of the others make the faintest effort to put them in each other’s way. There was certainly no fortune-hunting in the case. But Mab felt that Walter’s absences were not for nothing. She was astonished in her premature wisdom that no one took any note of them or seemed to mind. Perhaps there was a little pique in her soul. She had been interested in Walter, but he had shown no interest in her. She could not but think he would be much better employed making himself agreeable to the heiress whom fortune had thrown in his way than in involving himself in some clandestine love-making, which she felt sure was the case—some entanglement probably in the village, to which he seemed always to be going. What could be more silly? Mab had a strong practical tendency, perhaps drawn from the father who had made his own way so effectively. She felt vexed with Walter for this throwing away of his chances. Looking at the subject with perfect impartiality, she could not but feel that a young man coming into an encumbered property—or, at least, what was just the same as an encumbered property—to neglect the fortune which, for anything he knew, lay ready to his hand, was a mingled weakness and absurdity of the most obvious description. She did not enter into the question whether she herself would be disposed to assent or not. That was her own business, and not his. But that he should be so blind as not to try! And in the meantime she observed them all with wonder, and looked at their grave faces when they put themselves thus in sympathy with old Sir Walter’s burial with a little cynical disposition to laugh, which it took her some trouble to restrain.

It was amusing—it might even be said ridiculous—when Lady Penton, the little ceremonial being over and an hour or so of quiet having elapsed, drew up all the blinds again solemnly with her own hands, going from window to window.

“They will have got back to Penton by this time,” she said, in a tone perceptibly more cheerful. “You can tell Mary to take the children out for their walk; by this time it will be all over. And the affairs of life must go on, whatever happens,” she added, with a little sigh.

The sigh was for the trouble over, the cheerfulness for the life to come. They were both quite simple and true. She herself took a little walk afterward, still with much gravity, round the garden, in which Mab, in her character as a philosophical observer, took pains to accompany her.

“But you never knew Sir Walter Penton, did you?” she asked.

“Yes, I knew him, but not well. We went there a few times when we were newly married. After the death of the sons they rather turned against Edward. It was a pity, but I never blamed them.”

“Why should they have turned against him? it was not his fault.”

“My dear,” said the gentle woman, quietly, “you are not old enough to understand.”

Mab looked at her with those keen little eyes, which twinkled and sparkled with curiosity, and which to the little girl’s own apprehension were able to look through and through all those simple people. But even Mab was daunted by this gentle and undoubting superiority of experience.

Lady Penton resumed quietly, speaking more to herself than to her companion, “I hope she will not feel it now—not too much to listen. I hope she may not prove more proud than ever.”

She shook her head as she went slowly along, and Mab could not divine what she was thinking. They went together to the bench under the poplar-tree, where the weathercock which was over the Penton stables caught the red gold of the westering sun, and blazed so that it looked like a sun itself, stretching brazen rays over the dark and leafless woods.

“Do you think she could be happy living anywhere else?” Lady Penton said at last.

“She—who? Do you mean Aunt Gerald? Oh, yes, to be sure, when she knows it isn’t hers. And my uncle hates it.”

“Your uncle!” Lady Penton repeated. And then she said, after a time, “I don’t think she could be happy in any other house.”

But what was meant by this, or whether the new mistress of Penton was glad that her predecessor should suffer, or if these words were said in sympathy, was what little Mab could not understand. She had to betake herself to an investigation of the sentiments of the others. It began a new chapter in her investigations when at last Sir Edward and his son appeared in their sables, both very grave and preoccupied. The father went into the house with his wife; the son joined the youthful group about the door. But no one could be more unwilling to communicate than Walter proved himself. He stood like a hound held in and pulling at the leash—like a horse straining against the curb. (“If you were to give him his head how he would go!” Mab said to herself.) But he did not break loose as she expected him to do. Impatient as he was, he stood still, with now and then a glance at the western sky. The sunset was a long time accomplishing itself. Was that what he was so impatient for?

“I suppose there was a wonderful crowd of people, Wat?”

“Yes, there were a great many people.”

“Everybody—that was anybody—”

“Everybody, whether they were anybody or not.”

“And were there a great many flowers? and did our wreath look nice? was it as big as the others?”

“There were heaps of flowers; ours didn’t show one way or another. How could you expect it among such a lot?”

“But you were the chief mourners, Wat!”

“Yes, we were the chief mourners. I wish you wouldn’t ask me so many questions. Just because we were the chief mourners I saw next to nothing.”

“Did Cousin Alicia go?”

“How do you suppose she could go—to have all those people staring?”

“But did you see her?—did you see anybody? Did father say—”

“Oh, don’t bother me,” Walter cried. “Don’t you see I have enough to think of without that!”

“What has he to think of, I wonder?” said Mab to herself, gazing at him with her keen eyes. But the girls were silent, half respectful of the mysterious unknown things which he might now have to think of, half subdued by the presence of the looker-on, before whom they could not let it be supposed that Wat was less than perfect. And presently, after moving about a little, saying scarcely anything, he disappeared in-doors. Was it to the book-room, to look over his Greek? or was it to steal out by the other door and hurry once more to the village? It was there Mab felt sure that he always went. To the village—meaning doubtless to some girl there, of whose existence nobody knew.

Sir Edward took his wife in-doors, solemnly leading her by the hand, and when they got to the book-room he put a chair for her solemnly. Already his old breeding—too fine for the uses of every day at the Hook—began to come back to him.

“I have not been successful,” he said, “It will not do.”

“It will not do? She won’t take it from you, Edward?”

“There is no reason why she shouldn’t take it from me; but she will not hear of it. I have done all I could, my dear. There is nothing more possible. We can go in when we like; they will put no obstacles in our way.”

“Go in when we like—and how are we to furnish Penton?” she cried.

“And keep it up,” he said, with a groan; “there are literally acres of glass—and to see the gardeners going away in the evening it is like a factory. But we can not help it. I have done my best. By the bye,” he added, in something of his old aggrieved tone, “they have behaved what I suppose will be called very handsomely in another way. I told you my uncle’s fancy about Walter—they have given him ten thousand pounds.”

“What?” she said, almost with a scream.

“Walter—he took my uncle’s fancy; didn’t I tell you? He is to have ten thousand pounds. It’s a good sum, but nothing to them; they are very rich; what with all the savings of the estate, and the money in the funds, and the lands elsewhere that are out of the entail, Alicia’s very rich. They can afford it; but all the same, it’s a nice sum.”

“Ten thousand pounds,” she repeated to herself. She had not remarked the rest. A sort of consternation of pleasure overwhelmed her. “It is very good of them, Edward, oh, very good. Why, Walter will be independent. Ten thousand pounds! Oh, dear me, what a good that would have done us—how much we should have thought of it! Ten thousand pounds! And what does he say?”

“Nothing, so far as I remarked. I was not thinking of him,” said Sir Edward, with a little impatience. He had so much to think of in respect to the family at large and all the cares of the new life, that he was a little annoyed to have Walter thrust into the front at such a moment. “Of course it is a great thing for him,” he said. “It would have been a great thing for us at this moment to have command of a sum of money. My uncle might have thought of that. He might have thought that to change our style of living as we shall be obliged to do, to set up an establishment on a totally different scale, to alter everything, a little ready money would have been a great help; whereas Walter has no use for it, no need of it, a boy of twenty. But there is no limit to the fantastic notions of old men with money to leave.”

“You forget,” said his wife, “that old Sir Walter intended everything to be different—that he never meant us to set up an establishment or live in Penton at all.”

“Ah, the question is, did he mean that—wasn’t it merely a plan of Alicia’s? Oh, no, I’ve heard nothing more. But I can’t help thinking my uncle would really have preferred having a family to continue the old name after him, instead of letting it all run into the Russell family, as I suppose it must have done. That reminds me, I have a message for that little Russell girl. Russell Penton will come for her or send for her to-morrow. He made all sorts of pretty speeches about our kindness in taking her in.”

“Dear me, it was not worth talking about. It was Ally’s idea. One little thing more in our house—what does it matter? She is a nice little thing; she gives no trouble,” said Lady Penton, to whom little Mab was of no importance at all.

Sir Edward dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. It was of still less importance to him than it was to his wife. He said, “They are going abroad I believe very soon. Those people to whom money is no object always fly abroad to get quit of every annoyance. When shall you and I be able to run off, Annie, for a rest? Never, I fear.”

“Well, Edward,” she said, quietly, “if we were able in one way we shouldn’t be in another. We couldn’t leave the children, you know. I shouldn’t wonder if the Russell Pentons would willingly change with us—their money against our children. They have the worst of it after all; so much to leave and nobody belonging to them to leave it to. So we must not grumble.”

This view of the case did not appear to give Sir Edward much comfort. He seated himself at his table and drew his writing things toward him. It was only to begin once more those inevitable calculations which had a charm yet, did not make anything easier.

“If you have got anything to do,” he said, “I’ll not keep you longer.” He added, as she went toward the door, “Don’t make any fuss about Walter. He ought to understand that this makes no difference;” and again, turning round, calling her, “Annie, don’t forget to tell the little Russell girl.”

She went out into the garden, where the girls were still wandering about in the restlessness of spent excitement. It did not occur to her to keep back her news because of “the little Russell girl.” They all came round her, Mab keeping behind a little, yet following the others. The day was very mild, and Lady Penton had a shawl round her shoulders, but no covering on her head.

“Your father is rather disappointed,” she said. “Your cousin Alicia will not accept what we offered. I am sorry, but we must just make up our minds to it.”

“Make up our minds to Penton!” cried Anne.

“Oh, my dear, so far as that is concerned! but you know how difficult it will be. However, there is something else that will please you very much. You know old Sir Walter at the last took a great fancy to our Wat, and wanted to leave him something. Well, your cousin Alicia felt she ought to carry out her father’s wishes, and she has settled on him a fortune—ten thousand pounds.”

“Ten thousand pounds!” said the girls, in one breath.

“It makes him quite independent. It is a great thing for him at his age; I hope it will not lead him into temptation. And it is very good of your cousin Alicia. She had no need to do it unless she pleased, for it was only a fancy, a dying fancy, which Sir Walter, perhaps, had he got better, might not—We must always be grateful to her, whatever else may happen. Few people, though they might be very civil, would show kindness to that extent.” Lady Penton paused thoughtfully. Cousin Alicia had not been on the whole very civil, and she felt as if the thanks she was according were not enthusiastic enough. “It is a wonderful thing,” she added, warming herself up, “an absolute gift of ten thousand pounds. I don’t think I ever heard of anything like it. It is a splendid gift.”

“And Wat never said a word! I wonder, mother, if he knows.”

“Yes, he knows. I dare say he was overwhelmed by it. He would not know what to say. Where is he? I should like to wish him joy.”

“I know where he is. He has gone to the village to tell her,” said little Mab to herself, and she looked the other way in case Lady Penton might have read it in her eyes. But Lady Penton, in her innocence, never would have divined what those eyes meant. And presently she earned the war, so to speak, into the enemy’s country by turning next to her visitor.

“My dear,” she said, “there is a message for you, too. Mr. Russell Penton is to send for you, or perhaps come for you, to-morrow.”

“To-morrow!” cried Mab, taken by surprise. While she was thus keeping back her sheaf of imaginary arrows, here was one which caught herself as it were in the very middle of her shield. “Oh!” she cried again, “and must I go?”

Now she had been no inconsiderable embarrassment to the family at this crisis of its affairs, but the moment she uttered this little plaintive cry all their soft hearts turned to Mab with a bound of tenderness and gratitude, and great compunction for ever having found her in their way. They did not know that part of her reluctance to leave them was in consequence of the investigations which she had entered upon, and was by no means willing to break off.

“My dear,” said Lady Penton, “we have been so out of our ordinary while you have been with us, that I am sure it is very, very sweet of you to care to stay. And we should all like very much to keep you a little longer. I hope Mr. Russell Penton may come for you himself to-morrow, and then perhaps he will consent to let you stay.”

CHAPTER XXXI.
A VISIT.

These communications were interrupted by the sound of carriage-wheels so near that it was not possible to escape the certainty that visitors were approaching. Lady Penton paused for a moment, discussing with herself whether she should say “Not at home,” the day of the funeral was very early to receive visitors; but then she reflected that they had all got their mourning—even Martha having her black gown—and that there was therefore no reason why she should not receive, though “they,” whoever they were, would have shown better taste had they postponed their visit. However, in this afternoon of excitement and désoeuvrement, it was almost a relief to see somebody who was not concerned, and might consequently impart something new—a little change into the atmosphere. The carriage which came wheeling round past the drawing-room windows was new and glistening, and highly effective, much more so than is usually to be met with in the country: and out of it came two ladies, as carefully got-up as their vehicle, wrapped in furs and plush. That peeps were taken at them from the corner where a judicious observer could see without being seen it is almost unnecessary to say.

“No, I don’t know them,” said Anne, shaking her head. “It is none of the Bannister people, nor the Miltons, nor the Durhams, nor anybody I ever saw. They must be from the other side, or else they are Reading people, or—”

“We know no Reading people,” said Lady Penton, with a tone—well, perhaps it was not pride; but certainly it was a tone which would not have come naturally to Mrs. Penton of the Hook one short week before.

“The footman is opening the door—he has such a delightful fur cape on! They’re coming in. Ally, look, look! Did you ever see them before?”

Ally had held back, not liking to show her curiosity before little Mab, that critic and investigator whom she began instinctively to divine. But she made a little soft movement forward now. And when she saw the ladies stepping out of the carriage Ally gave vent to a startled cry, “Oh!” which showed she was not so ignorant as her sister. Lady Penton turned toward her for explanation, but it was already too late. The door was thrown open by Martha with more demonstration than when she was only parlor-maid to Mrs. Penton. The shadow of a title upon her head changed even Martha. She announced “Mrs. Rochford, my lady!” in a voice such as no one in the Hook had ever heard before.

“Rochford?” said Lady Penton, with a wondering question in her voice, looking at Ally, who seemed to know. It was not in her nature to be otherwise than polite. She stepped forward and accepted the visitor’s outstretched hand, and gave her a seat, but without any of the tremulous shyness of former days. She had taken up the rôle of great lady with less difficulty than could have been anticipated. Mrs. Rochford was large and ample in her furs. She would have made three of Lady Penton; and the muff in which one of her hands was folded was worth more than all that the other lady had to wear. Nevertheless, Lady Penton, simple as she sat there, felt herself so entirely Mrs. Rochford’s social superior that this outside splendor of appearance was altogether neutralized. Perhaps the visitor was a little confused by this, for she made another step beyond the mistress of the house and seized upon Ally with both her hands out and a great deal of enthusiasm.

“Dear Miss Penton, how are you after all this agitation?” she said, in the most sympathetic tone, and looked as if she would have kissed Ally, who blushed crimson, and evidently did not know how to respond; and then it was the turn of Miss Rochford, who was effusive and sympathetic too.

“The dear child,” said Mrs. Rochford, seating herself, “looked a little lost at Penton at the ball. She had never been out before, I am sure, without you, Lady Penton—which makes such a difference to a sensitive girl. I quite took it upon me to be her chaperon. And then I think she enjoyed herself.”

“Oh!” said Lady Penton, with a blank look; and then she added, “So much has happened since that I have heard nothing about the ball.”

“Yes, indeed,” said the other, in the most sympathetic tone. “Such wonderful changes in so short a time! and just when we were all thinking that poor dear Sir Walter might live to be a hundred.” Then she remembered that this was not an event which the Pentons at the Hook would naturally have found desirable. “But I always say,” added the lady, “that it is such a comfort when an old gentleman of that age goes out of life in tolerable comfort without suffering. Sometimes they have so much to go through. It seems so mysterious.”

Meanwhile, Miss Rochford, a pretty but much-curled and frizzed girl of the period, seized upon Ally. “Oh, I’ve wanted so much to come and see you. Mamma said we oughtn’t to, that you were much greater people now. But you were so nice at the ball, and looked so pleased to be with us, I felt sure you wouldn’t mind. Wasn’t it a delightful ball? But you who were in the house must have felt all that dreadful business about old Sir Walter dying. It was very dreadful, of course; but what a good thing he waited till the ball was over. Had it happened only a little sooner there would have been no ball. Is that your sister? are they both your sisters? Oh!” This exclamation followed when Mab turned round and revealed to the visitor the features of the heiress who had been pointed out to everybody at the Penton ball.

“This is my sister Anne, but she wasn’t at Penton. And this is Miss Russell,” said Ally, who did not know much about the formulas of introduction, and who was considerably startled by the recollection that the Rochfords had been her protectors at Penton, which even she, simple as she was, felt to be inappropriate now. Mab made the new-comer a very dignified little bow. She knew everything of this kind much better than the others did, and knew very well who the Rochfords were.

“My son has told me so often about your charming family and how kind you were to him; and after meeting Miss Penton, as there seemed then a sort of double connection, I thought I might take it upon me to call.”

“Oh, you are very kind,” Lady Penton said.

“My son does nothing but talk of Penton Hook. He is so charmed with everything here. And he is not easily pleased. He is a great favorite in the county, don’t you know? He is invited everywhere. I told him at his age it is enough to turn his head altogether. But he is very true; he is not led away by finery. I find that he always prefers what is really best.”

“Yes,” said Lady Penton; “we saw Mr. Rochford several times. He used to come about the business which unfortunately was not completed.”

“Do you say unfortunately? He supposed you would rather be pleased.”

“I am not at all pleased,” said Lady Penton, drawing back into the stronghold of her dignity. “It is always a pity when family arrangements can not be carried out.”

“I am sure,” said Mrs. Rochford, in her most ingratiating tones, “the county will like far better to see you there than Mrs. Russell Penton. Not that there is anything disagreeable in Mrs. Russell Penton. She is everything that is nice; but it is always more or less a false position, don’t you think? and, on the other hand, a young family is always cheerful and popular.”

“I don’t know how that may be. We are really more a nursery-party than anything else.”

“Oh, don’t say so, Lady Penton! with those two charming girls.”

The mother’s eye followed the wave of the visitor’s hand, and she could not but feel that there was truth in this. She had not thought of Ally and Anne from this point of view. They were not beauties, she was aware. Still, looking at them as they were now, a thrill of that satisfaction and complacency which is at once the most entirely unselfish and the most egotistical of sentiments warmed her bosom. She felt, contrasting them with the somewhat artificial neatness of the Rochford young lady, and the bluntness of little Mab on the other hand, that they might very well be called charming girls. She had rarely had creatures of the same species to compare them with.

“They are very young,” she said, “and we have had little opportunity to do anything for them; they are not at all acquainted with the world.”

“And that is such a charm, I always think! When my son brought Miss Penton to us the other night she had that look of wanting her mother which is so sweet. Mrs. Penton of course had all her guests to look to, and the anxiety about her father. I was so happy to take your dear girl under my motherly wing. It is broad enough,” said Mrs. Rochford, raising a little the arm which was clothed in sealskin and beaver, or in something else more costly than these, if there is anything more costly, and which indeed had an air of softness and warmth which was pleasant. She was what is called a motherly woman, large and caressing, and really kind. She might perhaps have found the courage to keep a poor girl at “a proper distance” had her son been in danger, but otherwise in all probability would have been kind to Ally even had she not been Miss Penton of Penton. And in that case would have taken no credit for it, such as in the present she felt it expedient to insist upon.

“You will be going nowhere in your mourning,” said Miss Rochford to Ally, “it will be so dull for you just at this time of the year. I do so wish you would come to us a little. We don’t give parties, not often; but there is always something going on. Mamma is very good, she never minds the trouble. And Charley is the very best of brothers, he is always trying to keep us amused. Now if you would come there’s nothing he wouldn’t do. We could give you a mount if you hunt. My sister doesn’t ride. I should be so happy to have another girl to go out with me. Oh, do come. And if the frost holds there will be skating. You will have to be quiet, of course, at home for the sake of your mourning, but with us you needn’t mind. Oh, do! It would be so delightful to have you. Charley was very despondent about it. He thought you would be so much too grand for us, who are only Reading people, but I said I was sure you were not one to forget old friends.”

“Too grand!” cried Ally, turning red. “Oh, no, no.” It was not surely that she was too grand. Still there was something—a sentiment of repugnance, a drawing back—which, if it was that, was the meanest sentiment, she thought, in the world.

“No, I am sure not,” said Miss Ethel Rochford. “I knew you were not one to throw over old friends.”

Were they old friends? She was very much puzzled by this question. It seemed so ungracious to make any exception to a claim made with such kindness and enthusiasm. But Ally did not know what answer to make when the ladies at length had rustled away back to their carriage, still very caressing and cordial, but somewhat disappointed, since Lady Penton, with a firmness not at all in keeping with her character, had declined the invitation to Ally.

“Are you such great friends with these people?” asked Anne, before the sealskin had quite swept out of the door; and, “Were you so much with them at the ball?” said Lady Penton, sitting down, and turning her mild eyes upon her daughter with great seriousness. Poor Ally felt as if she were a culprit at the bar.

“They were very kind,” she said, with a look of great humility at her mother. “I never saw them except that one time; but they were very kind.”

“You have never told me anything about the ball, there have been so many other things to think of. I ought to have remembered, my poor little Ally, you would be very forlorn without me or some one; but then I thought your cousin Alicia—Didn’t you have any dancing then? Didn’t you enjoy yourself at all?”

“She danced all the evening,” said Mab; “I saw her. I never could get near her to say a word.”

“Then what does this lady mean?” the mother said.

Poor Ally was very nearly crying with distress and shame, though there was nothing to be ashamed about. Oh, yes! there was cause for shame, and she felt it. She had been very thankful for Mrs. Rochford’s notice. She had been thankful to meet him, to feel herself at once transformed from the neglected little poor relation, whom no one noticed, to the admired and petted little heroine of the other set, who were not the great people, and yet who looked just as well as the great people, and danced as well, and were as well dressed, and so much more kind. And now she felt ashamed of it all—of them and him, and all the people who had made the evening so pleasant. She did not like to tell her story—how she had been neglected, and how she had been admired, and the comfort the Rochford set had been to her, and now that she was ashamed of them all—for that was the conclusion which she could not disguise from herself. Now that she was Sir Edward Penton’s daughter, now that she herself was to be the first at Penton, she was ashamed to have known nobody but the Rochfords, and she was ashamed of being ashamed. The family solicitor, that was all—a sort of official person, whose duty it was to take a little notice of her, not to let her feel herself neglected, whom she had been so glad to cling to. And now? There was no word of contempt that Ally did not heap upon herself. She was not sure if girls were ever called “snobs,” but this she was sure of, that if so, then a snob was what she was.

“Mother, they’re both true,” she said. “It was—oh, dreadful at first! I didn’t know any one. I knew some of them by sight, but that was all. And nobody spoke to me. I should have liked to go through the floor or run away, but I hadn’t the courage. And then I saw him—I mean Mr. Rochford, you know, who has been so often here. And he asked me to dance; and when he saw I had no one to go to, took me to his mother. And they were so kind; and I enjoyed myself very much after that. But—” said Ally, and stopped short.

Oh, odious little traitor that she was! But she could not say what was in her heart besides, which was—oh, horrible snobbishness, miserableness, unworthiness!—that she never wished to see these good Samaritans any more.

“When I return her call I must thank her for being so kind to you,” said Lady Penton, with a cloudy countenance.

And this was all she said. Nor was there any further conversation on the subject—none, at least, which Mab heard. She had her own theory on the subject, and formed her little history at once, which was founded on Ally’s faint little emphasis, “I saw him.” “Him” Mab decided to be a lover, whom, now that the Pentons had risen in the world, the family would no longer permit to be spoken of, but whom Ally favored in secret, and to whom she had given her heart. It was a mistake which was very natural—the most usual thing in the world. Mab decided that it was a great blunder for the mother and sisters to interfere. What could they do? except to put the other party on their guard? Our comprehensions are limited by our experiences. To understand the state of mind in which Ally was—the repugnance she felt toward the people whom she had liked so much, and who had been so kind to her, and her disgust at herself for that other disgust which she could not conquer—was what no one at Penton Hook was the least able to do.

CHAPTER XXXII.
WALTER: AND HIS FATE.

Walter had darted off to the village as Mab divined; but what was the good? He might get himself talked of, wandering about Crockford’s cottage; but there was no one there who would compromise herself for him. He had to go home again for the evening meal as before, but this time with more impatience than before, with a stronger sense that the bondage was insupportable. Walter would have been furiously indignant had it been said to him that the fact of having or not having money of his own would change his deportment toward his family; but yet it was the case, notwithstanding all he could have said. He felt himself a different being from the docile boy who had to do what was decided for him, to go to Oxford or wherever his father pleased. This morning, no further back, that had been all he thought of. There was nothing else possible—to do what was told him—what was arranged and settled, for him—what father and mother after one of their consultations had decided was the best. Walter would no more have thought of resisting that decision at twenty than Horry would at nine. But a day brings so many changes with it. He was not now what he had been when he passed the cottage with his father on his way to Sir Walter’s funeral. Now he was no longer dependent; he could stand by himself. It seemed absurd to him that he should have to be punctual to an hour, that he should be bound by all the customs of the house. Already he had felt the absurdity of going home—home from his romance, from his drama, from love and devotion on a heroic scale—to tea! Now he had gone a little further even than this. He was independent, he had a fortune of his own, no need to depend upon his father for everything as he had been doing. And he had come to an age and to circumstances which not only justified, but made it necessary that he should act for himself. Nevertheless, he was not even now prepared to break the bond of the old habits. He went back as before for the family meal, then escaping, once more hurried through the night to the scene which was ever in his thoughts. The moon was later of rising, the night was not so clear and frosty as on that other evening, when he had surprised her with the other lover, the man who had roused such fury in his breast. Since then they had met every evening, and Walter no longer feared that vulgar rival. They had no secrets from each other now. She had told him everything, or so he thought, about that other; how he had persecuted her to marry him, notwithstanding the opposition of his parents, who were very rich, and did not think her good enough—how she had come here to be out of his reach—and how she feared now that he had discovered her hiding-place he would give her no peace. She had confessed frankly that before she met Walter she had not “minded” the other. He was well off, he could give her a home; and if she had not met Walter she might have been happy enough; but now, never. The boy’s heart was penetrated by this sweet confession; his boyish love sprung up all at once into a chivalrous and generous passion. He had talked to her vaguely, splendidly, of what they could do. If, as seemed inevitable, his studies must be accomplished, why then they must be married at once, casting prudence to the winds, and he must find a little nook at Oxford where they could live like babes in the wood—like Rosamond in her bower. Yes, that was it—like Rosamond, with a flowery labyrinth all round her cottage, from whence he should come every morning with his books, and return when his work was over to love and happiness. The picture had been beautiful, but vague, and she had listened and laughed a little, now and then putting a practical question which confused but did not daunt the young man. How were they to live. What was enough for one, would not that be enough for two, he asked? and he cared for nothing, no pleasure, no luxury, but her sweet company. She let him talk, and perhaps enjoyed it; at least it amused her; it was like a fairy tale.

But to-night—to-night! there were other things to say. The foolish boy caught her arm and drew it within his as soon as she appeared. “Are you warm, are you comfortable?” he whispered. “I have so much to tell you; everything is changed. You must not hurry in again in a moment, there is so much to say.”

“What is changed? If you have tired of your romancing that would be the best thing,” she said.

“I shall never tire of my romancing. It is all coming right; everything is clearing up. It will be almost too easy. The course of true love this time will be quite smooth.”

“Ah, that’s what I like,” she cried, “but how is it to be? You don’t mean to say that your father and mother—they would never be such fools—”

“Fools!” he cried, pressing her arm to his side; “they’re not fools, but they know nothing about it; it is something—something that has happened to me.”

“I am glad,” she said, composedly, “that you have not told them; it would be a wild thing to do. And I know what young men’s parents are; they will sometimes pretend to consent to set you against it—they think that if there is no opposition it will die away of itself.”

“It will never die away,” he said, “opposition or no opposition; but, Emmy, it isn’t a penniless fellow that you’re going to marry. We sha’n’t have to live on my little bit of an allowance—I’ve got—money of my own.”

She gave a little suppressed scream of pleasure.

“Money of your own!”

“Yes; that has nothing to do with my father; that nobody can interfere with. It comes from my old relative, old Sir Walter. He has left me ten thousand pounds.”

“Ten thousand pounds!” she repeated, with a quickly drawn breath, then paused a little; “that is a very nice sum of money. I am very glad you’ve got all that. How much will it bring in by the year?”

He was a little checked in his enthusiasm by this inquiry; and, to tell the truth, it was not a question he had considered or knew very well how to answer.

“You might get five hundred a year for it if you were very very lucky; but I don’t think,” she said, “you will get so much as that.”

“At all events,” he said, somewhat sobered, “it will be my own; it will be something I can spend as I please, and with which nobody will have any right to interfere. We could have existed perhaps on my allowance; but it would have been hard upon my darling cooping her up in a small cottage, with scarcely money enough to live upon—”

He thought perhaps she would interrupt him here, and cry out, as he himself would have done, what did that matter, so long as they were together? But she did not do this. She was quite silent, waiting for him to go on.

“But now,” he continued, “it will be different. We can enjoy ourselves a little. I don’t suppose we shall be rich even now.”

“No,” she said, quietly, “you will not be rich.”

He turned and looked into her face, but in the darkness he could see nothing. And then he was used to these little prudential ways she had, and the superior knowledge which she claimed of the world.

“Perhaps not rich, but well off, don’t you think?” he said, with a little timidity, “to begin upon; and then there would be Penton in the distance. Penton is a noble place. All the time of the ball I was thinking of you, how you would have liked it, and how much more beautiful it would have been had you been there. We must give a ball some time, when we come home—”

“You mean,” she said, for he made a pause, “when you succeed; but your father is not an old man, and that may be a long, long time.”

“I hope so,” said Walter, fervently; “loving you makes me love everybody else better. I hope it may be a long, long time.”

Again she made no remark—which she might have done, perhaps saying she hoped so too; but no doubt she thought it unnecessary to say what was so certain and evident.

“But,” he cried, pressing her arm again closer to his side, “I didn’t mean anything so lugubrious, I meant when I brought you home. That will be a triumph, darling! They will put up arches for us, and come out to meet us. It shall be a summer evening, not cold like this. We shall have a pair of white horses lit for a bride, though you will be a little more than a bride by that time, Emmy?”

“Shall I?” she said, with a tone of mockery in her laugh.

“Why, of course,” he cried, bending over her, “since it is winter now! You don’t suppose it is to be put off so long. Why, you say yourself you are a will-o’-the-wisp. You would have disappeared by that time if I left you to yourself.”

“That’s true enough,” she said, with another soft suppressed laugh, which made him turn and look at her again, for there seemed a meaning in it more than met the ear.

“Don’t laugh so,” he said, softly. “It sounds as if you would like to wring my heart, only for the fun of it; but it would be no fun to me.”

“Did I?” said she. “No, it is you who are making fun.”

“It is not a thing to laugh about,” cried the boy. “It is tremendous beautiful earnest to me. But I was talking of the coming home. My people would never say a word when they knew it was done, Emmy, and that you and I were one. They might object perhaps before, not knowing you. I am not even sure of that when they knew how I cared for you. Father might; but mother would be on my side.”

“No,” she said, “don’t tell me that; I am sure they are not so silly, your mother, above all.”

“Do you call that silly? Well, I think she is silly then, dear old mother!” cried the young man, with his voice a little unsteady. Walter felt to the bottom of his heart what he had said to his unresponsive companion, that in loving her he loved them all so much better. The faculty of loving seemed to have expanded in him. He had not an unkind feeling to any one in the world, except perhaps to that fellow—no, not even to him, poor beggar, who was losing her. To lose her was such a misfortune as made even that cad an object of pity to gods and men.

“And how is all this to come about?” she said, after a pause. “It’s easy talking about what’s to happen in summer, and coming home to Penton, and all that sort of thing—but in the meantime there are a few things to be done. How is it all to come about?”

“Our marriage?” he said.

“Well, yes, I suppose that’s the first step,” she answered.

“That is the easiest thing in the world,” said Wat. “I shall go to town and arrange all the preliminaries. Why, what did you tell me that fellow wanted to do? Do you think I’m less fit to manage it than he is?”

“Well,” she said, “for one thing, he’s older than you are; he has more freedom than you have. He knows his way about the world. Will they let you go to London by yourself, for one thing?” she asked, with again that mocking sound in her voice.

Walter caught her arm to his side with a kind of fond fury, and cried, “Emmy!” in an indignant voice.

“I shouldn’t if I were your people,” she continued, with a laugh; “I should feel sure you would be up to some mischief. But, supposing you get off from them, and get to London, what will you do then?”

“I shall do—whatever is the right thing to do. I am not so foolish as you think me. There is a license to be got, I know—a special license.”

“Oh,” she cried, “but that costs money! You will want money.”

“Of course I shall want money,” said Walter, with a certain dignity, though his heart grew cold at the thought.

“You have not much confidence in me, Emmy; but I am not so ignorant as you think.”

There was something like a tone of indignation in his voice, and she pressed his arm with her hand.

“I am sure you have the courage for anything,” she said.

“Courage! Well, that is not precisely the quality that is needed.” He thought it was his turn to laugh now. “I am not afraid.”

“I know you are not afraid of fighting or—anything of that kind. But to walk into an office, and face a man who is grinning at you all the time, and ask for a marriage license—”

“Well,” he said, “I am capable of that.”

“And of all the questions that will be asked you? You will have to answer a great many questions—all about me, which you don’t know, and all about yourself.”

“I know that, I hope. And I shall know the other, for you will tell me.”

“And first of all—goodness!” she cried suddenly, pushing him slightly away from her, gazing at him in the darkness; “a thing I never thought of—are you of age?”

“Of age?”

He stood facing her, motionless. He had put out his hand to take hers again, to draw it through his arm once more. But this question startled him, and his hand dropped by his side. Each stood a dark shadow to the other in the dark, staring into each other’s faces, seeing nothing; and Walter’s heart gave a jump that seemed to take it out of his breast.

“Yes, of age. Oh, you fool! oh, you pretender! oh, you boy trying to be a man! You have known it all along, but you have not told me. You are not of age?”

“No,” said the poor boy, humbly. For the first moment he felt no sensation of anger or disappointment, but only the consternation of one who feels the very sky thundering down upon his head, the pillars of the earth falling. “Fool!” did she call him—“pretender!” What did she mean by fool? What did she mean by that tone of sudden indignation—almost fury? He felt beaten down by the sudden storm. Then the instinct of self-defense woke in him. “What have I done?” he said. “I have concealed nothing from you. No, I am not of age—not till October. What has that to do with it;—age can not be counted by mere years.”

“It is, though, in Doctors’ Commons,” she said, with a mocking laugh. “We might have saved ourselves a great deal of trouble and talking nonsense if you had said so at once. Didn’t I tell you you were too young to know what was wanted? Do you think they will give any kind of license to a boy who is under age!”

“I am not a boy,” said Walter, feeling as if she had struck him upon the naked heart, which was throbbing so wildly. “Perhaps I might be before I knew you, but not now, not now! And do you mean to tell me that for a mere punctilio like that—”

“Well, it is a punctilio,” she said, taking his arm suddenly again, her voice dropping into its softer tone. “That is true; nobody thinks anything of it, it is merely a matter of form. Even if you are found out they never do anything to you.”

“Found out in what?”

“In saying you are twenty-one when you are not; for that is what people have to do. It is just a punctilio, as you say. Nobody thinks anything of it. It is only a matter of form.”

“Why, it is perjury!” he cried, confused, not knowing what he said.

“If you like to call it so; but nobody minds. No one is harsh to a fib of that sort. Everything’s fair, don’t you know, in love?—or so they say.”

Walter’s head seemed going round and round. He could not feel the ground under his feet. He seemed to be lifted away from his firm and solid footing and plunged into a dark and whirling abyss. He could feel her leaning almost heavily upon his arm—all her weight upon him, both her hands clasping that support. That palpable touch seemed the only reality left in earth and heaven. He seemed to himself for a long time unable to speak; and when his voice came forth at last it was not his voice at all—it was a hoarse outburst of sound such as he had never heard before. Nor was it he who said the words. He heard them as if some one else had said them, hoarse, harsh, like the cry of an animal.

“Should you like me to do that?” the question was asked by some one, in that horrible way, in the midst of the chilled but heavenly stillness of the night.

He heard the question, but he was not conscious of any answer to it; nor did he know any more till he found himself, or rather heard himself, stumbling down the steep road to the Hook, almost falling over the stones in the way, making a noise which seemed to echo all about. He knew the way well enough, and where the stony places were, and generally ran up and down as lightly as a bird, his rapid elastic steps making the least possible sound as he skimmed along. But this evening it was very different. He stumbled against every obstacle in his way, and sent the stones whirling down the road in advance of him as though he had been a drunken man. He felt indeed as if that were what he was, intoxicated in a way that had no pleasure in it, but only a wild and stupefied confusion, which made a chaos all around—a noisy chaos full of the crash of external sounds—full of voices, conversations, in none of which he took any part, though he heard things said that seemed to come from himself flitting across the surface of his dream.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
A DOMESTIC EXPLOSION.

The breakfast-table at the Hook was not a particularly quiet scene. The children were all in high spirits in the freshness of the morning, and the toys and Christmas presents, though not very fine or expensive, had still novelty to recommend them. Little Molly, before she was lifted up to her high-chair, working away conscientiously and gravely with a large rattle, held at the length of her little arm, while her next little brother drew over the carpet a cart fitted up with some kind of mechanism which called itself music; and Horry flogged his big wooden horse, and little Dick added a boom upon his drum, made a combination of noises which might well have shut out all external sounds. This tumult, indeed, calmed when father came in, when the ringleaders were lifted up on their chairs, and another kind of commotion, the sound of spoons and babble of little voices, began. What other noise could be heard through it? Mab did not think she could have heard anything, scarcely the approach of an army. But the ears of the family were used to it, and had large capabilities. When Martha came in with a fresh supply of milk and a countenance more ruddy than usual, her mistress put the question directly which so much embarrassed the young woman.

“Martha, was that your father’s voice I heard? Is there anything wrong at home?”

“No, ma’am—my lady,” said Martha, in her confusion stumbling over the new title which she was in fact more particular about than its possessor.

“What does he want, then, so early in the morning? I hope your mother is not ill?”

“Oh, no, my lady.” Martha grew redder and redder, and lingered like a messenger who does not know how to deliver a disagreeable commission, turning her tray round and round in her hands.

“It is me, no doubt, that Crockford wants. If it’s nothing very particular he can come here.”

“Oh, no, sir; oh, please, Sir Edward, no, it ain’t you—”

“Then who is it, Martha? some one here it must be.”

“Please, Sir Edward!—please, my lady—I don’t think as it’s no one here at all; it’s only a fancy as he’s took in his head. Oh,” cried the girl, her eyes moist with excitement, her plump cheeks crimson, “don’t listen to him, don’t give any heed to him! it’s all just fancy what he says.”

“Why, what’s the matter, Martha? has John Baker got into trouble? Edward, go and see what is wrong,” said Lady Penton, placidly. She was very kind, but after all, Molly’s bread and milk, and the egg which was ordered for little Jack because he was delicate, were of more immediate importance than Martha’s love-affairs. Sir Edward was perhaps even more amiable in this respect than his wife. Old Crockford was a favorite in his way, and had often amused a weary afternoon when the horizon at the Hook was very limited and very dull. And now even Mab could hear, through the chatter of the children, the sound of some one talking, loud but indistinct, outside. At that moment, with the usual cruelty of fate, a pause took place in the domestic murmur, and suddenly Walter’s voice became audible, crying,

“Hush! Don’t speak so loud.”

The door had been left ajar by Martha, and these words, so unexpected, so incomprehensible, fell into the simple warm interior, unconscious of evil, like a stone into the water.

“Go and see what it is, Edward,” Lady Penton repeated, growing a little pale. The family to which for so long a time nothing had happened had got to a crisis, when anything might happen, and new events were the order of the day.

Sir Edward, who had been going with great composure, hurried his steps a little, and, what was more, closed the door behind him; but it can not be said that he anticipated anything disagreeable. When he got out into the hall, however, he was startled by the sight of Walter, who was pushing Crockford into the book-room, and repeating in a half whisper,

“Hush, I tell you. Be quiet. What good can it do you to let everybody know?”

“It’s right, Mr. Walter, as your father should know.”

“Not if I satisfy you,” said the boy. “Come in here. They are all at breakfast. Quick. Whatever it is, I am the person—”

Walter’s voice broke off short, and his under-lip dropped with a shock of sudden horror. His father’s hand, preventing the closing of it, was laid upon the book-room door.

“If it is anything that concerns you, Wat, it must concern me too,” Sir Edward said. He did not even now think any more of Walter’s possibilities of ill-doing than of Horry’s. They were still on about the same level to the father’s eyes. He supposed it was some innocent piece of mischief, some practical joke, or, at the worst, some piece of boyish negligence, of which Crockford had come to complain. He followed the two into the room with the suspicion of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He did not quite understand of what mischief his son might have been guilty, but there could be nothing very serious in the matter when old Crockford was the complainant.

“Well,” he said, “old friend, what has my boy done?”

But the sight of Sir Edward and this smiling accost seemed to take the power of speech from Crockford, as well as from Walter. The old man opened his mouth and his eyes; the color faded as far as that was possible out of the streaky and broken red of his cheeks. He began to hook his fingers together, changing them from one twist to another as he turned his face from the father to the son. It was evident that, notwithstanding his half threat to Walter, the presence of Walter’s father was as bewildering to him as to the young man.

“Well, sir,” he said, instinctively putting up his hand to his head and disordering the scanty white locks which were drawn over his bald crown, “I’m one as is lookin’ ahead, so being as I’m an old man, and has a deal of time to think; my occypation’s in the open air, and things goes through of my head that mightn’t go through of another man’s.”

“That is all very well,” said Sir Edward, still with his half smile. “I have heard you say as much a great many times, Crockford, but it generally was followed by something less abstract. What has your occupation and your habit of thought to say to my boy?”

Upon this Crockford scratched his head more and more.

“I was observin’ to Mr. Walter, sir, as a young gentleman don’t think of them things, but as how it’s a good thing to take care; for you never knows what way trouble’s a-going to come. The storm may be in the big black cloud as covers the whole sky, or it may be in one that’s no bigger nor a man’s hand.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Sir Edward, impatiently; “I tell you I’ve heard you say that sort of thing a hundred times. Come to the point. What is there between Walter and you?”

“There’s nothing, father—nothing whatever. I haven’t seen Crockford for ages, except on the road. He has done nothing to me nor I to him.”

“Then you’d better be off to your breakfast, and leave him to me,” said the father, calmly.

His mind was as composed as his looks. He felt no alarm about his son, but with a little amusement cast about in his mind how he was to draw out of the old road-mender the probably very small and unimportant thread of complaint or remonstrance that was in him. But Walter showed no inclination to budge. He did not, it would appear, care for his breakfast. He stood with his head cast down, but his eye upon Crockford, not losing a single movement he made. Sir Edward began to feel a faint misgiving, and old Crockford took his colored handkerchief out of his breast and began to mop his forehead with it. It was a cold morning, not the kind of season to affect a man so. What did it all mean?

“Look here,” said Sir Edward, “this can’t go on all day. Crockford, you have some sense on ordinary occasions. Don’t think to put me off with clouds and storms, etc., which you know have not the least effect upon me; but tell me straight off, what has Walter to do with it? and what do you mean?”

“Father,” said Walter, “it’s something about a lodger he has. There is a—young lady living there. I’ve seen her two or three times. She has spoken to me even, thinking, I suppose, that I was a gentleman who would not take any advantage. But the old man doesn’t think so; he thinks I’m likely to do something dishonorable—to be a cad, or—I don’t know what. You know whether I’m likely to be anything of the sort. If you have any confidence in me you will send him away—”

“A young lady!” Sir Edward exclaimed, with amazement.

“And that’s not just the whole of it, sir, as Mr. Walter tells you,” said Crockford, put on his mettle. “I’m not one as calls a young gentleman names; cad and such-like isn’t words as come nat’ral to the likes of me. But as for being a lady, there ain’t no ladies live in cottages like mine. I don’t go against ladies—nor lasses neither, when they’re good uns.”

“What does all this mean? I think you are going out of your senses, Wat—both Crockford and you. Have you been rude to any one?—do you think he has been rude to any one? Hold your tongue, Wat! Come, my man, speak out. I must know what this means.”

“It means that he is trying to make mischief—”

“It means, sir,” said Crockford, in his slow, rural way, taking the words out of Walter’s mouth—“I beg your pardon, Sir Edward. I don’t know as I’m giving you the respect as is your due, though there’s none—I’m bold to say it, be the other who he may—as feels more respect. It means just this, Sir Edward,” he went on, advertised by an impatient nod that he must not lose more time, “as there’s mischief done, or will be, if you don’t look into it, between this young gentleman—as is a gentleman born, sir, and your heir—and a little—a—a—” (Walter’s fiery eye, and a certain threatening of his attitude, as if he might spring upon the accuser, changed Crockford’s phraseology, even when the words were in his mouth)—“a young person,” he said, more quickly, “as is not his equal, and never can be; as belongs to me, sir, and is no more a lady nor—nor my Martha, nor half as good a girl.”

Surprise made Sir Edward slow of understanding—surprise and an absence of all alarm, for to his thinking Walter was a boy, and this talk of ladies, or young persons, was unintelligible in such a connection.

He said, “There is surely some strange mistake here. Walter’s—why, Walter is—too young for any nonsense of this kind. You’re—why, you must be—dreaming, Crockford! You might as well tell me that Horry—”

Here Sir Edward’s eyes turned, quite involuntarily, unintentionally upon Walter, standing up by the mantel-piece with his hands in his pockets, his face burning with a dull heat, his eyes cast down, yet watching under the eyelids every action of both his companions—a nameless air about him that spoke of guilt. He stopped short at the sight: everything in Walter’s aspect breathed guilt—the furtive watch he kept, the dull red of anger and shame burning like a fire in his face; the attitude—his hands in his pockets, clinched as if ready for a blow. The first look made Sir Edward stop bewildered, the second carried to his mind a strange, painful, unpleasant, discovery. Walter was no longer a boy! He had parted company from his father, and from all his father knew of him. This perception flashed across his mind like a sudden light. He gasped, and could say no more.

Crockford took advantage of the pause. “If I may make so bold, sir,” he said, “it’s you as hasn’t taken note of the passage of time. It ain’t wonderful. One moment your child here’s a boy at your knee, the next his heart’s set on getting married—or wuss. That’s how it goes. I’ve had a many children myself, and seen ’em grow up and buried most on ’em. Martha, she’s my youngest, she’s a good lass. As for the lads, ye can’t tell where ye are; one day it’s a peg-top and the next it’s a woman. If I may make so bold, I’ve known you man and boy for something like forty years; and I’m sorry for you, Sir Edward, that I am.”

Sir Edward heard as if he heard it not, the bourdonnement of this raw rustic voice in his ears, and scarcely knew what it meant. He turned to his son without taking any notice. “Walter,” he said, with something keen, penetrating, unlike itself in his voice, “what is this? what is this? I don’t seem to understand it.” He was going to be angry presently, very angry; but in the first place it was necessary that he should know.

“I won’t deceive you, father,” said Walter. “From his point of view I suppose he’s right enough—but that is not my point of view.”

“Mr. Walter,” old Crockford said, beginning one of his speeches. The old man in his patched coat of an indescribable color, the color of the woods and hedgerows, with his red handkerchief in a wisp round his neck, the lock of thin gray hair smoothed over his bald crown, his hat in his old knotted rugged hands, all knuckles and protrusions, came into Sir Edward’s mind, as the companion figure leaning on the mantel-piece had done, like a picture all full of meaning; but he stopped the old man’s slow discourse with a wave of his hand, and turned to his son, impatiently. He had not voice enough in his bewilderment to say, “Go on”—he said it with his hand.

“Well, sir?” said the lad, “I don’t know what I have to say; there are things one man doesn’t tell another, even if it’s his father. There’s nothing in me that is dishonorable, if that is what you mean. If there were, it is her eye I should shrink from first of all.”

Her eye! The father stood confounded, not able to believe his ears. He made one more attempt at a question, not with words, but with a half-stupefied look, again silencing Crockford with his hand.

“I tell you, father,” cried Walter, with irritation, “there are things one man doesn’t tell another, not even if—” He was pleased, poor boy, with that phrase; but the examination, the discovery was intolerable to him. He gave a wave of his hand toward Crockford, as if saying, “Question him—hear him—hear the worst of me!” with a sort of contemptuous indignation; then shot between the two other men like an arrow, and was gone.

“Things one man doesn’t tell to another, even if it’s his father.” One man to another! was it laughable, was it tragical? Sir Edward, in the confusion of his soul, could not tell. He looked at Crockford, but not for information; was it for sympathy? though the old stone-breaker was at one extremity of the world and he at the other. He felt himself shaking his head in a sort of intercommunion with old Crockford, and then stopped himself with a kind of angry dismay.

“If you’ve anything to say on this subject, let me have it at once,” he said.

“I can talk more freely, sir, now as he’s gone. That young gentleman is that fiery, and that deceived. The young uns is like that. Sir Edward; us as is older should make allowances, though now and again a body forgets. I’m one that makes a deal of allowances myself, being a great thinker, Sir Edward, in my poor way. Well, sir, it’s this, sir—and glad I am as you’re by yourself and I can speak free. She’s nobody no more nor I am. She’s a little baggage, that’s what she is. How she come to me was this. A brother of mine, as has been no better than what you may call a rollin’ stone all his life, and has done a many foolish things, what does he do at last but marry a woman as had been a play-actress, and I don’t know what. They say as she was always respectable—I don’t know. And she had a daughter, this little baggage as is here, as was her daughter, not his, nor belonging to none of us. But her mother, she bothered me to ’ave ’er, to take her out of some man’s way as wanted to marry her, but his friends wouldn’t hear of it. And that’s how it is. How she came across Mr. Walter is more than I can tell. That’s just how things happens, that is. You or me, Sir Edward, begging your pardon, sir, it’s a thing that don’t occur to the likes of us; but when a young gentleman is young and tender-hearted, and don’t know the world—The ways of Providence is past explaining,” Crockford said.

Sir Edward stood with that habitual look in his face of a man injured and aggrieved, and full of a troubled yet mild remonstrance with fate, and listened to all this only half hearing it. He heard enough to understand in a dull sort of way what it was which had happened to his boy, a thing which produced upon him perhaps a heavier effect than it need have done by reason of the vagueness in which it was wrapped, the blurred and misty outlines of the facts making it so much more considerable. It was not what Crockford said it was, not the mere discovery that his son had got into a foolish “entanglement,” as so many have done before him, with some village girl, that produced this effect upon him. It was Walter’s words so strangely dislocating the connection between them, cutting the ground from under his feet, changing the very foundations of life; “things one man doesn’t tell to another”—one man!—to another. He kept saying it over in his mind with a bewilderment that kept growing, a confusion which he could not get right—one man, to another. It was this he was thinking of, and not what Crockford had said, when he went back to the dining-room, where all the children had finished breakfast, and his wife met him with a look so full of surprise. “What has kept you, Edward? everything is cold. Have you sent Wat out for anything? Has anything happened?” she said.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
MATERNAL DIPLOMACY.

“You had better send the children off to play, and never mind if everything is cold. It’s my own fault; it’s the fault of circumstances.” He seated himself at table as he spoke and helped himself to some of the cold bacon, which was not appetizing; nor had he much appetite. His face was full of care as he swallowed his cup of tea, keeping an eye uneasily upon the children as they were gradually coaxed and led and pushed away. When the door closed upon the last of them there was still a moment of silence. Sir Edward trifled with his cold bacon, he crumbled his roll, he swallowed his tea in large abstract gulps; but said nothing, his mind being so full, yet so confused and out of gear. And it was not till his wife repeated her question, this time with a tone of anxiety, that he replied,

“What is it? It’s something that has taken me all aback, as you see. It’s—something about a woman.”

“Something about a woman!” she repeated with the utmost astonishment; but had he said “something about a cabbage,” Lady Penton could not have been less alarmed.

“Living at old Crockford’s,” he went on. “I don’t understand the story. The old man talked and talked, and Walter—”

“What has Walter to do with it, Edward? He has gone out without any breakfast. Have you sent him to see after anything? Where has he gone?”

“Gone! is he gone? Why, he’s gone to her, I suppose; that’s the amusing thing. He says ‘there’s things one man doesn’t tell to another;’ one man!—that’s how Wat speaks to me, Annie.” He gave a laugh which was far from joyful. “I think the boy’s gone off his head.”

“Wat says—I don’t know what you mean, Edward.”

“No more do I; it’s past understanding. It’s the sort of thing people talk of, but I never thought it would come in our way. It’s an entanglement with some girl in the village. Don’t you know what that means?”

“Edward!” cried the mother; and a flash of color like a flame passed over her face. She was confounded, and unable to make any comment even in her thoughts.

“You can’t take it in, and I don’t wonder; neither can I, that know more of the world than you can do. Our Wat, that has never seemed anything but a school-boy! Why, Horry will be saying presently, ‘There are some things that one man doesn’t tell to—’ I don’t know what the world is coming to,” he cried, sharply. When Sir Edward himself was taken by surprise he felt by instinct that something sudden and unexpected must have occurred to the world.

Lady Penton was perhaps still more taken by surprise than her husband. But she did not make any observations against the world. The sudden flush faded from her face as she sat opposite to him, her astonished eyes still fixed upon him, her hands crossed in her lap. But a whole panorama instantly revealed itself before her mind. How could she have been so blind? Walter had been absent continually, whenever he could get an opportunity of stealing away. The reading in the evening, and a hundred little kindly offices which he had been in the habit of performing for his sisters, and with them, had all dropped, as she suddenly perceived. For weeks past he had been with them very little, taking little interest in the small family events, abstracted and dreamy, wrapped in a world of his own. She saw it all now as by a sudden flash of enlightenment. “Some things a man doesn’t tell to another man”—oh, no, not even to another woman, not to his mother! How strange, bewildering, full of confusion, and yet somehow how natural! This was not her husband’s point of view. To him it was monstrous, a thing that never used to happen, an instance of the decay and degradation of the world. Lady Penton, though the most innocent of women, did not feel this. To her, with a curious burst of understanding, as if a new world had opened at her feet, it seemed natural, something which she ought to have expected, something that expanded and widened out her own world of consciousness. Walter, then, her boy, loved somebody. It brought a renewed, fainter flush to her cheek, and a wonderfully tender light to her eyes. She thought of that first, before it occurred to her to think (all being the work of a moment) who it was who had opened this new chapter in her boy’s life, and made Walter a man, the equal of his father. Oh, that he should have become the equal of his father, a man, loving, drawing to himself the life of another, he who was only a boy! This wonder, though it might have an acute touch in it, had also a curious sweetness. For Lady Penton was not the hungering jealous mother of one child, but the soft expansive parent of many, and never had shut herself up in the hope of retaining them altogether for her own.

“It is very strange,” she said, after a pause, “it takes a good time to accustom one’s self to such an idea” (which was not the case, for she had done it in the flash of a moment). “It would be quite nice—and agreeable,” she added, with some timidity, “if it was a—right person; but did you say, Edward—what did you say?”

“Nice!” he cried, with an explosion like thunder, or so it seemed to his wife’s ears, a little nervous with all that had happened. “You can’t have listened to what I have been saying. I told you plainly enough. A girl that has been living at old Crockford’s, a girl out of the village—no, worse, much worse, sent down from London, to be out of some one’s way—”

Lady Penton had sprung to her feet, and came toward him with her hands clasped, as if praying for mercy. “Oh! Edward, no, no, no; don’t say all that, Edward,” she cried.

“What am I to say? It’s all true so far as I know. You can ask Martha about her. Perhaps that’s the best way; trust one woman to tell you the worst that’s to be said of another. Yes, I think on the whole that’s the best way. Have her up and let us hear—”

“What!” said Lady Penton, “call up Martha, and question her about a thing that Walter’s mixed up in? let her know that we are in trouble about our boy? make her talk about—about that sort of thing—before you? I don’t know what sort of a woman you take me for, Edward. At all events, that is not what you would ever get me to do.”

He stared at her, only partially understanding—perhaps indeed not understanding at all, but feeling an obstacle vaguely shape itself in his path. “Annie,” he said, “there’s no room for sentiment here; whatever the girl is, she’s not a person that should ever have come in Walter’s way.”

Upon which his mother, without any warning, began suddenly to cry, a thing which was still more confusing to her husband; exclaiming by intervals, “Oh! my Wat!” “Oh! my poor boy! What did you say to him? You must have been harsh, Edward; oh, you must have been harsh; and to think he should have rushed out without any breakfast!” Lady Penton sobbed and cried.

It was not very long, however, before the mistress of the house, returning to the routine of domestic matters and with no trace of tears about her, though there was a new and unaccustomed look of anxiety in her eyes, found Martha in the pantry, where she was cleaning the silver, and lingered to give her a few orders, especially in respect to the plate. Lady Penton pointed out to her that she was using too much plate-powder, that she was not sufficiently careful with the chasings and the raised silver of the edges, with various other important pieces of advice, which Martha took with some courtesies but not much satisfaction. Lady Penton then made several remarks about the crystal which it would be impertinent to quote; and then she smoothed matters by asking Martha how her mother was. “I have not seen her for some time; I suppose she doesn’t go out in this cold weather, which is good for no one,” said Lady Penton.

“Oh, my lady, there’s worse things than the bad weather,” cried Martha. She was her father’s child, and apt, like him, to moralize.

“That is very true: but the bad weather is at the bottom of a great deal of rheumatism and bronchitis as well as many other things.”

“Yes, my lady, but there’s things as you can’t have the doctor to, and them’s the worst of all.”

“I hope none of your brothers are a trouble to her, Martha; I thought they were all doing so well?”

“Oh, it ain’t none of the boys, my lady. It’s one as is nothing to us, not a blood relation at all. Father was telling master—or at least he come up a purpose to tell master, but I begged him not,” said the young woman, rubbing with redoubled energy. “I said, ‘father, what’s the good?’”

“You are very right there, Martha; Sir Edward is only annoyed with complaints from the village; he can’t do anything. It is much better in such a case to come to me.”

“Yes, my lady; I didn’t want them to trouble you neither. I told ’em her ladyship had a deal to think of. You see, my lady, mother’s deaf, and things might go on—oh, they might go on to any length afore she’d hear.”

“I know she is deaf, poor thing,” Lady Penton said.

“That was why I didn’t want her to take a lodger at all, my lady. But Emmy’s not a lodger after all. She’s a kind of relation. She’s Uncle Sam’s wife’s daughter, and she didn’t look like one as would give trouble. She’s just as nice spoken as any one could be, and said she was to help mother; and so she does, and always kind. Whatever father says she’s always been kind—and that handy, turning an old gown to look like new, and telling you how things is worn, and all what you can see in the shops, and as good-natured with it all—”

“Of whom are you speaking, Martha? Emmy, did you say? who is Emmy? I have never heard of her before.”

“She’s the young woman, my lady; oh! she’s the one—she’s the young person, she’s—it was her as father came to speak of, and wouldn’t hold his tongue or listen to me.”

“What is there to say about her? Sir Edward, I am afraid, did not understand. He has a great many things to think of. It would have been much better if your father had come to me. Who is she, and what has she done?”

Lady Penton spoke with a calm and composure that was almost too complete; but Martha was absorbed in her own distress and suspected nothing of this.

“Please, my lady,” she cried, with a courtesy, “she have done nothing. She’s dreadful taking, that’s all. When she gets talking, you could just stop there forever. It’s a great waste of time when you’ve a deal to do, but it ain’t no fault of hers. She makes you laugh, and she makes you cry, and though she don’t give herself no airs, she can talk as nice as any of the quality, as if she was every bit a lady—and the next moment the same as mother or like me.”

“She must be very clever,” said Lady Penton. “Is she pretty, too?”

“I don’t know as I should have taken no notice of her looks but for other folks a-talking of them,” said Martha, “I don’t know as I sees her any different from other folks; but as for good nature and making things pleasant, there ain’t none like her high nor low.”

“And what is she doing here? and why did your father come to Sir Edward about her?” said Lady Penton, in her magisterial calm.

“Oh, my lady, you’ll not be pleased; I’d rather not tell you. When father does notice a thing he’s that suspicious! I’d rather not—oh, I’d rather not!”

“This is nonsense, Martha—you had much better tell me. What has this girl been doing that Sir Edward ought to know?”

Martha twisted her fingers together in overwhelming embarrassment.

“Oh, my lady, don’t ask me! I could not bear to tell you—and you’d not be pleased.”

“What have I to do with it, my good girl?” said Walter’s mother, as steadily as if she had been made of marble; and then she added, “but after hearing so much I must know. You had better tell me. I may perhaps be of use to her, poor thing!”

“Oh, my lady, Sir Edward’ll tell you. Oh, what have I got to do pushing into it! Oh, if you’re that kind, my lady, and not angry!” Here Martha paused, and took a supreme resolution. “It’s all father’s doing, though I say it as shouldn’t. He thinks as Mr. Walter—oh, my lady, Mr. Walter’s like your ladyship—he’s that civil and kind!”

“I am glad you think so, Martha. Gentlemen are very different from us; they don’t think of things that come into every woman’s mind. I shall be angry, indeed, if you keep me standing asking questions. What has all this to do with my son?”

“It’s all father’s ways of thinking. There’s nothing in it—not a thing to talk about. It’s just this—as Mr. Walter has seen Emmy a time or two at the cottage door. And he’s said a civil word. And Emmy is one as likes to talk to gentlefolks, being more like them in herself than the likes of us. And so—and so—father’s taken things into his head—as he did, my lady,” cried Martha, with a blush and a sudden change of tone, “about John Baker and me.”

“About John Baker and you?”

“Yes, my lady,” cried Martha, very red; “and there’s no more truth in it the one nor the other. Can’t a girl say a word but it’s brought up against her, like as it was a sin? or give a civil answer but it’s said as she’s keeping company? It ain’t neither just nor right. It’s as unkind as can be. It’s just miserable livin’ where there’s naught but folks suspecting of you all round.”

“Martha, is that how your father treated John Baker and you? I think you’re hard upon your father. He behaved very well about that, and you know you were yourself to blame. This that you tell me is all nonsense, to be sure. I will speak to Mr. Walter.” She paused a little, and then asked, “This Emmy that you tell me of—is she a nice girl?”

“Oh, yes, my lady.”

“Is she one that gives a civil answer, as you say, whoever talks to her?”

“Oh, yes, my lady.”

“Not particularly to young men?”

“Oh, no, my lady,” said Martha, with vehemence, her countenance flaming red, like the afternoon sun.

“If that is all true,” said Lady Penton, “you may be sure she shall have a friend in me. But I hope it is all true.”

“As sure as—oh, as sure as the catechism or the prayer-book! Oh, my lady, as sure as I’m speaking; and I wouldn’t deceive your ladyship—no, I wouldn’t deceive you, not for nothing in the world!”

“Except in respect to John Baker,” said Lady Penton, with a smile; at which Martha burst out crying over the silver that she had been cleaning, and made her plate-powder no better than a puddle of reddish mud.

This led Lady Penton, to make a few more observations on the subject with which she had begun the conversation; and then she went away. But if Martha was left weeping her mistress did not carry a light heart out of the pantry, where she had got so much information. The picture of the village siren was not calculated to reassure a mother. She had thought at first that Martha was an enemy, and ready to give the worst version of the story; and then it had turned out that Martha herself was on the side of the girl who had fascinated Walter. Had she fascinated Walter? Was it possible—a girl at a cottage door—a girl who—gave a civil answer? Lady Penton’s imagination rebelled against this description; it rebelled still more at the comparison with John Baker, with whom Martha herself had gone through a troublous episode. Walter Penton like John Baker! She tried to smile, but her lips quivered a little. What was this new thing that had fallen into the peaceful family all in a moment like a bomb full of fire and trouble? She could not get rid of the foolish picture—the girl at the cottage door, smiling on whosoever passed, with her civil answer; and Walter—her Walter, her first-born, the heir of Penton—Walter caught by that vulgar snare as he passed by! Had it been a poor lady, the curate’s daughter, the immaculate governess of romance—but the girl whose conversation was so captivating to Martha, who described what things were worn, and all that you could see in the shops—and then, with a smile at the cottage door, caught the unwary boy to whom every girl was a thing to be respected. Martha’s little bubble of tears in the pantry were nothing to the few salt drops that came to her mistress’s eyes. But Lady Penton went afterward to the book-room and told her husband that, so far as she could make out, old Crockford must have made a mistake. “Martha gives a very good account of the girl,” she said, “and Walter, no doubt, had only talked to her a little, meaning no harm.”

“He would not have answered me as he did this morning if there had been no harm,” said Sir Edward, shaking his head.

“You must have been harsh with him,” said his wife. “You must have looked as if you believed Crockford, and not him.”

“I was not harsh; am I ever harsh?” cried the injured father.

“Edward, the boy darted out without any breakfast! How is he to go through the day without any breakfast? Would he have done that if you had not been harsh to him?” Lady Penton said.

CHAPTER XXXV.
WAITING.

The day was a painful one to all concerned: to the father and mother, who knew, though vaguely, all about it, and to the children who knew only that something was wrong, and that it was Walter who was in fault, a thing incomprehensible, which no one could understand. The girls felt that they themselves might have gone a little astray, that they could acknowledge as possible; but Walter! what could he have done to upset the household, to make the father so angry, the mother so sad?—to rush out himself upon the world without his breakfast? That little detail affected their minds perhaps the most of all. The break of every tradition and habit of life was thus punctuated with a sharpness that permitted no mistake. He had gone out without any breakfast—rushing, driving the gravel in showers from his angry feet. When the time of the midday repast came round there was a painful expectancy in the house. He must return to dinner, they said to themselves. But Walter did not come back for dinner. He was not visible all day. The girls thought they saw him in the distance when they went out disconsolately for a walk in the afternoon, feeling it their duty to Mab. Oh, why was she there, a stranger in the midst of their trouble! They thought they saw him at the top of the steep hill going up from the house to the village. But though they hurried, and Anne ran on in advance, by the time she got to the top he was gone and not a trace of him was to be seen. Their hearts were sadly torn between this unaccustomed and awful cloud of anxiety and the duties they owed to their guest. And still more dreadful was it when the Penton carriage came for Mab with a note only, telling her to do as she pleased, to stay for a few days longer if she pleased. “Oh, may I stay?” she asked, with a confidence in their kindness which was very flattering, but at that moment more embarrassing than words could say. The two girls exchanged a guilty look, while Lady Penton replied, faltering: “My dear! it is very sweet of you to wish it. If it will not be very dull for you—” “Oh, dull!” said Mab, “with Ally and Anne, and all the children: and at Penton there is nobody!” A frank statement of this sort, though it may be selfish, is flattering; indeed, the selfishness which desires your particular society is always flattering. None of them could say a word against it. They could not tell their visitor that she was—oh, so sadly!—in their way, that they could not talk at their ease before her; and that to be compelled to admit her into this new and unlooked-for family trouble was such a thing as made the burden miserable, scarcely to be borne. All this was in their hearts, but they could not say it. They exchanged a look behind backs, and Lady Penton repeated, with a faint quaver in her voice, “My dear! Of course, we shall be only too glad to have you if you think it will not be dull.” When Mab ran to write her note and announce her intention to remain, the three ladies felt like conspirators standing together in a little circle, looking at each other dolefully. “Oh, mother, why didn’t you say they must want her at Penton, and that we did not want her here?” “Hush, girls! Poor little thing, when she is an orphan, and so fond of you all; though I wish it had been another time,” Lady Penton said with a sigh. They seized her, one by each arm, almost surrounding her, in their close embrace. “Mother, what has Wat done? Mother, what is it about Wat?” “Oh, hush, hush, my dears!” And Lady Penton added, disengaging herself with a smile to meet Mab, who came rushing into the room in great spirits, “I think as long as the daylight lasts you ought to have your walk.” It was after this that the girls thought they saw Walter, but could not find any trace of him when they reached the top of the hill.

There had never been any mystery, any anxiety, save in respect to the illnesses that break the routine of life with innocent trouble which anybody may share, in this innocent household. To make excuses for an absent member, and account for his absence as if it were the most natural thing in the world—not to show that you start at every opening of the door, to refrain heroically from that forlorn watch of the window, that listening for every sound which anxiety teaches: to talk and smile even when there are noises, a stir outside, a summons at the door that seems to indicate the wanderer’s return—how were they to have that science of trouble all in a moment? Lady Penton leaped to its very heights at once. She sat there as if all her life she had been going through that discipline, talking to Mab, surveying the children, neglecting nothing, while all the while her heart was in her ears, and she heard before any one the faintest movement outside. They were all very silent at table, Sir Edward making no attempt to disguise the fact that he was out of humor and had nothing to say to any one, while the girls exchanged piteous looks and kept up an anxious telegraphic communication. But Walter never appeared. Neither to dinner, neither in the evening did he return—the two meals passed without him, his place vacant, staring in their faces, as Anne said. Where was he? What could he be doing? Into what depth of trouble and misery must a boy have fallen who darts out of his father’s house without any breakfast, and, so far as can be known, has nothing to eat all day? Where could he go to have any dinner? What could have happened to him? These words express the entire disorganization of life, the end of all things in a family point of view, which this dreadful day meant to Walter’s sisters, and to his mother in a less degree. Nothing else that could have been imagined would have reached their hearts in the same way. And the last aggravation was given by the fact that all this which they felt so acutely to imply the deepest reproach against Walter was apparent to little Mab, sitting there with her little smiling face as if there was no trouble in the world. Oh, it was far better, no doubt, that she should suspect nothing, that she should remain in her certainty, so far as Penton Hook was concerned, that there was no trouble in the world! But her face, all tranquil and at ease, her easy flow of talk, her questions, her commentaries, as if life were all so simple and anybody could understand it! The impatience which sometimes almost overcame all the powers of self-control in Ally and in Anne, can not be described. They almost hated Mab’s pretty blue eyes, and her comfortable, innocent, unsuspecting smile. Had any one told them that little Mab, that little woman of the world, was very keenly alive to everything that was going on, and had formed her little theory, and believed herself to know quite well what it was all about, the other girls would have rejected such an accusation with disdain.

It was quite late, after everything was over, the children all in bed, all the noises of the house hushed and silent, when Walter came home. The family were sitting together in the drawing-room, very dull, as Lady Penton had forewarned the little guest they would be. She herself had suggested a game of besique, which she was ready to have played had it been necessary: but Ally and Anne could not for shame let their mother take that rude and arduous task in hand. So this little group of girls had gathered round the table, a pretty contrast in their extreme freshness and youthfulness. The gravity of this, to her, terrible and unthought-of crisis, the horror of what might be happening, threw a shade upon Ally’s passive countenance which suited it. She was very pale, her soft eyes cast down, a faint movement about her mouth. She might have burst out crying over her cards at any moment in the profound tension of her gentle spirit. Anne was different; the excitement had gone to her head, all her faculties were sharpened; she had the look of a gambler, keen and eager on her game, though her concentrated attention was not on that at all. She held her head erect, her slender shoulders thrown back, her breath came quickly through her slightly opened lips. Mab was just as usual, with her pretty complexion and her blue eyes, laughing, carrying on a little babble of remark. “A royal marriage! Oh, Anne, what luck!” “Another card, please—yes, I will have another.” Her voice was almost the only one that disturbed the silence. Lady Penton in her usual place was a little indistinct in the shade. She had turned her head from the group, and her usually busy hands lay clasped in her lap. She was doing nothing but listening. Sometimes even she closed her eyes, that nothing might be subtracted from her power of hearing. Her husband, still further in the background, could not keep still. Sometimes he would sit down for a moment, then rise again and pace about, or stand before the bookshelves as if looking for a book; but he wanted no book—he could not rest.

And then in the midst of the silence of the scene came the sounds that rang into all their hearts. The gate with its familiar jar across the gravel, the click of the latch, then the step, hurried, irregular, making the gravel fly. Lady Penton did not move, nor did Sir Edward, who stood behind her, as if he had been suddenly frozen in the act of walking, and could not take another step. Ally’s cards fell from her hands and had to be gathered from the floor with a little scuffle and confusion, in the midst of which they were all aware that the hall door was pushed open, that the step came in and hurried across the hall upstairs and to Walter’s room, the door of which closed with a dull echo that ran through all the house. Their hearts stood still; and then sudden ease diffused itself throughout the place—relief—something that felt like happiness. He had come back! In a moment more the girls’ voices rose into soft laughter and talk. What more was wanted? Wat had come back. As long as he was at home, within those protecting walls, what could go wrong? “Oh, what a fright we have had,” said Ally’s eyes, with tears in them, to those of Anne; “but now it’s all over! He has come back.”

The parents looked at each other in the half light under the shade of the lamp. When Walter’s door closed upstairs Sir Edward made a step forward as if to follow to his son’s room, but Lady Penton put up her hand to check him. “Don’t,” she said, under her breath. It still seemed to her that her husband must have been harsh. “Some one must speak to him,” said Sir Edward, in the same tone; “this can not be allowed to go on.” “Oh, no, no; go on! oh, no, it can’t go on.” “What do you mean, Annie?” cried her husband, leaning over her chair. “Do you think I should take no notice after the dreadful day we have spent, and all on his account?” “No, no,” she said, in a voice which was scarcely audible; “no, no.” “What am I to do, then—what ought I to do? I don’t want to risk a scene again, but to say ‘no, no’ means nothing. What do you think I should do?”

She caught his hand in hers as he leaned over her chair, their two heads were close together. “Oh, Edward, you’ve always been very good to me,” she said.

“What nonsense, Annie! good to you! we’ve not been two, we’ve been one; why do you speak to me so?”

“Edward,” she whispered, leaning back her middle-aged head upon his middle-aged shoulder. “Oh, Edward, this once let me see him. I know the father is the first. It’s right you should be the first; but, Edward, this once let me see him, let me speak to him. He might be softer to his mother.”

There was a pause, and he did not know himself, still less did she know, whether he was to be angry or to yield. He had perhaps in his mind something of both. He detached his hand from hers with a little sharpness, but he said, “Go, then: you are right enough; perhaps you will manage him better than I.”

She went softly out of the room, while the girls sat over their cards in the circle of the lamplight. They had not paid much attention to the murmur of conversation behind them. They thought she had gone to see about some supper for Walter, who had probably been fasting all day, an idea which had also entered Ally’s mind as a right thing to do; but mother, they knew, would prefer to do it herself. She did not, however, in the first place, think of Walter’s supper. She went up the dim staircase, where there was scarcely any light, not taking any candle with her, and made her way along the dark passage to Walter’s door. He had no light, nor was there any sound as she opened the door softly and went in. Was it possible he was not there? The room was all dark, and not a murmur in it, not even the sound of breathing. A dreadful chill of terror came over Lady Penton’s heart. She said with a trembling voice, “Walter, Walter!” with an urgent and frightened cry.

There was a sound of some one turning on the bed, and Walter’s voice said out of the dark in a muffled and sullen tone, “What do you want, mother? I thought here I might have been left in peace!”

“What!” she cried, “in peace. Is this how you speak to me? Oh, my boy, where have you been?”

“It can’t matter much where I’ve been. I’ve been doing no harm.”

“No, dear. I never thought you had,” said his mother, groping her way to the bedside and sitting down by him. She put out her hand till it reached where his head was lying. His forehead was hot and damp, and he put her hand away fretfully.

“You forget,” he said, “I’m not a baby now.”

“You are always my boy, Wat, and will be, however old you may grow. If your father was harsh he did not mean it. Oh, why did you rush away like that without any breakfast? Walter, tell me the truth, have you had anything to eat? have you had some dinner? Tell me the truth.”

There was a pause, and then he said, “I forget: is that all you think of, mother?”

“No, Wat, not all I think of, but I think of that too. If I bring you up something will you eat it, Wat?”

“For pity’s sake let me alone,” he said, pettishly, “and go away.”

“Walter!”

“Let me alone, mother, for to-night. I can’t say anything to-night. I came to bed on purpose to be quiet; leave me alone for to-night.”

“If I do, Wat, you will hear us, you will not turn your back upon us to-morrow?”

“Good-night, mother,” said the lad.

He turned his head away, but she bent over him and kissed his hot cheek. “I will tell your father he is not to say anything. And I will leave you, since you want me. But you will take the advice of your best friends to-morrow, Wat.”

“Good-night, mother,” he said again, and turned his flushed and shamefaced cheek to respond, since it was in the dark, to her kiss.

“Wat, there is nobody in the world can love you as we do. God bless you, my dear,” she said.

And listening in the dark, he heard the faint sound of her soft footsteps receding, passing away into the depths of the silent house, leaving him not silent, not quiet, as he said, but with a wild world of intentions and impulses whirling within him, all agitation, commotion, revolution to his finger-ends.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
POOR WALTER!

When Walter, in ungovernable excitement, trouble, and impatience, rushed out of the house in the morning, leaving old Crockford to make he knew not what revelations to his father, he had no idea either what he was going to do, or how long it might be before he returned home. It might have been that he was leaving the Hook—his birthplace, the only home he had ever known—for years. He might never see all these familiar things again—the pale river winding round the garden, the poplar-tree, thin and naked, in the wind, the little multitude in the dining-room making a hum and murmur of voices as he darted past. In his imagination he saw so clearly that breakfast-table—his mother dividing to each of the children their proper share, Ally and Anne, and little Molly, with her spoon, making flourishes, and calling, “Fader, fader!” He saw them all with the distinctness of inward vision as he darted away, though his mind was full of another image. The pang with which, even in the heat of his flight, he realized that he was going away, lay in the background of his heart, as that picture was in the background of his imagination; foremost was the idea of seeing her at once, of telling her that all was over here, and that he was ready to fly to the end of the world if she would but come with him, and that all should be as she pleased. He had forgotten the suggestion of last night about the oath which he would have to take as to his age. Nothing was apparent to him except that his secret was betrayed, that all was over, that she alone remained to him, and that nothing now stood between him and her. He rushed up the hill to the cottage, feeling that reserves and concealments were no longer necessary, that the moment of decision was come, and that there must be no more delay. He would not wait any longer patrolling about the house till she should see him from a window or hear his signal. He went up to the cottage door and knocked loudly. He must see her, and that without a moment’s delay.

It seemed to Walter that he stood a long time knocking at the cottage door. He heard the sound of many goings and comings within, so that it was not because they were absent that he was not admitted. At last the door was opened suddenly by old Mrs. Crockford, who was deaf, and who made no answer to his demand except by shaking her head and repeating the quite unnecessary explanation that she was hard of hearing, backed by many courtesies and inquiries for the family.

“My master’s out, Mr. Walter—Crockford’s not in, sir; he’s gone to work, as he allays does. Shall I send him, sir, to the ’ouse when he comes in to ’is dinner?” she said, with many bobs and hopes as how her ladyship and all the family were well.

Whether this was all she knew, or whether the old woman was astute, and brought her infirmity to the aid of her wits, he could not tell.

“I want to see your niece,” he said—“your niece—your niece Emmy: I want to see Emmy,” without eliciting any further reply than, “My master’s out, Mr. Walter, and I’m a little ’ard of ’earing, sir.”

He raised his voice so that she must have heard him, and surely, surely, in the condition in which things were, ought to have answered him! But perhaps she was anxious to keep up appearances still. He said, in his loudest voice, “I am leaving home; I must see her;” but even this produced no response: and at last he was obliged to go away, feeling as if all the machinery of life had come to a stand-still, and that nothing remained for him to do. He had abandoned one existence, but the other did not take him up. He roamed about, for he scarcely knew how long, till the wintery sun was high in the sky, then came back, and, in the audacity of despair—for so he felt it—knocked again, this time softly, disguising his impatience, at the cottage door. He had acted wisely, it appeared, for she herself opened to him this time, receding from the door with a startled cry when she saw who it was. But this time he would not be put off. He followed her into the little room in front, which was a kind of parlor, adorned by the taste of Martha and her mother, cold, with its little fire-place decked out in cut paper, and the blind drawn down to protect it from the sun. He caught sight of a box, which seemed to be half packed, and which she closed hastily and pushed away.

She turned upon him when he had followed inside this room, with an angry aspect that made poor Walter tremble. “Why do you hunt me down like this?” she cried; “couldn’t you see I didn’t want you when you came this morning pushing your way into the house? Though it’s a cottage, still it’s my castle if I want to be private here!”

“Emmy!” cried the youth, with the keenest pang of misery in his voice.

“Why do you call out my name like that? You objected to what I told you last night. Go away now. I don’t want to have anything to say to a man that objects to my plans as if I didn’t know what’s right and what’s wrong!”

“I object to nothing,” said the boy. “You sent me away from you, you gave me no time to think. And now my father knows everything, and I have left home; I shall never go back any more.”

“Left home! And how does your father know everything? And what is there to know?”

“Nothing!” cried Walter—“nothing, except that I am yours, heart and soul—except that I desire nothing, think of nothing, but you. And they had never heard of you before!”

She closed the door and pushed a chair toward him. “How did they know about me?—what do they know now? Was it you that told them? And what do they think?” she cried, with a slight breathlessness that told of excitement.

Poor Walter was glad to sit down, he was faint and weary; that rush out-of-doors into the frosty air without any breakfast, which had affected the imaginations of his family so much, had told on him. He felt that there was no strength in him, and that he was glad to rest.

“It was old Crockford who told them,” he said. “He came in upon me this morning like a—like a wolf: and my father of course heard, and came to see what it was.”

“Oh,” she said, in a tone of disappointment, not without contempt in it, “so it was not you! I thought perhaps, being so overwhelmed by what I said, you had gone right off and told your mother, as a good boy should. So it was only old Crockford? and I gave you the credit! But I might have known,” she added, with a laugh, “you had not the courage for that!”

“Courage! I did not think of it,” he said. “It did not seem a thing to tell them. How was I to do it? And Crockford came—I don’t know what for—to forbid me the house.”

“No; but to drive me out of it!” she said, with a look which he did not understand. “So you hadn’t the courage,” she said. “You have not much courage, Mr. Walter Penton, to be such a fine young man. You come here night after night, and you pretend to be fond of me. But when it comes to the point you daren’t say to your father and mother straight out, ‘Here’s a girl I’m in love with, and I want to marry her. I’ll do it as soon as I’m old enough, whether you like it or not; but if you were nice, and paid a little attention to her, it would be better for us all.’ That is what I should have said in your place. But you hadn’t the heart, no more than you’d have had the heart to run a little risk about your age and say you were six months older than you are. That’s like a man! You expect a girl to run every risk, to trust herself to you and her whole life; but to do anything that risks your own precious person, oh, no! You have not the heart of a mouse; you have not the courage for that!”

She spoke with so much vehemence, her eyes flashing, the color rising in her cheeks, that Walter could not say a word in his defense—and, besides, what was there to say? So far was he from having the courage to broach the subject in his own person, that when it had been begun by Crockford he had not been able to bear it, but had rushed away. He sat silent while she thus burst forth upon him, gazing at her as she towered over him in her indignation. He had seldom seen her in daylight, never so close, and never in this state of animation and passion. His heart was wrung, but his imagination was on fire. She was a sort of warrior-maiden—a Britomart, a Clorinda. Her eyes blazed. Her lip, which was so full of expression, quivered with energy. To think that any one should dare to think her beneath them!—of a lower sphere!—which was what he supposed his own family would do when they knew; whereas she was a kind of goddess—a creature made of fire and flame. To brave his father, with her standing by to back him; to deceive a registrar—about a miserable matter of age—six months more or less—what did these matter? What did anything matter in comparison with her?—in comparison with pleasing her, with doing what she wished to be done? He was a little afraid of her as she stood there, setting the very atmosphere on fire. If she ever belonged to him, became his familiar in every act of his life, might there not arise many moments in which he should be afraid of what she might think or say? This thought penetrated him underneath the fervor of admiration in his soul, but it did not daunt him or make him pause.

He said, “It is true I did not tell my father first. It did not come into my head. I can’t be sure now that it’s the thing to do. But when Crockford said what he did I told him it was so. It is the first time,” said Walter, with a little emotion, “that I ever set myself against my father. It may come easier afterward, but it’s something to do it the first time. Perhaps you’ve never done it, though you are braver than I.”

She laughed loudly with a contempt that hurt him.

“Never done it! Never done anything else, you mean! I never got on with my mother since I was a baby; and father, I never had any—at least I never saw him. Well! so you spoke up boldly, and said—what did you say?”

“Oh, don’t bother me!” he cried. “How can I tell what I said? And now I’ve come away. I have left home, Emmy. I am ready to go with you, dear, anywhere—if you like, to the end of the world.”

“I’ve no wish for that,” she said, with a softer laugh. “I’m going to London; that’s quite enough for me.”

“Well,” cried the lad, “I’ll go with you there; and all can be settled—everything—as you will. It can be nothing wrong that is done for you.”

“Oh, you’re thinking of the license again,” she said; “never mind that. I’ve been thinking too; and you can’t have your money till you’re twenty-one, don’t you know? Swearing will do you no good there—they want certificates and all sorts of things. And of course you can’t go to the end of the world, or even to London, without any money. So you must just wait and see what happens. Perhaps something will take place before then that will clear you altogether from me.”

He listened to the first part of this with mingled calm and alarm. To wait these six months, could he have seen her every day, would not have disturbed Walter much, notwithstanding the blaze of boyish passion which had lighted up all the world to him. The idea of a new life, an entire revolution of all the circumstances round him, and the tremendous seriousness of marriage, had given him a thrill of almost alarm. It was a plunge which he was ready to take, and yet which appalled him. And when she said that he could not have his money till he was twenty-one, a sensation half of annoyance, yet more than half of content, came over his soul. He could bear it well enough if only he could see her every day: but when she added that threat about the possibility of something happening, Walter’s heart jumped up again in his breast.

“What can happen?” he said. “Dear, nothing shall happen. If you are going to London I’ll go too—I must be near where you are—I’ve no home to go back to. London will be the best; it’s like the deep sea, everybody says. Nobody will find me there.”

“You must not be too sure of that. Sir Edward Penton’s son could be found anywhere. They will put your arrival in the papers, don’t you know? ‘At Mivart’s, Mr. Walter Penton, from the family seat.’” She broke off with a laugh. Walter, gazing at her, was entirely unaware what she meant. The fashionable intelligence of the newspapers, though his mother might possibly give an eye to it, was a blank to him; and when she met his serious impassioned look, the girl herself was affected by it. It was so completely sincere and true that her trifling nature was impressed in spite of everything. She despised him in many ways, though she was not without a certain liking for him. She was contemptuous of his ignorance, of the self-abandonment which made him ready to follow her wherever she went, even of his passion for herself. Emmy was very philosophical, nay, a little cynical in her views. She was ready to say and believe that there were many prettier girls than herself within Walter’s reach, and the idea that he cared for anything but her prettiness did not occur to this frank young woman. But the look of absolute sincerity in the poor boy’s eyes touched her in spite of herself. She put her hands on his shoulders with a momentary mute caress, which meant sudden appreciation, sudden admiration, like that with which an elder sister might have regarded the generous impulse of a boy: then withdrew laughing from the closer approach which Walter, blushing to his hair, and springing to his feet, ventured upon in response. “No, no,” she cried, “run away now. You can come back later; I’m very busy, I’ve got my packing to look after, and a hundred things to do—there’s a dear boy, run away now.”

“I am not a boy, at least not to you,” he cried, “not to you; you must not send me away.”

“But I must, and I do. How can I get my things ready with you hanging about? Run away, run away, do; and you can come back later, after it’s dark—not till after it’s dark. And then—and then—” she said.

He obeyed her after awhile, moved by the vague beatitude of that anticipation. “And then—” Nothing but the highest honor and tenderness was in the young man’s thoughts. He did not know indeed what to do when he should reach London with that companion, where he could take her, how arrange matters for her perfect security and welfare until the moment when he should be able to make her his wife. But somehow, either by her superior knowledge, or by that unfailing force of pure and honest purpose which Walter felt must always find the right way, this should be done. He went away from her cheered and inspired. But when he had got out of sight of the cottage he was not clear what to do for the long interval that must elapse; home he could not go—where should he go? He thought over the question with the icy blast in his face as he turned toward the east. And then he came to a sudden resolution, not indeed consciously inspired by Emmy, but which came from her practical impulse. In another mood, at another stage, her suggestion about his money might have shocked and startled him. It seemed now only a proof of her superior wisdom and good sense, the perfection of mind which he felt to be in her as well as the sweetness of manner and speech, the feeling, the sentiment, all the fine qualities for which he gave her credit, and for which he adored her, not only for the beauty in which alone she believed. And if he was about to do this bold and splendid thing, to carry off the woman he loved, and marry her by whatever means—and are not all means sanctified by love?—surely, certainly, whatever else might be necessary, he would want money. Having made up his mind on this point, Walter buttoned his coat, and set off for Reading like an arrow from a bow. There he managed to dine with great appetite, which would have been a comfort to his mother had she known it, and had an interview with Mr. Rochford, the solicitor, on the subject of the money which had been left to him (as he preferred to think) by old Sir Walter, the result of which was that he got with much ease a sum of fifty pounds (to Walter a fortune in itself), with which in his pocket he walked back with a tremendous sense of guilty elation, excitement, and trouble. He lingered on the road until after dark, as she had said, until, as he remembered so acutely, the hour of the evening meal at home, when the family would be all gathering, and every one asking, Where is Wat? He had rebelled before against the coercion of that family meal. This time it drew him with a kind of lingering desire which he resisted, he who before had half despised himself for obeying the habit and necessity of it. He went to his old post under the hedge, not knowing whether Emmy wished her departure with him to be known. For himself he did not care. If everybody he knew were to appear, father and mother, and all the authorities to whom he had ever been subject, he would have taken her hand and led her away before their faces. So he said to himself as he waited in the cold, half indignant, at that wonderful moment of his fate, that any concealment should be necessary. The cottage was all dark; there was not even a light in the upper window, such as was sometimes there, to make him aware that she looked for him. Not a glimmer of light and not a sound. The cottage seemed like a place of the dead. It seemed to him so much more silent than usual that he took fright after awhile, and this, in addition to his feeling that the time for secrecy was over, emboldened him in his impatience. He went up to the cottage door and knocked repeatedly more and more loudly after awhile, with a sensation of alarm. Was it possible that old deaf Mrs. Crockford was alone in the house? He had time to get into a perfect fever of apprehension before he heard a heavy step coming from behind, and the door was opened to him by Crockford himself, who filled up the whole of the little passage. The old man had a candle in his hand. “What, is it you, Mr. Walter?” he cried, astonished. “Where is she?” said Walter. “What have you done with her? Will you tell her I am here?” He could not speak of her familiarly by her name to this man. But Crockford had no such delicacy; he stared Walter in the face, looking at him across the flame of the candle, which waved and flickered in the night air.

“Emmy!” he said. “Why, Mr. Walter, she’s gone hours ago!”

“Gone! Where has she gone? You’ve driven her away. Some one has been here and driven her away!”

“Ay, Mr. Walter! The fly at the Penton Arms as she ordered herself to catch the two o’clock train; that’s what drove her away, and thankful we was to be quit of her; and so should you be, my young gentleman, if you was wise. She’s a little—”

“Hold your tongue!” cried Walter. “Who has driven her away? Is it my father?—is it—Some one has been here to interfere. Silence! If you were not an old man I’d knock you down.”

“Silence, and asking me a dozen questions? That’s consistent, that is! There’s been nobody here—not a soul. She’s gone as she intended. She told my old woman as soon as she heard I’d been down at the house. I didn’t believe her, but she’s kept her word. All the better for you, Mr. Walter, if you only could see it; all the better, sir. She’s not the same as you think. She’s—”

“Silence!” cried Walter again. “I don’t believe she has gone away at all; you are making up a story; you are trying to deceive me!”

At this old Crockford opened the door wider and bid him enter, and Walter, with eyes which were hot and painful, as if the blood had got into them, stared in, not knowing what he did. He had no desire to investigate. He knew well enough that it was true. She had sent him out of the way and then she had gone. She had not thought him worth the trouble. She had wanted to get rid of him. This sudden blow awoke no angry flush of pride, as it ought to have done. He felt no blame of her in his mind; instead, he asked himself what he had done to disgust her with him. It must be something he had done. He had disgusted her with his folly—with his hesitation about transgressing any puritanical habits of thought for her sake: and then by his talk about his home. He remembered her flash of disappointment, of contempt, when he had owned that it was not he who had told his father. Of course she had despised him, how could he think otherwise? She was ready to trust herself to him, and he had not been strong enough to make the least sacrifice for her. He turned and went away from Crockford’s door without a word.

And after that he did not know very well how he got through the weary hours. He walked to the railway station and prowled all about with a forlorn sort of hope that she might have missed her train. And then quite suddenly it occurred to him, having nothing else to do, that he might go home. He went, as has been seen, to his room in the dark, and sent his mother away with an entreaty to be left alone. He was not touched by his mother’s voice, or her touch or blessing. He was impatient of them, his mind being full of other things. His mind, indeed, was full of Emmy—full to bursting. It might be well for him that she was gone, if he could have thought so. He half agreed to that in his soul. But he would not think so. Had he carried her off triumphantly his mind would have been full of a hundred tremors, but to lose her now was more than he could bear. He lay thinking it all over, longing for the morning, in the dark, without candle or any other comfort, sleeping now and then, waking only to a keener consciousness. And then he became aware by some change in the chill, for there was none in the light, that it was morning. He got up in the dark—he had not undressed, but had been lying on the bed with the coverlet drawn over him in his morning clothes. It was very cold and blank, the skies all gloom, the river showing one pale gleam and no more. He got up as quietly as he could and stole down-stairs and opened stealthily the house door. No one was stirring, not even the servants, though in so full a house they were always early. The fresh morning air blew in his face and refreshed him. He felt his fifty pounds in his pocket. He scarcely thought of the misery he would leave behind him. Long enough, he said to himself, he had been bound by the family, now his own life was in question, and he must act for himself. There was a train at half past six which he could just catch. How different it was from his night drive so short a time ago! Then he was acting reluctantly for others, now willingly for himself. The cold air blew in his face with a dash of rain in it. He shut the gate quietly not to make a noise, but never looked back.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE LOST SON.

The parents respected poor Wat’s seclusion, his misery and trouble, though it was so hard to keep away from him; not to go and talk to him, remonstrating or consoling; not to carry him a tray, to implore him to eat a little. They resisted all these impulses: the last, perhaps, was the most difficult. Lady Penton had to call to her aid all the forces of her mind, to strengthen herself by every consideration of prudence, before she could overcome the burning desire which came back and back, with renewed temptation, a hundred times in the course of the evening to take up that tray. A few sandwiches, a little claret, or some beer, would have done him no harm; and who could tell whether he had eaten enough to sustain his strength in the course of the day? But, what with her own self-reminders that it was wiser to leave him to himself, what with the half taunts, half remonstrances of her husband—“If I am not to say a word to him, which I believe is nonsense, why should you?”—holding herself as it were with both hands, she managed to refrain. The first time that such a breach comes into a family—that one member of it withdraws in darkness and silence into his own room, not to be disturbed, not to be found fault with, not even to be comforted—till to-morrow—how keen is the pang of the separation, how poignant the sense of his solitude and anguish! In such circumstances it is the culprit generally who suffers least. The grieved and perhaps angered parents, pondering what to say to him, how to do what is best for him, how not to say too much, afraid to make the fault appear too grave, afraid to make too little of it, casting about in their anxious souls what to do: the brothers and sisters looking on in the background, questioning each other with bated breath, their imaginations all busy with that too touching, too suggestive picture of the offender in his room, left to himself, eating nothing, communicating with nobody—how dreadful when it is for the first time! what a heartbreaking and hopeless wretchedness when custom has made it common, and there is no longer any confidence in remonstrance or appeal. It is generally some evident breach of the proprieties or minor morals that is the cause of such a domestic event. But this time nobody knew what Walter had done. What had he done? it could not be anything wrong. He had quarreled with father: to be sure that was as though the heavens had fallen: but yet it could only be a mistake. Father no doubt had been impatient; Wat had been affronted. They had not waited, either of them, to explain. The girls made it clear to each other in this way. At all events, it was all over now. No doubt poor Wat had spent a miserable day: but no one would remind him of it by a word, by so much as a look, and it was all over, and would be remembered no more.

The parents got up in the morning with many a troubled thought. They asked each other what it would be best to say. Perhaps it would be wisest to say as little as possible: perhaps only to point out to him that, in his position, now truly the heir of Penton, any premature matrimonial project would be ruinous: that he was far too young; that in any case, supposing the lady were the most eligible person in the world, it would be necessary to wait.

“If that is what he is thinking of,” said Sir Edward.

“What else could he be thinking of?” cried Lady Penton.

Or if perhaps it was only a passing folly, a foolish little flirtation, nothing serious at all? Then perhaps a few words only, to remind him that in his position one must not do such things, one must not lead a silly girl to form expectations—

“Oh, bother the silly girl!” said Sir Edward; “what are her expectations to us? It is Wat I am thinking of.”

“Dear Edward,” said the mother, “he will be far, far more likely to see the folly of it if you show him that it might have a bad effect upon another.”

At this Sir Edward shook his head, thinking that his wife did not here show her usual good sense, but he made no objection in words, and finally it was decided between them that as little as possible was to be said, nothing at all at first, and that the poor boy was to be allowed to have his breakfast in peace.

But at breakfast Walter did not appear. It was thought at first that he was late on purpose, waiting perhaps till the children had finished—till he might have a hope of being alone; or at least, if he had to face his father, to secure that no one else should be present when he was called to account. By and by, however, a thrill of alarm began to be felt; and then came a terrible disclosure which froze their very blood—Gardener coming to his work very early in the morning had met Mr. Walter leaving the house. He had on his big great-coat and a bag in his hand, and he was in a great hurry, as a man might be who was bent on catching the seven o’clock train. Walter’s room was searched at once in case he should have left a note or anything to explain: but there was not a scrap of explanation. He was gone, that was clear. He had taken some linen, a change of dress in his bag; his drawers were left open, and all the contents thrown about, as is usual when a man selects for himself a few articles of dress to take with him. The look of these drawers carried dismay to his mother’s heart. He was gone. Where had he gone? So young, so little accustomed to independent action, so ignorant of the world! Where had the boy gone? what had happened to him? Lady Penton recollected after the event, as we so often do, that Walter had made no response to her suggestions of what was to be said and done to-morrow. He had answered “Good-night, mother,” and no more; that was no answer. He had never said he would accept her advice to-morrow, that he would discuss what had happened, or hear what his father had to say. “Good-night, mother,” that was all he had said. And oh! she might have known, when he eluded the subject in this way—she might have known! She ought to have been on her guard. Sir Edward said very little; his face grew dark with anger and indignation, and he walked off at once in the direction of the village without saying where he meant to go. All at once from their happiness and unsuspecting peace the family plunged into that depth of dismay and misery which comes with the first great family anxiety. It seemed to them all who were old enough to understand anything about it that a great shame and horror had come into the midst of them. Walter had left home without a word; they did not know where he was, or why he had gone, or in whose company. Could anything be more terrible? Just grown to man’s estate, and he had disappeared, and no one knew where he had gone!

The period that followed is beyond description in these pages. Out of the clear serenity of innocent life this blameless household fell—as into an abyss of terror and shame, of new experiences unthought of, and new conditions. The girls, with a gasp, behind backs, scarcely daring to look at each other, heard their mother say to Mab, who was so great an aggravation of their trouble, that Walter had gone—to town on business; that he had preparations to make and things to get before he went to Oxford. Lady Penton said this in a voice which scarcely faltered, looking the visitor, who was so sadly out of place in the midst of the agitated company, in the face all the time.

“Oh, to be sure,” said Mab, “they always do. Any excuse is good enough for gentlemen, don’t you think, Lady Penton? they are always so pleased to get to town.”

Lady Penton looked quite gratefully at the girl. “Yes,” she said; “they all like it.”

“And so should I,” said little Mab, “if I were a boy.”

It was not of any importance what little Mab said, and yet it was astonishing how it comforted Lady Penton. She said to the girls afterward that living so quietly as they had all done made people disposed to make mountains out of mole-hills. “But you see that little girl thinks it quite a common sort of thing,” she said.

But Sir Edward’s gloomy face was not a thing that was capable of any disguise. He was in movement the whole day long. He went all about, taking long walks, and next day went up to London, and was absent from morning to night. He never said anything, nor did the girls venture to question him. There seemed to have grown a great difference between them—a long, long interval separating him from his daughters. He had long private conversations with his wife when he came back; indeed, she would withdraw into the book-room when she saw him coming, as if to be ready for him. And they would shut themselves up and talk for an hour at a time, with a continuous low murmur of voices.

“Oh, mother, tell us,” Ally or Anne would cry when they could find her alone for a moment, “is there any news? has father found anything out?” to which Lady Penton would reply, with a shake of her head, “Your father hopes to find him very soon. Oh, don’t ask questions! I am not able to answer you,” she would say.

This seemed to go on for ages—for almost a life-time—so that they began to forget how peaceful their lives had been before; and to go into Walter’s room, which they did constantly, and look at his bed, made up in cold order and tidiness, never disturbed. To see it all so tidy, not even a pair of boots thrown about or a tie flung on the table, made their hearts die within them. It was as if Walter were dead—almost worse. It seemed more dreadful than death to think that they did not know where he was.

And Mab stayed on for one long endless week. Some one of them had always to be with her, trying to amuse her; talking, or making an effort to talk. Lady Penton was the one who succeeded best. She would let the girl chatter to her for an hour together, and never miss saying the right thing in the right place, or giving Mab the appropriate smile and encouragement. How could she do it? the girls wondered and asked each other. Did she like that little chatter? How did she bear it? Did it make her forget? Or finally—a suggestion which they hardly dared to make—did mother not care so very much; Was that possible? When one is young and very young, one can not believe that the older people suffer as one feels one’s self to suffer. It seems impossible that they can do it. They go steadily on and order dinner every day, and point out to the house-maid when she has not dusted as she ought. This suggestion to the house-maid (which they called scolding Mary) was a great stumbling-block to the girls. They did not understand how their mother could be very miserable about Walter, and yet find fault, nay, find out at all the dust upon the books. They themselves lived in a world suddenly turned into something different from the world they had known, where the air kept whispering as if it had a message to deliver, and sounds were about the house at night as of some one coming, always coming, who never came. They had not known what the mystery of the darkness was before, the great profundity of night in which somewhere their brother might be wandering homeless, in what trouble and distress who could tell? or what aching depths of distance was in the great full staring daylight, through which they gazed and gazed and looked for him, but never saw him. How intolerable Mab became with her chatter; how they chafed even at their mother’s self-command, and the steadiness with which she went on keeping the house in order, it would be difficult to say. Their father, though they scarcely ventured to speak to him in his self-absorbed and resentful gloom, had more of their sympathy. He not only suffered, but looked as if he suffered. He lost his color, he lost his appetite, he was restless, incapable of keeping still. He could no longer bear the noise of the children, and sickened at the sight of food. And there was Mab all the time, to whom Lady Penton had told that story about Walter, but who, when they felt sure, knew better, having learned to read their faces, and to see the restrained misery, the tension of suspense. Oh, if this spectator, this observer, with her quick eyes, which it was so difficult to elude, would but go away!

At last it was announced that the Russell Pentons were coming to fetch her, an event which the household regarded with mingled relief and alarm. Sir Edward’s face grew gloomier than ever. “They have come to spy out the nakedness of the land,” he said; “Alicia will divine what anxiety we are in, and she will not be sorry.”

“Oh, hush, Edward,” said his wife; “we do not want her to be sorry. Why should she be sorry? she knows nothing.”

“You think so,” he cried; “but depend upon it everybody knows.”

“Why should everybody know? Nobody shall know from me; and the girls will betray nothing. They know nothing, poor children. If you will only try to look a little cheerful yourself, and keep up appearances—”

“Cheerful!” he said, with something of the same feeling as the girls had, that she could not surely care so much. Was it possible that she did not care? But nevertheless he tried to do something to counteract that droop of his mouth, and make his voice a little more flexible and natural, when the sound of the wheels on the gravel told that the Pentons had come. Meanwhile Mab had gone, attended by the sisters, to make her preparations for going. They had packed her things for her, an office to which she was not accustomed, while she mourned over her departure, and did their best not to show her that this was a feeling they did not share.

Mab lingered a little after the carriage arrived. She wanted to show her sympathy, though it was not quite easy to see how that was to be done. She remained silent for a minute or so, and then she said, “I haven’t liked to say anything, but I’ve been very, very sorry,” giving Ally a sudden kiss as she spoke.

The two girls looked at each other, as was their wont, and Anne, who was always the most prompt, asked, “Sorry for what?”

“Do you really, really not know where he is?” said Mab, without pausing to reply. “I think I could tell you where he is. He is in town with—some one—”

“Some one?” they both cried, with a sudden pang of excitement, as though they were on the verge of a discovery; for unless she knew something—though how could she know anything?—it seemed impossible that she could speak so.

“Oh, the one he went out every night to see. There must have been somebody. When they go out every night like that it is always to see—some one,” she said, nodding her head in the certainty of her superior knowledge of the world.

“Oh, how do you know? You are mistaken if you think that Walter—how can you know about such things?”

“Because I am little,” said Mab, “and not very old, that’s not to say that I haven’t been a great deal about: and I’ve heard people talking. They pretend they don’t talk before girls. I suppose they think they don’t. They stop themselves just enough to make you want to find out, and then they forget you are there, and say all sorts of things. That’s where he is, you may be sure: and he will come back by and by, especially if he wants money. You needn’t be afraid. That is what they all do. Oh, listen; they are calling us from down-stairs! I am so sorry I must go: I wish I could stay: I like this better than any place I ever stayed at, and you’ve all been so kind. Write to me and tell me, will you, all about it? I shall be anxious to know. But don’t make yourselves miserable, for he will come back when he has spent his money, or when—Yes, we are coming! We are coming! Ally, mind you write and tell me. I shall want so much to know.”

They tried to interrupt her again and again to tell her she was mistaken; that Walter had only gone to town; that they were not anxious, or ignorant where he was, or unhappy about him: with much more to the same effect; but Mab’s cheerful certainty that she was right overpowered their faltering affirmations, of which she took no notice. She kissed them both with enthusiasm in the midst of her little harangue, and ran on with expressions of her regret as they went down-stairs. “Oh, I wish Lady Penton would have me for good,” Mab said; “but you don’t care for me as I do for you.”

Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, Lady Penton was receiving her visitors with an eager cordiality that was scarcely consistent with her nature, and which was meant to show not only that she was entirely at her ease, but that her husband’s gloom, which he had tried to shake off, but not very successfully, did not mean anything. As a matter of fact, the Russell Pentons, knowing nothing of the circumstances of Walter’s disappearance, were quite unaware of any effort, or any reason why an effort should be made. They interpreted the husband’s half-resentful looks—for that was the natural aspect of distress with Edward Penton—and the excessive courtesy and desire to please, of his wife, as fully accounted for by the position toward each other in which the two families stood. Why should Edward Penton be resentful? He had got his rights, those rights upon which he had stood so strongly when his cousin Alicia had paid her previous visit. She was ready to put a private interpretation of her own on everything she saw. He had resisted then her proposals and overtures, although afterward he had been anxious to accede to them; and now he was disappointed and vexed that the bargain against which he had stood out at first had come to nothing, and that she would not relieve him from the burden of the expensive house which he had first refused to give up and then been so anxious to be quit of. How inconsistent! How feeble! And the wife endeavoring with her little fuss of politeness to make up, perhaps thinking that she might succeed where her husband had failed! This was how Mrs. Russell Penton interpreted the aspect of the poor people whose object was to conceal their unhappiness from all eyes, and that nobody might have a word to say against the boy who was racking their hearts.

“I have been sorry to leave Mab so long, to give you the trouble,” Mrs. Russell Penton said, with her stiff dignity. “Her uncle, in his consideration for me, did not think of your inconvenience, I fear.”

“There has been no inconvenience. We are so many that one more or less does not matter. We have treated her without ceremony, as one of the family—”

“And made her very happy, evidently,” said Russell Penton. “She is very unwilling to come away.”

And then there was a pause. That Mab Russell, the heiress, should be treated as one of the family by these poor Pentons was to Alicia a reversal of every rule which she could scarcely accept without a protest. “It must have been a glimpse of life very different from anything she has been accustomed to,” she said at last.

“Yes, poor little thing! with no brothers or sisters of her own.”

“She has compensations,” said Russell Penton, with a glimmer of humor in his eyes. But Lady Penton looked at him without any response in hers. He was so surprised at this, and bewildered that Mab’s value should not be known, that involuntarily, out of the commotion in his own mind, he put a question which seemed full of meaning to the troubled listeners. “I don’t see your son,” he said.

The father and mother exchanged a miserable look. “It is known, then,” their eyes said to each other: and in spite of herself the blood rushed to Lady Penton’s face and then ebbed away again, leaving her faint and pallid; but she made an effort at a smile. “Walter,” she said, “is not at home. He is going to Oxford in a month or two, and he is away for a little.”

“Taking a holiday?” suggested Russell Penton, with a curious consciousness, though without any understanding, of trouble in the air.

“Oh, it is rather—business,” said the mother. Sir Edward did not change that aspect of severe gravity which he had borne all the time. He had too much set wretchedness in his face to change as she did. “You have been more good to him,” she continued, glad of the excuse which justified her trembling voice, “more good than words can say.”

“I have no right to any credit: I only carried out my father’s wishes,” said Mrs. Penton. How severe her tone was! how clear that she was aware that Walter, the recipient of her kindness, had shown himself unworthy! If anything could have made these poor people more unhappy it was this—that their precautions seemed useless and their trouble known.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
KEEPING UP APPEARANCES.

The Russell Pentons stayed a long time—at least, these anxious people thought so, who believed their visitors to be noting the signs of their unhappiness, and forming still stronger and stronger conclusions against their son. The effort Lady Penton made to carry on the conversation was one of those efforts, gigantic, unappreciated, in which women have sometimes to make an expenditure of strength which is equal to years of ordinary exertion. Who can tell the burden it was to talk, to smile, to exhaust all the trivial subjects that occurred to her, to keep at a distance all those graver topics which might bring in Walter—which might lead to discussion of where he was or how employed? She saw, so to speak, half a mile off those tendencies of conversation which might lead to him, and, with a sudden leap, would get away from these to another and another theme, which each in its turn would have to be dismissed and avoided. “All roads lead to Rome,” says the proverb; and when there is a certain subject which it is desirable to avoid, all the streamlets of conversation, by some curious tendency, go to that with infallible force. Lady Penton had to go through a series of mental gymnastics to avoid it—to keep her visitors from any thought of Walter—to hide him, or rather to hide the terrible blank in the house where he ought to have been. Had he been in his usual place the conversation would never have touched him; and, as a matter of fact, the Russell Penton’s did not think of him any more than they did of Horry in the nursery, a stray shout from whom could sometimes be heard, leaving no one in any doubt as to his whereabouts. But the mother, flying from subject to subject, talking as she had never been known to talk in her life before, and her taciturn husband, who said not a word that he could help saying—both felt that their misery was open and evident, that the Russell Pentons were saying in their hearts, “Poor people!” or making reflections that the boy’s upbringing must have been bad indeed when he had “gone wrong” at such an early age. Lady Penton felt instinctively that this was what must be going through Alicia’s mind. The childless woman always says so—it is one of the commonplaces of morals. If he had been brought up as he ought he would not have gone wrong. This and a hundred other things went buzzing through the poor mother’s head, confusing her as she talked and talked. “Oh,” she said to herself, “it is better that they should think that!—better blame us—blame me, who have been overindulgent, perhaps, or oversevere—overanything, so long as they do not blame him!” But the father was not so disinterested; he was angry as well as miserable. He would have had Walter bear his own guilt; he would not allow those critics who had never had a son to say that it was the parents’ fault. So he stood with that resentment in his face, saying so little, only making an annoyed remark when appealed to, short, with suppressed temper in it, while his wife smiled and ran on. How like Edward Penton that was! his cousin thought. He had made a proposal to her which she in her pride would not accept, and his pride could not forgive her. Alicia felt that she understood it all—as well as the silly attempt of the wife to smooth it all over and make peace between them—as if the two Pentons did not understand each other better than any outsider! as if this question between them could be smoothed away by her!

“You will let me come back again?” said Mab, rubbing her little cheek like a kitten against Lady Penton’s ear. “I will never go away unless you say that I may come back.”

“What a threat!” said Russell Penton. “In order to get rid of you, Mab, the promise will have to be made.”

“Not to get rid of her: we don’t want to get rid of her. Yes, my dear, certainly as soon—as soon as we are settled, when the house is not so dull—”

“It isn’t dull, no one can be dull with you. I will tell you what I want in a whisper. I want to come and stay altogether; I want you to have me altogether,” said Mab, in the confidence of her wealth.

“My dear!” cried Lady Penton, faltering. In spite of her preoccupations she was a little alarmed. She put it off with a kiss of farewell. “You must come as often as you like,” she said. “It is sweet of you to wish to come. We shall always be glad to see you, either here or—wherever we may be.”

“At Penton,” said Mab, once more rubbing her little head against the woman to whom she clung. “Uncle Russell, oh, ask her to have me! There is no place where I could be so happy.”

“You must come as soon as we are settled,” said Lady Penton, in real panic, putting the supplicant away.

Alicia had turned during this too tender and prolonged leave-taking, with a little indignation, to the master of the house. She had never herself either attracted or been attracted to Mab, and she felt resentful, annoyed, even jealous—though she cared nothing for the little thing and her whims—of this sudden devotion. She stood by her cousin, who was resentful and indignant too. “Edward,” she said to him, “we needn’t quarrel, at least. I know you meant well in offering me Penton. Don’t be displeased because I couldn’t accept it—I couldn’t, from any one, unless it had been my right.”

“Penton! do you think of nothing but Penton?” he cried, suddenly, with an incomprehensible impatience of the subject—that subject which had once seemed so important, which appeared to him so small now.

“I speak for the sake of peace,” she said, coldly; “that need not stand between us now. We go away in a week. The things I mean to remove will be gone within a month. What I wish you to know is, that you may make arrangements for your removal as soon as you please.”

“Oh, for our removal! yes, yes,” he said, impatiently; “there is no hurry about that: if that was all one had to think of—”

“I am sorry that you should have other things to think of. To me it seems very important,” Mrs. Russell Penton said.

“Ah! you have nobody but yourself to be concerned about,” he said. But then he met his wife’s look of warning, and added no more.

Russell Penton lingered a little behind the rest. “Let me speak a word to you,” he said, detaining Lady Penton; and her heart, which had begun to beat feebly as an end approached to this excitement, leaped up again with an energy which made her sick and faint. Could he know something about Walter? might he have some news to tell her? Her face flushed, and then became the color of ashes, a change of which he was wonderingly aware, though without a notion as to why it was, “You are alarmed,” he said, “about—”

“No, no!” she interrupted, faintly; “not alarmed. Oh, no, you must not think so—not frightened at all,” but with fear pale and terrible, and suspense which was desperate, in every line of her countenance.

Russell Penton himself grew frightened too. “There is nothing to alarm you,” he said, “about little Mab.”

“Oh!” the breath which had almost failed her came back. A sudden change came over her face; she smiled, though her smile was ghastly. “About—Mab?” she said.

“It is alarming, the way in which she flings herself upon you; but you must let me explain. I see that you think her just a little girl like any other, and her proposal to come and stay with you altogether is enough to make even the most generous pause. But that is not what she means, Lady Penton. She is very rich; she is a little heiress.”

The words did not seem to convey much significance to Lady Penton’s bewildered soul. “A little heiress,” she repeated, vaguely, as if that information threw no light upon the matter. Was she stupid? he asked himself, or ridiculously disinterested, altogether unlike the other women who have sons? “Very rich—really with a great fortune—but no home. She is too young to live by herself. She has never developed the domestic affections before. I should like very well to keep her, but it would be a burden on Alicia. Will you think it over? She has evidently set her heart on you, and if would do her so much good to be with people she cared for. There would of course be a very good allowance, if you will let me say so. Do think it over.”

They had reached the door by this time, where Sir Edward was solemnly putting his cousin into her carriage. Mr. Russell Penton pressed Lady Penton’s hand with a little meaning as he said good-bye. “Walter might have a try too,” he said, with a laugh, as he turned away.

Walter might have—a try. A try at what? His mother’s head swam. She put her arm through that of Anne, who stood near her, and kept smiling, waving her hand to Mab in the carriage: but Lady Penton scarcely saw what she was looking at. There was something moving, dazzling before her eyes—the horses, the glitter of the panels, the faces, flickered before her; and then came a rush of sound, the horses’ hoofs, the carriage wheels grinding the gravel, and they were gone. Oh, how thankful she felt when they were gone! The girls led her in, frightened by her failing strength, and then Sir Edward came, as gloomy as ever, and leaned over her.

“I don’t think they knew,” he said; “I don’t think they had heard anything.”

Lady Penton repeated to herself several times over “Walter might have a try,” and then she too burst forth, “No, Edward, thank God! I am sure they did not know.”

He shook his head, though he was so much relieved, and said, half reluctant to confess that he was relieved, “But if it lasts much longer they must know. How can it be kept from them, and from everybody, if it lasts much longer?”

The girls looked at each other, but did not speak; for they were aware, though no one else was, that Mab knew; and could it be supposed that that little thing, who did not belong to them, who had no reason for sharing their troubles, would keep it to herself and never tell?

They had all thought it would be a relief to be rid of the little spectator and critic, the stranger in the house, and for a time it was so. The rest of the afternoon after she was gone the girls and their mother spent together talking it all over. They had never been able uninterruptedly to talk it over before, and there was a certain painful enjoyment in going over every detail, in putting all the facts they knew together, and comparing their views. Sir Edward had gone out to take one of his long solemn walks, from which he always came in more gloomy, more resentful than ever. He was going up to town once more to-morrow. Once more! He had gone up almost every day, but never had discovered anything, never had found the lost. And in his absence, and freed from Mab, whom they had not been able to get rid of at any moment, what a long, long consultation they had, talking over everything, except what Mab had suggested. She had said it with the intention of consoling, but the girls could not repeat it to each other, or breathe to their mother the suggestion she had made. They were not educated to that point. That their brother should have married foolishly, made an idol of some girl who was not his equal, and followed her out into the unknown world, was dreadful, but comprehensible; but that he should come back by and by when he wanted money—oh, no, no! What they imagined was that scene so well known to romance—the foolish young pair coming back, stealing in, he leading her, ashamed yet proud of her, to ask his parents’ forgiveness. The girls went over the details of this scene again and again as soon as they had heard all that their mother had to tell them.

“She must be beautiful,” they said; “she may be nice—oh, she must be nice or Wat would not love her!”

“Oh, my dears,” cried Lady Penton, “how can we tell? It is not good girls and nice girls who lead young men away from their duty.”

“But, mother, if they love each other!” said Ally, blushing over all her ingenuous, innocent countenance, with the awe and wonder of that great thing.

Lady Penton did not say anything more, but she shook her head, and then it was for the first time that there came over her the poignant suggestion of that “might have been” which she had not taken into her mind till now. Walter might have a try; little Mab with her heiress-ship had been thrown at his head, as people say: and what it might have been had these two taken to each other—had a great fortune been poured into Penton! Lady Penton had never known what a great piece of good fortune was; she was not one who expected such things. The very advantages of it, the desirableness, made it to her temperate soul the less likely. It never could have come to pass, all the contrarieties of nature were against it; but still, when she thought that they had spent so many days under the same roof, and might have spent so many more, and how suitable it would have been, and what a good thing for Walter, it was not wonderful that she should sigh. But that was the course of nature, it was the way of human affairs. It was too good ever to come true.

After the first night, the relief of Mab’s departure was not so evident to them. She had been a restraint, not only upon their conversations and consultations, but on the entire abandonment of their life and thoughts to this anxiety and distress. They had been compelled on her account to bear the strain, to make a struggle against it. Now there was no longer that motive. Night and day their ears were intent on every sound; there was always a watcher at the window in the staircase, which commanded the ascending path to the village, a sort of lookout woman ready to dash down-stairs and give notice if by chance—ah! no, by the blessing of God—the wanderer might be seen coming home. The watch here was furtive, lest the servants should note, but it was continual; one or another was always lingering about, looking out with eyes keen and sharp with anxiety—“busy in the distance shaping things, that made the heart beat thick.” And so the days passed on, languishing, with dark nights so endless-long in which the anxious watchers could hear only and could not see.

CHAPTER XXXIX.
ALLY’S PART.

Sir Edward Penton went to London most days, but he never found out anything. He was not the sort of man to act as an amateur detective, and he would not appeal to the professionals in that capacity. He was an old-fashioned man, and it seemed to him that “to set the police after” his son was an indignity impossible. He could not do it. He tramped about himself, yearning, angry, very tender underneath, thinking if he could only see Walter, meet him, which always seems so likely to country people, in the street, that all would be well. He went to all the places Crockford could tell him of—to Emmy’s mother, a faded old actress of the lower class, whose faded graces, and her vivacity, and what had been, or had been supposed to be, her fascination, made poor Sir Edward’s heart sink into his boots. But she professed to know nothing of her daughter’s movements, and nothing at all of any gentleman. There had been a gentleman, she allowed, a young man connected with business—but it had been to escape from his addresses that her child had gone to the country: and Emmy was far too high-minded to keep company with any one of whom her mother did not know. In his despair Sir Edward even sought out the shop in which this gentleman in his business hours was to be found, and had an interview with the young man whose appearance in the village had so much alarmed and almost disgusted Walter. No information was to be obtained from him. He declared sullenly that he knew nothing about the girl: yes, he had known her, he didn’t deny; he had thought more of her than she was worth. Though it was going against all his family he had stuck to her for a long time, and would have stuck to her as long as she had stuck to him: but he knew nothing about her now. “Is it money, guv’nor; somebody left her a fortune?” he asked at the end of the interview, with a laugh which disconcerted Sir Edward. This was almost all he had been able to do, except tramping about the streets wherever he could think his son was likely to go. The poor gentleman increased his knowledge of London in the most wonderful way during these miserable days. He found out all kinds of back streets and alleys, and corners of building such as he had never remarked before, but all with a veil over them, a mist of trouble. London in January is dark enough even when the eyes are not clouded with suffering and anxiety; but with these added how miserable were the chill streets, the low skies, the yellow thickness of the atmosphere, the hopeless throngs of unknown men and women, always blank, always unresponsive to those strained and troubled eyes! Sometimes he thought he saw before him a slim young figure, moving quickly, as Walter might, through the crowd, and hurried vainly after it, pursuing at a hopeless distance, only to lose it in the ever-changing groups. Sometimes with the corner of his eye he would catch a glimpse of some one disappearing round a corner, plunging into a side street, who might be his boy. Alas! it was always a might-be. No happy chance brought them face to face. Had there been no particular reason for it they would have met, no doubt, in the simplest way; but this is one of the cases in which, as daily experience proves, those who seek do not find. And when Sir Edward returned home after a day so spent, the gloom he brought with him was like a London fog descending bodily upon the country. Probably there had been a little deadening of trouble in the physical exertion and gloomy expectation of these expeditions; but he brought an embodied darkness and desolation home.

On one of the days of his absence Ally was acting as a sort of sentinel in the garden: that is, she was taking a walk, as they said, but with an eye always upon the road and the gate—when her anxious mind was distracted by a sound of approaching wheels, coming, not down the hill, but along the river bank. It was a gray day, damp and soft, with no wind; one of those days which are not unusual in the valley of the Thames; not cold, save for the chill of the damp; very still; the river winding round the Hook in a pale and glistening link; the sky about the same color, which was no color at all, the leafless trees rising black as if photographed upon the gray. The river was lower than usual at this season, though it still flowed with a cruel motion round that little promontory as if meaning to make that bit of vantage ground its own some day. Ally was very sad and quiet, walking up and down, feeling as if life had come altogether to a stand-still save for that one thing; nothing else happening; nothing else seeming ever likely to happen. That furtive little current which had seemed for a moment to rise in her own life had died away. It seemed a long time since those days when young Rochford had come so often to Penton Hook. Perhaps his desire to come often had something to do with the delay which had so changed the face of affairs. This had occurred to Ally more than once, and had given her a secret feeling that it was perhaps her fault, but she had not felt able to regret it. But now all that was over, and Mr. Rochford came no longer. There was nothing for him to come about; and Ally remembered with a sort of half pang, half shame, the reception which had been given to his mother and sister when they called, and the curious sense of mingled superiority and inferiority which had overwhelmed her in their presence. They were far better acquainted with the world than she was; they were “in society,” or, at least, had that air of it which imposes upon simple people; but she was Miss Penton of Penton. She had felt then a great though always half-ashamed pleasure in remembering that elevation: but she had not the same sensations now. She felt that she was a snob (if a girl can be called a snob). She was ungrateful, for they had been very kind to her, and mean and petty, and everything that is most contemptible—feeling herself, only because of Penton (in which there was no merit) somehow exalted above them, the solicitor’s mother and sister. Many times since she had blushed at that incident, and sometimes at the most inappropriate moments; when she woke up in the middle of the night a flush would go over her from head to foot, thinking of what a poor creature, what a miserable little snob she was; a girl-snob, far worse than any other kind; worse than anything Mr. Thackeray had put in his book. Ally, like most people of her age, thought she did not like Mr. Thackeray, who seemed to her to make everybody look as if they had bad motives; but even he, so crushing as he was to a little girl’s optimism, had not gone so far in his cynical views as to think of a snob who was a girl. Perhaps she was wrong here, putting limits which did not exist to the great humorist’s imagination, but that was what she believed. And she was that girl-snob, which was a thing too bad to be conceived by fancy. She had repented this, and she had felt, though vaguely in the rush of other experiences, the blank that had fallen upon that opening chapter in which there had once seemed so much to come, but which had, to all appearance, ended all at once without anything coming of it. This chilled her gentle soul, she could scarcely tell why. How wretched that ball at Penton would have been to her, what a painful blight upon her girlish fancies, if it had not been for these kind people, if it had not been for him. Yes; that was the chief point after all, though she was ashamed to admit it to herself. It had been a pleasant break upon the monotony of life when he paid these frequent visits, when he talked in that suggestive way, making her think of things which he did not mention, raising a soft commotion which she did not understand in her simple being. It had been like a chill to her to perceive that all this was over. It was all over and done with, apparently; it had all dropped like the falling of a curtain over a drama just begun. She had wanted to know how it would all end, what its progress would be, the scenes that would follow: and lo, no scenes had followed at all, the curtain had come down. How wicked and wrong, how horrid it was to think of it at all in the midst of the great calamity that had fallen on the family, to wish even that mother might forget poor Wat for an hour, and go and call, and so make up for the coldness of Mrs. Rochford’s reception! This was a thing, however, which Ally had never suggested, which she thought it dreadful to have even thought of in the present trouble. She defended herself to herself by saying that she had not thought of it—it had only flashed across her mind without any will of hers, which is a very different thing, as everybody knows.

And was it possible while she wandered up and down, always with her attention fixed on the gate, always looking for news, for her father’s return, for a telegraph boy, for—oh, if that might be! for Walter himself; was it possible that some feeling about this other matter intruded into her mind and shared the thoughts which should have been all devoted to her brother? Ally trembled a little, but could not but blame herself, for she did nothing of the kind with her own will. She only felt a little chill, a little blank, a wonder how that story, if it had gone on, if the curtain had not fallen so abruptly, might have ended. It would have been interesting to know; a broken-off story is always tantalizing, distressful—the world becomes duller when it breaks off and you never know the end. Perhaps this had floated across her mind dimly, not interfering with the watch she was keeping, when suddenly the wheels which had been rolling along, not disturbing her attention—for they did not come in the direction whence news could be expected—startled her by suddenly stopping outside the gate. Who could it be? Her heart began to beat. She made a few steps quickly toward the gate. It could not be her father; could it be Walter bringing back his bride? What could it be? But here suddenly her heart gave another bewildering spring. She felt her breath taken away altogether. The vehicle had stopped outside; and it was young Rochford, in all the gloss of his usual trim appearance, with the usual flower in his coat, who came forward, quickening his steps as he saw her. He did not look quite as he used to look. There was a little doubt about him, as though he did not know how he was to be received—a little pride, as of a man who would draw back at once if he were discouraged. Ally could not help making a few steps further to meet him. She was glad to meet him—oh, there was no doubt of that!—and not only so, but to feel the curtain slowly drawing up again, the story beginning once more, gave everything around a different aspect. She said, “Oh, Mr. Rochford!” with a voice that had welcome in it as well as surprise.

“I have come about some business,” he said; but his eyes had already asked several questions, and seemed to derive a certain satisfaction from the unspoken replies. He added, lowering his voice, “I have been on the point of coming almost every day—but I felt as if perhaps—I might not be welcome.”

“Why?” said Ally, with an astonished look, which had no guilt in it; for, indeed, it was not to him, but to his mother and sister, that she had felt herself to behave like a snob.

“I scarcely know,” he said. “I thought Sir Edward might feel perhaps that my delay—. But I always half felt, Miss Penton, that you—would be rather pleased with the delay: you and your brother.”

“Yes,” she said, with a little shiver at Walter’s name; “it was wrong, perhaps, to go against my father; but I think perhaps we were glad—a little.”

“That has been a consolation; and then—But I must not trouble you with all my reasons for staying away, when most likely you never observed that I stayed away at all.”

Ally made no reply to this speech, which was so full of meaning. It was, indeed, so full of evident meaning that it put her on her guard.

“My father is in town,” she said, “if it is business; but perhaps mother—”

“I am too glad,” he said, “to meet you first, even for the business’ sake.”

Ally looked up at him with wondering eyes. What she could have to do with business of any kind, what light he could expect her to throw on any such subject, she could not understand. But there was something soothing, something pleasant, in thus strolling along the path by the flowing river with him by her side. She forgot a little the watch she had been keeping upon the gate. She recollected that he had once told her his dream about a flood, and coming in a boat to her window, but that she would not take advantage of the boat herself, only kept handing out the children to him one by one. How could he divine that she would do that? for of course that was exactly what she would do, if such a risk could ever happen, and if he should come to rescue her as in his dream.

Somehow he led her without any apparent compulsion, yet by a persistent impulse, a little way out of sight of the house behind a tuft of shrubbery. The big laurels stood up in their glistening greenness and shut out the pair from the windows of the Hook. They were close to the gray swirl of the river running still and swift almost on a level with the bank, when he said to her suddenly with his eyes fixed on her face, “I want to ask you something about your—brother.”

“My brother!” cried Ally. There was a sudden wild flushing up of color which she felt to the roots of her hair, and then a chill fell upon her, and paleness. He was watching her closely, and though she was not aware of it she had answered his question. “My brother,” she repeated, faltering, “Wat? he—he is not at home.”

“Miss Penton,” said Rochford, “do you think you could trust me?”

“Trust you!” said Ally, her voice growing fainter: and then a great panic came over her. “Oh! Mr. Rochford,” she cried, “if anything has happened to Wat, tell me, tell me! It is the not knowing that is so dreadful to bear.”

“I hope nothing has happened to him,” he said, very gravely. “It is only that I have had a letter from him, and I thought that perhaps your father had better know.”

“Come in and see mother,” said Ally, breathless. “Oh yes, yes, we had better know, whatever it is. Mr. Rochford, oh, I hope he is not ill. I hope nothing has happened.”

“I can not tell; he has written to me for money.”

“For money!” she cried, the expectation in her face suddenly dropping into a blank of astonishment and almost disappointment. “Was that all?” was the question written on Ally’s face.

“You don’t think that means much? but I fear it means a great deal: he is living in London, and he is very young. You must not think me intrusive or meddling: it is that I am afraid of. Sir Edward might suppose, Miss Penton—your mother might think—it is a difficult thing for a man to do. I thought that you, perhaps, if I could see you, might have a little confidence in me.”

Ally did not know how it was that a sense of sweetness and consolation should thus shed itself through her heart; it was momentary, for she had no time to think of herself, but it made everything so much more easy to her. She put out her hand involuntarily with a sudden sense that to have confidence in him was the most natural thing. “Oh yes,” she said, “tell me, I have confidence. I am sure you would do nothing but what was kind; tell me, oh, tell me!”

He took her hand; he had a right to do it, for she had offered it to him. “Will you try to follow me and understand?” he said. “It is business; it may be difficult for you, for Sir Edward will see the importance of it.” And then he told her, Ally bending all her unused faculties to the work of understanding, how Walter had gone to him before he left home at all to get money, and how he had heard from him again, twice over, asking for more. Ally listened with horror growing in her heart, but perhaps the young man, though he was very sympathetic, was scarcely so sorry as he looked: and perhaps to seek her out and tell her this story was not what a man of higher delicacy would have done. But then Rochford’s desire to be of use to Walter was largely intermingled with his desire to recommend himself to Walter’s sister. He would have done it anyhow out of pity for the boy and his parents, but to secure for himself a confidential interview with Ally, and to have this as a secret between them, and her as his embassador and elucidator to her parents, was what he could not deny himself. He was sorry for Walter, who was most likely spoiling his boyish life, and whom it would be right to call back and restrain: but yet he was almost glad of the occasion which brought him so near the girl whom he loved. She on her part listened to him with excitement, with relief, with the horror of ignorance, with an underlying consciousness that all must now come right.

“If Sir Edward will let me I will go,” Rochford said. “I shall be able to get hold of him perhaps easier than any one who has authority.”

“Oh, how kind you are,” said Ally.

“Kind! I would lie down and let him walk over me to please you,” the young man murmured, as if it were to himself.

It was partly to escape from the embarrassment of such murmurs, though they were sweet enough, and partly to escape from the curious process which was turning her trouble into a semblance of happiness against her will, and without any consent of hers, that Ally insisted at last on carrying this information to her mother. “How could she think you intrusive when you bring her news of Wat?” cried the girl, betraying all the anxiety of the family without knowing it; and she hurried him in to where Lady Penton sat in the window, looking out languidly and often laying down her work to gaze. She, too, flushed with anxious interest to hear of Walter’s letter.

And when Sir Edward came home, he found the lawyer’s dog-cart still at the door, and the young man, surrounded by the three anxious ladies, laying down his plan to them as one who was master of the situation. “I will go at once if you will let me; I’ll get hold of him easier than any one who has a right to find fault,” young Rochford was saying, when, cold and hungry and discouraged, and with a smoldering fury against all the world in his heart, Sir Edward pushed the door open and found him there.

CHAPTER XL.
THE POOR BOY.

Walter had plunged into London as a diver plunges into the sea. He was in search of but one thing: to find her again who had eluded him, who had drawn him after her by the strongest chains that can draw the imagination at his age, by all the tantalizing of vague promises, avoiding fulfillment, of vague engagements which came to nothing, and last of all by this sudden flight, a provocation more audacious than any that went before. Could he ever have expected that she would go with him, to wait all the preliminaries which (as she knew so much better than he did) must precede any possible marriage? When he came to think of it by the light of the morning, which alters the aspect of so many things, he saw quite plainly that this was not a thing he could have expected of her. She was very daring, he thought, and frank, and secure in her own innocence, but this was not a thing which she could be expected to do. He had been foolishly miserable, disappointed to the bottom of his soul, when he heard that she had gone away. The night he had spent trying to sleep, trying to get through the black hours that made any enterprise impossible, had been terrible to him; but with the morning there had come a better cheer. Of course, he said to himself! How could he be so imbecile, so silly, as to think differently. Of course she would not go with him under such circumstances; and it was delicacy on her part that prevented her from saying so. There are times when it is a failure of modesty even to suggest that modesty requires certain precautions. Therefore she had not said it. Impossible for her pure lips, for her pure mind, to put into words the idea that he and she, like any noble knight and maiden, might not have gone together blameless to the end of the world. But she had felt that in the present artificial state of the world it was better not to do this, and she had acted without saying anything, confident that he would understand. There is no limit to the ingenuity of a lover in framing excuses for the actions of the person beloved. Instead of being blamable, was not this another proof of her perfection, of the sensitive delicacy of all her thoughts, she who was so little bound by conventional laws? The mixture of freedom and of reserve, Walter said to himself, was what he had above all admired and adored in her. It was his own stupidity, not any fault of hers, that had given him so wretched a night, such a sense of desertion and abandonment. He remembered now that he had caught the address of the box which stood half packed in the room where she had talked to him, in Crockford’s cottage.

He comprehended everything now. She had taken him there that he should see it, that he should be able to follow her, without the need of saying a word. Oh, how well he understood it all! Had they gone together every circumstance would have been embarrassing; the mere payments to be made, the railway tickets, the cabs, everything would have been awkward. How well (he thought to himself) her fine sense had divined this, perceived it when he saw nothing! That was no doubt the woman’s part, to divine what could and could not be done—to settle it all swiftly, silently, without any need of talk, which would have been more embarrassing still.

These thoughts carried him as on fairy wings to the railway station on the dark and cold morning of his flight from home. He had Rochford’s fifty pounds in his pocket, which seemed to his inexperience a fortune, a sum he would never get through, and which was his own, not taken from his father, or lessening the means at home, but his, to do what he liked with. With that in his pocket, and the delightful confidence that Emmy had not abandoned him—that, on the contrary, she had done what was ideally right, the very thing that if he had understood, if he had not been dull beyond example, he would have liked her to do—Walter rushed from his father’s house with not too much thought of the wretchedness he was leaving behind. He would not think of that, nor did he feel himself at all constrained to do so. Why should they be miserable? He was old enough to know how to take care of himself. A man did get helpless, almost effeminate, living so much at home; but, after all, he could not be made a fuss over as if he were a lost child. They would understand at least that he could take care of himself. And then he reflected, with a smile about the corners of his mouth, they would soon know why it was. If at the bottom of his heart there might be a thrill of alarm as to how they would take it, yet on the surface he felt sure that Emmy’s beauty and charm would overcome all objections; and then it was not as if he were a boy dependent on his father’s bounty. That ten thousand pounds made all the difference! He had thought at first that it was a mean thing to suppose that it made any difference or disturbed any of the bonds of duty: but now his mind was changed, and he perceived that a man has his own career to think of, that nature forbids him to be always in a state of subordination to his father—nature, and the consciousness that he has enough of his own to live upon without troubling his father. Yes, it made a difference, not only on the surface, but fundamentally, a difference which was real; and then the present matter was not one of a day. It concerned, he said to himself with tremendous gravity, the happiness of his life. How could a little anxiety on the part of his parents, a little quite groundless anxiety, be compared to that? Even to be brutal, he said to himself, as he must live longer than they could, his happiness was of the most importance, even if it should affect permanently their peace of mind; and it was only for a time, a few weeks, a few days. What comparison was there? Even father himself, who was a just man, would see and acknowledge this. And as for his mother—oh, mother would forgive! That was easily settled. She might be unhappy for a moment, but she would rather be unhappy than condemn him to life-long misery. That he was very sure of; if the choice were given she would accept that which was best for him. Thus Walter completely vindicated to himself what he was doing; and before he got to the railway, which was a long way off, and gave time for all these elaborations of thought, he was convinced that what he was doing was what, on the whole, if they knew all the circumstances, they would like him to do.

An ordeal which he had not calculated upon met him when he reached London. The address which he had seen on Emmy’s box was in an out-of-the-way and poor place, though Walter, knowing nothing of town, did not know how much out of the way it was. He left his bag at a hotel, and then he went on in a hansom through miles and miles of squalid streets, until at length he reached the goal of his hopes. The goal of his hopes! Was it so? As he stood at the poor little narrow door the ideas with which he had contemplated Crockford’s cottage came into his mind. He had persuaded himself into thinking that Crockford’s cottage was in its way as venerable as Penton; but this No. 37 Albert Terrace, what was there to be said for it? He could not restrain a little shudder, nor could he, when he was shown into the little parlor on the ground-floor, look round him without a gasp of dismay. The only consolation he could get out of it was that he could take Emmy away, that this was indeed his object here, to take her away, to separate her from everything that was squalid and miserable, to surround her with the graces and luxuries of a very different kind of life. But even the aspect of the house, and of the little parlor, which was full of dirty finery and hung round with photographs and colored pictures of a woman in various theatrical dresses, with whom he never associated the object of his affections, was nothing to the shock which Walter sustained when the door opened and the original of these portraits presented herself, a large faded woman, very carelessly dressed, and with the smile which was beaming around him from all the walls, the stereotyped smile of the stage, upon her face. To realize, as he did by and by, that this was her mother, to feel that she had a right to ask him questions, and consider him with a judicial air, as one who had in her greasy hands, which were so disagreeably soft, and felt as if they were pomaded, the thread of his life, gave poor young Wat such a shock as took the words from his lips. He stared at her without knowing what to say to her in a dismay which could find no expression. No, Emmy was not there. Her occupation required that she should live in another part of London. No, she did not know that she could give him her daughter’s address—but if he returned in the evening he might perhaps see her.

“You are Mr. Penton? Oh, yes, she has spoken of you. She feared that perhaps you would take this step. But, Mr. Penton, my daughter is a girl of the highest principle. She can see you only under her mother’s roof.”

“I wish nothing else!” cried poor Wat. “I—I am ready to do whatever she pleases. She knows I am ready—she knows—”

“Yes,” said the mother, nodding her terrible head, upon which was banded and braided and plaited more hair than ever grew, and smiling her terrible smile, and putting forth that odious hand to give a little confidential pressure to his. “I also know a great deal, Mr. Penton. I have heard about you—your chivalry and your magnificent position, and your many, many qualities. But, as you know, a mother’s duty is to guard her child. I know the snares of life better than she; I have trodden the thorny way before her, young gentleman. I have myself experienced much which—I would save her from,” added the woman, with the imposing gesture of a mère noble, turning away her head and extending her hand as if to hold the gay deceiver at a distance.

He was the wolf at the gate of the sheepfold, it appeared. Alas, poor Wat! he did not recognize himself from that point of view. Was not he more like the poor strayed lamb, straying in ignorantly into the midst of the slayers? He was glad to get away, to bring this alarming, unexpected interview to an end: all the more that it had begun to be apparent to him, in a way that made his heart sick, that in the face of this woman, with all its traces of paint and powder, and in the little gestures and tricks of tone and movement, there were resemblances, frightful resemblances, suggestive of his Emmy; that it was possible she might some day—oh, horrible thought!—be like her mother. But no, he cried to himself! the marks which her profession had left—the lines under her eyes, the yellow stains of the rouge, the unwholesome softness of her pomaded hands—from all those he had come to deliver Emmy; these artificial evils never need to be hers. She should smile upon people who loved her, not upon the horrible public staring at her and her beauty. As he turned away from the place he even said to himself that this poor woman was not to blame for all those blemishes of self-decoration. It had been her trade; she had been compelled to do it. Who had any right to blame her? These might be as honorable scars as those which a soldier gets in battle. Perhaps she had to do it to get bread for herself and her child—to bring up Emmy and make her what he knew her. If that should be so, were not the traces of what she had gone through, of what she had had to bear, to be respected, venerated even, like any other marks of painful toil? He made these representations hotly to himself, but he did not find that any ingenuity of thought delivered him from that honor and repulsion. To see the rouge and the powder on the face of a young woman still playing her part was one thing; to mark the traces of them on the vulgarized and faded countenance of one whose day was over was quite another. It was unjust, but it was natural. And this was Emmy’s mother, and Emmy was like her. Oh, that such a thing should be!

After this came the strangest episode that could occur in a young man’s life. He was afloat on London, on that sea of pleasure and misery, amid all the perils and temptations that made the hearts of those who loved him sink within them. Even little Mab, with her little stock of worldly knowledge, who thought he would return home when he “tired,” or when his money was done, could form no other idea of the prodigal than that he was living in pleasure. He was amusing himself, Rochford thought, not without a half sympathy in the break-out of the home boy. As for his father and mother, unutterable terrors were in their minds, fears of they knew not what—of vice and depravity, evil associates, evil habits, the things that kill both body and soul. But Walter’s present life was a life more tedious than all the monotony of home. It had its bright moments, when he was with Emmy, who sometimes permitted him to take her to the play, sometimes to walk with her through the bright-lighted streets, sometimes even on Saturday afternoons or Sunday to take her to the country. It was only on these days that he saw her in daylight at all. She said, laughingly, that her occupation forbade it at other times, but she would not tell him what that occupation was. When they went to Richmond or Greenwich, or to a little box in one or other of the theaters, where they could sit half hidden by the curtains, and carry on their own little drama, which was more interesting than anything on the stage, Walter was in a strange elysium, in which the atmosphere was charged with painful elements, yet was more sweet than anything else in life. He made a hundred discoveries in her, sometimes sweet, sometimes—different. It made no alteration in his sentiment when they happened to be discoveries that wounded—sometimes even that shocked him. He was hurt, his sensitive nature felt the shock as if it had been a wound; but it did not affect his love. That love even changed a little—it became protecting, forgiving, sometimes remonstrating; he longed that she should be his, that he might put all that right, mold her to a more exquisite model, smooth away the points that jarred. Already he had begun to hint this and that to her, to persuade her to one little alteration and another. To speak more softly—she had spoken softly enough at Crockford’s, it was only the spirit of the street that had got into her blood—to move more gently, to know that some of the things she said were dreadful things—things that should not come from such lips. He had not perceived any of these things while she was at Crockford’s; he perceived them now, but they did not affect his love, they only penetrated that golden web with threads of shadow, with lines of pain, and smote his heart with keen arrows of anguish and regret—regret not that he had given his life and love to her, but only that she was less perfect than he had thought—that, instead of looking up to her always, and shaping his harsher being (as he had thought) upon her sweetness, it must be his first to shape and pare these excrescences away.

But, besides these glimpses of a paradise which had many features of purgatory, Walter had nothing at all to counterbalance the havoc he was making in his existence. He did not know what to do with himself in London. He rose late, having no occupation for the morning; he wandered about the streets; he eat the late breakfast and dinner, which were now all the meals he had time for, spinning out these repasts as long as possible. It was a wonder that he never met his father, who was straying about the streets in search of him; but Walter’s streets were not those which his father frequented. He acquired, or rather both acquired, a great knowledge of town in these perambulations, but not of the same kind. And then he would go to his occupation, the only tangible thing in his life, the meeting with Emmy. She was sadly shifty and uncertain even in these scraps of her time, which were all she would or could give him. She was not sure that she wanted to marry him at all. She was quite sure that she would only be married by special license at four in the afternoon, which was all the fashion now. But no; he was not to take that oath and make himself unhappy about her. He should not be obliged to swear. She would be married by bans—that was the fashion too. She knew all about what had to be done—everything that was necessary—but she would not tell him. She laughed and eluded him as before. Then she said, Why should they marry? they were very well as they were. “You are very good to me at present,” she said; “you think I must have a box whenever we go to the theater, and a bouquet, and everything that is nice; but after we are married, you will not be so kind.”

When Walter protested that neither marriage nor anything else could diminish his devotion, she shook her head, and said that they would not be able to afford it.

“You can’t have so much as five hundred a year,” she said; “most likely not more than four—and what would that be in London?”

“But we need not live in London,” he said; “my father would give us the Hook.”

Emmy threw up her arms with a scream.

“Should you like to murder me?” she cried.

It hurt the poor boy that she should have this opinion of his home—the home in which he had been born; and he listened with deep depression to the satirical description of it she began to make.

“We ought to be ducks to live in the damp like that. I’ve never been used to dabble in the water, and it would be my death—I know it would be my death. But we might let it, you know, and that would give us a little more money, say two hundred a year more—do you think it would bring two hundred a year?”

“Don’t talk of such things!” cried the young man; “it is not for you to be troubled about that.”

“And for whom is it, then?” she cried, “for you know no more than a baby; and I believe you think we are to live like the birds on worms and seeds, and anything else that turns up.”

Walter had never left her with so heavy a heart as on this evening. He was entirely cast down by her hesitations, her doubts, the contempt with which she spoke of the fortune which he had thought magnificent in his ignorance, and the home which he loved. He went back to his hotel with a heavy heart. He had given up everything for her—all the other objects that made life of importance. He had put himself altogether at her disposal, and lived but for the moments of their meeting. What was he to do if she despised him—if she cast him off? A faint sense of the pitiful part he had to play began vaguely to awaken in his mind, not moving him to the length of rebellion, nor even to the exercise of his critical faculties, only to misery and a chill suspicion that, instead of sharing the fervor of his feelings, she was weighing him in terrible scales of judgment, estimating what he was worth—a process which made Walter’s heart sink. For what was he worth?—unless it might happen to be love—in repayment of that which he gave.

And next evening when he went to the house, which he always approached with a shiver, afraid of meeting the mother, relieved when he found his love alone, he suddenly found himself in the presence he dreaded with a shock of alarm and surprise: for Emmy, whose perceptions were keen enough on this point, generally contrived to spare him the meeting which she divined he feared. Mrs. Sam Crockford met him with her sunniest smile. She caressed his hand with those large, soft, flaccid fingers from which he shrunk. “She is not in, but I have a message for you, my dear young sir,” she said.

“Not in!” cried Walter, his heart sinking into his boots.

“She is engaged elsewhere. May I tell you the truth, Mr. Penton? She has confidence in her mother. I am her only protector, for her step-father, though an honest fellow, does not count, being in another walk of life. I am her only protector, young gentleman.”

“But surely, surely she doesn’t want protection—from me?”

“Pardon me, my dear Mr. Penton, that is exactly where she wants protection—from you, that is, from her own heart, from her own treacherous, foolish heart. What have you to offer her, that is the question? She has had very good offers. There is one at present, hung up, so to speak, because she does not know her own mind.”

“Let me speak to her,” said Walter, hoarsely. “She can not intend to desert me after all—after all!”

“Dear boy!” cried the woman, pressing his hand once more with hers, “how I admire such impetuosity. But you must remember my duty as a mother. You have nothing to settle on her, Mr. Penton. Yes, I understand your ten thousand pounds; but you are not of age. You can’t even make your will or sign the settlements till you are of age. She has very good offers, no one could have better. Shall I tell you,” said Emmy’s mother, with the most ingenuous and ingratiating of smiles, “shall I tell you what I should do if I were you? I would not allow her to sacrifice herself. I would rather, much rather, that the sacrifice was on my side.”

“Sacrifice!” he cried, feeling the dreadful little room reel round him.

“What else can you call it, Mr. Penton? You will not be twenty-one till the autumn, I hear. October, is it? And in the meantime my chyild has to toil. Conceive a creature of her refined and sensitive temperament, young gentleman! a girl not adapted to face the world.”

This confused Walter, who could not but feel that Emmy was very well qualified to face the world, and to whom she seemed a sort of Una triumphant over it; but he would not reply on this score. All he could say was an impassioned offer if she would only accept—if her mother would but accept—all that he had. What could it matter, when so soon everything he had would be hers?

The mother put away his offer with her large white hand, turning her shoulder to him and half averting her head. “Money! I dare not propose it; I dare not suggest it, though it is most generous, most noble on your part,” she added, turning round suddenly, seizing his hand in both of hers with a soft lingering pressure, which poor Walter could not help feeling left something of the pomade behind. Then she subsided into a more majestic pose. “But, dear fellow, what have you?” she said, with a sort of caressing reflectiveness. It all seemed like a scene in a play to Walter, notwithstanding that he himself was one of the actors. “What have you?” she said, with a sort of tender regret. “Your agent will soon tire of making you advances, and every advance diminishes your capital. We are talking of marriage, my dear young gentleman, not of mere amusement and spending your money free, as some young men will do to please a girl they are in love with; but the object of my life has been to bring up my girl respectable, and nothing of that sort is possible.” She waved her hand, dismissing the idea, while Walter stood stupefied, gazing at her. “It is a question of marriage,” she added, with solemnity; “and what have you to offer—expectations?” Then she sunk her voice to a sort of stage whisper. “Do you know that your father is after you, young sir? He has been here.”

“Here!” said the boy, in sudden alarm and dismay.

She nodded her head slowly and solemnly. “Here. I need not say I gave him no information: but if you rely upon him to receive and support you, as my child has told me—Young Mr. Penton, Emmy must not be exposed to an angry father’s wrath.”

“My father here!” He looked round him, at the room, at the woman, at all these dreadful accessories, with a sinking heart. He seemed to see them all through his father’s eyes, who had never seen Emmy, and to himself they were terrible enough, with all the charm that she exercised.

“No!” she said, raising her arm. “I can not have her exposed to an angry father’s wrath. Mr. Penton, this suit of yours must come to an end.”

“I must see Emmy,” he cried, with confused misery. “I must see Emmy; don’t, don’t, for pity’s sake, say any more. It is she who must decide.”

“Pardon me; she takes her own way in small matters, but in this a mother is the best judge. Mr. Penton, she must not be exposed to an angry—”

“I must see Emmy, I must see Emmy,” cried poor Walter. He was capable of no other thought.

CHAPTER XLI.
A MORE CHEERFUL VIEW.

Sir Edward, with more than the usual irritation in his countenance, contemplated the new member of the family council. He had come in with a great deal to say, and the sight of Rochford was like a sudden check, unlooked for, and most unwelcome. He had, indeed, begun to speak, throwing himself into a chair. “I’ve got my trouble for my pains—” when he perceived that the weariness, the contrariety, the trouble in his face, had been betrayed to a stranger. He pulled himself up with a sudden effort. “Ah, Rochford,” he said, with an attempt at a smiling welcome, which was as much out of his usual habits as of his present state of mind.

“Edward,” said his wife, “Mr. Rochford has heard from Walter. He came to bring us the letter; he has some information, and he knows, oh, more than any of us—from the first.”

“What is it he knows?” cried the father, exasperated, with a start of energy in defense of his privacy and of his son. He looked with his angry, troubled eyes at the intruder with an angry defiance and contempt. Rochford the solicitor! the man of business, a man whom indeed he could not treat as an inferior, but who had no claim to place himself on the same level as a Penton of Penton. He had not hitherto shown any disposition to stand on his dignity to make the difference between the old level and the new. But that this young fellow should presume to bring information about his son, to thrust in a new and intrusive presence into a family matter, was more than he could bear. “I am very glad to consult Mr. Rochford on matters within his range,” he added, with an angry smile, “but this is a little, just a little, out of his sphere.”

“Edward!” cried Lady Penton, and “Father!” cried Ally; the latter with an indignation and resentment which surprised herself. But to hear him, so kind as he was, put down so, put aside when he wanted nothing but to help, had become suddenly intolerable to Ally. Why should Walter, who was behaving so unkindly, be considered so much above him, who had come out of his way to help? An impulse almost of indignation against Walter filled her mind, and she felt ready to silence her father himself, to demand what he meant. She did not herself comprehend the fervor of new feeling, the opposition, the resentment that filled her heart.

“When Sir Edward reads this letter he will understand,” said the young man, who kept his temper admirably. He was ready to bear a great deal more than that, having so much at stake. And he for his part was quite aware that for a Rochford of Reading to ally himself to the Pentons of Penton was a great matter, and one which might naturally meet with opposition. To have his part taken by Ally was a great matter—he could put up with her father’s scorn for a time.

Sir Edward read the letter, and his serious countenance grew more somber still. “From this it appears that my son has applied to you for money? I am sorry he has done it, but I don’t see that it tells any more. Walter has not made a confidant of you that I can see. My dear, I don’t mean to be disagreeable to Mr. Rochford; but he must see, any one might see, that a family matter—a—a consultation among ourselves—a question which has nothing to do with the public—”

“I am your man of business, Sir Edward,” said Rochford. “My family have known the secrets of yours long before my time. I don’t think we have ever betrayed our trust. Your son has put some information into my hands. I did not think I was justified in keeping it from you, and I think, if you will let me, that I can help you. Intrusion was not what I meant.”

He was the least excited of that tremulous party, and he felt that the object which was before him was well worth a struggle; but at the same time the young man was not without a certain generosity of purpose, a desire to help these troubled and anxious people. To Ally his attitude was entirely one of generosity and nobleness. He had come in the midst of the darkness to bring the first ray of light, and he was too magnanimous to be disgusted or repulsed by the petulance of her father’s distress. If he had a more individual motive it was that of pleasing her, and that was no selfish motive, surely. That added—how could it be otherwise?—a charm to all the rest in her dazzled eyes.

“Mr. Rochford is very kind, Edward,” said Lady Penton. “Why should we not take the help he offers? He is a young man, he understands their ways, not like you and me. The young ones understand each other, just as we understand each other. They haven’t the same way of judging. They don’t think how their fathers and mothers suffer at home. Oh, let him go! it isn’t as if he would talk of it and betray us. Listen to him. He has known of this all the time, and he hasn’t betrayed us. Oh, let him go.”

“Go! where is he to go?”

“To find Walter,” they all cried together.

“It is killing you,” said Lady Penton. “Let the young man—who doesn’t feel as we do, who doesn’t think of it as we do—let him go, Edward. It seems so dreadful to us, but not to him. He thinks that probably there is nothing dreadful in it at all, that it is a thing that—a thing that—boys do: they are so thoughtless—they do it, meaning no particular harm.”

“There is something in that,” said Sir Edward, with relief. “I am glad you begin to see it in that way, my dear. It is more silly than wrong—I have thought so all along.”

“That is what Mr. Rochford says. He is a young man himself. He thinks the boy will never have considered—and that as soon as he thinks, as soon as he finds out—Edward, we mustn’t be tragical about it. I see it now as you say. Stay at home—you have so many things to think of—and let the young man go. They understand each other between themselves,” Lady Penton said, with a somewhat wan smile.

And then Sir Edward began to relax a little. “Rochford is right there,” he said. “It is perhaps a good thing to have a man’s view. You, of course, were always unduly frightened, my dear. As for not writing, that is so common a thing—I could have told you all that. But, naturally, seeing you in such a state has affected me. When you are married,” he said, turning to Rochford with a faint smile, “you will find that though you may think it weak of her, or even silly, the color of your thoughts will always be affected by your wife’s.”

This speech produced a curious little momentary dramatic scene which had nothing to do with the question in hand. Rochford’s eyes instinctively flashed a glance at Ally, who, though hers were cast down, saw it, and flamed into sudden crimson, the consciousness of which filled her with shame and confusion. Her blush threw a reflection instantaneous, like the flash of a fire, over him, and lighted up his eyes with a glow of delight, to conceal which he too looked down, and answered, with a sort of servile respect, “I have no doubt of it whatever, sir; and it ought to be so.”

“Well, perhaps theoretically it ought to be so,” Sir Edward said, who noticed nothing, and whose observation was not at any time quick enough to note what eyes say to eyes. Now that it was all explained and settled, and he felt that it was by his wife’s special interposition that Rochford had been taken into favor, there could be no doubt that it was a comfort to have a man, with all the resources of youth and an immediate knowledge of that world which Sir Edward was secretly aware he had almost forgotten, to take counsel with. His spirits rose. His trouble had been greatly intensified by that sensation of helplessness which had grown upon him as he wandered about the London streets, sick at heart, obstinate, hopeless, waiting upon chance, which is so poor a support. This day he had been more hopeless than ever, feeling his impotence with that sickening sense of being able to do nothing, to think of nothing, which is one of the most miserable of sensations. It was so far from true that he had taken the color of his thoughts from his wife, or felt Walter’s absence more lightly than she had done, that it was he who had been the pessimist all along, whose imagination and memory had furnished a thousand stories of ruin and the destruction of the most hopeful of young men, and to whom it was almost impossible to communicate any hopefulness. But a partnership of any kind is of great use in such circumstances, and above all the partnership of marriage, in which one can always put the blame upon the other with the advantage of being himself able to believe that the matter really stands so. Lady Penton did not complain. She was willing enough to bear the blame. Her own heart was much relieved by Rochford’s cheerful intimation that Walter’s little escapade was the commonest thing in the world, and most probably meant nothing at all. If it might but be so! If it were only his thoughtlessness, the folly of a boy! At least if that could not be believed it was still a good thing and most fortunate that people should think so, and the man who suggested it endeared himself to the mother’s heart.

And then another and more expansive consultation began. On ordinary occasions Sir Edward allowed himself to be questioned, giving brief answers, sometimes breaking off impatiently, shutting himself up in a troubled silence, from which an unsatisfactory scrap of revelation unwillingly dropped would now and then come. Sometimes he drove them all away from him with the morose irritation of his unsuccess. What did it matter what he had done in town, when it all came to nothing, when it was of no consequence, and brought no result? But to-day he spoke with a freedom which he had never shown before. Everything was more practical, more possible. The new agent had to be informed of all the facts upon which perhaps his better knowledge of such matters might throw new light. Sir Edward confessed that he had extracted from old Crockford the address of the girl’s mother, “Though I could not allow—though I mean I feel sure that the boy never mixed himself up with people of that sort,” he added, with his little air of superiority; then described Mrs. Sam Crockford to them, and her declaration that she knew nothing of the young gentleman. In his heart of hearts Sir Edward did not believe this any more than Rochford did, but it gave him a countenance, it supported his new theory, the theory so adroitly suggested to him that Walter after all was probably not much to blame. This theory was a greater consolation than can be told to all of them. Not much to blame! Careless only, amusing himself, a thing which most youths of his age did somehow or other. “Of course,” Rochford said, “there are some preternatural boys who never tear their pinafores or do anything they ought not to do.” Thus he conveyed to their minds a suggestion that it was in fact rather spirited and fine of Walter to claim the emancipation which was natural to his kind. The load which was thus lifted from their gentle bosoms is not to be described. Lady Penton indeed knew better, but yet was so willing to be deceived, so ready to be persuaded! And Sir Edward knew—oh, a great many variations of the theme, better and worse—but yet was willing too to take the young man’s word for it, the young man who belonged to Walter’s generation and knew what was in the minds of the boys as none of the others could do. He brought comfort to all their hearts, both to those who had experience of life and those who had none, by his bold assumption of an easy knowledge. “I have no doubt, if truth were told, he is dying to come home,” Rochford said, “and very tired of all the noise and nonsense that looks so pleasant at a distance. I know how one feels in such circumstances—bored to death, finding idleness and the theaters and all that sort of thing the dreariest routine, and yet ashamed to own it and come back. Oh, he only wants to see a little finger held up to him from home, I know!” said the young fellow, with a laugh. He did himself the greatest injustice, having been all his life of the order of those who have the greatest repugnance to dirtying their pinafores. But love and policy, and pity as well, inspired him, and his laugh was the greatest comfort in the world to all those aching hearts. He took down Mrs. Sam Crockford’s address, and all the information which could be given to him; the very sight of his little note-book inspiring his audience with confidence. “The thing for me to do,” he said, “is to take him myself the money he wants. Though the address he gives is only at a post-office I shall find him out—and perhaps take a day or two’s amusement in his company,” he added, with a smile.

“Oh, Mr. Rochford, that would be kindness indeed!” Lady Penton said.

And Ally gave him a look—what did it say? Promises, pledges, a whole world of recompense was in it. He said, with another little laugh of confidence and self-satisfaction, not untouched with emotion, “Yes, I think that’s the best way. I’ll get him to take me about, I only a country fellow, and he up to all the ways of town; and it will be strange if we don’t get to be on confidential terms; and as I feel quite certain he is dying to come home—”

“Most likely, most likely,” said Sir Edward. It was, as Rochford felt, touch and go, very delicate work with Sir Edward. A word too much, a look even, might be enough to remind Walter’s father that he was the head of the house of Penton, and that this was only his man of business. The young lawyer was acute enough to see that, and wise enough to restrain the natural desire to enlarge upon what he could do, which the intoxication of feminine belief which was round him encouraged and called forth. He subdued himself with a self-denial which was very worthy of credit, but which no one gave him any credit for. And by this time the afternoon was spent, darkness coming on, and it was necessary he should go home: he felt this to be expedient in the state of affairs, though it was hard to go without a word from Ally, without a moment of that more intimate consultation, all in the erring brother’s interests, which yet drew these two so much closer together. “I will come this way,” he said, as they all went with him to the door where the dog-cart was standing, “to-morrow, on my way to town, to see if there are any last directions—anything you wish to suggest, Sir Edward—anything that may occur to you in the meantime, which I might carry out.”

“Yes, perhaps that will be well,” Sir Edward said.

“To go direct from you will give me so much more influence.”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. It was very delicate work with Sir Edward. “Telegraph if I’m wanted. Of course I am ready—whatever is wanted.”

“And you will let us know at once, oh, at once, Mr. Rochford; you know how anxious, though foolishly, as you all say—”

“Not foolishly,” the young man said, pressing Lady Penton’s hand. He was very sorry for her wistful, tremulous looks, though his heart was bounding with satisfaction and elation in his own prospects. “Not foolishly,” he half whispered, “but soon to be over. I think I can promise you that—I feel sure I can promise you that.”

“God bless you!” said Walter’s mother, “and reward you, for I can’t—oh, if you bring me back my boy, Mr. Rochford!”

“I will,” he cried, but still in a whisper. “I will! and you can reward me, dear Lady Penton.” He kissed her hand in his emotion, which is a salutation very unusual in mild English households, and brought a little thrill, a sensation of solemnity, and strangeness, and possibilities unconceived, to her startled consciousness. Ally could not speak at all. She was half concealed in her mother’s shadow, clinging to her, still more full of strange sweet excitement and emotion. Her young eyelids seemed to weigh down her eyes. She could not look at him, but his words seemed to murmur in her ears and dwell there, returning over and over again, “You can reward me.” Ally at least, now, if not before, knew how.

“You’ve got a good horse there,” said Sir Edward, mechanically stroking the shining neck of the impatient animal, “you’ll not be long on the road.”

“No, she goes well; to-morrow then, sir, early.”

“As early as you please—you’ll have a cold drive. Thank you, Rochford.” He put out his hand to the young man with a hasty touch just as Rochford took the reins, and then turned away and shut himself up in his book-room, while the others stood watching the dash of the mare, the sudden awakening of sound in the silence, the glimmer of the lamp as the cart flew along the drive. Sir Edward retired to think it over by his dull afternoon fire, which was not made up till after tea. The night had fallen, but he did not immediately light his candles. He bent down over the dull red glow to think it over. His mind was relieved, there seemed now some possibility that this miserable anxiety might be over. But even though his object may be gained by other means, a man does not like to fail in his own person, and the chill of unsuccess was in his heart. Rochford, his man of business! well, princes themselves have to seek help from men of business. It was his trade to find out things. It was in the way of his profession that he should succeed. But then had not his ear caught something about a reward—a reward! what reward? except his charges, of course. A new contrariety came into Sir Edward’s mind, though he could not define it. He had not at all an agreeable half hour as he sat thinking it over in that dull moment before tea, over the dull book-room fire.

CHAPTER XLII.
A NEW AGENT.

Ally was up very early next morning. She was always early. In a house with so many little children and so few servants, if you were not up early you were in arrears with your work the whole day. That was her conviction always, but on many occasions, especially on dark winter mornings, it did not carry the same practical force. This day she was more certain of the necessity than ever. She scolded Anne for not sharing it, but so softly that Anne fell asleep in the middle of the little lecture. And Ally knew very well that nothing could be done, that no one could come so very early as this was. But still her mind was in great agitation, and it did her good to be up and about. About Walter? She had been very unhappy about Walter, full of distress and trouble, her heart beating at every sound, thinking of nothing else. But to-day she was, to say the least, a little more at ease about her brother. Last night they had all been more at their ease, so much so that Lady Penton had begun to talk a little about the removal, and the new furniture that would be required, and the many expenses and advantages, such as they were, of the new establishment. The expenses were what Lady Penton was most sensible of. For her own part, perhaps the advantages did not seem advantages to her. She was satisfied with the Hook. What did she want with Penton? But, at all events, she had been able to think of all this, to change the one persistent subject which had occupied her mind. And perhaps this was what had set Ally’s mind afloat. She was glad to be quite alone to think it all over, notwithstanding that Martha looked at her with no agreeable glances as she came into the dining-room before the fire was lighted.

“I just overslep’ myself, Miss Alice,” said Martha. “With helping to wash up down-stairs, and helping to get the nursery straight upstairs, a body has no time for sleep.”

“It does not matter at all, Martha,” said Ally with fervor, “I only thought I should like to arrange the books a little.”

“Oh, if that’s all, miss,” Martha said, graciously accepting the excuse.

But even Martha was a hinderance to Ally’s thoughts. She made herself very busy collecting the picture-books with which the children made up for the want of their usual walks on wet days, and which they were apt to leave about the dining-room, and ranging them all in a row on the shelf while Martha concluded her work. But as soon as she was alone Ally’s arms dropped by her side and her activity ceased. She had put away her thoughts in Martha’s presence, as she had done in Anne’s and in her mother’s, keeping them all for her own enjoyment; but now that she was alone she could take them out and look at them. After all, they were not thoughts at all, they were recollections, anticipations, they were a sort of soft intoxication, delirium, a state too sweet to be real, yet which somehow was real—more real than the most commonplace and prosaic things. To be alone, how delightful it was, even with the fire only half alight, and reluctant to begin the work of the day, and Martha’s duster still before her. She leaned her arms on the mantel-piece and bent her head down upon them and shut her eyes. She could see best when she shut her eyes. Had any one been there Ally could not thus have shut herself up in that magical world. Her hands were rather blue with cold, if truth must be told, but she was aware of nothing but an atmosphere of warmth and softness, full of golden reflections and a haze of inarticulate happiness. She had forgotten all about that momentary movement of pride, of hesitation, which she had afterward called by such hard names, but which at the moment had been real enough; that sensation of being Miss Penton of Penton, in the presence of Mrs. Rochford and her daughter. Both the sin and the repentance had faded out of Ally’s mind. She did not ask herself anything about her suitor, whether he would satisfy her father, whether he would be thought of importance equal to the new claims of the family. Ally had gone beyond this stage, she remembered none of these things. The only external matters which affected her were the facts that for her sake he was going out into the world to bring back her brother, and that the whole horizon round her was the brighter for this enterprise. Naturally her thoughts gave it a far graver character than it possessed. It seemed something like the work of a knight-errant, an effort of self-sacrifice beautiful and terrible. He was about to leave his home, to plunge into that seething world of London, of which she had heard so many appalling things, for her brother’s, nay, for her sake. She thought of him as wandering through streets more miserable than any of the bewildering dark forests of romance. In short, all the anguish of such a search as she had read of in heart-rending stories occurred to Ally’s mind. And all this he was doing for her. It gave her a pang of delightful suffering more sweet than enjoyment, that he should be so good, so brave, and that it should be all for her.

Meantime young Rochford prepared, with a little trouble, it must be said, to absent himself from his business for a few days; he thought that certainly this time must be required for a mission that might not be an easy one; for if he did not know, as he said, that such escapades were the commonest thing in the world among young men, he knew very well that to bring back a young culprit was not easily accomplished, and made up his mind that he would want both courage and patience for his task. As a matter of fact, he had no idea of Walter’s motive, or of the “entanglement” which had drawn him away. He was willing enough to believe in an entanglement, but not in one so innocent and blameless; and he believed that the youth had plunged into the abyss with the curiosity and passion of youth, to feel what was to be felt and to see what was to be seen, and to make a premature dash at that tree of the knowledge of evil which has so wonderful and bitter a charm. He was ready to take a great deal of trouble for the deliverance of the boy, though not without a little shake of his head at the thought of the other young Pentons who had also taken that plunge and whom it had not been possible to rescue. He had heard his father tell how many efforts Sir Walter had made to save his sons, and with how little effect. Did it perhaps run in the blood? But Rochford was fully determined to do his best, and confident, as became a fighter in that good cause, that whoever failed, he at least would succeed. And it was quite possible that he might have been willing to help these poor people (as he called them to himself) and save the unfortunate boy, if he had not loved Ally. He was generously sorry for them all, notwithstanding his consciousness of the enormous advantage likely to spring to himself from what he could do for them. He would have done it, he thought—if they had asked him, or even if it had come evidently in his way—for them; and certainly he would have done it for Ally’s brother, whosoever that brother might have been to recommend himself to the girl he loved. There could be no doubt upon that subject. The complication which made it so infinitely useful to him to make himself useful in this way, because the girl he loved was the eldest daughter of Sir Edward Penton, and more or less out of his sphere, was after all a secondary matter—and yet it could not be denied that it was very important too. He said to himself that he would have chosen Ally from the world had she been a poor curate’s daughter, a poor governess, a nobody. But at the same time he could not but be aware that to marry Miss Penton was a great thing for him, and worth a great deal of trouble to bring about. Perhaps a man’s feelings in the matter of his love are never so unalloyed as a girl’s, to whom the love itself is everything, and with whom the circumstances tell for nothing. Or perhaps this depends upon the circumstances themselves, since a girl too has many calculations to make and much to take into consideration when she is called upon to advance herself and her family by a fortunate marriage. Rochford could not help feeling that such a connection would be a fine thing: but it was not for the connection that Ally was dear to him. He thought of her in his way with subdued rapture really stronger and more passionate, though not so engrossing, as her own, as he dashed along the river-side, his mare almost flying, his heart going faster, beating with the hope of a meeting with Ally before he should see her father—before he set off upon his mission. If Ally loved him she would find the means, he thought, to give him that recompense for his devotion; and sure enough, as he came in sight of the gate, he became aware also of a little slim figure gathering the first snow-drops in the shadow of the big laurel bushes that screened the little drive. He flung the reins to his groom and leaped out of the cart, at imminent risk of startling the other nervous, highly organized animal, who had carried him along so swiftly; but what did he care for that or any other risk? In a moment, shutting the gate behind him gingerly, notwithstanding his headlong haste, that nobody might be aware of his arrival, he was by Ally’s side.

“You are gathering flowers, Miss Penton, already!”

“Oh, Mr. Rochford, is it you? Yes; they are earlier here than anywhere. They are only snow-drops, after all.”

She looked not unlike a snow-drop herself, with a white wrapper wound round her throat, and her head, which drooped a little—but not till after she had recognized him with a rapid glance and an overwhelming momentary blush which left her pale.

“I could think there would be always flowers wherever you trod,” he said.

“That’s poetry,” she replied, with a little tremulous laugh, in which there was excitement and a little nervous shivering from the cold. “It must have been you I heard galloping along,” she added, hurriedly, “like the wind. Are you in haste for the train?”

“I was in haste, hoping for a word with you before I started.”

“My father is expecting you, Mr. Rochford.”

“Yes; I did not mean your father. Won’t you say a kind word to me before I go?”

“Oh, if I could only thank you as I should like! Mr. Rochford, I do with my whole heart.”

“It is not thanks I want,” he said. “Ally—don’t be angry with me—if I come back—with—your brother.”

“Oh, Mr. Rochford, we will all—I don’t know what to say—bless you!”

“I don’t want blessing; nor is it the others I am thinking of. Ally, are you angry?”

He had taken in his own her cold hands, with the snow-drops in them, and was bending over them. Ally trembled so that she let her flowers fall, but neither of them paid any attention. He did not say he loved her, or anything of that kind, which perhaps the girl expected; but he said, “Ally, are you angry?” once more.

“Oh, no,” she said, in a voice that was no more than a whisper: and then the sound of a step upon the gravel made them start asunder.

It was Sir Edward, who had heard the dog-cart coming along the curve by the river, and who, restless in his anxiety, had come forth to see who it was. Both Rochford and Ally stooped down after that little start of separation to pick up the fallen flowers, and then once more their hands touched, and the same whisper, so meaningless yet so full of meaning, was exchanged—“If you are not angry, give them to me, Ally!”

Angry? no; why should she be angry? She gave him the snow-drops out of her hand, and while he ran up to meet her father was thankful to have the chance of stooping to gather up the rest. It was not so much, after all, that he had said; nothing but her name—Ally—and “Are you angry?” At what should she be angry?—because he had called her by her name? It had never sounded so sweetly, so soft, in her ears before.

“Yes, I am on my way to the station. I came to see if you had any instructions for me; if there was any—news, before I go.”

“I don’t see how there could be any news,” said Sir Edward, who had relapsed into something of his old irritation. “I didn’t expect any news. If he did not write at first, do you think it likely he would write now?”

“He might do so any day; every day makes it more likely that he should do so,” said Rochford, “in my opinion.”

“Ah, you think more favorably than I do,” said the father, shaking his head, but he was mollified by the words. He went on shaking his head. “As long as he can get on there I don’t expect him to write. I don’t expect him to come back. I don’t think you’ll find him ever so easily as you suppose. But still, you can try; I have no objection that you should try.”

“Then there is nothing more to say beyond what we settled last night?”

“Nothing that I can think of. His mother, of course, would have messages to send; she would wish you to tell him that she was anxious, and feared his falling ill, and all that; but I don’t pretend to be unhappy about his health or—anything of that sort,” said Sir Edward, hoarsely, with a wave of his hand. “You can tell him from me that he’d better come home at once; we’ll be removing presently. He had best be here when we take possession of Penton; he had best—be here—But you know very well what to say—that is, if you find him,” he added, with a harsh little laugh, “which you won’t find so easy as you think.”

“I don’t suppose it will be easy,” said Rochford; “but if it can be done I’ll do it. I’ll stay till I’ve done it. I shall not return without some news.”

“Ah, well; go, go. You are full of confidence, you young men. You think you’ve but to say ‘come’ and he will come. You’ll know better when you are as old—as old as I am. Good-bye, then, if you are going. You’ll—look in as you come back?”

“I shall come here direct, sir: and telegraph as soon as I have anything to say.”

“Good-bye, then,” said Sir Edward, stretching out his hand. He held Rochford for a moment, shaking his hand in a tremulous way. Then he said, “It must be inconvenient, leaving all your business, going away on this wild-goose chase.”

“If it were ever so inconvenient I shouldn’t mind.”

He kept swinging the young man’s hand, with a pressure which seemed every moment as though he would throw it away; then he murmured in his throat, “God bless you, then!” and dropped it, and turned back toward the house.

Rochford was left standing once more by the side of Ally, with her hands full of snow-drops, who had followed every word of this little colloquy with rapt attention. The flowers she had given him were carefully inclosed in his left hand; they were a secret between his love and him. He did not unfold them even for her to see. “Walk with me to the gate,” he said, in a voice which was half entreaty and half command. He held out his arm to her, and she took it. The little authority, the air of appropriation, was sweet to her as she thought no flattery could have been.

“He will be against me,” said Rochford, holding her hand close, bending over her in the shade of the laurels. “And I don’t wonder. But if I come back successful perhaps they will think me worthy of a reward. Ally, darling, you thank me for going, when it is all mercenary, for my own interest—”

“Oh, no, no—no.”

“It is—to win you. I am not good enough for you, I know that, but I can not give up this dear hope. Will you stand by me if they refuse?”

She made no reply. How could she make any reply? She held his arm tight, and drooped her head. She had never stood against them in her life. She was aghast at the thought. Everything in life had been plain to her till now. But her eyes were dazzled with the sudden new light, and the possibility of darkness coming after it. The confusion of betrothal, refusal, delight, dismay, all coming together, bewildered her inexperienced soul. “No, no, no,” she murmured; “oh, no; they will never be against us.”

“No,” he cried, in subdued tones of triumph; “not against us, if you will stand by me. Ally! then it is you and I against the world!”

And then there was the glitter and glimmer before her eyes, the impatient mare tossing her nervous head, the wintery sun gleaming in the harness, in the horse’s sleek coat, in the varnish of the dog-cart: and then the sudden rush of sound, and all was gone like a dream. Like a dream—like a sudden phantasmagoria, in which she too had been a vision like the rest, and heard and saw and done and said things inconceivable. To turn back after that on everything that was so familiar and calm, to remember that she must go and put into water the snow-drops, which were already dropping limp in the hand that he had kissed—that she must face them all in the preoccupation of her thoughts—was almost as wonderful to Ally as this wonderful moment that was past. “You and I against the world.” And those other shorter words that meant so little apparently, “Ally—you are not angry?” kept murmuring and floating about her, making an atmosphere round her. Would the others hear her when she went in? That fear seized upon Ally as she drew near the door, coming slowly, slowly along the path. They would hear the words, “Ally, are you angry?” but would they know what that meant? she said to herself in her dream as she reached the door. No, no; they might hear them, but they would not understand—that was her secret between her love and her. To think that in such little words, that look so innocent, everything could be said!

But nobody took any notice of Ally when she went in at last. They were all occupied with their own affairs, and with the one overpowering sentiment which made them insensible to other things. Ally went into the midst of them with her secret in her eyes like a lamp in a sanctuary, but they never perceived it. She put her snow-drops in water, all but two or three which she took to her room with her, feeling them too sacred even to be worn, even to be left for Anne to see. But where could she put them to keep them secret? She had no secret places to keep anything in, nor had she ever known what it was to have a secret in all her innocent life. How, oh, how was she to keep this?

CHAPTER XLIII.
ALLY’S SECRET.

As a matter of fact she did not keep it at all.

The others were very anxious, lost in their thoughts, their minds all quivering with anxiety and hope and fear, but still there were moments when the tension relaxed a little. It was very highly strung at first while the excitement of Rochford’s departure and of Sir Edward’s encounter with him was still in the air, but by degrees this died away, and a sense of increased serenity, of greater hope, released their souls from that bondage. Lady Penton after a long silence began again to talk a little about the new house.

“I don’t know what we can do with these poor old things in Penton,” she said; “such a beautiful house as it is, everybody says, and so many pretty things in it: and all we have is so shabby. Ally, you are the only one that has seen it.”

“Yes, mother,” said Ally, waking up as from a dream.

“What do you think, my dear? you ought to be able to tell me. I suppose there is scarcely a room in the house so small as this?”

“I—don’t think I paid any attention.”

“No attention!—to a house which was to be our own house.”

“But no one thought then it was to be our own house,” cried Anne, coming to the rescue. “And you know Ally did not enjoy it, mother.”

“Oh, yes,” cried Ally, suddenly waking up, feeling once more the brightness of pleasure that had come with the sight of him; how he had found her neglected and made a princess of her, a little queen! Was it possible that she could ever have forgotten that?

“Well, not at first,” said Anne; “you didn’t like Cousin Alicia, which I don’t wonder at. Mab didn’t like her either. Mother, if Mab comes back and insists on coming to live with us, what shall you do?”

“I wish you would not be so nonsensical,” said Lady Penton, with a little vexation, “when I was talking of the furniture. Why should Mab—” she paused a moment, struck by a recollection, and then wound up with a sigh and a shake of her head. “Why should not Walter have a try?” The words came back to her mind vaguely, just clear enough to arouse a keener consciousness of the prevailing subject which her mind had put aside for the moment. Ah! poor Wat! poor Wat! how could his mother think or speak of anything while his fate hung in the balance? But then she reflected on the new agent who had been sent out into the world in search of him, a young man who knew the ways of young men. This reflection gave her more comfort than anything. She clung to the idea that young men spoke a language of their own among themselves, and that only they understood each other’s way. She resumed with another sigh.

“I don’t suppose we have anything in our possession that is fit to be put into the drawing-room, Ally. I remember it in old days, the very few times I ever was there: but they say it is far more splendid now than it was before. Do you think that chiffonier would do?” The chiffonier had been the pride of Lady Penton’s heart. It was inlaid, and had a plate-glass back. She looked at it fondly where it stood, not very brilliant in fact, but making the shabby things around look a little more shabby. She had always felt it was thrown away amid these surroundings, and that to see it in a higher and better sphere would be sweet and consolatory; but Lady Penton was aware that taste had changed greatly since that article was constructed, and that perhaps the decorations of the great drawing-room at Penton might be out of harmony with a meuble belonging to another generation, however beautiful it might be in itself.

“I—don’t know,” said Ally, looking at the well-known article with her dreamy eyes; “there was nothing like it—I think: I didn’t notice—”

“You don’t seem to have noticed anything, my dear,” her mother said.

Oh, if Ally could but say what it was that had been most delightful to her at Penton! But then she remembered with overpowering shame how she had shrunk from the ladies who had been so good to her; how she had felt the elation of her new superiority; how she had been a snob in all the horror of the word. And she was silent, crushed by remorse and confusion. Fortunately Lady Penton’s mind was taken up by other things.

“I think,” she said, “the chiffonier will do. It is large, too large, for this little room; it will fill one side of the wall very nicely. And perhaps some of the chairs, if they are newly covered; but as for curtains and carpets and all that, everything must be new. It is dreadful to think of the expense. I don’t know how we are ever to meet it. Ally, what sort of carpets are there now? Oh, no doubt beautiful Persian rugs and that sort of thing—simple Brussels would not do. Is it a polished floor with rugs, or is it one of those great carpets woven in one piece, or is it—My dear, what’s the matter? There is no need to cry.”

“I—don’t remember—it is so stupid of me,” said Ally, with the tears in her eyes.

“You are nervous and upset this morning; but we must all try and take a little courage. I have great confidence in Mr. Rochford—oh, great confidence! He is very kind and so trustworthy. You can see that only to look into those nice kind eyes.”

“Oh, mother dear!” cried Ally, flinging her arms about Lady Penton’s neck, giving her a sudden kiss. And then the girl slid away, flying upstairs as soon as she was safely out of sight, to cry with happiness in her own room where nobody could see.

“There is something the matter with Ally this morning,” said her mother; “she is not like herself.”

“She is not at all like herself,” said Anne, with a little pursing up of her lips, as one who should say, “I could an I would.”

“What do you think it is, Anne? Do you know of anything?”

“I don’t know,” said Anne, “but I guess. Mother—I think it’s Mr. Rochford.”

“Mr. Rochford!” Lady Penton replied; and then in a moment the whole passed before her like a panorama. How could she have been so dull? It had occurred to her as possible before old Sir Walter’s death, and she had not been displeased. Now things were different; but still—“What will your father say?” she exclaimed. “Oh, I am afraid I have been neglecting Ally thinking of her brother. What will your father say?”

“If that sort of thing is going to be,” said Anne, sententiously, “do you think anything can stop it, mother? I have always heard that the more you interfere the stronger it becomes. It has to be if it’s going to be.”

Lady Penton did not make any reply to this wisdom, but she was greatly moved. First Walter and then Ally! The children become independent actors in life, choosing their own parts for good, or, alas! perhaps for evil. She stole upstairs after a little interval and softly opened the door of Ally’s room, where the girl was sitting half crying, smiling, lost in the haze of novelty and happiness: her mother looked at her for a moment before she said anything to make her presence known. Ah, yes, it was very clear Ally had escaped, she had gone away from the household in which she was born, the cares and concerns of which had hitherto been all the world to her, into another sphere, a different place, a little universe of her own, peopled but by the two, the beginners of a new world. Lady Penton stood unseen, contemplating the girl’s dreamy countenance, so abstracted from all about her with a complication of new and strange emotions. Her little girl! but now separate, having taken the turn that made her life a thing apart from father and mother. The child! who had in a moment become a woman, an individual with her fate and future all her own. The interest of it, the pride of it, in some respects the pity of it, touches every maturer soul at such a sight—but when it is a woman looking at her own little girl! She came into the room very softly and sat down beside Ally upon the little white bed and put her tender arms about the young creature in her trance; and Ally, with one low cry, “Mother!” flung herself upon the breast which had always been her shelter. And there was an end of the secret—so far as such a secret can be told. The mother did not want any telling, she understood it all. But, notwithstanding her sympathy for her child, and her agreement in Anne’s inspiration and conviction that such a thing has to be if it is going to be, she kept reflecting to herself, “What will her father say?” all the time in her heart.

This was destined to be a day of excitement in many ways. Just before the family meal (which Lady Penton, with a sense of all the changes now surging upward in their family life, had begun to speak of with a little timidity as “the children’s dinner”) one of the Penton carriages came to the door, and Mab burst in, all smiles and delight. “Am I in time for dinner?” she said. “Oh, Lady Penton, you will let me come to dinner? May I send the carriage away and tell them to come back for me? When must they come back for me? Oh, if you only knew how I should like to stay.” It was very difficult for these kind people to resist the fervor of this petition. “My dear, of course we are very glad to have you,” Lady Penton said, with a little hesitation. And Mab plunged into the midst of the children with cries of delight on both sides. Horry possessed himself at once of her hand, and found her a chair close to his own, and even little Molly waved her spoon in the stranger’s honor, and changed her little song to “Mady, Mady,” instead of the “Fader, fader!” which was the sweetest of dinner-bells to Sir Edward’s ears. When dinner was over, Mab got Lady Penton into a corner and poured forth her petition. “Oh, may I come and stay! Uncle Russell is going away, and Aunt Alicia is not at all fond of me. She would not like it if I went with them, and where can I go? My relations are none of them so nice as you. You took me in out of kindness when I didn’t know where to go. I have a lot of money, Lady Penton, they say, but I am a poor little orphan girl all the same.”

“Oh, my dear,” said Lady Penton, “nobody could be more sorry than I am; and a lot of money does not do very much good to a little girl who is alone. But, Mab, I have so many to think of: and we have not a lot of money, and we have to live accordingly. Though Sir Edward has Penton now, that does not make things better, it rather make them worse. Even in Penton we shall live very simply, perhaps poorly. We can not give you society and pleasures like your other friends.”

“But I don’t want society and pleasure. Pleasure! I should like to take care of Molly, and make her things and teach her her letters. I should; she is the dearest little darling that ever was. I should like to run about with the boys. Horry and I are great friends, oh, great friends, Lady Penton. At Penton you will have hundreds of rooms; you can’t say it is not big enough. Oh, let me come! Oh, let me come! And then my money—” But here Mab judiciously stopped, seeing no room for any consideration about her money. “You wouldn’t turn me from the door if I was a beggar, a little orphan,” she cried.

“Oh, my dear! No, indeed, I hope not; but this is very different. Mab, though I am not much set upon money (but I am afraid I am too, for nothing will go without it), yet a rich girl is very different from a poor girl. You know that as well as I.”

“The poor girl is much better off,” cried Mab, “for people are kind to her; they take her in, they let her stay, they are always contriving to make her feel at home; but the wretched little rich one is put to the door. People say, ‘Oh, we are always glad to see you;’ but they are not, Lady Penton! They think, here she comes with her money. As if I cared about my money! Take me for Molly’s nurse or her governess. Ally will be going and marrying—”

“What do you know about that?” Lady Penton said, grasping her arm.

“I! I don’t know anything about it; but of course she will, and so will Anne; and it might happen that you would be glad to have me, just to look after the children a little after the weddings were over, and help you with Molly. Oh, you might, Lady Penton, it is quite possible; and then you would find out that I am not a little good-for-nothing. I believe I am really clever with children,” Mab cried, flinging herself down on her knees, putting her arms about Lady Penton’s waist. “Oh, say that I may stay.”

When she had thus flung herself upon Lady Penton’s lap, Mab suddenly raised her round rosy cheek to the pale one that bent over her. They were by themselves in a corner of the drawing-room, and nobody was near. She said in a whisper, close to the other’s ear, “I saw Mr. Penton in town yesterday. He was looking quite well, but sad. I was—oh, very impertinent, Lady Penton. Forgive me. I stopped the carriage, though I am sure he did not want to speak to me. I told him that you were not—quite well—that you were so pale—and that everybody missed him so. Don’t be angry! I was very impertinent, Lady Penton. And he said he was going home directly—directly, that was what he said. I said you would be sure not to tell him in your letters that you were feeling ill, but that you were. And so you are, Lady Penton; you are so pale. But he is coming directly, that was what he said.”

“Oh, my little Mab!” Lady Penton cried. She gave the little girl a sudden kiss, then put her hands with a soft resoluteness upon Mab’s arms and loosed their clasp. It was as if the girl had pushed open for a moment a door which closed upon her again the next. “Yes,” she said, “my son is coming home. He has stayed a little longer than we expected, but you should not have tried to frighten him about his mother. I am not ill. If he comes rushing back before his business is done, because you have frightened him about me, what shall we do to you, you little prophet of evil?” She stooped again and kissed the girl, giving her a smile as well. But then she rose from her seat. “As soon as we get in to Penton you must come and pay us a long visit,” she said.

And this made an end of Mab’s attempt to interfere in the affairs of the family of which she was so anxious to become a member. She went away to the children with her head hanging, and in a somewhat disconsolate condition. But, being seized upon by Horry, who had a great manufacture of boats on hand, and wanted some one to make the sails for him, soon forgot, or seemed to forget, the trouble, and became herself again. “I am coming to live with you when you go to Penton,” she said.

“Hurrah! Mab is coming to live with us!” shouted the little boys, and soon this great piece of news ran over the house.

“Mad’s tumming! Mad’s tumming!” little Molly joined in with her little song.

And this new proposal, which was so strange and unlikely, and which the elder members looked upon so dubiously, was carried by acclamation by the little crowd, so to speak, of the irresponsible populace—the children of the house.

The day had been an exhausting day. When the winter afternoon fell there was throughout the house more than usual of that depressed and despondent feeling which is natural to the hour and the season. Even Mab’s going contributed to this sensation. The hopefulness of the morning, when all had felt that the sending out of the new agent meant deliverance from their anxiety, had by this time begun to sink into the dreary waiting to which no definite period is put, and which may go on, so far as any one knows, day after day. Sir Edward had withdrawn to the book-room, very sick at heart and profoundly disappointed, disgusted even not to have had a telegram, which he had expected from hour to hour the entire day. Rochford had not found Walter, then, though he was so confident in his superior knowledge. After all, he had sped no better than other people. There was a certain solace in this, but yet a dreary, dreadful disappointment. He sat over his fire, crouching over it with his knees up to his chin, cold with the chill of nervous disquietude and anxiety, listening, as the ladies had done so long—listening for the click of the gate, for a step on the gravel—for anything that might denote the coming of news, the news which he had never been able to bring himself, but which Rochford had been so sure of sending, only, as it seemed, to fail.

Lady Penton was in the drawing-room. She spent this dull hour often with her husband, but to-day she did not go to him. She could not have been with him and keep Ally’s secret, and she was loath to give him the additional irritation of this new fact in the midst of the trouble of the old. She said to herself that if Rochford succeeded in his search, if he sent news, if he brought Walter home, that then everything would be changed; and in gratitude for such a service his suit might be received. She did not wish to expose that suit to an angry objection now. Poor lady! she had more motives than one for this reticence. She would not make Ally unhappy, and she would not permit anything to be said or done that might lessen the energy of the lover who felt his happiness to depend on his success. It was because of her habit of spending this hour between the lights in the book-room with her husband that she was left alone in the partial dark, before the lamp was brought or the curtains drawn. She had gone close to the window when it was too dark to work at the table, but now her work had dropped on her lap, and she was doing nothing. Doing nothing! with so much to think of, so many, many things to take into consideration. She sat and looked out on the darkening skies, the pale fading of the light, the dull whiteness of the horizon, and the blackness of the trees that rose against it. The afternoon chill was strong upon her heart; she had been disappointed too—she too had been looking for that telegram, and her heart had sunk lower and lower as the night came on. That Walter should be found was what her heart prayed and longed for, and now there was another reason, for Ally’s sake, that the lover might claim his reward. But the day was nearly over, and, so far as could be told, the lover, with all his young energy, was as unsuccessful as Edward himself. So far as this went, their thoughts were identical, but Lady Penton’s, if less sad, were more complicated, and took in a closer net-work of wishes and hopes. She sat at the window and looked out blankly, now and then putting up her hand to dry her eyes. She could cry quietly to herself in the dark, which is a relief a man can not have.

What a sad house! with heavy anxiety settling down again, and the shadow of the night, in which even the deliverer can not work, nor telegrams come. There was a spark of warmer life upstairs, where the girls had lighted their candle, and where the tremendous secret which had come to Ally was being shyly contemplated by both girls together in wonder of so great and new a thing. And on the nursery there was plenty of cheerfulness and din. But down-stairs all was very quiet, the father and mother in different rooms thinking the same thoughts. Lady Penton wept out those few tears very quietly. There was no sound to betray them. It had grown very dark in the room and her eyes were fixed on the wan light that lingered outside. She had no hope now for a telegram. He would not send one so late. He must have written instead of telegraphing. He had found nothing, that was clear.

She had said this to herself for the hundredth time, and had added for perhaps the fiftieth that it was time to go and dress, that it was of no use lingering, looking for something that never came, that she had now a double reason to be calm, to have patience, to take courage, when it seemed to her that something, a dark speck, flitted across the pale light outside. This set her heart beating again. Could it be the dispatch after all? She listened, her heart jumping up into her ears. Oh! who was it? Nothing? Was it nothing? There was no sound. Yes, a hurried rustle, a faint stir in the hall. She rose up. Telegraph boys make a great noise, they send the gravel flying, they beat wild drums upon the door. Now there was nothing, or only a something fluttering across the window, the faintest stir at the open door.

What was it? a hand upon the handle turning it doubtfully, slowly; then it was pushed open. Oh, no; no telegraph boy. She flew forward with her whole heart in her outstretched hands. Some one stood in the dark, looking in, saying nothing, only half visible, a shadow, no more. “Wat! Wat!” the mother cried.

CHAPTER XLIV.
THE FINAL BLOW.

What does it matter what a mother says? especially when she is a powdered and pomaded woman like Mrs. Sam Crockford, altogether unable to comprehend, much less interpret, the fair and brilliant creature who is her daughter. How strange that anything so sweet and delightful as Emmy should come from such a woman—one from whom the heart recoiled, who was offensive to every sense, with those white, unwholesome, greasy hands, the powder, the scent, the masses of false hair, the still falser and more dreadful smile. Walter said to himself as he left her with that nausea which always overwhelmed him at the sight of her, that he would not take what she said as having anything to do with Emmy. No; her existence was a sort of an offense to Emmy; it might, if that were possible, throw a cloud over her perfection, it might make a superficial admirer pause to think, could she ever in her young beauty come to be like that? A superficial admirer, Walter said to himself—not, of course, a true lover such as he was, to whom the suggestion was odious and abominable. Like that! oh, never, never! for Emmy had soul, she had heart in her loveliness; never could the actress have resembled her, never could she resemble the actress. He wondered if that woman could be her mother. Such people stole children, they got hold of them in strange ways. Emmy might have been taken in her childhood from some poor mother of a very different kind. She might have strayed away from her home and been found by vagrants: anything rather than believe that she was that woman’s daughter, who, to crown all her artificialities, was mercenary too. Or even if it might really be so, what did it matter? is there not often no resemblance between the mother and the child, the mother elderly, faded, meretricious, trying hard to keep up an antiquated display of dreadful charms, seductions that filled the mind with loathing; the daughter, oh, so different, so young and fresh, so full of youth and sweetness and everything that is delightful, everything that is most fascinating. When he thought of Emmy the young man’s heart, which had been so outraged, grew soft again. If it came to a decision, how very different would Emmy’s deliverance be. Yet Emmy had discouraged him too, she had thought of secondary things. She had been sorry that he should lose anything for her sake, he who was so ready to lose all. She had even scoffed a little sweetly at his fortune, the ten thousand pounds, which would not, she declared, be more than four hundred a year. Four hundred a year would be plenty, Walter thought; they could live somewhere quietly in the depths of the country enjoying each other’s society, desiring nothing else to make them happy. Would Emmy care for that? she who so loved London. A number of people loved London so, did not know what to do out of it, people who were the very best, the most highly endowed of all, poets, philosophers—it was no reproach to her that she should be among that number. He was not one of them himself, but then he was, he knew, a dull fellow, a rustic. Poor Walter went about the streets all day thinking these thoughts. He knew he was not so clever as she was; but yet they had always understood each other: not like that dreadful woman whom nothing could make him understand. He would not accept her decision whatever she said—he would not believe her even—probably what she had said about his father was untrue; how should his father have got there? No, no, it was not true, any more than it was true that Emmy had permitted her mother to interfere. There was some one else whom the old woman preferred, he said, miserably, to himself, and that was the entire cause of it, not that Emmy meant to cast him off—oh no, no!

But it was two or three days after this before he succeeded in seeing her. Either there was a conspiracy on her mother’s part, into which she, guileless, fell, or else the mother had acquired an ascendency over her, and was able to curb the natural instincts, to restrain the sweeter impulses of her daughter. That it could be Emmy’s fault he would not allow. He haunted the place morning and evening, and on Saturday afternoon, which had been his moment of bliss. It was on that day that he met her at last. He met her hurrying out, dressed as she usually was when he was allowed to take her to the country or to make some expedition with her. She had just stopped to call out something before closing the door, about the hour of her return—he thought he heard her say nine o’clock, and it was little past noon. She was going somewhere, then, but not with him. He turned after her as she went lightly along, with the easy skimming step which he had so often compared to every poetic movement under heaven. It filled him with despair to see it now, and to feel that she was going along like this, upon some other expedition, not in his company, though she must know to what darkness of despondence and solitude she was leaving him. “Emmy,” he cried, hurrying after her. He thought she started a little, but only quickened her pace. She was not, however, to escape him so—that was a vain expectation on her part. He quickened his pace too, and came up to her, close to her, and caught at her elbow in his eagerness and impatience. She turned round upon him with a face very unlike that which had so often smiled upon the foolish boy. She plucked her arm away from his touch. “Oh,” she said, with a tone of annoyance, “you here!”

“Where should I be, Emmy, but where you are? You were going to send for me, to meet me—”

She looked at him with impatience. “No,” she said, “I wasn’t going to do anything of the kind; I have got something very different to do.”

“I have always been ready to do whatever you wanted,” he said, “to go where you pleased, and you know this has been my reward—this Saturday afternoon, after waiting, waiting, day by day—”

“Who wanted you to wait? Mr. Penton, that was your doing. You must understand that I’m not going to be made a slave to you.”

“A slave,” cried the poor boy, “to me!”

“Well, what is it better? I can’t move a step but you are at my heels. What I’ve always held by is doing what I like and going where I like. I never could put up with bondage and propriety like some people; but you dog my steps, you watch everything I do—”

“Emmy!”

“Well, is that all you have to say? Emmy! yes, that’s my name; but you can’t crush me by saying ‘Emmy!’ to me,” she said, with a little breathless gasp, as of one who had seized the opportunity to work herself up into a fit of calculated impatience. She stopped here, perhaps moved by his pale face, and ended by a little laugh of ridicule. “Well, that’s natural enough, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what is natural,” he said. “I have thrown off all that. Emmy, are you going to abandon me after all?”

“After all!—after what? I suppose you mean after all the great things you’ve done for me? What has it been, Mr. Penton? You’ve followed me here, you’ve watched me that I couldn’t take a step, or speak a word. No, I am not going with you any more. You must just make up your mind to it, Mr. Walter Penton. I’ve got other things in hand. I’ve other—I’ve—well, let us be vulgar,” she cried, with a wild little laugh, “I’ve got other fish to fry.”

The poor young fellow kept his eyes fixed upon her—eyes large with dismay and trouble.

“You are not going with me anymore! You can’t mean it!—you don’t mean it, Emmy!”

“But I do. It’s been all nonsense and romance and folly. I didn’t mind just for amusement. But do you think I am going to let you, with next to nothing, and expectations—expectations! what could your expectations be?—your father may live for a century! Do you think I’m going to let you stand in my way, and keep me from what’s better? No—and no again and again. I mean nothing of the sort. I mean what’s best for myself. I am not going with you any more.”

“Not going with me!” he said, in a voice of misery: “then what is to become of me?—what am I to do?”

“Oh, you’ll do a hundred things,” she said, tapping him on the arm; “go home, for one thing, and make your peace. It’s far better for you. It’s been folly for you as well as me. Go and take care of your ten thousand pounds. Ten thousand pounds! What do you think of as much as that a year? Take care of it, and you’ll get a nice little income out of it, just enough for a young man about town. And don’t be tyrannized over by your people, and don’t let any one say a word about marrying. You’re too young to be married. I’m your only real friend, Walter. Yes, I am. I tell you, don’t think of marrying—why should you marry?—but just have your fling and get a little fun while you can. That’s my last advice to you.”

He walked on with her mechanically, not able to speak, until she got impatient of the silent figure stalking by her side, struck dumb with youthful passion and misery.

She stopped suddenly and confronted him with hasty determination. “You’re not,” she said, “coming another step with me!”

“Where am I to go? what am I to do: I have lived,” he cried, “only for you!”

“Then it’s time to stop that!” she said. “Go away—go clean away; it will—it will damage me if you’re seen with me! Now there, that’s the truth! I was so silly as to allow it for your sake before, now I’ve learned better. Mr. Penton, it will be harming me if you come another step. Now, do you understand?”

Did he understand? He stopped, and gazed at her with his blank face. “It will be harming you! But you belong to me, you are going to be my wife!”

“No, no, no!” she cried; “that is all folly: I never meant it. Good-bye, and for Heaven’s sake go away, go away!”

She gave an alarmed glance round toward the end of the street. It seemed to Walter that he too saw something vaguely—a tali spidery outline, a high phaeton, or something of the sort. She broke into a little run suddenly, waving her hand to him. “Good-bye!” she cried; “good-bye; go away!” and left him standing stupefied with wonder, with incredulous conviction, if such words can be put together. He felt in the depths of his heart that she had abandoned him, but he could not believe it. No, he could not believe it, though he knew it was true. A sort of instinct of chivalry lingered in the poor lad’s heart, wrung and bleeding as it was. He could not harm her, he could not spy on her, he could not interfere with her will, whatever she might do to him. He turned his back upon the spidery tall phaeton. If that was the thing that was to carry her away from him he would not spy, he would not put himself in her way. So long as she did what she liked best! He turned with his heart bleeding, yet half stupefied with trouble, and walked away.

Poor Walter walked and walked all the rest of the afternoon; he did not know where he went or how, his mind was stupid with suffering. And then came Sunday, when without her the blank was more complete than on any other day. He had not the heart even to seek another interview. On Sunday afternoon he went past the house, and the high phaeton stood at the door. What more could be said? And yet another day or two passed, he did not know how many, before Mab stopped the little brougham in which she was driving and called to him in the street as he went mooning along with his head down in dull and helpless despondency.

“Mr. Penton! Mr. Penton!” The little soft voice calling him roused Walter from the stupor of his despair. He knew nobody in town. It was a wonder to him that any one should know him—should take the trouble to call him. And then Mab’s little fresh face stabbed him with innocent cheerful looks. He was not learned enough to know that these innocent looks knew a great deal, and suspected much more harm than existed, in their precocious society knowledge.

Mab was bent upon doing what she could to bring him back, and she fully realized all the difficulty; but she looked like a child delighted to see her country acquaintance.

“And oh, how is Lady Penton?” she cried.

“My mother?” gasped Walter, taken altogether by surprise.

Then Mab told him that little story about Lady Penton’s health. “She will of course make light of it when she writes,” said the artful little girl. “But oh, she looks so ill and so pale!” (So she does, the little romancer said to herself in her heart; it is quite, quite true!) “Oh, Mr. Penton, do make her see the doctor! do make her take care of herself! You could do it better than any one—because you know the others don’t notice the great, great change; they see her every day.”

“I will!” cried poor Wat. “Thank you—thank you a thousand times for telling me!”

It gave him a reason for going home, and he did so want a reason, poor boy! His own wretchedness did not seem cause enough; and how was he ever to be forgiven for what he had done? But his mother! He would not wait to think, he would not let himself consider the matter. His mother! And what if she should die! Death had never entered that happy house. It seemed to him the most horrible of all possibilities. He did not even pause to go back to his hotel. Oh, how glad he was of the compulsion, to be thus sent home, to have a reason for going! He went flying, without taking time for thought.

And when Lady Penton threw herself upon him, calling “Wat, Wat,” with that great outcry, he forgot all about his wrong-doing and his need of pardon. He caught her in his arms and cried, “Mother, are you ill?—Mother, are you better?” as if there were no other trouble or anxiety but this in the world.

“Oh, Wat! oh, Wat!” she cried, unable on her side to think of anything but that he had come back and she had him in her arms again: and for a minute or two no more was said. Then he led her tenderly back to a chair and placed her in it, and knelt down beside her.

“Mother, you have been ill—”

“No; oh, no, my dear.” And then she remembered Mab’s little alarm (dear little Mab! if it should be her doing). “At least,” she said, “my dearest boy, there is nothing the matter with me that the sight of you will not cure.”

“Oh, mother,” he cried, “that you should have to say that, that I should have been the cause—”

“Hush, hush,” she said, pressing him to her; “it is all over, Wat, my own boy. You have come home.”

She asked him no questions, she did not even say that he was forgiven: and the youth’s heart swelled high. “I think I have been mad,” he said.

But she only replied, kissing him, “My own boy, you have come home.” And what more was there to be said.

This transport all passed in the dark, with no light in the room except the paleness of twilight in the windows, the dull glow from the fire, which was an ease and softening to the meeting. And then with the lighting of the cheerful lamps the knowledge spread through the house—Wat has come home.

“Already!” cried Ally, with a flush of radiant joy that was more than for her brother.

“Already,” Sir Edward said, with a frown that belied the sudden ease of his heart. To say what that relief was is beyond the power of words. The dark book-room, where he sat with his head in his hands and all the world dark round him, suddenly became light. A load was lifted from his shoulders and from his soul; his mind was freed as from chains. But after that first blessed release and relief a sensation of humiliation, almost of resentment, came into his mind. “Already,” he said. He had tramped about London for days and days and found nothing. Rochford had gone and seen and overcome the same day.

“Edward,” said Lady Penton, who, though so still, so tremulous after the prodigal’s return, had yet felt the other anxiety spring up as soon as the first was laid, “I am sorry for Mr. Rochford. I fear he was making this the foundation for a great many hopes. He expected to find Walter and bring him home, and thus gain our favor for—something else.”

“Well,” said Sir Edward with his frown, “it is astonishing to me how he’s done it. It looks like collusion. I suppose it’s only a piece of luck, a great piece of luck.”

“He has not done it at all,” said Lady Penton, “Wat has not so much as seen him. He has had nothing to do with it at all.”

The cloud rolled off Sir Edward’s brow: he gave expression to the delightful relief of his mind in a low laugh.

“I thought,” he said, “nothing would come of it, he was so cock-sure. I thought from the first nothing would come of it: but of course you were all a great deal wiser than I. So he came home of himself when he was tired? Let me see the boy.”

CHAPTER XLV.
NO LONGER COCK-SURE.

Rochford came back in a sadly humbled condition of mind. He was indeed summoned back by a telegram which told him that all was well and his services unnecessary, and returned trailing his arms, so to speak, very much cast down, beginning to say to himself that the Reading solicitor was not at all likely to be considered a fit match for Sir Edward Penton’s daughter now that all chance of special service to the family was over. Young idiot! why, after staying away so long, couldn’t he have stayed a little longer? Why not have helped somebody by his folly instead of simply dropping from the skies when it suited him in his egotism and selfishness? Rochford came back deeply humiliated, deeply despondent. He too had tramped about London one weary and dismal day, and with disgust had recognized that his mission was not so easy as he had supposed. He had gone to the post-office which Walter had given as his address, and had made what inquiries were possible, and then had hung about hoping that Walter would come to fetch his letter, like those sportsmen who hang about the pools where their big game go to drink. But no one came; and in the morning had arrived that telegram—“All well: further search unnecessary. Has returned home.” Confound him! Why, after making everybody miserable, could he not have stayed another day? Rochford came home very despondent, taking the blackest view of affairs. If he had but acted with more prudence in the end of the year—if he had but pushed on matters and got that bargain accomplished before Sir Walter had been stricken with his last illness!—then the Pentons, though they would still have had the baronetcy, would not have been a great county family, and Ally, without fortune to speak of, would have made no mésalliance in marrying a man who could keep her in luxury though he was but the family man of business. But now, though the fortune was scarcely greater, the position was very different. The mother was very artless, but still she knew enough to know that girls so attractive, with the background of Penton behind them, even if they had not a penny, were not to be thrown away on men like himself. Such was the tenor of his thoughts as he came back. He had expected to return with trumpets sounding and colors flying, bringing back in triumph the wanderer, and having a certain right to his recompense. He came now silent and shamed, an officious person who had offered more than he could perform, who had thrust his services upon those who did not require them. He had not even the courage to see Ally before he went in humbled to her father. It was his duty to tell Sir Edward all that had happened, but he had scarcely a doubt as to what must follow. He would be sent away, he felt sure; probably he would not be allowed to speak to her at all—he the man of business, and she the princess royal, the eldest daughter of the house.

But, to his relief as well as surprise, Sir Edward met him with an unclouded countenance. He gave him a warm grasp of the hand. He said, “Well, Rochford, all’s well that ends well. You see it was all settled more easily than you supposed.”

“You can’t doubt, Sir Edward, that I am most glad it should be so.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure you are; glad—but a little disappointed, eh?—it’s quite natural: you were so cock-sure. That is the worst of you young men. You think we elder ones are all ninnies; you think we don’t know what we are about. And you are so certain that you sometimes take us in, and we think so too. But you see you are wrong now and then,” said Sir Edward, with high satisfaction, “and it turns out that it is we who are in the right.”

Rochford did not fail to remark to himself in passing, that though he might be wrong he saw very little reason for the assertion that Sir Edward was right. But he was too much cast down for argument. He said, “The chief thing is that your anxiety is relieved. I am very glad of that—though I should have liked better to have had a hand in doing it.” And then he drew himself together as best he could. “There is another subject, Sir Edward, that I wished to speak to you about.”

“Yes, very likely; but you must hear first about Walter. So far as I can make out it has been a mere escapade, and he has been mercifully saved from committing himself, from—compromising his future. We can’t be thankful enough for that. He comes back free as he went away, and having learned a lesson, I hope, an important lesson. We mean to say nothing about it, Rochford. You’ll not take any notice: I’m sure we can trust in you.”

“I hope so,” said the young man; and then he repeated, “Sir Edward, there is another subject—”

“You don’t look,” said Sir Edward, rubbing his hands with internal satisfaction, “so cock-sure about that.”

This was not very discouraging if he had retained sufficient presence of mind to see it. But he was out of heart as well as out of confidence, and everything seemed to him to be of evil augury. “No, indeed,” he said, “I am far from being sure. I feel that what I am going to ask will seem to you very presumptuous: and if it were not that my whole heart is in it and all my hopes—”

“Ah, you use such words lightly, you young men—”

“I don’t use them lightly. If I could help it I would put off speaking to you. I would try whether it were not possible to find some way of recommending myself—of making you think a little better of me.”

“If you suppose,” cried Sir Edward, benignly, “that I think less of you because you were not successful about Walter you are quite mistaken, Rochford. You had not time to do anything. He left town almost as soon as you arrived in it. I never expect impossibilities, even when they are promised,” he added, with a nod of his head.

“It is I that am looking for impossibilities, Sir Edward. I can’t think how I could have been so bold. I have been letting myself think that perhaps—that if you could be got to take it into consideration—that, that in short—”

And Mr. Rochford, crimsoning, growing pale, changing from one foot to another, looking all embarrassment and awkwardness, came to a dead stop and could find nothing more to say.

“What is it? You seem to have great difficulty in getting it out. What have I in my power that is so important, and that you are so shy about?”

“I am shy, that is just the word. You will think me—I don’t know what you will think me—”

“Get it out, man. I can’t tell till I know.”

“Sir Edward,” said Rochford, more and more embarrassed, “your daughter—”

“Oh, my daughter! Is that how it is?” It is not to be supposed that a day had elapsed after Walter’s return and the relief of mind that followed it without some communication passing between Lady Penton and her husband on the second of the subjects that had excited her so deeply.

“Sir Edward,” said the young man, “Miss Penton’s family and position are of course superior to mine. It all depends on the way these matters are looked upon. Some people would consider this an insuperable obstacle. Some do not attach much importance to it. Ideas have changed so much on this subject. My grandfather, as perhaps you are aware, married a Miss Davenport of Doncaster. But I don’t know how you may look on that sort of thing.”

“I don’t exactly see the connection,” said Sir Edward; “your grandfather’s marriage was a good while ago.”

“Yes, when prejudices were a great deal stronger than now. Though they exist in some places, I have the strongest reason to believe that among the best people they are no longer held as they used to be. Eva Milton married a Manchester man that had no education to speak of at all.”

“Are you arguing the question on abstract principles?” said Sir Edward, who was nursing his foot, and looking half-amused, half-bored. His companion was too anxious to be able to judge what this look meant, and he was sadly afraid of irritating the authority in whose hands his happiness lay.

“Oh, no, not at all,” he cried, anxiously: “I wanted to remind you, sir, that it was not the first time that such things had been done. It’s no abstract question: all that I look forward to in life depends on it. I am not badly off, as I can prove to you if you will let me. I could keep my wife, if I had the good fortune to—to—make sure of that—surrounded by everything that belongs to her sphere. There should be nothing wanting in that way. I could make settlements that would be, I think, satisfactory.”

“Is that how you talked to Ally?” said Sir Edward, a perception of the humor of the situation breaking in. “How astonished she must have been!” His mind was so unusually at ease that he was ready to smile even in the midst of an important arrangement like this.

“To Ally!” cried Rochford, startled by the reference, and in his confusion unable to see how much it was in his favor. “No, sir,” he said, eagerly, “not a word! Do you think I would fret her delicate mind with any such suggestions? No. She is far above all that. She knows nothing about it. I may not be worthy of her, but at least I know how to appreciate her. She has heard nothing like this from me.”

“But I suppose you must think that what you did say was not without effect, and that the appreciation is not all on your side? You don’t mind fretting my delicate mind, it appears,” said Sir Edward; and then, in a sharper tone, “How far has this matter gone?”

“Sir Edward,” stammered the young man: his anxiety stupefied instead of quickening his senses; he seemed able to perceive nothing that was not against him, “I—I—”

“You don’t give me very much information,” repeated the father. “Can’t you tell me how far this matter has gone?”

Rochford was a keen man of business. He was not to be overpowered by the most powerful judge or the most aggravating jury. He was in the habit of stating very clearly what he wanted to say. But now he stood before this tribunal stammering, without a word to say for himself. “Sir Edward,” he repeated, “if I had taken time to think I should have felt that you ought to have been consulted first. But in an unguarded moment—my—my feelings got the better of me. I saw her unexpectedly alone. And then,” he added with melancholy energy, “I thought, I confess, that if I could be of use, if I could find and bring back—”

“I see,” said Sir Edward, “that was why you undertook so much. It was scarcely very straightforward, was it, to profess all that interest in the brother when it was the sister you were thinking of all the time?”

“Perhaps it might not be straightforward,” owned the unsuccessful one; “and yet,” after a pause, “it was no pretense. I was interested, if you will let me say so, in—all the family, Sir Edward. I should have been too glad—to be of any use: even if there had been no—even if there had not existed—even if—”

“I see,” said the stern judge again: and then there was a dreadful pause. Circumstances alter much, but not even the advanced views of the nineteenth century can alter the position in which a young lover stands before the father of the girl he loves—a functionary perhaps a little discredited by the march of modern ideas, but who nevertheless has still an enormous power in his hands, a power which the feminine heart continues to believe in, which is certainly able to cause a great deal of discomfort and inconvenience, if nothing else. Rochford stood thoroughly cowed, with his eyes cast down, before this great arbiter of fate, although after a while, as the silence continued, there began to crop up in his mind suggestions, resolutions: how nothing should make him resign his hopes; how only Ally herself could loose the bond between them, how he would take courage to say to the father that however much they respected him his decision would not be absolute, that on the contrary it could be resisted, that the two whose happiness was involved—that the two—the two—words which made his heart jump with a sudden throb in the midst of this horrible uncertainty—would stand against the world together not to be sundered. All these heroic thoughts gathered in his mind as he stood awaiting the tremendous parental decision, which came in a form so utterly unexpected, so bewildering, that he could only gasp, and for a moment could not reply. This was what Sir Edward said:

“You know, I suppose, that my girls will have no money, Rochford?”

“Sir!” cried the lover, with a burst of pent-up breath which seemed to carry away with it the burden of a whole lifetime of care from his soul.

“They will have no money. I am a poor man, and have always been so all my life. If you have not known that before you will have to know it now in your capacity (as you say) of the Penton man of business. To keep up Penton will tax every resource. We shall be rather poorer, my wife thinks, than we have been at the Hook; and as for the girls—”

“Do you mean that that’s all?” cried the young man. “You don’t make any—other objection? What do you think I’m made of? I don’t want any money, Sir Edward. Money! when there is Miss Penton—Ally, if I may call her so. How shall I ever thank you enough? I have plenty of money; it’s not money I want, it’s—it’s—”

Words failed him: he stood and swung Sir Edward’s hand, who looked not without a glow of pleasurable feeling at this young fellow who beamed with gratitude and delight. It is never unpleasant to confer so great a favor. This had not been generally the position in which fate had placed Edward Penton. It had been usually the other way. He had received few blessings, even from the beggars, having so little to give; but an emperor could not have conferred a greater gift than his daughter, a spotless little princess of romance, a creature altogether good and fair and sweet. He felt the water come into his eyes out of that simple sense of munificence and liberal generosity. “I think,” he said, “you’re a good fellow, Rochford, and that you’ll be good to little Ally. She’s too young for anything of the kind, but her mother sees no objection. And she ought to know best.”

CHAPTER XLVI.
THE FATE OF THE CHIFFONIER.

The family of Penton Hook took possession of the great house of Penton in the spring. It need scarcely be said that there were endless consultations, discussions, committees of ways and means of every imaginable kind before this great removal was accomplished. Lady Penton’s first visit to her new home was one which was full of solemnity. It was paid in much state, a visit of ceremony, greatly against the wish of both of the visitors and the visited, before the Russell Pentons withdrew from the great house.

“We must go to bid them good-bye,” Sir Edward said. “We must not fail in any civility.”

“Do you call that civility? She will hate the sight of us. I should myself in her place,” Lady Penton cried.

But he had his way, as was to be expected. They drove to Penton in the new carriage, which Lady Penton could not enjoy for thinking how much it cost, behind that worthy and excellent pair of brown horses, more noted for their profound respectability and virtue than for appearance or speed, which Sir Edward had consented to buy with some mortification, but which his wife approved as a pair, without much knowledge of the points in which they were defective. He knew that Russell Penton set them down as a pair of screws at the first glance; but Lady Penton, who had never possessed a pair of horses before, was quite impervious to this, and appreciated the grandeur, though never without a pang at the cost. But the sight of the great drawing-room overwhelmed the visitor. The first coup d’œil of the beautiful, vast room, with its row of pillars, its vast stretches of carpets, its costly furniture, so stupefied her that the sight of Mrs. Russell Penton herself in her deep mourning, and that look of injured majesty of which she could not, with all her efforts, divest herself, failed to produce the effect which otherwise it must have had. Lady Penton had fully intended to take no notice, to banish if possible from her face all appearance of curiosity or of the natural investigation which a first visit to the house which was to be her own would naturally give rise to; but she could not quite conceal the startled dismay of her first glance—a sentiment which was more agreeable to the previous mistress of the house than any other would have been. It was not very amiable, perhaps, on the part of Mrs. Russell Penton, to be pleased that her successor should thus be overwhelmed by the weight of the inheritance—but perhaps it was natural enough.

It was not possible that the conversation should be otherwise than restrained and difficult. Russell Penton, as usual, threw himself into the breach. He entered into a lively description of their plans of travel.

“We both of us love the sunshine,” he said; “England is the noblest of countries, but she is far away from the center of warmth and light. There is no saying how far we may go southward before we come back.”

“But you were always fond of home, Alicia,” said (this being, of course, as all his companions remarked, the very last thing that ought to have occurred to him to say) the new proprietor of Penton.

“Home, I suspect,” she said, in her formal way, “is more where one chooses to make it than I have hitherto thought.” And then there was a pause.

“The weather will be quite delightful by this time in Italy, I suppose,” said Lady Penton, timidly. “I have never traveled at all; we have never had it in our power; but it seems as if it should always be fine there.”

“It is not, though. There is no invariable good weather,” said Russell Penton. “It generally turns out to be exceptional, and just as bad as what you have left, wherever you go.”

He had forgotten his little flourish of trumpets about the sunshine; and again they all sat silent, gazing at each other for a few terrible moments, asking each other on each side, Why did they come? and, Why did we come?

“The river has kept in tolerable bounds this year,” said Russell Penton, catching at a new subject; “no doubt because we have had less rain than usual. Come to the window, and let me show you the view.” He led Lady Penton to the further end of the room, where a side window commanded the whole range of the river, with the red roofs of Penton Hook making a spot of warm color low down by the side of the stream. “I am glad you see it before anything is disturbed,” he said; “an empty house is always a sight of dismay.”

“Oh, I wish it were never to be disturbed at all!” cried the poor lady; “I feel a dreadful impostor—an usurper—as if we were taking it from its rightful owner. It is all so suitable to her, and she to it,” she continued, casting an alarmed, admiring look to where the mistress of the house sat, an imposing figure, all crape and jet, like a queen about to abdicate, but not with her will.

“Yes, for she has made it all,” said the Prince Consort of the place; “but so will it be suitable to you when you have re-made it, Lady Penton; and if it is any consolation to you to know, I shall be a much happier man out of this house. After awhile I believe everything will be brighter for us both. But don’t let us talk of that. We have all had enough of the subject. Tell me what you are going to do about Mab, who has fallen so deeply in love with you all.”

“She is a dear little girl,” said Lady Penton. “I have asked her to come and pay us a long visit.”

“That is very kind; but pray remember that it would be still kinder to her to let her be with you as she wishes. She has more money than a little girl ought to have. It will be good and kind in every way.”

Lady Penton shook her head as he went on talking. Some people are proud in one way and some in another. She did not think much of Mab’s money. She was ready to open her heart to the orphan girl, but not to profit by her. They stood in the window with the great landscape before them, and the great room behind, which was too splendid even for that chiffonier; and involuntarily Lady Penton’s mind went back to that overwhelming question of the furniture, which was so much more important than little Mab and her fortune. To think of bringing anything from the Hook here! The chairs and tables would be lost even if they were not so shabby. Nothing would bear transplanting but the children, “And you can’t furnish a house with children,” she said, ruefully, to herself.

“Your wife no doubt will alter everything,” said Mrs. Russell Penton, following the other pair with her eyes.

“How could you think so, Alicia? It shall be altered as little as possible. Everything that belongs to the past is as dear to me as to you.”

“I said your wife,” said Alicia. And then she added, “No doubt she would like to go over the house.”

“She wishes nothing, I am sure, that would vex you,” Sir Edward said.

“Vex! I hope I have not so little self-command. The place has become indifferent indeed to me. It was dear by association, but now that’s all ended. One ends where another begins. I can only hope, Edward, that your branch of the family will be more fortunate—more—than ours have been.”

“Thank you, Alicia. I hope that you may be very happy, Russell and you. He’s as good a fellow as lives; and I’m sure, a delightful companion to be alone with.”

“Are you recommending my husband to me?” she said, with one of those smiles which made her cousin, whose utterances certainly were very inappropriate, shrink into himself. “Don’t you think I ought to know better than any one what a delightful companion he is? And I hear you are to have a marriage in your family. Harry Rochford will, I hope, prove a delightful companion too.”

“He is a good fellow,” said poor Sir Edward, able to think of no more original phrase. “He is not quite in the position a Penton might have looked for—”

“Oh,” she cried, hastily, “what does that matter?—there are Pentons and Pentons. And your daughter, Edward—your daughter—”

“I am sorry you don’t think well of my daughter, Alicia.”

“I never said so. She is very pretty and what people call sweet. I know no more of her; how could I? I was going to say she looked unambitious. And against Harry Rochford there is not a word to be said. Don’t you think your wife would like to see over the house?”

This is how they parted, without any warm rapprochement, though Alicia, with her usual consciousness of her own faults and her husband’s opinion, involuntarily condemned every word she herself said, and everything she did, while she almost forced Lady Penton from one room to another, each of which filled that poor lady with deeper and deeper dismay. But, notwithstanding this secret current of self-disapproval, and notwithstanding the certainty she had of what her husband felt on the subject, there was a certain stern pleasure in bidding her supplanters good-bye on the threshold of the house that was still her own; dismissing them, so to speak, for the last time from Penton with a keen sense of the despondency and discouragement with which they went away. She took notice of everything as she did them that unusual honor, which was an aggravation under the circumstances, of accompanying them to the door; of the pair of screws—of the absence of any footman—and, still more, of the depressed looks of the simple pair. All these things gave her a thrill of satisfaction. Who were they, to be the possessors of Penton? They did not even appreciate it—did not admire it—thought of the expense! But she went upstairs again with her husband following her, feeling more like a culprit, a school-boy who is expecting a lecture, than it was consistent with Alicia’s dignity to feel. Russell did not say anything, but he showed inclinations to whistle, as it were, under his breath.

“I am very glad this is over,” she said.

“So am I,” he replied.

“I know what you think, Gerald—that I ought to be more sympathetic. In what way could I be sympathetic? She is buried in calculations as to how they are to live here; and he—”

“I respect her calculations,” said Russell Penton. “It is a dreadful white elephant to come into the poor lady’s hands.”

“And yet you scarcely concealed your pleasure when it passed away from me—to whom it has always been a home so dear.”

“I never stand on my consistency, Alicia. I am glad and sorry about the same thing, you see. I am sorry that you are sorry to go away, yet I can’t help being glad that you are freed from the bondage of this place, which has been a kind of idol to you all; and I am glad they have it, yet sorry for poor Lady Penton and her troubled looks. When we go away from Penton I shall feel as if we were starting for our honey-moon.”

“Don’t say so, Gerald—when you think how it is that this has come about.”

“It has come about by a great grief, my darling, yet a natural one—one that could not have been long averted. And I hope you don’t object Alicia, now that you have fulfilled your duty to the last detail, that your husband should be glad to have you more his own than Penton would ever have permitted you to be.”

She accepted the kiss he gave her, not without a sense of the sweetness of being loved, but yet with a consciousness that when he spoke of her fulfilling her duty to the last detail he implied a certain satisfaction having got rid of that duty at last. She knew as well as he did, with a faint pleasure mingling with many a thought of pain and some of irritation, that this setting out together was indeed at last their real honey-moon, in so far as that consists of a life together and alone.

Lady Penton returned very grave and overwhelmed with thought to the shelter of those red roofs at the Hook which made so picturesque a point in the landscape from Penton. She did not make any response to the children who rushed out in a body to see the parents come home, to admire the pair of screws, and the new carriage. She went into the drawing-room and gazed long upon the chiffonier, measuring and gauging it with her eye from every side. It had, as has been said, a plate-glass back, and it was inlaid, and had various brass ornaments entitling it to the name of ormolu. She touched its corners with her hand lovingly, then shook her head. “Not even the chiffonier will do for Penton,” she said; “not even the chiffonier!” Nothing else could have given the family such an idea of the grandeur of the great house, and their own grandeur to whom it belonged, as well as of the saddening yet exhilarating fact that everything would have to be got new.

“Well, my dear,” said Sir Edward, “we must make up our minds to that, for to tell the truth, though you were always so pleased with that piece of furniture, I never liked it much.”

He never liked it much! Lady Penton turned a reproachful glance upon her husband; it was as if he had abandoned a friend in trouble.

“Edward,” she said, with a tone of despair, “if this will not do, nothing will do—nothing we have. I had given up the carpets and curtains, but I still had a fond hope—I thought that one side of the room, at any rate, would be furnished with that; but it would be nothing in the Penton drawing-room—nothing! And if that won’t do, nothing will do.”

“My dear,” Sir Edward said—he planted himself very firmly on his feet, with the air of Fitzjames, in the poem, setting his back against the rock—“my dear,” he repeated, looking round as who should say,

“Come one, come all, this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I:”

“I have thought of all that; and I have something to propose. You must not take me up in a hurry, but hear me out. We are all very fond of Penton Hook; but we can’t live in two houses at once.”

“Especially when they are so close to each other,” cried Anne, instinctively standing up by him. “I know what father means.”

She was the only one whose mind was disengaged and free to follow every new initiative. Ally was altogether occupied by her new prospects, and Walter, though he did his best to resume his old aspect, was still too much absorbed in those that were past. Anne alone was the cheerful present, the to-day of the family, ready to take up every suggestion. She stood up by her father womanfully and put her arm through his. “I am with you, father—though I’m not of much account,” she said.

Lady Penton withdrew her regretful gaze from her chiffonier. She did not, to tell the truth, expect any practical light about the furniture from her husband, who was only a theorist in such matters, or the enthusiast by his side; but she was a woman of impartial mind, and she would not refuse to listen. She turned her mild eyes upon the pair.

“Well, then,” said Sir Edward, “this is what I am going to propose: that I should let the Hook as it stands—poor old house, it is shabby enough, but in summer it will always bring a fair rent. Take away nothing; the chiffonier shall stand in all its glory, and you can come back and look at it, my dear, from time to time. And look here, it is no use straining at a gnat; we must make up our minds to it. As soon as my cousin goes we must write to Gillow or somebody—who is the best man?—to go in at once to Penton and furnish it from top to bottom. It is no use straining at a gnat, as I say. We must just make a great gulp and get it down.”

“Straining at a—do you call that a gnat, Edward? It is a camel you mean.”

“Camel or not, my dear,” said Sir Edward, with a look of determination; “that is how it must be.”

They all held their breath at this tremendous resolution. “But as for Gillow, that is nonsense. It must be Maple at the very utmost,” Lady Penton said.

CHAPTER XLVII
AN AGITATING ENCOUNTER.

It was spring before these changes were accomplished and the family got into Penton, all newly furnished from top to bottom as Sir Edward in his magnificence had said. Perhaps this was not exactly true, for Lady Penton kept an unwearying eye upon all the movements of the workmen, and decided that it was unnecessary to touch many of the rooms where there was still enough of furniture to make them habitable, or which only the exigencies of a very large party of visitors would make necessary—and that was not a contingency likely to occur. They took up their residence in Penton when the woods were all carpeted with primroses, and everything was opening to the new life and hope of the growing season. No doubt it was evident at once that the grandeur of the old Pentons, their cold but splendid dignity of living, and all the self-restrained yet self-conscious wealth of their manners and ways, the costliness, the luxury, the state, were not to be reproduced; but then the house had become a cheerful house, which it never was under Mrs. Russell Penton’s sway. It was no longer silent with one stately figure moving here and there, and Russell Penton, fretted and impatient, protesting in his morning coat with his hands in his pockets against the splendor. There was no splendor now, but a perpetual movement, a flitting of many groups about the lawns, a sound of cheerful voices.

The children enjoyed it with their whole hearts, and Mab Russell, who had come upon that promised long visit, and had managed to establish herself with the maid and the man who were attached to her little person, and other accessories, which looked like a very long visit, indeed—plunged into the midst of all their diversions, and became the ringleader in all nursery mischief. “I never had any growing up,” she said. “I have always been out and seeing everything. I don’t like grown-up people, except you, Lady Penton. Let me go back to the nursery; and then I can be promoted to the school-room, and then burst upon the world. After Ally and Anne are both married I shall be of such use. You can’t do without a grown-up daughter. But I am only in the nursery now.” “Anne is not thinking of marrying, my dear. She is too young,” Lady Penton would say, which was all the gentle protest she made against Mab’s claim. For she was very pitiful of the poor little orphan—and then Walter—Perhaps it is not possible to be a mother without admitting certain schemes into one’s head. And Sir Edward, for his part, did not oppose, which was more curious. He was not fond of strangers, and as he; like his wife, was too proud to hear of Mab’s allowance, and her horses and she were a great expense to the restrained and economical household, it may perhaps be supposed that the father, though no schemer, had fancies in his mind, too.

The one in the house whose heart beat low, whose life seemed to have sunk into the shadow, was the one of all others who should have been the brightest, and whose beginning of existence included most capabilities of enjoyment. Walter was now the heir of Penton in reality. He had attained everything he had once looked forward to. More than this, he had that little fortune of his own which in a few months would be in his actual and unfettered possession. But his life, before ever it opened out, had been chilled. It seemed to him at first that life and all its joys were over for him. It was not only that he had been disappointed in his love, but it had been associated to him with all the disgusts that affect youth so profoundly; he had touched the mercenary, the meretricious, the degraded, and his pride had been humbled by the contact. Yet he had been ready to endure that contact, to submit to be linked with these horrors for the sake of his love. He had known even in the midst of his rapture of youthful fantastic passion, that to be linked with all these debasing circumstances would take the fragrance and the beauty out of life. To have Mrs. Sam Crockford for his mother-in-law, to recognize that uncleanly, untidy, sordid little house as Emmy’s home would have been misery even in the midst of bliss; he had been aware of this even in the hottest of his pursuit, while he was possessed by the image of Emmy, and could think of no possibility of happiness save that of marrying her. Had it been Crockford’s cottage in all its old-fashioned humility; had it been the kind, deaf, dear old woman who had been familiar to him all his life, how different! But the dreadful woman in that dreadful parlor, with her smile, and her portraits all smiling just the same upon the dingy walls, with her white, horrible, unwholesome hands, even in Emmy’s presence how he had shuddered at her! These images oppressed the poor boy’s imagination like a nightmare—he could not forget them; and he could not forget her who had made him accept and tolerate all that, who still could, if she would but hold up a finger, make everything possible. How was it that this magic existed? What was the meaning of it? He knew now with more or less certainty what Emmy was. She was not, notwithstanding the cleverness of speech which had so filled him with wonder at first, either educated or refined; and she was not beautiful. He was able to perceive even that. He saw, too, and hated himself for seeing, indications of her mother’s face in Emmy’s, the beginning of that horrible smile. And he knew also that she had no response to make to the enthusiastic love in his own youthful breast, the passion of devotion and self-abandonment which had swept in his mind all precaution and common sense away. No such operations had taken place in her. She had weighed him in the balance of the most common, the most prosaic form of sense, that of worldly advantage—of money. His heart was sore with all these wounds, he felt them in every fiber. It had been taken into consideration whether he was rich enough, whether he had enough to offer. She whom he loved with extravagant youthful devotion, ready to sacrifice everything for her, even his tastes, the manners and ways of thinking in which he had been brought up, had tried him by the vulgarest of tests. How could a young heart bear all this? Seldom, very seldom, does so complete a disenchantment come to one so young; for Walter did not take it as young Pendennis did, or learn to laugh at his own delusion. He had no temptation to laugh; he could not put out of his pained young being the thought that it could not be true, that after all there must be some mistake in it, that his love must have judged rightly, that his disenchantment was but some horrible work of the devil. And wounded, undeceived, quivering with pain as he was, his heart still yearned after her; he formed to himself pictures of what he might find if he stole back unawares, without any warning. He imagined her sitting in dreariness and solitude, perhaps shut up by the mother lest she should call him back, a patient martyr, knowing how she had been vilified in his eyes—but not vilified, oh, no, only mistaken. He fed his heart with dreams of this kind even while he knew—knew by experience, by certainty, by her own words, and looks, and sentiments, noways disguised, that the fact was not so. Women more often go on loving after the beloved has lost all illusion than men do, but perhaps in extreme youth the boy has this experience oftener than the girl. Poor Walter had been stabbed in every sensitive part, and felt his wounds all keen; but still he could not put her out of his heart.

And the consequence of this morbid and divided soul was that his being altogether was weakened and the life made languid in it. He had no heart, as people say, for anything. He left the Hook without regret, and entered on the larger life of Penton without pleasure; everything was obscured to him as if a veil were over it. “No joy the blowing season gives,” his vitality had sunk altogether. It was arranged that he was to go to Oxford in April, but he felt neither pleasure nor unwillingness. It was all unreal to him; nothing was real but that little episode. Emmy in her brightness and lightness by his side in the streets, making those little expeditions with him in all the confidence and closeness of belonging to him, two betrothed that were like one; and the mother in the background with her hands, which he still seemed to feel and shudder at. He had almost daily impulses to go and see all these scenes again, to see the actors in them, to make out if they were false or true. But he did not do so, perhaps because of the languor of his being, perhaps because he was afraid of any one divining what he wanted, perhaps because he clung to some ray of illusion still.

There began, however, to be frequent visits to town, Lady Penton being absorbed in that important matter of Ally’s trousseau, which could no longer be deferred. What changes seemed to have happened in their life since the time when they all went up to London, a simple party, to provide what was necessary for the visit to Penton! Penton, it had seemed at that time, would never be theirs; they were giving it up and contemplating a comfortable obscurity with a larger income and no responsibilities. Now they had indeed the larger income, but so many responsibilities with it, and so much to be done, that the poverty of Penton Hook seemed almost wealth in comparison; yet—for the mind accustoms itself very quickly to what is, however much it may have struggled for a different way—there was perhaps no one of the family who could now have returned to the Hook without the most humiliating sense of downfall, a feeling which Lady Penton herself shared, in spite of herself. The trousseau occupied a great many of the thoughts of the ladies at this period. They had a great many shops to go to, and when by times one of the male members of the family accompanied them, it was tedious work inspecting their proceedings and waiting, looking on, while so many stuffs were turned over and patterns compared.

It happened one of these days that Walter was of the party. How he had been got to join it nobody knew, for he shrunk from London and could scarcely be induced to enter it at all, his inclinations, and yet not his inclinations so much as his dreams, and that uneasy sense that his disillusionment might of itself be an illusion, drew him in one direction, while all the impulses of the moment were toward the other way. But this day he had come he could not tell why. Mab was one of the party, and though it can not be said that Mab’s presence was an attraction, yet there was a certain camaraderie between the two, and she had taken it upon herself to talk to him, to attempt to amuse and interest him, when nobody knew how to approach him in his forlorn languor so unlike himself. Even Ally and Anne, his sisters, were so moved by sympathy for Wat, and by dismayed wondering what he was thinking of and what they could say, what depths of his recently acquired experience he was straying in, and what they could do to call him back from those depths—that they were silenced even by their feeling for him. But Mab had no such restraint upon her, though she knew more than they did, having seen him at the very crisis of his fate; and though she thought she knew a great deal more than she really knew, Mab had no such awed and trembling respect for Walter’s experiences as the others had, and would break in upon him frankly and talk until he threw off his dreams, or persuade him into a walk in the woods, or to join them in something which made him for the moment forget himself. His idea was that she knew nothing of that one unrevealed chapter in his history which the others, he thought, could not forget; so that Mab and Walter were very good friends. Even now, when Ally and her mother were busy over their silks and muslins, Mab left that interesting discussion by times to talk to Walter, who lounged about distrait, as creatures of his kind will, in a shop adapted for the wants of the other half of humanity. Walter stood about waiting, taking little notice of anything except when he turned at her call to respond to what Mab said to him, and that was only by intervals. It was in one of these pauses that his eye was caught by a group at a little distance, which at first had no more interest for him than any other of the groups about. It was in one of the subdivisions of the great shop, framed in on two sides by stands upon which hung all kinds of cloaks and mantles. In the vacant space in the middle were two or three ladies, attended upon by one of the young women of the shop, who was trying on for their gratification one mantle after another, while the customers looked on to judge of the effect. These figures moved before Walter’s dreamy eyes vaguely without attracting his attention, until suddenly something in the attitude of one of them struck upon his awakening sense. She was standing before a tall glass, which reflected her figure, with the silken garment which she was trying on drawn about her with a little shrug and twist of her shoulders to get it into its place. Wat’s heart began to beat, the mist fled from his eyes. The group grew distinct in a moment, separated as it was from all the others by the little fence half round, the light coming down from above upon the slim, elastic figure with all its graceful curves, standing so lightly as if but newly poised on earth, turning round with the air he knew so well. He had a moment of eblouissement, of bewilderment, and then it all became clear and plain. He made but the very slightest movement, uttered not a word; the shock of the discovery, the thrill of her presence so near him, were too penetrating to be betrayed by outward signs. He stood like one stupefied, though all his faculties on the moment had become so keen and clear. There was no possibility of any doubt; her light hair, all curled on her forehead, her face so full of brightness and animation, gleamed out upon him as she turned round. Emmy here, before his eyes!

It was like watching a little drama to see her amid the more severely clothed, cloaked, and bonneted figures of the ladies round. Her head was uncovered. She was in what seemed her natural place. Her patience seemed boundless. She took down cloak after cloak and slid them about her graceful shoulders, and made a few paces up and down to show them. It was a pretty occupation enough. She was dressed well; her natural grace made what she was doing appear no vulgar service, but an action full of courtesy and patience. The unfortunate boy watched her with eyes which enlarged and expanded with gazing. This, then, was what she had been doing while he had waited for her, while he had been her faithful attendant. She had never betrayed it to him. Sometimes he had believed that she was a teacher, sometimes that she went to work somewhere, he did not know how. This was what her occupation had been all the time. To make a trade out of her pretty gracefulness, her slim, youthful, easy figure, her perception of what was comely, while he was there who would have taken her out of all that, who would so fain have given her all he had. Why had she not come to him? He watched the pretty head turn, and that twist of the shoulders settling the new wrap. They were all beautiful on her. Did the women who were round her believe—could they believe that they could resemble Emmy—that anything could ever make them like her?

Walter’s whole aspect changed, he stood as if on tiptoe watching that little scene. At last the bargain was decided, the purchase made; the figures changed places, went and came from one side to another, as in the theater, then dissolved away, leaving her there before the big glass, in a little pose of her own, contemplating herself. It was in this glass that by and by Emmy, looking at herself, with her head now on one side, now on the other, suddenly perceived a stranger approaching, a gentleman, not with the air of a customer, coming along hurriedly with his face turned toward her. Emmy was sufficiently used to be admired. She knew as well as any one that her pretty figure, as she put on the cloaks that hung about, was a pretty sight to see, that the graceful little tricks with which she arranged them on her shoulders gave piquancy to her own appearance and a grace which perhaps did not belong to it to the article of apparel which she put on. She knew this, and so did her employers, who engaged her for this grace, and profited by her prettiness and her skill. But Emmy was very well aware that with strange gentlemen in this sanctuary of the feminine she had nothing to do. She made her preparations for retiring discreetly before the approaching man. But before she did so she gave him a glance over her shoulder, a glance of invincible inherent coquetry, just to let him see that she perceived she was admired, and had no objection theoretically, though as a practical matter the thing was impossible. As she gave him this look through the medium of the big mirror, Emmy recognized Walter as he had recognized her. She gave a sudden low cry of alarm, and put up her hands to her face to hide herself, and then darted like a startled hare through the intricacies of all those subdivisions. Walter called out her name, and hurried after her, breathless, forgetting everything, but in a moment found himself hopelessly astray amid screens which balked his passage and groups of ladies who stared at him as if he had been a madman. Those screens, with their hanging finery, those astonished groups disturbed in their occupation, seemed to swallow up all trace of the little light figure which had disappeared in a moment. He stumbled on as far as he could till he was met by a severe and stately personage who blocked the way.

“Is there anything I can show you, sir?” this stately lady said, who was as imperious as if she had been a duchess.

“I—I saw some one I knew,” said Walter; “if I might but speak to her for a moment.”

“Do you mean one of our young ladies, sir?” said that princess dowager. “The young ladies in the mantle department are under my care: we shall be happy to show you anything in the way of business, but private friends are not for business hours; and this is a place for ladies, not for young gentlemen,” the distinguished duenna said.

CHAPTER XLVIII.
THE END OF ALL.

What was he to do? He was stopped short, bewildered, excited, quivering with a hundred sensations, by this impassable guardian of virtue and proprieties. A young gentleman is in every personal particular stronger, more effective and potent than a middle-aged woman in a shop; yet a bolder man than Walter would have been subdued by a representative of law and order so uncompromising. He looked at her appealingly, with his young eyes full of anxiety and trouble.

“I wanted only—a moment—to say a word—” he faltered, as if his fate hung upon her grace. But nothing could move her. She stood before him with her black silk skirts filling up the passage, in all the correctness of costume and demeanor which her position required.

“Young gentleman,” she said, “remember that you may be doing a great deal of harm by insisting. You can’t speak to any one here. If you’ll take my advice you’ll join the ladies that seem to be looking for you. That’s your party, I believe, sir,” she said, with a majestic wave of her hand. And then poor Walter heard Ally’s voice behind him.

“Oh, Wat, what are you doing? We thought we had lost you, and mother is waiting. Oh, Wat, what were you doing there? Who were you talking to? What could you want among all the mantles?” Another voice came to the rescue while he turned round bewildered. “I know what he was doing, Ally; he was looking for that wrap you were talking of. You should have asked me to come and help you to choose it, Mr. Penton.” They swept him away bewildered, their voices and soft rustle of movement coming round him like the soft compulsion of a running stream. The girls flowed forth in pleasant words as they got him between them, as irresistible as the duenna, though in a different way, Ally thanking him for the intention that Mab had attributed to him. “Oh, Wat, how good of you to think of that!”

“But, Mr. Penton, you should have asked me to come with you to choose it; I would have protected you,” said the laughing Mab. He was swept away by them, confused, with something singing in his ears, with—not the earth, but at least the solid flooring, covered with noiseless carpets, laden with costly wares, giving way, as he felt, under his stumbling feet.

He accompanied them home as in a dream: fortunately their minds were engrossed with subjects of their own, so that they did not remark his silence, his preoccupation. He sat sunk in his corner of the railway carriage, his face half covered with his hand, thinking it all over, contemplating that scene, seeing those figures float before him, and her look in the mirror over her shoulder. Ah! that look in the mirror was a stab to him, keener than any blow. For it was not to him that Emmy threw that glance—it was to any man, to the first pair of admiring eyes that might find out her prettiness, her grace—oh, not to him! When she saw who it was she had covered her face and fled. She had been ashamed to be discovered. Why should she be ashamed to be discovered? There was nothing shameful in what she was doing. In the quiet of the great shop, among women, no disturbing influences near—among the pretty things that suited her, the atmosphere warm and soft, the carpets noiseless under her feet. Perhaps he said all this to himself to console him for some internal shock it gave him to see her there at everybody’s will, turning herself into a lay figure that all the vulgar women, the dumpy matrons, the heavy girls, might be deceived and think that by assuming the same garment they might become as beautiful as she. Walter was not aware of this if it were so, but all his thoughts, which he had been trying to sever from her, went back with a bound. He thought and thought, as the lines of the country, all touched with reviving green, flew past the carriage windows, and the jar and croak of the railway made conversation difficult, and justified his retirement into himself—seeing her now in a new light, seeing her in perspective, the light all round her, her daily work, her home, the diversions she had loved. He said to himself that it was a life of duty, though not one that the vulgar mind recognized as drawn on elevated lines. How patient she had been, smiling upon those whom she had served, putting on one thing after another, exhibiting everything at its best to please them! It was all curiously mixed up with pain and sharpness, this rapture of admiration, and confusion, and longing, and regret, which the sight of her had worked in his mind. The smile on her lips was a little like the smile with which her mother had been represented as charming the public. Emmy had her public to charm, too. Oh, if he could but snatch her away from it all!—carry her off, hide her from all contact with the common world! It occurred to him quite irrelevantly in the midst of his thoughts, how it might be if Emmy at Penton, or in any other such place, should suddenly encounter some one whom she had served at Snell and Margrove’s? This thought came into his mind like an arrow fired by an enemy across the tender and eager course of his anticipations and resolution. How could she bear it? and how should he bear it, to see the stare, the whisper, the wonder, the scorn in the looks of some pair of odious, envious, spiteful women (women always call forth these adjectives under such circumstances). This arrow went to his very heart, and wounded him in the midst of his longing and purpose, and hot, impatient aspiration. And then he seemed to see her with that pretty trick of movement settling the cloak upon her shoulders, to show it off to the intending purchaser! Oh, Emmy! his Emmy! that she should be exposed to that! And yet he said to himself it was nothing derogatory—oh, nothing derogatory!—a safe, sheltered, noiseless place, among women, among beautiful stuffs and things, with no jar of the outside world about! If he could but snatch her away from it, carry her away!

Penton contained his body but not his mind for some time after. What could he do? She had rejected him—for motives of prudence, poor Emmy! and returned to her shop. Why? why? Was he so distasteful to her as that?—that she should prefer her shop to him and his ten thousand pounds? And yet he had not felt himself to be distasteful. Even on this unexpected, undreamed-of meeting, she had hidden her face and fled, that he might not identify her, might not speak to her. Was she, then, so set against him? And yet she had not always been set against him. Walter did not know how long the time was which passed like a dream, while he pondered these things, asking himself every morning what he should do? whether he should return and try his fortune again; whether when she knew all she would yield to his entreaties and allow him to deliver her from that servitude? It was on a Saturday at last that the impulse became suddenly uncontrollable. He had been thinking over her little holiday, the Saturdays, which she had to herself, the little time when she was free, when she had gone out with him enjoying the air, even though it was winter, and the freedom, though he had not known in what bondage her days were spent. He could not contain himself when he remembered this. He went hurriedly away, not, as he had done on a previous occasion, in hot enthusiasm and rapture, but sadly, perceiving now all he was doing, and the break he must make, if he were successful, between himself and his home—perceiving too the difficulties that might come after, the habits that were not as his, the modes of life which are so hard to efface. Even his anticipation of happiness was all mixed with pain. It had become to him rather a vision of the happiness of delivering her, of placing her in circumstances more fit, surrounding her with everything delightful, than of the bliss to himself which would come from her companionship. Was he a little uncertain of that after all that had come and gone? But Walter would never have owned this to himself—only it was of her happiness, not of his, that he thought; and something wrung his heart as he left Penton behind, and took his way toward the house of Mrs. Sam Crockford with a shuddering recollection which he could not subdue.

He had planned to get there about noon, when Emmy would be coming home. She might be tired, she might be sad, she might be cheered by the sudden appearance of a faithful lover, bringing the means of amusement and variety in his hand. They might go to Richmond, and he would take her on the river, as she had said she liked it, though in winter that had not been practicable. And he had made up his mind to insist, to be masterful, as it was said women liked a man to be. He would not accept a denial, he thought. He would tell her that he could not endure it, that this work of hers must come to an end. He made up his mind that neither her sauciness nor her sweetness should distract him from his resolution, that this thing must come to an end. He walked most of the long way from the railway station to the little street in which was the mean little house where she lived with her mother. How often he had trodden that way with his heart beating—how often distracted with pain! There was more pain than pleasure in his bosom now. He did not know how she would receive him, but he had made up his mind not to be discouraged by any reception she might give him. This time he would have his way. His motive was no longer selfish, he said to himself. It was no longer for him, but for her.

There was a little commotion in the street, of which he took no particular notice as he came up. A carriage with a pair of gray horses was coming along with the familiar jog of a hack carriage which is paid for at so much an hour. Walter did not suppose this could have anything to say to him, and took no notice, as how should he? But when he approached the house it became more and more evident that something had happened or was happening. A group of idlers were standing about a door, from which came the sound of voices and laughter, altogether festive sounds. Somebody was rejoicing, it was apparent, with that not too refined kind of joy—a happiness unrestrained by any particular regard for the proprieties that belong to such regions. Even this did not rouse Walter. What did it matter to him if some one had been married, or christened, or was going through any of the joyful incidents of life—next door? His mind was full of what she would say, of what she would do, of the steps to be taken in order to complete her deliverance. It would not be his deliverance. It would be his severance from much that had acquired a new value in his eyes. But it would be freedom to her; it would be, whatever she might say, comparative wealth. Why had she so resisted? why, in her position, had she scorned his little fortune? It could only be, he thought, that he might be hindered from sacrificing so much on his side.

He was deep, deep in thought as he approached. Surely it was next door, this marriage, or whatever it was. It must be next door. The carriage came leisurely up and stopped, the coachman displaying a great wedding favor. It was a marriage, then: strange that he should come with his mind full of that proposal of his, to which he would take no denial, and find a marriage going on next door! He smiled to himself at the odd circumstance, but there was not very much pleasure in his smile. There would soon be another there—but quiet—that at least he would secure—not attended by this noisy revelry, the voices and cheers ringing out into the street. Ah, no! but quiet, the marriage of two people who would have a great deal to think of, to whom happiness would come seriously, not without sacrifices, not without—

But, oh, that sudden shock and pause! what did this mean? It was not at the next house, but at Mrs. Sam Crockford’s door that the carriage with the two gray horses drew up. It was there the idlers were standing grouped round to see somebody pass out: the voices came from within that well-known narrow entrance. Walter stopped, struck dumb, his very breath going, and stood with the rest, to see—what he might see. He heard the stir of chairs pushed from the table, the chorus of good-byes, and then—

The open doorway was suddenly filled by the bridal pair, the bridegroom coming out first, she a step behind. Walter knew the man well enough; he had seen him but once, but that seeing had been sufficient. He came out flushed, in his wedding clothes, his hat upon one side of his head, his white gloves in his hand. “Thank you all; we’ll be jolly enough, you needn’t fear,” he was calling to the well-wishers behind. After him Emmy came forward, perhaps more gayly apparelled than a bride of higher position would have been for her wedding journey, her hat covered with flowers and feathers, her dress elaborately trimmed. She too was a little flushed, and full of smiles and satisfaction. Walter did not stir, he stood and looked on grimly, like a man who had nothing to do with it. It did not seem to affect him at all; his heart, which had been beating loudly, had calmed in a moment. He stood and looked at them as if they were people whom he had never seen before—standing silent in the midst of the loungers of the little street, a few children and women, a passing errand boy, and a man out of work, who stood too with his hands in his pockets and gazed in a sullen way, with a sort of envy of the people who were well-off and well-to-do. The bridegroom had not the same outward deference to his bride which might be seen in other circles. He held her arm loosely in his and dragged her behind him, turning back and shouting farewells to his friends. “Oh, we’ll be joyful enough!” he cried, taking no heed to her timid steps. And perhaps Emmy’s steps could not be described as timid. She gave his arm a shake to rouse him from the fervor of these good-byes.

“Here, mind what you are doing, Ned, and let’s get on, or we shall miss the train,” she said.

Walter stood and gazed stupidly, and took all the little drama in.

And then there ensued the farce at the end, the shower of rice, the old shoes thrown after the departing pair. The jovial bridegroom threw back several that fell into the carriage, and Emmy laughed and cheered him on. They went off in a burst of laughter and gayety. Her quick eye had glanced at the spectators on either side of the door. Could she have seen him there? She had turned round to her mother, who followed them to the door, and whispered something as they went away: but that was all. Walter stood and watched them drive off; it was all like a scene in a theater to him. He did not seem able to make up his mind to go away.

And then suddenly he felt a touch upon his arm. “Oh, Mr. Penton, is it you? Step in—step in, sir, please, and let me speak to you; I must say a word to you.”

“I can see no need for any words,” he said, dully; but partly to get free of her, for her touch was intolerable to him, partly because of the want of any impulse in his own mind, he followed her into the house, into the parlor, all full of wedding favors and finery. The bridal party had retired riotously, as was very apparent, to the table in the back room.

“Oh, Mr. Penton, you have been shamefully treated!” Mrs. Sam Crockford cried. She was herself splendid in a new dress, with articles of jewelry hung all over her. She touched her eyes lightly with her handkerchief as she spoke. “Young gentleman,” she said, “though I have had to give in to it, don’t think I approved of it. My chyild, of course, was my first object, but I had some heart for you too. And you behaved so beautiful! How she could ever do it, and prefer him to you, is more than I can tell!”

“Then it was going on all the time?” said Walter, dully. He did not seem to have any feeling on the subject, or to care: yet he listened with a sort of interest as to the argument of the play.

“Sir,” said the woman, “everything is said to be fair in love. If it will be any consolation to you, you have helped my chyild to an alliance which—is not greater than her deserts—no, it is not greater than her deserts, Mr. Penton, as you and I know: but so far as money goes was little to be looked for. Edward is not perhaps a young man of manners as refined as we could wish, but he can give her every advantage. He is in business, Mr. Penton. Business has its requirements, which are different to those of art. His mother has just died, who was not Emmy’s friend. And he is rich. The business,” said Mrs. Sam Crockford, sinking her voice, “brings in—I can’t tell you how many thousands a year.”

Then Walter remembered what Emmy had said about some one who had as much a year as his whole little fortune consisted of, and added that dully to the story of the drama which he was hearing, paying a sort of courteous attention without any interest to speak of. “Why did not she—do this at once? that is what surprises me,” he said.

“Mr. Penton, I said all things are fair in love. I am afraid she played you against him to draw him on. She is my only child, it is hard for me to blame her. I don’t know that strictly speaking she is to be blamed. A girl has so few opportunities. He proposed a secret marriage, but my Emmy has too much pride for that. You were always with her, Mr. Penton, after she returned, and he was distracted. He thought she was going to marry you. I thought so myself at first: but she played her cards very well. She played you against him to draw him on.”

“Oh, she played me against him to draw him on,” said Walter. These words kept going through his head while Emmy’s mother went on talking at great length, explaining, defending, blaming her chyild. She might as well have said nothing more, for he could not take it in. The words seemed to circle round and round him in the air. They did not wound him, but gave a sort of wonder—a dull surprise.

“She played me against him to draw him on.” He went back through the endless streets to the railway-station, walking the whole way, feeling as if that long, long course might go on forever, for nights and days, for dreary centuries; and then the railway, with its whirl of noise and motion, completed and confirmed the sense of an endless going on. He could not have told how long he had been away when he walked up the avenue again in the soft darkness of the spring night. His dulled mind mixed this absence up somehow with the previous one, and, with this confusion, brought a curious sense of guilt, and impulse to ask pardon. He would arise and go to his father, and say, “Father, I have sinned.” He would kneel down by his mother’s side. He could not understand that he had done no harm—that he had only left Penton that day. “She played me against him to draw him on.” It all seemed so simple—nobody’s fault—not even perhaps Emmy’s—for girls have so few opportunities, as her mother said. Perhaps it was natural, as it was the explanation of all the play—the mot de l’enigme. It seemed a sort of satisfaction to have such an ample explanation of it, at the last.

Just inside the gate he saw something white fluttering among the trees, and Mab cried, breathless, “Mr. Walter, is it you?” It was all he could do not to answer her with that explanation which somehow seemed so universally applicable. “She played me off”—but he restrained himself, and only said, “Yes, it is I.” She put out her hand to him in an impulsive, eager way. He had not in fact seen her that day before, and Walter took the hand thrust into his in the dark with a curious sensation of help and succor; it was a cool little soft fresh hand, not like that large and clammy member which, thank Heaven, he had nothing to do with any more. And there was an end of it all—there it all ended, in Mab’s little frank hand meeting his in the twilight as if she were admitting him to a new world.

Ally was married shortly after, and the marriage was very good for the material interests of the house of Penton. It was a very fine marriage for young Mr. Rochford of Reading, but it was also a fine thing for the family in whose history he had in future more interest than merely that of their man of business. Mab still promises every day that Anne will soon follow her sister’s example, and that she herself will be the only one left to fulfill the duties of the grown-up daughter. Her visit has been prolonged again and again, till it has run out into the longest visit that ever was known. Will it ever come to an end? Will she ever go away again, and set up with a chaperon in the house in Mayfair with which she is sometimes threatened by her guardians? Who can tell? There will be many people to be consulted before it can be decided one way or other. But if nobody else’s mind is made up, Mab’s is very distinct upon this point, as well as upon most others within her range. And she is one of those people who usually have their way.

THE END.

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