Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series

Very, very true. Her passion for Robert Grame had been as living fire in its wild intensity; it was but the shadow of a thrill that warmed her heart for Philip Hamlyn. Possibly she mistook it in a degree; thought more of it than it was. The feeling of gratification which arises from flattered vanity deceives a woman’s heart sometimes: and Mr. Hamlyn did not conceal his rapturous admiration of her.

She held to her defiant course, and her father held to his. He did not continue to say she should not marry; he had no power for that—and perhaps he did not want her to make a moonlight escapade of it, as Katherine had made. So the preparation for the wedding went on, Eliza herself paying for the rattletraps, as they had been called; Captain Monk avowed that he “washed his hands of it,” and then held his peace.

Whether Mr. Hamlyn and his intended bride considered it best to get the wedding over and done with, lest adverse fate, set afoot by the Captain, should after all circumvent them, it is impossible to say, but the day fixed was a speedy one. And if Captain Monk had deemed it “not decent” in Mr. Hamlyn to propose for a young lady after only a month’s knowledge, what did he think of this? They were to be married on the last day of the year.

Was it fixed upon in defiant mockery?—for, as the reader knows, it had proved an ominous day more than once in the Monk family. But no, defiance had no hand in that, simply adverse fate. The day originally fixed by the happy couple was Christmas Eve: but Mr. Hamlyn, who had to go to London about that time on business connected with his property, found it impossible to get back for the day, or for some days after it. He wrote to Eliza, asking that the day should be put off for a week, if it made no essential difference, and fixed the last day in the year. Eliza wrote word back that she would prefer that day; it gave more time for preparation.

They were to be married in her own church, and by its Vicar. Great marvel existed at the Captain’s permitting this, but he said nothing. Having washed his hands of the affair, he washed them for good: had the bride been one of the laundry-maids in his household he could not have taken less notice. A Miss Wilson was coming from a little distance to be bridesmaid; and the bride and bridegroom would go off from the church door. The question of a breakfast was never mooted: Captain Monk’s equable indifference might not have stood that.

“I shall wish them good luck with all my heart—but I don’t feel altogether sure they’ll have it!” bewailed poor Mrs. Carradyne in private. “Eliza should have agreed to the delay proposed by her father.”

III

Ring, ring, ring, broke forth the chimes on the frosty midday air. Not midnight, you perceive, but midday, for the church clock had just given forth its twelve strokes. Another round of the dial, and the old year would have departed into the womb of the past.

Bowling along the smooth turnpike road which skirted the churchyard on one side came a gig containing a gentleman, a tall, slender, frank-looking young man, with a fair face and the pleasantest blue eyes ever seen. He wore a white top-coat, the fashion then, and was driving rapidly in the direction of Leet Hall; but when the chimes burst forth he pulled up abruptly.

“Why, what in the world——” he began—and then sat still listening to the sweet strains of “The Bay of Biscay.” The day, though in mid-winter, was bright and beautiful, and the golden sunlight, shining from the dark-blue sky, played on the young man’s golden hair.

“Have they mistaken midday for midnight?” he continued, as the chimes played out their tune and died away on the air. “What’s the meaning of it?”

He, Harry Carradyne, was not the only one to ask this. No human being in and about Church Leet, save Captain Monk and they who executed his orders, knew that he had decreed that the chimes should play that day at midday. Why did he do it? What could his motive be? Surely not that they should, by playing (according to Mrs. Carradyne’s theory), inaugurate ill-luck for Eliza! At the moment they began to play she was coming out of church on Mr. Hamlyn’s arm, having left her maiden name behind her.

A few paces more, for he was driving gently on now, and Harry pulled up again, in surprise, as before, for the front of the church was now in view. Lots of spectators, gentle and simple, stood about, and a handsome chariot, with four post-horses and a great coat-of-arms emblazoned on its panels, waited at the church gate.

“It must be a wedding!” decided Harry.

The next moment the chariot was in motion; was soon about to pass him, the bride and bridegroom within it. A very dark but good-looking man, with an air of command in his face, he, but a stranger to Harry; she, Eliza. She wore a grey silk dress, a white bonnet, with orange blossoms and a veil, which was quite the fashionable wedding attire of the day. Her head was turned, nodding its farewells yet to the crowd, and she did not see her cousin as the chariot swept by.

“Dear me!” he exclaimed, mentally. “I wonder who she has married?”

Staying quietly where he was until the spectators should have dispersed, whose way led them mostly in opposite directions, Harry next saw the clerk come out of the church by the small vestry door, lock it and cross over to the stile: which brought him out close to the gig.

“Why, my heart alive!” he exclaimed. “Is it Captain Carradyne?”

“That’s near enough,” said Harry, who knew the title was accorded him by the rustic natives of Church Leet, as he bent down with his sunny smile to shake the old clerk’s hand. “You are hearty as ever, I see, John. And so you have had a wedding here?”

“Ay, sir, there have been one in the church. I was not in my place, though. The Captain, he ordered me to let the church go for once, and to be ready up aloft in the belfry to set the chimes going at midday. As chance had it, the party came out just at the same time; Miss Eliza was a bit late in coming, ye see; so it may be said the chimes rang ’em out. I guess the sound astonished the people above a bit, for nobody knew they were going to play.”

“But how was it all, Cale? Why should the Captain order them to chime at midday?”

John Cale shook his head. “I can’t tell ye that rightly, Mr. Harry; the Captain, as ye know, sir, never says why he does this or why he does t’other. Young William Threpp, who had to be up there with me, thought he must have ordered ’em to play in mockery—for he hates the marriage like poison.”

“Who is the bridegroom?”

“It’s a Mr. Hamlyn, sir. A gentleman who is pretty nigh as haughty as the Captain himself; but a pleasant-spoken, kindly man, as far as I’ve seen: and a rich one, too.”

“Why did Captain Monk object to him?”

“It’s thought ’twas because he was a stranger to the place and has lived over in the Indies; and he wanted Miss Eliza, so it’s said, to have young Tom Rivers. That’s about it, I b’lieve, Mr. Harry.”

Harry Carradyne drove away thoughtfully. At the foot of the slight ascent leading to Leet Hall, one of the grooms happened to be standing. Harry handed over to him the horse and gig, and went forward on foot.

“Bertie!” he called out. For he had seen Hubert before him, walking at a snail’s pace: the very slightest hill tried him now. The only one left of the wedding-party, for the bridesmaid drove off from the church door. Hubert turned at the call.

“Harry! Why, Harry!”

Hand locked in hand, they sat down on a bench beside the path; face gazing into face. There had always been a likeness between them: in the bright-coloured, waving hair, the blue eyes and the well-favoured features. But Harry’s face was redolent of youth and health; in the other’s might be read approaching death.

“You are very thin, Bertie; thinner even than I expected to see you,” broke from the traveller involuntarily.

“You are looking well, at any rate,” was Hubert’s answer. “And I am so glad you are come: I thought you might have been here a month ago.”

“The voyage was unreasonably long; we had contrary winds almost from port to port. I got on to Worcester yesterday, slept there, and hired a horse and gig to bring me over this morning. What about Eliza’s wedding, Hubert? I was just in time to see her drive away. Cale, with whom I had a word down yonder, says the master does not like it.”

“He does not like it and would not countenance it: washed his hands of it (as he told us) altogether.”

“Any good reason for that?”

“Not particularly good, that I see. Somehow he disliked Hamlyn; and Tom Rivers wanted Eliza, which would have pleased him greatly. But Eliza was not without blame. My father gave way so far as to ask her to delay things for a few months, not to marry in haste, and she would not. She might have conceded as much as that.”

“Did you ever know Eliza concede anything, Bertie?”

“Well, not often.”

“Who gave her away?”

“I did: look at my gala toggery”—opening his overcoat. “He wanted to forbid it. ‘Don’t hinder me, father,’ I pleaded; ‘it is the last brotherly service I can ever render her.’ And so,” his tone changing to lightness, “I have been and gone and done it.”

Harry Carradyne understood. “Not the last, Hubert; don’t say that. I hope you will live to render her many another yet.”

Hubert smiled faintly. “Look at me,” he said in answer.

“Yes, I know; I see how you look. But you may take a turn yet.”

“Ah, miracles are no longer wrought for us. Shall I surprise you very much, cousin mine, if I say that were the offer made me of prolonged life, I am not sure that I should accept it?”

“Not unless health were renewed with it; I can understand that. You have had to endure suffering, Bertie.”

“Ay. Pain, discomfort, fears, weariness. After working out their torment upon me, they—why then they took a turn and opened out the vista of a refuge.”

“A refuge?”

“The one sure Refuge offered by God to the sick and sorrowful, the weary and heavy-laden—Himself. I found it. I found Him and all His wonderful mercy. It will not be long now, Harry, before I see Him face to face. And here comes His true minister, but for whom I might have missed the way.”

Harry turned his head, and saw, advancing up the drive, a good-looking young clergyman. “Who is it?” he involuntarily cried.

“Your brother-in-law, Robert Grame. Lucy’s husband.”

It was not the fashion in those days for a bride’s mother (or one acting as her mother) to attend the bride to church; therefore Mrs. Carradyne, following it, was spared risk of conflict with Captain Monk on that score. She was in Eliza’s room, assisting at the putting on of the bridal robes (for we have to go back an hour or so) when a servant came up to say that Mr. Hamlyn waited below. Rather wondering—for he was to have driven straight to the church—Mrs. Carradyne went downstairs.

“Pardon me, dear Mrs. Carradyne,” he said, as he shook hands, and she had never seen him look so handsome, “I could not pass the house without making one more effort to disarm Captain Monk’s prejudices, and asking for his blessing on us. Do you think he will consent to see me?”

Mrs. Carradyne felt sure he would not, and said so. But she sent Rimmer to the library to ask the question. Mr. Hamlyn pencilled down a few anxious words on paper, folded it, and put it into the man’s hand.

No; it proved useless. Captain Monk was harder than adamant; he sent Rimmer back with a flea in his ear, and the petition torn in two.

“I feared so,” sighed Mrs. Carradyne. “He will not this morning see even Eliza.”

Mr. Hamlyn did not sigh in return; he spoke a cross, impatient word: he had never been able to see reason in the Captain’s dislike to him, and, with a brief good-morning, went out to his carriage. But, remembering something when crossing the hall, he came back.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Carradyne; I quite forgot that I have a note for you. It is from Mrs. Peveril, I believe; it came to me this morning, enclosed in a letter of her husband’s.”

“You have heard at last, then!”

“At last—as you observe. Though Peveril had nothing particular to write about; I daresay he does not care for letter writing.”

Slipping the note into her pocket, to be opened at leisure, Mrs. Carradyne returned to the adorning of Eliza. Somehow, it was rather a prolonged business—which made it late when the bride with her bridesmaid and Hubert drove from the door.

Mrs. Carradyne remained in the room—to which Eliza was not to return—putting up this, and that. The time slipped on, and it was close upon twelve o’clock when she got back to the drawing-room. Captain Monk was in it then, standing at the window, which he had thrown wide open. To see more clearly the bridal party come out of church, was the thought that crossed Mrs. Carradyne’s mind in her simplicity.

“I very much feared they would be late,” she observed, sitting down near her brother: and at that moment the church clock began to strike twelve.

“A good thing if they were too late!” he answered. “Listen.”

She supposed he wanted to count the strokes—what else could he be listening to? And now, by the stir at the distant gates, she saw that the bridal party had come out.

“Good heavens, what’s that?” shrieked Mrs. Carradyne, starting from her chair.

“The chimes,” stoically replied the Captain. And he proceeded to hum through the tune of “The Bay of Biscay,” and beat a noiseless accompaniment with his foot.

“The Chimes, Emma,” he repeated, when the melody had finished itself out. “I ordered them to be played. It’s the last day of the old year, you know.”

Laughing slightly at her consternation, Captain Monk closed the window and quitted the room. As Mrs. Carradyne took her handkerchief from her pocket to pass it over her face, grown white with startled terror, the note she had put there came out also, and fell on the carpet.

Picking it up, she stood at the window, gazing forth. Her sight was not what it used to be; but she discerned the bride and bridegroom enter their carriage and drive away; next she saw the bridesmaid get into the carriage from the Hall, assisted by Hubert, and that drive off in its turn. She saw the crowd disperse, this way and that; she even saw the gig there, its occupant talking with John Cale. But she did not look at him particularly; and she had not the slightest idea but that Harry was in India.

And all that time an undercurrent of depression was running riot in her heart. None knew with what a strange terror she had grown to dread the chimes.

She sat down now and opened Mrs. Peveril’s note. It treated chiefly of the utterly astounding ways that untravelled old lady was meeting with in foreign parts. “If you will believe me,” wrote she, “the girl that waits on us wears carpet slippers down at heel, and a short cotton jacket for best, and she puts the tea-tray before me with the handle of the tea-pot turned to me and the spout standing outwards, and she comes right into the bed-room of a morning with Charles’s shaving-water without knocking.” But the one sentence that arrested Mrs. Carradyne’s attention above any other was the following: “I reckon that by this time you have grown well acquainted with our esteemed young friend. He is a good, kindly gentleman, and I’m sure never could have done anything to deserve his wife’s treatment of him.”

“Can she mean Mr. Hamlyn?” debated Mrs. Carradyne, all sorts of ideas leaping into her mind with a rush. “If not—what other ‘esteemed friend’ can she allude to?—she, old herself, would call him young. But Mr. Hamlyn has not any wife. At least, had not until to-day.”

She read the note over again. She sat with it open, buried in a reverie, thinking no end of things, good and bad: and the conclusion she at last came to was, that, with the unwonted exercise of letter-writing, poor old Mrs. Peveril’s head had grown confused.

“Well, Hubert, did it all go off well?” she questioned, as her nephew entered the room, some sort of excitement on his wasted face. “I saw them drive away.”

“Yes, it went off well; there was no hitch anywhere,” replied Hubert. “But, Aunt Emma, I have brought a friend home with me. Guess who it is.”

“Some lady or other who came to see the wedding,” she returned. “I can’t guess.”

“You never would, though I were to give you ten guesses; no, though je vous donne en mille, as the French have it. What should you say to a young man come all the way over seas from India? There, that’s as good as telling you, Aunt Emma. Guess now.”

“Oh, Hubert!” clasping her trembling hands. “It cannot be Harry! What is wrong?”

Harry brought his bright face into the room and was clasped in his mother’s arms. She could not understand it one bit, and fears assailed her. Come home in this unexpected manner! Had he left the army? What had he done? What had he done? Hubert laughed and told her then.

“He has done nothing wrong; everything that’s good. He has sold out at my father’s request and left with honours—and is come home the heir of Leet Hall. I said all along it was a shame to keep you out of the plot, Aunt Emma.”

Well, it was glorious news for her. But, as if to tarnish its delight, like an envious sprite of evil, deep down in her mind lay that other news, just read—the ambiguous remark of old Mrs. Peveril’s.

IV

The walk on the old pier was pleasant enough in the morning sun. Though yet but the first month in the year, the days were bright, the blue skies without a cloud. Mr. and Mrs. Hamlyn had enjoyed the fine weather at Cheltenham for a week or two; from that pretty place they had now come to Brighton, reaching it the previous night.

“Oh, it is delightful!” exclaimed Eliza, gazing at the waves. She had not seen the sea since she crossed it, a little girl, from the West Indies. Those were not yet the days when all people, gentle and simple, told one another that an autumn tour was essential to existence. “Look at the sunbeams sparkling on the ripples and on the white sails of the little boats! Philip, I should like to spend a month here.”

“All right,” replied Mr. Hamlyn.

They were staying at the Old Ship, a fashionable hotel then for ladies as well as gentlemen, and had come out after breakfast; and they had the pier nearly to themselves at that early hour. A yellow, gouty gentleman, who looked as if he had quarrelled with his liver in some clime all fire and cayenne, stood at the end leaning on his stick, alternately looking at the sea and listlessly watching any advancing stragglers.

There came a sailor, swaying along, a rope in his hand; following him, walked demurely three little girls in frocks and trousers, with their French governess; then came two eye-glassed young men, dandified and supercilious, who appeared to have more money than brains—and the jaundiced man went into a gaping fit of lassitude.

Anyone else coming? Yes; a lady and gentleman arm-in-arm: quiet, well-dressed, good-looking. As the invalid watched their approach, a puzzled look of doubt and surprise rose to his countenance. Moving forward a step or two on his gouty legs, he spoke.

“Can it be possible, Hamlyn, that we meet here?”

Even through his dark skin a red flush coursed into Mr. Hamlyn’s face. He was evidently very much surprised in his turn, if not startled.

“Captain Pratt!” he exclaimed.

“Major Pratt now,” was the answer, as they shook hands. “That wretched climate played the deuce with me, and they graciously gave me a step and allowed me to retire upon it. The very deuce, I assure you, Philip. Beg pardon, ma’am,” he added, seeing the lady look at him.

“My wife, Mrs. Hamlyn,” spoke her husband.

Major Pratt contrived to lift his hat, and bow: which feat, what with his gouty hands and his helpless legs and his great invalid stick, was a work of time. “I saw your marriage in the Times, Hamlyn, and wondered whether it could be you, or not: I didn’t know, you see, that you were over here. Wish you luck; and you also, ma’am. Hope it will turn out more fortunate for you, Philip, than——”

“Where are you staying?” broke in Mr. Hamlyn, as if something were frightening him.

“At some lodgings over yonder, where they fleece me,” replied the Major. “You should see the bill they’ve brought me in for last week. They’ve made me eat four pounds of butter and five joints of meat, besides poultry and pickles and a fruit pie! Why, I live mostly upon dry toast; hardly dare touch an ounce of meat in a day. When I had ’em up before me, the harpies, they laid it upon my servant’s appetite—old Saul, you know. He answered them.”

Mrs. Hamlyn laughed. “There are two articles that are very convenient, as I have heard, to some of the lodging-house keepers: their lodgers’ servant, and their own cat.”

“By Jove, ma’am, yes!” said the Major. “But I’ve given warning to this lot where I am.”

Saying au revoir to Major Pratt, Mr. Hamlyn walked down the pier again with his wife. “Who is he, Philip?” she asked. “You seem to know him well.”

“Very well. He is a sort of connection of mine, I believe,” laughed Mr. Hamlyn, “and I saw a good deal of him in India a few years back. He is greatly changed. I hardly think I should have known him had he not spoken. It’s his liver, I suppose.”

Leaving his wife at the hotel, Mr. Hamlyn went back again to Major Pratt, much to the lonely Major’s satisfaction, who was still leaning on his substantial stick as he gazed at the water.

“The sight of you has brought back to my mind all that unhappy business, Hamlyn,” was his salutation. “I shall have a fit of the jaundice now, I suppose! Here—let’s sit down a bit.”

“And the sight of you has brought it to mine,” said Mr. Hamlyn, as he complied. “I have been striving to drive it out of my remembrance.”

“I know little about it,” observed the Major. “She never wrote to me at all afterwards, and you wrote me but two letters: the one announcing the fact of her disgrace; the other, the calamity and the deaths.”

“That is quite enough to know; don’t ask me to go over the details to you personally,” said Mr. Hamlyn in a tone of passionate discomfort. “So utterly repugnant to me is the remembrance altogether, that I have never spoken of it—even to my present wife.”

“Do you mean you’ve not told her you were once a married man?” cried Major Pratt.

“No, I have not.”

“Then you’ve shown a lack of judgment which I wouldn’t have given you credit for, my friend,” declared the Major. “A man may whisper to his girl any untoward news he pleases of his past life, and she’ll forgive and forget; aye, and worship him all the more for it, though it were the having set fire to a church: but if he keeps it as a bonne bouchée to drop out after marriage, when she has him fast and tight, she’ll curry-comb his hair for him in style. Believe that.”

Mr. Hamlyn laughed.

“There never was a hidden skeleton between man and wife yet but it came to light sooner or later,” went on the Major. “If you are wise, you will tell her at once, before somebody else does.”

“What ‘somebody?’ Who is there here that knows it?”

“Why, as to ‘here,’ I know it, and nearly spoke of it before her, as you must have heard; and my servant knows it. That’s nothing, you’ll say; we can be quiet, now I have the cue: but you are always liable to meet with people who knew you in those days, and who knew her. Take my advice, Philip Hamlyn, and tell your wife. Go and do it now.”

“I daresay you are right,” said the younger man, awaking out of a reverie. “Of the two evils it may be the lesser.” And with lagging steps, and eyes that seemed to have weights to them, he set out to walk back to the Old Ship Hotel.

THE SILENT CHIMES

IV.—NOT HEARD

I

That oft-quoted French saying, a mauvais-quart-d’heure, is a pregnant one, and may apply to small as well as to great worries of life: most of us know it to our cost. But, rely upon it, one of the very worst is that when a bride or bridegroom has to make a disagreeable confession to the other, which ought to have been made before going to church.

Philip Hamlyn was finding it so. Standing over the fire, in their sitting-room at the Old Ship Hotel at Brighton, his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hand shading his eyes, he looked down at his wife sitting opposite him, and disclosed his tale: that when he married her fifteen days ago he had not been a bachelor, but a widower. There was no especial reason for his not having told her, save that he hated and abhorred that earlier period of his life and instinctively shunned its remembrance.

Sent to India by his friends in the West Indies to make his way in the world, he entered one of the most important mercantile houses in Calcutta, purchasing a lucrative post in it. Mixing in the best society, for his introductions were undeniable, he in course of time met with a young lady named Pratt, who had come out from England to stay with her elderly cousins, Captain Pratt and his sister. Philip Hamlyn was caught by her pretty doll’s face, and married her. They called her Dolly: and a doll she was, by nature as well as by name.

“Marry in haste and repent at leisure,” is as true a saying as the French one. Philip Hamlyn found it so. Of all vain, frivolous, heartless women, Mrs. Dolly Hamlyn turned out to be about the worst. Just a year or two of uncomfortable bickering, of vain endeavours on his part, now coaxing, now reproaching, to make her what she was not and never would be—a reasonable woman, a sensible wife—and Dolly Hamlyn fled. She decamped with a hair-brained lieutenant, the two taking sailing-ship for England, and she carrying with her her little one-year-old boy.

I’ll leave you to guess what Philip Hamlyn’s sensations were. A calamity such as that does not often fall upon man. While he was taking steps to put his wife legally away for ever and to get back his child, and Captain Pratt was aiding and abetting (and swearing frightfully at the delinquent over the process), news reached them that Heaven’s vengeance had been more speedy than theirs. The ship, driven out of her way by contrary winds and other disasters, went down off the coast of Spain, and all the passengers on board perished. This was what Philip Hamlyn had to confess now: and it was more than silly of him not to have done it before.

He touched but lightly upon it now. His tones were low, his words when he began somewhat confused: nevertheless his wife, gazing up at him with her large dark eyes, gathered an inkling of his meaning.

“Don’t tell it me!” she passionately interrupted. “Do not tell me that I am only your second wife.”

He went over to her, praying her to be calm, speaking of the bitter feeling of shame which had ever since clung to him.

“Did you divorce her?”

“No, no; you do not understand me, Eliza. She died before anything could be done; the ship was wrecked.”

“Were there any children?” she asked in a hard whisper.

“One; a baby of a year old. He was drowned with his mother.”

Mrs. Hamlyn folded her hands one over the other, and leaned back in her chair. “Why did you deceive me?”

“My will was good to deceive you for ever,” he confessed with emotion. “I hate that past episode in my life; hate to think of it: I wish I could blot it out of remembrance. But for Pratt I should not have told you now.”

“Oh, he said you ought to tell me?”

“He did: and blamed me for not having told you already.”

“Have you any more secrets of the past that you are keeping from me?”

“None. Not one. You may take my honour upon it, Eliza. And now let us——”

She had started forward in her chair; a red flush darkening her pale cheeks. “Philip! Philip! am I legally married? Did you describe yourself as a bachelor in the license?”

“No, as a widower. I got the license in London, you know.”

“And no one read it?”

“No one save he who married us: Robert Grame, and I don’t suppose he noticed it.”

Robert Grame! The flush on Eliza’s cheeks grew deeper.

“Did you love her?”

“I suppose I thought so when I married her. It did not take long to disenchant me,” he added with a harsh laugh.

“What was her Christian name?”

“Dolly. Dora, I believe, by register. My dear wife, I have told you all. In compassion to me let us drop the subject, now and for ever.”

Was Eliza Hamlyn—sitting there with pale, compressed lips, sullen eyes, and hands interlocked in pain—already beginning to reap the fruit she had sown as Eliza Monk by her rebellious marriage? Perhaps so. But not as she would have to reap it later on.

Mr. and Mrs. Hamlyn spent nearly all that year in travelling. In September they came to Peacock’s Range, taking it furnished for a term of old Mr. and Mrs. Peveril, who had not yet come back to it. It stood midway, as may be remembered, between Church Leet and Church Dykely, so that Eliza was close to her old home. Late in October a little boy was born: it would be hard to say which was the prouder of him, Philip Hamlyn or his wife.

“What would you like his name to be?” Philip asked her one day.

“I should like it to be Walter,” said Mrs. Hamlyn.

“Walter!”

“Yes. I like the name to begin with, but I once had a dear little brother named Walter, just a year younger than I. He died before we came home to England. Have you any objection to the name?”

“Oh, no, no objection,” he slowly said. “I was only thinking whether you would have any. It was the name given to my first child.”

“That can make no possible difference—it was not my child,” was her haughty answer. So the baby was named Walter James; the latter name also chosen by Eliza, because it had been old Mr. Monk’s.

In the following spring Mr. Hamlyn had to go to the West Indies. Eliza remained at home; and during this time she became reconciled to her father.

Hubert brought it about. For Hubert lived yet. But he was a mere shadow and had to take entirely to the house, and soon to his room. Eliza came to see him, again and again; and finally over Hubert’s sofa peace was made—for Captain Monk loved her still, just as he had loved Katherine, for all her rebellion.

Hubert lingered on to the summer. And then, on a calm evening, when one of the glorious sunsets that he had so loved to look upon was illumining the western sky, opening up to his dying view, as he had once said, the very portals of Heaven, he passed peacefully away to his rest.

II

The next change that set in at Leet Hall concerned Miss Kate Dancox. That wilful young pickle, somewhat sobered by the death of Hubert in the summer, soon grew unbearable again. She had completely got the upper hand of her morning governess, Miss Hume—who walked all the way from Church Dykely and back again—and of nearly everyone else; and Captain Monk gave forth his decision one day when all was turbulence—a resident governess. Mrs. Carradyne could have danced a reel for joy, and wrote to a governess agency in London.

One morning about this time (which was already glowing with the tints of autumn) a young lady got out of an omnibus in Oxford Street, which had brought her from a western suburb of London, paid the conductor, and then looked about her.

“There!” she exclaimed in a quaint tone of vexation, “I have to cross the street! and how am I to do it?”

Evidently she was not used to the bustle of London streets or to crossing them alone. She did it, however, after a few false starts, and so turned down a quiet side street and rang the bell of a house in it. A slatternly girl answered the ring.

“Governess-agent—Mrs. Moffit? Oh, yes; first-floor front,” said she crustily, and disappeared.

The young lady found her way upstairs alone. Mrs. Moffit sat in state in a big arm-chair, before a large table and desk, whence she daily dispensed joy or despair to her applicants. Several opened letters and copies of the daily journals lay on the table.

“Well?” cried she, laying down her pen, “what for you?”

“I am here by your appointment, made with me a week ago,” said the young lady. “This is Thursday.”

“What name?” cried Mrs. Moffit sharply, turning over rapidly the leaves of a ledger.

“Miss West. If you remember, I——”

“Oh, yes, child, my memory’s good enough,” was the tart interruption. “But with so many applicants it’s impossible to be certain as to faces. Registered names we can’t mistake.”

Mrs. Moffit read her notes—taken down a week ago. “Miss West. Educated in first-class school at Richmond; remained in it as teacher. Very good references from the ladies keeping it. Father, Colonel in India.”

“But——”

“You do not wish to go into a school again?” spoke Mrs. Moffit, closing the ledger with a snap, and peremptorily drowning what the applicant was about to say.

“Oh, dear, no, I am only leaving to better myself, as the maids say,” replied the young lady, smiling.

“And you wish for a good salary?”

“If I can get it. One does not care to work hard for next to nothing.”

“Or else I have—let me see—two—three situations on my books. Very comfortable, I am instructed, but two of them offer ten pounds a-year, the other twelve.”

The young lady drew herself slightly up with an involuntary movement. “Quite impossible, madam, that I could take any one of them.”

Mrs. Moffit picked up a letter and consulted it, looking at the young lady from time to time, as if taking stock of her appearance. “I received a letter this morning from the country—a family require a well-qualified governess for their one little girl. Your testimonials as to qualifications might suit—and you are, I believe, a gentlewoman——”

“Oh, yes; my father was——”

“Yes, yes, I remember—I’ve got it down; don’t worry me,” impatiently spoke the oracle, cutting short the interruption. “So far you might suit: but in other respects—I hardly know what to think.”

“But why?” asked the other timidly, blushing a little under the intent gaze.

“Well, you are very young, for one thing; and they might think you too good-looking.”

The girl’s blush grew red as a rose; she had delicate features and it made her look uncommonly pretty. A half-smile sat in her soft, dark hazel eyes.

“Surely that could not be an impediment. I am not so good-looking as all that!”

“That’s as people may think,” was the significant answer. “Some families will not take a pretty governess—afraid of their sons, you see. This family says nothing about looks; for aught I know there may be no sons in it. ‘Thoroughly competent’—reading from the letter—‘a gentlewoman by birth, of agreeable manners and lady-like. Salary, first year, to be forty pounds.’”

“And will you not recommend me?” pleaded the young governess, her voice full of entreaty. “Oh, please do! I know I should be found fully competent, and promise you that I would do my best.”

“Well, there may be no harm in my writing to the lady about you,” decided Mrs. Moffit, won over by the girl’s gentle respect—with which she did not get treated by all her clients. “Suppose you come here again on Monday next?”

The end of the matter was that Miss West was engaged by the lady mentioned—no other than Mrs. Carradyne. And she journeyed down into Worcestershire to enter upon the situation.

But clever (and generally correct) Mrs. Moffit made one mistake, arising, no doubt, from the chronic state of hurry she was always in. “Miss West is the daughter of the late Colonel William West,” she wrote, “who went to India with his regiment a few years ago, and died there.” What Miss West had said to her was this: “My father, a clergyman, died when I was a little child, and my uncle William, Colonel West, the only relation I had left, died three years ago in India.” Mrs. Moffit somehow confounded the two.

This might not have mattered on the whole. But, as you perceive, it conveyed a wrong impression at Leet Hall.

“The governess I have engaged is a Miss West; her father was a military man and a gentleman,” spake Mrs. Carradyne one morning at breakfast to Captain Monk. “She is rather young—about twenty, I fancy; but an older person might never get on at all with Kate.”

“Had good references with her, I suppose?” said the Captain.

“Oh, yes. From the agent, and especially from the ladies who have brought her up.”

“Who was her father, do you say?—a military man?”

“Colonel William West,” assented Mrs. Carradyne, referring to the letter she held. “He went to India with his regiment and died there.”

“I’ll refer to the army-list,” said the Captain; “daresay it’s all right. And she shall keep Kate in order, or I’ll know the reason why.”

The evening sunlight lay on the green plain, on the white fields from which the grain had been reaped, and on the beautiful woods glowing with the varied tints of autumn. A fly was making its way to Leet Hall, and its occupant, looking out of it on this side and that, in a fever of ecstasy, for the country scene charmed her, thought how favoured was the lot of those who could live out their lives amidst its surroundings.

In the drawing-room at the Hall, watching the approach of this same fly, stood Mrs. Hamlyn, a frown upon her haughty face. Philip Hamlyn was still detained in the West Indies, and since her reconciliation to her father, she would go over with her baby-boy to the Hall and remain there for days together. Captain Monk liked to have her, and he took more notice of the baby than he had ever taken of a baby yet. For when Kate was an infant he had at first shunned her, because she had cost Katherine her life. This baby, little Walter, was a particularly forward child, strong and upright, walked at ten months old, and much resembled his mother in feature. In temper also. The young one would stand sturdily in his little blue shoes and defy his grandpapa already, and assert his own will, to the amused admiration of Captain Monk.

Eliza, utterly wrapt up in her child, saw her father’s growing love for him with secret delight; and one day when he had the boy on his knee, she ventured to speak out a thought that was often in her heart.

“Papa,” she said, with impassioned fervour, “he ought to be the heir, your own grandson; not Harry Carradyne.”

Captain Monk simply stared in answer.

“He lies in the direct succession; he has your own blood in his veins. Papa, you ought to see it.”

Certainly the gallant sailor’s manners were improving. For perhaps the first time in his life he suppressed the hot and abusive words rising to his tongue—that no son of that man, Hamlyn, should come into Leet Hall—and stood in silence.

“Don’t you see it, papa?”

“Look here, Eliza: we’ll drop the subject. When my brother, your uncle, was dying, he wrote me a letter, enjoining me to make Emma’s son the heir, failing a son of my own. It was right it should be so, he said. Right it is; and Harry Carradyne will succeed me. Say no more.”

Thus forbidden to say more, Eliza Hamlyn thought the more, and her thoughts were not pleasant. At one time she had feared her father might promote Kate Dancox to the heirship, and grew to dislike the child accordingly. Latterly, for the same reason, she had disliked Harry Carradyne; hated him, in fact. She herself was the only remaining child of the house, and her son ought to inherit.

She stood this evening at the drawing-room window, this and other matters running in her mind. Miss Kate, at the other end of the room, had prevailed on Uncle Harry (as she called him) to play a game at toy ninepins. Or perhaps he had prevailed on her: anything to keep her tolerably quiet. She was in her teens now, but the older she grew the more troublesome she became; and she was remarkably small and childish-looking, so that strangers took her to be several years younger than she really was.

“This must be your model governess arriving, Aunt Emma,” exclaimed Mrs. Hamlyn, as the fly came up the drive.

“I hope it is,” said Mrs. Carradyne; and they all looked out. “Oh, yes, that’s an Evesham fly—and a ramshackle thing it appears.”

“I wonder you did not send the carriage to Evesham for her, mother,” remarked Harry, picking up some of the nine-pins which Miss Kate had swept off the table with her hand.

Mrs. Hamlyn turned round in a blaze of anger. “Send the carriage to Evesham for the governess. What absurd thing will you say next, Harry?”

The young man laughed in good humour. “Does it offend one of your prejudices, Eliza?—a thousand pardons, then. But really, nonsense apart, I can’t see why the carriage should not have gone for her. We are told she is a gentlewoman. Indeed, I suppose anyone else would not be eligible, as she is to be made one of ourselves.”

“And think of the nuisance it will be! Do be quiet, Harry! Kate ought to have been sent to school.”

“But your father would not have her sent, you know, Eliza,” spoke Mrs. Carradyne.

“Then——”

“Miss West, ma’am,” interrupted Rimmer, the butler, showing in the traveller.

“Dear me, how very young!” was Mrs. Carradyne’s first thought. “And what a lovely face!”

She came in shyly. In her whole appearance there was a shrinking, timid gentleness, betokening refinement of feeling. A slender, lady-like girl, in a plain, dark travelling-suit and a black bonnet lined and tied with pink, a little lace border shading her nut-brown hair. The bonnets in those days set off a pretty face better than do these modern ones. That’s what the Squire tells us.

Mrs. Carradyne advanced and shook hands cordially; Eliza bent her head slightly from where she stood; Harry Carradyne stood up, a pleasant welcome in his blue eyes and in his voice, as he laughingly congratulated her upon the ancient Evesham fly not having come to grief en route. Kate Dancox pressed forward.

“Are you my new governess?”

The young lady smiled and said she believed so.

“Aunt Eliza hates governesses; so do I. Do you expect to make me obey you?”

The governess blushed painfully; but took courage to say she hoped she should. Harry Carradyne thought it the very loveliest blush he had ever seen in all his travels, and she the sweetest-looking girl.

And when Captain Monk came in he quite took to her appearance, for he hated to have ugly people about him. But every now and then there was a look in her face, or in her eyes, that struck him as being familiar—as if he had once known someone who resembled her. Pleasing, soft, dark hazel eyes they were as one could wish to see, with goodness in their depths.

III

Months passed away, and Miss West was domesticated in her new home. It was not all sunshine. Mrs. Carradyne, ever considerate, strove to render things agreeable; but there were sources of annoyance over which she had no control. Kate, when she chose, could be verily a little elf, a demon; as Mrs. Hamlyn often put it, “a diablesse.” And she, that lady herself, invariably treated the governess with a sort of cool, indifferent contempt; and she was more often at Leet Hall than away from it. The Captain, too, gave way to fits of temper that simply terrified Miss West. Reared in the quiet atmosphere of a well-trained school, she had never met with temper such as this.

On the other hand—yes, on the other hand, she had an easy place of it, generous living, was regarded as a lady, and—she had learnt to love Harry Carradyne for weal or for woe.

But not—please take notice—not unsolicited. Tacitly, at any rate. If Mr. Harry’s speaking blue eyes were to be trusted and Mr. Harry’s tell-tale tones when with her, his love, at the very least, equalled hers. Eliza Hamlyn, despite the penetration that ill-nature generally can exercise, had not yet scented any such treason in the wind: or there would have blown up a storm.

Spring was to bring its events; but first of all it must be said that during the winter little Walter Hamlyn was taken ill at Leet Hall when staying there with his mother. The malady turned out to be gastric fever, and Mr. Speck was in constant attendance. For the few days that the child lay in danger, Eliza was almost wild. The progress to convalescence was very slow, lasting many weeks; and during that time Captain Monk, being much with the little fellow, grew to be fond of him with an unreasonable affection.

“I’m not sure but I shall leave Leet Hall to him after all,” he suddenly observed to Eliza one day, not noticing that Harry Carradyne was standing in the recess of the window. “Halloa! are you there, Harry? Well, it can’t be helped. You heard what I said?”

“I heard, Uncle Godfrey: but I did not understand.”

“Eliza thinks Leet Hall ought to go in the direct line—through her—to this child. What should you say to that?”

“What could he say to it?” imperiously demanded Eliza. “He is only your nephew.”

Harry looked from one to the other in a sort of bewildered surprise: and there came a silence.

“Uncle Godfrey,” he said at last, starting out of a reverie, “you have been good enough to make me your heir. It was unexpected on my part, unsolicited; but you did do it, and you caused me to leave the army in consequence, to give up my fair prospects in life. I am aware that this deed is not irrevocable, and certainly you have the right to do what you will with your own property. But you must forgive me for saying that you should have made quite sure of your intentions beforehand: before taking me up, if it be only to throw me aside again.”

“There, there, we’ll leave it,” retorted Captain Monk testily. “No harm’s done to you yet, Mr. Harry; I don’t know that it will be.”

But Harry Carradyne felt sure that it would be; that he should be despoiled of the inheritance. The resolute look of power on Eliza’s face, bent on him as he quitted the chamber, was an earnest of that. Captain Monk was not the determined man he had once been; that was over.

“A pretty kettle of fish, this is,” ruefully soliloquised Harry, as he marched along the corridor. “Eliza’s safe to get her will; no doubt of that. And I? what am I to do? I can’t repurchase and go back amongst them again like a returned shilling; at least, I won’t; and I can’t turn Parson, or Queen’s Counsel, or Cabinet Minister. I’m fitted for nothing now, that I see, but to be a gentleman-at-large; and what would the gentleman’s income be?”

Standing at the corridor window, softly whistling, he ran over ways and means in his mind. He had a pretty house of his own, Peacock’s Range, formerly his father’s, and about four hundred a-year. After his mother’s death it would not be less than a thousand a-year.

“That means bread and cheese at present. Later—— Heyday, young lady, what’s the matter?”

The school room door, close by, had opened with a burst, and Miss Kate Dancox was flying down the stairs—her usual progress the minute lessons were over. Harry strolled into the room. The governess was putting the littered table straight.

“Any admission, ma’am?” cried he quaintly, making for a chair. “I should like to ask leave to sit down for a bit.”

Alice West laughed, and stirred the fire by way of welcome; he was a very rare visitor to the school-room. The blaze, mingling with the rays of the setting sun that streamed in at the window, played upon her sweet face and silky brown hair, lighted up the bright winter dress she wore, and the bow of pink ribbon that fastened the white lace round her slender, pretty throat.

“Are you so much in need of a seat?” she laughingly asked.

“Indeed I am,” was the semi-grave response. “I have had a shock.”

“A very sharp one, sir?”

“Sharp as steel. Really and truly,” he went on in a different tone, as he left the chair and stood up by the table, facing her; “I have just heard news that may affect my whole future life; may change me from a rich man to a poor one.”

“Oh, Mr. Carradyne!” Her manner had changed now.

“I was the destined inheritor, as you know—for I’m sure nobody has been reticent upon the subject—of these broad lands,” with a sweep of the hand towards the plains outside. “Captain Monk is now pleased to inform me that he thinks of substituting for me Mrs. Hamlyn’s child.”

“But would not that be very unjust?”

“Hardly fair—as it seems to me. Considering that my good uncle obliged me to give up my own prospects for it.”

She stood, her hands clasped in sympathy, her face full of earnest sadness. “How unkind! Why, it would be cruel!”

“Well, I confess I felt it to be so at the first blow. But, standing at the outside window yonder, pulling myself together, a ray or two of light crept in, showing me that it may be for the best after all. ‘Whatever is, is right,’ you know.”

“Yes,” she slowly said—“if you can think so. But, Mr. Carradyne, should you not have anything at all?—anything to live upon after Captain Monk’s death?”

“Just a trifle, I calculate, as the Americans say—and it is calculating I have been—so that I need not altogether starve. Would you like to know how much it will be?”

“Oh, please don’t laugh at me!”—for it suddenly struck the girl that he was laughing, perhaps in reproof, and that she had spoken too freely. “I ought not to have asked that; I was not thinking—I was too sorry to think.”

“But I may as well tell you, if you don’t mind. I have a very pretty little place, which you have seen and heard of, called by that delectable title Peacock’s Range——”

“Is Peacock’s Range yours?” she interrupted, in surprise. “I thought it belonged to Mr. Peveril.”

“Peacock’s Range is mine and was my father’s before me, Miss Alice. It was leased to Peveril for a term of years, but I fancy he would be glad to give it up to-morrow. Well, I have Peacock’s Range and about four hundred pounds a-year.”

Her face brightened. “Then you need not talk about starving,” she said, gaily.

“And, later, I shall have altogether about a thousand a-year. Though I hope it will be very long before it falls to me. Do you think two people might venture to set up at Peacock’s Range, and keep, say, a couple of servants upon four hundred a-year? Could they exist upon it?”

“Oh, dear, yes,” she answered eagerly, quite unconscious of his drift. “Did you mean yourself and some friend?”

He nodded.

“Why, I don’t see how they could spend it all. There’d be no rent to pay. And just think of all the fruit and vegetables in the garden there!”

“Then I take you at your word, Alice,” he cried, impulsively, passing his arm round her waist. “You are the ‘friend.’ My dear, I have long wanted to ask you to be my wife, and I did not dare. This place, Leet Hall, encumbered me: for I feared the opposition that I, as its heir, should inevitably meet.”

She drew away from him, with doubting, frightened eyes. Mr. Harry Carradyne brought all the persuasion of his own dancing blue ones to bear upon her. “Surely, Alice, you will not say me nay!”

“I dare not say yes,” she whispered.

“What are you afraid of?”

“Of it altogether; of your friends. Captain Monk would—would—perhaps—turn me out. And there’s Mrs. Carradyne!”

Harry laughed. “Captain Monk can have no right to any voice in my affairs, once he throws me off; he cannot expect to have a finger in everyone’s pie. As to my mother—ah, Alice, unless I am much mistaken, she will welcome you with love.”

Alice burst into tears: emotion was stirring her to its depths. “Please to let it all be for a time,” she pleaded.

“If you speak it would be sure to lead to my being turned away.”

“I will let it be for a time, my darling, so far as speaking about it goes: for more reasons than one it may be better. But you are my promised wife, Alice; always recollect that.”

And Mr. Harry Carradyne, bold as a soldier should be, took a few kisses from her unresisting lips to enforce his mandate.

IV

Some time rolled on, calling for no particular record. Mr. Hamlyn’s West Indian property, which was large and lucrative, had been giving him trouble of late; at least, those who had the care of it gave it, and he was obliged to go over occasionally to see after it in person. Between times he stayed with his wife at Peacock’s Range; or else she joined him in London. Their town residence was in Bryanston Square; a pretty house, but not large.

It had been an unfavourable autumn; cold and wet. Snow had fallen in November, and the weather continued persistently dull and dreary. One gloomy afternoon towards the close of the year, Mrs. Hamlyn, shivering over her drawing-room fire, rang impatiently for more coal to be piled upon it.

“Has Master Walter come in yet?” she asked of the footman.

“No, ma’am. I saw him just now playing in front there.”

She went to the window. Yes, running about the paths of the Square garden was the child, attended by his nurse. He was a sturdy little fellow. His mother, wishing to make him hardy, sent him out in all weathers, and the boy throve upon it. He was three years old now, but looked older; and he was as clever and precocious as some children are at five or six. Her heart thrilled with a strange joy only at the sight of him: he was her chief happiness in life, her idol. Whether he would succeed to Leet Hall she knew not; since that one occasion, Captain Monk had said no more upon the subject, for or against it.

Why need she have longed for it so fervently? to the setting at naught the express wishes of her deceased uncle and to the detriment of Harry Carradyne? It was simply covetousness. As his father’s eldest son (there were no younger ones yet) the boy would inherit a fine property, a large income; but his doting mother must give him Leet Hall as well.

Her whole heart went out to the child as she watched him playing there. A few snowflakes were beginning to fall, and twilight would soon be drawing on, but she would not call him in. Standing thus at the window, it gradually grew upon her to notice that something was standing back against the opposite rails, looking fixedly at the houses. A young, fair woman apparently, with a profusion of light hair; she was draped in a close dark cloak which served to conceal her figure, just as the thick veil she wore concealed her face.

“I believe it is this house she is gazing at so attentively—and at me,” thought Mrs. Hamlyn. “What can she possibly want?”

The woman did not move away and Mrs. Hamlyn did not move; they remained staring at one another. Presently Walter burst into the room, laughing in glee at having distanced his nurse. His mother turned, caught him in her arms and kissed him passionately. Wilful though he was by disposition, and showing it at times, he was a lovable, generous child, and very pretty: great brown eyes and auburn curls. His life was all sunshine, like a butterfly’s on a summer’s day; his path as yet one of roses without their thorns.

“Mamma, I’ve got a picture-book; come and look at it,” cried the eager little voice, as he dragged his mother to the hearthrug and opened the picture-book in the light of the blaze. “Penelope bought it for me.”

She sat down on a footstool, the book on her lap and one arm round him, her treasure. Penelope waited to take off his hat and pelisse, and was told to come for him in five minutes.

“It’s not my tea-time yet,” cried he defiantly.

“Indeed, then, Master Walter, it is long past it,” said the nurse. “I couldn’t get him in before, ma’am,” she added to her mistress. “Every minute I kept expecting you’d be sending one of the servants after us.”

“In five minutes,” repeated Mrs. Hamlyn. “And what’s this picture about, Walter? Is it a little girl with a doll?”

“Oh, dat bootiful,” said the eager little lad, who was not yet as advanced in speech as he was in ideas. “It says she——dere’s papa!”

In came Philip Hamlyn, tall, handsome, genial. Walter ran to him and was caught in his arms. He and his wife were just a pair for adoring the child.

But nurse, inexorable, appeared again at the five minutes’ end, and Master Walter was carried off.

“You came home in a cab, Philip, did you not? I thought I heard one stop.”

“Yes; it is a miserable evening. Raining fast now.”

“Raining!” she repeated, rather wondering to hear it was not snowing. She went to the window to look out, and the first object her eyes caught sight of was the woman; leaning in the old place against the railings, in the growing twilight.

“I’m not sorry to see the rain; we shall have it warmer now,” remarked Mr. Hamlyn, who had drawn a chair to the fire. “In fact, it’s much warmer already than it was this morning.”

“Philip, step here a minute.”

His wife’s tone had dropped to a half-whisper, sounding rather mysterious, and he went at once.

“Just look, Philip—opposite. Do you see a woman standing there?”

“A woman—where?” cried he, looking of course in every direction but the right one.

“Just facing us. She has her back against the railings.”

“Oh, ay, I see now; a lady in a cloak. She must be waiting for some one.”

“Why do you call her a lady?”

“She looks like one—as far as I can see in the gloom. Does she not? Her hair does, any way.”

“She has been there I cannot tell you how long, Philip; half-an-hour, I’m sure; and it seems to me that she is watching this house. A lady would hardly do that.”

“This house? Oh, then, Eliza, perhaps she’s watching for one of the servants. She might come in, poor thing, instead of standing there in the rain.”

“Poor thing, indeed!—what business has any woman to watch a house in this marked manner?” retorted Eliza. “The neighbourhood will be taking her for a female detective.”

“Nonsense!”

“She has given me a creepy feeling; I can tell you that, Philip.”

“But why?” he exclaimed.

“I can’t tell you why; I don’t know why; it is so. Do not laugh at me for confessing it.”

Philip Hamlyn did laugh; heartily. “Creepy feelings” and his imperiously strong-minded wife could have but little affinity with one another.

“We’ll have the curtains drawn, and the lights, and shut her out,” said he cheerily. “Come and sit down, Eliza; I want to show you a letter I’ve had to-day.”

But the woman waiting outside there seemed to possess for Eliza Hamlyn somewhat of the fascination of the basilisk; for she never stirred from the window until the curtains were drawn.

“It is from Peveril,” said Mr. Hamlyn, producing the letter he had spoken of from his pocket. “The lease he took of Peacock’s Range is not yet out, but he can resign it now if he pleases, and he would be glad to do so. He and his wife would rather remain abroad, it seems, than return home.”

“Yes. Well?”

“Well, he writes to me to ask whether he can resign it; or whether I must hold him to the promise he made me—that I should rent the house to the end of the term. I mean the end of the lease; the term he holds it for.”

“Why does he want to resign it? Why can’t things go on as at present?”

“I gather from an allusion he makes, though he does not explicitly state it, that Mr. Carradyne wishes to have the place in his own hands. What am I to say to Peveril, Eliza?”

“Say! Why, that you must hold him to his promise; that we cannot give up the house yet. A pretty thing if I had no place to go down to at will in my own county!”

“So far as I am concerned, Eliza, I would prefer to stay away from the county—if your father is to continue to treat me in the way he does. Remember what it was in the summer. I think we are very well here.”

“Now, Philip, I have said. I do not intend to release our hold on Peacock’s Range. My father will be reconciled to you in time as he is to me.”

“I wonder what Harry Carradyne can want it for?” mused Philip Hamlyn, bowing to the imperative decision of his better half.

“To live in it, I should say. He would like to show his resentment to papa by turning his back on Leet Hall. It can’t be for anything else.”

“What cause for resentment has he? He sent for him home and made him his heir.”

“That is the cause. Papa has come to his senses and changed his mind. It is our darling little Walter who is to be the heir of Leet Hall, Philip—and papa has so informed Harry Carradyne.”

Philip Hamlyn gazed at his wife in doubt. He had never heard a word of this; instinct had kept her silent.

“I hope not,” he emphatically said, breaking the silence.

“You hope not?”

“Walter shall never inherit Leet Hall with my consent, Eliza. Harry Carradyne is the right and proper heir, and no child of mine, as I hope, must or shall displace him.”

Mrs. Hamlyn treated her husband to one of her worst looks, telling of contempt as well as of power; but she did not speak.

“Listen, Eliza. I cannot bear injustice, and I do not believe it ever prospers in the long run. Were your father to bequeath—my dear, I beg of you to listen to me!—to bequeath his estates to little Walter, to the exclusion of the true heir, rely upon it the bequest would never bring him good. In some way or other it would not serve him. Money diverted by injustice from its natural and just channel does not carry a blessing with it. I have noted this over and over again in going through life.”