He that will not when he may; vol. I

“Could papa help him?” cried Alice, eagerly; “then you may be sure, quite sure, that he will do it. I will speak to him myself. They all say he always listens to me.”

“Will you?” said Mrs. Lenny. She grasped suddenly at the firm little hand in which Alice held the reins, and put down her head as if to kiss it, then looked up with a nervous laugh, winking her eyes rapidly to cast off some tears. “You are a dear little angel!” she cried. “But Lenny will do that, and I’ll do it. I won’t ask it of you, my pretty darling. It would be more than was right.”

Alice was somewhat affronted at this rejection of her proposal. She was bewildered by her companion’s demeanour altogether. Why should she cry? and then refuse her assistance when she could have been of real use? But that was, of course, as Mrs. Lenny pleased.

“This is the fishpond,” she said, more coldly. “It is very old, and there are some carp in it that are supposed to be very old too.”

The fishpond was a piece of clear and beautiful water embosomed in the richest wood. It was the very centre of all the beauties of the Chase to the Markhams. A little brook trickled into it over a little fall which made music in the silence, itself unseen, mingling a more liquid silvery tone with all the songs of the birds and the murmur of the trees. A little path wandered along by one side, the others were sloping banks of greensward. The trees on all sides stooped as if leaning over each other’s shoulders to see themselves in that fairy mirror, where they all fluttered and trembled in reflection between the glimmer of the water and the blue circle of sky, which filled up all the middle with blueness and light. Some light and graceful birches upon the bank seemed to have pressed further forward like advanced posts to get nearest the pool; a great cluster of waterlilies filled up one corner. Even the impatient ponies stood still in this soft coolness and shadow; perhaps they had caught a glimpse of their pretty tossing heads and arched necks. Mrs. Lenny’s bonnet shone in that mirror like an exotic bird, poised over it, and her exclamation of delight broke the quiet with something of the same effect.

“What a lovely place!” she said; “and it’s I that would live long if I were a fish in such a sweet spot. Dear, dear, if one lived here it would be a tug to die at all. And you have been here, my darling, all your life?”

“Oh, yes,” said Alice, with a little laugh at the ignorance of the question. “This is home, where else could I be? This is only the second season I have ever been to town. I went for a little while last year though I was not out. This summer I have been introduced,” she said, with a little innocent ostentation. “I am out now. I go wherever mamma goes.”

“Introduced?” said Mrs. Lenny, with a little awe, “to her Majesty—her very self? Tell me how she looked, and all about her. Dear lady! what I’d give to hear a word out of her mouth!”

“I did not mean that,” said Alice, feeling important and splendid; “introduced means going out into society. I was presented too—of course I had to be presented. Oh, there are the children down that opening—do you see them? It is holiday time, and they are all together.”

Mrs. Lenny looked round with eager interest, again swaying the little carriage to one side.

“Are you the eldest?” she said; “and you have two little brothers?—only these two?”

She looked quite anxiously in Alice’s face.

“Only these two—except Paul—and we are three girls—just the same number of each.”

“Who is Paul?”

“Who is Paul?” said Alice, laughing; “that is the strangest question here. Paul is the eldest of all—he is my brother. We all come in pairs. There is Harry and Bell, Roland and Marie—and Paul is mine. He is not very much at home now,” she said, her face clouding with the recollection. “He is grown up—he is at Oxford. In the holidays he does not always come home like the little ones. No one could expect him to be like the little ones. He is a man.”

To a cooler observer Alice’s eager explanations would have betrayed the family anxiety, of which Paul was the object. But Mrs. Lenny had other thoughts in her mind. She clasped her hands together in her lap, and said, “Dear me, dear, dear me!” with suppressed dismay. This suddenly reawakened all the girl’s fears. Had it been a mistake, a pretence after all? Was it no old connection, nothing to do with papa’s business? (what could papa’s business matter, it would not go to any one’s heart like the other) but after all some new evil that was threatening Paul?

“Mrs. Lenny,” she cried, “oh tell me first, for I can bear it; is it about Paul? Has he got into any trouble? Is it something about him you have really come to tell us! Oh, tell me, tell me! and keep it from mamma.”

“My dear,” cried Mrs. Lenny, confused, “what do I know about your brother? I never heard of him before, and oh, I wish I had not heard of him now. Do you think I would harm him if I had the power to help it? Not I—not I! if there was anything in my power!”

And with this the good woman let fall upon her gloves, which were green, a few tears. Why should she cry because of Paul if she did not know him? Fortunately for Alice the ponies at that moment gave her no small trouble. She had been thinking of other things and they took the advantage. They wanted to take her home the back way into the stables. Greedy little brutes! as if they had not everything that heart of pony could desire—plenty of corn, plenty of ease, and the prettiest stable with enamelled mangers and everything handsome about them. She stopped them as they began to twist round in the wrong direction, tossing their heads aloft. If they thought to take Alice unawares they were mistaken. Thus she was obliged to withdraw her attention altogether from Mrs. Lenny and fix it upon this rebellious pair, getting them past the dangerous byway and bringing them up with a sweep and dash to the steps of the great door.

CHAPTER VIII.

Meanwhile Sir William Markham had been strangely employed. He came home to get himself brushed free of the dust of his journey; but when he got to the house he thought of that errand no more. He asked for his letters as if these were all that he was thinking of. And you may suppose that in a house which knew the importance of letters, and was aware of all the momentous issues of neglect in that particular, Sir William’s letters were carefully arranged on the table in the library. He asked for them, which was unnecessary, and looked so full of business and importance, that Brown found “a screw loose” in his master too. This was not his usual aspect when he came home. Then the busy statesman allowed himself a holiday. Even when he was in office (much more being in opposition), he had put off his burden of official cares, and had strolled up the avenue with his wife without caring for his letters. When Brown answered respectfully, “They are in the library, Sir William;” within himself that functionary shook his head and said, “There is something wrong.” Sir William went into the library, which was large and dim and cool, the very home of quiet leisure and comfort—and closed the door after him with a sense of relief. His letters were all laid out on the table, but he did not so much as look at them. He sat down in his usual chair, and leaned his head in his hands, and gazed into the blank air before him. Was this all he had come for? Certainly he did nothing more: gazed out straight before him and saw nothing; sat motionless doing nothing; paused altogether body and soul. He was not aware yet of the second visitor who had arrived; but he was in no doubt about the first. He did not require to ask himself what his old friend,—whose name had tingled through and through him, though he had professed that he scarcely remembered it—wanted of him. That early chapter of his life which he had put away entirely, which he had honestly forgotten as if it had not been, came back to him in a moment, no longer capable of being forgotten as he sat by his daughter’s side in the little pony carriage. He had not meant any harm in putting it so entirely from him. But nothing is ever lost in this tenacious world. Bury a secret in the deepest earth, and some chance digger, thinking of other things, will bring it up without intending it. Exercise even the most innocent reticence about your own affairs, matters in which you have a perfect right to judge for yourself, and some time or other even this will come up against you like a crime. What harm had he done by burying in his own heart a little inconsequent chapter of his life, an episode that had come to an end so soon, that had left so few results behind? What results had it left? The only one had been promptly and conclusively taken off his hands. He had never felt it; he had never been conscious of any responsibility in respect to it. But that which had seemed to him nothing but a broken thread at twenty-five, was it to reappear against him at sixty like a web of fate perplexing and entangling his feet? A cold dew came out upon his forehead when he thought of his wife. Were she to hear it, were she to know, how could he ever again look her in the face? And yet he had done her no wrong. There had been no harm, no evil intention in his mind. Half inadvertence, and half a dislike to return to a matter which was an irritation to his orderly mind, as well as a recollection of pain—an incident that had come to nothing, a false beginning in life—were the causes of his original silence about his own youth and all that was in it. A man who marries at forty, is it necessary that he should unfold everything that happened to him at twenty-five? and he had been done with it all; had closed the chapter altogether so very long ago. That it should be re-opened now was intolerable. But yet Sir William knew that he must bear it; he must subdue all signs of annoyance, he must receive his unwelcome visitor as if he were pleased to see him, and ascertain what he wanted, and steal, if possible, his weapons out of his hands.

These were the thoughts in his mind as he sat alone and pondered, arranging his ideas. He had known what it was to be much troubled by public business in his day, but he had experienced little trouble with his own. All was orderly and well regulated in his private affairs: no skeletons in the cupboards, nothing anywhere that could not meet the eye of day. This was the very sting of the present occurrence to him. A secret! That he should be convicted of a hidden chapter of early indiscretion, of having taken a foolish step which might have coloured all his life! Though it was no wrong to her, his wife could scarcely fail to think it a wrong, and he could not but suffer in the estimation of everybody who heard of it. Already, was he not humiliated in his own eyes? But for this pause which enabled him to rearrange his thoughts, to settle his plan of operations, he felt that he must have been overwhelmed altogether. At last, with a sigh, he got up and prepared himself to issue forth out of his sanctuary, and meet the dangers that threatened him; he to be threatened with dangers of such a sort!—It was intolerable—yet it had to be borne. He went out to meet the party which he could hear coming up the avenue. Brown looked at him with suspicious eyes as he came into the hall. Could Brown know anything? did everybody know? Even Lady Markham, he thought, looked at him strangely, almost with alarm. But it is unnecessary to say that this was all in Sir William’s imagination. No one had as yet associated any idea of mystery with him. His wife only thought he was weary with the work of the session, and looking pale. She was standing talking to Colonel Lenny, waiting till Alice should draw up at the door. Sir William, with a faint gleam of returning pleasure, stood on the top of the steps and waited too; but then he was confronted by the vision of the pink bonnet by his daughter’s side. A pink bonnet! who had been talking of a pink bonnet? He came down slowly, half afraid of this and everything else that was new.

“In good time, Markham,” said Colonel Lenny, waving his hand; “here is another old friend come to see you. She is changed more than you are. From a girl, and a pretty one, she has grown an old woman, and that’s not a thing to be permitted; but an old friend, my dear fellow, and more than an old friend. Can’t you see it’s Katey? Katey, my wife?”

“Katey!” Even Sir William’s steady nerves gave way a little. His eyes seemed to give a startled leap of alarm in their sockets. For a moment the impulse in his mind was to turn and fly. Lenny was bad, but his wife was a hundred times worse; and she looked at him, leaning out of the pony carriage and holding out her hands as if she meant to kiss him; but that was more than flesh and blood could bear. “Katey!” he said; “I cannot believe my eyes. Is it Katey Gaveston after all these years? I know I’ve grown an old man, and everything has changed, but——”

“You never thought to see the like of me such an old woman? Ah, Will, but it’s true. I am Katey Gaveston, as sure as you stand there. I came after him, to stop him from making mischief. He don’t mean it—we know that; but he’s just as simple as ever. He blurts everything out.”

This speech went through and through Sir William. The light seemed to fail from his eyes for a moment; but when he looked round all was as before—Lady Markham talking to Brown, and Alice to the groom, who had come for the pony carriage.

“Hush!” he said, instinctively, with a shudder, giving her his hand to help her to step out. “Hush!” Then, making a little effort over himself, he added, “We are to have time, I hope, to talk over old stories quietly—at our leisure—no need to go back in a moment from the present to the past.”

“Nearly forty years—it’s a long way to go back,” she said. “We’ve grown old folks; but it’s better to take our time and talk it all over quietly, as you say. Yes, yes, quietly; that is by far the best way.”

Mrs. Lenny nodded till her bonnet seemed to fill all the atmosphere with pink mists of reflection, and laughed, filling the air with reverberations of sound, just as her bonnet did with flickering of coloured light; but she did not throw her arms round him in sisterly salutation; this was something saved at least.

Then he led her in ceremoniously to the great drawing-room, which was carefully shaded and cool and luxurious after the blaze outside. It was sweet with great bowls of late roses, full of flowers of every kind—a stately room such as Mrs. Lenny was not accustomed to see. She stopped short with a cry of admiration.

“What a lovely place! What a beautiful—beautiful house!” Then she put her handkerchief to her eyes. “To think, poor dear, who might have been the mistress of it all!” she said.

Sir William cast an alarmed glance behind him, but his wife was too far off to hear.

“You must recollect,” he said, “that then I had no house at all—no place to make—any one the mistress of. I never expected then to be master here.”

Mrs. Lenny sat down and wiped her eyes.

“It is a beautiful house,” she said. “I’ve been into the park, and seen a great deal; and when I think of all that’s come and gone, when I remember that you were nothing but a poor man, Will Markham, just as poor as all the rest of us—and to see you now, like a prince, with your lovely wife, and her sweet family—oh! I know you’ll forgive me, my dear lady; if your heart is as sweet as your face, you’ll forgive me; but I can’t help thinking that what is given to one is taken from another; and of them that never had a chance of happiness—them that are dead and gone—and the place where they might have been—remembers them no more.”

Lady Markham, who could not shut her heart to any distress, came and sat down by her and took her hand.

“I know what you mean,” she said. “When I have any sorrow it always comes upon me afresh in a new place.”

How far she was from knowing what her visitor meant!

Mrs. Lenny looked up surprised. Then two big honest tears burst out of her eyes, and her whole face lighted up with a smile.

“You are a darling,” she said, seizing Lady Markham’s soft hand in both of hers, “with a heart as feeling! But I am not crying for anything in particular, my dear—only out of excitement, and the strangeness of everything. You must not be so sorry for me.”

Here Colonel Lenny interposed, and pointed out to Lady Markham the tea-table which was awaiting her.

“Give her a big cup, my dear lady; that is what makes Katey happy,” he said. “What would she be without her tea? We men take something stronger, I don’t deny it; but we’re not so dependent upon anything. I could live without my smoke, and I could live without my drink—times have been when I’ve lived without eating too; but I can’t fancy my wife without a tea-pot.”

“Not altogether without eating, I hope. Take some cake now,” said Lady Markham, smiling, “to make amends.”

“I will have the cake,—but yes, altogether without eating—for as long as it lasted—that was two days; the time is apt to feel long when you’ve nothing to eat. I’ve always thought the more of breakfast and dinner and all the little bits of ornamental eating and drinking that we make no account of, since then. Oh I’ve told all about it to the boys. I’m getting to an end of my stories,” said the colonel. “Roland begins to know them better than I; he says, ‘That’s not how you told it before.’ That boy is as sharp as a needle; he’s the one you should make a lawyer of, my dear lady. Now Harry’s a born soldier; he’s up to everything that wants doing with the hands. Put him before a lion, and he’ll face it, that little fellow; and he takes in every word you say to him. But Roland by Jove, cross-examines you as if you were in a witness-box: ‘You said so-and-so before,’ or ‘How could you do that when you had just done so-and-so?’ He’s as keen as an east wind.”

“That is a very biting metaphor,” said Lady Markham; but it did not occur to her that the colonel was talking against time to beguile her attention and keep the conversation which was going on at the other side of the room undisturbed. There it was Sir William who was serving Mrs. Lenny with the tea his wife had poured out.

“She knows nothing,” he said, in a low tone. “I did not think it was worth while telling her. For God’s sake do not let her surmise it now.”

“I wouldn’t if I could help it, Will; but the boy—there’s the boy.”

“What boy? You mean Philip’s boy?”

Mrs. Lenny put out her hand and grasped his.

“Haven’t you heard? Philip’s dead, and the property all sold up, and nothing left for one belonging to him. He never learnt, like the rest of us, to scrape and save. It’s all gone—every penny. There was not so much to begin with, when you think upon it; and there he is, without a son.”

“My God!” said Sir William under his breath. He was not a man given to oaths, but he was suddenly overwhelmed by the danger that over-shadowed him which he had not thought of before. The evil he had feared was as nothing in comparison. He grew pale to his very finger-nails. “This is why you have come to me?” he said.

“Nothing but that—do I want to bother you? but he must be thought of, too. Will, the boy must not lose his rights.”

“He must be provided for,” said the baronet, gloomily; “but he has no rights.”

“Will! do you mean to bring his mother out of her grave? No rights! We came in friendship, but we’ll go in anger if there is any meaning in you to disown the boy.”

“I cannot say any more now,” said Sir William, hastily. “I will talk to Lenny to-night.”

“I don’t put my faith in Lenny for that matter. Will, you must satisfy me.”

“I will, I will, Katey! For God’s sake no more.”

Alice had come up to them in her easy grace of youth. She heard, if not the words, yet the tone in which they were said; and her father got up hastily and got behind the stranger to whom he was speaking so seriously, but who smiled upon the girl from her great chair.

“Come and talk to me, my pretty,” Mrs. Lenny said. “Your father and I have been reminding each other of things we had both forgotten, and they’re not such pleasant things as you. Come and cheer us up, my bonnie dear.”

Lady Markham was very well content to see the close conversation that was going on between her husband and this new guest. It took a great burden off her mind. This time she had made no mistake—the claim of the old friendship was real. No suspicion of any kind entered her thoughts. She leaned back in her chair with a grateful sense of relief, and felt glad that she had sent orders by Brown that Mrs. Lenny was to be put into one of the best rooms, thus promoting the colonel too. There remained only one little difficulty: Mrs. Lenny’s pink bonnet was a very fine article indeed, but she could not come to dinner in it. Where was she to find a toilette for the evening, since all her luggage, Lady Markham knew, consisted of a bag which she had left with the lodge-keeper? Lady Markham herself was somewhat particular about dress. She wondered privately what it would be best to do, as she leant back in her chair and listened to the colonel talking of Roland and Harry. She must put on, she concluded, the plainest article in her wardrobe, that Mrs. Lenny might not feel uncomfortable, and she must give Alice a hint to do the same. Thus the alarming sensations aroused by this meeting subsided, to all appearance.

“Yes, you did quite right; they are old friends, very old friends,” Sir William said from his dressing-room, in answer to his wife’s question. “Did I never tell you I spent two years in Barbadoes? Indeed I suppose I had almost forgotten myself. My uncle had left some property there, and not being of much consequence then I was sent out to look after it. It came to nothing, like most West Indian property. The Gavestons were a family of handsome girls. I—saw a good deal of them; most of the young Englishmen who were there frequented their house. Lenny among the rest. I scarcely recollected his name; but Katey Gaveston of course I was bound to know.”

“She implied, I think, that there once had been some—flirtation between you,” said Lady Markham, with a smile.

“Ah!” said Sir William—his voice sounded harsher than usual, though he was painfully civil and ready to explain—“perhaps there might have been—something. It is nearly forty years ago—it is not of much consequence to any one now.”

“No—you don’t think I mind,” she said, this time with a soft laugh. But he did not respond. He had not finished dressing, and he was very particular in his attire. His wife had taken a slight liberty, she felt, in disturbing him. Did she not know that he liked perfect tranquillity in that moment of preparation for dinner? It would not have occurred to him to put on a black neck-tie, or change the usual solemn dignity of his appearance on account of any visitor. Lady Markham was glad that her own very simple dress escaped notice, at least.

The other pair meanwhile were comparing notes in their rooms, where Mrs. Lenny’s preparations for dinner were by no means so simple as Lady Markham had supposed. The bag, on being opened, had proved to contain what she called “an evening body,” much trimmed with lace and ribbons. She regarded this article with great complacency as she pinned the ribbons across her bosom.

“I hope you don’t feel that you’ve any call to be ashamed of your wife, Lenny,” she said. “I hope I’m fit to sit down with my lady, or the Queen herself if she were to think of asking us. There’s the good of a real, excellent black silk, it does for anything; in the morning it’s one dress, in the evening it’s another. My Lady Markham will think I have trunks full when she sees me. She’s a sweet woman; I thought so before, but I think so more than ever now, to see the handsome room she’s put us in. That proves her sense. She can see I’m not one of the common sort. She doesn’t know anything about the connection, and she sha’n’t know it through me, to vex her, the pretty dear. She doesn’t even know he was ever in the island. After all, it’s a long time ago. She shall never hear a word of it through me.”

“That would be all very well,” said the colonel, “if there was only you and I; but you forget there’s another to think of.”

“I don’t forget; but there’s a deal more to think of than I supposed. Why shouldn’t he stay where he is? It’s the life he’s used to. And what would he do here? Money will never be wanting; and a little money would make him a great man where he is. Don’t interrupt me with your reasons, Lenny. He’s my flesh and blood, not yours; and I won’t do it, I haven’t the heart to do it. A lovely woman, and a pretty family as you could see. Don’t you know there’s the heir grown up—Paul they call him? If it had been but a small boy I shouldn’t have minded. And the other, what does he know about it? It can’t hurt him, what he doesn’t know. And he isn’t at an age to change his habits. He’s no lad—he’s a man as old as you or I.”

“Twenty years younger, and more.”

“What’s twenty years?” said Mrs. Lenny, indignantly. “He’s not an old man, if you please, but neither is he young. He’s a man at his best—or his worst, perhaps. We haven’t seen him since he was a boy. All’s fixed and settled about him. And to change his country, and his condition, and his way of living all in a moment!—who could do that? scarcely the best man that ever was. He wouldn’t know how to behave; he wouldn’t understand what was expected of him. He’d be miserable—and so would the others too.”

“I can’t argue with you, Katey,” said her husband; “you’re so used to having your own way. I won’t attempt to argue with you; but I know what’s justice—and justice must surely be the best.”

“Oh, justice!” cried the colonel’s wife, “where do you find it in this world? Is it justice that you’re only lieutenant-colonel of a West India regiment, when you ought to have been a general in the army? Don’t speak to me. I know you better than any one else does, and when I say that’s what you’re fit for you may be sure I’m not flattering. Does a man get flattery from his wife? We may get justice in another world, and I for one hope for it; but not here. And here’s just a case where justice would do more harm than good. It would do harm to both sides, and punish everybody. It would be real injustice and cruelty, and all that’s bad; and would you be the one to force it—and I to recommend it? No, no; I tell you no!”

“I can’t argue with you, Katey,” her husband repeated. “Have it your own way. It’s not my flesh and blood, as you say, but yours. But if it turns out badly, and you repent after——”

“Bless us all,” cried Mrs. Lenny, starting to her feet, “there’s the dinner bell!”

“I would advise you to put your cap on straight,” was all the colonel said.

When this couple entered the dining-room, Mrs. Lenny felt proudly that she had achieved one of the successes of her life. Lady Markham looking up at her as she marched in on her husband’s arm, with flowers rustling on her cap and lace on her shoulders, gave one look of bewildered admiration, Mrs. Lenny thought, then glanced at Alice to communicate her wonder. (“I knew she’d think I’d brought my whole wardrobe,” she said to the colonel after, “and for that matter, that is fit to be seen, so I have.”) The “evening body,” the lace, and the ribbons took Lady Markham altogether by surprise; and it cannot be said that her own simple toilet was appreciated by her visitor. But Mrs. Lenny was very kind after dinner, and explained the simple artifice to her hostess, by way of giving a lesson to one of the best dressed of women.

“You look very nice in your muslin, my dear,” she said, “and so does that pretty darling, that would look well in anything; but when you come to my time of life it makes a difference; and roaming about from place to place how could I have room for muslins? not to say that washing is a ruination. I have one evening body made with good black silk. It costs a little more at the time, but what does that matter? And there you are, both for morning and evening, quite set up.”

“It is a very admirable plan, I am sure,” Lady Markham said, with great seriousness, checking with a look the laugh that was in Alice’s eyes. The children were in the drawing-room, all four of them, very ready to make friends with their beloved colonel’s wife.

“I feel as if I had something to do with them. I feel as if I were their grandmother, though I never had a child of my own,” she said. Thus everything went harmoniously in the drawing-room, though the ladies were all a little curious to know what kept the gentlemen so long over their wine. Sir William’s coffee grew cold; he had never been known to be so late before.

CHAPTER IX.

“All died out, I believe,” Colonel Lenny was saying. “The last son lost his children one after another, and died himself at the last broken-hearted, poor man! The daughters were all scattered—but Katey knows more about them than I do.”

“I am really afraid to ask any more questions,” Sir William said. What more natural?

“Yes, my dear lady,” Colonel Lenny resumed, taking his old place beside Lady Markham; “we have been making the most of our time; for it is very likely we may have letters to-morrow, my wife and I, summoning us away. I don’t like it, and neither will she, and perhaps we may have another day, but I scarcely think it likely. I don’t know how we’re to drag ourselves away. You have been kinder than any one ever was; and the children have got a hold of my old heart, bless them!”

The colonel had genuine tears in his eyes.

“Lenny will tell you what I propose,” said Sir William on the other side. “It is not an easy position. I have always thought myself quite safe—quite free of responsibility; and now to be pulled up all at once; and when I think of my own boys——”

“Your own boys?” said Mrs. Lenny, raising herself very erect in her chair. “Oh, I feel for you—I feel for you, Will! but if you put the least bit of a slur on my sister or her child——

“Don’t make it worse,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I throw a slur! You know I never thought of anything so impossible—it is impossible; but how could I think of him as mine? Adoption has its rights—but Lenny will tell you what I propose.”

A short time after there were affectionate good-nights between the ladies. Lady Markham accompanied Mrs. Lenny to her room to see that she had everything she could desire.

“I am so sorry you must go to-morrow,” she said, half out of politeness, but with a little mixture of truth, for there was something in the genial warmth of the strange couple which touched her heart.

“My dear, it’s just possible we may have another day,” said the old campaigner.

The mother and daughter had a harmless little laugh together over Mrs. Lenny’s “evening body,” but they agreed that “papa’s old friends” were real friends, and adopted them with cordiality though amusement.

“She asked me a great deal about the family and about Paul,” Alice said as they separated.

“No letter again to-day,” said Lady Markham, with a sigh.

That name subdued their smiles. To think he should be the best beloved, yet so careless of their happiness!

“He is so forgetful,” they both said.

And with this so common family sigh, not any present or pressing trouble, only a fear, an anticipation, a doubt what to-morrow might bring forth, the doors of the peaceful chambers closed, and night and quiet settled down on the silent house.

No one knew, however, that the night was not so silent as it appeared. Sir William, of course, was left in his library when all the rest of the world went to bed. It was his habit. He wrote his letters, or he “got up” those questions which were always arising, and which every statesman has to know; or perhaps he only dozed in his great chair; but anyhow, it was his habit to sit up later than all the rest of the household, putting out his lamp himself when he went to bed. This night, however, after midnight when all was still, there was a mysterious conference held in the library. Mrs. Lenny came down the great staircase in her stockings not to make a noise. “I wouldn’t disturb that pretty creature, not for the world,” she said. “I wouldn’t let her know there was a mystery, not for anything you could give me.” And she spoke in a whisper during the course of the prolonged discussion, though Lady Markham was on the upper floor on the other side of the house, and safe in bed. It was Colonel Lenny who was the most stubborn of the conspirators. He spoke of right and justice with such eloquence that his wife was proud of him, even though it was she eventually who put him down, and stopped his argument. It was almost morning—a faint blueness of the new day striking in through all the windows and betraying them, when the Lennys with their shoes in their hands stole up stairs to bed. It would have been strange indeed if some conscientious domestic had not seen this very strange proceeding in the middle of the night; but if they did so, they kept the fact to themselves. Sir William took no such precautions. He shut the heavy door of the library almost ostentatiously, awaking all the silent echoes, and went up the great staircase with his candle in his hand. The rising dawn, however, cast a strange, almost ghastly look upon his face, doing away with the candle. He had told his wife that he had brought some papers from town that had to be attended to, and which had to be sent back to London by next morning’s post.

Next morning the Lennys appeared at the breakfast-table in travelling-garb, ready to go away. Mrs. Lenny had put on her pink bonnet not to lose time.

“Have you had your letters?” Lady Markham said, astonished.

“No, my dear, we have had no letters; that was to be the sign if we were wanted,” Mrs. Lenny explained. Sir William did not say a word. He did not join in the regret expressed by all the rest, or in the invitations proffered. “You must come back—promise us that you will come back,” the children cried; but their father maintained a steady silence which discouraged his wife.

The whole family accompanied the travellers to the door to see them drive away.

“I hope we shall see you again,” Lady Markham said; then added, oppressed by her husband’s silence, “when you come this way.”

“My dear lady,” said the colonel, kissing her hand like a Frenchman, “I shall never forget your kindness, nor my wife either; but most likely we shall never pass this way again. There is nothing in the world I should like better; but I don’t know if it is to be desired.”

“God bless you!” said Mrs. Lenny, taking both Lady Markham’s hands, “it’s not at all to be desired. Once for old friendship’s sake is very well. But if I ever come here again it will not be as an old friend, but for love of you.”

“That is the best reason of all,” Lady Markham said, with her beautiful smile. And she stood there waving her pretty hand to the strange couple as they drove down the avenue. Mrs. Lenny’s pink bonnet made a dotted line of colour all the way as she bobbed it out of the carriage window in perpetual farewells. This made the young ones laugh, though they had been near crying. Sir William alone said nothing. He had gone in again at once when the carriage left the door.

It was that very evening, however, that the letters arrived which cast the family into so great a commotion and obliterated all recollection of the Lennys. It had pleased Lady Markham that her husband, of himself, had begun to speak of Paul the next time they met after the departure of their guests. There was a certain tenderness in his tone, a something which was quite unusual. “Have you heard from him lately?” he asked with some anxiety, “poor boy!” This was so unusual that Lady Markham would not spoil so excellent a disposition by any complaint of Paul’s irregularity in correspondence. She replied that she had heard—not very long ago; that he was still in Oxford; that she hoped he would return for Alice’s birthday, which was approaching. Sir William did not say any more then, but he spoke of Paul again at luncheon, saying—“Poor fellow!” this time. “He has very good abilities if he would only make the right use of them,” he said.

“Oh, William!” cried Lady Markham, “he is still so young; why should not he make very good use of them yet? We were not so very wise at his age.”

“That is true. I was not at all wise at his age: poor Paul!” his father said.

The ladies were quite cheered by this exhibition of interest in Paul, who had not been, they felt, so good or submissive to his father as it was right for a young man to be. “He is letting his heart speak at last,” Lady Markham said when she was alone with her daughter; “he is longing to see his boy; and oh, Alice! so am I.”

“May I write to him,” cried Alice, eagerly, “and tell him he is to come home?”

They talked this over all the afternoon. Paul had not listened to any of their previous entreaties, but perhaps now, if he were told how his father had melted, if he knew how everybody was longing for him! There were two letters written that afternoon, full of tenderness, full of entreaties. “If your reading is so important I will not say a word, you shall go back, you shall be left quite free; but oh, my dearest boy! surely you can spare us a week or two,” Lady Markham wrote. Their spirits rose after these letters had been despatched. It did not seem possible that Paul could turn a deaf ear to such entreaties; and by this time surely he, too, must be longing for home. The future had not seemed so bright to them since first these discords began. Now, surely, if Paul would but respond as became an affectionate son, everything would be right.

Markham Chase was situated in one of those districts where the post comes in at night—a very bad thing, as is well known for the digestion, and a great enemy to sleep and comfort. No one, however, had the philosophy to do without his or her letters on that account. The ladies naturally never took it in consideration at all, and Sir William’s official correspondence did not affect his nerves. Lady Markham and her daughter came early into the drawing-room that evening, while it was still daylight, though evening was advancing rapidly. The children, who felt severely the loss of Colonel Lenny and his stories, and were low spirited and out of temper in consequence, went soon to bed. Lady Markham retired into her favourite room—the large recess which made a sort of transept to the great drawing-room. It was filled at the further end by a large Elizabethan window, the upper part of which was composed of quarries of old painted glass in soft tints of greenish white and yellow; and which caught the very last rays of daylight—the lingering glories of the west. Soft mossy velvet curtains framed in, but did not shade the window, for Lady Markham was fond of light—and shrouded the entrance dividing this from the great drawing-room beyond. The fireplace all glimmering with tiles below and bits of mirror above, with shelves of delicate china and pet ornaments, filled the great part of one side, while the other was clothed with bookcases below and pictures above, closely set. One of Raphael’s early Madonnas (or a copy—there was no certainty on the subject, Lady Markham holding to its authenticity with more fervour than any other article of faith, but disinterested critics holding the latter opinion) presided over the whole; and there were some pretty landscapes, and a great many portraits—the true household gods of its mistress. There she had seated herself in the soft waning light of the evening. Alice just outside the velvet curtains was playing softly, now an old stately minuet, now an old-fashioned, quaint gavotte, now a snatch of a languid, dreamy valse—music which did not mean much, but which breathed echoes of soft pleasures past into the quiet. The soft summer twilight fading slowly out of the great window, the cool breathing of the dews and night air from the garden, the dreamy music—all lulled the mind to rest. Lady Markham made not even a pretence at occupation. What was she thinking of? When a woman has her boys out in the world—those strange, unknown, yet so familiar creatures whom she knows by heart yet knows nothing of, who have dipped into a thousand things incomprehensible to her, filling her with vague fears and aches of anxiety—of what but of them is she likely to be thinking? She was groping vaguely after her Paul in strange places which her imagination scarcely took in. When the other boys were away they too had their share in her thoughts; but they were still in the age of innocence at school, not young men abroad in the world. Where was he now? She tried to figure to herself a scene of youthful gaiety—one of the college parties she had read of in novels. She was the more bold to think of this, as she felt that her appeal to Paul just despatched would surely detach him, for a time at least, from all such noisy scenes. Lady Markham’s imagination was not her strong point. She was floating vaguely in a maze of fancies rather than forming for herself any definite picture, when Brown came into the room with the letters. The music stopped instantly, and Alice, rushing at them, uttered a tremulous cry which made the mother at once aware what had happened. Only Paul could have called forth that cry of trembling satisfaction, delight, and alarm. Lady Markham got up at once and held out her hands for the letters, while Alice ran to light the candles. “I can see, I can see,” Lady Markham said. The mere fact that the letter was Paul’s made it more or less luminous in itself and helped the fading light.

Sir William, seated in his library by himself, had been thinking, with a difference, much the same thoughts. With a compunction and compassion indescribable, he had been thinking of his son. Paul, with all his foolish democratical notions, was yet the most aristocratic, the most imperious of young men, knowing nothing of the evils he was so ready to take upon him, generous in giving, but to whom it would be bitterness itself to receive. Would Paul ever turn upon him, upbraid him, curse him? A shiver came over his father at the thought—and along with this a horrible sense of the position in which this haughty young heir would find himself, if—— How was it that such a possibility had altogether escaped his mind? He could not tell: he did not know how to answer himself. Forty years is a large slice out of a man’s life. Even had it been some one fully known and loved, it would be unlikely that you should think of him with any persistency of reference after a separation of forty years—and a child, an infant, a thing with no personality at all! But still, he asked himself, had he never thought when Paul was born of the former time, far away in the morning haze of youth, when a young mother and a child had called forth his interest? Yes, he had thought of it; he had thought with alarm of what had happened then; he had been more anxious about his young wife than young husbands usually are—but no more. It had never occurred to him that his child had anything to do with the other. Strange blindness in a man so accurate! He said to himself, “It will come to nothing; it will be arranged; all will be well:” but in the same breath he said, “Poor Paul! God help him! What would happen to Paul, if——”

He had not been able to do anything all day for thinking of this: he had kept his blue-book before him, but he had made nothing of it. Sir William, whose understood creed it was that public affairs went before everything, could pay no attention to these public affairs. When the letters came in, in the evening, he received them languidly, not feeling that there was anything there which could interest him so much as his own thoughts. When he saw Paul’s handwriting an unusual stir arose in his elderly bosom. But he put it down, and took up a letter from his chief, which would be no doubt of far more importance to the country, with a last attempt to conquer himself. But the words of his chiefs letter had no sense to him; he could not understand what there was to be so anxious about. Smith’s candidature for Bannockshire—what did it matter? He made a rapid and novel reflection to himself about the trifling character of the incidents which people made so much of; then laid down the solemn sheet with its coronet, and took up the letter of his boy.

A few minutes after he walked into his wife’s sitting-room, the letter open in his hand. Lady Markham was seated close to the great window against the dying light, with a candle flaring melancholy on a table beside her, reading her letter. Alice, behind her, read it too, over her mother’s shoulder: surprise and trouble were on their faces. Alice had begun to cry. Lady Markham in her wonder and distress, was repeating a few words here and there aloud. “I can no longer hope for anything in this country of prejudice.” “Going away to a new world.” They were both so absorbed that they did not hear Sir William’s entrance till he suddenly appeared, holding out his letter. “What is the meaning,” he asked, “of this, Isabel? What is the meaning of it?” The indignation of the head of the house, which seemed to be directed against themselves, brought the two ladies with a sudden shock out of their own private dismay, and gave them a new part to play. Their hearts still quivering with the sudden blow which Paul’s disclosure had given them, they still turned in a moment into apologists and defenders of Paul.

“What is it?—from Paul, William? he has written to you too,” said Lady Markham, with trembling lips.

“What does it mean?” cried Sir William. “He is going off, he says—away—to Australia or New Zealand, or somewhere. What does it mean? No doubt he takes you into his confidence. If you have known of this intention long you ought to have let me know.”

“I am as much overwhelmed as you can be, William. I have just got a letter.” Lady Markham stopped, her lips trembling. “Oh, Paul, my boy! He cannot mean it,” she said. “It must be some fancy of the moment. At his age everything is exaggerated. William, William, something must be done. We must go to him and save him.”

“Save him! from what are we to save him?” Sir William began to pace up and down with impatience and perplexity. He was not so angry (they thought) as they had feared. He was anxious, unhappy, as they were, though querulous too. “What is the meaning of it? Follies like this do not spring up all at once. You must have seen it coming on. You must know what it means. What has he been writing to you about lately? Is there—any woman——?”

“William!” cried his wife.

“Well!—Alice, run away; we can discuss this better without you.—Well! it need not be anything criminal or vicious, though of course that is what at once you imagine it to be. Has he spoken of any one? Has he ever—— No, he would not do that. He is a fool,” cried the anxious father; “he is capable of any nonsense. But it need not necessarily be anything that is vicious—from your point of view.”

Alice had not gone away. She shrank behind her mother into the dim corner, yet to her own consciousness stood confronting her brother’s accuser with a resolute countenance, from which the colour had all gone out. Her blue eyes were open wide with horror yet denial. Whatever Paul might have done she was ready to defend him; although the possibility of any such wrongdoing went through her like a sword of fire. The light of the candle flickered upon her faintly, showing scarcely anything but her attitude, partially relieved against the lightness of the window—a slim, straight, indignant figure drawn up and set in defence.

“He has not written often lately,” said Lady Markham, faltering; “but oh, William, it is not possible; he is not capable——”

“What do you know about it” cried Sir William, almost roughly. “How can you tell what he is capable of? A young man will go from a house like this, from his mother’s side, and will find pleasure—actual pleasure—in the society of creatures bred upon the streets; in their noisy talk, in their bad manners, in all that is most unlike you. God knows how it is; but so it is. Paul may be no better than the rest. Alice, I tell you, run away.”

Lady Markham grew red and then deadly pale. She rose trembling to her feet. “Can we go to-night? Can we go at once?” she cried. “Oh, William, let us not lose an hour!”

“You know as well as I do there is no train after eight o’clock. Compose yourself,” said Sir William. “Nothing more than what has already happened can happen to him to-night.”

“We might get the express at Bluntwood—the train papa generally goes by—if we were to start at once” cried Alice, with her hand on the bell, her eyes turning from her father to her mother. The eager women on each side of him made the greatest contrast to the head of the house. Had Paul been dying instead of simply in a problematical danger, Sir William Markham would not have consented to leave his home in this headlong way, or take any step upon which he had not reflected. He waved his hand impatiently.

“You had much better go to bed,” he said, “and don’t worry yourself about a matter in which for the present none of us can do anything. I will go to-morrow. Sit down, Alice! Do you think Paul would thank you if you arrived breathless in the middle of the night? Try to look at the matter coolly. Excitement never does any good. I will go and see if he will listen to reason—to-morrow.”

To-morrow! It seemed to both mother and sister as if a thousand calamities, too terrible to think of, might be happening, might have happened, before to-morrow; and on the other hand, how, they asked each other with a pitiful interchange of looks, were they themselves to live through the night? No feeling of this description moved Sir William. He was very much disturbed and annoyed, but certainly it would do no good to any one were he to render himself unfit for action by foolish anxiety. Nor did he feel any of that vague horror of apprehension which filled their minds. He was a great deal more angry and much less alarmed about his son’s well-being. On the other hand, he was less sanguine; for he did not hope that Paul would listen to reason, as they hoped that by their entreaties, by their tears, by the sight of the misery his resolution would bring them, Paul might relent and give way. After a while Sir William returned to his library and to his blue-books, and the official letter which he had only half-read, which he had suffered himself to be so much influenced by parental feeling as to leave in the middle; and though he paused now and then to frown and sigh, and give a thought aside to the troubles of paternity, yet he went on with his work, and gave all the attention that was necessary to the public business, until his usual hour for going to bed.

Lady Markham and Alice spent their evening in a very different way; they read their letter over twenty times at least; they found new meanings in every sentence of it. Hidden things seemed to be brought out, emotions, penitences, relentings, by every new perusal. Sometimes these discoveries plunged them into deeper trouble—sometimes raised them to sudden hope. How little Paul was conscious of the subtle shades of meaning they attributed to him! They were like commentators in all ages; they found a thousand ideas he had never dreamed of lurking in every line of their author; and with all these different readings in their heads spent a sleepless night.

CHAPTER X.

Paul Markham was not in his rooms. The porter at the college gate looked curiously upon the party of people who asked after him. It was not the time of year when college authorities interfere with undergraduates; neither was a virtuous young man “staying up to read” likely to call forth their censures. The porter could not give them any information as to where to find Paul; the party (he thought) looked anxious, just as he had seen people look whose son had got into trouble: the father with wrinkles in his forehead, but an air of business and anxious determination to look as if there was nothing particular in it—nothing but an ordinary visit; the mother with a redness about her eyes, but a smile, very courteous, even conciliatory, to the porter himself, and so sorry to give him trouble; and an eager young sister clinging to the mother, looking anxiously about, staring at every figure she saw approaching.

“Here’s a gentleman, sir, as can tell you, if any one can,” the porter said. All three turned round simultaneously to look at the person thus indicated. He was a young man of not very distinguished appearance, who came carelessly across the quadrangle in a rough coloured suit, with a pipe in his mouth. He came along swinging his cane, smoking his pipe, not thinking of what awaited him. However, those three pairs of eyes affected him unawares. He looked up and saw the little group, and instinctively withdrew his pipe from his mouth. He had just slipped it quickly into the pocket of his loose jacket, and was trying to steal through the party under cover of a messenger who was passing, when Sir William stepped forward and addressed him—

“This man tells me,” he said, “that you are a friend of my son, Paul Markham, and can perhaps give us some information where to find him.”

While the father spoke, the two ladies looked at the young man with eyes half-investigating, half-imploring. He felt that they were making notes of his rough clothes, his pipe, which alas! they had seen going into his pocket, and of a general aspect which was not very decorous, and forming opinions unfavourable, not only to himself, but to Paul; while, at the same time, they were entreating him with soft looks to tell them where Paul was, and somehow—they could not tell how—to reassure them on his account.

Young Fairfax, who was not perhaps a very elevated member of society in general, was of a sympathetic nature at least. He was greatly embarrassed by their looks, and confused between the two sides, giving the attention of his eyes to the ladies on the one hand, and that of his ears to Sir William on the other. He felt himself blush at the thought of his own unsatisfactory appearance—his worst clothes (for who expected to meet ladies in August?) and the pipe, which both literally and metaphorically burnt his pocket. Lady Markham and Alice took the redness which overspread the stranger’s face, not as referring to the state of his own appearance (though they were keenly sensible of that), but as a sign that he had nothing that was comforting or satisfactory to say of Paul—and their hearts sank.

Young Fairfax coughed and cleared his throat.

“Markham?” he said. “I will go and see if he is in his rooms.”

“He is not in his rooms,” they said all together, a fact which the other knew very well.

When Fairfax found this little expedient of his to gain time did not answer, he ventured on a bolder step. “If you will go to Markham’s rooms,” he said, “I think I can find him for you. I know where he will be; that is to say I know two or three men’s rooms—where he is very likely to be.”

“Could not we go with this gentleman?” said Lady Markham, looking at him, though it was to her husband she spoke—and Alice looked at him too with a supplicating look which went to the young good-for-nothing’s heart. He gave the ladies a look in return which he felt was apologetic, and yet full of a protest and appeal to their sense of justice. What can I do? I cannot make him all that you wish him to be; was what he felt his look said; and this was really the sentiment in his mind, though he would have laughed at himself for it. They understood him well enough, and their hearts sank a little too.

“Impossible!” said Sir William, “how could you go to—a man’s rooms? perhaps into the midst of a—— party” he was going to have said riotous party, but forbore for the sake of the girl. “No, you had better take this—young gentleman’s advice—”

“My name is Fairfax” said the youth, taking off his hat. He blushed again, having kept that engaging weakness, though it is not by any means sure that he had kept the modest grace of which it is the sign: and a smile crept about his lips. The hearts of the two women rose a little. If things had been very bad with Paul he would not, they reasoned, have had the heart to smile.

“Mr. Fairfax’s advice,” said Sir William; “go to Paul’s room and wait there, and I will go with Mr. Fairfax to find him. That is much the best thing to do.”

“I may have to run about to one place and another,” said the young man alarmed; “it is a pity to give you so much trouble. Would not you, sir, wait with the ladies? I promise you to find him with as little delay—”

“I will go with you,” said Sir William, in his cold way, which admitted of no appeal; “you know the way, Isabel, to Paul’s rooms.” And thus they parted, the young man looking at the ladies again with a kind of dismayed protest: can I help it? He was very much dismayed to have Sir William with him. Fairfax had not much doubt as to where Paul was, and he did not think it was a place which would please his father. He felt already that he had established an understanding with the others which justified his glance of dismay. Lady Markham and her daughter turned very reluctantly away. They went across the quadrangle with drooping heads. Everything lay vacant in the sunshine, no cheerful bustle about, the windows all black, no voices, no footsteps, no lounging figures under the trees. Slowly they went across the light with their heads close together. “He knows where Paul is,” said Lady Markham, with a sigh. “But he did not want papa to go,” said Alice with another. They crept up the silent staircase and went into the vacant room, and sat down timidly, not venturing to look at anything. They were afraid of seeing something, even a book, which in Paul’s absence would betray Paul. His mother glanced furtively, pitifully about her. She was more bound by honour here in her son’s room, more determined to make no discoveries, than if her boy had been her enemy; and who can tell how the consciousness of this sank like a stone into her heart! A few years ago everything would have been so lightly reviewed, so gaily discussed—but now! The fringes of her cloak swept some papers off a side-table, and she let them lie, not venturing to touch them. Paul should not suppose that his mother had come to pry into his secrets. God forbid! He should be allowed to explain himself, to say the best he could for himself.

“Mr. Fairfax looked as if he knew everything. Did not you think so, mamma?”

“Oh, my darling, what can I say? He looked, I think, as if he were fond of Paul.”

“That I am sure he did. He was not very nice looking, nor well dressed; but these young men are very careless, are they not, when they are living alone?”

“I should not think anything of that, dear,” said Lady Markham, decidedly; “I think, too, though he was careless of his appearance, that he had an innocent look. He met your eye; there was nothing down-looking about him; and he blushed; that is always a good sign, and smiled at me, like a boy who has got a mother.”

“And he did not look at all frightened to see us; as he would have done had there been anything very wrong. I think he was rather pleased—it was papa he was afraid of. Now it is clear that if Paul had been—wicked, as papa said—(oh, Paul, Paul, I beg your pardon dear, I never thought it!)—it would have been you and me, mamma, don’t you think, that they would have been afraid of? They could not have borne to look us in the face if that had been true; whereas,” said Alice, in a tingle of logic, the tears starting into her eyes, “it was papa Mr. Fairfax was afraid of, not you or me.”

“That is true,” said Lady Markham, brightening slowly, but she did not take all the comfort from this potent argument that Alice expected. “Unless they are very intimate, he is not likely to know all that Paul is doing” she said, shaking her head. Paul’s room was far from orderly. Once upon a time he had been very fond of knick-knacks, and had cultivated china and hung plates about the walls. All that was gone now. Lady Markham looked at the bareness of the room with a pang. Would he have neglected it so if everything had been going well with him? Perhaps had it been much decorated she would have asked herself whether these meritricious ornaments did not indicate a mind given up to frivolity; but at this moment it seemed a curious and significant fact that the ornaments had all disappeared from his walls.

In the meantime young Fairfax was hurrying Sir William at a pace which scarcely befitted his dignity, or his years, along the streets. Probably the young man forgot that his companion was likely to suffer from this rapid progress; and when he remembered, he was not without hope of tiring the angry (as he supposed) father. But Sir William was a statesman and trained to exertion. He puffed a little and got very hot, but he did not flinch. Fairfax it was evident knew very well where he was going. He made a cunning attempt to deceive his companion by pretending to pause and wonder at the first corner; then he smote his thigh, and declared that of course he knew where Paul would be at this hour—not in any man’s lodgings—with the man who was teaching him—what was it? He could not recollect what it was—wood-carving, or something of that sort. “It is a good way off; would it not be better to let me fetch him?” he said, making a last attempt. “Let us get a cab,” said Sir William. “Oh, it is not so far as that,” said his guide, with a blush. Sir William had a half-suspicion that he was being led round and round about to make him think the way longer than it really was; but that part of Oxford had changed since his time, and he was not quite sure of the way. At last, however, when no further delay was possible, he found himself at the door of a little grimy house, the ground floor of which seemed to be occupied as some kind of workshop, where a man sat working. The place smelt of varnish and the window was full of small picture-frames, gilt and ungilt, and other very simple articles, carved workboxes and book-shelves. “Oh, Spears! has Markham been here?” the young man cried with a certain relief in his tone, evidently pleased not to see the person of whom he was in search. The workman looked up from his work. He was busy with a glue-pot, and the varnish which smelt so badly. He did not rise from his bench in honour of the gentleman, or remove his cap from his head. He said shortly, but in a voice of unusual sweetness and refinement—

“He is here still. He has gone up stairs, to wash his hands I suppose.”

“Ah!” said Fairfax. It was not a syllable, it was a sigh. He had hoped to have escaped easily; but it was not to be so. He went to the foot of the stairs, which led directly out of the workshop. “Markham!” he cried, “are you there? Come down at once; you are wanted.” How could he throw special significance into his voice? It sounded to himself just as careless as usual, though he had meant to make it very serious. “Markham, I say, there’s some one wants you—important! Come at once!” he added, going up a few steps.

Sir William stood stiffly down below, watching with the utmost attention, while the workman upon his bench eyed him with suspicious eyes.

Then Paul’s voice came still more lightly from above, striking strangely upon the ear of his father, who had never heard that tone in it before.

“Confound you, what’s the hurry?” Paul said. “If it’s a dun you ought to know better than to bring him here. I’ll come when I’m ready.”

“Markham! I tell you it’s of the first importance,” said the young man, going a step or two higher, but still quite audible to Sir William.

Then there came a burst of laughter from above, seconded by what sounded to Sir William’s suspicious ears like feminine voices.

“Is it the Vice-chancellor?” said Paul; “or the Provost? Say the word, and I’ll get out over the leads or through the window—”

The next moment he appeared, rubbing his hands in a towel, and without his coat, with a face more full of laughter than, Sir William thought, he had ever seen it before; and this time he felt certain that he heard women laughing up stairs. He was standing with his back to the light, and his son did not see him for the moment.

Paul came down stairs, gradually emerging, always rubbing his hands. He called out—

“Who is it, Spears? What is this fellow making a fuss about?”

“I cannot tell who it is,” said the workman; “it is some one who has come into my house without taking the trouble to notice me. I presume therefore that it must be what is called a gentleman.”

The sound of the man’s voice was so pleasant that Sir William did not at first realise the offence in it; and at that moment he was too much absorbed in watching the changes of his son’s countenance to think of anything else.

Paul emerged from the shadow of the staircase, which was like a ladder, his face full of amusement and brightness, entirely at his ease, and familiar with all about him. His hat was on and his coat was off, but that evidently made no difference; neither did he cease to dry his hands with the towel as he came leisurely down stairs. It was clear that he expected no one whose appearance could require any more regard to the decorum of formal life.

When he first caught sight of his father a cloud came over him. Sir William’s face was not visible, but Sir William’s figure and voice were scarcely to be mistaken. The father looked on while the first shadow of fear came over his son’s face; then saw it lighten with a desperate effort not to believe what was too apparent; then darken suddenly and completely with the sense of discovery and of the fate which had overtaken him. To see your child’s bright countenance cloud over at the sight of you, to see the struggle of hope that this may not be you, and despair to find that it is you, what mortal parent can bear this unmoved? It would have half killed Lady Markham.