Under Lock and Key: A Story. Volume 1 (of 3)

by T. W. Speight

UNDER LOCK AND KEY.

[CHAPTER I.]

MY ARRIVAL AT DUPLEY WALLS.

"Miss JANET HOLME,

To the care of Lady Pollexfen,

Dupley Walls, near Tydsbury,

Midlandshire."

"There, miss, I'm sure that will do famously," said Chirper, the overworked oldish young person whose duty it was to attend to the innumerable wants of the young-lady boarders of Park Hill Seminary. She had just written out, in a large sprawling hand, a card as above, which card was presently to be nailed on to the one small box that held the whole of my worldly belongings.

"And I think, miss," added Chirper, meditatively, as she held out the card at arm's length and gazed at it admiringly, "that if I was to write out another card similar, and tie it round your arm, it would mayhap help you in getting safe to your journey's end."

I, a girl of twelve, was the Janet Holme indicated above, and I had been looking over Chirper's shoulder with wondering eyes while she addressed the card. "But who is Lady Pollexfen, and where is Dupley Walls? and what have I to do with either, Chirper, please?" I asked.

"If there is one thing in little girls more hateful than another, it is curiosity," answered Chirper, with her mouth half full of nails. "Curiosity has been the bane of many of our sex. Witness Bluebeard's unhappy wife. If you want to know more, you must ask Mrs. Whitehead. I have my instructions, and I acts on them."

Meeting Mrs. Whitehead half an hour later as she was coming down the stone corridor that led from the refectory, I did ask that lady precisely the same questions that I had put to Chirper. Her frosty glance, filled with a cold surprise, smote me even through her spectacles, and I shrank a little, abashed at my own boldness.

"The habit of asking questions elsewhere than in the class-room should not be encouraged in young ladies," said Mrs. Whitehead, with a sort of prim severity. "The other young ladies are gone home; you are about to follow their example."

"But, Mrs. Whitehead--Madam," I pleaded, "I never had any other home than Park Hill."

"More questioning, Miss Holme? Fie! Fie!" And with a lean forefinger uplifted in menacing reproval, Mrs. Whitehead sailed on her way, nor deigned me another word.

I stole out into the playground, wondering, wretched, and yet smitten through with faint delicious thrillings of a new-found happiness such, as I had often dreamed of, but had scarcely dared hope ever to realize. I, Janet Holme, going home! It was almost too incredible for belief. I wandered about like one mazed--like one who stepping suddenly out of darkness into sunshine is dazzled by an intolerable brightness whichever way he turns his eyes. And yet I was wretched: for was not Miss Chinfeather dead? And that, too, was a fact almost too incredible for belief.

As I wandered, this autumn morning, up and down the solitary playground, I went back in memory as far as memory would carry me, but only to find that Miss Chinfeather and Park Hill Seminary blocked up the way. Beyond them lay darkness and mystery. Any events in my child's life that might have happened before my arrival at Park Hill had for me no authentic existence. I had been part and parcel of Miss Chinfeather and the Seminary for so long a time that I could not dissociate myself from them even in thought. Other pupils had had holidays, and letters, and presents, and dear ones at home of whom they often talked; but for me there had been none of these things. I knew that I had been placed at Park Hill when a very little girl by some, to me, mysterious and unknown person, but further than that I knew nothing. The mistress of Park Hill had not treated me in any way differently from her other pupils; but had not the bills contracted on my account been punctually paid by somebody, I am afraid that the even-handed justice on which she prided herself--which, in conjunction with her aquiline nose and a certain antique severity of deportment, caused her to be known among us girls as _The Roman Matron_--would have been somewhat ruffled, and that sentence of expulsion from those classic walls would have been promptly pronounced and as promptly carried into effect.

Happily no such necessity had ever arisen; and now the Roman Matron lay dead in the little corner room on the second floor, and had done with pupils, and half-yearly accounts, and antique deportment, for ever.

In losing Miss Chinfeather I felt as though the corner-stone of my life had been rent away. She was too cold, she was altogether too far removed for me to regard her with love, or even with that modified feeling which we call affection. But then no such demonstration was looked for by Miss Chinfeather. It was a weakness above which she rose superior. But if my child's love was a gift which she would have despised, she looked for and claimed my obedience--the resignation of my will to hers, the absorption of my individuality in her own, the gradual elimination from my life of all its colour and freshness. She strove earnestly, and with infinite patience, to change me from a dreamy, passionate child--a child full of strange wild moods, capricious, and yet easily touched either to laughter or tears--into a prim and elegant young lady, colourless and formal, and of the most orthodox boarding-school pattern; and if she did not quite succeed in the attempt; the fault, such as it was, must be set down to my obstinate disposition and not to any lack of effort on the part of Miss Chinfeather. And now this powerful influence had vanished from my life, from the world itself, as swiftly and silently as a snowflake in the sun. The grasp of the hard but not unkindly hand, that had held me so firmly in the narrow groove in which it wished me to move, had been suddenly relaxed, and everything around me seemed tottering to its fall. Three nights ago Miss Chinfeather had retired to rest, as well, to all appearance, and as cheerful as ever she had been; next morning she had been found dead in bed. This was what they told us pupils; but so great was the awe in which I held the mistress of Park Hill Seminary that I could not conceive of Death even as venturing to behave disrespectfully towards her. I pictured him in my girlish fancy as knocking at her chamber door in the middle of the night, and after apologizing for the interruption, asking whether she was ready to accompany him. Then would she who was thus addressed arise, and wrap an ample robe about her, and place her hand with solemn sweetness in that of the Great Captain, and the two would pass out together into the starlit night, and Miss Chinfeather would be seen of mortal eyes nevermore.

Such was the picture that had haunted my brain for two days and as many nights, while I wandered forlorn through house and playground or lay awake on my little bed. I had said farewell to one pupil after another till all were gone, and the riddle which I had been putting to myself continually for the last forty-eight hours had now been solved for me by Mrs. Whitehead, and had been told that I too was going home.

"To the care of Lady Pollexfen, Dupley Walls, Midlandshire." The words repeated themselves again and again in my brain, and became a greater puzzle with every repetition. I had never to my knowledge heard of either the person or the place. I knew nothing of one or the other. I only knew that my heart thrilled strangely at the mention of the word _Home;_ that unbidden tears started to my eyes at the thought that perhaps--only perhaps--in that as yet unknown place there might be some one who would love me just a little. "Father--Mother." I spoke the words, but they sounded unreal to me, and as if uttered by another. I spoke them again, holding out my arms, and crying aloud. All my heart seemed to go out in the cry, but only the hollow winds answered me as they piped mournfully through the yellowing leaves, a throng of which went rustling down the walk as though stirred by the footsteps of a ghost. Then my eyes grew blind with tears, and I wept silently for a time as if my heart would break.

But tears were a forbidden luxury at Park Hill, and when, a little later on, I heard Chirper calling me by name, I made haste to dry my eyes and compose my features. She scanned me narrowly as I ran up to her. "You dear, soft-hearted little thing!" she said. And with that she stooped suddenly and gave me a hearty kiss that might have been heard a dozen yards away. I was about to fling my arms round her neck, but she stopped me, saying, "That will do, dear. Mrs. Whitehead is waiting for us at the door."

Mrs. Whitehead was watching us through the glass door which led into the playground. "The coach will be here in half an hour, Miss Holme," she said; "so that you have not much time for your preparations."

I stood like one stunned for a moment or two. Then I said, "If you please, Mrs. Whitehead, may I see Miss Chinfeather before I go?"

Her thin, straight lips quivered slightly, but in her eyes I read only cold disapproval of my request. "Really," she said, "what a singular child you must be. I scarcely know what to say."

"Oh, if you please, Mrs. Whitehead!" I urged. "Miss Chinfeather was always kind to me. I remember her as long as I can remember anything. To see her once more--for the last time. It would seem to me cruel to go away without."

"Follow me," she said, almost in a whisper. So I followed her softly upstairs into the little corner room where Miss Chinfeather lay in white and solemn state, grandly indifferent to all mundane matters. As I gazed, it seemed but an hour ago since I had heard those still lips conjugating the verb _mourir_ for the behoof of poor ignorant me, and the words came back to me, and I could not help repeating them to myself as I looked: _Je meurs_, _tu meurs_, &c.

I bent over and kissed the marble-cold forehead, and said farewell in my heart, and went downstairs without a word.

Half an hour later the district coach, a splendid vision, pulled up impetuously at the gates. I was ready to the moment. Mrs. Whitehead's frosty fingers touched mine for an instant; she imprinted a chill kiss on my check, and looked relieved. "Good-bye, my dear Miss Holme, and God bless you," she said. "Strive to bear in mind through after life the lessons that have been instilled into you at Park Hill Seminary. Present my respectful compliments to Lady Pollexfen, and do not forget your catechism."

At this point the guard sounded an impatient summons on his bugle; Chirper picked up my box, seized me by the hand, and hurried with me to the coach. My luggage found a place on the roof; I was unceremoniously bundled inside; Chirper gave me another of her hearty kisses, and pressed a crooked sixpence into my hand "for luck," as she whispered. I am sure there was a real tear in her eye as she did so. Next moment we were off.

I kept my eyes fixed on the Seminary as long as it remained in view, especially on the little corner room. It seemed to me that I must be a very wicked girl indeed, because I felt no real sorrow at quitting the place that had been my home for so many years. I could not feel anything but secretly glad, but furtively happy with a happiness which I felt ashamed of acknowledging even to myself. Miss Chinfeather's white and solemn face, as seen in her coffin, haunted my memory, but even of her I thought only with a sort of chastened regret. She had never touched my heart. There had been about her a bleakness of nature that effectually chilled any tender buds of liking or affection that might in the ordinary course of events have grown up and blossomed round her life. Therefore, in my child's heart there was no lasting sorrow for her death, no gracious memories of her that would stay with me, and smell sweet, long after she herself should be dust.

My eight miles' ride by coach was soon over. It ended at the railway station of the county town. The guard of the coach had, I suppose, received his secret instructions. Almost before I knew what had happened, I found myself in a first-class carriage, with a ticket for Tydsbury in my hand, and committed to the care of another guard, he of the railway, this time--a fiery-faced man, with immense red whiskers, who came and surveyed me as though I were some contraband article, but finished by nodding his head and saying with a smile, "I dessay we shall be good friends, miss, before we get to the end of our journey."

It was my first journey by rail, and the novelty of it filled me with wonder and delight. The train by which I travelled was a fast one, and after my first feeling of fright at the rapidity of the motion had merged into one of intense pleasure and exhilaration of mind, I could afford to look back on my recent coach experience with a sort of pitying superiority, as on a something that was altogether rococo and out of date. Already the rush of new ideas into my mind was so powerful that the old landmarks of my life seemed in danger of being swept clean away. Already it seemed days instead of only a brief hour or two since I had bidden Mrs. Whitehead farewell, and had taken my last look at Park Hill Seminary.

The red-faced guard was as good as his word; he and I became famous friends before I reached the end of my journey. At every station at which we stopped he came to the window to see how I was getting on, and whether I was in want of anything, and was altogether so kind to me that I was quite sorry to part from him when the train reached Tydsbury, and left me, a minute later, standing, a solitary waif, on the little platform.

The one solitary fly of which the station could boast was laid under contribution. My little box was tossed on to its roof; I myself was shut up inside; the word was given, "To Dupley Walls;" the station was left behind, and away we went, jolting and rumbling along the quiet country lanes, and under overarching trees, all aglow just now with autumn's swift-fading beauty. The afternoon was closing in, and the wind was rising, sweeping up with melancholy soughs from the dim wooded hollows where it had lain asleep till the sun went down; garnering up the fallen leaves like a cunning miser, wherever it could find a hiding-place for them, and then dying suddenly down, and seeming to hold its breath as if listening for the footsteps of the coming winter.

In the western sky hung a huge tumbled wrack of molten cloud like the ruins of some vast temple of the gods of eld. Chasmed buttresses, battlements overthrown; on the horizon a press of giants, shoulder against shoulder, climbing slowly to the rescue; in mid-sky a praying woman; farther afield a huge head, and a severed arm the fingers of which were clenched in menace: all these things I saw, and a score others, as the clouds changed from minute to minute in form and brightness, while the stars began to glow out like clusters of silver lilies in the eastern sky.

We kept jolting on for so long a time through the twilight lanes, and the evening darkened so rapidly, that I began to grow frightened. It was like being lifted out of a dungeon, when the old fly drew up with a jerk, and a shout of "House there!" and when I looked out and saw that we were close to the lodge entrance of some park.

Presently a woman, with a child in her arms, came out of the lodge and proceeded to open the gate for us. Said the driver--"How's Tootlums to-night?"

The woman shouted something in reply, but I don't think the old fellow heard her.

"Ay, ay," he called out, "Tootlums will be a famous young shaver one of these days," and with that he whipped up his horse, and away we went.

The drive up the avenue, for such at the time I judged it to be, and such it proved to be, did not occupy many minutes. The fly came to a stand, and the driver got down and opened the door. "Now, young lady, here you are," he said, and I found myself in front of the main entrance to Dupley Walls.

It was too dark by this time for me to discern more than the merest outline of the place. I saw that it was very large, and I noticed that not even one of its hundred windows showed the least glimmer of light. It loomed vast, dark, and silent, as if deserted by every living thing.

The old driver gave a hearty pull at the bell, and the muffled clamour reached me where I stood. I was quaking with fears and apprehensions of that unknown future on whose threshold I was standing. Would Love or Hate open for me the doors of Dupley Walls? I was strung to such a pitch that it seemed impossible for any lesser passion to be handmaiden to my needs.

What I saw when the massive door was at last opened was an aged woman, dressed like a superior domestic, who, in sharp accents, demanded to know what we meant by disturbing a quiet family in that unseemly way. She was holding one hand over her eyes, and trying to make out our appearance through the gathering darkness. I stepped close up to her. "I am Miss Janet Holme, from Park Hill Seminary," I said, "and I wish to speak with Lady Pollexfen."

[CHAPTER II.]

THE MISTRESS OF DUPLEY WALLS.

The words were hardly out of my lips when the woman shrank suddenly back, as though struck by an invisible hand, and gave utterance to an inarticulate cry of wonder and alarm. Then, striding forward, she seized me by the wrist, and drew me into the lamp-lighted hall. "Child! child! why have you come here?" she cried, scanning my face with eager eyes. "In all the wide world this is the last place you should have come to."

"Miss Chinfeather is dead, and all the young ladies have been sent to their homes. I have no home, so they have sent me here."

"What shall I do? What will her ladyship say?" cried the woman, in a frightened voice, "how shall I ever dare to tell her?"

"Who rang the bell, Dance, a few minutes ago? And to whom are you talking?"

The voice sounded so suddenly out of the semi-darkness at the upper end of the large hall, which was lighted only by a small oil lamp, that both the woman and I started. Looking in the direction from which the sound had come, I could dimly make out, through the obscurity, the figures of two women who had entered without noise through the curtained doorway, close to which they were now standing. One of the two was very tall, and was dressed entirely in black. The second one, who was less tall, was also dressed in black, except that she seemed to have something white thrown over her head and shoulders; but I was too far away to make out any details.

"Hush! don't you speak," whispered the woman warningly to me. "Leave me to break the news to her ladyship." With that she left me standing on the threshold, and hurried towards the upper end of the hall.

The tall personage in black, then, with the harsh voice--high pitched, and slightly cracked--was Lady Pollexfen! How fast my heart beat! If only I could have slipped out unobserved I would never have braved my fortune within those walls again.

She who had been called Dance went up to the two ladies, curtsied deeply, and began talking in a low earnest voice. Hardly, however, had she spoken a dozen words, when the lesser of the two ladies flung up her arms with a cry like that of some wounded creature, and would have fallen to the ground had not Dance caught her round the waist and so held her.

"What folly is this?" cried Lady Pollexfen, sternly, striking the pavement of the ball sharply with the iron ferule of her cane. "To your room, Sister Agnes! For such poor weak fools as you solitude is the only safe companion. But, remember your oath! Not a word; not a word." With one lean hand uplifted, and menacing forefinger, she emphasized those last warning words.

She who had been addressed as Sister Agnes raised herself with a deep sigh from the shoulder of Dance, cast one long look in the direction of the spot where I was standing, and vanished slowly through the curtained arch. Then Dance took up the broken thread of her narration, and Lady Pollexfen, grim and motionless, listened without a word.

Even after Dance had done speaking her ladyship stood for some time looking straight before her, but saying nothing in reply. I felt intuitively that my fate was hanging on the decision of those few moments, but I neither stirred nor spoke.

At length the silence was broken by Lady Pollexfen. "Take the child away," she said; "attend to her wants, make her presentable, and bring her to me in the Green Saloon after dinner. It will be time enough to-morrow to consider what must be done with her."

Dance curtsied again. Her ladyship sailed slowly across the hall, and passed out through another curtained doorway.

Dance's first act was to pay and dismiss the driver who had been waiting outside all this time. Then, taking me by the hand, "Come along with me, dear," she said. "Why, I declare, you look quite white and frightened! You have nothing to fear, child. We shall not eat you--at least, not just yet; not till we have fed you up a bit."

At the end of a long corridor was Mrs. Dance's own room, into which I was now ushered. Scarcely had I made a few changes in my toilette when tea for two persons was brought in, and Mrs. Dance and I sat down to table. The old lady was well on with her second cup before she made any remark other than was required by the necessities of the occasion.

I have called her an old woman, and such she looked in my youthful eyes, although her years were only about sixty. She wore a dark brown dress, and a black silk apron, and had on a cap with thick frilled borders, under which her grey hair was neatly snooded away. She looked ruddy and full of health. A shrewd sensible woman, evidently, yet with a motherly kindness about her that made me cling to her with a child's unerring instinct.

"You look tired, poor thing," she said, as she leisurely stirred her tea; "and well you may, considering the long journey you have had to-day. I don't suppose that her ladyship will keep you more than ten minutes in the Green Saloon, and after that you can go to bed as soon as you like. What a surprise for all of us your coming has been! Dear, dear! who would have expected such a thing this morning? But I knew by the twitching of my corns that something uncommon was going to happen. I was really frightened of telling her ladyship that you were here. There's no knowing how she might have taken it; and there's no knowing what she will decide to do with you to-morrow."

"But what has Lady Pollexfen to do with me in any way?" I asked. "Before this morning I never even heard her name, and now it seems that she is to do what she likes with me."

"That she will do what she likes with you, you may depend, dear," said Mrs. Dance. "As to how she happens to have the right so to do, that is another thing, and one about which it is not my place to talk nor yours to question me. That she possesses such a right you may make yourself certain. All that you have to do is to obey and to ask no questions."

I sat in distressed and bewildered silence for a little while. Then I ventured to say: "Please not to think me rude, but I should like to know who Sister Agnes is."

Mrs. Dance stirred uneasily in her chair and bent her eyes on the fire, but did not immediately answer my question.

"Sister Agnes is Lady Pollexfen's companion," she said at last. "She reads to her, and writes her letters, and talks to her, and all that, you know. Sister Agnes is a Roman Catholic, and came here from the convent of Saint Ursula. However, she is not a nun, but something like one of those Sisters of Mercy in the large towns who go about among poor people, and visit the hospitals and prisons. She is allowed to live here always, and Lady Pollexfen would hardly know how to get through the day without her."

"Is she not a relative of Lady Pollexfen?" I asked.

"No--not a relative," answered Dance. "You must try to love her a great deal, my dear Miss Janet, for if angels are ever allowed to visit this vile earth, Sister Agnes is one of them. But there goes her ladyship's bell. She is ready to receive you."

I had washed away the stains of travel, and had put on my best frock, and Dance was pleased to say that I looked very nice, "though, perhaps, a trifle more old-fashioned than a girl of your age ought to look." Then she laid down a few rules for my guidance when in the presence of Lady Pollexfen, and led the way to the Green Saloon, I following with a timorous heart.

Dance flung open the folding doors of the big room. "Miss Janet Holme to see your ladyship," she called out, and next moment the doors closed behind me, and I was left standing there alone.

"Come nearer--come nearer," said her ladyship's cracked voice, as with a long lean hand she beckoned me to approach.

I advanced slowly up the room, stopped and curtsied. Lady Pollexfen pointed out a high footstool about three yards from her chair. I curtsied again, and sat down on it. During the interview that followed my quick eyes had ample opportunity for taking a mental inventory of Lady Pollexfen and her surroundings.

She had exchanged the black dress in which I first saw her for one of green velvet, trimmed with ermine. This dress was made with short sleeves and low body, so as to leave exposed her ladyship's arms, long, lean, and skinny, and her scraggy neck. Her nose was hooked, and her chin pointed. Between the two shone a row of large white even teeth, which long afterwards I knew to be artificial. Equally artificial was the mass of short black frizzly curls that crowned her head, which was unburdened with cap or covering of any kind. Her eyebrows were dyed to match her hair. Her cheeks, even through the powder with which they were thickly smeared, showed two spots of brilliant red, which no one less ignorant than I would have accepted without question as the last genuine remains of the bloom of youth. But at that first interview I accepted everything _au pied de la letter_, without doubt or question of any kind.

Her ladyship wore long earrings of filigree gold. Round her neck was a massive gold chain. On her fingers sparkled several rings of price--diamonds, rubies, and opals. In figure her ladyship was tall, and as upright as a dart. She was, however, slightly lame of one foot, which necessitated the use of a cane when walking. Lady Pollexfen's cane was ivory-headed, and had a gold plate let into it, on which was engraved her crest and initials. She was seated in an elaborately-carved high-backed chair, near a table on which were the remains of a dessert for one person.

The Green Saloon was a large gloomy room; at least, it looked gloomy as I saw it for the first time, lighted up by four wax candles where twenty were needed. These four candles being placed close by where Lady Pollexfen was sitting, left the other end of the saloon in comparative darkness. The furniture was heavy, formal, and old-fashioned. Gloomy portraits of dead-and-gone Pollexfens lined the green walls, and this might be the reason why there always seemed to me a slight graveyard flavour--scarcely perceptible, but none the less surely there--about this room which caused me to shudder involuntarily whenever I crossed its threshold.

Lady Pollexfen's black eyes--large, cold, and steady as Juno's own--had been bent upon me all this time, measuring me from head to foot with what I felt to be a slightly contemptuous scrutiny. "What is your name, and how old are you?" she asked, with startling abruptness, after a minute or two of silence.

"Janet Holme, and twelve years," I answered, laconically. A feeling of defiance, of dislike to this bedizened old woman, began to gnaw my child's heart. Young as I was, I had learned, with what bitterness I alone could have told, the art of wrapping myself round with a husk of cold reserve, which no one uninitiated in the ways of children could penetrate, unless I were inclined to let them. Sulkiness was the generic name for this quality at school, but I dignified it with a different term.

"How many years were you at Park Hill Seminary? and where did you live before you went there?" asked Lady Pollexfen.

"I have lived at Park Hill ever since I can remember anything. I don't know where I lived before that time."

"Are your parents alive or dead? If the latter, what do you remember of them?"

A lump came into my throat, and tears into my eyes. For a moment or two I could not answer. "I don't know anything about my parents," I said. "I never remember seeing them. I don't know whether they are alive or dead."

"Do you know why you were consigned by the Park Hill people to this particular house--to Dupley Walls--to Me, in fact?"

Her voice was raised almost to a shriek as she said these last words, and she pointed to herself with one claw-like finger.

"No, my lady, I don't know why I was sent here. I was told to come, and I came."

"But you have no claim on me--none whatever," she continued, fiercely. "Bear that in mind: remember it always. Whatever I may choose to do for you, will be done of my own free will, and not through compulsion of any kind. No claim whatever; remember that. None whatever."

She was silent for some time after this, and sat with her cold steady eyes fixed intently on the fire. For my part, I sat as still as a mouse, afraid to stir, longing for my dismissal, and dreading to be questioned further.

Lady Pollexfen roused herself at length with a deep sigh, and a few words muttered under her breath. "Here is a bunch of grapes for you, child," she said. "When you have eaten them it will be time for you to retire."

I advanced timidly, and took the grapes, with a curtsey and a "Thank you, my lady," and then went back to my seat.

As I sat eating my grapes my eyes went up to an oval mirror over the fire-place, in which were reflected the figures of Lady Pollexfen and myself. My momentary glance into its depths showed me how keenly but furtively her ladyship was watching me. But what interest could a great lady have in watching poor insignificant me? I ventured another glance into the mirror. Yes, she looked as if she were devouring me with her eyes. But hothouse grapes are nicer than mysteries, and how is it possible to give one's serious attention to two things at a time?

When I had finished the grapes, I put my plate back on the table. "Ring that bell," said Lady Pollexfen. I rang it accordingly, and presently Dance made her appearance.

"Miss Holme is ready to retire," said her ladyship.

I arose, and going a step or two nearer to her, I made her my most elaborate curtsey, and said, "I wish your ladyship a very good night."

The ghost of a smile flickered across her face. "I am pleased to find, child, that you are not entirely destitute of manners," she said, and with a stately wave of the arm I was dismissed.

It was like an escape from slavery to hear the door of the Green Saloon shut behind me, and to get into the great corridors and passages outside. I could have capered for very glee; only Mrs. Dance was a staid sort of person, and might not have liked it.

"Her ladyship is pleased with you, I'm sure," she remarked, as we went along.

"That is more than I am with her," I answered, pertly. Mrs. Dance looked shocked.

"You must not talk in that way, dear, not on any account," she said. "You must try to like Lady Pollexfen; it is to your interest to do so. But even should you never learn to like her, you must not let any one know it."

"I'm sure that I shall like the lady you call Sister Agnes," I said. "When shall I see her? To-morrow?"

Mrs. Dance looked at me sharply for a moment. "You think you shall like Sister Agnes, eh? When you come to know her, you will more than like her; you will love her. But perhaps Lady Pollexfen will not allow you to see her."

"But why not?" I said, abruptly, and I could feel my eyes flash with anger.

"The why not I am not at liberty to explain," said Mrs. Dance, drily. "And let me tell you, Miss Janet Holme, there are many things under this roof of which no explanation will be given you, and if you are a wise, good girl, you will not ask too many questions. I tell you this simply for your own good. Lady Pollexfen cannot abear people that are always prying and asking, What does this mean? and what does the other mean A still tongue is the sign of a wise head."

Ten minutes later I had said my prayers, and was in bed. "Don't go without kissing me," I said to Dance, as she took up the candle.

The old lady came back and kissed me tenderly. "Heaven bless you, and keep you, my dear!" she said, with solemn dignity. "There are those in the world who love you very dearly, and some day perhaps you will know all. I dare not say more. Good night, and God bless you."

Mrs. Dance's words reached a chord in my heart that vibrated to the slightest touch. I cried myself silently to sleep.

How long I had been asleep I had no means of knowing, but I was awakened sometime in the night by a rain of kisses, soft, warm, and light, on lips, cheeks, and forehead. The room was pitch dark, and for a second or two I thought I was still at Park Hill, and that Miss Chinfeather had come back from heaven to tell me how much she loved me. But this thought passed away like the slide of a magic lantern, and I knew that I was at Dupley Walls. The moment I knew this I put out my arms with the intention of clasping my unknown visitor round the neck. But I was not quick enough. The kisses ceased, my hands met each other in the empty air, and I heard a faint noise of garments trailing across the floor. I started up in bed, and called out, in a frightened voice, "Who's there?"

"Hush! not a word!" whispered a voice out of the darkness. Then I heard the door of my room softly closed, and I felt that I was alone.

I was left as wide awake as ever I had been in my life. My child's heart was filled with an unspeakable yearning, and yet the darkness and the mystery frightened me. It could not be Miss Chinfeather who had visited me, I argued with myself. The lips that had touched mine were not those of a corpse, but were instinct with life and love. Who, then, could my mysterious visitor be? Not Lady Pollexfen, surely! I half started up in bed at the thought. Just as I did so, without warning of any kind, a solemn muffled tramp became audible in the room immediately over mine. A tramp, slow, heavy, measured, from one end of the room to the other, and then back again. I slipped back into the bedclothes and buried myself up to the ears. I could hear the beating of my heart, oppressed now with a new terror before which the lesser one faded utterly. The very monotony of that dull measured walk was enough to unstring the nerves of a child, coming as it did in the middle of the night. I tried to escape from it by going still deeper under the clothes, but I could hear it even then. Since I could not escape it altogether, I had better listen to it with all my ears, for it was quite possible that it might come downstairs, and so into my room. Had such a thing happened, I think I should have died from sheer terror. Happily for me nothing of the kind took place; and, still listening, I fell asleep at last from utter weariness, and knew nothing more till I was awoke by a stray sunbeam smiting me across the eyes.

[CHAPTER III.]

A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.

A golden sunbeam was shining through a crevice in the blinds; the birds were twittering in the ivy outside; oxen were lowing to each other across the park. Morning, with all her music, was abroad.

I started up in bed and rubbed my eyes. Within the house everything was as mute as the grave. That horrible tramping overhead had ceased--had ceased, doubtless, with the return of daylight, which would otherwise have shifted it from the region of the weird to that of the commonplace. I smiled to myself as I thought of my terrors of the past night, and felt brave enough just then to have faced a thousand ghosts. In another minute I was out of bed, and had drawn up my blind, and flung open my window, and was drinking in the sweet peaceful scene that stretched away before me in long level lines to the edge of a far-off horizon.

My window was high up and looked out at the front of the hall. Immediately below me was a semicircular lawn, shut in from the park by an invisible fence, close shaven, and clumped with baskets of flowers glowing just now with all the brilliance of late autumn. The main entrance--a flight of shallow steps, and an Ionic portico, as I afterwards found--was at one end of the building, and was reached by a long straight carriage drive, the route of which could be traced across the park by the thicker growth of trees with which it was fringed. This park stretched to right and left for a mile either way. In front, it was bounded, a short half-mile away, by the high road, beyond which were level wide-stretching meadows through which the river Adair washed slow and clear.

But chief of all this morning I wanted to be down among the flowers. I made haste to wash and dress, taking an occasional peep through the window as I did so, and trying to entice the birds from their hiding-places in the ivy. Then I opened my bedroom door, and then, in view of the great landing outside, I paused. Several doors, all except mine now closed, gave admittance from this landing to different rooms. Both landing and stairs were made of oak, black and polished with age. One broad flight of stairs, with heavy carved banisters, pointed the way below; a second and narrower flight led to the regions above. As a matter of course I chose the former, but not till after a minute's hesitation as to whether I should venture to leave my room at all before I should be called. But my desire to see the baskets of flowers prevailed over everything else. I closed my door gently and hurried down.

I found myself in the entrance-hall of Dupley Walls, into which I had been ushered on my arrival. There were the two curtained doorways through which Lady Pollexfen had come and gone. For the rest, it was a gloomy place enough, with its flagged floor, and its diamond-paned windows high up in the semicircular roof. A few rusty full-lengths graced the walls; the stairs were guarded by two effigies in armour; a marble bust of one of the Cæsars stood on a high pedestal in the middle of the floor; and that was all.

I was glad to get away from this dismal spot and to find myself in the passage which led to the housekeeper's room. I opened the door and looked in, but the room was vacant. Farther along the same passage I found the kitchen and other domestic offices. The kitchen clock was just on the point of six as I went in. One servant alone had come down. From her I enquired my way into the garden, and next minute I was on the lawn. The close-cropped grass was wet with the heavy dew; but my boots were thick and I heeded it not, for the flowers were there within my very grasp.

Oh, those flowers! can I ever forget them? I have seen none so beautiful since. There can be none so beautiful out of Paradise.

One spray of scarlet geranium was all that I ventured to pluck. But the odours and the colours were there for all comers, and were as much mine for the time being as if the flowers themselves had belonged to me. Suddenly I turned and glanced up at the many-windowed house with a sort of guilty consciousness that I might possibly be doing wrong. But the house was still asleep--closed shutters or down-drawn blind at every window. I saw before me a substantial-looking red-brick mansion, with a high slanting roof, of not undignified appearance now that it was mellowed by age, but with no pretensions to architectural beauty. The sole attempt at outside ornamentation consisted of a few flutings of white stone, reaching from the ground to the second floor, and terminating in oval shields of the same material, on which had originally been carved the initials of the builder and the date of erection; but the summer's sun and the winter's rain of many a long year had rubbed both letters and figures carefully out. Long afterwards I knew that Dupley Walls had been built in the reign of the Third William by a certain Squire Pollexfen of that date, "out of my own head," as he himself put it in a quaint document still preserved among the family archives; and rather a muddled head it must have been in matters architectural.

After this, I ventured round by the main entrance, with its gravelled carriage sweep, to the other side of the house, where I found a long flagged terrace bordered with large evergreens in tubs placed at frequent intervals. On to this terrace several French windows opened--the windows, as I found later in the day, of Lady Pollexfen's private rooms. To the left of this terrace stood a plantation of young trees, through which a winding path that opened by a wicket into the private grounds, invited me to penetrate. Through the green gloom I advanced bravely, my heart beating with all the pleasure of one who was exploring some unknown land. I saw no living thing by the way, save two grey rabbits that scuttered across my path and vanished in the undergrowth on the other side. Pretty frisky creatures! how I should like to have caught them, and fed them, and made pets of them as long as they lived!

Two or three hundred yards farther on the path ended with another wicket, now locked, which opened into the high road. About a mile away I could discern the roofs and chimneys of a little town. When I got back to the hall I found dear old Dance getting rather anxious at my long absence, but she brightened into smiles when I kissed her and told her where I had been.

"You must have slept well, or you would hardly look so rosy this morning," she said, as we sat down to breakfast.

"I should have slept very well if I had not been troubled by the ghosts."

"Ghosts! my dear Miss Janet? You do not mean to say----" and the old lady's cheek paled suddenly, and her cup rattled in her saucer as she held it.

"I mean to say that Dupley Walls is haunted by two ghosts, one of which came and kissed me last night when I was asleep; while the other one was walking nearly all night in the room over mine."

Dance's face brightened, but still wore a puzzled expression. "You must have dreamed that some one kissed you, dear," she said. "If you were asleep you could not know anything about it."

"But I was awakened by it, and I am positive that it was no dream." Then I told her what few particulars there were to tell.

"For the future we must lock your bedroom door," she said.

"Then I should be worse frightened than ever. Besides, a real ghost would not be kept out by locking the door."

"Well, dear, tell me if you are disturbed in the same way again. But as for the tramping you heard in the room overhead, that is easily explained. It was no ghost that you heard walking, but Lady Pollexfen." Then, seeing my look of astonishment, she went on to explain. "You see, my dear Miss Janet, her ladyship is a very peculiar person, and does many things that to commonplace people like you and me may seem rather strange. One of these little peculiarities is her fondness for walking about the room over yours at night. Now, if she likes to do this, I know of no reason why she should not do it. It is a little whim that does no harm to anybody; and as the house and everything in it are her own, she may surely please herself in such a trifle."

"But what is there in the room that she should prefer it to any other in the house for walking in by night?" I asked.

"What--is--there--in the room?" said the old lady, staring at me across the table with a strange frightened look in her eyes. "What a curious question! The room is a common room, of course, with nothing in it out of the ordinary way; only, as I said before, it happens to be Lady Pollexfen's whim to walk there. So, if you hear the noise again, you will know how to account for it, and will have too much good sense to feel in the least afraid."

I had a half consciousness that Dance was prevaricating with me in this matter, or hiding something from me; but I was obliged to accept her version as the correct one, especially as I saw that, any further questioning would be of no avail.

I did not see Lady Pollexfen that day. She was reported to be unwell, and kept her own rooms.

About noon a message came from Sister Agnes that she would like to see me in her room. When I entered she was standing by a square oak table, resting one hand on it while the other was pressed to her heart. Her face was very pale, but her dark eyes beamed on me with a veiled tenderness that I could not misinterpret.

"Good morrow, Miss Holme," she said, offering a white slender hand for my acceptance. "I am afraid that you will find Dupley Walls even duller than Park Hill Seminary."

Her tone was cold and constrained. I looked up earnestly into her face. Her lips began to quiver painfully. Suddenly she stooped and kissed me. "Child! child! you must not look at me in that way," she cried.

Instinct whispered something in my ear. "You are the lady who came and kissed me when I was asleep!" I exclaimed.

Her brow contracted for a moment as if she were in pain. A hectic spot came out suddenly on either cheek, and vanished almost as swiftly. "Yes, it was I who came to your room last night," she said. "You are not vexed with me for doing so?"

"On the contrary, I love you for it."

Her smile, the sweetest I ever saw, beamed out at this. Gently she stroked my hair. "You looked so forlorn and weary last night," she said, "that after I got to bed I could not help thinking about you. I was afraid you would not be able to sleep in a strange place, so I could not rest till I had visited you: but I never intended to awake you."

"I do not mind how often I am awakened the same way," I said. "No one has ever seemed to love me but you, and I cannot help loving you back."

"Ma pauvre petite!" was all she said. We had sat down by this time close to the window, and Sister Agnes was holding one of my hands in hers and caressing it gently as she gazed dreamily across the park. My eyes, childlike, wandered from her to the room and then back again. The picture still lives in my memory as fresh as though it had been limned but yesterday.

A square whitewashed room, fitted up with furniture of unpolished oak. On the walls a few proof engravings of subjects taken from Sacred History. A small bookcase in one corner, and a _prie-dieu_ in another. The floor uncarpeted, but polished after the French fashion. A writing-table; a large workbox; a heap of clothing for the poor; and lastly, a stand for flowers.

The features of Sister Agnes were as delicate and clearly cut as those of some antique statue, but their habitual expression was one of intense melancholy. Her voice was low and gracious: the voice of a refined and educated gentlewoman. Her hair was black, with here and there a faint silver streak; but the peculiar head-dress of white linen which she wore left very little of it visible. Disfiguring as this head-dress might have been to many people, in her case it served merely to enhance the marble whiteness and transparent purity of her complexion. Her eyebrows were black and well-defined; but as for the eyes themselves, I can only repeat what I said before, that their dark depths were full of tenderness and a sort of veiled enthusiasm difficult to describe in words. Her dress was black, soft, and coarse, relieved by deep cuffs of white linen. Her solitary ornament, if ornament it could be called, was a rosary of black beads. Not without reason have I been thus particular in describing Sister Agnes and her surroundings, as they who read will discover for themselves by-and-by.

Sister Agnes woke up from her reverie with a sigh, and began talking to me about my schooldays, and my mode of life at Park Hill Seminary. It was a pleasure to me to talk, because I felt that it was a pleasure to her to listen to me. And she let me talk on and on for I can't tell how long, only putting in a question now and again, till she knew almost as much about Miss Chinfeather and Park Hill as I knew myself. But she never seemed to weary. We were sitting close together, and after a time I felt her arm steal gently round my waist, pressing me closer still; and so, with my head nestling against her shoulder, I talked on, heedless of the time. O happy afternoon!

It was broken by a summons for Sister Agues from Lady Pollexfen. "To-morrow, if the weather holds fine, we will go to Clarke Forest and gather blackberries," said Sister Agnes, as she gave me a parting kiss.

That night I went early to bed, and never woke till daybreak.

[CHAPTER IV.]

SCARSDALE WEIR.

I was up betimes next morning, long before Sister Agnes could possibly be ready to take me to the forest. So I took my sewing into the garden, and found a pleasant sunny nook, where I sat and worked till breakfast time. The meal was scarcely over when Sister Agnes sent for me. It made my heart leap with pleasure to see how her beautiful melancholy face lighted up at my approach. Why should she feel such an interest in one whom she had never seen till a few hours ago? The question was one I could not answer; I could only recognise the fact, and be thankful.

The morning was delicious; sunny, without being oppressive; while in the shade there was a faint touch of austerity like the first breath of coming winter. A walk of two miles brought us to the skirts of the forest, and in five minutes after quitting the high road we might have been a hundred miles away from any habitation, so utterly lost and buried from the outer world did we seem to be. Already the forest paths were half hidden by fallen leaves, which rustled pleasantly under our feet. By-and-by we came to a pretty opening in the wood, where some charitable soul had erected a rude rustic seat, that was more than half covered with the initials of idle wayfarers. Here Sister Agnes sat down to rest. She had brought a volume of poems with her, and while she read I wandered about, never going very far away, feasting on the purple blackberries, finding here and there a late-ripened cluster of nuts, trying to find out a nest or two among the thinned foliage, and enjoying myself in a quiet way, much to my heart's content.

I don't think Sister Agnes read much that morning. Her gaze was oftener away from her book than on it. After a time she came and joined me in gathering nuts and blackberries. She seemed brighter and happier than I had hitherto seen her, entering into all my little projects with as much eagerness as though she were herself a child. How soon I had learned to love her! Why had I lived all those dreary years at Park Hill without knowing her? But I could never again feel quite so lonely, never quite such an outcast from that common household love which all the girls I had known seemed to accept as a matter of course. Even if I should unhappily be separated from Sister Agnes, I could not cease to love her; and although I had seen her for the first time barely forty-eight hours ago, my child's instinct told me that she possessed that steadfastness, sweet and strong, which allows no name that has once been written on its heart to be erased therefrom for ever.

My thoughts were running in some such groove, but they were all as tangled and confused as the luxuriant undergrowth around me. It must have been out of this confusion that the impulse arose which caused me to address a question to Sister Agnes that startled her as much as if a shell had exploded at her feet.

"Dear Sister Agnes," I said, "you seem to know my history, and all about me. Did you know my papa and mamma?"

She dropped the leaf that held her fruit, and turned on me a haggard frightened face, that made my own grow pale. "What makes you think that I know your history?" she stammered out.

"You who are so intimate with Lady Pollexfen must know why I was brought to Dupley Walls: you must know something about me. If you know anything about my father and mother, oh! do please tell me; please do!"

"I am tired, Janet. Let us sit down," she said, wearily. So, hand in hand, we went back to the rustic seat and sat down.

She sat for a minute or two without speaking, gazing straight before her into some far-away forest vista, but seeing only with that inner eye which: searches through the dusty chambers of heart and brain whenever some record of the past has to be brought forth to answer the questions of to-day.

"I do know your history, dear child," she said at length, "and both your parents were friends of mine."

"Were! Then neither of them is alive?"

"Alas! no. They have been dead many years. Your father was drowned in one of the Italian lakes. Your mother died a year afterwards."

All the sweet vague hopes that I had cherished in secret, ever since I could remember anything, of some day finding at least one of my parents alive, died out utterly as Sister Agnes said these words. My heart seemed to faint within me. I flung myself into her arms, and burst into tears.

Very tenderly and lovingly, with sweet caresses and words of comfort, did Sister Agnes strive to win me back to cheerfulness. Her efforts were not unsuccessful, and after a time I grew calmer, and recovered my self-possession; and as soon as so much what is a question, dear Janet, which I cannot answer," she said. "I am bound to Lady Pollexfen by a solemn promise not to reveal to you the nature of the secret bond which has brought you under her roof. That she has your welfare at heart you may well believe, and that it is to your interest to please her in every possible way is equally certain. More than this I dare not say, except that there are certain pages of your history, some of them of a very painful character, which it would not be advisable that you should read till you shall be many years older than you are now. Meanwhile, rest assured that in Lady Pollexfen, however eccentric she may seem to be, you have a firm and powerful friend; while in me, who has neither influence nor power, you have one who simply loves you, and prays night and day for your welfare."

"And you will never cease to love me, will you?" I said, just as we stepped out of the forest into the high road.

She took both my hands in hers and looked me straight in the face. "Never, while I live, Janet Holme, can I cease to love you," she said. Then we kissed and went on our way towards Dupley Walls.

"You are to dine with her ladyship to-day, Miss Janet," said Dance the same afternoon. "We must look out your best bib and tucker."

Dance seemed to think that a mighty honour was about to be conferred upon me, but for my own part I would have given much to forego the distinction. However, there was no help for it, so I submitted quietly to having my hair dressed and to being inducted into my best frock. I was dreadfully abashed when the footman threw open the dining-room door and announced in a loud voice, "Miss Janet Holme."

Dinner had just been served, and her ladyship was waiting. I advanced up the room and made my curtsey. Lady Pollexfen looked at me grimly, without relaxing a muscle, and then extended a lean forefinger, which I pressed respectfully. The butler indicated a chair, and I sat down. Next moment Sister Agnes glided in through a side door, and took her place at the table, but considerably apart both from Lady Pollexfen and me. I felt infinitely relieved by her presence.

Her ladyship looked as elaborately youthful, with her pink cheeks, her black wig, and her large white teeth, as on the evening of my arrival at Dupley Walls. But her hands shook a little, making the diamonds on her fingers scintillate in the candlelight as she carried her food to her mouth, and this was a sign of age which not all the art in the world could obviate. The table was laid out with a quantity of old-fashioned plate; indeed, the plate was out of all proportion to the dinner, which consisted of nothing more elaborate than some mutton broth, a roast pullet, and a custard. But there was a good deal of show, and we were waited on assiduously by a respectable but fatuous-looking butler. There was no wine brought out, but some old ale was poured into her ladyship's glass from a silver flagon. Sister Agnes had a small cover laid apart from ours. Her dinner consisted of herbs, fruit, bread, and water. It pained me to see that the look of intense melancholy which had lightened so wonderfully during our forest walk, had again overshadowed her face like a veil. She gave me one long, earnest look as she took her seat at the table, but after that she seemed scarcely to be aware of my presence.

We had sat in grim silence for full five minutes, when Lady Pollexfen spoke.

"Can you speak French, child?" she said, turning abruptly to me.

"I can read it a little, but I cannot speak it," I replied.

"Nor understand what is said when it is spoken in your presence?"

"No, your ladyship."

"So much the better," she answered with a grating laugh. "Children have long ears, and there is no freedom of conversation when they are present." With that she addressed some remarks in French to Sister Agnes, who replied to her in the same language. I knew nothing about my ears being long, but her ladyship's words had made them tingle as if they had been boxed. For one thing I was thankful--that no further remarks were addressed to me during dinner. The conversation in French became animated, and I had leisure to think of other things.

Dinner was quickly over, and at a signal from her ladyship the folding doors were thrown open, and we defiled into the Green Saloon, I bringing up the rear meekly. On the table were fruit and flowers, and one small bottle of some light wine. The butler filled her ladyship's glass, and then withdrew.

"You can take a pear, little girl," said Lady Pollexfen. Accordingly I took a pear, but when I had got it I was too timid to eat it, and could do nothing but hold it between my hot palms. Had I been at Park Hill Seminary, I would soon have made my teeth meet in the fruit, but I was not quite certain as to the proper mode of eating pears in society.

Lady Pollexfen placed her glass in her eye, and examined me critically.

"Haie! haie!" she said. "That good Chinfeather has not quite eradicated our gaucherie, it seems. We are deficient in ease and aplomb. What is the name of that Frenchwoman, Agnes, who 'finished' Lady Kinbuck's girls?"

"You mean Madame Duclos."

"The same. Look out her address to-morrow, and remind me that you write to her. If mademoiselle here remain in England, she will grow up weedy, and will never learn to carry her shoulders properly. Besides, the child has scarcely two words to say for herself. A little Parisian training may prove beneficial. At her age a French girl of family would be a little duchess in bearing and manners, even though she had never been outside the walls of her pension. How is such an anomaly to be accounted for? It is possible that the atmosphere may have something to do with it."

Here was fresh food for wonder, and for such serious thought as my age admitted of. I was to be sent to a school in France! I could not make up my mind whether to be sorry or glad. In truth, I was neither wholly the one nor the other; the tangled web of my feelings was something altogether beyond my skill to unravel.

Lady Pollexfen sipped her wine absently for a while; Sister Agnes was busy with some fine needlework; and I was striving to elaborate a giant and his attendant dwarf out of the glowing embers and cavernous recesses of the wood fire, while there was yet an underlying vein of thought at work in my mind which busied itself desultorily with trying to piece together all that I had ever heard or read of life in a French school.

"You can run away now, little girl. You are _de trop_," said her ladyship, turning on me in her abrupt fashion. "And you, Agnes, may as well read to me a couple of chapters out of the _Girondins_. What a wonderful man was that Robespierre! What a giant! Had he but lived, how different the history of Europe would have been from what we know it to-day."

I could almost have kissed her ladyship of my own accord, so pleased was I to get away. I made my curtsey to her, and also to Sister Agnes, whose only reply was a sweet sad smile, and managed to preserve my dignity till I was out of the room. But when the door was safely closed behind me, I ran, I flew along the passages till I reached the housekeeper's room. Dance was not there, neither had candles yet been lighted. The bright moonlight pouring in through the window, gave me a new idea.

I had not yet been down to look at the river! What time could be better than the present one for such a purpose? I had heard some of the elder girls at Park Hill talk of the delights of boating by moonlight. Boating in the present case was out of the question, but there was the river itself to be seen. Taking my hat and scarf, I let myself out by a side door, and then sped away across the park like a hunted fawn, not forgetting to take an occasional bite at her ladyship's pear. To-night, for a wonder, my mind seemed purged of all those strange fears and stranger fancies engendered in it, some people would say, by superstition, while others would hold that they were merely the effects of a delicate nervous organization and an overexcitable brain reacting one upon the other. Be that as it may, for this night they had left me, and I skipped on my way as fearlessly as though I were walking at mid-day, and, with a glorious sense of freedom working within me, such, only in a more intense degree, as I had often felt on our rare holidays at school.

There was a right of public footpath across one corner of the park. Tracking this narrow white ribbon through the greensward, I came at length to a stile which admitted me into the high road. Exactly opposite was a second stile opening on a second footpath, which I felt sure could lead to nowhere but the river. Nor was I mistaken. In another five minutes I was on the banks of the Adair.

To my child's eyes the scene was one of exquisite beauty. To-day, I should probably call it flat, and wanting in variety. The equable full-flowing river was lighted up by a full and unclouded moon. The undergrowth that fringed its banks was silver-foliaged; silver white rose the mists in the meadows. Silence everywhere, save for the low liquid murmur of the river itself, which seemed burdened with some love secret, centuries old, which it was vainly striving to tell in articulate words.

The burden of the beauty lay upon me and saddened me. I wandered slowly along the bank, watching the play of moonlight on the river. Suddenly I saw a tiny boat that was moored to an overhanging willow, and floated out the length of its chain towards the middle of the stream. I looked around. Not a creature of any kind was visible. Then I thought to myself, "how pleasant it would be to sit out there in the boat for a little while. And surely no one could be angry with me for taking such a liberty--not even the owner of the boat if he were to find me there."

No sooner said than done. I went down to the edge of the river, and drew the boat inshore by the chain that held it. Then I stepped gingerly in, half frightened at my own temerity, and sat down. The boat glided slowly out again to the length of its chain and then became motionless. But it was motionless only for a moment or two. A splash in the water drew my attention to the chain. It had been insecurely fastened to a branch of the willow; my weight in the boat had caused it to become detached and fall into the water, and with horrified eyes I saw that I had now no means of getting back to the shore. Next moment the strength of the current carried the boat out into midstream, and I began to float slowly down the river.

I sat like one paralysed, unable either to stir or speak. The willows seemed to bow their heads in mocking farewell as I glided past them. I heard the faint baying of a dog on some distant farm, and it sounded like a death-note in my frightened ears. Suddenly the spell that had held me was loosened, and I started to my feet. The boat heeled over, and but for a sudden instinctive movement backward I should have gone headlong into the river, and have ended my troubles there and then. The boat righted itself, veered half round, and then went steadily on its way down the stream. I sank on my knees and buried my face in my hands, and began to cry. When I had cried a little while it came into my mind that I would say my prayers. So I said them, with clasped hands and wet eyes, and the words seemed to come from me and affect me in a way that I had never experienced before. As I write these lines I have a vivid recollection of noticing how blurred and large the moon looked through my tears.

My heart was now quieted a little; I was no longer so utterly overmastered by my fears. I was recalled to a more vivid sense of earth and its realities by the low melancholy striking of some village clock. I gazed eagerly along both banks of the river, but although the moon shone so brightly, neither house nor church nor any sign of human habitation was visible. When the clock had told its last syllable, the silence seemed even more profound than before. I might have been floating on a river that wound through a country never trodden by the foot of man, so entirely alone, so utterly removed from all human aid, did I feel myself to be.

I drew the skirt of my frock over my shoulders, for the night air was beginning to chill me, and contrived to regain the seat I had taken on first entering the boat. Whither would the river carry me? was the question I now put to myself, To the sea, doubtless. Had I not been taught at school that sooner or later all rivers emptied themselves into the ocean? The immensity of the thought appalled me. It seemed to chill the beating of my heart; I grew cold from head to foot. Still the boat held its course steadily, swept onward by the resistless current; still the willows nodded their fantastic farewells. Along the level meadows far and wide the white mist lay like a vast winding-sheet; now and then through the stillness I heard, or seemed to hear, a moan--a mournful wail, as of some spirit just released from earthly bonds, and forced to leave its dear ones behind. The moonlight looked cruel, and the water very, very cold. Some one had told me that death by drowning was swift and painless. Those stars up there were millions of miles away: how long would it take my soul, I wondered, to travel that distance--to reach those glowing orbs--to leave them behind? How glorious such a journey, beyond all power of thought,--to track one's way among the worlds that flash through space! In the world I should leave there would be one person only who would mourn for me--Sister Agnes, who would----But what noise was that?

A noise, low and faint at first, just taking the edge of silence with a musical murmur that seemed to die out for an instant now and again, then coming again stronger than before, and so growing by fine degrees louder and more confirmed, and resolving itself at last into a sound which could not be mistaken for that of anything but falling water. The sound was clearly in front of me,--I was being swept resistlessly towards it. A curve of the river and a swelling of the banks hid everything from me. The sound was momently growing louder, and had distinctly resolved itself into the roar and rush of some great body of water. I shuddered and grasped the sides of the boat with both hands. Suddenly the curve was rounded, and there, almost immediately in front of me, was a mass of buildings, and there, too, spanning the river, was what looked to me like a trellis-work bridge, and on the bridge was a human figure. The roar and noise of the cataract were deafening, but louder than all was my piercing cry for help. He who stood on the bridge heard it. I saw him fling up his hands as if in sudden horror, and that was the last thing I did see. I sank down with shut eyes in the bottom of the boat, and my heart went up in a silent cry to heaven. Next moment I was swept over Scarsdale Weir. The boat seemed to glide from under me; my head struck something hard; the water overwhelmed me, seized on me, dashed me here and there in its merciless arms; a noise as of a thousand cataracts filled my ears for a moment, and then I recollect nothing more.

[CHAPTER V.]

AT ROSE COTTAGE.

On regaining my senses I found myself in a cozy little bed, in a cozy little room, with an old gentleman sitting by my side gently chafing one of my hands--a gentleman with white hair and a white moustache, with a ruddy face, and a smile that made me fall in love with him at first sight.

"Did I not say that she would do famously in a little while?" he cried, in a cheery voice that it did one good to listen to. "I believe the Poppetina has only been hoaxing us all this time: pretending to be half-drowned just to find out whether anybody would make a fuss about her. Is not that the truth, little one?"

"If you please, sir, where am I? And are you a doctor?" I asked, faintly.

"I am not a doctor, either of medicine or law," answered the white-haired gentleman. "I am Major Strickland, and this place is Rose Cottage--the magnificent mansion which I call my own. But you had better not talk, dearie--at least not just yet: not till the doctor himself has seen you."

"But how did I get here?" I pleaded. "Do tell me that, please."

"Simply thus. My nephew Geordie was out mooning on the bridge when he heard a cry for help. Next minute he saw you and your boat go over the weir. He rushed down to the quiet water at the foot of the falls, plunged in, and fished you out before you had time to get more than half-drowned. My housekeeper, Deborah, put you to bed, and here you are. But I am afraid that you have hurt yourself among those ugly stones that line the weir; so Geordie has gone off for the doctor, and we shall soon know how you really are. One question I must ask you in order that I may send word to your friends. What is your name? and where do you live?"

Before I could reply the village doctor came bounding up the stairs three at a time. Five minutes sufficed him for my case. A good night's rest and a bottle of his mixture were all that was required. A few hours would see me as well as ever. Then he went.

"And now for the name and address, Poppetina," said the smiling major. "We must send word to papa and mamma without a moment's delay."

"I have neither papa nor mamma," I answered. "My name is Janet Holme, and I come from Dupley Walls."

"From Dupley Walls!" exclaimed the major. "I thought I knew everybody under Lady Pollexfen's roof, but I never heard of you before to-night, my dear."

Then I told him that I had been only two days with Lady Pollexfen, and that all of my previous life that I could remember had been spent at Park Hill Seminary.

The major was evidently puzzled by what I had told him. He mused for several moments without speaking. Hitherto my face had been in half-shadow, the candle having been placed behind the curtain that fell round the head of the bed, so as not to dazzle my eyes. This candle the major now took, and held it about a yard above my head, so that its full light fell on my upturned face. I was swathed in a blanket, and while addressing the major had raised myself on my elbow in bed. My long black hair, still damp, fell wildly round my shoulders.

The moment Major Strickland's eyes rested on my face, on which the full light of the candle was now shining, his ruddy cheek paled; he started back in amazement, and was obliged to replace the candlestick on the table.

"Great Heavens! what a marvellous resemblance!" he exclaimed. "It cannot arise from accident merely. There must be a hidden link somewhere."

Then taking the candle for the second time, he scanned my face again with eyes that seemed to pierce me through and through. "It is as if one had come to me suddenly from the dead," I heard him say in a low voice. Then with down-bent head and folded arms he took several turns across the room.

"Sir, of whom do I remind you?" I timidly asked.

"Of some one, child, whom I knew when I was young--of some one who died long years before you were born." There was a ring of pathos in his voice that seemed like the echo of some sorrowful story.

"Are you sure that you have no other name than Janet Holme?" he asked, presently.

"None, sir, that I know of. I have been called Janet Holme ever since I can remember."

"But about your parents. What were they called, and where did they live?"

"I know nothing whatever about them except what Sister Agnes told me yesterday."

"And she said--what?"

"That my father was drowned abroad several years ago, and that my mother died a year later."

"Poverina! But it is strange that Sister Agnes should have known your parents. Perhaps she can supply the missing link. The mention of her name reminds me that I have not yet sent word to Dupley Walls that you are safe and sound at Rose Cottage. Geordie must start without a moment's delay. I am an old friend of Lady Pollexfen, my dear, so that she will be quite satisfied when she learns that you are under my roof."

"But, sir, when shall I see the gentleman who got me out of the water?" I asked.

"What, Geordie? Oh, you'll see Geordie in the morning, never fear. A good boy! a fine boy! though it's his old uncle that says it."

Then he rang the bell, and when Deborah, his only servant, came up, he committed me with many injunctions into her charge. Then taking my head gently between his hands, he kissed me tenderly on the forehead, and wished me "Good-night, and happy dreams."

Deborah was very kind. She brought me up a delicious little supper, and decided that there was no need for me to take the doctor's nauseous mixture. She took it herself instead, but merely as a sop to her conscience and my own; "for, after all, you know, there's very little difference in physic--it's all nasty; and I daresay this mixture will do my lumbago no harm."

The effects of the accident had almost entirely passed away by next morning, and I was dressed and downstairs by seven o'clock. I found the major hard at work digging up the garden for his winter crops. "Ah, Poppetina, down so early!" he cried. "And how do we feel this morning, eh? None the worse for our ducking, I hope."

I assured him that I was quite well, and that I had never felt better in my life.

"That will be good news for her ladyship," he replied, "and will prove to her that Miss Holme has not fallen among Philistines. In any case, she cannot be more pleased than I am to find that you have sustained no harm from your accident. There is something, Poverina, in that face of yours that brings back the past to me strangely. But here comes Master Geordie."

I turned and saw a young man sauntering slowly down the pathway. He was very fair, and, to me, seemed very handsome. He had blue eyes, and his hair was a mass of short, crisp flaxen curls. From the way in which the major regarded him as he came lounging up, I could see that the old soldier was very proud of his young Adonis of a nephew. The latter lifted his hat as he opened the wicket, and bade his uncle good morning. Me he did not for the moment see.

"Miss Holme is not up yet, I suppose?" he said. "I hope she is none the worse for her tumble over the weir."

"Our little water-nymph is here to answer for herself," said the major. "The roses in her cheeks seem all the brighter for their wetting."

George Strickland turned smilingly towards me, and held out his hand. "I am very glad, Miss Holme, to find that you have suffered so little from your accident," he said. "When I fished you out of the river last night you looked so death-like that I was afraid we should not be able to bring you round without difficulty."

Tears stood in my eyes as I took his hand. "Oh, sir, how brave, how noble it was of you to act as you did! You saved my life at the risk of your own, and how can I ever thank you enough?"

A bright colour came into his cheek as I spoke. "My dear Miss Holme, you must not speak in that way," he said. "What I did was a very ordinary thing. Any one else in my place would have done precisely the same. I must not claim more merit than is due for an action so simple."

"To you it may seem a simple thing to do, but I cannot forget that it was my life that you saved."

"What an old-fashioned princess it is!" said the major. "Why it must have been born a hundred years ago, and have had a fairy for its godmother. But here comes Deborah to tell us that breakfast is ready. Toasted bacon is better than pretty speeches, so come along with you, and make believe that you have known each other for a twelvemonth at least."

Rose Cottage was a tiny place, and there were not wanting proofs that the major's income was commensurate with the scale of his establishment. A wise economy had to be a guiding rule in Major Strickland's life, otherwise Mr. George's college expenses would never have been met, and that young gentleman would not have had a proper start in life. Deborah was the only servant that the little household could afford; but then the major himself was gardener, butler, valet, and page in one. Thus--he cleaned the knives in a machine of his own invention; he brushed his own clothes; he lacquered his own boots, and at a pinch could mend them. He dug and planted his own garden, and grew enough potatoes and green-stuff to serve his little family the year round. In a little paddock behind his garden the major kept a cow; in the garden itself he had half a dozen hives; while not far away was a fowl-house that supplied him with more eggs than he could dispose of, except by sale. The major's maxim was, that the humblest offices of labour could be dignified by a gentleman, and by his own example he proved the rule. What few leisure hours he allowed himself were chiefly spent with rod and line on the banks of the Adair.

George Strickland was an orphan, and had been adopted and brought up by his uncle since he was six years old. So far, the uncle had been able to supply the means for having him educated in accordance with his wishes. For the last three years George had been at one of the public schools, and now he was at home for a few weeks' holiday previously to going to Cambridge.

It will of course be understood that but a very small portion of what is here set down respecting Rose Cottage and its inmates was patent to me at that first visit; much of it, indeed, did not come within my cognizance till several years afterwards.

When breakfast was over the major lighted an immense meerschaum, and then invited me to accompany him over his little demesne. To a girl like me, whose life had been spent within the four bare walls of a school-room, everything was fresh and everything was delightful. First to the fowl-house, then to the hives, and after that to see the brindled calf in the paddock, whose gambols and general mode of conducting himself were so utterly absurd that I laughed more in ten minutes after seeing him than I had done in ten years previously.

When we got back to the cottage, George was ready to take me on the river. The major went down with us and saw us safely aboard the _Water Lily_, bade us good-bye for an hour, and then went about his morning's business. I was rather frightened at first, the _Water Lily_ was such a tiny craft, so long and narrow that it seemed to me as if the least movement on one side must upset it. But George showed me exactly where to sit, and gave me the tiller-ropes, with instructions how to manage them, and was himself so full of quiet confidence that my fears quickly died a natural death, and a sweet sense of enjoyment took their place.

We were On that part of the river which was below the weir, and as we put out from shore the scene of my last night's adventure was clearly visible. There, spanning the river just above the weir, was the open-work timber bridge on which George was standing when my cry for help struck his ears. There was the weir itself, a sheet of foaming frothing water, that as it fell dashed itself in white-lipped passion against the rounded boulders that seemed striving in vain to turn it from its course. And here, a little way from the bottom of the weir, was the pool of quiet water over which our little boat was now cleaving its way, and out of which the handsome young man now sitting opposite to me had plucked me, bruised and senseless, only a few short hours ago. I shuddered and could feel myself turn pale as I looked. George seemed to read my thoughts; he smiled, but said nothing. Then bending all his strength to the oars, he sent the _Water Lily_ spinning on her course. All my skill and attention were needed for the proper management of the tiller, and for a little while all morbid musings were banished from my mind.

Scarcely a word passed between us during the next half hour, but I was too happy to care much for conversation. When we had gone a couple of miles or more, George pointed out a ruinous old house that stood on a dreary flat about a quarter of a mile from the river. Many years ago, he told me, that house had been the scene of a terrible murder, and was said to have been haunted ever since. Nobody would live in it; it was shunned as a place accursed, and was now falling slowly into decay and ruin. I listened to the story with breathless interest, and the telling of it seemed to make us quite old friends. After this there seemed no lack of subjects for conversation. George shipped his oars, and the boat was allowed to float lazily down the stream. He told about his school days, and I told about mine. The height of his ambition, he said, was to go into the army, and become a soldier like his dear old uncle. But Major Strickland wanted him to become a lawyer; and owing everything to his uncle as he did, it was impossible for him not to accede to his wishes. "Besides which," added George, with a sigh, "a commission is an expensive thing to buy, and dear old uncle is anything but rich."

When we first set out that morning I think that George, from the summit of his eighteen years, had been inclined to look down upon me as a little school miss, whom he might patronize in a kindly sort of way, but whose conversation could not possibly interest a man of his sense and knowledge of the world. But whether it arose from that "old-fashioned" quality of which Major Strickland had made mention, which caused me to seem so much older than my years; or whether it arose from the genuine interest I showed in all he had to say; certain it is that long before we got back to Rose Cottage we were talking as equals in years and understanding, but that by no means prevented me from looking up to him in my own mind as to a being superior not only to myself but to the common run of humanity. I was sorry when we got back in sight of the weir, and as I stepped ashore I thought that this morning and the one I had spent with Sister Agnes in Charke Forest were the two happiest of my life. I had no prevision that the fair-haired young man with whom I had passed three such pleasant hours would, in after years, influence my life in a way that just now I was far too much a child even to dream of.

[CHAPTER VI.]

THE GROWTH OF A MYSTERY.

We started at five o'clock to walk back to Dupley Walls, the major, and I, and George. It was only two miles away across the fields. I was quite proud to be seen in the company of so stately a gentleman as Major Strickland, who was dressed this afternoon as for a visit of ceremony. He had on a blue frock-coat tightly buttoned, to which the builder had imparted an intangible something that smacked undeniably of the vieux soldat. He wore a hat rather wide in the brim; a high stiff checked cravat; a white vest; and lacquered military boots, over which his tightly strapped trousers fell without a crease. He had white buckskin gloves, a stout silver-headed malacca cane, and carried a choice geranium in his button-hole.

There was not much conversation among us by the way. The major's usual flow of talk seemed to have deserted him this afternoon, and his mood seemed unconsciously to influence both George and me. Lady Pollexfen's threat to send me to a French school weighed down my spirits. I had found dear friends--Sister Agnes, the kind-hearted major, and his nephew, only to be torn from them--to be plunged back into the cold cheerless monotony of school-girl life, where there would be no one to love me, but many to find fault.

We went back by way of the plantation. George would not go any farther than the wicket at its edge, and it was agreed that he should there await the major's return from the hail. "I hope, Miss Holme, that we shall see you at Rose Cottage again before many days are over," he said, as he took my hand to bid me farewell. "Uncle has promised to ask her ladyship to spare you for a few days."

"I shall be very, very glad to come, Mr. George. As long as I live I shall be in your debt, for I cannot forget that I owe you my life."

"The fairy godmother is whispering in her ear," said the major in a loud aside. "She talks like a woman of forty."

While still some distance away we could see Lady Pollexfen sunning herself on the western terrace. With a pang of regret I saw that Sister Agnes was not with her. The major quickened his pace; I clung to his hand, and felt without seeing that her ladyship's eyes were fixed upon me severely.

"I have brought back your wandering princess, my lady," said the major, in his cheery way, as he lifted his hat. Then, as he took her proffered hand, "I hope your ladyship is in perfect health."

"No princess, Major Strickland, but a base beggar brat," said Lady Pollexfen, without heeding his last words. "From the first moment of my seeing her I had a presentiment that she would cause me nothing but trouble and annoyance. That presentiment has been borne out by facts--by facts!" She nodded her head at the major, and rubbed one lean hand viciously within the other.

"Your ladyship forgets that the child herself is here. Pray consider her feelings."

"Were my feelings considered by those who sent her to Dupley Walls? I ought to have been consulted in the matter--to have had time given me to make fresh arrangements. It was enough to be burdened with the cost of her maintenance, without the added nuisance of having her before me as a continual eyesore. But I have arranged. Next week she leaves Dupley Walls for the Continent, and if I never see her face again, so much the better for both of us."

"With all due respect to your ladyship, it seems to me that your tone is far more bitter than the occasion demands. What may be the relationship between Miss Holme and yourself it is quite impossible for me to say; but that there is a tie of some sort between you I cannot for a moment doubt."

"And pray, Major Strickland, what reason may you have for believing that a tie of any kind exists between this young person and the mistress of Dupley Walls?"

"I will take my stand on one point: on the extraordinary resemblance which this child bears to----"

"To whom, Major Strickland?"

"To one who lies buried in Elvedon churchyard. You know whom I mean. Such a likeness is far too remarkable to be the result of accident."

"I deny the existence of any such likeness," said Lady Pollexfen, vehemently. "I deny it utterly. You are the victim of your own disordered imagination. Likeness, forsooth!" She laughed a bitter contemptuous laugh, and seemed to think that she had disposed of the question for ever.

"Come here, child," said the major, taking me kindly by the hand, and leading me close up to her ladyship. "Look at her, Lady Pollexfen," he added; "scan her features thoroughly, and tell me then that the likeness of which I speak is nothing more than a figment of my own brain."

Lady Pollexfen drew herself up haughtily. "To please you in a whim, Major Strickland, which I cannot characterize as anything but ridiculous, I will try to discover this fancied resemblance." Speaking thus, her ladyship carried her glass to her eye, and favoured me with a cold critical stare, under which I felt my blood boil with grief and indignation.

"Pshaw! Major Strickland, you are growing old and foolish. I cannot perceive the faintest trace of such a likeness as you mention. Besides, if it really did exist it would prove nothing. It would merely serve to show that there may be certain secrets within Dupley Walls which not even Major Strickland's well-known acumen can fathom."

"After that, of course I can only bid your ladyship farewell," said the offended major, with a ceremonious bow. Then turning to me: "Good-bye, my dear Miss Holme, for the present. Even at this, the eleventh hour, I must intercede with Lady Pollexfen to grant you permission to come and spend part of next week with us at Rose Cottage."

"Oh! take her, and welcome; I have no wish to keep her here. But you will stop to dinner, major, when we will talk of these things further. And now, Miss Pest, you had better run away. You have heard too much already."

I was glad enough to get away, so after a hasty kiss to Major Strickland I hurried indoors, and once in my own bedroom, I burst into an uncontrollable fit of crying. How cruel had been Lady Pollexfen's words! and her looks had been more cruel than they.

I was still weeping when Sister Agnes came into the room. She had but just returned from Tydsbury. She knelt beside me, and took me in her arms and kissed me, and wiped away my tears. "Why was I crying?" she asked. I told her of all that Lady Pollexfen had said.

"Oh! cruel, cruel of her to treat you thus!" she said. "Can nothing move her--nothing melt that heart of adamant? But, Janet, dear, you must not let her sharp words wound you so deeply. Would that my love could shield you from such trials in future. But that cannot always be. You must strive to regard such things as part of that stern discipline of life which is designed to tutor our wayward hearts and rebellious spirits, and bring them into harmony with a will superior to our own. And now you must tell me all about your voyage down the Adair, and your rescue by that brave George Strickland. Ah! how grieved I was, when the news was brought to Dupley Walls, that I could not hasten to you, and see with my own eyes that you had come to no harm! But I was chained to my post, and could not stir."

Scarcely had Sister Agnes done speaking when the air was filled with a strain of music that seemed to be more sweet and solemn than anything I had ever heard before. All the soreness melted out of my heart as I listened; all my troubles seemed to take to themselves wings, and life to put on an altogether different aspect from any it had ever worn to me before. I saw clearly that I had not been so good a girl in many ways as I might have been. I would try my best not to be so inattentive at church in future, and I would never, no, not even on the coldest night in winter, neglect to say my prayers before getting into bed.

"What is it? Where does it come from?" I whispered into the ear of Sister Agnes.

"It is Father Spiridion playing the organ in the west gallery."

"And who is Father Spiridion?"

"A good man, and my friend. Presently you shall be introduced to him."

No word more was spoken till the playing ceased. Then Sister Agnes took me by the hand and we went towards the west gallery. Father Spiridion saw us, and paused on the top of the stairs.

"This is the child, holy father, of whom I have spoken to you once or twice; the child, Janet Holme."

The father's shrewd blue eyes took me in from head to foot at a glance. He was a tall, thin, and slightly cadaverous-looking man, with high aquiline features; and with an indefinable something about him that made me recognise him on the spot as a gentleman. He wore a coarse brown robe that reached nearly to his feet, the cowl of which was drawn over his head. When Sister Agnes had spoken he laid his hand gently on my head, and said something I could not understand. Then placing his hand under my chin, he said, "Look me straight in the face, child."

I lifted my eyes and looked him fairly in the face, till his blue eyes lighted up with a smile. Then patting me on the cheek, he said, addressing Sister Agnes, "Nothing shifty there, at any rate. It is a face full of candour, and of that innocent fearlessness which childhood should always have, but too often loses in an evil world. I dare be bound now, little Janet, that thou art fond of sweetmeats?"

"Oh yes, sir, if you please."

"By some strange accident I find here in my _soutane_ a tiny box of bonbons. They might have been put there expressly for a little sweet tooth of a Janet. Nothing could be more opportune. Take them, child, with Father Spiridion's blessing; and sometimes remember his name in thy prayers."

I did not see Father Spiridion again before I was sent away to school, but in after years our threads of life crossed and re-crossed each other strangely, in a way that neither he nor I even dreamed of at that first interview.

My life at Dupley Walls lengthened out from day to day, and in many ways I was exceedingly happy. My chief happiness lay in the love of dear Sister Agnes, with whom I spent at least one or two hours every day. Then I was very fond of Major Strickland, who, I felt sure, liked me in return--liked me for myself, and liked me still more, perhaps, for the strange resemblance which he said I bore to some dear one whom he had lost many long years before. Of George Strickland, too, I was very fond, but with a shy and diffident sort of liking. I held him as so superior to me in every way that I could only worship him from a distance. The major fetched me over to Rose Cottage several times. Such events were for me holidays in the true sense of the word. Another source of happiness arose from the fact that I saw very little of Lady Pollexfen. The indifference with which she had at first regarded me seemed to have deepened into absolute dislike. I was forbidden to enter her apartments, and I took care not to be seen by her when she was walking or riding out. I was sorry for her dislike, and yet glad that she dispensed with my presence. I was far happier in the housekeeper's room, where I was treated like a little queen. Dance and I soon learned to love each other very heartily.

Those who have accompanied me thus far may not have forgotten the account of my first night at Dupley Walls, nor how frightened I was by the sound of certain mysterious footsteps in the room over mine. The matter was explained simply enough by Dance next day as a whim of Lady Pollexfen, who, for some reason best known to herself, chose that room out of all the big old house as the scene of her midnight perambulations. When therefore, on one or two subsequent occasions, I was disturbed in a similar way, I was no longer frightened, but only rendered sleepless and uncomfortable for the time being. I felt at such times, so profound was the surrounding silence, as if every living creature in the world, save Lady Pollexfen and myself, were asleep.

But before long that room over mine acquired for itself in my mind a new and dread significance. A consciousness gradually grew upon me that there was about it something quite out of the common way; that its four walls held within themselves some grim secret, the rites appertaining to which were gone through when I and the rest of the uninitiated were supposed to be in bed and asleep. I cannot tell what it was that first made me suspect the existence of this secret. Certainly not the midnight walks of Lady Pollexfen. Perhaps a certain impalpable atmosphere of mystery, which, striking keenly on the sensitive nerves of a child, strung by recent events to a higher pitch than usual, broke down the first fine barrier that separates things common and of the earth earthy, from those dim intuitions which even the dullest of us feel at times of things spiritual and unseen. But however that may be, it so fell out that I, who at school had been one of the soundest of sleepers, had now become one of the worst. It often happened that I would awake in the middle of the night, even when there was no Lady Pollexfen to disturb me, and would so lie, sleepless, with wide-staring eyes, for hours, while all sorts of weird pictures would paint themselves idly in the waste nooks and corners of my brain. One fancy I had, and for many nights I thought it nothing more than fancy, that I could hear soft and muffled footsteps passing up and down the staircase just outside my door; and that at times I could even faintly distinguish them in the room over mine, where, however, they never stayed for more than a few minutes at any one time.

In one of my daylight explorations about the old house I ventured up the flight of stairs that led from the landing outside my door to the upper rooms. At the top of these stairs I found a door that differed from every other door I had seen at Dupley Walls. In colour it was a dull dead black, and it was studded with large square-headed nails. It was without a handle of any kind, but was pierced by one tiny keyhole. To what strange chamber did this terrible door give access? and who was the mysterious visitor who came here night after night with hushed footsteps and alone? These were two questions that weighed heavily on my mind, that troubled me persistently when I lay awake in the dark, and even refused by day to be put entirely on one side.

By-and-by the mystery deepened. In a recess close to the top of the flight of stairs that led to the black door was an old-fashioned case clock. When this clock struck the hour two small mechanical figures dressed like German burghers of the sixteenth century came out of two little turrets, bowed gravely to each other, and then retired, like court functionaries, backwards. It was a source of great pleasure to me to watch these figures go through their hourly pantomime. But after a time it came into my head to wonder whether they did their duty by night as well as by day, whether they came out and bowed to each other in the dark, or waited quietly in their turrets till morning. In pursuance of this inquiry I got out of bed one night after Dance had left me, and relighted my candle. I knew that it was just on the stroke of eleven, and here was a capital opportunity for studying the customs of my little burghers by night. I stole up the staircase with my candle, and waited for the clock to strike. It struck, and out came the figures as usual.

"Perhaps they only came out because they saw my light," I said to myself. I felt that the question as to their mode of procedure in the dark was still an unsettled one.

But scarcely had the clock finished striking when I was disturbed by the shutting of a door downstairs. Fearing that some one was coming, and that the light might betray me, I blew out my candle and waited to hear more. But all was silent in the house. I turned to go down, but as I did so I saw with astonishment that a thin streak of light shone from under the black door. I stood like one petrified. Was there any one inside the room? Listening intently, I waited for full five minutes without stirring a limb. Silence the most profound upstairs and down. Stepping on tiptoe, I went back to my room, shut myself in, and crept gladly into bed.

Next night my curiosity overmastered my fear. As soon as Dance was gone I crept upstairs in the dark. One peep was enough. As on the previous night, a thin streak of light shone from under the black door--evidence that it was lighted up inside. Next night, and for several nights afterwards, I put the same plan in operation with precisely the same result. The light was always there.

Having my attention thus concentrated as it were upon this one room, and lying awake so many hours when I ought to have been asleep, my suspicions gradually merged into certainty that it was visited every midnight by some one who came and went so lightly and quietly that only by intently listening could I distinguish the exact moment of their passing my door. Who was this visitor that came and went so mysteriously? To discover this, without being myself discovered, was a matter that required both tact and courage, but it was one on which I was almost as much a monomaniac as a child well can be. To have opened my door when the landing was perfectly dark would have been to see nothing. To have opened the door with a candle in my hand would have been to betray myself. I must wait for a moonlight night, which would light up the landing sufficiently for my purpose. I waited. My opportunity came. With my doorway in deep shadow, my door just sufficiently open for me to peer through, and with the staircase lighted up by the rays of the moon, I saw and recognised the mysterious midnight visitor to the room over mine. I saw and recognised Sister Agnes.

[CHAPTER VII.]

EXIT JANET HOLME.

The effect upon me of the discovery that Sister Agnes was the midnight visitor of the room over mine was at once to stifle that brood of morbid fancies with which of late both room and visitor had become associated in my mind. I loved her so thoroughly, she was to me so complete an embodiment of all that was noble and beautiful in womanhood, that however unsatisfying to my curiosity such visits might be, I could not doubt that she must have excellent reasons for making them. One thing was quite evident, that since she herself had said nothing respecting the room and her visits to it, it was impossible for me to question her on the matter. Such being the case, I felt that it would be a poor return for all her goodness to me to question Dance or any other person respecting what she herself wished to keep concealed. Besides, it was doubtful whether Dance would tell me anything, even if I were to ask her. She had warned me a few hours after my arrival at Dupley Walls that there were many things under that roof respecting which I must seek no explanation; and with no one of the other domestics was I in any way intimate.

Still my curiosity remained unsatisfied; still over the room itself hung a veil of mystery which I would fain have lifted. All my visits to the room to see whether the light shone under the door had hitherto been made previously to the midnight visits of Sister Agnes. The question that now arose in my mind was whether the mysterious thread of light was or was not visible after Sister Agnes's customary visit--whether, in fact, it shone there all the night through. In order to solve this doubt I lay awake the night following that of my discovery of Sister Agnes. Listening intently, with my bedroom door ajar, I heard her go upstairs, and ten minutes later I could just distinguish her smothered footfall as she came down. I heard the door at the bottom of the corridor shut behind her, and then I knew that I was safe.

Slipping out of bed, I stole, barefooted as I was, out of my bedroom and up the flight of stairs which led to the black door. Of ghosts in the ordinary meaning of that word--in the meaning which it has for five children out of six--I had no fear: my fears, such as they were, ran in quite another groove. I went upstairs slowly, with shut eyes, counting each stair as I put my feet on it from one up to ten. I knew that from the tenth stair the streak of light, if there, would be visible. On the tenth stair I opened my eyes. There was the thread of light shining clear and steady under the black door. For a minute I stood looking at it. In the intense silence the beating of my heart was painfully audible. Grasping the banister with one hand, I went down stairs backwards, step by step, and so regained the sanctuary of my own room.

I scarcely know in what terms to describe, or how to make sufficiently clear, the strange sort of fascination there was for me in those nightly rambles--in living perpetually on the edge of a mystery. While daylight lasted the feeling slumbered within me; I could even take myself to task for wanting to pry into a secret that evidently in nowise concerned me. But as soon as twilight set in, and night's shadows began to creep timidly out of their corners, so surely could I feel the spell working within me, the desire creeping over me to pluck out the heart of the mystery that lay hidden behind the black nail-studded door upstairs. Sometimes I clomb the staircase at one hour, sometimes at another; but there was no real sleep for me, nothing but fitful uneasy dozes, till the brief journey had been made. After climbing to the tenth stair, and satisfying myself that the light was there, I would creep back noiselessly to bed, and fall at once into a deep dreamless sleep that was often prolonged till late in the forenoon.

At length there came a night when the secret was laid bare, and the spell broken for ever. I had been in bed for two hours and a half, lying in that half-dreamy state in which facts and fancies are so inextricably jumbled together that it is too much labour to disintegrate the two, when the clock struck one. Next moment I was out of bed, standing with the handle of the half-opened door in my hand, listening to the silence. I had heard Sister Agnes come down some time ago, and I felt secure from interruption. To-night the moon shone brightly in through a narrow window in the gable, and all the way upstairs there was a track of white light as though a company of ghosts had lately passed that way. As I went upstairs I counted them up to the tenth, and then I stood still. Yes, the thread of light was there as it always was, only--only somehow it seemed broader to-night than I had ever noticed it as being before. It _was_ broader. I could not be mistaken. While I was still pondering over this problem, and wondering what it might mean, my eye was taken by the dull gleam of some small white object about half way up the door. My eyes were taken by it, and would not leave it till I had ascertained what it really was. I approached it step by step, slowly, and then I saw that it was in reality that which I had imagined it to be. It was a small silver key--Sister Agnes's key--which she had forgotten to take away with her on leaving the room. Moreover the door was unlocked, having been simply pulled to by Sister Agnes on leaving, which explained why the streak of light showed larger than common.

I felt as though I were walking in a dream, so unreal did the whole business seem to me by this time. I was in a moonlight glamour; the influence of the silver orb was upon me. Of self-volition I seemed to have little or none left. I was given over to unseen powers, viewless, that dwell in space, of which we have ordinarily no human cognition. At such moments as these, and I have gone through many of them, I am no longer the Janet Holme of everyday life. I am lifted up and beyond my ordinary self. I obey a law whose beginning and whose ending I am alike ignorant of: but I feel that it is a law and not an impulse. I am led blindly forward, but I go unresistingly, feeling that there is no power left in me save that of obeying.

Did I push open the door of the secret room, or was it opened for me by unseen hands? I know not. I only know that it closed noiselessly behind me of its own accord and left me standing there wondering, alone, with white face and staring eyes.

The chamber was a large one, or seemed so to me. It was draped entirely in black, hiding whatever windows there might be. The polished wood floor was bare. The ceiling was painted with a number of sprawling Cupids, some of them scattering flowers, others weaving leafy chaplets, presumably to crown the inane-looking goddess reclining in their midst on a bank of impossible cloud. But both Cupids and goddess were dingy with age, and seemed to have grown too old for such Arcadian revels.

The room was lighted with a dozen large wax candles placed in four silver tripods, each of them about six feet in height, and screwed to the floor to prevent their being overturned. All these preparations were not without an object. That object was visible in the middle of the room. It was a large black coffin studded with silver nails, placed on a black slab about four feet in height, and more than half covered with a large pall.

I felt no fear at sight of this grim object. I was lifted too far above my ordinary self to be afraid. I simply wondered--wondered who lay asleep inside the coffin, and how long he or she had been there.

The only article of furniture in the room was a _prie-dieu_ of black oak. I knelt on this, and gazed on the coffin, and wondered. My curiosity urged me to go up to it, and turn down the pall, and ascertain whether the name of the occupant was engraved on the lid. But stronger than my curiosity was a certain repugnance to go near it which I could not overcome. That some person was shut up there who during life had been of importance in the world, I could not doubt. This, too, was the room in which Lady Pollexfen took her midnight perambulations, and that coffin was the object she came to contemplate. Perhaps the occupant of the coffin came out, and walked with my lady, and held ghostly converse with her on such occasions. I fancied that even now I could hear him breathing heavily, and turning over uneasily in his narrow bed. There seemed a rustling, too, among the folds of the sombre curtains as though some one were in hiding there; and that low faint sobbing sigh which quivered through the room, like an accent of unutterable sorrow, whence did it come? Others than myself were surely there, though I might not be able to see them.

I knelt on the _prie-dieu_, stirring neither hand nor foot; as immovable, in fact, except for my breathing, as a figure cut out of stone. Looking and wondering still, after a time it seemed to me that the lights were growing dimmer, that the room was growing colder; that some baleful presence was beside me with malicious intent to gradually numb and chill the life out of me, to freeze me, body and soul, till the two could no longer hold together; and that when morning came, if ever it did come to that accursed room, my husk would be there indeed, but Janet Holme herself would be gone for ever. A viewless horror stirred my hair, and caused my flesh to creep. The baneful influence that was upon me was deepening in intensity; every minute that passed seemed to render me more powerless to break the spell. Suddenly the clock struck two. At the same moment a light footfall sounded on the stairs outside. It was Sister Agnes coming back to lock the door, and to fetch the key which she had left behind two hours before. I heard her approach the door, and I saw the door itself pulled close to; then the key was turned, the bolt shot into its place, the key was withdrawn, and I was left locked up alone in that terrible room.

But the proximity of another human being sufficed to break the spell under which I had been powerless only a minute before. Better risk discovery, better risk everything, than be left to pass the night where I was. Should that horror settle down upon me again, I felt that I must succumb to it. It would crush the life out of me as infallibly as though I were in the folds of some huge Python. Long before morning I should be dead.

I slid from off the _prie-dieu_, and walking backward, with my eyes glancing warily to right and left, I reached the door, and struck it with my fists. "Sister Agnes!" I cried, "Sister Agnes! do not leave me. I am here alone."

Again the curtains rustled, stirred by invisible fingers; again that faint long-drawn sigh ran like an audible shiver through the room. I heard eager fingers busy outside the door; a mist swam up before my eyes, and next moment I fainted dead away in the arms of Sister Agnes.

For three weeks after that time I lay very ill--lay very close to the edge of the grave. But for the ceaseless attentions and tender assiduities of Sister Agnes and Dance I should have slipped out of life and all my troubles. To them I owe it that I am now alive to write these lines. One bright afternoon, as I was approaching convalescence, Sister Agnes and I, sitting alone, got into conversation respecting the room upstairs, and my visit to it.

"But whose coffin is that, Sister Agnes?" I asked. "And why is it left there unburied?"

"It is the coffin of Sir John Pollexfen, her ladyship's late husband," answered Sister Agnes, very gravely. "He died thirteen years ago. By his will a large portion of the property left to his widow was contingent on his body being kept unburied and above ground for twenty years. Lady Pollexfen elected to have the body kept in that room which you were so foolish as to visit without permission; and there it will probably remain till the twenty years shall have expired. All these facts are well known to the household; indeed, to the country for miles around; but it was not thought necessary to mention them to a child like you, whose stay in the house would be of limited duration and to whom such knowledge could be of no possible benefit."

"But why do you visit the room every midnight, Sister Agnes?"

"It is the wish of Lady Pollexfen that, day and night, twelve candles shall be kept burning round the coffin, and ever since I came to reside at Dupley Walls it has been part of my duty to renew the candles once every twenty-four hours. Midnight is the hour appointed for the performance of that duty."

"Do you not feel afraid to go there alone at such a time?"

"Dear Janet, what is there to be afraid of? The dead have no power to harm us. We shall be as they are in a very little while. They are but travellers who have gone before us into a far country, leaving behind them a few poor relics, and a memory that, if we have loved them, ought to make us look forward with desire to the time when we shall see them again."

Three weeks later I left Dupley Walls. Madame Duclos was in London for a week, and it was arranged that I should return to France with her. Major Strickland took me up to town and saw me safely into her hands. My heart was very sad at leaving all my dear new-found friends, but Sister Agnes had exhorted me to fortitude before I parted from her, and I knew that neither by her, nor the major, nor George, nor Dance, should I be forgotten. I saw Lady Pollexfen for a moment before leaving. She gave me two frigid fingers, and said that she hoped I would be a good girl, and attend assiduously to my lessons, for that in after life I should have to depend upon my own industry for a living. I felt at the moment that I would much rather do that than have to depend through life on her ladyship's bounty.

A few tears would come when the moment arrived for me to say farewell to the major. He tried his best, in his hearty affectionate way, to cheer me up. I flung my arms round his neck and kissed him tenderly. He turned abruptly, seized his hat, and rushed from the room. Whereupon, Madame Duclos, who had been trying to look _sympathétique_, drew herself up, frowned, and pinched one of my ears viciously. Forty-eight hours later I was safely shut up in the Pension Clissot.

Here my personal narrative ends. From this point the story of which the preceding pages form a part, will be recorded by another pen. It was deemed advisable by those to whose opinion in such matters I bow without hesitation, that this narrative of certain events in the life of a child--a necessary introduction to the narrative yet to come--should be written by the person whom it most concerned. Now that her task is done, she abnegates at once (and thankfully) the first person singular in favour of the third, and whatever is told of her in the following pages, is told not by herself, but by that other pen, of which mention is made above.

Between the time when this curtain falls and the next one draws up, there is a lapse of seven years.

[CHAPTER VIII.]

BY THE SCOTCH EXPRESS.

Among other passengers, on a certain fine spring morning, by the 10 a.m. Scotch express, was one who had been so far able to propitiate the guard as to secure a whole compartment to himself. He was enjoying himself in a quiet way--smoking, and skimming his papers, and taking a bird's-eye view now and again at the landscape that was flying past him at the rate of forty miles an hour. Few people who cared to speculate as to his profession would have hesitated to set him down as a military man, even had not the words, "Captain Ducie," painted in white letters on a black portmanteau which protruded half-way from under his seat, rendered any such speculation needless. He must have been three or four-and-forty years old, judging from the lines about his mouth and eyes, but in some other respects he looked considerably younger. He wore neither beard nor whiskers, but his short hair, and his thick, drooping moustache were both jet black, and betrayed as yet, thanks either to Nature or Art, none of those straggling streaks of silver which tell so plainly of the advance of years. He had a clear olive complexion, a large aquiline nose, and deep-set eyes, piercing, and full of fire, under a grand sweep of eyebrow. In person he was tall and thin; broad-chested, but lean in the flank, with hands and feet that looked, almost effeminate, so small were they in comparison with his size. A black frock-coat, tightly buttoned, set off to advantage a figure of which he might still be reasonably proud. The remainder of his costume was in quiet keeping with the first fashion of the period.

Captain Ducie smoked and read and stared out of the window much as eleven out of twelve of us would do under similar circumstances, while milepost after milepost flashed out for an instant and was gone. After a time he took a letter out of his breast pocket, opened it, and read it. It was brief, and ran as under:--

"Stapleton, Scotland,
March 31st."

"My Dear Ned,--Since you wish it, come down here for a few weeks; whether to recruit your health or your finances matters not. Mountain air and plain living are good for both, However, I warn you beforehand that you will find us very dull. Lady B.'s health is hardly what it ought to be, and we are seeing no company just now. If you like to take us as we are, I say again--come.

"As for the last paragraph of your letter, I scarcely know in what terms to answer it. You have already bled me so often the same way, that I have grown heartily sick of the process. This must be the last time of asking, my boy; I wish you clearly to understand that. This place has cost me a great deal of money of late, and I cannot spring you more than a hundred. For that amount I enclose you a cheque. _Finis coronat opus_. Bear those words in mind, and believe me when I say that you have had your last cheque.

"From your affectionate cousin,

Barnstake."

"Consummate little prig!" murmured Captain Ducie to himself as he refolded the letter, and put it away. "I can fancy the smirk on his face as he penned that precious effusion, and how, when he had finished it, he would trot off to his clothes-prop of a wife and ask her whether she did not think it at once amusing and severe. That letter shall cost your lordship fifty guineas. I don't allow people to write to me in that style with impunity."

He lighted another cigar frowningly. "I wonder if I was ever so really hard up as I am now," he continued to himself. "I don't think I ever was quite. I have been in Queer Street many a time, but I've always found a friend round the corner, or have pulled myself through by the skin of the teeth somehow. But this time I see no lift in the cloud. My insolvency has become chronic; it is attacking the very citadel of life. I have not a single uncle or aunt to fall back upon. The poor creatures are all dead and buried, and their money all spent. Well!--Outlaw is an ugly word, but it is one that I shall have to learn how to spell before long. I shall have to leave my country for my country's good." He puffed away fiercely for a little while, and then he resumed. "It would not be a bad thing for a fellow like me to become a chief among the Red Skins--if they would have me. With them my lack of pence would be no bar to success. I can swim, and shoot, and ride: although I cannot paint a picture, I daresay that I could paint myself; and I know several fellows whose scalps I should have much pleasure in taking. As for the so-called amenities of civilized life, what are they worth to one who, like me, has no longer the means of enjoying them? After all, it is a question whether freedom and the prairie would not be preferable to Pall-Mall and a limited income of, say--twelve hundred a year--the sort of income that is just enough to make one the slave of society, but is not sufficient to pay for gilding its fetters. A station, by Jove! and with it the possibility of getting a drop of cognac."

As soon as the train came to a stand, Captain Ducie vacated his seat and went in search of the refreshment-room. On coming back five minutes later, he was considerably disgusted to find that he was no longer to have his compartment to himself. The seat opposite to that on which he had been sitting was already occupied by a gentleman who was wrapped up to the nose in rugs and furs.

"Any objection to smoking?" asked the captain presently as the train began to move. He was pricking the end of a fresh cigar as he asked the question. The words might be civil, but the tone was offensive; it seemed to convey--"I don't care whether you object or not: I intend to enjoy my weed all the same."

The stranger, however, seemed in nowise offended. He smirked and quavered two yellow gloved fingers out of his furs. "Oh, no, certainly not," he said. "I too am a smoker and shall join you presently." He spoke with the slightest possible foreign accent, just sufficient to tell an educated ear that he was not an Englishman. If Captain Ducie's features were aquiline, those of the stranger might be termed vulturine--long, lean, narrow, with a thin high-ridged nose, and a chin that was pointed with a tuft of thick black hair. Except for this tuft he was clean shaven. His black hair, cropped close at back and sides, was trained into an elaborate curl on the top of the forehead and there fixed with _cosmètique_. Both hair and chin-tuft were of that uncompromising blue-black which tells unmistakably of the dye-pot. His skin was yellow and parchment-like, and stretched tightly over his forehead and high cheek bones, but puckering into a perfect network of lines about a mouth whose predominant expression was one of mingled cynicism and suspicion. There was suspicion, too, in his small black eyes, as well as a sort of lurking fierceness which not even his most urbane and elaborate smile could altogether eliminate. In person he was very thin and somewhat under the middle height, and had all the air of a confirmed valetudinarian. He was dressed as no English gentleman would care to be seen dressed in public. A long brown velvet coat trimmed with fur; lavender-coloured trowsers tightly strapped over patent leather boots; two or three vests of different colours under one made of the skin of some animal and fastened with gold buttons; a profusion of jewellery; an embroidered shirt-front and deep turn-down collar: such were the chief items of his attire. A hat with a very curly brim hung from the carriage roof, while for present head-gear be wore a sealskin travelling cap with huge lappets that came below his ears. In this cap, and wrapped to the chin in his bear-skin rug, he looked like some newly-discovered species of animal--a sort of cross between a vulture and a monkey, were such a thing possible, combining the deep-seated fierceness of the one with the fantastic cunning, and the impossibility of doing the most serious things without a grimace, of the other.

No sooner had Captain Ducie lighted his cigar than with an impatient movement he put down the window close to which he was sitting. It had been carefully put up by the stranger while Ducie was in the refreshment room; but the latter was a man who always studied his own comfort before that of any one else, except when self whispered to him that such a course was opposed to his own interests, which was more than he could see in the present case.

The stranger gave a little sniggering laugh as the window fell noisily; then he shivered and drew his furs more closely around him. "It is strange how fond you English people are of what you call fresh air," he said. "In Italy fresh air may be a luxury, but it cannot be had in your hang-dog climate without one takes a catarrh at the same time."

Captain Ducie surveyed him coolly from head to foot for a moment or two. Then a sudden thought seemed to strike him. "I must really ask you to pardon my rudeness," he said, lifting his Glengarry. "If the open window is the least annoyance to you, by all means let it be shut. To me it is a matter of perfect indifference." As he spoke he pulled the window up, and then he turned on the stranger with a look that seemed to imply: "Although I seemed so truculent a few minutes ago, you see what a good-natured fellow I am at heart." In most of Captain Ducie's actions there was some ulterior motive at work, however trivial many of his actions might appear to an outsider, and in the present case it was not likely that he acted out of mere complaisance to a man whom he had never seen nor heard of ten minutes previously.

"You are too good--really far too good," said the stranger. "Suppose we compromise the matter?" With that his lean hands, encased in lemon-coloured gloves, let down the window a couple of inches, and fixed it there with the strap.

"Now really, you know, do just as you like about it," said the captain, with that slow amused smile which became his face so well. "As I said before, I am altogether indifferent in the matter."

"As it is now, it will suit both of us, I think. And now to join you in your smoke."

From the net over his head he reached down a small mahogany case. This he opened, and from it extracted a large meerschaum pipe elaborately mounted with gold filigree work. Having charged the pipe from an embroidered pouch filled with choice Turkish tobacco, he struck an allumette and began to smoke.

"Decidedly an acquaintance worth cultivating," murmured the captain under his breath.

"But what country does the beggar belong to?" A question more easily asked than answered: at all events, it was one which the captain found himself unable to solve to his own satisfaction. For a few minutes they smoked in silence.

"Do you travel far, to-day?" asked the stranger at length. "Are you going across the Border?"

"The end of my journey is Stapleton, Lord Barnstake's place, and not a great way from Edinbro'. Shall I have the pleasure of your Company as far as I go by rail?"

"Ah, no, sir, not so far as that. Only to ----. There I must leave you, and take the train for Windermere. I live on the banks of your beautiful lake. Permettez-moi, monsieur," and with a movement that was a combination of a shrug, a grimace, and a bow, the stranger drew a card-case from one of his pockets, and extracting a card therefrom, handed it to Ducie.

The captain took it with a bow, and sticking his glass in his eye, read: