Carità

‘I hate a maid. I like Gretchen a great deal better. She makes so much of me.’

‘Then take Gretchen with you, my dearest; take her to Como; keep her with you till you get home.’

‘Oh, how like a man that is!’ she said, laughing. ‘Take Gretchen with me—Gretchen, who is her father’s only daughter, the life and soul of the place! What would he do without Gretchen? He would have to shut up altogether. I might drop out of the world, and I would not be missed half so much as she would be. Do you know I begin to get tired of this place, and the hills, James,’ she cried, starting up. ‘Let us go and ask about Donato and his horses. I want to get to Como before October. Why, we’ll come in for the vintage! I like the vintage; and there are advertisements everywhere about a sale at one of the villas. We shall be sure to pick up something. Is it too late to start to-day?’

‘My darling, when you take a thing into your head——’

‘Yes, to be sure, I like to do it all at once. I was always hot-headed. Now mind, we are to start to-morrow. I always loved Como, James; you know I always did. We went there the first year we were married. I don’t call it honeymooning when we don’t go to Como; and remember this is our last bout of honeymooning; we shall have Cara next year.’

She laughed, and was very gay all the evening, delighted with the idea of the change. But when he put her into Donato’s big old-fashioned vettura next morning, and saw everything fastened on, and prepared for the long, slow journey, poor Beresford was very sad. He thought, if he could only have a long talk with Maxwell, and hear what Sir William had got to say, and know what it was that he had to fear, he should be less unhappy. There must be something, or she would not be so strange; but what was it? Almost anything was better, he thought, than fighting in the dark—fighting with ghosts, not knowing what you were afraid of. She was quite light-hearted at first, interested with the drive, and waved her hands to the hills as they went slowly out of sight. ‘Good-bye,’ she said, ‘you dear old giants! I hope those white furs of yours will keep you warm till we bring Cara. What will Cara think of the mountains? She never saw anything bigger than Sunninghill.’

‘Sunninghill has the effect of being much higher than it is with that great level stretch of flat country. It impresses the imagination just as much as your giants. Don’t laugh, Annie; but your mountains stifle me. I never have air enough to breathe. I like miles and miles of country round me. You know my weakness.’

‘Sunninghill before the Alps!’ she cried, laughing. ‘’Tis clear you are a true cockney. Give me your shoulder for a pillow; I think I shall go to sleep.’

And so she did; and the horses jogged on and on, now slow, now fast, their bells jingling, and Donato’s whip making harmless circles and slashes over their heads; and houses and hedgerows, and slopes of mountain, flew past in a dream. James Beresford could see nothing but the wan lines of the face that rested on his shoulder, solemn in that deep sleep of weariness. How worn she was! how pale! growing whiter, he thought, and whiter, till sometimes in terror he stooped down close to make sure that the pale lips were parted by living breath.

CHAPTER IV.

THE THREE CHARITIES.

To live at Sunninghill, with one’s feet on a level with the highest pinnacle of the big Castle at St. George’s, what a thing it was in summer! All that country is eloquent with trees—big beeches, big oaks, straight elms, sweet birch-trees; even the very holly-bushes, in their dark green, grow tall into prickly, straggling monsters, as big as the elms. But the triumph of the place perhaps is in spring, when the primroses come too thick for counting, and the woods are full of their fairy, indefinable fragrance. In the ripe summer there was no such lovely suggestion about; all was at that perfection which suggests only decay. The wild flowers were foxgloves, with here and there in the marshy places a lingering plume of meadow-sweet. The ferns had grown too strong and tall, like little trees. The woods were in their darkest, fullest garments of green; not another leaflet to come anywhere; all full, and mature, and complete. Wild honeysuckle waved flags of yellow and brown from the high branches of big trees, which it had caught and tangled in; and made the hedge into one big wall of flowers—almost too much when the sun was on it. In the very heart of August it was as cool in these shadowy wood-walks as in a Gothic chapel, and here and there on a little plateau of brown earth a bench underneath a tree offered rest and a view to the wayfarer. Mrs. Burchell was sitting on one of these, panting a little, on the special day we have to record. She was that rector’s wife already mentioned, who was a contemporary of Cherry Beresford, and who grudged so much that ‘two single women’ should have all the delights of Sunninghill. She was just Miss Cherry’s age, fat and fair, but more than forty, and she had seven children, and felt herself inconceivably in advance of Cherry, for whom she retained her old friendship however, modified by a little envy and a good deal of contempt. Cherry was an old maid; that of itself surely was quite enough to warrant the contempt and the envy. You had but to look at Mr. Burchell’s rectory, which lay at the foot of the hill under the shadow of the woods, but facing towards the high road, which was very dusty, and exposed without a tree to the blaze of the west, and to compare it with the beautiful house on the top of the hill, sheltered so carefully, not too much nor too little—set in velvet lawns and dewy gardens, dust and noise kept at arm’s length—to see the difference between them. It was a difference which Mrs. Burchell for her part could not learn not to resent; though, indeed, but for the benefice bestowed by Miss Beresford, the Burchells must have had a much worse lot, or indeed perhaps never would have united their lots at all. The rector’s wife might have been as poor a creature as Miss Cherry, an old maid, and none of the seven Burchells might ever have come into being, but for the gift of that dusty Rectory from the ladies on the hill; but the rectorinn did not think of that. She was seated on the bench under the big oak, fanning herself with her handkerchief, while Agnes, her eldest daughter, and Dolly, her youngest, dutifully waited for her. They were going up to ‘The Hill’ for tea, which was a weekly ceremonial at least.

‘At all events, mamma, you must allow,’ said Agnes, ‘that it is better to live at the foot of the hill than at the top. You never could take any walks if you had this long pull up every time you went out.’

‘They don’t have any long pull,’ said her mother; ‘they have their carriage. Ah, yes, they are very different from a poor clergyman’s wife, who has done her duty all her life without much reward for it. It is not those who deserve them most, or who have most need of them, who get the good things of this life, my dear. I don’t want to judge my neighbours; but Miss Charity Beresford I have heard all my life was not so very much better than a heathen. It may not go so far as that—but I have seen her, with my own eyes, laugh at your papa’s best sermons. I am afraid she is not far removed from the wicked that flourish like a green bay tree; yet look at her lot in life and your papa’s—a gentleman, too, and a clergyman with so many opportunities of doing good—and she in this fine place, a mere old woman!’

‘If papa lived here should we all live here?’ said Dolly, whose small brain was confused by this suggestion; ‘then I should have the pony instead of Cara, and Miss Cherry would be my auntie! Oh, I wish papa lived here!’

‘Hold your tongue,’ said her mother. ‘Cherry Beresford is a ridiculous old creature. Dear me, when I think of the time when she and I were girls together! Who would have thought that I should have been the one to toil up here in the sun, while she drove in her carriage. Oh, yes, that’s very true, she was born the richest—but some girls have better luck than others! It was mine, you see, to marry a poor clergyman. Ah, well, I daresay Cherry would give her head to be in my place now!’

‘And you in hers? Is that what you mean, mamma?’

‘Me in hers! I’d like to be in her house, if that’s what you mean; but me a fanciful, discontented, soured old maid—me!’

‘Then, mamma dear, if you are better off in one way and she in another, you are equal,’ said Agnes, somewhat crossly; ‘that’s compensation. Have not you rested long enough?’ Agnes was in the uncomfortable position of an involuntary critic. She had been used to hear a great deal about the Miss Beresfords all her life, and only a little while before had awoke out of the tranquil satisfaction of use and wont, to wonder if all this abuse was justifiable. She stood under the tree with her back to her mother, looking out upon the view with an impatient sadness in her face. She was fond of her mother; but to hear so many unnecessary animadversions vexed and ashamed her, and the only way in which she could show this was by an angry tone and demeanour, which sat very badly upon her innocent countenance and ingenuous looks.

Just then they heard the sound of footsteps coming towards them, and voices softly clear in the warm air. ‘But, Cara, we must not be so ready to blame. All of us do wrong sometimes—not only little girls, but people who are grown up.’

‘Then, Aunt Cherry, you ought not, and one ought to blame you. A little child who cannot read—yes, perhaps that ought to be excused—it does not know; but us——’

‘We do wrong, too, every day, every minute, Cara. You will learn that as you grow older, and learn to be kind, I hope, and forgive.’

‘I shall never learn that.’

They came within sight as these words were said. Miss Cherry, in a cool grey gown, with a broad hat which Mrs. Burchell thought far too young for her; little Cara in her white frock, the shadows speckling and waving over her, erect as a little white pillar, carrying herself so straight. They made a pretty picture coming down the brown mossy path all broken up by big roots under the cool shade of the trees. On the bank behind them were low forests of coarse fern, and a bundle of foxgloves flowering high up on a brown knoll. The cool and tranquil look of them felt almost like an insult to the hot and panting wayfarers who had toiled up the path this hot day. Mrs. Burchell was in black silk, as became her age and position; she had a great deal of dark hair, and, though she blamed Miss Cherry for it, she, too, wore a hat; but, though she had been resting for ten minutes, she was still red and panting. ‘Ah, Cherry,’ she said, ‘how lucky you are coming downhill while we have been climbing! Some people have always the best of it. It makes me feel hotter and hotter to see you so cool and so much at your ease.’

‘We have come to meet you,’ said Miss Cherry, ‘and we shall be equal the rest of the way, for we shall all climb. Little Dolly, will you drag me up? You are so big and so strong, and you like to help old ladies. Come.’

Dolly being a very little mite, more fit to be carried, was made very happy by this address. She stretched forth two fat, small hands, and made great pretences to drag her thin charge. ‘But you must want to come, or I can’t drag you,’ she said.

‘Dolly is a little, wise woman, and speaks proverbs and parables,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘Yes, dear, I want to come; but we must wait for mamma.’

‘Oh, go on, you are light and airy; you have not been tried with a large family like me! You had better give me your arm, Agnes, for the rest of the way. What a pull it is! I don’t think I should ever walk if I had my choice. If I could afford a pair of ponies like yours; but with so many children ponies are out of the question,’ said Mrs. Burchell, still aggrieved. Miss Cherry looked wistfully at the pretty daughter upon whose arm her friend laid a heavy hand.

‘Perhaps we both have something that the other would like to have,’ she said, mildly. ‘I believe that is the way in life.’

‘Oh, it would never do for you, a single woman, to wish for children! I consider that most improper,’ said the rector’s wife. ‘Of course we all wished for husbands in our day, and some of us were successful and some weren’t; but it isn’t a subject to be talked of, pardon me, my dear Cherry, before young girls.’

Miss Cherry opened her mild eyes very wide, and then she blushed a delicate, overwhelming old-maidenly blush, one of those demonstrations of feeling which are almost more exquisite in the old than in the young. She did not make any reply. Mrs. Burchell went on in her daughter’s ear: ‘She is an old fool—look at her. Blushing! as if she were a young girl.’

‘I can’t blush when I please, mamma,’ said Agnes; ‘neither, I suppose, can she. Lean on me a little heavier; we shall soon get to the top now.’

‘Why, she runs actually,’ said poor Mrs. Burchell. ‘She is as light as Dolly; she doesn’t mind the hill. So, Cara, your papa and mamma have gone away again? Why don’t they take you with them? I should think you are old enough now to go too. How different people are! Now, I can never bear to be separated from my children. I like them to go everywhere with me. It is quite astonishing the difference. Doesn’t your Aunt Charity think it strange that they should always send you here?’

‘Aunt Charity likes to have me,’ said Cara; ‘for mamma travels very fast, and I should get very tired. I think I like the Hill best. Mamma is not very strong, and I should have to stop all my lessons.’

‘But you would not mind that, I should think. My girls are always so glad to get lessons over. They would go mad with joy to have their month’s holiday, and I am sure so would you.’

‘No,’ said Cara; ‘I am nearly twelve, and I can only play three or four tunes, and talk a little French with Aunt Cherry. We pronounce very badly,’ she continued, with a blush. ‘I know by the French people who come to see us in the Square.’

‘You poor child! do you mean to say they let you stay up at night, and hear people talking in the drawing-room? How very wrong for you, both for your mind and health! that is what makes you so thin, I am sure; and you must hear a great many things that you ought not to hear.’

Cara opened her blue eyes very wide. She was on the whole gratified by the idea that she had heard things she ought not to hear. That perhaps accounted for her superior wisdom which she felt in herself.

‘Mamma says I ought to learn to judge for myself,’ she said, with dignity. ‘When there is an argument going on I like to listen, and often she makes me tell her what I thought, and which side I take.’

Mrs. Burchell gave Agnes a significant look; and Agnes, it must be allowed, who heard little conversation which did not turn on personal subjects, was slightly horrified too.

‘Poor child!’ repeated the rector’s wife; ‘at your age!—and what kind of subjects do they talk about? It must be very bad for you.’

‘Oh, about books chiefly,’ said Cara, ‘and pictures—but I don’t understand pictures—and sometimes about politics. I like that—about Ireland and Mr. Gladstone they talked once. And to hear the Frenchmen talk about Ireland—just as if it were Poland, papa said.’

‘Well, I am sure it could not be much worse,’ Mrs. Burchell said, after a pause of alarm. She did not know much about Ireland, except that they shot landlords there, and that when she advertised for a housemaid she said ‘No Irish need apply;’ and she knew nothing at all about Poland, and what the analogy was between them she had not an idea. She looked at Cara after this with a little awe; but naturally held fast by her censure, which no doubt must be just, though she could not tell how.

‘It cannot be good for you to hear such talk as that,’ she said. ‘A good romp and go to bed at eight o’clock, that is what I hold with for my girls. You are a great deal too old for your age. Before you are eighteen, people will be taking you for five-and-twenty. To hear you talk, one would think you were eighteen now.’

‘I wish they would,’ said Cara; ‘I don’t like to be always thought a child. I have often things I want to say just on my very lips. I know I could set the people right if I might but speak. But mamma holds up her finger, and I dare not. If I were eighteen, I should be grown up, and I might give my opinion—and twenty-five! Is Agnes twenty-five?’

‘Agnes! you spiteful little thing!’ cried the mother, getting redder and redder. Agnes was sixteen, and the eldest of five, so that to add anything to her age was very undesirable. Cara was too much bewildered to ask what it was which made her a ‘spiteful little thing,’ for just then they came to the final plateau, where the path reached the level of the lawn. And there, snipping away at her roses, was Miss Beresford herself, in a deep sun-bonnet and garden gloves, with a large pair of scissors in her hand, and two baskets at her feet. The roses were in the full flush of their second bloom, notwithstanding their mistress’s fears. She was snipping off the withered flowers, the defective buds, and yellow leaves on one hand, and here and there making a savage dash at a sound twig infested by a colony of green flies, while she cut roses for the decoration of the room. One of the baskets was filled with these flowers, and Miss Cherry, who had preceded them, had lifted this basket from the path, and was looking at it with a perplexed face.

‘There’s a “Malmaison” which is perfect,’ said Miss Charity; ‘and as for those “Giant of Battles”——’ She liked to pronounce their names in her own way, scorning pretence, as she said; and she put down her nose into the basket with true satisfaction. The one thing in the world Miss Charity was a little ‘off her head’ about was a fine rose.

‘They are fine flowers,’ said Miss Cherry, very seriously, her soft voice relaxing, with no smile; ‘but the stalks are so short! How am I to arrange them? unless you put them bolt upright, each one by itself, as they are in a rose show?’

‘You don’t think I’m going to sacrifice my buds,’ said Miss Charity; ‘never! I see you do it, and that dolt of a gardener, and it goes to my heart. Put them bolt upright; what could be better? or they do very well in flat dishes. You can’t go wrong with roses; but sacrifice my buds—not for the world!’

‘There is not one long enough to put in one’s belt,’ said Miss Cherry, who looked half disposed to cry. ‘We have more roses than any one, but they never look nice, for they never have any stalks. I must think what is to be done. The flat dishes are not effective, and the pyramids are wearisome, and specimen glasses make the table like a child’s garden.’

‘There’s a dinner party to-night,’ said Miss Beresford; ‘that’s why Cherry is put out. Come to the arbour and sit down, you poor hot people. How very hot you look, to be sure. That is what it is to be stout. Neither Cherry nor I are stout, and it is a great advantage to us, especially in summer. Come, Maria, you shall have some tea.’

‘I don’t consider myself stout,’ said Mrs. Burchell, offended. ‘The mother of a large family naturally develops a little. “It would not do, my dear, if you were as slim as you were at twenty,” my husband says to me; “only old maids are thin:” and if he likes it——’

‘Yes; you see we’re all old maids here,’ said Miss Charity, with one of her hearty laughs. Her handsome old face shone cool at the bottom of the deep tunnel of her sun-bonnet, clear red and white, as if she had been twenty; and with large, blue, undimmed eyes, from which little Cara had taken hers, and not from either father’s or mother’s. Cara, indeed, was considered by everybody ‘the very image’ of Miss Charity, and copied her somewhat, it must be allowed, in a longer step and more erect carriage than was common to little girls. Miss Charity put down her scissors in her other basket, while Miss Cherry bent her reflective and troubled countenance over the roses, and drew off her big garden gloves, and led the way to the arbour or bower, which was not so cockney an erection as its name portended. At that height, under the shadow of a group of big fragrant limes, in which two openings cleverly cut revealed the broad beautiful plain below, one with St. George’s noble Castle in the midst of the leafy frame, the air was always fresh and sweet. By stretching your neck, as all the young Burchells knew, you could see the dusty road below, and the Rectory lying deep down in the shadow of the trees; but not a speck of dust made its way up to the soft velvet lawn, or entered at the ever-opened windows. ‘Ah, yes, there’s our poor little place, children; a very different place from this!’ Mrs. Burchell said, plaintively, as she sat down and began to fan herself once more.

‘You once thought it a very nice little place, Maria,’ said Miss Charity. ‘I am afraid you are getting tired of the rector, good man—— ’

‘I?’ said Mrs. Burchell, ‘tired of my husband! You little know him or me, or you would not say such a thing. Nobody except those who have a husband like mine can understand what a blessing it is——’

‘We don’t keep anything of the kind up here,’ said Miss Charity; ‘and here comes the tea. Cherry has gone in to have a cry over her roses. When one has not one thing to trouble about, one finds another. You because your house is not so big as ours; she because I cut the roses too short. We are but poor creatures, the best of us. Well, what’s the news, Maria? I always expect a budget of news when I see you.’

The rector’s wife, offended, began by various excuses, as that she was the last person in the world to hear anything, and that gossips knew better than to bring tales to her; but in the end unfolded her stores and satisfied Miss Charity, who took a lively interest in her fellow-creatures, and loved to hear everything that was going on. By the time this recital was fairly begun Miss Cherry came back, carrying with her own hands a bowl of creamy milk for little Dolly, who clung to her skirts and went with her wherever she went. Mrs. Burchell sat in the summer-house, which afforded a little shelter, and was safer as well as more decorous than the grass outside. When Cherry sat down with the children, Agnes had her gossip, too, to pour into the gentle old maiden’s sympathetic ears. Agnes was in the crotchety stage of youth, when the newly-developed creature wants to be doing something for its fellows. She had tried the school and the parish, not with very great success. She wanted Miss Cherry to tell her what to do. ‘The schoolmistress can teach the girls better than I can. She shrugs her shoulders at me. She is certificated, and knows everything; and the old women are not at their ease. They talk about my dear papa, and what a beautiful sermon it was last Sunday. And mamma is busy with her housekeeping. Couldn’t you tell me, dear Miss Cherry, anything a girl can do?’ Miss Cherry somehow was a girl herself, though she was old. It was more natural to appeal to her than even to mamma.

Dolly for her part drank her milk, and dipped her biscuit in it, and made ‘a figure’ of herself unnoticed by anybody, carrying on a monologue of her own all the time. And Cara sat on the lawn, with the leaves playing over her, flecking her pretty head and white frock with a perpetual coming and going of light and shadow. Cara said nothing to any one. She was looking out with her blue eyes well open, through the branches over big St. George’s, upon that misty blueness which was the world.

CHAPTER V.

COMING HOME.

‘They brought me back,’ he said; ‘and I shall have to die twice now, which is hard upon a man; for I was gone; if they had not brought me back, I should never have known anything more. No, Signora, I did not see all that had happened in my life. I felt only that I had slipped the net, and was grasping and grasping at it, and could not get it.’

‘That was painful,’ she said, eagerly.

‘It was a confusion,’ said the fisherman.

Mrs. Beresford called to her husband to give him some money for the poor widows who had lost their men in the boat. ‘A confusion!’ she said to herself, dreamily. It was a very still day after the storm, and she had been looking with a strange wistfulness at the soft blue ripples of the water which had drowned these men. ‘A confusion! How strange it is that we know so little about dying! A lingering death would be good for that, that you could write it down hour by hour that others might know.’

‘One would not be able,’ said her husband; ‘besides, I think everything gets misty; and one ceases to be interested about other people. I don’t much believe those stories that represent passionate feeling in the dying. The soul gets languid. Did I ever tell you what a friend of mine said who was dead like Abbondio till the doctors got hold of her and forced her back?’

‘No,’ she said, growing very pale; ‘tell me, James.’

‘She told me that she felt nothing that was painful, but as if she was floating away on the sea somewhere about Capri, where she had once been. Do you remember the sea there, how blue it is about those great Faraglioni rocks? And there she was floating—floating—not suffering; mind and body, all softly afloat; until they got hold of her, as I say, and forced her back.’

‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Beresford, with a shiver; ‘I should not like to be forced back. Poor soul! She will have to die once again some time; but if it was only like that, she will not be much afraid.’

‘She was as far gone as she could go, to come back, I have heard. What queer talk this is, my darling! The accident has spoiled all our pleasure.’

‘No; it is pleasant talk. I like that idea of floating; it is better, far better, than Abbondio’s confusion; but that, I suppose, was because of the suddenness in his case, and clutching at something perhaps as he got into the water. It was not an accident with her, was it? She was dying of an illness as we poor women do.’

‘And most men, Annie; the greater part of us all.’

‘Yes, yes; I know. Poor woman! And they brought her back?’

‘Her family was round her bed, my darling, praying for her life, asking nothing but to get her back. You don’t consider her children, and her husband. Don’t let us talk of it. It makes me think of jumping into this wicked lake, and getting it all over.’

‘Ah! do you feel that too? It is wicked, James; how dare you think such things? Take me back home; yes, home. I am tired of this place. It is all very well when it is fine, but winter is coming. To-morrow let us go home.’

He took her to the shore with a few long sweeps of the oars, glad in his heart of that decision. He, too, was very tired of the place; more tired of the eternal shining than of the storm, and it was getting late in the year for the Alps. Nevertheless it was by the Alps that this capricious woman insisted upon returning, and they had something very near an accident in the snows which roused and pleased her mightily. After the excitement, however, nothing would satisfy her but to rush to London with the utmost speed. She objected to stay even a single night in Paris. She had been seized with a passion of longing for the humdrum Square.

Miss Cherry brought Cara up from Sunninghill to be at home to receive her mother. But the pair of travellers had stolen a march upon the household, and instead of waiting to be received in a proper manner in the evening, with dinner ready and everything comfortable, had arrived at an absurd hour in the morning, before the maids were out of bed, and when there was nothing prepared in the house. Cook herself came, much aggrieved, to tell Miss Cherry this, while Cara ran upstairs to her mother’s room. ‘I don’t make no doubt as folks get very fanciful when they’re ill; but still, Miss, there’s reason in all things. At six o’clock in the morning, and we not up, as why should we be, not thinking of nothing of the sort, and not a thing in the house?’

‘It was hard, cook,’ said the sympathetic Miss Cherry; ‘but then you know my brother had a right to come to his own house when he pleased. Coming home is not like going anywhere else. But I hope Mrs. Beresford is looking better?’

‘Better!’ said cook, spreading out her hands; and Sarah, the housemaid, shook her head and put her apron to her eyes.

‘Dear, dear!’ said kind Miss Cherry, appalled by their tears; ‘but travelling all night makes any one look ill. I shall not go up until she has had a good look at her child. Miss Cara is like a little rose.’

‘So she is, Miss, bless her!’ assented the maids; and Cherry had to wait for a long time in the library before even her brother came to her. One thing which struck her with great surprise was, that there were no boxes about half emptied, in which precious fragilities had been packed in straw and wicker cases. The Buen Retiro cup was the only thing they had bought, and that was among Mrs. Beresford’s things—smashed; and they had both forgotten its very existence. No more wonderful sign could have been of the changed times.

When Miss Cherry in her turn was introduced into the bedroom in which Mrs. Beresford still lay, resting herself, she all but cried out with sudden panic. She only just stopped herself in time; her mouth was open; her tongue in the very act of forming the ‘Oh!’ when her brother’s look stopped her. Not that he saw what she was going to say, or all the effect his wife’s changed looks had upon her. He himself had got used to them. He asked her, half aside, ‘How do you think she is looking?’ with an eager look in his eyes.

‘She is looking—tired,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘Most people do after travelling all night. I could not have lifted my head from the pillow; but Annie had always so much spirit.’

‘Yes; she has no end of spirit,’ said poor James Beresford, looking admiringly at his wife. He flattered himself, poor fellow! that Cherry had not remarked the thinness of the worn face, beside which her own faintly-coloured old maid’s countenance almost looked fresh and round and blooming. He had been alarmed at the thought of what ‘they’ would think of her looks; but now his spirits rose. Cherry did not seem to have remarked it; and what a hypocrite poor Cherry felt, sitting there smiling, with her heart sinking more and more every moment! ‘What will he do without his wife?’ she was asking herself. And, alas! that wife’s worn looks; her fretful little outbursts of impatience; all her caprices and restlessness betrayed a progress of evil more rapid than any one had even feared.

‘Does Mr. Maxwell know you have come back? He will want to see you. He was always so anxious to have news of you,’ she said, falteringly.

‘We have forgotten what doctors are like,’ said Mrs. Beresford. ‘I don’t want ever to renew my acquaintance with them. James, send him a note, and let him come to dinner. Yes, Cara! What has my pet got to say?’

‘You said two different things at once, mamma—that you did not want to see doctors again, and that Mr. Maxwell was to come to dinner.’

‘I told you she was an idealist,’ said Mrs. Beresford, smiling. Then, changing—as she had got into a way of doing,—in a moment, she added, ‘Get down from the bed, Cara; you tire me. There, sit there, further back. Children flutter so; they are always in motion. Cherry is still—she is a comfort; and, James, Mrs. Meredith can come, if she likes to come before I get up. She is a soft, tranquil woman, like Cherry; silly, perhaps, but that does not matter. When one is over tired, silly people who don’t fatigue one are the best——’

‘I wonder does she think me silly?’ Miss Cherry said to herself; and it is to be feared there was not much doubt on the subject. After she had made this speech about Mrs. Meredith, next door, the invalid sent them all away, that she might rest. This was no more than a passing fancy, like other notions that flitted across her restless brain. They went down softly to the library, avoiding by common consent the drawing-room, which was her room, and so closely associated with all her ways. There James Beresford interrogated his sister very closely. ‘You don’t see a very great change—nothing more than you expected?’ He was tired, too, poor fellow! worn out in body and in soul.

‘I think you should see Mr. Maxwell at once,’ said Miss Cherry, who was timid, and did not like to commit herself. ‘What does it matter what I think, who don’t know? I think she is perhaps—more worn than I expected; but then she has been travelling all night. Perhaps you ought not to have allowed her to do so much.’

‘I? How could I help it? and I was too thankful to get home. How I hate those pleasure places! the more beautiful they are, the more terrible. I detest them. I shall never be able to endure mountains and lakes again—till Annie is better, he added, with such a miserable pretence at a smile that his kind sister almost broke down. She made up her mind to remain at his entreaty, though both of them had a doubt whether the invalid would like it. ‘Annie will be pleased, I am sure,’ he said, with hesitation. How well they all understood her! But quiet Miss Cherry felt no anger with the fanciful, capricious, suffering woman, who meant happiness in this house, notwithstanding all her uncertain moods and ways.

‘I will tell her I have something to do in town, and ask her to give me a bed for a few nights.’

‘Aunt Cherry, you had nothing to do when we started; you meant to go home to-day.’

‘Yes, Cara; but I should like to see your mamma get a little better.’

‘Then please tell her so,’ said the child; ‘please tell her so. I know what you think. You think she is very, very ill; but you will not say it. You try to deceive papa and me, and her too. I cannot bear to be deceived.’

‘My dear, some time or other you will learn to know that one must not say everything one thinks; though indeed, indeed, I would always have you say the truth.’

‘I shall never learn not to say what I think,’ said the little girl, with erect head and severe blue eyes fixed upon her aunt disapprovingly. Miss Cherry was nervous and easily disturbed. She could not bear even Cara’s disapproval, and she began to cry in spite of herself, even then not quite ingenuously she felt; for her disturbed nerves and her distress and sympathy for her brother were at the bottom of her emotion, though Cara’s severity gave an immediate reason for her tears.

Mrs. Beresford was better in the evening, and came down to dinner, putting on one of her prettiest dresses in honour of the return. ‘I have worn nothing but grey alpaca for months,’ she said; ‘like you, Cherry; I am quite glad to get out of it, and feel at home again. We have had rather a long spell of honeymooning this time, and we were beginning to get tired of each other; but it was the last, you know, for Cara is to go with us next year.’

Cara, who was sitting by, began to speak. ‘If——,’ she said, and then stopped, arrested in spite of herself by such a passionate look as she had never seen before in her father’s eyes.

‘If—what? You think I shall change my mind? Ah, Mr. Maxwell, how do you do! Am I feeling strong? Well, not strong, perhaps, but very well to-night. I have ups and downs. And poor James there, whom I have punished severely, will tell you I have grown the most fanciful, troublesome, capricious woman. James!’

He had taken Cara into a corner, and was whispering to her in a voice which made the child tremble: ‘If you say a word! if you vex your mother or frighten her with that idiotic sincerity of yours, by Heaven I’ll kill you!’ he said, clenching his hand. ‘Capricious! Yes, you never saw anything like it, Maxwell. Such a round as she has led me—such a life as I have had!’ And he laughed. Heaven help them! they all laughed, pretending to see the joke. While the child in the corner, her little frame thrilling in every nerve with that strange, violent whisper, the first roughness that had ever come her way, sat staring at the group in a trance of wonder. What did it mean? Why were they false all of them, crying when she was not there, pretending to laugh as soon as they turned to her. It was Cara’s first introduction to the mysteries of life.

That night when Miss Cherry had cried herself almost blind, after a stolen interview with the doctor in the passage as he left the house, she was frightened nearly out of her wits by a sudden apparition. It was late, for Cherry, though used to early hours, had not been able to think of sleep after the doctor’s melancholy shake of the head and whisper of ‘I fear the worst.’ She was sitting sadly thinking of what that pretty house would be with the mistress gone. What would become of James? Some men have work to occupy them. Some men are absorbed in the outdoor life which makes a woman less a companion to them, perpetual and cherished; but James! Cherry Beresford was so different a woman from her sister-in-law, that the affection between them had been limited, and almost conventional—the enforced union of relations, not anything spontaneous; for where mutual understanding is not, there cannot be much love. But this did not blind her perception as to what his wife was to James. She herself had not been very much to him, nor he to her. They had loved each other calmly, like brother and sister, but they had not been companions since they were children. Cherry, who was very simple and true, not deceiving herself any more than other people, knew very well that she could never fill for him anything of the place his wife had left vacant. Her heart would bleed for him; but that was all—and what would become of him? She shivered and wept at the thought, but could think of nothing—nothing! What would poor James do?

Then Cara came stalking in upon her in her nightgown, with a candle in her hand, white and chill as a little ghost, her face very pale, her brown hair hanging about her shoulders, her white bare feet showing below her night-dress, all lighted up by the candle she carried. ‘I have come to ask you what it all means,’ the child said; ‘none of you say what is true. You laugh when I can see you are more like crying, and you make jokes, and you tell—lies. Have you all gone mad, Aunt Cherry? or what does it mean?’

Upon this a little burst of impatience came to Miss Cherry, which was an ease to her over-wrought feelings. ‘You disagreeable, tiresome little child! How dare you make yourself a judge of other people? Are you so wise or so sensible that you should be able to say exactly what is right and what is wrong? I wonder at you, Cara! When you see us unhappy, all upset and miserable, about your poor mamma.’

‘But why? To tell me—lies, will that make her well?’

‘You should have been whipt,’ cried the indignant lady. ‘Oh, you should have been whipt when you were a small child, and then you never would have dared to speak so to me, and to your poor father, whose heart is broken! Would you like us to go and tell her how ill she is, and beg of her to make haste and die? Poor, poor Annie! that is what would be best for her, to get rid of the pain. Is that what you would like us to do?’

‘Oh, Aunt Cherry, Aunt Cherry! don’t say that mamma—that mamma——’

‘No, my darling, I can’t say it,’ cried Miss Cherry, drawing the child into her arms, kissing and crying over her. ‘I won’t say it. I’ll never, never give up hope. Doctors are deceived every day. Nobody can tell what may happen, and God hears prayers when we pray with all our hearts. But that’s why we hide our feelings, Cara; why we laugh, dear, when we would like to cry; why we try to talk as if we were happy when we are very sad; for she would give up hope if she once knew——’

‘And would that make any difference?’ said the child, in all the impenetrability of wonder, one revelation bursting upon her after another, feeling this new dark mysterious world beyond her powers.

‘Would hope make any difference?’ cried Miss Cherry. ‘Oh, child, how little you know! It is hope that makes all the difference. If you think things are going well, it helps them to go well—it keeps up your strength, it cheers your heart, it makes you a different creature. Everything, everything, lies in keeping up hope.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Cara, slowly. She had pushed open a door unawares into a spiritual world of which she knew nothing. She had not one of the happy superficial natures which sail over mysteries. That which was deeper than fact and truer than truth was a perplexity and aching wonder to the child. She could not fathom it, she had but just discovered it. She stood quite still while Miss Cherry explained to her as well as she could how nothing must be said or done that would alarm the patient, how everything must be made smooth and kept cheerful round her. ‘And, Cara, you will remember—you will say nothing to frighten her, whatever you may hear. If she should suffer very much, you must always look as if you felt sure she would soon be better.’

‘Even if it is not true?’

‘Oh, my dear child! the only way to mend that is to pray to God day and night, day and night, to make it true! He can and He will—or, oh, Cara! we hope He will,’ cried Miss Cherry, with tears. ‘And you can help by always praying, and always being cheerful. Look at your poor papa, how he smiles and jokes, and his heart is breaking all the time.’

‘His heart is breaking!’ said Cara, under her breath.

‘But if we all do what we can, and are cheerful, and trust in God, she may get better, dear. There is so much we can do. That is how I try to keep up my heart. We must never look frightened, never let her get alarmed. Keep cheerful, cheerful, Cara, whatever we do.’

The child went back to bed with her head buzzing full of strange thoughts. She knew very well that nurse had often exhorted her to patience under toothache, for instance, as the best cure; but it never had been cured by that in Cara’s experience. Was cheerfulness likely to answer in her mother’s case, and smiles instead of crying, and people saying things they did not believe? Such knowledge was too high for her. It confused her head, and made it ache and throb with the multitude of her thoughts.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CONSULTATION.

‘I’ll warrant as you won’t,’ said nurse; and so disappeared down the kitchen stairs to snatch that cup of tea which is the saving of poor women. ‘And make it strong, do, or I can’t go through with it much longer,’ she said, throwing herself into a chair.

This was some months after the home-coming of the invalid. Mrs. Beresford had rallied, and spent a pleasant Christmas with her friends round her once more, and she recovered her looks a little, and raised high hopes in all those who watched her so curiously. But just as spring began to touch the Square, and the crocuses appeared, a sudden and rapid relapse had come on, and to-day there had been a consultation of the doctors of a kind which could not be mistaken, so deeply serious was it. They were in Mr. Beresford’s study while nurse went downstairs, and he had just been called in solemnly from the next room to hear her fate, which implied his own. She had dropped into an uneasy sleep when her trial was over, too tired and worn out to be capable of more; and it was during this moment that nurse had yielded to Cara’s entreaties, made through the half-open door. The child had not seen her mother all day, and her whole being was penetrated by the sense of anxiety and foreboding that was in the house. She had wandered up and down the staircase all the time the doctors had been about, and her little, anxious face affected nurse with pity. It was the best thing for Cara to take the watch by her mother’s side during this moment of suspense, as it was the best thing for nurse to get out of the sick-room and refresh herself with change. Nurse’s heart was heavy too, but not with suspense. There had been no mystery to her in the growing illness. She was an ‘old-fashioned servant’—alas! of a very old-fashioned sort indeed; for few in any age, we fear, are those poetical retainers whose service is given for duty, not for need. Nurse served not for duty, indeed; to which word she might have objected—for was it not the duty ‘of them as she had done everything for’ to look after her, as much as hers to look after them?—but for love, which is a more effectual argument. She liked her good wages and her comforts, as an honest woman has a right to do; but she liked the ‘family’ better still, and cared not very much for any other family, not even that with which she was herself connected in the capacity of sister and aunt—for, though she had been married, she had no children of her own. Mrs. Beresford had been her child; then, so long after, Cara. Her heart was concentrated in those two. But after this trial of the medical examination, which was almost as hard upon her as upon her mistress, nurse was very thankful to take advantage of that door, and escape for a little into the more cheerful world of the kitchen, with all its coming and going, and the cup of tea which cook, sympathetic and curious, and very anxious to hear all that could be heard, made for her with such friendly care.

Thus little Cara stole in and established herself noiselessly in the corner by her mother’s bedside, hidden by the curtains. Many and strange had been the thoughts in the child’s head through these winter months, since her parents came home. She had lived a very quiet life for a child since ever she could remember, though it was a happy life enough; and the curious baby rigidity of the little code of morals which she had formed for herself had been unbroken up to that time. Cara had felt that, whosoever did wrong ought to be hanged, beheaded, burnt, or whatsoever penalty was practicable, at once, without benefit of clergy. A lie being the worst possible offence that ever came within her ken, had been as murder in the swift and sudden vengeance of her thoughts. The offence had been considered capital, beyond the reach of pardon or extenuation. It is impossible to tell what horrible overthrow of all her canons ensued when her father and aunt not only sanctioned, but enforced, lying upon her, and boldly avowed their practice of it themselves as a duty. Cara had lost herself for a long time after that. She had wandered through that bottomless darkness for months, and now had only just come to a glimmering of daylight again by aid of the individual argument, that though truth was necessary for the world in general, modifications were permitted in cases where people were ill—in the case of mamma being ill, which was the immediate thing before her. It was the one evil she was individually cognisant of in the world; but the thing was to accept it, not struggle against it, as guilt which was justified by necessity. Cara felt that here was one thing upon which more light would come as one grew older—a prospect which generally this little idealist treated with the contempt it deserves. Mamma would be better then, she thought, and the world get back into its due balance and equilibrium without any one being the worse. Probably now that time was soon approaching, now that the doctors had come and found what was the matter, and probably very soon, Cara hoped, the worst of all her difficulties would be removed; and upon this doubtful subject she would be able to get the opinion of the individual on whose behalf the others were defying Heaven with so much horrible daring, of mamma herself, for whom the sun and moon were being made to stand still, and all the world was put out of joint for the time. This hope was in her thoughts as she took her seat in nurse’s big, softly-cushioned chair, which never creaked nor made any noise, and sat there as still as a mouse, sometimes not unlike a mouse, peeping round the corner of the curtain at her charge, who lay half buried among the pillows which her restlessness had thrown into disorder, with little starts and twitches of movement, and now and then a broken moan. Worn as she was, there was still beauty in the face—white and sharpened with pain, with red hectic spots upon it, like stains on the half-transparent flesh. Her hair had been pushed away under a cap, which had come loose, and only half confined the soft golden brown locks, which had not lost their lustre; she had thrown out one arm from under the bedclothes, which lay on the white coverlet, an ivory hand, half visible only through the lace and needlework of the sleeve. With what wondering awe and pity Cara looked at her—pity which was inexpressible, like all profound childish sentiments! Poor mamma! who suffered as she? for whom else did God permit the laws of truth to be broken? She was very fond of her beautiful mother, proud of her, and oh, so piteously sorry for her. Why should she be ill—she who hated it so much? Cara herself now and then was ill, and had to put up with it, without making any fuss. But mamma was different. The still child watched with a pity which was unfathomable, and beyond the reach of words.

The room was very still; it was at the back of the house, looking out upon nothing but gardens; so quiet that you could not have thought you were within reach of the full torrent of London life. The little pétillement of the fire, the occasional soft falling of the ashes, the ticking of the small, soft-toned clock, were the only audible sounds. It was a warm spring afternoon, and, but that Mrs. Beresford liked to see it, there was no need for a fire. It made the room warm and drowsy. How it was that, amid all her confused and troubled thoughts, such a reflective child as little Cara should have got drowsy too, who can tell? The stillness and quiet were unusual to her. She was leaning back against nurse’s chair, her feet curled up, her small frame entirely contained within it, her mother sleeping beside her, the room very still, with those soft rhythms of periodic sound. All at once she came to herself in a moment, after a lapse, the duration of which she knew nothing of. It was the sound of voices which roused her. Her mother speaking—her father, though how he got there she could not tell, standing very haggard and pale, in front of the fire.

‘You said you would tell me—oh, tell me the truth! I am tired of waiting, and of uncertainty. James, in pity, the truth!’

‘Yes, my darling; but they came—to no decision. It is so long since Sir William saw you. You could not bear him, you know. He must come again—he must have time——’

‘James! You are not telling me the truth!’

Cara saw that her father turned round to the fire, and held out his hands to it, as if he were cold. That change made his voice sound further away. ‘Annie, Annie! do you think I would deceive you?’ he said, faltering. Neither of them knew that the child was there behind the curtain, but of that Cara never thought.

‘What did they say?’ she cried. ‘Oh, yes, you deceive me: you do nothing but deceive me; and now, at least, I must know the truth. I will send for Maxwell to come back, and he will tell me—he is honest, not like you. James, James! have you no love for me left? You did love me once—and promised. What did they say? I know they have told you. You cannot hide it from me—it is in your face.’

He made no answer, but stooped down over the fire, so that his very profile might be hid from her. She could not see anything, he thought, in his shoulders—and yet the tremor in his frame, the very gesture told more plainly than words. She sat up in her bed, growing wild with eager energy. Her cap fell back, which had been loose before, and her long hair streamed over her shoulders. ‘Bring me the medicine-box, quick, quick!’ she cried. He ran to obey her, glad of the diversion, and knowing how often she had paroxysms of pain, which had to be stilled at all hazards. The neat little medicine-chest, with its orderly drawers and shelves, like a toy in tiny regularity and neatness, was kept in a closet at the other end of the room. He brought it out, and put it down on the table by her bedside. ‘Is it the usual pain?’ he said, his voice trembling. And now she could see all the misery in his haggard face. She clutched with her white, feverish fingers at his arm.

‘Tell me. You have heard—oh, I can see, you have heard—tell me, what do they say?’

He tried for a moment to get free; but what was the use? His face, all quivering with miserable excitement, his heavy eyes that would not look her in the face, his lips, not steady enough even to frame an excuse, were more telling than any words. She devoured his face with her strained eyes, holding him by his sleeve. Then, with a convulsive shiver, ‘It is as I thought. I see what it is,’ she cried.

‘O my darling!’ he said, sinking down on his knees by her bedside. ‘What do they know? They are mistaken every day. How often have we said that, you and I? Why should we make gods of them now? Annie! we never believed in doctors, you and I!’

‘I believe in them now,’ she said. All her excitement had faded from her. The hectic red had disappeared from her cheeks, a convulsive shivering was all that remained of her strong excitement and emotion. She was hushed by the certainty. No doubt was in her mind as to the truth of it. There was silence for a moment—a long, long time, as it seemed; and when the silence was broken, it was she who spoke, not in complaint or despair, but with a strange, chill wonder and reflective pain. ‘There are some people who would not have minded so much,’ she said, in a half whisper. ‘Some people do not feel the pain so much—or—the loathing. O my God, my God, me!’ What could be said? Hard sobs shook the man’s helpless frame. He could do nothing for her—and she was dearer to him than his life.

‘Do not cry,’ she said, as if she had been talking to a child; ‘that hurts me more. Don’t you remember when we talked of it—if it ever came to this, James—and I made you promise. You promised. Surely, surely, you must remember? In summer, before we went away.’

He tried to look at her blankly, as if he did not know what she meant; but, God help him, he remembered every word.

‘Yes; you know what I mean. I can see it in your eyes. You can’t deceive me now, James! you promised!’

‘Never! never!’ he said, his voice broken with passionate sobs.

‘I think you promised; but at least you said it was right—no wickedness in it. Oh, do it, James! You can save me still. Why should I have any more pain, now? I could bear it if it was for any good; but why should I now, James?’

‘I cannot, I cannot,’ he cried; ‘do not ask me. Myself, if you will, but not you—not you!’

‘Yourself!’ she said, with a dreamy contempt. In her deadly danger and despair she was somehow raised above all creatures who had no warrant of death in them. ‘Why yourself? You are safe; there is no vulture coming to gnaw your flesh. O James, have you not the heart of a man to save me! Think if it had been in India, in the Mutiny—and you said it would be right.’

‘How could I know?’ cried the unhappy man, with the artlessness of despair; ‘how could I tell it was coming to us? I did not think what I was saying. I thought of others—strangers. Annie! oh, let me go!—let me go!’

‘Think a moment,’ she said, still holding him; ‘think what it will be. Torment! It is hard to bear now, but nothing to what it will be—and worse than torment. You will sicken at me; the place will be unendurable. O God! James, save me! oh, save me! It would be so easy—nothing but a dose, a drink—and all safe. James! James!’

The man burst out into terrible tears—he was beyond the stage at which self-restraint exists—but as for her, she was calm. It was she who held the chief place in this conflict. He was but secondary. The day, the moment was for him but one of many; his life would flow on the same as before, but hers had to stop if not now, yet immediately. She had her sentence delivered to her. And suddenly a fever of longing woke up in her—a desire to taste this strange death, at once to anticipate fate, like that vertigo which makes shipwrecked people plunge into the sea to meet their end a few minutes before it comes inevitably, forestalling it, not waiting for it. She rushed all at once into sudden energy and excitement.

‘Come,’ she cried, with a breathlessness which was half taste, half from the sudden acceleration of her heart. ‘Come; this is the moment. There could be no time as good as now. I am not unhappy about it, nor sorry. It is like champagne. James, if you love me, do it at once; do it now!’

He made no reply, but clung to the bed, hiding his face, with a convulsive shivering all over him. Was it that the excitement in her communicated itself to him, and that he was tempted to obey? There was a singing and a buzzing in his ears. Despair and misery stupefied him. Sooner or later she was to be taken from him: now, or a few weeks, a few months hence through a burning path of, torture. And he could make it easy. Was it a devil or an angel that tugged at his heart, and echoed what she said?

‘Come,’ she said, in soft tones of pleading, ‘cannot you see? I am in the right mind now. Death takes people constantly by surprise, but I am just as I should like to be, able to understand everything, able to feel what is happening to me, not in pain, or unhappy. Oh, quick, quick, James! you shall hold my hand, and as long as I can speak I will tell you how it feels; like your friend. You remember Como and the boat and the floating away. Quick, quick, while I am happy, out of pain, clear in my head!’ Then her voice softened still more, and a piteous smile came upon her face. ‘Sorry only for you—O my James, my poor James! But you would rather send me away like this than see me perishing—perishing! Come, James!’

She loosed her hold upon him to let him rise, and he stumbled up to his feet like a man dazed, paused, looked at her; then throwing up his arms in a paroxysm of despair and misery, turned and fled from the room. ‘Ah!’ she gave a cry that he thought pursued him, echoing and echoing round his head as he rushed out of the house like a hunted man. But she had no power to pursue him, though her cry had. She sat up gazing after him, her arm stretched out, her head bent forward as when she was talking. Then her arm relaxed, her head drooped, a rush of womanish childish tears came to her eyes. Tears! at such a moment they made everything dim around her, but cleared away gradually like a mist, and once more the doomed woman saw clear. He was gone who should have been her loving executioner and saviour; but—her heart, which had sunk with the disappointment, gave another leap in her breast. He had left the remedy in her hands. The little medicine-chest stood open beside her on the table, within her reach. She did not pause to think, but put out her hand and selected one of the bottles firmly yet trembling, trembling only in her nerves, not in her courage. It required a little effort to pluck it out of the closely-fitting case, and then she held death in her hands.

Just then a little rustle behind the curtain, a childish face peeping round the corner, disturbed her more than anything else in the world would have done. ‘Mamma,’ said Cara, ‘what is that? What is that you are going to take? If papa would not give it you, can it be good for you? Oh, don’t take it, mamma!’

Mrs. Beresford trembled so much that she could scarcely hold the bottle in her hand. ‘It is something that will put my pain away,’ she said, quite humbly. ‘O Cara, my darling, I must take it; it will put away my pain!’

‘Are you sure, quite sure?’ said the child. ‘Shall I ring for nurse, mamma, or shall I do it? My hand is quite steady. I can drop medicine as well as nurse can. Mamma, you are quite, quite sure it will do you good; then let me give it you.’

‘No, no,’ she said, with a low shriek and shudder, turning away from her. ‘No, Cara, not for the world.’

‘But I am very steady; and here is your glass, mamma.’

‘God forbid!’ she cried, ‘not you, not you.’ This last strange incident seemed to take from her the last excuse for delay, and hurried on her fate. She paused a moment, with her hands clasped close upon the little phial, and looked upward, her face inspired and shining with a wonderful solemnity. Then slowly she unclasped her fingers, sighed, and put it to her lips. It was not the right way to take medicine, poor little Cara thought, whose mind was all in a confusion, not knowing what to think. But the moment the deed was done, that solemn look which frightened Cara passed away from her mother’s face. ‘Ah!’ she cried, fretfully, wiping her lips with her handkerchief, ‘how nasty, how nasty it is! Give me a piece of sugar, a bit of biscuit, anything to put the taste away.’

Cara brought the biscuit, pleased to be of use. She picked up the bottle which had dropped out of her mother’s hand, and put it back tidily in the case. She smoothed the disordered pillow. Mamma had been vexed because papa would not tell her something, would not let her know the truth, which was precisely what Cara herself objected to in him; but perhaps papa might have reason on his side too, for she was not strong enough to be agitated. And no doubt he would come back presently and make amends. In the meantime it pleased Cara to be her mother’s sole attendant; she put everything tidy with great care, drawing the coverlet straight, and smoothing the bed. The medicine chest was too heavy for her to carry back to its proper place, but at least she put it exactly level upon the table, with the other things cosily arranged round it. Her mother, following her movements with drowsy eyes, smiled softly upon her. ‘Cara, come here,’ she said; ‘come and give me a kiss. You will be good, and take care of papa?’

‘Yes,’ said Cara, astonished. She was almost frightened by the kiss, so clinging and solemn, which her mother gave her, not on her cheek, but her mouth. Then Mrs. Beresford dropped back on the pillow, her eyes closing. Cara had finished her tidying. She thought the room looked more still than ever, and her patient more comfortable; and with a curious mixture of satisfaction and wonder she went back behind the curtain to nurse’s big chair. Then her mother called her again; her eyes altogether closed this time, her voice like one half asleep.

‘Cara, tell him I was not angry; tell him it is quite true—no pain, only floating, floating away.’

‘What are you saying, mamma?’

‘Floating, floating; he will know.’ Then she half opened the drowsy eyes again, with a smile in them. ‘Give me one kiss more, my Cara. I am going to sleep now.’

The child could not tell what made her heart beat so, and filled her with terror. She watched her mother for a moment, scarcely daring to draw her breath, and then rang the bell, with a confused desire to cry for help, though she could not have told why.