Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE EARL’S PROMISE.
A Novel.

BY

MRS. RIDDELL,

AUTHOR OF

“GEORGE GEITH,” “TOO MUCH ALONE,” “HOME, SWEET HOME,” ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

LONDON:

TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8 CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.

1873.

[All rights of Translation and Reproduction are Reserved.]

PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO.,

LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.

CONTENTS
OF
THE THIRD VOLUME.

THE EARL’S PROMISE.

CHAPTER I.
LEFT ALL ALONE.

Between them, Drs. Murney and Connelley devised some plan of treatment designed to comfort Dr. Girvan, to provide the inmates of Bayview with an ideal occupation, and to impress Grace with the conviction that nothing which could be done to save her father was being left undone.

True to his determination, Dr. Girvan, spite of all entreaties to the contrary, broke the news of Mr. Moffat’s danger to his daughter, accusing himself, at the same time, with having been the cause of that danger.

“Ye trusted me,” he said, in that homely Irish accent which is never so sweet as when the speaker is in trouble and breathes a pathetic tone with every word,—“Ye trusted me, and this is how I’ve recompensed ye; and all because of my own hatred—God forgive me!—and my own conceit. Had it been Dr. Murney or Connelley that said I was wrong, I’d have listened to either of them; but as it is, my heart is breaking to think about you and him.”

Into the old, honest face, puckered with emotion, into the eyes that had looked at her with a kindly light in them so often, Grace gazed for a minute. She was not so besotted with her own grief that she failed to see the bitterer grief of another, that she could note unmoved the anguish of repentance that had rendered this old man who made his tremulous confession almost beside himself with remorse; and though tears lay too high for her to trust herself to answer him verbally, she took his hand in both of hers, with a pitying gesture, more eloquent than any form of speech.

Had Doctor Girvan been the most consummate diplomatist, instead of an honest, well-meaning, behind-the-age old man, he could not have hit on a plan better calculated to retain Grace’s kindly feeling than that of a free and open confession.

After all, it is never what a person tells of himself, but what others say of him, that damages him materially. The frank plea of guilty takes the worst of the sting out of many a social as well as legal crime.

It may not be the highest nature which is ready to confess to man, but it is nevertheless the sort of nature man likes best; and whereas, had Dr. Girvan failed to take the whole of the blame on his own shoulders, she would have retained an exceeding bitter remembrance of his determined rejection of Mr. Hanlon’s opinion, she never, as matters now stood, thought in the future of her father’s life sacrificed as it was to old tradition, without at the same time recalling the picture of an aged man’s anguished face while he in the same breath entreated her forgiveness and blamed himself for having caused her such misery.

Further, Drs. Murney and Connelley, shocked at so open a display of professional insufficiency, lack of reticence, and disregard of medical etiquette, deeming it best to make out as good a case for their fellow-practitioner as his imbecile and indiscreet revelations left possible, took immediate opportunity to efface as far as might be the impression such a direful abuse of common discretion was calculated to produce.

Between them they succeeded in sketching and filling in a very creditable series of facts founded on fiction; that is to say, the general conclusion at which they arrived was right, though the premises on which those conclusions were founded were wrong.

The case, they assured her, was a most obscure one. How far Dr. Girvan had been right in his course of treatment they could not tell, owing to the length of time which elapsed between Mr. Moffat’s attack and their own arrival; but there was no doubt he had medical precedent of the highest authority for all he did, and if he erred, it was from no lack of skill or prudence, but simply because nature had chosen to clothe the complaint in a dress similar to that worn by a totally distinct disease; Mr. Hanlon’s diagnosis of the case might not really have been one whit more correct than Dr. Girvan’s; and finally they assured Miss Moffat that everything which could be done had been done, and should be done. “If skill and attention can save him,” said Dr. Murney, “he will be spared to you.” And they left Grace, thinking they had glossed over the little error in judgment very neatly.

Mr. Hanlon lingered behind them for a moment. He had all a young man’s enthusiasm for truth being always presented as a nude figure, and his public experiences of stating unpleasant facts without the slightest atom of clothing veiling their deformity tended undoubtedly to encourage this outspoken frankness on disagreeable topics.

For his life he could not see what good purpose the doctors proposed to effect by mystifying Miss Moffat as to her father’s state.

“They are raising false hopes,” he thought, and so waited to hear what remark Grace might have to make.

Doctor Murney’s last words, which Dr. Connelley ratified with an approving smile, had been, “If skill and attention can save him, he will be spared to you.”

“And what do you say, Mr. Hanlon?” she asked.

“You have heard what Dr. Murney’s opinion is,” he answered.

“Yes, and I think I know what it is worth. The promise contained in his words will be kept to the ear and broken to the heart. Be frank with me, Mr. Hanlon; it is so, is it not?”

“I do not like to answer you,” he said.

“But what is the use of deceiving me?” she asked.

“None,” was his answer.

“You believe, then, there is no hope?”

“I believe nothing can save him,” he said slowly. “But we will all do our best, you may be sure of that, Miss Moffat.”

“Thank you,” she answered. The words were nothing, but the tone in which she spoke them went straight to the surgeon’s heart.

“I wish that idiot Girvan had been dead and buried rather than he should have meddled in the case,” thought the surgeon. “And yet, perhaps, it is as well. A few years might have been added to this man’s life, but how could he have found enjoyment in them, with the dread of THIS dogging his path? Better as it is,” decided Mr. Hanlon philosophically. Like many other social reformers, his ideas about the value of life were extremely lax. The nation, the race, the world, posterity, these were the objects he desired to benefit.

What did a few or many lives matter, providing the grand result were obtained? What mattered it whether thousands died brokenhearted, if by the travail of their souls millions yet unborn tasted the delights of perfect equality of (this was a telling platform phrase, perhaps because there is no country—unless, indeed, it may be Scotland, where there is less uncovering, except amongst the beggars, than in Ireland)—“doffing their hats to no man.”

Mr. Hanlon said, and doubtless thought he spoke the truth, he would cheerfully lay down his life to emancipate Ireland.

There is a considerable difference, however, between abstract propositions and actual practice. When the time came that Mr. Hanlon’s chances of existence seemed jeopardized, he proved himself as solicitous to extend his days as the veriest aristocrat might have been.

Nevertheless his theories on the subject being that as a man had to die some time, it did not much matter when he died, he began after a time to consider that perhaps it was quite as well Mr. Moffat should not recover.

He had been a negative quantity ever since his arrival in Ireland. He had not done any harm, but he had not done any good. He occupied the place where a better man might stand, or which no man might advantageously fail to occupy.

A woman with money, a willing heart, an open hand, was of ten times more use in her generation than a man. Perhaps he had in his mind the old saying, “When women reign—men rule.”

At any rate, he thought he could find a use for much of Miss Moffat’s income, not a use so far as he personally was concerned; he was not mercenary; good things he desired, but those it was beyond the power of gold to purchase. No, he would relieve the poor, he would advance the cause, he would drive the wedge destined to split up “the dynasty of oppression,” and Grace’s money would help him to these ends.

She could not well now refuse to recognize him as a friend. His knowledge of society was so slight, he had not the faintest idea two such alien barks as his and hers might come nigh together, and have for a few hours a common interest and then part, “like a dream on the wide deep.” He railed against society; but of its ideas, customs, habits of thought, modes of action, he was ignorant as a child.

Already he had sketched out a course of action for Grace and himself—arranged the pecuniary part she was to play in the drama, and the various modes in which her money would enable him better to enact the character he had elected to fill.

His interest, professionally, in Mr. Moffat had departed. He could do nothing for him—no one could do anything for him. He had even in the course of his limited experience beheld nature achieve triumphs of medical skill, which set science and all previous calculations utterly at nought, but his conviction was, that in this case nature meant to let matters take their course.

“She has been meddled with and thwarted,” he considered; “but for Doctor Girvan perhaps she might have had a chance, at all events we should have been left time in which to try our treatment. As matters are he is doomed. A few hours more and the master of Bayview will be wiser than the wisest man on earth. He will know more than any of us.”

Which really might be considered an almost reluctant admission on the part of Mr. Hanlon’s mind, not because his theology was defective, but because his self-conceit was so great, it actually touched his vanity to think a man like Mr. Moffat would know more in the next world than he knew in this.

“I have done all I could in the matter, that is certain,” he said as a finish to his reflections; and Grace being in the sick room, he went downstairs to join Drs. Murney and Connelley at breakfast.

Let death be ever so active in one place, life will be equally active in another, and the fact that the master of the house could never again welcome a guest nor issue a command did not in the smallest degree affect the appetites of the men who had come so far to strive and save him.

Doctor Girvan, indeed, saying it would choke him to “take bite or sup,” had hurried home to secure a few hours’ quiet before the business of the day began; but the night air and the long drive and ride, and the sharp morning air which blew crisp and cold over Bayview, sharpened the relish with which the two strange doctors looked on the well-laden table that gladdened their eyes when they entered the dining-room after their interview with Grace.

As for Mr. Hanlon, he was young; he dined early; he never supped; he did not often treat himself to the luxury of sitting up all night—in a word, breakfast was still breakfast to him, let who could not help it die, let who would live.

“A most capital cut of beef!” remarked Dr. Murney, returning from the sideboard with his plate replenished for the third time; “Connelley, let me persuade you.”

“Remember I am not a sea-bird like you, and fish fresh out of the water is a treat to me. Ah! poor Moffat, how particular he used to be about the fish that came to his table!”

And the speaker shook his head and helped himself to another slice of broiled salmon.

“That was a sad mistake of Girvan’s!” said Dr. Murney, looking round the room, to make sure the respectable servant who had been told they “would see to themselves” was nowhere within earshot.

“Never kept himself up with the times,” explained Dr. Connelley.

“But, gentlemen,” interrupted Mr. Hanlon, “if nature is always changing her diseases with the times, how is a doctor to keep himself posted up with regard to her latest ailment?”

“Nature does not change. Her diseases may be modified or extended by circumstances,” said Dr. Murney, “but her laws are immutable. Science, however, finds out that diseases once classed under the same head may be separated; may be—must be; and a medical man ought to keep himself abreast of science. For instance, no doubt hundreds and thousands of persons suffering like Mr. Moffat have been treated up to quite recent times for apoplexy, and died under that treatment.”

“Pleasant!” ejaculated Mr. Hanlon.

“Inevitable,” said Dr. Connelley, with philosophical composure. And after all he was right; the knowledge of those days would be deemed ignorance now.

“I will drive over to-morrow,” remarked Dr. Murney, who, having finished his breakfast, was drawing on his gloves preparatory to that return journey which was to be made once again in Mr. Moffat’s tax-cart, with one of Mr. Moffat’s horses. “Although indeed—” the pause was as significant as the words.

“And I will come too, if I can,” added Dr. Connelley; “but I am afraid—” once again an ellipsis, which Mr. Hanlon filled up at his discretion.

“I suppose you will watch the case?” suggested Dr. Murney.

“With Girvan? yes. He and I had a quarrel last night, but I will not desert the poor old fellow now.”

“Ah, well, you need not fear having to wait long for the end,” observed Dr. Connelley. “It is a question of hours. He may be alive when we come to-morrow—but I think myself he cannot last out the day.”

“He will go with the first or second ebb tide, I should say,” corrected Dr. Murney; “most likely the second. Certainly I should say not the third.”

There was one question Mr. Hanlon wanted to ask before they left.

“No doubt,” he began, “Miss Moffat will wish to send for the rector; if she does, what am I to say?”

Dr. Murney took a pinch of snuff and looked at Dr. Connelley. Dr. Connelley looked out of the window and made no sign.

“I think,” answered the former uneasily, “I should let her send for the rector, and explain the position to him.”

“Precisely. But what is the position? He will never be conscious again.”

“In this world,” amended Dr. Connelley.

“In this world,” repeated Dr. Murney, taking off his hat as if he were in a church.

There was a moment’s respectful silence. Then said Dr. Murney, as if he conceived affairs which strictly speaking belonged to the clergy had been encroached upon by him,—

“Of course, Mr. Hanlon, had Dr. Connelley and I considered there was the remotest chance of a restoration to consciousness, we should at once have advised Miss Moffat to send for her father’s attorney.”

With which utterance Dr. Murney took his leave.

“So it is,” thought Mr. Hanlon, after he had seen Dr. Connelley mounted and answered his farewell wave of the hand; “So it is; the law first—God after.”

Till the great assize is over, who may tell how these apparent incongruities shall be settled; how the toil and trouble a man often entails on those who are to come after is quite compatible with a quiet death-bed and the rules of eternal justice!

To me it has always seemed that the person who, having time and inclination to make his peace with Heaven, as the not inappropriate phrase has it, makes that peace, and leaves mundane affairs to conduct themselves, must have failed in his worldly trust, must have neglected to put out at interest some of those talents with which he was entrusted.

In my poor opinion the doctors were right, and Mr. Hanlon wrong. A man, to all ordinary ways of thinking, ought not to be able to turn his eyes with a steady gaze heavenward so long as there is anything on earth demanding his attention, and yet it may be that when the supreme moment has arrived, and this world is vanishing, and another opening, it may be then, I say, that not merely do the most important projects of this life dwarf into insignificance, but that a glimpse is caught of that perfect faith which enables its possessor to leave the welfare of the nearest and dearest to him in higher hands than those of man.

Upon no other supposition does it appear to me possible to account for the supine selfishness with which those who have worldly goods to leave sometimes fold their hands and remain tranquil, whilst five minutes devoted to temporal matters might save miseries and heartburnings untold.

Mr. Hanlon’s speech, however, was prompted quite as much by the spirit of opposition as of religion. Had the other doctors suggested sending for a clergyman, he would most probably have mentally sneered at “old women who believed in the efficacy of a death-bed repentance.”

“Show me how a man lived, and I will tell you how he died,” was one of his favourite quotations; and yet now, when he came face to face with a death which allowed no instant of preparation, he could not help admitting—he was not the advanced Republican of these times, recollect—there must be something in the almost universal desire human beings feel to be permitted to linger, if only for a few minutes, on the shores of that mighty ocean which washes on the one side the fair land of life, and on the other the hidden mysteries of eternity.

So far as Mr. Moffat’s temporal affairs were concerned, he had left nothing to be settled in a hurry at the last hour of his existence. In the methodical, self-contained life he had led there was no sign to indicate the manner of death he should die. Probably he himself never imagined for a moment he should be called upon to leave this world except in the most orderly and usual manner.

Nevertheless his affairs were in perfect order. All the attorneys and accountants in Ireland could not have put them in more intelligible shape.

Concerning other matters, who could tell? Himself and his Maker alone knew how far the peremptory summons found him ready to leave a world which had always been a pleasant one to the owner of Bayview.

The clergyman was sent for and came, but it all turned out as Dr. Murney had predicted.

The tide ebbed, and the tide flowed; when it ebbed again his soul set forth on a longer and more awful voyage than mortal mariner ever undertook.

Little more than thirty hours had passed since Grace walked slowly homeward from the Lone Rock, and yet the whole current and colour of her life was changed. The sunbeams danced merrily on the waters, the sea rippled in once more upon the shore, the trees and shrubs shook out their green foliage, and the air was almost heavy with the rich perfumes of summer. In the distance the hills seemed almost to melt into the soft blue of the sky. Everywhere there was beauty, and gladness, and sunshine, but Grace saw nothing of the beauty, felt nothing of the gladness. Over the house there brooded the shadow of mighty wings, for the angel of death had paused in his flight; one whose voice had been so suddenly stilled lay silent within; he who had been master there might dwell in that pleasant abode—never more.

CHAPTER II.
SAYING GOOD-BYE.

The summer was gone and early autumn had come before Grace Moffat walked beyond the precincts of Bayview. Sorrow not sickness had kept her solitary. With the bitterness of her grief she could not endure friends or strangers to meddle, and so all alone she bore the first brunt of her trouble, all alone she formed her plans, rooted up the old projects and fanciful aims of her past life, and, spite of her former convictions on the subject of absenteeism, determined to leave Ireland, if not for ever, at all events for a considerable period.

In truth, without sacrificing her liberty she could not well have remained there.

Although in the eyes of Kingslough she was fast verging towards the sere and yellow leaf period of life, she was not old enough to set Mrs. Grundy at defiance and reside at Bayview without a duenna, and that was an encumbrance Grace had no desire to burden herself with. Further, she knew that every eligible man within reach would rush to offer her consolation in the first instance, and his hand in the second; and that mothers would outvie each other in offering to supply a father’s place to so eligible a daughter-in-law as herself.

She was of course a much more desirable investment in the matrimonial market than had been the case during her father’s lifetime. All he once possessed was hers now unreservedly; and amongst men in search of rich wives, the increased value of Miss Moffat’s hand might readily have been computed by a rule-of-three sum.

All this Grace felt bitterly. Now when she wanted a friend as she had never wanted one before, she found herself surrounded by those who all, she suspected, held a second purpose concealed behind their kindly advances.

Perhaps she wronged the impulses of many a warm heart by this idea, but money was an article truly needed at that time amongst the Irish gentry. Heiresses were scarce, encumbered estates numerous. So to speak, the bulk of the old families were in a state of insolvency, and driven to their wits’ ends to avert the final catastrophe which the famine only precipitated, which it alone certainly never could have induced amongst an aristocracy already tottering to the verge of ruin.

How were the heirs of impoverished estates covered with debt as with a garment to mend their position except by marriage?

Every profession was overstocked; they could not go into trade. Even had they possessed the requisite ability necessary to carry on a business successfully, the prejudices of the country must have deterred them from attempting to mend matters by a move in that direction.

A few went to India, where some succeeded and others died. Australia and the West Indies absorbed most of the adventurous or speculative youth of the period. In Australia they led a not disagreeable life, spite of hardships they certainly never could have endured at home. In the West Indies success resolved itself into a game at hazard with death. If death won, why they died, and there was an end of it; if they won, they won wealth as well.

For the male gentry who remained at home on the ancestral acres, there were but two courses open. One to marry a girl without money, and so hasten the advent of ruin; the other to marry a girl with money, and so defer to another generation that bankruptcy which it was impossible could be averted for ever.

In such a state of society the woman herself counted for very little. Love matches were made, it is true, every day, and resulted in a good deal of domestic unhappiness, pinching, saving, meanness, and an infinite number of children; but in those cases where love and prudence might have been supposed able to travel together, prudence turned love out of court, and no heiress, let her be as good and beautiful as she pleased, could make quite sure whether it were she who was being wooed, or the comfortable thousands the care and affection of some exceptionally fortunate ancestor had saved for her benefit.

Had she been deaf, humpbacked, lame, afflicted with a squint, eighty years of age, an heiress need not have despaired of attracting suitors.

When sons were shy or indifferent, when they seemed inclined to balk, as a hunting gentleman described their reluctance to go wooing, mothers courted sometimes not unsuccessfully in their stead; and had Grace been one of the blood royal, she could scarcely have had greater attention showered upon her than was the case once the funeral was over and the terms of her father’s will known.

But to visitors Grace sedulously denied herself; invitations she steadily refused to accept, with the exception of one which she took time to consider.

It came from Mrs. Hartley, and was couched in these words:—

“I have been thinking much about you and your position, and putting my own selfish wishes on one side, really and truly believe the best thing you can do is to come to me for a time. If you stay where you are you will be driven to marry some one. The day must come when in utter weariness of saying ‘No,’ you will say ‘Yes;’ not because you care much for the suitor, or he is especially eligible, but because you feel one husband is preferable to a host of lovers.

“We shall not bore each other; you shall go your way, and I shall continue on mine.

“We will travel if you like; I shall not herald your arrival amongst my friends in the character of an heiress, be sure of that. I have no pet young man free of the house to whom I wish to see you married. Come and try the experiment, at all events. If you still preserve your Utopian ideas on the subject of Ireland’s regeneration, it may be as well for you, before you begin the work, to see that the inhabitants of another country really manage to keep their doorsteps white—and their children’s hair combed without the intervention of philanthropists like yourself, or demagogues like Mr. Hanlon. By the way, I hope you are not getting entangled in that quarter.

“No doubt the young man is clever, and behaved well at the time of your poor father’s attack; but still, these are no reasons why he should marry your father’s daughter.

“It would not do, Grace. If by your marriage to such a man you were able to ensure a meat dinner every day to all the tenant farmers in Ireland, you would find even that desirable result dearly purchased at the cost of so unsuitable an alliance. I do you the justice to feel certain your heart is unaffected, but the circumstances have been propitious for touching your fancy; and I know of old what a snare that lively imagination you possess is capable of proving.

“Talking of imagination, what has become of the handsome hero of your teens? What has he done? What is he doing? I see the young earl is dead; and I understand that where the sapling fell it is to lie, as the means of the family do not permit of a second grand funeral within so short a time. Opinions here are divided as to the chances of Mr. Robert Somerford succeeding to the title.

“Some persons say the new earl is privately married and has a family, others that he will marry, others that he is and has always been single, that he has one foot in the grave and will shortly have another in likewise. It is a case in which I should decline to advise if you asked my opinion.

“If you marry Robert Somerford he may be Earl of Glendare. If you wait till he is Earl of Glendare, you may never be Countess of Glendare. And indeed I shall not desire to see you raised to the peerage. I do not think greatness would sit easily upon your shoulders. I believe you would be far happier married to some honest, honourable man in our own rank of life than you could be amongst the nobility. But there is no honest, honourable young man in our own rank of life residing near here whose cause I wish to plead, so you will be quite safe in coming to me. Will you think the matter over and come?”

Which letter Grace, after having thought the matter over, answered in these words:—

“I will go to you. Amongst all the people I know, there is no one I trust so fully, I believe in so implicitly as I do in you. I will let Bayview furnished. I will set my affairs in order, and leave the dear old place which has grown hateful to me—temporarily only, I hope—for I should like, when I have advanced sufficiently in age, to wear caps, and set the world’s opinions at defiance, to return to Ireland, and spend my declining years and my income amongst mine ‘ain folk.’”

“Were I a stronger-minded woman, I suppose I should be able to conquer my grief and defy public criticism by starting on what you would call a career of philanthropy; but sorrow and the world, this little world of Kingslough, are, I confess, too much for me. As you say, I believe I should marry out of mere weariness of spirit.”

“My pensioners I shall leave to Mrs. Larkin, who will rejoice in seeing the poor crowd round her door like robins in the winter.

“If anything were capable of making me laugh now, I should laugh at your idea of there being the slightest tender feeling between me and Mr. Hanlon. It is because by some nameless instinct I comprehend he never could by any chance care for me that I have seen more of him since my irreparable loss than has been perhaps, situated as I am, quite wise. I do not mean that he has called here often, or that I have chanced to meet him more than two or three times in my solitary walks by the seashore; but still you know what all small places are, what this small place is especially.

“Kingslough has talked, is talking—Kingslough says my head is turned, and that I am bent on flinging myself and my money away on a man who, some say—you remember Kingslough was always remarkable for its vehemence of expression, ‘should be drummed out of the town’—and others think worthy of being—do not faint at the phrase, it is not mine—‘strung up.’

“I have told you that I am positive Mr. Hanlon has no intention, even for the weal of the nation, of ever asking me to marry him; and yet I have an uneasy conviction he has some purpose to serve in cultivating better relations between us, which purpose I cannot at present divine. Moreover, I fear he has not given so direct a denial to those rumours which have bracketed his name and mine in such an undesirable connection as I think, were I a man, I should have done under similar circumstances. Kingslough says positively I have lost my heart and my senses—of the state of both you will be able to judge when we meet.

“Mr. Robert Somerford has at length given me the opportunity of refusing the honour of allying myself to the house of Glendare. I am glad of this, for I should scarcely have liked to leave Bayview whilst a chance remained of his doing so. He is handsomer than ever—years only improve his appearance; but were he beautiful as Adonis he could never be my hero more.

“He was first sentimental and sympathetic, next pressing in his entreaties, and sceptical as to the genuineness of my ‘No.’ Lastly he was insolent and made as much of himself and his position as though he had been nursed in the lap of royalty, and lived all his life on terms of equality with kings and queens. Familiarity may in my case have bred contempt, but I certainly never in the days when I admired him most considered he was so much my superior as appears is the case.

“I was equal, however, to the emergency; my desolate position, and my heavy mourning, the sorrow I have passed through, all combine to give me a courage I lacked in former times.

“Whilst he was still exalting himself and depreciating me—reciting the glories of the Glendares and contrasting the rank to which he could have raised me with the level of obscurity in which my refusal doomed me to remain for life, maundering on as one might have thought only an angry ill-bred woman or a spoiled child could have maundered—I rose and rang the bell.

“‘Perhaps you will go now, Mr. Somerford,’ I said, ruthlessly cutting across a sentence in which he was drawing a picture of my future life when married to a poor apothecary who had not even the recommendation of being possessed of all his senses. ‘Perhaps you will go now, and spare yourself the vexation of being asked to leave before a servant.’

“I never saw a man so taken by surprise. He got up, made me a low, mocking bow, and quitted the room without uttering another word.

“Next time he asks any one to marry him, he says, he will take care the lady is in his own rank of life.

“He had been gradually provoking me, so at that point I broke silence and suggested the advisability of his ascertaining at the same time whether her worldly means were as excellent as his own.

“You will blame me for this, of course; but if I had bitten back the words they would have choked me.

“There was a time when I could have married him, and probably repented doing so every hour of my after life. I told him this, and he pressed me much to say when my feelings underwent so great a change.

“‘On that day,’ I answered, ‘when you forced me to remark,—We had made you welcome at Bayview, and we now make you welcome to stay away.’

“It is only women with money, I fancy, who have to endure impertinence at the hands of their suitors. I suppose the fact is a feeling of tenderness for the beloved one mingles even with the bitterness of losing her; but the wildest fancy cannot suppose any feeling of tenderness towards a fortune that a man sees plainly can never be possessed by him.

“Every obstacle to my accepting your invitation is now removed.

“Our servants seem determined to celebrate the event of their master’s death with a series of weddings. He left them each a sum of money which, though it would appear little to English people of the same rank, is wealth to them, and a number of alliances have been arranged on the strength of these legacies which would have amused you had you seen the match-making in progress.

“On the whole, I am inclined to think that even in Ireland the possession of a nest egg produces the same effect upon human beings as it does upon a hen. A desire to lay another beside it becomes at once irresistible. After that remark you will not be surprised to hear the marriages in this establishment are chiefly remarkable for prudence. Jane, the dairymaid, is going to invest her money in cows, and a husband who owns a small cottage, the right of grazing over a large tract of common land, and a cabbage-garden, in which he proposes to erect byres. The cook, whom you may perhaps remember for the excellence of her omelets and the warmth of her temper, clubs her legacy with that of the coachman, and they intend to take a public-house five miles down the coast, and add posting to the business. I will not weary you with further matrimonial details.

“The youngest and prettiest of the establishment, my own little maid, takes her money, supplemented by a gift from me, back to her sickly mother.

“‘I shall be able to stay with her always now, Miss Grace,’ she said, crying and laughing in the same breath. ‘I know enough, thanks be to you, to teach a little school, and we’ll be happy as the day is long.’

“I have spoken to no one concerning my own plans; though of course every one knows I am going to leave Bayview, no person suspects that I intend to visit England.

“It has indeed been stated that I mean to spend the winter abroad with Lady Glendare. Her ladyship sent me a very civil note, favoured by Mrs. Dillwyn, saying how grieved she was to hear of my bereavement, speaking of her own loss, and adding that, if I thought a thorough change would prove beneficial to my health and spirits, she would be delighted if I would visit her.

“Which was very kind, particularly from a member of a family famous for the shortness of their memories of favours received.

“This, I conclude, gave rise to the first report, which has now, however, been superseded by another. I am going to stay with Mr. Hanlon’s mother, who is to come so far as Dublin to meet me!

“I mean to-day to bid good-bye to the Scotts; to-morrow, the next day, and the next, I shall employ in paying farewell visits and in gratifying the curiosity of my friends. Can you not fancy the entreaties with which I shall be assailed to stay in my own country and amongst my own people? My father’s solicitor is delighted with the proposal that he and his family shall occupy Bayview for the autumn. He will endeavour to let it from November next.

“I shall break my journey at Dublin, from which place I will write to you again; but under any circumstances I hope to be talking to you face to face within a fortnight from the present time.”

And having sealed and despatched this letter, Grace, as has been stated, for the first time since her father’s death left behind her the grounds of Bayview, and wended her way towards the Castle Farm.

With a feeling of sick surprise she paused when she reached the top of the divisional road and looked at the fields to right and left. The meadows were still uncut; acres of long rich grass had been laid by the rain, trampled by the cattle. The potato blossoms had flowered and faded; the potato apples were beginning to turn brown on the stems, but not a spade had been put in to dig the roots out of the ground.

In the other lands lying around she saw hayricks; she beheld men busy at work; she heard the voices of the women and children who were almost playing at their labour, so rejoiced were all hearts to find the heavy crop the upturned earth disclosed; but at the Castle Farm there was no sign of toil or of gladness.

There was a dead stillness about the place which told Grace the beginning of the end had begun. Spite of the rich grass thick with clover, spite of the wealth lying buried in the broad ridges of the potato fields, spite of the luxuriance of the ripening corn, she knew ruin was sitting by the once hospitable hearth, stealthily biding its time till it should turn husband and wife and children out of house and home upon the world.

No active signs of grief—no outbreak of sorrow could have affected Grace like the dumb testimony which gave evidence of the crisis that had come.

When before, in hay-time, had Amos and his boys and his men not been up at the first streak of light, in order to get well on with their labour before the sun gaining power—and the dews drying off the grass—made mowing weary work?

When had the potatoes ever lain in the ground as they were lying now? when had not all needful tasks been expedited and got well out of hand before the time came for the ingathering of the corn?

Miss Moffat’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at the deserted fields that had borne their increase only to point more forcibly the ruin which was come to the Castle Farm.

If she had seen a sale going on in the place; had she beheld a crowd of strangers in the yard, and heard a babel of tongues in the air; had the horses and the cows and the busy fussing hens, and the fat well-to-do pigs been taken away while she looked, the scene could scarcely have struck her with the numb dread that for a time paralysed her steps.

Then it all came upon her. They had sown, but they might not reap; they had planted, but they might not gather; on the land they had held so long they were trespassers, and if they still remained in the old homestead it was only because there is nothing more difficult than to get rid of people who have determined to remain.

Amos Scott had so determined; but the law was closing him in slowly, surely.

It was eating his substance first; while he had a pound in the traditional stocking, or the ability to borrow a pound—while he had a shoe to his foot and a shirt to his back, it refrained from cutting short his torture, but once let the cruise fail, and the law would scourge him with scorpions out of that once happy garden which never again might seem like paradise to Amos or one of his family.

Out of the sunlight Grace passed into the house, where, by reason of the glare from which she had come, she could at first scarcely distinguish any object; but after a second or two she beheld Mrs. Scott, aged and haggard, who, in her hands holding a coat of her husband’s she had been engaged in patching, rose and bade her visitor welcome.

She was quite alone; a rare thing in that populous house. Inside as out the same stillness prevailed, a stillness like unto the Egyptian darkness, inasmuch as it could be felt.

The first words uttered were by Mrs. Scott, in sympathy for Miss Moffat’s affliction; but Grace, though her burden seemed heavy, knew the dead had no need of help or remembrance, and here face to face with her was at least one human being who had.

“Tell me about yourselves,” she said, passing her handkerchief across the large soft eyes that would encourage tears to shelter themselves under the white lids and long lashes. “We cannot do anything more for him. It was a great shock. I sometimes seem as if I were unable to realize it even yet; but it is true, and I must learn to bear the greatest trouble God sends one of his creatures.”

“The greatest, Miss?” said Mrs. Scott inquiringly; she was sympathetic and respectful, but she could not quite fall in with this opinion.

She had her trouble, and if she heard that the trouble of another might be greater, who shall blame her for being slow of belief.

There cannot be much doubt that the man who has broken his leg feels sceptical when told that his next neighbour who has broken his ankle is in worse case than he. As a matter of theory, people may sympathize with the griefs of their fellow-creatures, but as a matter of fact the only sorrows which are ever thoroughly understood are those a man has himself to bear; and this is reasonable enough, remembering that after the lapse of even a short time, a man finds it difficult to recall vividly the anguish and the shame and the agony he may once have been obliged to pass through.

Mrs. Scott’s pain was very present with her, however, on that beautiful morning. She was in the midst of a trouble which might well have exhausted a more patient woman. She had to sit still and see her household gods broken one by one; she was forced, as she said herself, to “bide quiet” whilst ruin stalked towards their home, drawing nearer every hour. Death to her seemed naturally a less trial than this lengthened torture, and she could not agree with her visitor when Miss Moffat answered,—

“The greatest because it is hopeless.”

“Not making light of your trouble, Miss Grace, don’t you think it may be just as hopeless a grief as death to feel yourself coming to want and your children to beggary?”

“If there were no way to avert such misfortunes, perhaps not,” was the reply; “but it is because we cannot avert death, because we can never hope in this world to see those who are gone, that I say death is so terrible a grief.”

“It is terrible,” Mrs. Scott agreed; “but I don’t feel as if it was as hard a sorrow as to see everything going, and not be able to put out a finger to save us from ruin. There are the potatoes undug in the ground, and I dursn’t take up a root of them to boil for the dinner. We have had to sell the cows, for we were “threatened” if we tried to graze them. The boys have nothing to do, and the meadows are all laid; but they warned Amos off when he went to mow. They poisoned our dog because he flew at one of the bailiffs Brady sent; and they tell me now Brady is going to get the grass in, and the potatoes up, and the corn cut when it ripens, if he has to bring a regiment of soldiers to protect his men.”

At the idea of which imposing array Mrs. Scott dropped her work on her knee, heaved a deep sigh, and remarked,—

“God alone knows what the end will be!”

“I will tell you what the end ought to be,” said Grace kindly. “You ought to begin to pack up your belongings now, and leave the Castle Farm as soon as ever you can get out of it.”

“Amos’ll never leave it alive,” she answered. “He is not a hard man to talk to in a general way, but Brady has tried to head him, and it has made him that dour, there is no reasoning with him.”

“Have you ever really tried to reason with him?” Miss Moffat inquired.

“Not at first. I’ll own it. I was as keen on as himself for fighting to the last; but, oh! Miss Grace, when the trouble comes inside the door, it is the woman feels it. She must hold up and have a bite for the men folks to eat if her heart is just breaking; and I’m fairly tired of it. I feel I’d be that glad to creep into any hole where we could be quiet, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Where is Amos?” asked her visitor, after a pause.

“Gone to Glenwellan to see the lawyer; now we have sold Tom he has to walk there and back every step of the way. He is spending his all in law, Miss Grace. Shure the very money I got for the hens and the ducks and the other cratures he made me give him, and me saving it for the time when we’ll want it sorely.”

“What does Amos hope to do?” inquired Grace. “What does he expect the lawyers can do for him?”

“That’s beyond me to tell. He wants his rights, and he says he’ll have them.”

“What are his rights?”

“Oh, that’s easy telling; this place he paid the renewal of.”

“I am going away,—” began Grace, with apparent irrelevance.

“So I heard tell,” interpolated Mrs. Scott.

“And before I go I want to put this matter before you clearly, as I see it; as others, wiser and more capable than I, see it also.”

“Yes, Miss,” said Mrs. Scott in a tone which implied that Grace might talk and she herself might listen, but that her opinions would remain the same.

And indeed is this not always the case? Is it not always when talking and listening are signally useless that opinions alter?

“Supposing,” said Grace, a little fluttered by reason of her own boldness, “I went to Dublin and said I must have a new piano.”

“Likely you will some day,” agreed Mrs. Scott, as her visitor paused for a moment and hesitated.

“And suppose for the sake of argument,” went on Grace, “I decided to spend a hundred pounds.”

“It would be a heap of money,” commented her auditor.

“Or fifty, or twenty,” said Miss Moffat, seeing her mistake; “say twenty pounds; and that I chose a piano and told the man where to send it, and paid him the money and took no receipt for it. After I leave, another person sees the same piano, likes it, pays the money, and gets a receipt. Shortly I begin to wonder why the instrument is not sent home, and I write to the seller. I receive an answer saying he is dead, and that no one knows anything about the matter except that the piano I mention has been sold and delivered to Mr. So-and-so. Now such a case would be undoubtedly a hard one for me, but I should never think of throwing good money after bad in trying to put spilt milk back into a basin; and yet this is what Amos persists in attempting. Do you understand what I mean?”

“You speak very clever, Miss Grace,” was the reply.

“I am afraid I do not speak at all cleverly,” said her visitor. “I wish any words of mine could persuade Amos and you how utterly useless it is for you to continue the resistance he has begun.”

“Would you have him give up everything, then, Miss, and see us turned out on the world—we who have always tried to keep decent and respectable as you know, Miss Grace?”

“I do know,” was the answer, “but I see no help for it—if a thing has to be done at last, it may as well and better be done at first.”

“I am thinking Amos will fight it to the end,” said Mrs. Scott calmly.

“But what folly it is!” exclaimed Miss Moffat.

“Like enough; I wouldn’t be so ill bred as to contradict you, Miss, even if I could.”

“But it is impossible you can be happy or comfortable living in this sort of way.”

“Happy, comfortable,” repeated the poor woman, then added with sudden vehemence, “And who is it that has made us unhappy and uncomfortable, but that villain Brady? It’ll come home to him though; sure as sure, Miss Grace, it will. We may not live to see it, but the day will come that others will mind what Brady done to us and say, ‘Serve him right,’ no matter what trouble is laid upon him.”

“But you do not wish any harm to happen to him?” suggested Grace, who, having no personal feud with Mr. Brady, naturally felt shocked at Mrs. Scott’s bitterness of expression.

“Don’t I?” retorted the woman. “It would be blessed news if one came in now and said, ‘Brady is lying stiff and stark out in the field yonder.’”

“Hush, hush, hush!” entreated Grace, laying her hand on the lean unlovely arm which had once been plump and comely. “Oh! I wish I could talk to you as I want to talk. I wish I could say good things as other people are able. I wish I could persuade you to bear your heavy burden patiently, feeling certain God in His own good time will lighten it for you. I cannot think there is any reality in religion if it does not support us in trials like these, and you are a religious woman, dear Mrs. Scott. I remember, as if it was yesterday, the Bible stories you used to tell me when I was a bit of a thing wearing mourning for the first time.”

Mrs. Scott’s face began to work, then her eyes filled with tears, then one slowly trickled down her cheek, which she wiped away with the corner of her checked apron, then with a catching sob, she said,—

“Ay, those were brave days, Miss Grace, brave, heartsome days. It was easy to feel good and Christian-like then, and wish well to everybody; but I can’t do it now, I cannot. When I’m sitting here all alone, texts come into my head; but they are all what I used to call bad ones, about vengeance, and hatred, and punishment. There are no others I can mind now. That thief of the world has destroyed us body and soul, but it will come to him. He will get his deserts yet.”

Grace rose, and walked into an inner room, where, on the top of a chest of drawers, bright as beeswax could keep them, lay the family Bible, with Scott’s spectacles, heirlooms like the book, reposing upon it.

Lifting the Bible she carried it out, placed it upon the dresser, and, turning to the Gospels, read the last six verses of the fifth chapter of St. Matthew softly and slowly. Then she closed the volume and took it back again.

“It’s well for them that can do all that,” said Mrs. Scott, not defiantly, but in simple good faith.

“Some day we shall all be able to feel it, and do it, please God,” answered Grace, and, stooping over the back of Mrs. Scott’s chair, she kissed the face of the humble friend who had once been like a mother to her.

“Good-bye,” she said. “Let Reuben write to me, and get Amos away from here, if you can, before worse comes of it.”

“What is this, Miss Grace?” asked Mrs. Scott, as her visitor laid a small packet in her lap.

“It is what you will need,” said Grace, “when perhaps I am not near at hand to come to for it.”

“Is it money?” inquired the woman.

“Yes; surely you do not mind taking it from me?”

“No, I wouldn’t mind. There aren’t many I could ask to help us, or that I could take help from; but I am not that high in my turn I’d refuse it from you. Take it with you though, Miss Grace. Don’t leave it here. I could not keep it secret from the good man—we have never had anything separate, and he’d either be angry with me for taking it, or else he’d want it to spend on the law.”

“In that case I will not leave it,” said Grace emphatically; “only remember this one thing,—whilst I am alive and have a pound, you need never want. Bid me good-bye now, for I must go.”

“Good-bye,” answered Mrs. Scott, taking Grace’s hand in her own, after carefully wiping the latter on her apron; “God send you safe to England and back again!” and with this customary form of farewell, which, familiar as it is to those resident in Ireland, always strikes solemnly on the ear, Mrs. Scott suffered her visitor to depart, watching her retreating figure till it was lost to sight, and then returning to her seat and her occupation.

“And back again!” Grace repeated to herself, as she looked over the glory of land and water—hill and wood lying calm and beautiful under a flood of golden sunshine. “And back again! what will have happened, I wonder, by the time I return?”

CHAPTER III.
BREAKING THE ICE.

Were I to say that at first Miss Moffat neither admired the country nor liked the people of England, I should only be expressing the sentiments of an entire nation in the person of a single individual; other people may have met with Irish men and Irish women who took kindly to Saxon soil on the first intention, but for my own part I have still to see the recently imported Celt willing to admit there can be any good thing found in the land.

It is very curious to consider how rapidly educated English tourists take to Ireland—to the inhabitants, the brogue, the scenery, the whisky—and then to contrast with this the length of time required to acclimatize an Irish person of any rank to England and English ways. Safely, I think, it may be asserted that there is nothing on this side the channel, from the red-tiled roofs of picturesque old barns to the glories of the Row, which finds favour in Hibernian eyes. They may like England at last—many do—but they never like it at first.

To this rule Grace formed no exception. There was nothing she liked in the foreign land to which she had voluntarily exiled herself. Amongst her own country people, she even fancied Mrs. Hartley had changed, and changed for the worse, from the decided, incisive widow, whose tongue had been the terror and whose dress had been the envy of feminine Kingslough.

She was more conventional and less amusing, the young lady considered; but Mrs. Hartley’s latest surroundings presented no temptations to unconventionality, and it would have been extremely difficult to prove herself clever at the expense of the eminently dull and decorous people amongst whom her lot was now cast.

The style in which her friend lived was also at first a trial to Grace.

The extreme simplicity of her own bringing up—the modesty of the Bayview establishment—the unpretending fashion of receiving and visiting that at one time obtained in Ireland rendered the rules and ceremonies of—to quote Mrs. Hartley—“a more advanced civilization” irksome in the extreme to a person who had from her childhood upwards been accustomed to an exceptional freedom of action; whilst after the inoffensive familiarity of Irish servants, the formality and decorum of Mrs. Hartley’s highly-trained domestics seemed cold and heartless.

In a word, Miss Grace was more than slightly home-sick; in all probability, had she possessed a home to go back to, she would have received some early communication compelling her to return to Ireland.

All of this, or at least much of this, so shrewd a woman as Mrs. Hartley could not fail to notice; she had expected the desire to manifest itself, though not exactly so violently, and she was accordingly quite prepared to let it run its course without much interference from her.

It was not in her nature, however, to refrain altogether from a little raillery on the subject.

“The cakes and the ales of this gormandizing land will find favour in your eyes some day, Grace,” she remarked. “I do not despair of hearing you confess other forms of diet may be as appetizing as milk and potatoes.”

“I can fancy many things more appetizing than potatoes as boiled in England,” Miss Moffat would retort, not without some slight sign of irritation. Her temper was not quite so sweet, Mrs. Hartley noticed, as had been the case formerly.

“She will not make an amiable old maid,” considered her friend. “As she gets on in life her wine will turn to vinegar; she is the kind of woman who ought to have a husband and half-a-dozen children, to prevent her growing morbid and disagreeable—like all other philanthropists, she has had some serious disappointments, and I must say they have not improved her. She ought to marry; but, like her, I confess I cannot imagine who the happy man is to be. Beauty, wealth, amiability! she has the three gifts men value most, and yet it seems to me that not a man suitable in any solitary respect has ever yet asked her to be his wife—except John Riley. I wonder what he would think of her now? Who could have imagined she would ever have developed into so lovely a creature?”

There were two things by which Mrs. Hartley set great store—competence and beauty.

Poor people and ugly people were to her as repellent as many diseases. Genteel poverty was one of her abhorrences, plain faces another; and it may therefore be imagined that when she found two most desirable advantages combined in one human being, she gave way to exultation so perfectly frank that it struck Grace with amazement.

“What a beautiful creature you are!” she said as, Grace seated beside her in the carriage, they drove along the level English roads to Mrs. Hartley’s house.

“I am not very beautiful now, I am afraid,” answered Miss Moffat; “tired, burnt up with the sun and the wind, and smothered with dust, I feel utterly ashamed of my appearance.”

“Ah! well you need not be, my dear. I always thought you would grow up very pretty, but certainly I never expected to see you so pretty as you are. What do the Kingslough oracles think of Gracie Moffat now?”

“The Kingslough oracles disapprove of my being personally presentable,” Grace answered. “They likewise think it a pity that, if I were designed to be good-looking, good looks were not conferred upon me in my youth. Further, they consider that as I have plenty of money, I ought to be plain; and, besides all this, they think I am not so particularly good-looking after all.”

“The dear Kingslough! It is like a dream of old times to hear its opinions summed up so concisely.”

“I wonder what Kingslough would think of your present state of magnificence,” said Grace, a little mischievously. “If you were to drive through Kingslough in this carriage, you would have the whole town out, and furnish conversation for a month.”

Mrs. Hartley laughed, but her mirth was a little forced; she did not like her splendour dimmed by the breath of ridicule, but she was too much a woman of the world to show her annoyance.

“When we are in Turkey we do as the Turkeys do, to borrow a phrase from one of your own countrymen,” she answered. “If any adverse wind stranded me to-morrow in Ireland, I should at once purchase a jaunting-car and advertise for a Protestant without incumbrance, able to drive and wait at table.”

Miss Moffat remembered that when the speaker was stranded in Kingslough she dispensed even with the jaunting-car; but Mrs. Hartley had so neatly hit off the popular method of proceeding, that Grace, tired as she was, and feeling rather lonely and miserable, thought that silence might be wisdom, and refrained from reminding her friend of the dreary drives they had taken in that particular style of conveyance which the young lady detested.

“Besides,” went on Mrs. Hartley, as though guessing at her companion’s thoughts. “I am now a much richer woman than I was in those days. Money has come to me as it generally does to people who have it. Gold has a way of attracting gold which is certainly very remarkable. I used to think my income was as large as I should care to have it, but since more has been added I find I can manage to spend it very comfortably.”

This scrap of conversation may be taken as samples of many which followed. Mrs. Hartley and her guest talked, walked, drove, paid visits together, but they did not at once fall into the old familiar relations that had formerly been so pleasant.

In effect both were different persons from the young heiress and the rich English widow of Grace’s genial spring-time; and even if they had not so changed, it is a difficult matter to take up, after years of separation, the thread of a friendship at the precise point where it was dropped, and go on weaving the many-coloured web of intimate association as though nothing had occurred to stop its progress.

Besides this, that which Grace styled “Mrs. Hartley’s magnificence” was not a thing this country-bred maiden could accustom herself to in a moment.

Hers was a model property; small, it is true, but maintained as Grace had never seen any place maintained before, unless indeed it might be a botanical garden. Not half so large as Bayview, a very doll’s house and toy grounds in comparison with those of Woodbrook! but the order which kept the lawns trimmed, the hedges clipped, the walks rolled, the house from garret to cellar a marvel of comfort and luxury, was enough to make a thoughtful and devoted Irishwoman like Grace ask herself a few very awkward questions, and make her feel for the moment angry because she could not avoid a sensation of shame at the contrast suggested.

“I wish I could ever hope to be so admirable a manager in all respects as you are, Mrs. Hartley,” said Grace one day, after she had heard that lady issue some rather peremptory commands to her head gardener.

“One cannot be a handsome young thing like you and a sharp old busybody like myself,” replied Mrs. Hartley, not displeased, however, at the compliment; “and then remember I was born and brought up in a country where order is Heaven’s first law; in a land where it is the fashion to keep the doorsteps white, it is natural that one should like to see one’s own steps presentable. There is a great deal in habit. Although in the abstract no doubt you admire English order and cleanliness, still I have no doubt but that in your heart of hearts you think we are fussy and over-particular.”

Miss Moffat laughed and coloured.

“To be quite frank,” she replied, “I like the result produced, but I do not like the means by which it is produced. Perpetual hearthstoning and rolling, and mowing and cutting and clipping produce marvellous effects, I confess; but still I think the constant recurrence of such days of small things must tend to dwarf the intellect and make life seem a very poor affair.”

“Irish, my dear, very; but these are opinions about which there is no use arguing. I should have considered begging in a town where I knew every man, woman, and child, and where every man, woman, and child knew me, a somewhat monotonous occupation; and I fail to see anything calculated to enlarge the intellect in the acts of planting potatoes all day and eating them for breakfast, dinner, and supper. Still there is a certain amount of truth in what you say, or rather imply. The English are not an imaginative people, and they do not consider it necessary to idealize work. They labour for so much a day, and honestly say so. It is in the nature of a quick, sympathetic nation to be desultory, and the Irish are desultory till they come to England, when they suddenly develope the most marvellous perseverance, and trot up and down ladders with hods on their shoulders in a manner wonderful to behold.”

“Dear Mrs. Hartley, how I wish I could make you like the Irish!” said Grace.

“I like you; is not that sufficient?” was the prompt reply.

“No, not half, nor quarter.”

“Ah! my love, you are like those unreasonable women who expect their husbands to be fond, not merely of them but of the whole of their relations, to the sixth and seventh cousins.”

It was a singular fact, and one Grace could not avoid remarking to herself, that on paper she and Mrs. Hartley had been much more confidential and friendly than they seemed ever likely to become while they remained face to face. Doubtless this arose from the circumstance that in their correspondence Mrs. Hartley still thought of Grace as the young girl in whose fortunes she had once taken an almost motherly interest, whilst Grace pictured Mrs. Hartley as the kindly, middle-aged lady who had petted and ridiculed and been fond of her ever since she attained to the dignity of long frocks and turned-up hair.

For Grace had never worn her hair in ringlets like Nettie; not all the papers or irons on earth could have given her hair that curl which Kingslough so much admired in Miss O’Hara; and after having had her locks twisted up into some hundreds of little twists and screws, Grace would appear an hour after her nurse had unfurled her curls with her hair as straight as if no attempt had ever been made to dress it in the approved fashion.

Thus it came to pass that as those were not the days in which children’s tresses were allowed to float in the wind, or stream down to their waists through the valley between their shoulders, Grace was condemned to have her hair done up in two long plaits, which were sometimes worn as pigtails, and sometimes doubled up like curtain-holders, being tied together at the nape of the neck by ribbons brown or blue.

Considering that blue did not suit the child, and that a more hideous style of dressing the hair never prevailed, it may be suggested that Kingslough had some excuse for the opinion at which it then arrived concerning little Miss Moffat’s looks.

Those days were gone, the days of plum-cake and delightful evenings, with two people for a whole party, and Grace allowed to make the tea; the days when Mrs. Hartley used to ask the girl to spend pleasant afternoons with her, and took her drives and walks, and was very good to her altogether.

Yes, they were gone, as the Grace of old was gone; the plain chrysalis who was now so pretty a creature, the little, grave, silent orphan who, wont to blush when any one spoke to her, could now speak for herself in any place and in any company, but who could not talk confidentially to Mrs. Hartley, perhaps for the reason that Mrs. Hartley now felt a difficulty in asking questions she once would not have hesitated to put by letter.

There was a break, not caused by disagreement, but by apparent lack of sympathy between them, which both felt painfully, which each would have given much to bridge over. I think this kind of reserve between staunch friends is by no means so uncommon as many people imagine. It is more difficult to get the heart to break silence than the tongue, and for this reason the most fluent talkers are not those who speak of their tenderest feelings.

How long this might have gone on it is hard to conjecture, had there not one morning arrived a letter for Miss Moffat, directed in a man’s handwriting. Mrs. Hartley noticed the fact. It was the first communication from any gentleman, except her lawyer, Grace had received since her arrival. Her friend knew this, because she opened the post-bag and dealt out its contents.

The whole day after Grace was silent and thoughtful. Mrs. Hartley noticed she looked in an abstracted manner out of the window, and that occasionally she fixed her eyes on her with a sort of questioning and anxious expression.

Towards evening Mrs. Hartley determined to break the ice. “That girl has something on her mind,” she considered as she entered the drawing-room five minutes before dinner, “I must find out what it is,” and she proved herself as good as her words.

They had dined, dessert was on the table, Grace was toying with some fruit on her plate, Mrs. Hartley had swallowed two of the three glasses of port her doctor assured her she ought to take with as “much regularity as if it were medicine.”

At this precise stage of the proceedings she had made up her mind to speak, and with Mrs. Hartley, to make up her mind was to do.

“Grace,” she began, “there is something troubling you.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hartley, I have a very great trouble,” answered Grace calmly.

In an access of excitement Mrs. Hartley poured out and swallowed that third glass of port.

“Let us go into the other room, where we can talk comfortably, my dear,” she said, rising; and Grace, nothing loth, left her untouched fruit, walked across the hall into the snug little drawing-room she had learned to love so much, opening on one side to a conservatory, and on the other to a lawn kept smooth and soft as velvet.

After all, spite of its shrubs, its trees, its long sea frontage, and its acres of garden ground, there was room for much improvement at Bayview.

“If ever I return to Ireland,” Grace had said to herself many and many a time, “I will have that grass kept like these English lawns.”

And yet after all there is grass in the Emerald Isle smoother, shorter, closer, and softer than any in England. Only in that case sheep have been the mowers. I know an island in a lake where they fatten in six weeks, and where it is perhaps unnecessary to say stand the ruins of an old monastery.

CHAPTER IV.
GRACE TELLS HER STORY.

Grace’s experiences of drawing-rooms in her own country had been considerable.

She had been acquainted from her childhood with immense apartments, commanding sea and land views. She knew the orthodox style of furniture which upholsterers sent in as a species of groundwork upon which individual fancy subsequently painted the form of its own especial idiosyncrasy. She had beheld acres of carpeting, hangings which were miracles of heaviness and expense, chairs first covered with green, or amber, or ponceau, or silver grey, to match the curtains, and then wrapped up in holland, to preserve their beauty intact, ponderous loo and sofa tables, everything as good as money could buy, and expected to last accordingly; these were some of the necessaries without which no drawing-room in a gentleman’s house could be considered orthodox; but when all such things had been provided, it was admissible to add such other elegances as personal taste might suggest.

Personal taste or family circumstances produced occasionally some very curious devices in the way of ornamentation. Relics from Pompeii would be the attraction of one home; carved temples, cedar-wood boxes, daggers with richly-ornamented handles, spoke in another of some male relatives who had crossed the sea, and brought back flotsam and jetsom with him. Dogs, parrots, flowers, depicted in wool on canvas, testified in many homes to the indefatigable industry of its female occupants; in rare cases, rare because the materials were for those days costly, beadwork in unlimited quantities charmed the beholder; occasionally old china, which would now fetch fabulous prices in London, adorned the chiffoniers, whatnots, and cabinets of persons who had none too much money to spare, whilst in almost all cases where there were young ladies, or even middle-aged, the open piano, the litter of music, often a harp or a guitar, spoke of the love of that talent which is bestowed so much more freely on Irish than English women.

All these rooms, and many others besides, Grace had been free of; rooms with a certain stately dignity about them, rooms connected with which she had many a pleasant childish and girlish memory, but a drawing-room like Mrs. Hartley’s was as far beyond her imagination as that other style of apartment generally and prudently unoccupied which obtains in the suburbs of London, and in the houses of all highly respectable and sober-minded middle class people throughout England generally.

Luxury in those days had not attained to the height to which it has since sprung. It has been reserved for the reign of her present Majesty to witness a more rapid transition from comparative simplicity of living, lodging, dressing, spending, to the wildest extravagance of expenditure in all ranks, than has ever occurred before at any era, or in any nation; and for this reason the decorations and furniture which seemed perfection to Grace Moffat, would no doubt appear extremely poor and commonplace if catalogued for the benefit of the reader.

In the nature of almost every woman there is, I suspect, a latent, cat-like love of things soft, bright, cosy, and there was something in the whole aspect of Mrs. Hartley’s drawing-room which appealed to this sense in Grace’s nature. She liked walking over the thick carpet; the white sheepskin hearthrug on which generally reposed a King Charles that hated Grace with a detestation she cordially reciprocated; the firelight reflected from mirrors, sparkling against lustres; the lovely water-colour drawings hanging on the walls; the delightful easy chairs; the statuettes; the flowers piled up in banks between the long French windows, and the conservatory filled with rare and beautiful plants; all these things were pleasant as they were novel to the rich widow’s visitor.

In Mrs. Hartley’s opinion, however, the very greatest ornament her room had ever held was Grace Moffat, and the admiration she always entertained for her guest was heightened as they entered the apartment together, by the new interest now attaching to her, as the older lady felt satisfied must be the case. Some misplaced affection, some love entanglement which she had kept secret until she could endure to keep silent no longer.

“Now sit down, dear, and tell me all about it; you prefer the low chair, I know,” began Mrs. Hartley; but Grace answered,—

“I should like to sit on the rug close by you, if I may, and if Jet does not object to my company.”

“He shall be taken away,” said Jet’s mistress, laying her hands on the bell.

“No!” interposed Grace. “I will try to be amiable to him, if he will be tolerant of me,” and she sat down; a pretty picture in the firelight, her black dress disposing itself in graceful folds over the white rug, her hands crossed idly in her lap, and her face upturned to Mrs. Hartley, who, stooping, kissed it almost involuntarily.

“Now who is he?” asked the widow.

“There is no ‘he’ in my story,” Grace answered; “at least no ‘he’ in your sense. I hope you will not be disappointed when I tell you my trouble has nothing to do with love, but a very great deal to do with money.”

“So far, my dear, I think money has been a trouble to you; when you are as old as I am you will understand the trouble of having money is by no means comparable to the trouble of being without it.”

“In this case my money has nothing to do with the story.”

“Then, for mercy’s sake, child, tell me what has to do with it.”

“I have,” Grace answered; “a secret has been confided to me that I do not know how to deal with; a responsibility has been put upon me which makes me wretched. I fully intended when I first came here to tell you all about the matter, but—”

“But what?” asked Mrs. Hartley softly; “this is the light, and you are in the mood for confession, let us get that little ‘but’ out of the way now—for ever.”