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PHEMIE KELLER.
A Novel.

By F. G. TRAFFORD,

AUTHOR OF “GEORGE GEITH,” “CITY AND SUBURB,” “MAXWELL DREWITT,” “TOO MUCH ALONE,” “WORLD AND THE CHURCH,” “RACE FOR WEALTH.”

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

LONDON:

TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.

1866.

[The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved.]

LONDON:

BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

CONTENTS.

PHEMIE KELLER.

CHAPTER I.
SORROWFUL TIDINGS.

It was drawing towards the close of the year 1856 (there may be some among my readers who can recollect what a dull, foggy, cheerless ending that year had), when one morning the post to Marshlands brought with it an Indian letter for Captain Stondon.

The post often brought Indian letters there—long letters (for though the writer addressed his epistles to Captain Stondon, he knew they would be read by Phemie), full of descriptions of the country, of his occupations, of his prospects, of his hopes.

Nearly three years had elapsed since Basil’s departure, but time made no difference in the regularity of his correspondence. Let him be busy or the reverse, the young man still found leisure to despatch his budget of news. Perhaps he felt that on those letters Phemie lived; that her existence was only rendered supportable by the excitement of waiting for his missives, and hearing them read aloud; that she loved the sight of his handwriting as she had once loved the sight of himself; that she counted up the days as they came and went—counted how long it was since the arrival of his last letter, how long it would be before the advent of his next. The time had passed with her somehow; she was no longer the girl Phemie; she had changed from the young wife, from the beautiful gracious hostess, to a quiet, undemonstrative woman, who tried with all her heart and all her soul to do her duty.

It had come to that—for lack of explanation—even because of her husband’s excessive tenderness and consideration, she found she could only give him duty, never love. Her lover was gone from her—she had driven him away! Her lover, who had not married Miss Derno after all, who had loved her, her only—Phemie Stondon, who now sat with her hands folded, and her untasted breakfast before her, waiting for the news which Captain Stondon appeared unusually loth to communicate.

When he went away she vowed she would never ask a question concerning him, and so far she never had; but now she saw something in her husband’s face which impelled her to say—

“Is Basil ill—is there anything the matter?”

Captain Stondon looked at his wife as she spoke, and seeing her pale, anxious countenance—her eager, earnest expression, turned sick as he answered—“He is ill; he is coming back to England. You see what he says.” And he tossed the letter over to her, and then got up and walked to the window, and looked out, with such feelings of bitterness swelling in his heart as were only imagined by God and himself.

He made no man his confidant; but the knowledge that had come to him among the pines, while the autumn wind moaned through the branches, and went sobbing away into the night, had whitened his hair, and bowed his head, and taken the pride and the trust and the happiness out of his heart. He had his wife safe—as the world calls safety; there was no speck on her honour, so far as the world knew. Yet no time could ever make her seem to him as she had been—the Phemie he had held to his heart among the hills. The pure, innocent, guileless Phemie had gone, and left him in her stead a woman, whose thoughts morning, noon, and night, were wandering over the sea; who loved Basil as she had never loved him; whom he could not accuse of perfidy, because she had not been false; to whom he dared not speak of his sorrow, because he dreaded seeing her face change and change at finding her secret discovered, her trouble known.

And all the time Phemie was wishing that by any means he and she could come nearer to each other again—that she could show him more love, more attention, greater attachment. She was very wretched, and she wanted some one to comfort her; it made her miserable to notice his whitening hair, his bent head, his feeble steps, his failing health; she thought of him now with a tenderness such as she had never felt for him in the years before any one came between them; and if she could by any will or act of her own have kept her thoughts from wandering away to that man in the far-off land, she would have done so.

Even now she was not glad to hear he was coming back; she laid down the letter when she had quite finished it; and her husband, turning from the window, caught her eyes making a very long and sorrowful journey into the future. He knew by that look she was true—knew that the clear, honest eyes could never have held such a sad, wistful expression in their blue depths, had the news not been a trouble to her as well as a surprise.

She was thinking the same thoughts as her husband at that moment; she was wondering, as he was wondering, whether Basil were really ill or whether he was making bad health a pretext for returning to England; and she was resolving that if Basil came home unchanged, she would at all hazards speak to her husband, and let him comprehend how matters really stood; while he, on his part, was thinking that, supposing Basil were playing a false game in any way, he would either take Phemie abroad, or else—well, yes—there should be confidence—painful confidence between them at last.

And yet the man’s heart yearned towards Basil. He had been fond of him as he might have been of a son; and if he were ill, if he had overcome his madness, if he could live in England, and yet not seek to destroy what measure of peace still existed in Phemie’s heart, Captain Stondon felt he should be glad to see the man whose love for his wife had driven him forth into exile, on British ground again.

The mysteries of human nature are inexplicable; its inconsistencies are never ending. For any outsider even to attempt to describe all Captain Stondon had thought and felt about his wife and Basil—about Basil and his mother—about himself and Phemie, would be useless. I can only say that he was sorry and he was glad at the news contained in Basil’s note. He had been wretched about the young man; Mrs. Montague Stondon made his life a weariness concerning her son. He felt that if Basil died abroad he should feel as though he had almost two deaths to answer for. If Basil would only marry, if Phemie could only forget the love that had been a curse to her, if he could only see oftener the look in his wife’s face which had just comforted him, he believed his declining days might still be bright with sunshine.

And Phemie’s first comment on the letter was satisfactory.

“Of course,” she said, “Basil will go to his mother. He had better not come here. I would rather he did not learn to look upon Marshlands as his home again. Do not think me hard, Henry,” she went on, pleadingly; “I have my reasons. It was bad for Basil leading the idle life he did with us, it was indeed.”

“My love, my own darling wife, if you only tell me what you wish, I will be guided by you. I think I should have been wise to listen to you before.”

“Well, listen to me now,” she entreated; “if his health be really bad, give him a handsome allowance and let him travel. Let him make his head-quarters with his mother—let him do anything but come here. You will not give in to him, Henry?” she went on; “you will be firm; you will keep our home as it is, without bringing strangers here again. Will you not?—will you not?”

She was older then than when this story opened—older by ten years; but her beauty at seven-and-twenty was almost as great as it had been at seventeen; and while she stood there, pleading against the love of her heart—stood with flushed cheek and soft, low, tender voice, in the tones of which there was yet a touch of passionate regret, Captain Stondon felt that, though they had been separated for so long, there would still be danger for Basil near her; and then he wished Basil were not returning. He would have given half Marshlands to have kept him out of England.

There was one thing, however, which induced Captain Stondon to believe that his relative was really ill—viz., the fact that he meant to perform his homeward journey by long sea, to spare himself the fatigue of the overland route. There could be no deception about this matter. He mentioned the name of the vessel in which he had taken his passage; he stated the period about which she might be expected to arrive; he requested Captain Stondon to break the news of his serious illness to his mother, and ask her to prepare for his reception.

“God knows,” he finished, “whether I shall ever live to see England again; but if I do, I should like to stay for a time at Hastings.”

Reading his letter over for the first time, the earnest brevity of his communication failed to strike Captain Stondon; but the longer he pondered over Basil’s words, the more satisfied he felt that he had been stricken down by some terrible sickness, and that perhaps he was, after all, only coming home to die.

“And if so—better so,” Phemie thought; “better he should die than that we should have to live through the past again, with its shame, and its sorrow.” And then, in the solitude of her own room, she covered her face with her hands, and wept aloud.

Can the old love ever die? Can we ever bury that body out of our sight, and heap the mould upon it, and tramp it into the clay? The men and the women may change—they may grow old—they may die—they may pass from the familiar haunts, and the place which has known them may know them no more; but still the picture painted long and long before on the canvas of some human fancy remains young and fresh and lovely. There it hangs on the walls of the heart, and not all the world’s dust—not all the world’s cares—not all time’s ravages can make those dear features other than beautiful for ever.

Well, well, the dark days were at hand when Phemie could have nothing but recollection; when the picture hung in the innermost chamber would be all she might ever hope to see more; when the man’s memory would be encircled with a halo of mystery; when a sad and tender interest would surround the last hours of Basil Stondon’s life, giving to his fate that sad and pathetic interest which was alone needed to fill Phemie’s cup of love and sorrow full unto overflowing.

The ship sailed, and the ship came, but Basil Stondon did not arrive with her; neither did the next Indian mail bring any explanation of his absence. Captain Stondon wrote to the owners, who stated, in reply, that they knew a Mr. Stondon had sailed in the Lahore; but as the vessel had been laid up for repairs, and the captain and mates and most of the crew had shipped in a new merchantman belonging to the same firm for China, till the return of the mates or captain they (Messrs. Hunter, Marks, Son, and Co.) would be unable to obtain further information. Meanwhile, they remained Captain Stondon’s obedient servants.

After that there ensued a pause, during which Captain Stondon wrote to General Hurlford, requesting tidings of Basil. Before any reply could be looked for to this communication the news of the Indian mutiny arrived in England, and throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain there arose such a cry of distress and terror as drowned the sound of any single grief—of any individual’s solitary sorrow.

Straightway down to Marshlands came Mrs. Montague Stondon—came demanding her son as though Captain Stondon hid him there in durance.

“You know, now, what has happened to him,” she said. “He saw what was approaching, and would not desert his post. You see for yourself.” And she thrust the “Times” into Captain Stondon’s face. “General Hurlford is killed; and Thilling, and Osmonde, and hundreds of others whose names are not mentioned; and my boy is dead too—murdered—butchered, and by you.”

Marshlands never witnessed such scenes previously as were enacted within its walls for a fortnight after that. Mrs. Montague would not stay in the house of her “son’s murderer,” but remained at Disley, where she made descents on Captain Stondon, whose life she almost harassed out of him by entreating that he would obtain accurate information for her.

“If I could but know where he was buried, it would comfort me,” she said. And then she relapsed into violent hysterics at the idea that perhaps he was not buried at all. “First my husband—now my son. And it was your doing, his going out there,” she would remark to Captain Stondon, Phemie, and Miss Derno. “You were all against him—all. Because he was next heir you hated him. You sold him into captivity as Joseph’s brethren sold him; and now he is dead, and I shall see his face no more.”

“One ought not to speak ill of the dead,” remarked Miss Derno. “But sure am I that whatever has happened to Basil, he never of his own free will, got into the middle of that mutiny; and it is perfectly unreasonable for you to insist on anything of the kind.”

“Where is he, then?” demanded Mrs. Montague.

“That I am quite unable to tell you,” answered Miss Derno. “If only for Captain Stondon’s satisfaction, I wish I knew. But my belief is that Basil is not dead at all.”

“I wish I could believe that, Miss Derno. Oh! I wish I could,” said Captain Stondon. And the poor old man, utterly broken down by the absence of the son and the reproaches of the mother, burst into tears.

At this period Phemie took the most decided step of her married life. She forbade Mrs. Montague Stondon the house.

“You shall not come here,” she said, “and speak to my husband as you do. We are as sorry about Basil as even you can be.” For a moment she faltered. “We did all we could for him while he was in England; and if anything has happened to him, Captain Stondon is not the one to blame for it. He cannot bear these reproaches. He is not able to leave his room to-day; and the doctor says he must be kept perfectly quiet, and free from excitement.”

Then Mrs. Montague Stondon broke out. She denounced Phemie as a scheming adventuress; she spoke of Captain Stondon as a cold-blooded murderer. She declared Miss Derno was a disappointed woman, and that Phemie had wanted to catch Basil for her cousin Helen; failing in which object, and angry at having no children to succeed to the estate, she sent him abroad to die.

She showed how grievously the idea of losing Marshlands had affected her. She declared the only reason Phemie wished to prolong Captain Stondon’s life was because at his death she would cease to be a person of consequence.

To all of which Mrs. Stondon listened quietly, till the speaker was quite exhausted, when she took her by the hand and led her towards the door.

“I am not going to put any indignity on Basil’s mother,” she said; “but as no person shall have a chance of uttering such words before me twice, I mean to see you to your carriage myself, and must beg you never to enter the gates of Marshlands again so long as I am mistress here.”

A servant was standing in the hall as the pair passed out together—and so Mrs. Montague had to content herself with hissing in Phemie’s ear—“I hope I shall live to see you a beggar, to see you back in the mud he picked you out of.”

“You are very kind,” Phemie answered, aloud, and she remained at the hall door watching the carriage till it disappeared from sight. Then she turned away and walked slowly up the stairs, and along the wide passages, and entered the room where her husband was lying in bed, with the doctor seated beside him.

“That letter, dear,” he murmured; “that letter we had this morning. I am afraid I shall not be able to make the inquiries for some time.”

“If you are better to-morrow, shall I go to town and see Mr. Hunter?” she asked, “or should you like me to send for my uncle?”

“I should like you to do both,” he answered; and accordingly the next day Phemie started for London, and proceeded from the Eastern Counties Railway Station, where Duncan met her, to the offices of Messrs. Hunter, Marks, Son, and Co., Leadenhall Street.

“You will come and stay with us?” Duncan said. The “us” referring to himself and his sister Helen, who was his housekeeper; but Phemie refused.

“I must return to Marshlands as soon as possible,” she said. “I feel wretched about being away at all, only it was a comfort to Captain Stondon for me to come up and learn what Mr. Hunter had to tell us. They have got his boxes, Duncan.”

“Then he did sail?”

“I am going to hear all about it—all they can tell me.” And she looked out at the block there always is at the point where Cornhill and Gracechurch and Leadenhall Streets join, in order to hide her face from Duncan.

The punishment was not over; it was now but the beginning of the end.

Mr. Hunter received her in a large office on the first floor, which was well, not to say luxuriously, furnished. There were comfortable chairs, there was a library-table in the centre of the room, the floor was covered with a turkey carpet, the blinds were drawn down over plate-glass windows. The only articles out of keeping with the generally stylish appearance of the apartment were three large boxes, one of which had been opened, and to which Mr. Hunter directed Mrs. Stondon’s attention.

“We advertised those boxes for months, and at last opened one of them. It is so unusual a thing for passengers’ luggage not to be labelled, that when Captain Stondon applied to us for information we never thought of associating that luggage with his missing relative. But the papers we have discovered leave no doubt as to the gentleman’s identity; and one of the sailors, who was laid up from the effects of an accident when the Singapore was ready for starting, has since called here and given us full particulars on the subject of his fate. He says he remembers a gentleman being carried down to the Lahore the very morning she sailed. He looked in a dying state when brought on board, and before a week had passed all was over. He was buried the next day.”

“Where?” Phemie interrupted—then—

“Oh, my God!” It was all the moan she ever made, but she reeled as she uttered it—reeled and would have fallen but that Duncan caught her.

“There is but one burial-place for those who die at sea,” was the reply, spoken gently and hesitatingly. “Far from land, it is impossible to do anything with the body except——”

“I did not know that this lady was so near a relative,” began Mr. Hunter, apologetically; but Phemie broke across his sentence.

“What more? He was buried, you say? Had he no one with him—no servant—no friend?”

“He had his servant, the man tells me, who took the bulk of his luggage away with him directly the Lahore came into the docks. He must have satisfied the captain on the matter by some plausible tale, or else he would not have been permitted to do so. How he chanced to leave those boxes I am at a loss to imagine, for I conclude his object was to appropriate the property. We can hear nothing further, however, till the return of the Singapore, for the surgeon who was on board the Lahore has gone on even a longer voyage, and will be away for three years.”

“The passengers?” suggested Duncan.

“True,” answered Mr. Hunter, “you might learn something from them. About these boxes? You would wish them sent on to Marshlands, I presume?”

“No,” said Phemie; “his mother ought to have everything belonging to him. I will write to her, and then she will say where she should like them forwarded.”

She asked no more questions, she made no further remark; there were no confidences exchanged between her and Duncan on their way back to the station, only as he stood by the carriage window waiting till the train should move off, her cousin said, a little bitterly—

“How fond you were of that man, Phemie.” And she replied—

“If you had died far from home and friends as he did, should I not be sorry for you too?”

She put up her face and kissed him as she spoke these words. The Phemie of old was dead—the vain, fanciful, exacting Phemie; but for my part, I love better the Phemie who sat back in the carriage all the way down to Disley than the Phemie who had looked out over the flat Cambridgeshire fields five years before.

It was over—with her as with him; she had earned her wages, and they were being paid to her as the months rolled by. Death—he was dead! What had life to offer her in the future? what could the years bring to her worse than this?

At Disley, the carriage was waiting for her, and something in the footman’s face as he stood aside while she entered it, made her pause and ask—

“How is your master?”

“He has been worse since morning, ma’am; the doctor was with him when we left Marshlands.”

“Drive fast, Sewel,” she said to the coachman; “do not spare your horses.” And accordingly Sewel took his favourite pair of bays back to Marshlands (to the intense astonishment of society) at a gallop.

CHAPTER II.
WIDOWED.

Phemie was not in the house two minutes before she knew her husband had had a paralytic stroke. The doctor was still with him; but in such a case, what can a doctor do? When the Almighty strikes—when the blow falls, which no skill is able to avert—of what use are God’s instruments?

From that day Phemie’s work was laid out for her. To nurse him, to tend him, to take the man who had raised her from poverty to wealth, hither and thither as the medical men advised, or as his own fancy dictated; that was the employment of Mrs. Stondon’s life.

Mr. Aggland, now a widower, came and stayed at Marshlands; he it was who propped the sick man up in bed—who read to him—who amused him—who accompanied them from place to place—who thought that never a husband had found so devoted a wife as Phemie—who made his head-quarters in London, that he might be near his niece, and who, after Mr. Keller’s death, made his head-quarters at Roundwood, Mrs. Keller not desiring to continue her residence there.

Phemie was a great woman at last. An heiress in her own right—a person who, without any Marshlands at all, could have taken a high place in society; and yet the Phemie of those days was humbler, sweeter than the Phemie who had dreamed dreams in the valley of Tordale—who had lingered beside the waterfall, and sat beside Strammer Tarn.

How did her new dignity of heiress become her? many a reader may want to know; and yet I think the reader who asks that can have read the life-story of Phemie Keller to little purpose.

How does wealth affect those who have discovered the powerlessness of wealth to confer happiness? How did wealth affect this woman who had not found wealth do much for her?

It simply suggested to her one idea—that money had come too late; that her life had been throughout one great mistake; that, as a rule, lives were great mistakes.

The burden of the song was sorrow—the refrain of the song was work. And her work, as I have said before, was laid out for her: she had from the day she returned from London to attend to her husband, ceaselessly.

They went for the winter to Hastings. The doctor recommended it, and Phemie went wherever the medical men desired.

Now the sea talked to her differently: all through those long, dreary, interminable months she listened to the winds and the waves while they mourned to her of Basil’s last resting-place—of the restless ocean, in the midst of which he had lain him down to sleep.

In those days there was no one to come between her and her husband—no one; friend—nor lover—nor relation—and accordingly Phemie was able to devote herself to him heart and soul.

For a time he seemed to rally, but the constitution was too enfeebled—the shock had been too severe. While they were at Hastings, Captain Stondon had a second stroke; and though his doctor pooh-poohed the calamity to Phemie, still she felt unsatisfied, and paid a visit to a London physician on her own account.

“If a person have a second paralytic stroke,” she said—“remember I want the simple truth—what is the usual consequence? Can the patient recover?”

For a moment, the man of large experience hesitated, then he said,

“After a second stroke, as a rule, there can be but one thing more—a third——”

“Which is——” Phemie suggested.

“Death.”

She turned away—she felt suffocating. Death! He had been her best friend through the most trying period of her life; and she had loved—oh, heavens! in spite of all faults and shortcomings, she had loved him.

“I should like you to see my husband,” she faltered out. And then the doctor was very sorry for his words; but he went down to Hastings to see Captain Stondon notwithstanding.

She wanted to get him back to Marshlands; but the medical attendants shook their heads. She would have given anything to be able to move him to his own home; but the physicians said that unless a decided change for the better occurred such a journey was not to be thought of.

“You would like to get back, dear,” she said to him, when the spring buds were jutting out—when the primroses were springing in the hedges—when the hyacinths in Fairlight Glen were showing for flower; and the poor lips that could now answer in nothing save monosyllables, framed the one word—“Yes.”

“Shall I try to move you there, darling?” she asked; and the dim eyes lighted up with pleasure, and the wan fingers clasped hers tighter, and over the white lips passed the monosyllable “Yes!” once more.

“You do not like this place,” she went on, fearful that her own detestation of the sea—the cruel sea, might be leading her astray with regard to his wishes; and he answered, “No!”

Then she resolved to move him. And she did it.

Before a fortnight was over he was lying in his own room at Marshlands, listening to the song of the birds—to the cawing of the rooks—to the sweet spring sounds—that never seem quite the same when heard away from home.

In the years gone by he had wished a wish—he had prayed a prayer; and now, when the dark days were come upon him—when his strength was turned into weakness—his noon changed to night—when he lay unable to speak—unable to move—the memory of that prayer came back to him.

“O God!” he said, when he stooped over the pool, and drank of the waters, “when Thy good time comes, leave me not to die alone.”

Through the days that had passed since then, his soul went back. Tordale was with him in the time of which I am now writing, as the days of his boyhood were with him when he lay bruised and maimed at the foot of Helbeck.

For ever he was turning round that rock which brought him within view of the valley and the waterfall and the everlasting hills. Eternally the dull plash of the stream as it fell over the rocks—the faint rustling of the leaves—the mourning farewell of the rivulet—the trickling of the water among the stones—sounded in his ear. Dead as he was to the scenes of this beautiful world—powerless though he was to lift himself up and look forth on God’s earth, which he had loved so dearly, still he could remember many things, and amongst them Tordale, which he had once said lightly he should never forget.

Never! for ever! There he had been happy—there he had met Phemie—there he had heard that sweet girlish voice singing the old Covenanting Hymn—there he had wooed and won her, and now the tale was told—the sands were running out—the sun was near its setting—the end which comes sooner or later to all human hopes and fears, troubles and pleasures, was drawing nigh unto him; the wife who had never loved him as much as he had loved her, still hung over his sick-bed, and anticipated his lightest want.

“If she could but know.” And in those hours, had speech been vouchsafed to him, he could have talked to her about their common trouble. “If God would but give me power to talk once more, I would not remain silent as I have done.” And with light from eternity streaming in upon the pages of the past, he saw that his silence had been wrong, his forbearance useless; he vaguely comprehended that if he had opened his heart to Phemie in the days gone by, Basil need not have left for India, while perfect confidence would have reigned between him and her.

“But she will understand it when I am gone,” he thought; “she will know then how I loved her through all.”

That was the story the weary eyes tried to tell Phemie as they followed her about the room; that was the assurance he tried to convey when he clasped her soft hand—when by sign and gesture he kept the dear, pale, changed face near to his own; when he looked at the white cheek, white and worn; when he strove to return the remorseful kisses she laid upon his lips.

Summer came—summer with its sunshine, its roses, its mirthful gladness, its wealth of beauty and of perfume—summer came and shone down on the sweet valley of Tordale once again.

Twelve years previously, Captain Stondon, seated in the church porch, shaded from the mid-day sun, wearied with his walk from Grassenfel, had speculated vaguely upon death; and now, lying in his bed at Marshlands, with the windows flung wide to admit both air and sunshine, tired with his long walk through life, he thought about death once more.

After all, when it comes to this with any person, no existence seems to have lasted for years, and years, and years. There has been a sunrise and a noontide and a sunset; the day is done, the night draws on, the task is finished, the labourer hies him homeward from the last hour’s work he shall ever be called upon to perform.

What more—what more! Oh, friends, the longest life ends with some work, to our thinking, left unfinished—some seventh unresolved—some lesson unlearnt; but who amongst us can tell the why and the wherefore of this mystery? Who can explain the meaning of this universal law? We can write the story up to a certain point, but there our knowledge ceases.

When mortal sickness comes to put a finish to the life-history, what can any one say further? The man has lived, the man has died, the day is ended, the night has closed in. Draw we the curtains, and leave the room—there is nothing further to be written; sleep has come to the tired eyelids—ease to the worn-out frame; there is great peace where there was much suffering. The heat has been borne, the burden is laid aside; the wayfarer has reached his long home; the unquiet heart is still; in the shadows of evening man ceases from his work and from his labour, and sinks to his long rest.

What more? Nothing, my readers; that is, nothing of the stranger whom we met so long ago gazing in the summer sunshine upon Tordale. Captain Stondon was dead, and Phemie—a widow! and there was no direct heir to Marshlands.

CHAPTER III.
THE LETTER.

When trouble came upon her, Phemie was not left alone to bear it. Kind hearts and loving sympathised with her—friendly hands clasped hers—true men and women were near to give what comfort they could, or, at all events, to share in her distress.

Mr. Aggland and Duncan, and Helen and Miss Derno, were all with Phemie when the end came. Norfolk was importunate in its inquiries—Norfolk, professing to feel very sorry about Captain Stondon’s death, wondered who would succeed to the property, and whom Phemie would marry.

Mr. Ralph Chichelee had hopes—intentions, rather, would perhaps be a better word; but then other people had intentions also, so perhaps it is scarcely fair to mention his in particular.

Phemie was still beautiful enough to attract admiration—still young enough to love and be loved—still fascinating enough to choose a second husband and rule over a new home. The prospect opened out before Phemie by Captain Stondon’s death seemed to society like a vision of fairyland. She might marry an earl. The Duke of Seelands had inquired particularly who she was one day when he beheld her driving from the Disley Station. How would Phemie like the strawberry leaves? Norfolk began forthwith to wonder, while the man who had loved her so well was lying dead in one of the pleasant rooms at Marshlands. Concerning “that young man Aggland” the gossips had also something to say; they marvelled if, instead of marrying for rank, Phemie’s uncle would trap her into wedding her cousin. Where would she live? What would she do? She possessed a fine property of her own, and doubtless Captain Stondon had done well pecuniarily by his wife.

Was not this a dainty dish for a county to feast on and speculate over? while the flavouring was supplied by an all-devouring curiosity to know who was the next heir male. Remote relations, unheard of before, came from the uttermost parts of the earth to claim the property. Stondons who had gone down in the world—Stondons who had gone up in the social scale—arrived at Disley when the news of Captain Stondon’s death was noised abroad. There was no near heir, and every man of the connection consequently claimed to be next-of-kin. Who would be master? What would Phemie do? Whom would Phemie marry? What a pity she had no children—what a sad thing it was Mr. Basil Stondon had gone abroad! These were the questions and remarks everybody made and everybody asked.

As for Phemie, she grieved for her dead husband with a sorrow which was neither conventional nor circumscribed. The best friend woman ever possessed he had been to her through all the years of her married life.

Through that part of her existence when she may be said to have lived he had stood beside her.

In sickness, in sorrow, in prosperity, he had thought of her, and of her only. No one in the after time could ever be so fond or proud of her as he had been; no one could ever step in and fill his place. She had never had to think for herself—to take any trouble which his love could keep from her; he had been true and faithful and tender, and the return she had made would have broken the heart of the man who now lay so still and stiff, could he have known it.

“Better so,” she thought, “better so. I would rather see him thus”—and she kissed the cold brow and lips—“than imagine his grief, could he have guessed what I was—I whom he trusted—too well, too well!” And she wept through the hours beside his coffin till her friends forcibly removed her.

“I never loved him enough—I never knew till now how much I loved him,” were the contradictory sentences she kept constantly repeating; and then Miss Derno, who could guess so well wherein the worst sting of this death lay, drew the poor weary head on to her breast and rested it there.

“And I was once very unjust to you,” Phemie went on, sobbing out her confession. “There was a time when I thought I did not like you, and it was wicked of me to misjudge you as I did. You forgive me, dear, don’t you? and you will not ask me why I misjudged you?”

“I forgive and I will not ask. Shall we be friends now—true friends for evermore?” And she bent down till her curls swept Phemie’s face, and then the poor trembling lips touched hers, and the widow broke out sobbing more passionately than ever.

So the days wore on—the weary days with death in the house—till at last the morning came when all that was mortal of Captain Stondon passed out of the gates of Marshlands and on to the churchyard at the other end of the hamlet. He had gone for ever. Phemie realised that fact when she stole to the room where he had lain—when she understood that she had looked on his face for the last time in this world—when she turned desperately towards the future, and confronted it without his help—without his supporting hand—without his encouraging voice—alone—wholly and entirely, so far as the close companionship, as the watchful care given to her by Captain Stondon was concerned.

She had not valued him living, and now he was dead.

She had sorrowed for that man lying under the sea, and there was treason in her sorrow towards the husband just taken from her. Even indeed in that bitter hour she could not put the memory of Basil aside—could not help thinking how hard it was he had been taken in his youth and hope away from earth, away from Marshlands!

She thought this, and then, with a despairing moan, knelt down in the room where she should never more see her husband, and cried till the fountain of her tears seemed exhausted, till, for very faintness and weariness, she could cry no more.

When Captain Stondon’s will came to be read, it was found that he had indeed remembered his wife with the most generous and ungrudging trustfulness.

He had saved and purchased—purchased this little estate and that small farm; invested in some paying companies, and accumulated money for her benefit. With the exception of an annuity to Mrs. Montague Stondon, and some few legacies, he left Phemie the entire of his personal property, all he had been able to put by during the years since he came into possession of Marshlands. There was no condition attached; he said nothing about a second marriage, he made no proviso, he attached no restrictions, he left almost everything he owned in the world, to Phemie absolutely after his death, just as in life he had given her his heart and his substance, wholly and unconditionally.

As for Marshlands, of course it had to go to the next heir—but who was the next heir?

There were not wanting claimants in abundance. Stondons from Devonshire, Stondons from Perth, Stondons from Ireland, Stondons from abroad, were eager in pressing their separate claims. Old men and young, men who looked as though they had been buried for a hundred years and then dug up again, and let out for a day to state where they were born, and who had been their father—men again who were worn and haggard, to whom even a few acres of the great estate would have been ease and competence—men who had all their lives long been fighting the battle of poverty, and probably pawned some of their goods to defray the expenses of the journey—men fresh from their oxen and their ploughshares, who had come “parly,” with a sharp country practitioner: all these laid siege to Marshlands, and strove to make their title appear good; and whilst they were wrangling and disputing over the matter, Phemie still clung to the old walls like a cat, reluctant to quit the place where fires had once blazed cheerfully for her.

She wrote to her late husband’s lawyers, begging them to give her timely notice when the new owner might be expected, and the answer which came back sounded to her like the voices of the dead.

They enclosed a letter which, “as she would perceive,” Captain Stondon had instructed them to forward to her a month after his decease, whenever that might occur, and they begged to assure her she should have full information whenever anything definitive was settled. They (Messrs. Gardner, Snelling, and Co.) thought it was useless considering the claims of any other person until the fact of Mr. Basil Stondon’s death was proved past doubt.

“Proved past doubt.” Oh, heavens! is it not hard to think that what is evidence sufficient for love is not evidence sufficient for law? Till that instant Phemie had never for a moment doubted the accuracy of the tidings which had reached England, but now, with a bound, hope sprung to life again.

It had been so easy to remain true to her husband with Basil dead; but Basil living! Over and over and over she conned the lines suggesting this probability, while the other letter—the enclosure, the message from the newly-made grave—lay unheeded beside her.

To do Phemie justice, she did not couple together the sentences—Basil is living, and I am free. She had never thought of marrying him, and she did not now; but she had loved him, and, as I have said, the old love never dies; it is the one thing in this mutable world which is immutable; it is the one temporal possession of our mortality which is immortal. She could not kill it, she could not bury it; the winter’s frosts and the winter’s snows had lain upon it, yet here it was, springing up fresh and green and fair and beautiful as ever.

If he were but alive! and then all at once her eyes fell on her black dress, and she remembered with a shock the man who was but too surely dead. There lay his letter, with this written on the outside—“To be given to my wife one month after my death in case she survives me; to be burnt in the event of her dying before me.”

It always seems a solemn and a strange thing when the idea of his or her own death is presented as a precautionary possibility to the mind of a person in health.

Insurance forms, for instance, appear to put a matter about which most people, I suppose, think sometimes after a fashion, in a new light before the senses of an intending insurer.

There is a regular debit and credit statement. You may die—you may not die; you are such an age, and inasmuch as you are such an age, the chances are against the length of the years to come; on the other hand, you are healthy, active, temperate. It is not a sermon, it is not a warning, it is not a mere possibility; it is a rule-of-three sum worked out, not very accurately it may be, but still calmly and dispassionately. You may die, you may not die, and you are rated accordingly; you may live, you may not live, and the law and common sense take precautions in consequence.

When that letter was written the future lay shrouded from view, that future was the present now, and he had died; but she might as well have died, and then—why that letter would have been burnt, and she never a bit the wiser.

Life’s firmest ground is insecure, its strongest fortresses powerless against the touch of the great destroyer. Vaguely this idea took root in Phemie’s mind as she read the lines I have copied, ere breaking the outer seals and taking out the letter folded inside.

“Mrs. Stondon” was the direction on the cover, but on the actual envelope were traced the words—“To my dear wife,” and the paper that envelope contained began—“My dearest Phemie.” His! The hand that penned the sentence, that had been warm when the letter was folded, sealed, and directed, was cold enough now.

Well-a-day!—ah, well-a-day!—there are many bitter hours in life, and one of those hours was striking for Phemie then. In the twilight she sat reading, while her tears fell fast and hot on the paper; in the twilight she understood at last the nature of the man she had loved so lightly—the man who, in the time of his fiercest trial, wrote thus to the wife whose heart he found had never throbbed with love for him.

“My dearest Phemie,—When you receive this I shall be lying in my quiet grave, and you will be my widow. To you, my widow, I write that which I could never have said to my wife. It seems to me at this moment that I am almost writing these words from another world, for the old things bear new forms, and life itself is changed to me within the last few hours. My love, my wife, my child, I know all now—your strength, your weakness, your secret; and if I could give you happiness at this moment by any personal sacrifice, God is my witness—God in whose presence I shall stand when you read this—that I would try to do so; but, my darling, it is impossible. I cannot undo the past: let me try to make amends in the future.

“I did wrong, Phemie—I did wrong; but it is only within the last twenty-four hours that I see this. I was old, and you were young; I was rich in money and love, and you in youth, beauty, virtue, the power of winning affection. In your inexperience, my darling, I took you unto myself, away from all chance of happy love—away to the temptation to which I have exposed you. Blind! blind! blind! I thought I could have made you so happy, Phemie, and I have learned that it was not in my power to do so. Forgive me, dear—forgive,—for I am very penitent, and very miserable!

“What I want to say to you, my darling, is this. If, when you read these lines, you think Basil can be to you all I tried to be, marry him after what the world thinks a prudent and fitting interval. Let no thought of me come between you and him, save this, that if it seems good to you to cast your lot with his, I wish you to do so. You have done your uttermost to give the old man your love. I know by what I heard last night that you have not hurt his honour, and I would in the years to come you should give your hand where your heart is now. Give it, remembering that if I had any need to pardon I have pardoned; that I have done my best to repair my error, and secure for you freedom from temptation during my lifetime, and happiness after my death. I never suspected you; I never spied upon you; all my knowledge came from others. The enclosed told me of your intended meeting with Basil this evening. I leave it for you to see, as perhaps you may guess who sent it (I cannot), and be on your watch against a secret enemy when I am here to guard you no longer. This is the last thing I can do for you. God grant it may turn out for your welfare here and hereafter.

“H. S.”

In the twilight she read it; when the summer night came, she still sat on thinking with a terrible despair, with a sickening remorse about the irreparable past—about the hopeless future. He had known—he had known how fond she was of Basil; but he could never know now how fond she had been of him! And Phemie would have given all the years of her future life for ten minutes from the past—ten minutes to explain, to confess, to weep out her repentance, and then, if need be, to part.

But amid all her grief there was another and perhaps a stronger feeling—anger against the person who enlightened Captain Stondon, who had driven Basil across the seas.

She could have fought out her fight alone, she thought. Had she not done so? She could have spoken herself to her husband when she found the burden of the day too much, the heat of the battle too fierce. How came it she had never suspected interference before? How could she ever have forgiven Miss Derno, and varied in her opinion concerning her?

“She wrote that letter.” Thus Phemie ended the mental argument. “She fancied she would get him for herself, and she did not care what misery she brought to any one else—a double-faced hypocrite! Well, Miss Derno, you have played your last game out with me.” And Phemie folded up the letters, and put them aside in a drawer, resolving to make no mention of their contents to any one.

She felt wretchedly ill. Her head was burning, her hands and feet were cold as ice. When her maid came to know if she would wish her tea brought up into her dressing-room, she said, “No,” and bade the woman say to Mr. Aggland that she desired to see him.

“Uncle,” she began, when he obeyed the summons, “I have had a great shock to-night, and I fear I am going to have a bad illness. Count that,” and she laid his fingers on her pulse; “promise me that if I should be delirious you will get a nurse from London. I do not want Helen nor any of the servants to come near me, and, beyond everything, keep Miss Derno away.”

Whereupon Mr. Aggland went downstairs, and sending off straightway for a doctor, told Miss Derno he thought Phemie must be “lightheaded;” acting upon which information, Miss Derno went upstairs, and knocked at Mrs. Stondon’s door, which was opened by Mrs. Stondon’s maid, who said her mistress had gone to bed with a bad headache.

“Is that Miss Derno?” cried out Phemie; “let her come in—I wish to speak to her; and you may go away, Marshall. Are you there?” she exclaimed, as the door closed behind the woman. “Come near to me. That will do. Now then, what do you want?”

“I want to know how you are, dear,” said Miss Derno, approaching the bed, and trying to take one of Phemie’s hands in hers, but Phemie pulled it away.

“I will be fair and frank with you, Miss Derno,” she began; “I will speak freely to you now, as I once thought never to speak freely to mortal. Within the last few hours I have learnt all; I have learned who sent Basil Stondon to India; who told my husband that I—that he——”

“That Basil loved you,” supplied Miss Derno, “If you mean that, I certainly plead guilty; but, Mrs. Stondon, was I wrong?”

“Wrong or right what business had you to come between my husband and me?” retorted Phemie, sitting bolt upright in bed; while the loosened waves of her hair, that she wore ordinarily braided so closely under her cap, rippled down over throat and shoulders and pillows. “Could you not have left me to deal with Basil without breaking the heart of as good a man as ever possessed an unworthy wife?”

“I never told Captain Stondon that I thought you loved Basil,” was the reply.

“But you sent him where he could hear it for himself,” answered Phemie. “You told him to go to the pine plantation that night when Basil and I parted.”

Here Mrs. Stondon stopped: there seemed to come around her as she spoke the twilight of the autumn evening, the moaning of the wind, the leaves beneath her feet. She could not go on, and so she paused, while Miss Derno said—

“I never did—I never even knew till this moment that Basil and you had a parting interview, or that Captain Stondon was present at it.”

“You cannot expect me to believe that,” was the retort; “you wanted Basil for yourself; you thought if once he were separated from me, he would marry you. No means seemed too treacherous to secure such a prize.”

“Now heaven help the woman!” broke in Miss Derno. “Mrs. Stondon,” she continued, “are you mad? Can you think that I should scheme to win Basil Stondon? I, who refused him twice before he ever lost his heart to you?”

Hearing that, Phemie fell back on her pillow.

If Miss Derno thought to make peace by such a sentence, she mistook the nature of the woman she was speaking to.

There was no balm in Gilead for a wound like this. To have given her own love, to have deceived her husband, to have wasted her affection on a man who had loved another before her! It seemed like the very bitterness of death, and Phemie struggled against conviction.

“If you did not wish to marry Basil; if you did not write that letter, who did?” she said, half turning her face towards Miss Derno.

“I cannot tell; I cannot be sure, though I may guess——”

“That is only half an answer,” persisted Phemie.

“Well, then, I guess Georgina Hurlford wrote it. She would have had no objection to become Mrs. Basil Stondon; and I believe she was capable of committing any meanness, if by so doing she could compass her own ends.”

For a moment Phemie paused; then she said—

“You confess you told my husband Basil cared for me?”

“I do; and I told him so in all honour and honesty of purpose. I knew you would not tell him. I saw Basil would never leave Marshlands of himself, and it was best I did speak to Captain Stondon. Though going to India cost Basil his life, it was best for you both that he did go. You cannot deny the truth of what I am saying.”

“I do deny it,” retorted Phemie, fiercely. “I would have gone through fire and water; I would have suffered tortures; I would have died myself cheerfully before letting him guess the miserable truth he learnt that night among the pines. It is no use my making any secret of what you already know. I tell you, hating you all the time for your knowledge, that I did love Basil Stondon—God forgive me—more than I ever loved any man on earth. I loved him, detesting myself for loving him; I loved him more than my husband, but I loved my husband better; and because I loved him better—because he trusted, idolized, and believed I was as good and true as a wife ought to be, I had rather have fought my own battle out to the end. I would rather have borne twenty times as much as I did bear than that he should have come to share any part of the trouble with me. Oh Lord!” finished Phemie, passionately, “will my punishment never end? Will there come no day that shall see the last of this my sin?”

“Mrs. Stondon!” And Miss Derno laid a beseeching hand on Phemie, but Phemie again shook it off.

“You put division between us—you meddled in that which did not concern you—you sent Basil to India—you embittered the last days of my husband’s life. I know now, I know now,” she wailed out, “what made him look at me as he often did, and I will never forgive you, never—if you were dying this minute I would not—if I were dying I would not; and I do not believe Basil ever cared for you much, and I do believe you wrote that note. If you meddled in one part, why not in the other?”

“It is of no use, I suppose, striving to argue with you,” answered Miss Derno. “There is only one thing I will say, however; not very long ago you told me you were sorry ever to have misjudged me. You are misjudging me now, and you will be sorry for having done so hereafter.”

“I shall have to bear that sorrow then as I have had to bear others,” was Phemie’s reply. “You came here professing to be fond of me—professing to like me better than any other woman in the world, and all the time you were scheming against me and mine; you were trying to put division between me and my husband; you thought perhaps nothing would kill him so soon as to tell him I was too fond of Basil; very likely you hoped to get Basil and Marshlands together. I am saying exactly what I think—I cannot be a hypocrite, though you are one.”

“Mrs. Stondon, I never told any one you were too fond of Basil, and I never sent Captain Stondon to any place where he was likely to hear that fact for himself. What is the cause of all this excitement? who has been putting ideas into your mind? from whom have you heard?”

“I have heard from the dead,” answered Phemie; “and they, I suppose, may be trusted to speak the truth. You came spying here, watching my every word and look and movement, and then, having somehow guessed the truth, you went and informed my husband that Basil loved me. That is on your own confession—out of your own mouth I convict you. After that you expect me to believe you did not go further, and tell him I loved Basil. Do you imagine I am an idiot? do you think I have lost my senses altogether? No, no, Miss Derno, there is a point at which credulity ceases, and you could never make me credit Georgina Hurlford wrote that note, unless I heard it from her own lips.”

“Which it is not very probable you will do, in this world at all events,” said Miss Derno; “for I have not the slightest idea that she is still living. Let that be as it may, however, I can only repeat what I have said, I did not try to do you any harm. I did not desire that Basil should marry me. I have tried to be your friend, and though you will not be my friend, I shall never change to you. Do not let our last word be one of anger. Good-by.”

But Phemie only turned her head aside, and the great mass of her hair was all Miss Derno could see of her.

“Good-by,” repeated Miss Derno, putting her hand over Phemie’s shoulder, but Phemie would take no notice.

“Good-by,” she said for the third time, and she stooped and kissed the shining tresses which had first caught Captain Stondon’s fancy. “God knows whether or not we shall ever meet again, but may He keep and bless you!”

And turning away she left the room slowly, and returning to Mr. Aggland, told him his niece was not at all delirious.

“But she has taken offence at something she fancies I have done,” added Miss Derno; “and it will be best for me to leave here to-morrow morning. Do not try to make peace between us; in time she will discover her mistake, and till then I can be patient.”

CHAPTER IV.
MEETING.

Spring came round again; and Phemie, walking about the grounds at Marshlands, saw the crocuses and the snowdrops blooming, the daffodils rearing their gaudy heads in triumph, the violets peeping modestly up from amongst their thick covert of green leaves, and the primroses blossoming in the hedgerows and beside the wood paths.

In due time the wild hyacinths opened their blue and white bells, and perfumed the air with a delicious fragrance; in the copses the wood anemones shone like stars in shaded places; there was fresh foliage on the trees, the grass felt soft and velvety under foot; there was a stir of life throughout all nature—nature so recently awakened from her long winter’s rest. And Phemie, looking around her—looking back at the years which were past, and forward at the years which were to come—thought sadly that for all inanimate nature there is a spring-time as well as an autumn, but for man no second youth, no returning April wherein the flowers of his former existence can blossom and bloom as of yore.

She had passed through grievous sickness since the night she and Miss Derno parted; she had suffered mentally and bodily, and she was only now just crawling out again into the air and the sunshine, to see what the sweet sights and sounds of spring could do for her—she whom the world thought so fortunate a woman.

For was not she young, well dowered, well cared for? She had Roundwood to fall back upon whenever Marshlands came to be claimed by its rightful owner. Her husband was dead; but people said if she could not please herself again, supposing she desired to do so, who could?

Society felt it was the proper thing for her to live in strict seclusion, to receive no visitors, to be in a poor state of health and in low spirits; but at the same time society concluded that when the days of mourning were expired, Mrs. Stondon would feel that it had been the will of God for Captain Stondon to die, and that as he was to die, she ought to be thankful it had likewise been the will of God to provide her with a satisfactory portion of this world’s goods.

Many people were already making inquiries as to the amount of personalty Captain Stondon had left behind him, and how he had disposed of it—whilst the value of Roundwood was known to a shilling. Those ladies who had brothers or sons anxious to marry a wife able to contribute her share towards the expenses of a household, ventured finally to remark to Mr. Aggland that they thought dear Mrs. Stondon was leading too much the life of a hermit, and that a little society, “not exactly society, but merely seeing a few intimate friends, would be extremely good for her.”

To which Mr. Aggland replied, in all truthfulness, that he thought the shock had been almost too much for his niece. “They were so much attached,” he added, “she seems to feel his loss more and more every day.”

(Which was not encouraging to the young men.)

“She will be better perhaps when we get her away from Norfolk,” went on Mr. Aggland; “change of scene will, I hope, work wonders. It is her first great sorrow in life, and you remember, madam, ‘Every one can master a grief but he that has it.’ Few are able to say just at the first—‘The hand of the Lord hath wrought this.’ In time, I have no doubt but that her present anguish will—

‘Settle down into a grief that loves

And finds relief in unreproved tears;

Then cometh sorrow like a Sabbath, and, last

Of all, there falls a kind oblivion

Over the going out of that sweet light

In which we had our being.’”

“What a wonderful memory you have, Mr. Aggland,” said his visitor, with a simper; and then she drove down the avenue, and called at half-a-dozen houses, and whispered in each of them—“I do think there must be some little insanity in Mrs. Stondon’s family. That uncle of hers is as eccentric and odd as possible. His brain seems to me a perfect library, or rather a book filled with familiar quotations.”

“It did not strike me that they were familiar at all,” said Mr. Ralph Chichelee; “quite the contrary, indeed.”

“And, besides,” put in Mrs. Enmoor, who had rather an affection for Phemie, “he is not her uncle by blood, only by marriage.”

“But it is so strange the way she goes on,” persisted the first speaker; “she sees no one—she goes out nowhere—she is even ‘not at home,’ or ‘too ill to receive’ to the clergyman’s wife.”

“Do you not believe she is ill, then?” asked Mr. Chichelee.

“I met her out driving one day last week, and I am sure she then looked like a ghost,” added Mrs. Enmoor. “I was quite shocked to see her.”

“But she adopts no means to get well.”

“I hear she is having that place of hers in Sussex put into thorough order,” said Mr. Chichelee. “No doubt she will soon be leaving Marshlands now; and that reminds me—has anything been heard of the missing heir?”

“People seem convinced he is dead,” was the reply.

“And who is the fortunate man in that case?” inquired Mr. Chichelee.

“A Mr. Haslett Stondon, I hear,” answered Mrs. Enmoor; “who was born in Canada—a great boor, I am told. Ah! Marshlands will never again be what it was—poor dear Captain Stondon!” finished Mrs. Enmoor, with grateful reminiscences of all Phemie had tried to do for her and hers in that pretty drawing-room which looked out over the flower-garden, and the walk under the elm trees.

It was all true—Phemie was going away, and Marshlands would never again be bright and gay as formerly. Mrs. Stondon had scarcely realised to herself how much she loved Marshlands till she was called upon to quit it. Roundwood might be a very nice property, but it was not Marshlands. And to leave Marshlands, to vacate the old familiar rooms in favour of Mr. Haslett Stondon, a man who openly stated he should never reside there, and that with all his heart and with all his soul, and with a good many oaths into the bargain, he wished she would stay, as it would save him the expense of a caretaker!

Phemie wished so too; but still she could not continue to live in the house she had owned, as a mere tenant. It was best for her to effect her change of residence as speedily as might be, and try to get over all her troubles at once. The ray of hope that had illumined her life had faded away. No tidings came of Basil; there seemed no reason to doubt but that it was really he who had died on board the Lahore.

“We will leave this and go to Roundwood, uncle, before the summer is over,” she said one day. And Mr. Aggland eagerly assenting—forthwith preparations for their departure were made, and bills were posted on every wall and paling in the neighbourhood, announcing that on the —th inst. there would be an auction at Marshlands of household furniture, carriages, stock, farming utensils, &c.

“I intend to have that inlaid cabinet,” said Mrs. Hurlford to her husband.

“And I,” answered he, “that roan horse, if he goes at all reasonable.”

“It seems strange to me she can bear to sell the furniture,” remarked soft-hearted little Mrs. Enmoor, never thinking that Phemie wanted to have done with all the old associations—that she wished to forget—to begin an entirely new life in a new place.

When once her own personal effects were off the premises, Mrs. Stondon meant to proceed to Roundwood, leaving her uncle to arrange all other matters for her; and it wanted but a day or two of her intended departure when a special messenger arrived with a letter from Messrs. Gardner, Snelling, and Co., stating that Mr. Basil Stondon was alive, that he was in England, that he might be expected at Marshlands almost at any hour.

“Uncle!” She put the letter into his hands, and then fell back in a dead faint on the sofa where she was seated.

“My dear child,” Mr. Aggland said, when the weary eyes opened once more, and rested on the paper lying on the table, “my poor Phemie, I must get you away; you must be kept quiet. These surprises and sudden tidings are killing you. Those men might have had more consideration, more sense. You must leave Marshlands.”

Then, as it seemed, speaking almost without her own will, Phemie cried out—

“Let me wait and see him—let me see the dead man alive again, and then take me where you will, away from this for ever. Let me stay,” she went on, with earnest pleading, “just to welcome him back, just to make him feel he has come home, and I will leave the next hour.”

That was her first prayer; her second was to leave immediately—to have everything packed up, and ready for immediate departure.

Then a new fancy seized her: she would have all the bills for the auction taken down; she would have every article of furniture put back in its place; the mirrors refixed, the pictures rehung, the curtains re-arranged; there should not be a chair out of place when the wanderer returned.

“My husband would have wished it so,” she said to Mr. Aggland, and Mr. Aggland gave orders to have the rooms they had already vacated put in order, the fatted calf killed, and the house got ready for the reception of the new owner.

He certainly inclined to the opinion that Phemie was a little out of her mind. He had long thought her odd—and now he was confident his niece was not merely odd, but also something more.

“Fainting and crying, and having the whole place upset on account of the return of a man whom she never could bear—for whom she never had a civil word!” Mr. Aggland muttered; but he comforted himself a moment afterwards by recollecting that—

“——Good as well as ill,

Woman’s at best a contradiction still;”

and thought that perhaps, when all was said and done, Phemie’s eccentricities were matters not of mind but of sex.

“I am not sure that it is good for women to have their own way,” he reflected; “for if they have the guiding of themselves they are never content with one road for two minutes together. Likely as not, she will want the bills posted again to-morrow, so I won’t have them taken down at any rate.”

“Do you not think it would be well for you to send a messenger, begging Mrs. Montague Stondon to come down here to receive her son?” he ventured to propose next morning.

“Am I mistress here now?” Phemie angrily retorted. “Is the house mine, to ask or to bid keep away? I ought to be out of Marshlands at this minute. I shall merely remain to touch hands with Basil, and bid him welcome home, and then go when he arrives. Let the luggage be sent over to Disley, and it will be ready for whatever train we choose to start by.”

“But I think it most improbable he will be here for some days; he will naturally remain in London to see his lawyers and his mother, and——”

“Basil Stondon will come straight on to Marshlands,” she interrupted. “He will not lose an hour in hastening to—to—take possession of his property.” And her heart fluttered like a bird’s as she spoke; while Mr. Aggland answered—

“That she seemed to have a high opinion of Mr. Basil Stondon and of his unselfishness. If he will feel no sorrow for your husband’s death, and only rejoice at your having to leave Marshlands, why do you remain to receive him, why can you not travel to Roundwood at once?”

“Because it would seem hard to him—no matter what he may be—for no creature to be here to say, ‘I am glad you are alive—God give you happiness as He has given you wealth.’”

“Well, suppose I stay here and say all that in your name?” suggested Mr. Aggland, who had an intuitive feeling his niece would be better away. “I can tell him all your wishes—how you desire that he shall retain the whole or any portion of the furniture—how the cows and horses, the sheep and the pigs are his to command, if he have any liking for any of them—how you have enough and to spare without stripping the house of its ornaments. I can say as well as you that ‘there is no winter’ in your generosity; can prove how good a steward you have been, spending your own money on another’s land. All that has occurred here since his departure I can relate for his benefit, and I can bring news to you at Roundwood where and how he has passed the time during which we have all thought him dead. Will you take my advice, Phemie, and go? The memories he will recall, the excitement of seeing a man risen from the grave, as one may say, will certainly prove too much for you. Will you go?”

“I have a fancy to stay, uncle,” she answered; “just as I said before, to wish him health and happiness before I leave Marshlands for ever. Most likely I shall never enter its doors again—let my last thought of the old home be a gracious one.”

And there came such a sad, wistful look into the sweet face that Mr. Aggland could press the point no further. He only said it should all be as she wished, and entreated her to lie down and recruit her strength, so that when the journey had to be taken she might be ready for it.

“I hope to see the colour back in your cheeks some day, my dear,” he concluded. “We will all take such care of you when we get you among us once more, that you shall not have any choice left but to get well and strong again. With all your life still before you, it will never do for you to settle down into a desponding invalid.”

“Have patience,” Phemie answered; “let me only get this meeting over—let me once begin a new existence elsewhere, and I will try to make a good thing of it.”

“Have you not made a good thing of it?” he asked; but Mrs. Stondon shook her head.

“We will not talk about the past,” she replied; “the present is enough for us, surely. Let me go now, uncle,” she added; “I want to be quiet for a time, quiet and alone.”

Mr. Aggland followed her with his eyes, as she ascended the staircase. He felt there was something about Phemie which he could not understand—which he had never understood—“and which I probably never shall,” he decided, when he heard a distant door close behind her. “I do think she is very odd but somehow very sweet.”

Could he have seen what Phemie was doing at that very moment, he would have thought her odder still.

She was standing before her mirror, looking at all that was left of the Phemie who had once been so beautiful; looking at the pale, wan face, at the sharpened features, at the dark lines under her eyes, at the lines across her forehead, at her figure round and symmetrical no longer, at the ghastly whiteness of her cheeks, at the widow’s cap which concealed her hair, at the black trailing dress.

Her beauty! Ah, Heaven! that had been a dream too, and it was gone—like her youth, like her gaiety, like her pride, like her vanity, like her innocence of soul—gone for ever.

She turned away from the glass, and covered her face with her hands. She was no heroine, only a woman; and she could not help mourning over the fact that her youth was gone and her beauty with it.

Yet what had youth and beauty done for her?—what? Had they not led her into temptation? Had she not wept such tears, whilst her eyes were bright, and her face round, and her cheeks blooming, as she hoped never to shed again till the day of her death?

Had her very loveliness not brought such suffering upon her as had wrought the wreck she was? Why should she mourn because she had no attractions left to charm the man who once loved her so passionately? Why was it so terrible to her now to realise the full force of the truth which had glimmered across her understanding that night when she sat looking through the darkness down over Tordale?

She had owned one life—on this side of the grave she could never own another. In the eyes of the world she had made a very good thing of it; she had married well, she had associated well, she had succeeded to the Keller property; her husband also had left her abundantly provided for; she had done well so far as money was concerned, but for all that Phemie knew, now when she sat looking—not through the darkness down upon Tordale, but back through the years to her girlhood—that her life had been a lost one, that although there were plenty more lives in the world still to be lived out and made much of or spoiled—enjoyed or marred—yet there could be no second existence for her, no return of the years, no retracing of her steps, no re-writing the book, no erasing the past.

Do you comprehend at last the story I have been trying to tell?—the story which has had in it so little of variety or excitement, but yet that was after all the tale of a woman’s life—of a woman who, like the rest of us, whether man or woman, had but one—and spoiled it! In the world’s great lottery, as I said early in these pages, her little investment might seem a mere bagatelle; but it was the whole of her capital notwithstanding.

And she had lost! Looking back, this conviction forced itself upon her; she had lost, and it was too late for her to hope for a profit in the future.

Had she hoped? had she still clung to the idea of that man loving her? had she believed they might again meet for once, as of old, and then part? What had she thought? what had she hoped till she looked critically at herself in the unflattering mirror?

My reader, I cannot tell—though that was an hour when Phemie tried hard to understand herself, to comprehend why she had wished to stay—why she now wished to go.

All that passed swiftly and sharply through her heart, it would be well nigh impossible for any one to imagine. She could not have told herself aught save this—that her part was played out, on a stage where every step had proved a failure; that there was literally nothing more left for her to do, save walk behind the scenes, and leave the ground clear for those who had still to act out their life’s drama—ill or well, as the case might be.

She rose and stood in the middle of her room irresolute. Should she go? should she not go? should she play the hostess in Marshlands for the last time? remain to greet the new owner and then pass away like the old year? or should she follow the bent of her own inclination and avoid this meeting?

Could she bear to see his look when he saw her changed face? could she assume indifference, or he forgetfulness?

“I will go,” she concluded; and the grey evening shadows were settling down as this idea became a fixed determination. “I will go!—better to seem unkind than to play the fool. My uncle will wait and welcome him—a fitter one to do so than I.” And she rang her bell, and bade Marshall pack the few articles still lying about, and prepare for their immediate departure.

“I think we can catch the night express,” she said; and she went downstairs to speak to her uncle about it.

He was not in the drawing-room, and while she remained for a moment irresolute, there was a noise in the hall as of some one’s arrival.

She tried to move forward to the door, but the blood rushing back to her heart took the power of movement from her. He had come—he had come from out of those great waters—from the grave—out of the past. She forgot the years—she forgot her widow’s weeds—she forgot the dead husband lying in the churchyard beyond the village—she forgot the loss of her beauty—the time that had passed—she remembered nothing save this man whom she had loved, and who had come back again; and when the door opened she stretched out her arms towards him, and cried—“Basil—Basil!”

Then, as in a sort of fright, the dead alive, with a quick glance behind him, answered warningly, while he advanced to meet Phemie—

“And my wife!”

There are times when the very excess of their fear gives men courage; there are occasions when the very intensity of the suffering deadens sensation; and there are also moments in life when, out of the very depth of the previous humiliation, there arises sufficient pride to carry humanity over the most critical moment of its agony and despair.

Such a moment arrived to Phemie then. She had forgotten her pride—her dead—her resolutions; she had stretched out her arms with a great cry of joy to the lost who was found. Another second, and, God help her! she would have let him take her to his heart; but, almost before his name had passed her lips there came crashing down upon her that cruel warning sentence—

“And my wife.”

Then she saw his wife. Standing behind him in the doorway, with her bright, mocking eyes fixed on Phemie’s face, was the woman he had married.

She was younger than Phemie; watching had not paled her cheeks, nor grief wasted her figure. The mourning dress which made Phemie look so white and worn and haggard only set off the other’s beauty to greater advantage; and there was a malicious satisfaction playing over every feature, as the new mistress of Marshlands heard Basil’s remark, and perceived the effect it produced on Phemie. But next moment Phemie was mistress of the position.

“You are welcome!” she said, and she held out her hand, which neither shook nor faltered, towards the woman who had supplanted her. “I have waited here to say this to both of you, Georgina; waited to wish you health, wealth, and happiness in Marshlands—before leaving it for ever.”

She was like a queen beside the new arrival—like a queen in her manner, her carriage, her address; and when she turned and spoke to Basil, and, looking him straight in the face, told him—with just that tremor in her voice which comes into most voices when people speak of a great pain endured—of a great peril escaped—how she had mourned for his reported death—how she had suffered much suspense and much sorrow concerning him—how even at that moment she could scarcely believe it was really to Basil Stondon, Basil raised from the dead, she was speaking—she still remained in possession of the field, and Mrs. Basil Stondon, née Hurlford, gained no advantage over her.

Phemie speaking to Basil never tried to conceal how much the thought of his death had affected her; never strove to explain away her cry at his entrance. She had sustained a grievous defeat, and yet she mastered her men so well, she displayed her resources so admirably, she addressed the wife with so gracious a courtesy, and the husband with such an earnest joy and sincerity, that Georgina could scarcely decide whether, after all, she was not the one worsted in the encounter—whether the former mistress of Marshlands had not the best of the day.

She could not even flatter herself into thinking her arrival was driving Phemie off the field; for Phemie’s preparations had all been made before she knew Basil Stondon had brought a wife back with him.

The departing combatant always, too, seems, like the Parthian, to be able to leave some stinging arrow behind him. There is a victory in the mere act of “going,” the greatness of which is generally felt, though rarely, I believe, acknowledged.

There is a grand moral power in walking out of a room, or driving away from a house, that produces an effect on the individuals left behind. It is action—it is force—it is doing what another person is unable to do. Their intentions are powerless to detain; the will of the one combatant has been stronger than that of the other; and perhaps it was some idea of this kind which made Mrs. Basil Stondon so earnestly press Phemie to remain.

“You will not pain us—you will not be cruel?” she urged. But Phemie had made all her arrangements, and was not to be turned aside from her path.

“I stayed but to bid you welcome—you, Basil, whom I knew were coming, you also, Georgina, whom I did not expect—it seems I remained to receive you both. Having done so, let me go, for this is my home no longer, and no kindness can ever make it seem home to me again.”