“Yes. My father is John Smith, Lord Luxellian’s master-mason, who lives under the park wall by the river.”
“O Stephen! can it be?”
“He built—or assisted at the building of the house you live in, years ago. He put up those stone gate piers at the lodge entrance to Lord Luxellian’s park. My grandfather planted the trees that belt in your lawn; my grandmother—who worked in the fields with him—held each tree upright whilst he filled in the earth: they told me so when I was a child. He was the sexton, too, and dug many of the graves around us.”
“And was your unaccountable vanishing on the first morning of your arrival, and again this afternoon, a run to see your father and mother?...I understand now; no wonder you seemed to know your way about the village!”
“No wonder. But remember, I have not lived here since I was nine years old. I then went to live with my uncle, a blacksmith, near Exonbury, in order to be able to attend a national school as a day scholar; there was none on this remote coast then. It was there I met with my friend Knight. And when I was fifteen and had been fairly educated by the school-master—and more particularly by Knight—I was put as a pupil in an architect’s office in that town, because I was skilful in the use of the pencil. A full premium was paid by the efforts of my mother and father, rather against the wishes of Lord Luxellian, who likes my father, however, and thinks a great deal of him. There I stayed till six months ago, when I obtained a situation as improver, as it is called, in a London office. That’s all of me.”
“To think YOU, the London visitor, the town man, should have been born here, and have known this village so many years before I did. How strange—how very strange it seems to me!” she murmured.
“My mother curtseyed to you and your father last Sunday,” said Stephen, with a pained smile at the thought of the incongruity. “And your papa said to her, ‘I am glad to see you so regular at church, JANE.’”
“I remember it, but I have never spoken to her. We have only been here eighteen months, and the parish is so large.”
“Contrast with this,” said Stephen, with a miserable laugh, “your father’s belief in my ‘blue blood,’ which is still prevalent in his mind. The first night I came, he insisted upon proving my descent from one of the most ancient west-county families, on account of my second Christian name; when the truth is, it was given me because my grandfather was assistant gardener in the Fitzmaurice-Smith family for thirty years. Having seen your face, my darling, I had not heart to contradict him, and tell him what would have cut me off from a friendly knowledge of you.”
She sighed deeply. “Yes, I see now how this inequality may be made to trouble us,” she murmured, and continued in a low, sad whisper, “I wouldn’t have minded if they had lived far away. Papa might have consented to an engagement between us if your connection had been with villagers a hundred miles off; remoteness softens family contrasts. But he will not like—O Stephen, Stephen! what can I do?”