John, A Love Story; vol. 1 of 2

“Mother, we want you,” said John; “give me your basket, and make haste. Miss Crediton has come down-stairs.”

“Miss Crediton!” cried his mother, with a gasp. “Oh, the impatient naughty child! to take advantage as soon as I was out of the way. And have you made acquaintance with her, John?”

“Yes,” he said, succinctly, taking the basket from his mother’s hand.

“Yes—is that all? But how did you introduce yourself, and what did she say, and what do you think of her? Oh dear, dear! I am afraid you must have been looking very forbidding, and frightened poor Kate—why was I away?”

“I don’t think I frightened her,” said John; “at least she laughed. I know I never laugh when I am frightened. She is all by herself in the big drawing-room. Take my arm, and come as quick as you can; she ought not to be left alone.”

“I don’t think she can come to any harm for five minutes,” said Mrs Mitford, and looked anxiously in her son’s face. She was a very good woman—as good a woman as ever was. But John was her only child, and Kate Crediton would be very rich, and was very nice and pretty and unexceptionable, and he had saved her life. Could it be wondered at if his mother was a little anxious about their first meeting? If she had not liked Kate, Mrs Mitford said to herself, of course she would never have thought of it. But she was very fond of Kate, and they were quite suitable in point of age; and John was so good—worthy a princess! What a husband he would make! his mother thought, looking up at him fondly. If Kate Crediton had such a companion as that, instead of some man of the world who would think less of her than of her money, what a happy thing it would be for her! But “Don’t you think she is very charming, John?” was all the designing woman said.

“Pretty, certainly,” said the young man, as if he had been speaking of a cabbage-rose, and with looks as steady as if his heart had not been working like a steam-engine, pumping warmth and life and waves of wild fancy through all his veins.

“Pretty!” cried Mrs Mitford, and drew her arm out of his in her impetuosity; “I don’t know what you young men are made of nowadays. Why, I was thought pretty once; and not in that calm manner neither,” she exclaimed, with a pretty blush, and a laugh at herself.

“Mamma mia, I never see anybody so pretty now,” said John, caressingly. “Perhaps if Miss Crediton lives thirty years longer, and keeps on improving every day, she may get somewhere near you at last. She has the roses and lilies, but not the same sweet eyes.”

“Foolish boy,” said Mrs Mitford; “her eyes are far nicer than ever mine were. Mine were only brown, like most other people’s—and Kate’s are the loveliest blue, and that expression in them! I thought my son would know better, if nobody else did.”

“But perhaps if your son did know better, it would be the worse for him,” said John, without looking at her. He put his hands into his pockets again, and stared straight before him, and attempted a little weak distracted sort of whistle as he went on; and then a strange thrill ran all over the little woman by his side. She had been dreaming of it—planning it secretly in her mind for all these days—thinking how nice a thing it would be for John, who was not one to get riches for himself, or acquire gain in this selfish world. And now, what if it had come true? What if her son, who was all hers, had at this moment, in this innocent June morning, while she, all unsuspecting, was comforting the village people—strayed off from her side for ever—taken the first step in that awful divergence which should lead him more and ever more apart into his own life, and his own house, and the arms of the wife who should supersede his mother? She bore it bravely, standing up, with a gasp in her throat and a momentary quiver of her lips and eyelids, to receive the blow. And he never knew anything about it, stalking on there with his shadow creeping sideways behind him, and his hands buried deep in his pockets; not a handsome figure, take him at his best, but yet all the world to the mother who bore him—and perhaps not much less, should she be such a woman as his mother was, to the coming wife. But surely that could never be Kate!

CHAPTER IV.

“Like crying,” said Kate, with a half-sob. They had left the gentlemen in the dining-room, and were straying round the garden in the twilight. Mr Crediton had been late, and had delayed dinner, and even the long June day had come to a close, and darkness was falling. The garden was full of the scent of roses, though all except the light ones were invisible in the darkness; tall pyramids of white lilies stood up here and there like ghosts in the gloom, glimmering and odorous; and the soft perfume of the grateful earth, refreshed by watering and by softer dew, rose up from all the wide darkling space around. “I think it must be because it is a rectory garden that it is so sweet,” said Kate, with a quick transition. By reason of being an invalid, she was leaning on Mrs Mitford’s arm.

“Are you fond of rectories?” said her kind companion. “But you might see a great many without seeing such a spot as Fanshawe Regis. It is a pretty house, and a good house; and, my dear, you can’t think what a pleasure it is to me to think that when we go, it will pass to my John.”

“Oh!” said Kate; and then, after a pause, “Has he quite made up his mind to be a clergyman?” she said.

“Yes, indeed, I hope so,” said his unsuspecting mother. “He is so well qualified for it. Not all the convenience in the world would have made me urge him to it, had I not seen he was worthy. But he was made to be a clergyman—even the little you have seen of him, my dear——”

“You forget I have only seen him to-day,” said Kate; “and then I don’t know much about clergymen,” she went on, demurely. “I have always thought, you know, they were people to be very respectful of—one can’t laugh with a clergyman as one does with any other man; indeed I have never cared for clergymen—please don’t be angry—they have always seemed so much above me.”

“But a good man does not think himself above any one,” said Mrs Mitford, falling into the snare. “The doctor might stand upon his dignity, if any one should; but yet, Kate, my dear, he was quite content to marry an ignorant little woman like me.”

“Do you think clergymen ought to marry?” said Kate, with great solemnity, looking up in her face.

Mrs Mitford gave a great start, and fell back from her young companion’s side. “Kate!” she cried, “you never told me you were High Church!”

“Am I High Church? I don’t think so; but one has such an idea of a clergyman,” said Kate, “that he should be so superior to all that. I can’t understand him thinking of—a girl, or any such nonsense. I feel as if he ought to be above such things.”

“But, my dear, after all, a clergyman is but a man,” said Mrs Mitford, suddenly driven to confusion, and not knowing what plea to employ.

“Should he be just a man?” asked Kate, with profound gravity. “Shouldn’t they be examples to all of us? I think they should be kept apart from other people, and even look different. I should not like to be intimate—not very intimate, you know—with a clergyman. I should feel as if it was wrong—when they have to teach us, and pray for us, and all that. Your son is not a clergyman yet, or I should never have ventured to speak to him as I did to-day.”

“But, you dear simple-minded child,” cried Mrs Mitford, half delighted with such an evidence of goodness, half confused by the thought of how this theory might affect her boy, “that is all very true; but unless they became monks at once, I don’t see how your notion could be carried out; and the experience of the Roman Catholics, dear, has shown us what a dreadful thing it is to make men monks. So that, you see, clergymen must mix in the world; and I am quite sure it is best for them to marry. When you consider how much a woman can do in a parish, Kate, and what a help she is, especially if her husband is very superior——”

“I don’t know, I am sure,” said Kate; “perhaps, in that case, you know, women should be the clergymen. But I do think they should be put up upon pedestals, and one should not be too familiar with them. Marrying a clergyman would be dreadful. I don’t know how any one could have the courage to do it. I suppose people did not look at things in that light when you were young?”

“No, indeed,” said Mrs Mitford, with a little warmth; “there were no High Church notions in my days. One thought one was doing the best one could for God, and that one had one’s work to do as well as one’s husband. And, my dear,” said the good woman, dropping into her usual soft humility, “I think you would think so, too, if you knew what the parish was when I came into it. Not that I have done much—not near so much, not half so much, as I ought to have done—but still, I think——”

“As if I ever doubted that!” cried Kate; “but then—not many are like you.”

“Oh yes, my dear! a great many,” said Mrs Mitford, with a smile of pleasure. “Even Mr Crediton’s pretty Kate, though he says she is a wilful little puss—if it came to be her fate to marry a clergyman——”

“That it never can be,” said Kate; “oh, dear, no! In the first place, papa would hate it; and, in the next place, I should—hate it myself.”

“Ah! my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, feeling, nevertheless, as if she had received a downright blow, “that all depends upon the man.”

They had come round in their walk to the path which led past the dining-room windows, where the blinds were but half dropped and the lights shining, and sounds of voices were audible as the gentlemen sat over their wine. It was the two elder men only who were talking—Dr Mitford’s precise tones, and those of Mr Crediton, which sounded, Kate thought, more “worldly.” John was taking no part in the conversation. Some time before, while they had still been at a little distance, Kate had seen him under the blind fidgeting in his chair, and listening to the sound of the footsteps outside. She knew as well that he was longing to join his mother and herself as if he had said it, and looked at him with an inward smile and philosophical reflection, whether a man who gave in so easily could be worth taking any trouble about. And yet, perhaps, it was not to Kate he had given in, but to the first idea of woman, the first enchantress whom he could make an idol of. “He shall not make an idol of me,” she said to herself; “if he cares for me, it must be as me, and not as a fairy princess.” This thought had just passed through her mind when she answered Mrs Mitford, which she did with a little nod of obstinacy and elevation of her drooping head.

“I am sure everything would not depend on the man, so far as I am concerned,” she said. “Men are all very well, but you must take everything into account before you go and sacrifice yourself to them. One man is very much like another, so far as I can see. One doesn’t expect to meet a Bayard nowadays.”

“But why not, my dear?” said Mrs Mitford. “There are Bayards in the world as much as there ever were. I am sure I know one. If it had been the time for knights, he would have been a Bayard; and as it is not the time for knights, he is the very best, the truest, and tenderest! No one ever knew him to think of himself. Oh, my dear! there are some men whose circumstances you never would think of—not even you.”

“But I am very worldly,” said Kate, shaking her head; “that is how I have been brought up. If I cared for anybody who was poor, I should give him no rest till he got rich. If I did not like his profession, or anything, I should make him change it. I don’t mean to say I approve of myself, and, of course, you can’t approve of me, but I know that is what I should do.”

“I think we had better go in and have some tea,” said Mrs Mitford, with a half-sigh. There was some regret in it for the heiress whom John had manifestly lost, for it was certain that a girl with such ideas would never touch John’s heart; and there was some satisfaction, too, for she should have her boy to herself.

“It is so sweet out here,” said Kate, with gentle passive opposition, “and there are the gentlemen coming out to join us—at least, there is your son.”

“John is so fond of the garden,” said Mrs Mitford, with another little sigh. She felt disposed to detach Kate’s arm from her own, and run to her boy and warn him. But politeness forbade such a step, and his mother’s wistful eyes watched his tall figure approaching in the darkness—approaching unconscious to his fate.

“We were talking of you,” said Kate, with a composure which filled Mrs Mitford with dismay,” and about clergymen generally. I should be frightened if I were you—one would have to be so very, very good. Don’t you ever feel frightened when you think that you will have to teach everybody, and set everybody a good example? I think the very thought would make me wicked, if it were me.”

“Should it?” said John,—and his mother thought with a little dread that he looked more ready to enter into the talk than she had ever seen him before; “but then I don’t understand how you could be wicked if you were to try.”

“Ah! but I do,” said Kate, “and I could not bear it. Do you really like being a clergyman? you who are so young and—different. I can fancy it of an old gentleman like Dr Mitford; but you——”

“I am not a clergyman yet,” said John, with a half-audible sigh.

“And Dr Mitford is not so old,” said his mother, “though I suppose everybody who is over twenty looks old to you; but Miss Crediton means that you must feel like a clergyman, my dear boy, already. I am sure you do!”

“I don’t see how you can be so sure,” said John; and perhaps for the first time in his life he felt angry with his mother. Why should she answer for him in this way when he was certainly old enough and had sense enough to answer for himself? He was a little piqued with her, and turned from her towards the young stranger, whom he had spoken to for the first time that day. “I am secular enough at present,” he said; “you need not be sorry for me. There is still time to reflect.”

“It is never any good reflecting,” said Kate; “if you are going in for anything, I think you should do it and never mind. The more one thinks the less one knows what to do.”

“And oh, my dear, don’t jest about such subjects!” said Mrs Mitford. “Don’t you recollect what we are told about him that puts his hand to the plough and looks back?”

“And is turned into a pillar of salt?” said Kate, demurely. “Mr John, that would never do. I should not like to see you turned into a pillar of salt. Let us think of something else. How sweet it is out here in the dark! The air is just raving about those roses. If you could not see them, you would still know they were there. I like an old-fashioned garden. Is that a ghost up against the buttress there, or is it another great sheaf of lilies? If I had such a garden as this, I should never care to go anywhere else.”

“My dear, I hope you will come here as often as you like,” said Mrs Mitford, with hospitable warmth; and then she thought of the danger to John, and stopped short and felt a little confused. “The Huntleys are friends of yours, are not they?” she went on, faltering. “When you are with them, it will be so easy to run over here.”

“Oh, indeed, I should much rather come here at first hand, if you will have me,” said Kate, frankly. “I don’t think I am fond of the Huntleys. They are nice enough, but—— And, dear Mrs Mitford, I would rather go to you than to any one, you have been so good to me—that is, if you like me to come here.”

“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs Mitford, half touched, half troubled, “if I could think there was any amusement for you——”

“Whether there may be amusement or not, there must always be a welcome. I am sure, mother, that is what you meant to say,” said John, with a certain suppressed indignation in his tone, which went to his mother’s heart.

“Oh yes,” she said, more and more confused; “Miss Crediton knows that. If she can put up with our quietness—if she does not mind the seclusion. We have not seen so much of the Huntleys as we ought to have seen lately, but when they are here——”

“I had much rather come when you were quite quiet. I love quiet,” said deceitful Kate, putting her face so close to her friend’s shoulder as almost to touch it in a caressing way she had. Mrs Mitford trembled with a presentiment of terror, and yet she could not resist the soft half-caress.

“My dear child!” she cried, pressing Kate’s arm to her side. And John loomed over them both, a tall shadow, with a face which beamed through the darkness; they looked both so little beside him—soft creatures, shadowy, with wavy uncertain outlines, melting into the dark, not clear and black and well defined like himself—moving softly, with a faint rustle in the air, which might almost have been wings. His mother and—— what was Kate to him? Nothing—a stranger—a being from a different sphere; yet, at the same time, the one creature in all the world upon whom he had a supreme claim, whose life he had fought for, and rescued out of the very jaws of death.

After this they went in with eyes a little dazzled by the sudden change into the drawing-room, where the lamps were lighted, and the moths came sweeping in at the open window, strange optimists, seeking the light at all costs. Kate threw herself down in a great chair, in the shadiest corner, her white dress giving forth (poor John thought) a kind of reflected radiance, moon-like and subdued. She sank down in the large wide seat, and gave a little yawn. “I’m so tired,” she said; “I think I shall make papa carry me up-stairs.”

“Not your papa, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, who, to tell the truth, was a little matter-of-fact; “not your papa. He does not look very strong, and it would be too much for him. The servants can do it; or perhaps John——”

John started up, and came forward with his eyes lit up, half with eagerness, half with fun. He had held her in his arms before, but she had not been conscious of that. “Oh, please!” cried Kate, in alarm, “I did not mean it; I only said it in fun—for want of something else to say.”

“That is Kate’s general motive for her observations,” said Mr Crediton, who had just then come in with Dr Mitford; “and heaven knows it is apparent in them! but if I don’t carry her up-stairs, I must carry her home. She must have been no end of a trouble to you.”

“Oh no—not yet, I hope,” said Mrs Mitford, still with some confusion. She cast a rapid glance over the situation. In less than three months John was going up for ordination. After that, she reflected, his mind would be settled, and such an interruption would do him less harm. “But I feel it is very selfish trying to keep her when, I daresay, you have a great many pleasant engagements,” she went on, with diplomatic suavity; “and we are so quiet here. Only you must bring her back again, Mr Crediton—that you must promise me—in autumn, or at Christmas the very latest——”

She caught John’s eye, and faltered and stopped short; and then, of all people in the world, it was Dr Mitford who interposed.

“I should say it was the doctor who had to be consulted first,” he said. “After an illness I make it a principle never to move till I have consulted my medical man. This is a rule which I never transgress, my dear, as you know—and we must do the same by our young friend. You can decide after he has been here.”

“But the fact is, Kate, if you don’t come at once you will come to an empty house,” said her father. “I have to go up to town on election business, and I should like to be here to take my girl home.”

“Then she shall wait till you come back,” said Dr Mitford; “and now that is settled, if you will come with me to my library I will show you the old charter I was speaking of. It is the earliest of the kind I have ever seen. You will find it very curious. It grants the privilege of sanctuary to all the Abbey precincts”—he went on, as he opened the door for his guest, talking all the way. They could hear the sound of his voice going along the oak passage which led to the library, though they could not make out the words; and somehow it seemed to have a kind of soporific effect upon the party left behind, who sat and gazed at each other, and listened as if anxious to catch the last word.

“What is all settled?” cried Kate, who was the first to break the silence. “Oh, please, am I to take sanctuary in the Abbey precincts, or what is to be done with me? I should so like to know!”

“Mr Crediton has consented that you should stay,” cried John, eagerly. Kate took no more notice of him than if he had been a cabbage, but bent forward to Mrs Mitford, ignoring all other authority. And what could that good woman do, who was not capable of hurting the feelings of a fly?

“My dear,” she said, faltering, “what would be the use of going home when your papa is going away? Much better stay with me, if you can make up your mind to the quiet. We are so very quiet here.”

“But you said Christmas,” said Kate, who was a little mortified, and did not choose to be unavenged.

“I said—I was thinking—I meant you to understand—— Oh! what is it, Lizzie?” cried Mrs Mitford, eagerly, as the maid came to the door. “Widow Blake?—oh yes, I am coming;” and she went away but too gladly to escape the explanation. Then there was nobody left in the drawing-room but Kate alone with John.

The girl turned her eyes upon him with their surprised ingenuous look, and then with profound gravity addressed him: “Mr John, tell me—you know what is best for her better than I do. Is it not convenient to have me now?”

“Convenient!” cried the young man; “how is such a word to be applied to you? It could never be but a delight to all of us——”

“Oh, hush, hush,” said Kate; “don’t pay me any compliments. You know I am only a stranger, though somehow I feel as if you all belonged to me. It is because your mother has been so kind; and then—you saved my life.”

“That was nothing,” cried John; “I wish it had cost me something, then I might have felt as if I deserved——”

“What? my thanks?” she said, softly, playing with him.

“No, but to have saved you—for I did save you; though it did not cost me anything,” he said, regretfully; “and that is what I shall grudge all my life.”

“How very droll you are!” said Kate, after a long look at him, in which she tried to fathom what he meant without succeeding; “but never mind what it cost you. My opinion is, that, after such a thing as that, people become a sort of relations—don’t you think so? and you are bound to tell me when I ask you. Please, Mr John, is it convenient for your mother to have me now?—should I stay now? I shall be guided by what you say.”

He gave an abrupt idiotic laugh, and got up and walked about the room. “Of course you must stay,” he said; “of course it is convenient. What could it be else? It would be cruel to leave us so abruptly, after all.”

“Well, I am very comfortable,” said Kate; “I shall like it. The only thing was for your mother. If she should not want me to stay—but anyhow, the responsibility is upon you now; and so, as Dr Mitford says, as we have settled that, tell me what we are going to do.”

“To do?” said John, with open eyes.

“To amuse ourselves,” said Kate; “for I am a stranger, you know. How can I tell how you amuse yourselves in this house?”

“We don’t amuse ourselves at all,” said John; and as he had been coming nearer and nearer, now he drew a chair close to her sofa, and sat down and gazed at her with a new light in his face. He laughed, and yet his eyes glowed with a serious fire. He was amused and surprised, and yet the serious nature underneath gave a certain meaning to everything. He took the remark not as the natural expression of a frivolous, amusement-loving creature, but as a sudden, sweet suggestion which turned to him all at once the brighter side of life. “I think we have rather supposed that amusement was unnecessary—that it was better, perhaps, not to be happy. I don’t know. In England, I suspect, many people think that.”

“But you are happy—you must be happy,” said Kate. “What! with this nice house, and such a nice dear mother—and Dr Mitford too, I mean, of course—and just come from the university, which all the men pretend to like so much. I do not believe you have not been happy, Mr John.”

“I am very happy now,” said John Mitford, with a dawning faculty for saying pretty things of which he had been himself totally unconscious. He did not mean it as a compliment; and when Kate gave the faintest little shrug of her pretty shoulders, he was bewildered and discouraged. The words were commonplace enough to her, and they were not commonplace but utterly original to him. He was happy, and it was she who had made him so. It never occurred to the young man that any fool could say as much, it was so simply, fully true in his case. And he sat and glowed upon her with his new-kindled eyes. Yes, it was true what she said—she was a stranger, and yet she belonged to them; or rather, she belonged to him. He might not be worthy of it. He had done nothing to deserve it, and yet through him her life had come back to her. He had saved her. He was related to her as no man else in the world was. Her life had been lost, and he had given it back. His mind was so full of this exulting thought that he forgot to say anything; and as for Kate, she had to let him gaze at her, with amusement at first, then with a blush, and with a movement of impatience at the last.

“Mr John,” she said, turning her head away, and taking up a book to screen her, “I am sure you don’t mean to be disagreeable; but—did you never—see—a girl before?”

“Good heavens! what a brute I am!” cried poor John; and then he added humbly, “no, Miss Crediton, I never saw—any one—before.”

Upon which Kate laughed, and he, taking courage, laughed too, withdrawing his guilty eyes, and blazing red to his very hair. And when Mrs Mitford came back, she could not but think that on the whole they had made a great deal of progress. The two fathers were in the library for a long time over that charter, and Kate’s merry talk soon beguiled the yielding mother. When the tea came, she sat apart and made it, and watched the young ones with her tender eyes. It seemed to her that she had never seen her boy so happy. “She must have been making fun of me with all that about the clergymen,” Mrs Mitford said to herself; “and but for that, what could I desire more?” And she thought of John’s happiness with such a wife, and of Kate’s fortune, and of what a blessing it would be if it could be brought about; and sighed—as indeed most people do when it appears to them as if their prayers were about to be granted, and nothing left to them more to desire.

CHAPTER V.

“I suppose it’s for your mother’s sake,” he answered, looking down upon his child with eyes which were liquid and tender with love; but such a little episode was only for a moment. “Let us come back to our subject,” he said. “Don’t make that boy unhappy, Kate. That would be a very poor return. He looks something of a cub, but I hear he is a very good fellow, and he saved your life. Let him alone. He deserves it at your hands.”

“What! to be let alone! What a curious way of showing one’s gratitude!” cried Kate. “No, papa, I know a way worth two of that. He shall be my friend. There shall be no nonsense—that I can promise you; but to pay no attention to him would be horribly ungrateful. I could not do it. Besides, he is very nice—not the sort of man you would ever fall in love with, but very nice—for a friend.”

“Ah! I put no faith in your friends,” said Mr Crediton, shaking his head. “I have a great mind to take you home after all.”

“But that would be breaking faith with Mrs Mitford,” said Kate. Her father turned upon her one of those strange, doubtful looks, with which men often compliment women—as much as to say, You wonderful, incomprehensible creature, I don’t know what you would be at. I can’t understand you; but as I must trust you all the same——“Well,” he said, aloud, with a shake of his head, “I suppose you must have your way; but I won’t have this young fellow made game of, Kate.”

“As if I could ever think of such a thing!” she said, indignantly; and thus he had to go at last, not without a qualm of conscience, leaving Kate and her dresses and her maid in possession of the house. She stayed most of the morning in her own room after he had gone, that nobody might say she was too impetuous in her rush upon the prey, but came down to luncheon with all the charming familiarity yet restraint of a young lady staying in the house, ready to be amused, and yet demanding nothing. The first thing she met when she entered the room was John’s eyes watching the door, looking for her. Poor fellow!—those same eyes which had struck her first when she opened her own in this strange yet so familiar house.

“I do not know that we have ever had a young lady here before. Have we ever had a young lady here before, my dear?” said Dr Mitford. “As it is an opportunity which does not occur every day, we must make the most of it. Miss Crediton, Mrs Mitford, of course, has her own occupations, but, so far as the men of the house are concerned, command us—you must let us know what you like best.”

“Oh, please, Doctor Mitford! fancy my dragging you out to go places with me,” cried Kate. “I should be so dreadfully ashamed of myself! I don’t want to do anything, please. I want you to let me be just as if I were at home. I want to go to the schools, and the poor people, and take walks, and play croquet, as if I belonged to you;” and then she recollected herself, and caught a curious ardent look from John, and a still more curious inquiring one from his mother, and blushed violently, and stopped short all at once.

“But that cannot be,” said Dr Mitford, who noticed neither the blush nor the sudden pause, and, indeed, did not understand why conversation should be interrupted by such foolish unforeseen accidents. “I hope we are not so regardless of the duties of hospitality as that. Let me think what there is to see in the neighbourhood. What is there to see, John? There is a very interesting Roman camp at Dulchester, and there are some curious remains of the old Abbey at St Biddulph’s, about which there has been a great deal of controversy: if you are at all interested in archæology——”

“Oh, please!” cried Kate, and then she gave Mrs Mitford a piteous look, “don’t let me be a nuisance to any one—pray don’t. I shall be quite happy in the garden, and taking walks about. If I had thought I should be a nuisance to any one I should have gone home.”

“On the contrary,” Dr Mitford went on in his old-fashioned way, “John and I will feel ourselves only too fortunate. Mrs Mitford is always busy in the parish—that is her way; but if you will accept my escort, Miss Crediton——”

And the old gentleman waved his hand with old-fashioned gallantry. He was a little old gentleman, with beautiful snow-white hair and a charming complexion, and the blackest of coats and the whitest of linen. He was so clean that it was almost painful to look at him. He was like a Dutch house, all scrubbed and polished, and whitened and blackened to absolute perfection. He was not a man who thought it wrong theoretically to be happy, though his son had almost hinted as much; but it never occurred to him to take any trouble about the matter. In short, his nature made no special demands upon him for happiness. If things went well it was so much the better; if not, why, there was no great harm done. He was above the reach of any particular strain of evil fortune. Nothing could be more unlikely than that he should ever have to change his dinner-hour, or any of his favourite habits; and if his wife or his son had been very ill, or had died, or any calamity of that sort had happened, the Doctor hoped he had Christian fortitude to bear it; and anything less than this he could scarcely have realised as unhappiness. Why, then, with the dinner-hour immovable, and everything else comfortably settled, should people trouble themselves searching for amusement? The worst of this principle was, that when it came to be a right and necessary thing to seek amusement—when, for instance, a young lady was staying in the house—Dr Mitford was a little embarrassed. Amusement had become a duty in such a case, but how was it to be found? So he thought of the Roman camp and the ruins of St Biddulph’s, and that was all the length his invention could reach.

“She is not strong enough yet for these long expeditions,” said Mrs Mitford, coming to Kate’s aid; “she must be left quite quiet with me, I think. I am sure that will be the doctor’s opinion. Yes, my dear, I will take you to the schools; there are some such nice little things that it is a pleasure to teach, and there are some of my poor people that I know you would like——”

“Mother, mother, do you think that is what interests Miss Crediton?” said John, with that quick sense of his parents’ imperfections which is so common to the young. A Roman camp on the one side, and the old women in the village on the other, proposed as amusement for this bright-eyed fairy creature, to whom every joy and rapture that the world possessed must come natural! Did not music seem to come up about her out of the very earth as she walked, and everything to dance before her, and the flowers to give out sweeter odours, and the very sun to shine more warmly? John was not learned in delights, any more than his father and mother, but yet nothing less than the superlative was good enough for her—to preside over tournaments, and give prizes of love and beauty; to be the queen of the great festivals of poetry; to have everything indefinite and sweet and splendid laid at her feet. It was so strange that they should not understand!

“I shall delight in seeing the old women,” said Kate, with a laugh, which he thought was addressed to him; “but, indeed, I don’t think I can teach anything—I am so dreadfully ignorant. You can’t think how ignorant I am. We have a school at Fernwood, and I went once and they gave me sums to look over—sums, Mrs Mitford—only fancy! and I was to tell if they were right or wrong. It was little chits of eight or nine that had done them, and I could not have done one for my life; so, please, I can’t pretend to teach.”

“My dear,” said Mrs Mitford, beaming upon her with maternal eyes, “you are not a clergyman’s wife.”

“Thank heaven!” said Kate; and then it occurred to her that she had been rude, and the colour stole to her cheek. “Oh, I beg your pardon; I did not mean to be impertinent.”

“You were not impertinent, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, with a sigh. “I daresay you are quite right. One likes one’s own lot best, you know; but unless you took to it, there could not be much pleasure in being a clergyman’s wife.”

“Oh, please, don’t think I was rude,” cried Kate, “to you, dear Mrs Mitford, that have been so very, very good to me! All I thought was, that perhaps—nowadays,—but never mind what nonsense came into my head. May I go to see Lizzie’s mother? I have been hearing so much about her, and about the trouble they have with the big lads.”

“My dear, that is not amusement for a young lady,” said Dr Mitford. “If you will come with me, Miss Crediton, I assure you, you will like it better. I will drive you to the Roman camp. There are some measurements I want to verify. I am writing a paper for the Archæological Society, and they are sad fellows to pick holes in one’s coat. You must tell them, John, to have the phaeton out, and I will drive Miss Crediton over to Dulchester this afternoon. We could not have a more charming day.”

“And you can call at the Huntleys, and have some tea, Doctor,” said Mrs Mitford; “it is a long drive. Miss Crediton is a friend of theirs. It will be more amusing for her; and if you would ask the girls to come over to-morrow, perhaps we might get up a croquet-party. Frederick Huntley has come home, so that would be another man. There are no young men in the parish, that is the sad thing, when one wants to get up a little party,” said Mrs Mitford, with depression. She was looking quite weary and miserable, and did not know what to do with herself. Amusement for the young lady staying in the house! How was she to procure it? You feed caterpillars, when you collect them, with green leaves, and birds have their appropriate seed, and even sea-anemones in an aquarium; but when there are no young men in a parish, how are you to feed a stray young lady? This was the frightful problem which clouded over Mrs Mitford’s soul. And this was complicated by the harder difficulty still, which continually returned upon her—a girl who thanked heaven she was not a clergyman’s wife! Was it right to leave such a creature in unfettered intercourse with John?

Kate made one or two ineffectual struggles to deliver herself from her fate, but when she saw the phaeton drive up—an ancient spiderylooking vehicle, with room only for two—her spirit was cowed within her. There was no way of escape short of being taken suddenly ill, and she could not be so unkind as that. She reserved the card in her hand for future use, should this persecution be continued. “I hope I shan’t get ill when Dr Mitford is so kind,” she said, as she was helped into the shabby little carriage. It was the only one they had at Fanshawe, and they thought a great deal of it. It was high, and the wheels were large, and the hood toppled about so, it looked as if it must tumble down on their noses every minute—and Kate had carriages of her own, and knew what was what in this respect; and she did not care in the least about the Roman camp, and the roads were very dusty, and would spoil her clean pretty dress. Nevertheless she had to yield like a martyr, and indeed felt herself very like one as she drove away by Dr Mitford’s side, leaving John standing looking very blank on the lawn. “Why could not he come too?” Kate said to herself; and called him fainéant and sluggard in her heart. But, after all, there was no room for John. He watched, feeling much more blank even than she did, as the carriage rattled away, and by-and-by was joined by his mother, who, for her part, was rather pleased to get rid of her visitor for half a day at least. Mrs Mitford laid her hand on her son’s shoulder as she came to him, but John took no notice, and only gazed the more at the carriage rattling and grinding and wheezing away.

“My dear boy!” she said, looking at him with tender admiring eyes, and smoothing his sleeve with her soft hand as if she loved it, “don’t look after them like that. You have seen the camp at Dulchester before now.”

“Oh yes—fifty times at least,” said John, turning away with a derisive grin. “You don’t think I care for that?”

“Then why should you look so blank?” said his mother. “Miss Crediton is very nice, but, do you know, I am afraid it will be very hard work entertaining her. I am sure I don’t know what to do. If the Huntleys come to-morrow, that will be enough (I hope) for one day. And then we might have a dinner-party; but I can’t think she would care for a dinner-party. I am sure I should not at her age. Your papa thinks that is the proper thing; but fancy one of our ordinary parties, with the Fanshawes and the Lancasters and the doctor, and some curate to fill up—what would that be to her?”

“Mamma,” said John, “I am sure you are taking a great deal too much trouble. Why not leave Miss Crediton alone? She has gone to-day only to please my father. She does not care for Roman camps any more than I do, nor for a drive in a shabby old phaeton with defective springs.”

“My dear, you are doing her injustice,” said Mrs Mitford, with severe loftiness. “She is rather frivolous, I fear; but still, you may be sure Kate understands that to have the Doctor to drive her, and tell her all about the country, is what very few people attain.”

To this speech John made no reply. The carriage was out of sight, and even the dust it had raised had dropped peacefully to earth again; but still the young man stood with a dissatisfied face. “I could have taken her for a walk, and she would have liked it better,” he said—“at least I should have liked it better; and I am sure she does not want such a fuss made over her, mamma.”

“You would have liked it better!” said Mrs Mitford. “Oh, my dear, dear boy! did you hear what she said this morning, John, about a clergyman’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“And yesterday what a tirade about clergymen! She made me half angry. As if your papa would have been a better man had he not married me!”

“I don’t think that was what she meant,” said John. “My father—is—different. One does not think of him, nor of what is. One thinks of what is to be.”

“Then, perhaps, you agree with her, and think clergymen should not marry?” said Mrs Mitford, with a little heat. “Oh John! if you were to turn out a Ritualist, I think it would break my heart.”

“I don’t intend to turn out an anythingist,” said John, shutting his face up into an obstinate blank which his mother knew. She gave a sigh, and shook her head, and once more softly stroked his arm.

“And since we are speaking of this,” she said, sinking her voice, and smoothing down his sleeve more and more tenderly, with her eyes fixed on it, as if that was the object of her thoughts, “I have one little word to say to you, John—just one word. My dear boy! you are very young, and you don’t know the world, nor the ways of girls. She is very pretty, and winning, and all that; but I would not put myself too much at her service, if I were you. It might not be good for yourself—and it might put things in her head.”

“Put things in her head,” echoed poor John. “O mother, mother! as if she would care twopence if she never saw me again! But I know what you mean, and I don’t mean to lose my head or my senses. She is out of my reach. I am not so simple but I can see that.”

“And that is just what I can’t see,” said his mother, sharply. “She is not a duchess; but, my dear, the prudent way is to have no more to do with her than just friendliness and civility. I am so glad you see that.”

“Oh yes, I see it,” John replied, with a shrug of his shoulders. “I’ll go and see to the mowing of the lawn, since there’s to be croquet to-morrow—a thing I detest,” he added, with irritation, as he moved away. Poor John! His mother looked after him, wondering was he really so wise as he said, or was this mere pride and disappointment—or what was it? There had never been a young lady before at Fanshawe Regis since the boy had grown up; for Miss Lancaster at the Priory was nearly old enough to be his mother, and the young Fanshawes were very delicate, and always travelling about in search of health, and the Doctor’s little girls were in the nursery. And as for the Huntleys, though they were so rich, they were comparatively new people in the country, and the girls were plain; so that pretty Kate Crediton was doubly dangerous. Ah! if she had only been a good girl—one of those girls who are so common—or at least everybody says so—who adore clergymen, and work slippers for them! Few such young ladies had fallen in Mrs Mitford’s way; but she believed in them, on the authority of the newspapers, as most people do. If Kate had been but one of those, with her nice fortune and her nice position, and her pretty manners and looks, what a thing for John! Mrs Mitford heaved a sigh over this dream, which, alas! it seemed but too clear she must relinquish; and with the sigh breathed a prayer that her boy might be protected from all snares, and not led into temptation more than he could bear.

John himself went off peremptorily to the gardener, and disturbed him among his vegetables. He was busy with the cucumbers, and considered the lawn at that moment worse than vanity. But John’s temper was up, thanks to his father who had thus carried her off from him under his very nose, and poor Roots had no chance against him. When he had effectually spoiled that poor man’s morning’s work, the young fellow went off sullenly enough with his fishing-rod. She was out of his reach, no doubt. She thanked heaven she was no clergyman’s wife; but yet—— The only man in the world, so far as John knew, who had any right to her was himself—more right than her father. Her life was his, for he had given it back to her. Of all ties on earth, could there be one more binding? not that he meant to make any ungenerous use of his claim, or even to breathe it in words; but yet he knew it, and she knew it. He had given her back her life.

CHAPTER VI.

“Yes, no doubt,” said Kate, politely, longing all the time to take the reins into her own small nervous fingers. Dr Mitford had a nice little white soft hand—a clergyman’s hand—without any bone or fibre in it. “We made up our minds quite suddenly,” she went on, “that we would go back from Humbledon to Camelford, riding. I had often heard of Fanshawe Regis, but I never saw it before.”

“Most people have heard of Fanshawe Regis,” said the Doctor. “I consider my library one of the lions of the country—not that it is so very old, only Elizabethan, or, at the farthest, Henry the Seventh; but household architecture is a thing by itself. We expect the Archæological Society to hold its next meeting at Camelford, and then I hope much light may be thrown upon our antiquities. We shall make an excursion to Dulchester, Miss Crediton, and you must come with us there.”

“Oh, I am sure I am much obliged,” said Kate.

“You would enjoy that,” said Dr Mitford. “Downy is sure to be there from Oxford, and I should not wonder if he gave a lecture on it. He is one of the very great guns. He understands more about it than almost any man in England, I must say, to do him justice. But almost is not all, my dear Miss Crediton; and when you see a man setting himself up for an authority in presence of others who——” Here the Doctor stopped, and laughed a conscious complacent laugh; by which Kate perceived that Dr Mitford himself was a greater authority still, or at least thought he was.

“It is very funny,” said Kate, “but I shall be better off going with you than if I had half-a-dozen archæological societies. I feel quite sure of that.”

“Well, well, we must not brag,” said Dr Mitford, waving his white hand softly. “This camp, you must know, was one of the camps of Agricola, which he made on his journey northwards. It is constructed——”

And so the narrative went on. Kate kept looking up at him with her bright eyes, and said yes, and said no, and made herself very agreeable; but I cannot undertake to say that she was much the better for it. In the first place, she took no interest whatever in Roman camps, and then she had a good deal on her mind. What was John about all this time? Why did not he manage to get into the phaeton in his father’s place, and drive her? If the horse had not been the meekest and most long-suffering of animals, Kate felt that there must have been another running away, and another accident. And her recent experience had made her nervous. When she had received an immense deal of information about the castrum which she was going with so little enthusiasm to visit, she suddenly caught a glimpse of a group of turrets among the trees, and gave a start, which made Dr Mitford and his horse swerve aside, and shook the hood of the phaeton so that it nearly descended upon the party, burying them alive.

“Oh, there is Westbrook, where the Huntleys live!” cried Kate. “I beg your pardon, Dr Mitford, I am sure. Mrs Mitford said we were to call. Don’t you think we had better go now, in case they should be out? There was a message, you know, that you were to give.”

“Oh, about croquet,” said the Doctor, and his brow was slightly ruffled. He would not allow, even to himself, that his instruction was slighted; but still he felt that she had been able to see the towers of Westbrook at the very moment when he was affording her every information. But he was too polite to make any objection. Westbrook was a very fine house, but its turrets were new, and its wealth had been made, not inherited, for which half the country said, “So much the more credit to the Huntleys;” and all the country, even the poor clergymen and the country doctors, looked down upon them, though not upon their parties, which were unexceptionable. Mr Crediton being himself only a banker, had not much indulged in this universal condescension; and Kate was very glad to bethink herself of the Huntleys at this special moment. They were better than Dulchester, and the phaeton with the unsteady hood. There were two sons and two daughters. The girls were plain, and no way remarkable; neither was Willie, the second son; but Fred was very clever—so clever that nobody knew what was to be done with him. He had taken a first-class at Oxford, and done everything else a young man can do that is gratifying and honourable. He was fellow of his college, and was understood to be able to do anything he pleased in the way of scholarship or literature. If he had but taken the trouble to write, a great many people were of opinion that he would have beaten Tennyson hollow; but he was indolent, and satisfied with his position, and had as much as ever he could desire without doing anything for it. And consequently, his great gifts were unexercised. The country, however, which had been cold to his family, and patronised them, acknowledged that such condescension would be out of character to a man who had taken a first-class. And thus the Huntleys had risen in popular estimation. Kate recalled Mrs Mitford’s words to her mind as they drove unwillingly up to the great door. “Frederick is at home.” She had known Frederick for years, but he was too much self-absorbed, Kate thought, ever to care for any girl; and so it happened that not even flirtation had ever passed between them. “That prig to play croquet!” she said to herself, with a shrug of her shoulders; and then she sprang down, and received a farewell blow from the hood of the phaeton upon her pretty bonnet. Poor Kate! It was all she could do to restrain herself from shaking her little fist at it. The tears almost came to her eyes as she straightened the injured bonnet with her hands. Was it an evil omen? for the Huntleys were out, all but Mrs Huntley—and the girls were engaged for next day; and Willie had gone to town; and Fred——“My dear, you know I never can answer for Fred,” his mother said, with pride. “He has his own engagements, and all sorts of things to do.”

“Oh yes, to be sure; it is not likely he would stoop so far as to play croquet,” said Kate; “but I am only giving Mrs Mitford’s message. You know it is not me that asks. I will tell her what you say.”

“Tell her I am so sorry,” said Mrs Huntley. “I know what it is to be disappointed when one tries to get up any little thing impromptu, and the girls would have been so glad, and so would Willie—but she knows I cannot answer for Fred. Dr Mitford, I am so sorry Mr Huntley is not at home, nor my son. If they had known there was the least chance of seeing you! But now you have come, you must have some tea.”

“I thank you, my dear madam,” said the Doctor, “but we have still a good way to go. I am taking Miss Crediton to see the Roman camp at Dulchester. It is not often I go so far, but you know I pretend to a little antiquarian knowledge——”

“Oh, a little indeed!” said Mrs Huntley; “we all know what that means. You may be very proud, Kate, to have such a cicerone. I can’t tell you how I sigh for you, Doctor, when we have people down from town, and they go to see the camp. Oh, don’t ask me, I always beg of them—you should hear all about it if Dr Mitford were here.”

“Well, one has one’s little bits of information, of course,” said Dr Mitford, with a deprecating wave of the hand; “one’s hobby, I suppose the young people would call it. I am very glad that Frederick has got his fellowship. It must be a great satisfaction to his father and you.”

“Well, we were pleased, of course,” said the lady; “though, but for the honour of the thing, it did not matter to Fred. I often say how odd it is that such things should fall to him who don’t want them, when so many poor fellows, to whom it would be a real blessing, fail. He has no business to have the money and the brains too.”

“That must make it all the more agreeable,” said the Doctor, with a stiff bow; and the looks of the two parents made Kate wonder suddenly whether John had been successful in his university career. Poor fellow! he did not look remarkably bright. There was no analogy between his looks and Fred Huntley’s sharp clever face—but then he was some years younger than Fred.

“Won’t you be persuaded to stay to dinner?” said Mrs Huntley; “you never can get back in time for your own. We have not seen Kate for ages, nor you either, Dr Mitford. Do stay—my husband and all of them will be back before dinner. Mr Huntley will be so vexed and disappointed if I let you go.”

“But Dulchester, my dear lady,” said the Doctor, rising and making her a bow.

“Oh, Dulchester!—is your heart so much set upon it, Kate?”

Fortunately Kate glanced at her guide before she replied, and saw that he was red with mortification, anticipating her answer. “Oh dear, yes! my heart is set upon it,” she cried. “Dr Mitford has come all the way to make me understand; and, indeed, it is getting late, and we must not stop, even for tea.”

“I will go and see that the carriage is brought round,” said her old cavalier, with alacrity; and he shook hands with Mrs Huntley, who mimicked him as soon as his back was turned with a sweep of her hand and smirk of affability which tried Kate’s gravity much. “Oh, my dear, you don’t know what you are going to encounter,” she said, in a rapid undertone, as soon as he was gone. “I tried to save you from it, but you would not back me up. He is the most dreadful old bore——”

“Hush! I am staying in his house, and they have been very, very kind,” said Kate, with a sudden blush.

“Staying in their house! I must speak to your papa about that, who never will let you come to us. But I did not know you knew the Mitfords, Kate.”

“We did not know them—but—my horse ran away with me—and Dr Mitford’s—son—saved my life.”

This Kate gave forth very slowly, with eyes that glittered with sudden excitement; and Mrs Huntley, for her part, received the news with the most eager interest.

“Oh, was it you?” she cried. “We heard something of it. They say it was quite a wonder that he didn’t lose his own life. But, dear me, Kate! after anything so interesting, how was it that he didn’t drive you himself instead of his papa?”

“I suppose, because he was never consulted,” said Kate, with some indignation; “and now I must not keep Dr Mitford waiting. Mrs Mitford has been so good to me—oh, so kind! She has nursed me as if I had been her own child; and papa let me stay, he was so grateful to them. I don’t know, I am sure, what the son did for me, but I know what the mother has done. She was as kind as if I had been her own child.”

“Her own child!” Mrs Huntley repeated to herself, with bewilderment, when Kate ran down-stairs; “oh yes, indeed! that one can easily understand. What a nice thing for John! But I am sure I should never think of such a little flirt for one of my sons, however rich she was—a spoiled child!”

This would have hurt Kate’s feelings if she had heard it, for she thought she was a favourite of Mrs Huntley’s—and so indeed she was; but it is hard upon a woman to hear unmoved that somebody else’s son has been braver, abler, more successful than her son, even though, as she reminded herself with a toss of her head, her boys had no need for that sort of thing, thank heaven! “Fred shall go, if I can persuade him,” she said within herself, “and spoil that John’s game, though they think so much of him;” and yet there was not a shadow of a reason why Mrs Huntley should wish to thwart that John.

After this Kate had to do the camp, and did it with a heroic show of interest. She got through it, looking up into Dr Mitford’s face with such bright and vivid looks that the good man felt he had at last found a congenial soul. Kate bore this, and she bore the assaults of the unsteady hood, though it gave her yet another thump upon her bonnet, which nearly made an end of that ornament. But there are limits to human nature, and she was very glad when she found herself approaching home. She called the Rectory home with the frankest satisfaction, such as would have awakened many thoughts in Mrs Mitford’s mind. It was sweet to see the pretty irregular house in the evening light, with its shadow turned to the east and all its windows open, and the great sheaves of lilies sending forth their fragrance. John suddenly appeared to open the gate as they drove up, as if he had sprung from the earth; and his mother was standing on the lawn with her white shawl thrown over her, like another flower; and the expedition was over, and the castrum done with, and Dr Mitford pleased, and the bonnet, perhaps, not spoiled for ever. Kate was so glad that she gave Mrs Mitford an unexpected kiss as she jumped lightly down. “How nice it is to have some one waiting for us!” she said, with almost tearful earnestness—the poor motherless girl! Mrs Mitford was touched by the accent, and Kate was touched herself, though of course she must have known how much of her emotion was delight at being free of what she considered a bore. But it was not entirely relief either, and there was some real feeling in the girl’s perverse little heart.

“I am so grieved they cannot come,” said Mrs Mitford, when they were all seated at dinner, which had been delayed. “I am so sorry, my dear, for you; but perhaps you might try a game with John—and the party could be asked for another day.”

“I am so glad,” said Kate. “It is so nice to escape the croquet-parties, and all the stuff one has to think about at home.”

“But, my dear, you must miss your amusements,” said Mrs Mitford. “I should not think a quiet life was the kind of life for you.”

“Changes are what I like,” said Kate, bravely. “I could not live always in a turmoil, and I could not live always in a hermitage. I should like sometimes the one and sometimes the other. The dreadful thing would be, to be always the same.”

Mrs Mitford gave her son a piteous look, and then cast an instinctive glance round the room. She did not herself feel the full meaning that was in her eyes. She glanced at all the signs of her own changeless existence. For years and years she had visited the same places at the same hours, sat down to the same work, made the same engagements, discharged the same duties. The dinner-party, which, contrary to her own lights, she was going to give in honour of Kate, would have the same people at it as had been at her first dinner-party after her wedding. She said to herself that if John were rich he could give his wife a great deal more change; but still there remained the fact that John’s wife would have the parish to think of, and the schools, and the old women. It would not do, alas! it could not do, Mrs Mitford concluded, as she rose from dinner with a sigh. And yet it would be such a thing for John.

And to see poor John’s miserable look when he came into the drawing-room, and found that Kate had a headache and had gone to bed. “It must have been that confounded camp,” he said, through his teeth, which grieved his mother more.

“Oh, my dear, don’t swear,” she said; “things are bad enough without that.”

“What things? and what do you mean, mother?” growled John.

“It is—that girl. I am so sorry she came here—so sorry you saved her, John; that she should come where no one wanted her, disturbing my boy!”

“Sorry I saved her! Are you mad, mother?” cried her son.

“Oh, you know I did not mean that. I am glad she is saved, poor thing—very glad; but oh, John, my dear, why should she come disturbing you? You must not think anything more about her, my own boy. See what pains she takes to show you it is no use. She could not live where it is always the same! Oh, John, after so many warnings, if you fall into her wiles at last!”

“What folly!” he said, leaving her, and throwing himself on a sofa in a dark corner, where the light of the lamp did not reach him. The anxious mother could no longer see his face. It was not with her as in days past, when he would poke into the light, under the shade of the lamp, and put his book on the top of her work, getting many a tender scold for it, or read aloud to her, which was her greatest pleasure. The Doctor was in his study, busy with his paper for the Archæological Society, and as indifferent to his wife’s loneliness as if she had been his housekeeper. Mrs Mitford had long ago got over that. She had accepted it as the natural course of affairs that your husband should go back to his study after dinner. Perhaps it would have plagued more than pleased her now had he suddenly made his appearance in the drawing-room. What she liked was to get her work or her knitting (John’s socks, which she always made with her own hands), and listen, in a soft rapture of ineffable content, as he read to her. It did not matter much what he read; his voice, and the work in her hand, and the consciousness that her boy was there, wrapt her in a silent atmosphere of happiness. But now how different it was! The Doctor by himself in his study, and Kate by herself in her chamber, and the mother and son, with almost the whole breadth of the room between them, each in a corner, he in the dark, she in the light, alone too. And it was all that girl’s fault. It was she who was making him unhappy.

“John, won’t you read to me a little, dear?” said his mother from the table.

“I can’t to-night,” he answered from the sofa, glad that his face was not visible. He was so vexed and disappointed and mortified, coming in full of the expectation of a long evening in Kate’s society, and finding her gone. A year or two ago it would have brought tears to John’s eyes. He was a man now, and it was not possible to cry, but he was so disappointed that he could scarcely endure himself. Mrs Mitford bore his silence and abstraction as long as she could. It went to her heart—but she was all mother, down to the tips of her fingers; and though it gave her a deep wound to think her boy had thus given her over, she could not bear to see him unhappy. She laid down her work at last, and stole out of the room, wondering if he noticed her going, and went and knocked at Kate’s door. “My dear, I have just made the tea, and it smells so refreshing. I thought, if you had not gone to bed, a cup would do you good,” she said, coming in and taking Kate’s hand. Her eyes were so wistful, such an unspoken prayer was in her face, that a glimmering of what she must mean just flashed upon Kate.