When in London, Lucy, although in perfect health, and peculiarly active and alert, was not permitted to go out. She was chained to the sofa, till she almost longed to be a little ill to give her some occupation. She did muster a little attack of nerves, and an occasional whim, which, unfortunately for her, served to justify Lord Montreville in the continuance of his precautions.
Lord Montreville was often at the House of Lords, and as the season advanced he was more and more absent from home. Lucy thought the peers really worked very hard, and sacrificed a great deal of time to the good of their country. However, it was so right and praiseworthy to do so that she could not complain.
Numberless persons left their cards with her, and she sent her’s in return; but, as she was not allowed to keep late hours, she did not go out of an evening, and her circle of acquaintance did not increase as rapidly as she expected. Lord Montreville did not allow her to admit gentlemen of a morning, and he did not encourage her seeing much of Mrs. Bentley and her “sweet children;” so that, except the visits of the Duchess of Altonworth and her daughters, with whom she soon became intimate, and the drives into the country, which she sometimes took with them, nothing could exceed the monotony of her life.
She heartily wished the spring over, and her confinement over, and another spring come, that she might revel in the anticipated delights of a good London season.
In the course of time the spring was over; they returned to the country, and Lucy reminded Lord Montreville that he had promised her parents should pay them a visit. The invitation was despatched, and they arrived, father, mother, sisters, and Milly.
Lucy’s situation afforded an excuse for not seeing much company, which suited Lord Montreville very well; but not so well Mrs. Heckfield, who had passed four days in London, on her way to Ashdale Park, for the purpose of providing herself and daughters with apparel fit for the succession of distinguished company which she there expected to meet.
Neither did it suit Emma and Mary, whose hearts palpitated at the prospect of wearing their new wardrobe, and at the effect it was to produce. Vague images of barons, viscounts, earls, marquesses, and even dukes, were floating in their minds, and Mademoiselle had certainly intimated she did not see why if one of her young people had married so brilliantly, the others should not do as well, especially as Mademoiselle Emma played with much more execution than Madame la Marquise, and Mademoiselle Marie had begun learning German.
One and all were wofully disappointed when day after day elapsed, and the family party received no addition, unless it might be the clergyman of the parish, Lord Montreville’s solicitor from the county town, once his agent from Lancashire, and once the Delafields.
Mrs. Heckfield appeared in perfect caps from Devi’s, in the last new Parisian hat from Carson’s; Emma and Mary in the crispest of white muslins, over the cleanest of white satins. In vain! Neither duke, marquess, earl, viscount, baron, or even baronet, made his appearance. A fortnight had already slipped away,—the time for departure was approaching, when Mrs. Heckfield one day said to her daughter,—
“Well, my dear Lucy, I hope when your confinement is over, you will lead a gayer life. I fancied you had your house always full of company. Your letters constantly contained a list of visitors as long as my arm, and I am sure since we have been here, scarcely a soul has crossed your threshold. We have ten times as much society at Rose Hill Lodge.”
“Lord Montreville takes too much care of me, and that is the reason we have been so dull. I was afraid Emma and Mary would be disappointed, but whenever I proposed asking people to come, Lord Montreville seemed so afraid of my being ill. I am sure I am well enough, if he would but think so.”
“Well, my dear, it is quite right that husbands should be attentive, and I cannot but rejoice that your’s is so peculiarly so. Certainly your father never took half so much care of me. However, I hope the next time we pay you a visit we may find you well, and strong, and able to have your house full, and that I shall have the pleasure of seeing my Lucy the life of a brilliant society.”
Lucy sighed, for she had begun to understand Lord Montreville’s dislike to introducing her friends to his friends, and she feared it would be long before she had them all around her again. It was not that their visit gave her all the pleasure she had anticipated from it: she felt that her husband was bored; she was aware that he avoided his own set; she was in an agony if any of her family did any of the things which he thought out of the question; and her sisters, who were not “come out,” although they “dined down,” as they termed it, often made her uncomfortable.
One day her mother asked a gentleman opposite if he would “take” some of the dish before her, and Lucy looked timidly towards Lord Montreville to see if he had caught the sound of a word which was peculiarly obnoxious to his ears. Emma, on another occasion, exclaimed, what a “delicious” trifle, and she felt a chill run through her, for she knew he had a particular aversion to an epithet, which to him seemed expressive of gluttony.
Mary (who had never dined down before) was so delighted with the variety of excellent dishes before her, that she was much inclined to go the round of the second course, and needed many admonitory nods and frowns from her mother. She also frequently tipped her chair on its two fore-legs while she was writing or working, and this Lucy knew was an unpardonable sin.
Both girls were gay and wild, and had, as most sisters have, till they have been a little schooled in the world, the habit of talking over each other, and sometimes of interrupting the person speaking in their eagerness to rejoin. On such occasions Lord Montreville stopped short, and betook himself to a silence which was most painful to Lucy, although it was entirely unperceived by the culprits.
Lucy occasionally attempted to give them gentle hints upon these subjects, but they only seemed to think she was grown quite fine, and very difficult to please, and they could not conceal their disappointment at the retirement in which she lived.
The result was, that at the end of three weeks, when the large coach which contained them all drove from the door, a sensation of relief mingled itself with the sorrow she felt at parting from them.
Milly remained at Ashdale Park, and Lucy looked forward with unmixed pleasure to the prospect of having always about her a person so thoroughly attached, and in whom she had such perfect confidence.
In the autumn the long-expected event took place,—Lord Montreville was made happy by the birth of a son, and Lucy was delighted to think she should soon be a free agent again.
They had removed to London for the occasion. Lord Montreville was a great deal from home, and, as there were very few people in town, the time hung heavy with Lucy; for she was so impatient to leave her sick room and her sofa, that she did not find every thought and feeling wholly absorbed in the new-born babe. She was very young in years, and still more so in character: she had by no means had enough of youth and gaiety, and was not yet ripe for the tender affections and dull details of maternity. She was charmed with her baby, and was very unhappy if it cried, but it did not suffice her for amusement to watch it all day long. She wished Lord Montreville would stay at home, and read to her, or would bring her home some news, or that somebody would come, or something happen.
Milly was her comfort. She sometimes conversed with her for hours, and listened with sympathy to the details of her life in America, and with interest to her unsophisticated view of things in general. She thought that after all there was nothing half so good or so sensible as Milly, except the Duchess of Altonworth;—indeed, she fancied she perceived a considerable resemblance between their characters.
They returned to the country. When the first excitement was over, of bells being rung and oxen being roasted—when the servants, the tenants, the neighbours, had all looked at the wonderful child, and pronounced it to be the very finest they had ever seen, Lucy relapsed into her former state of ennui. She began to think she must be ill.
“Milly, I do not think I am well,” she one day promulgated to Milly, as she was sitting in the nursery.
“La, my lady! I am sure you look the very picture of health! What ever is the matter?”
“I do not know, exactly.”
“You have not the headache, sure?”
“No! my head never aches.”
“Perhaps, my lady, you feel tired if you walk too far.”
“No! I do not think I ever feel tired with walking, but I feel very tired if I do not walk.”
“Sure, my lady!—that’s comical too!”
“I never feel merry as I used to do; and I think it must be my state of health that prevents my being so. I have thought of consulting Dr. Bolusville, only I do not know what to say to him. I have no symptom that I know of—only I ought to be so very happy. I possess every thing that a person can sit down and wish for, and yet I feel low. I sometimes think, if I had more occupation, I should be better; but Lord Montreville is so kind, he will not let me take any trouble about any thing. Now, I dare say you did not feel low when you were in your log hut, on the banks of your swampy river—did you?”
“No, my lady! I never did, certainly;—when poor John was middling well, that is.”
“Ah, yes, for you had plenty to do! that must have been the reason. When I was a child, I always worked harder in my garden than my sisters; and the old bailiff once gave me a silver knife, because he said I had earned it haymaking. How I do wish Lord Montreville would let me help him to manage the house, and that he would consult me, and talk with me; but you see he never has any thing to say to me, except a kind word now and then, just as he has to the child. I should like to go hand-in-hand with my husband, as you and John did, and ride about his woods, and his park, and his farm with him, as the Duchess of Altonworth does with the Duke; and I should like to have a school, and to be useful. But he would not let me go to the school—especially now—he is so afraid of my bringing back the measles, or any complaint to the child.”
“Well, my lady, the baby will soon be business enough for you. What a sweet fellow he grows! Look! he knows you already!” and Milly tried to turn her attention to the child; for she thought all the mischief lay in Lord Montreville’s being so very little like John Roberts; and as that evil was without a remedy, the less it was dwelt upon the better.
The wished-for spring came, and Lucy was at once launched into the circle, which, to those who are not admitted, appears far to exceed in glory and delights Dante’s “Paradiso.”
Lord Montreville did not approve of her going out quite every evening, nor did he like her being seen at four or five parties the same night; but he allowed her a fair proportion of dissipation. He generally accompanied her himself; and without appearing to watch her, he contrived to know exactly what she was doing: but he did not make a point of never letting her stir without him: he took care to do nothing that should make her feel herself doubted, or that should cause either her or himself to appear ridiculous in the eyes of others. His proceedings were, as usual, dictated by the head, rather than by the heart; and were, as usual, framed with reference to the effect to be produced on the world, rather than to any abstract notion of right and wrong. In this instance, however, morality and expediency pointed out the same line of conduct.
Lucy was charmed with all she saw, and she was also delighted at finding herself considered charming; but her gaiety was as frank and natural as ever, although more subdued than in her girlish days. She ventured to talk more in society, and there was still enough left of the madcap Lucy to give a certain raciness and originality to what she uttered. Speeches, which in themselves were nothing, pleased from being so like herself.
Lord Montreville had now sufficient confidence in her tact not to fear any outbreak which could offend the most fastidious; and he rendered justice to the perfect innocence of her manner, in which there was so complete an absence of prudery or of coquetry, that no one presumed to pay her any marked attention.
This was the happiest period of her wedded life. The charms of London society had not yet palled on her, and, although her head was not turned with it, still she could not be insensible to the éclat of her present position. She gradually became quite reconciled to seeing less of Mrs. Bentley and her children than she had at first wished, and she was not so much annoyed as she thought she should have been at not having Emma with her at Almack’s.
The Duchess of Altonworth was most kind, and she passed many agreeable evenings with small parties at her house.
Upon the whole, time no longer hung heavy. Lord Montreville now had seldom occasion to set her right on any point of etiquette; and when she saw him in private, he appeared pleased and satisfied with her. But, although she did not always see his name in the House of Lords, still he was frequently absent of an evening, except when they were engaged to some pleasant party, in which case he almost always accompanied her.
The season drew to a close. They left London, and, to her great delight, removed to the Welsh castle, to pass some of the summer weeks among the wild beauties of nature.
All she had heard or imagined of the awful glories of the castle were more than realised. It was as vast, as dark, as gloomy, as massive, as uncomfortable, and as ghostly as heart could wish; and when first she arrived with all the spirits which the London season had infused into her, she was enchanted with the small windows in the thick walls, and the delightful look-out into the square courtyard.
There is no saying how long she would have found amusement in wandering about the oaken passages, and the winding stairs, and in finding likenesses for her boy among the grim warriors and furred judges whose portraits adorned the sides of the gallery; or how soon she would have longed for some of her friends to explore and to admire with her, for, soon after their arrival at Caërwhwyddwth Castle, an event occurred which gave a completely new current to her thoughts and feelings.
Lord Montreville, who had been out on horseback with his agent to inspect some improvements that were making on the property, was one evening brought home senseless. In descending a narrow footpath to examine the foundations of a new bridge, the horse slipped. He was precipitated down a considerable declivity, and a blow on the head produced a concussion of the brain, from which the most serious consequences might be apprehended.
Lucy’s horror and grief were such as might be expected. The doctor from the nearest town arrived as soon as possible. His report of the patient’s state was most alarming, although he gave hopes of ultimate recovery. All the usual remedies of bleeding, blistering, and extreme quiet were recommended; and Lucy sat night and day by his bed-side, watching with intense anxiety for the symptoms of returning consciousness.
The doubt had sometimes crossed her mind whether she did love her husband as she had wished and intended to do, and as Milly had loved John. But now, in his present helpless and suffering state, she felt herself so capable of doing any thing for him, of enduring any thing for him,—she felt that on his recovery all her future happiness so completely depended, that she was quite reassured as to the extent of her affection. She reflected with gratitude on his having selected her from all the world; she forgot his little particularities, she thought only of his kindnesses, and she nursed him with all the devotion and forgetfulness of self with which Milly could have nursed her John.
Weeks elapsed, and he did not recover his memory, nor did he seem to recognise those about him.
In the mean time agents, servants, stewards,—all required orders and directions. There were law affairs pending. Lord Montreville’s letters had been carefully set aside in his study till he himself might be well enough to open them, when Lucy received a formal epistle from the agent, informing her that among these letters there were some containing papers which it was absolutely necessary should be returned for signature. Lucy made up her mind that she must open the letters.
Before she went to Lord Montreville’s study to proceed with the necessary routine, she looked into the sick room, to see that all was quiet and comfortable.
She was again closing the curtains, when she was almost overcome with joy at hearing him utter, in feeble accents, “Lucy, do not leave me!”
CHAPTER XI.
Lucy could scarcely command herself so as to answer her husband, without betraying a degree of emotion which might have been prejudicial to him in his present state of weakness. He thanked her for her attention to him; he told her he had often been aware of her presence, though he had not had the power to show it. She bathed his hand with tears of joy and gratitude; and at that moment, when he was endeared to her by long watching and by deep anxiety, she felt as if Milly’s love for John could not have exceeded her’s for her husband, her guide, her protector, the father of her child.
The doctor came, and pronounced the patient convalescent; but prescribed the most perfect quiet, and the avoidance of every thing which might in any way arouse his feelings. Lucy told him of the letter she had received from the agent, and asked his opinion and advice upon the subject.
He declared it out of the question that Lord Montreville should be allowed to attend to matters of business for weeks, nay, perhaps months.
Under these circumstances, Lucy resumed her intention of opening Lord Montreville’s letters, and of acting according to the best of her judgment. Several were most uninteresting and unimportant communications, which required neither comment nor answer; some were letters of correspondence, which she laid aside as soon as she found they did not contain the papers of which she was in search. At length she came to one written in a delicate female hand, beginning, “Dearest Montreville,” and signed “Your Alicia Mowbray.”
“Alicia Mowbray!” she thought; “I never heard of her,” and her eye glanced upon words which filled her with astonishment and horror: “cruel absence,” and “consuming grief,” “counting the moments,” and “happy meeting,” and “sad parting,” and “distress for money,” and “necessary expenses,” winding up with an urgent request for a fresh supply of a hundred pounds.
Could this be intended for Lord Montreville! She looked again at the direction at the beginning of the letter. There could be no mistake: it was most assuredly addressed to her husband,—to the husband whom in health she had so dutifully studied to please,—whom in sickness she had nursed with such unwearied attention,—from whom, though exposed to all the fascinations and allurements of a London life, she had never for one moment allowed her thoughts to wander! That he, whom she had always looked upon as the appointed guardian of her honour and her morals, should have been habitually, deliberately breaking his nuptial vow, preferring to her pure and true affection the hired caresses of a mistress,—and, above all, exposing her to the eyes of the world as the neglected wife of an old profligate, old enough to be her father! The letter fell from her hand; her brain went round with the multitudinous thoughts that rushed almost simultaneously through it; but rage, indignation, and disgust superseded, for some moments, all more tender emotions.
Then came pity for herself, who had thus wasted the bloom of her early feelings, and she wept bitter tears over her blighted youth, her worthless beauty; for at this moment she suddenly became aware that she was one of the most lovely and most admired of women,—admired by all around her, except her husband,—lovely in all eyes but his!
Lucy had married almost from the school-room. Lord Montreville had drawn a veil over his own former career; he had studiously avoided initiating her into the frailties of fashionable life; he had wished to preserve the purity he found; so that she still retained that freshness of mind which refuses itself to the conviction of the existence of vice, but which, when once unwillingly convinced, sees it in all its natural deformity.
From long acquaintance with the world, the imagination becomes familiarised with what at first inspired horror; or from experience of the weakness of human nature, the temptations to which it is exposed, and the gradations by which one error often leads on to guilt, the charitable learn to pity the sinner, while they condemn the sin. But Lucy’s perceptions of right and wrong were not blunted by habitual intercourse with the faulty, nor softened by the consideration of their temptations or their repentance. She saw but the broad distinction between virtue and vice, and she looked on the latter with the indignant horror of youth. Charity is not the characteristic virtue of the young.
While she was absorbed in such new and painful reflections, there came a tap at the door, and her maid informed her that Lord Montreville was awake, and was incessantly asking for her. She started at the interruption, and, quickly dismissing the maid, stood for a few moments paralysed.
She had looked with loathing at the letter, till her tears had all retreated to their cells. She roused herself, and hastily pushing the other papers into an escrutoire, she stopped to pick up the fatal epistle.
At that moment the servant entered. She instinctively crammed it into her bosom, but as instantly pulled it forth again, as if its very touch was contamination.
Lord Montreville was so impatient for her return, that a second messenger had been despatched to hasten her. She rushed to her own apartment, where she placed the letter under lock and key, and then was obliged, with what composure she could muster, to repair to the bedside of her husband.
He greeted her with a pleased smile,—he extended his pale and emaciated hand to take her’s. “Dearest Lucy,” he said, “it seems an age since you left me; it does me good to know my kindest and best nurse is near me. I cannot bear to feel that what I love best is absent from me.”
His hand lay passively in hers; her soul recoiled from him. She could not return the pressure of his hand, she could not meet his eyes. “Falsehood upon his lips,” she thought, “when scarcely snatched from the jaws of death, when still trembling on the verge of the grave.”
She made an effort to speak, and, assuring him the doctor forbade all excitement or emotion, she begged him to compose himself to sleep.
“You will not leave me, then?”
She promised she would not, and she seated herself by the bedside. All was quiet; he gradually dozed off into a light slumber; and there she sat bewildered, confused, fancying all that had occurred must be a dream! Could he speak so kindly, so tenderly, and yet be false? Could he address her as the being he loved best, while he preferred to her this Alicia? Could he, with death staring him in the face, thus add a deliberate lie to all his other sins? Yet there existed the letter—the letter which expressed implicit reliance on his affections!
She gazed on him as he slept, and looked back to the moment when he had first recognised her, and thought, was it possible one little hour could have worked such a wondrous revolution in her mind?
The truth was, that Alicia had been a mistress of former days, on whom he had settled a handsome annuity at the very time when his absence from Lyneton had excited such surprise in the inhabitants of Rose Hill Lodge, and from whom he had then parted, as he intended for ever, but who had once more succeeded in getting him within her toils.
For some time after his marriage he had neither heard nor seen any thing of her; but when he came to London in the spring, he received from her a letter, stating that she had been robbed of the money he allowed her—that she was deeply in debt, and was threatened with an execution in her house, and with the prospect of being sent to prison. He could not do otherwise than ascertain the truth of this history, and interfere to save her from such wretchedness. She was still very handsome, in deep grief, and in great agitation at again seeing him. He relieved her immediate wants, and occasionally visited her; for which visits she expressed the greatest gratitude, and from which she contrived to extract considerable additions to her allowance. He did not thoroughly believe in her passionate devotion to him, but he could not be cruel to a person who had acquired the sort of hold over him which is obtained by long habit.
He did not consider that this renewal of his former acquaintance at all interfered with his making an excellent husband, for he treated his wife with all possible respect and attention; she had every thing that an unlimited command of money could procure her, and he imagined that the whole guilt of infidelity consisted in its coming to the knowledge, and consequently hurting the feelings, of the wife.
If he had been obliged to make his election between them, he would not have hesitated for a moment; but there was nothing, to his mind, incompatible in the two connexions.
In fact, his sentiments for Lucy had of late rather increased than diminished in warmth; for he could not but respect the singleness of heart with which she passed through the ordeal of a London season, so dangerous to a young and lovely married woman of high rank, and especially to one who was the fashion. As the mother of his son and heir, she had an additional claim on his affections that no other woman had ever possessed; and the attention with which she had nursed him had now awakened in his bosom stronger emotions of tenderness than he had thought himself capable of feeling.
The expressions which fell from his lips came straight from his heart, although, at that moment, they appeared to Lucy to be an insulting refinement of deceit.
During the hour which she passed watching his slumbers, she seemed to live a long life of bitter and confused thoughts, and she was unutterably relieved when the entrance of the physician enabled her to make her escape, and to lock herself into her room, there to meditate on the past, the present, and the future.
On looking back she remembered a thousand circumstances which to her unsuspicious mind had seemed of no import at the time, but which now proved to her that this connexion was one of some standing. She remembered having heard persons allude to debates in the House of Lords, at which he had been obliged to confess he had not been present, although he had been absent from her all the evening. She remembered how little she had seen of him during her confinement; she looked at the fatal letter, and felt certain she had often seen notes in the same hand-writing, and she became more and more indignant to think she had long been a neglected, an injured, and a duped wife. She recollected the rigid notions of female propriety which he professed; she thought the care he had taken of her morals, the censorship which he exercised over the books she read, an insulting mockery. She could almost smile in bitterness at his having forbidden her reading Delphine, and made her return Adam Blair to the library,—and at the remark he made to some one who wondered she had never yet read La Nouvelle Heloise—that he was surprised at any woman who had read the first three lines of the introduction owning she had read any further.
“And I was grateful to him,” she thought, “for thus watching over me. I fancied it argued affection for me, and a love of virtue in himself, while he was thus treating me like a fool, and laughing at his childish dupe! No wonder he wished to preserve the ignorance which was so convenient to him. This taste for purity in which I so rejoiced, was but the veil to conceal his own vice. And I am bound for life to this man. I must drag on a weary existence, forced, Heaven knows how unwillingly, to break my marriage vow; for how can I love, how can I honour, what I despise and condemn?”
Floods of tears came to the relief of her bursting heart and bursting head. She wept, till she was once more calm, and could look with some degree of composure upon the actual position in which she was placed.
In the first instance she resolved, although she could never again find pleasure in the performance of her duty, that she would rigidly adhere to it, that she would command all outward expression of her emotions, and that she would continue to nurse Lord Montreville, if possible, with the same devotion as before. She made up her mind that when she had succeeded in finding the papers for which the lawyer had written, she would lock up all the letters together, and when Lord Montreville was well enough to attend to his own affairs again, she would explain the circumstances under which she had been obliged to search for these papers, and give him the key of the escrutoire without any farther remark.
When she had despatched the papers, and safely deposited the letters according to her intention, she felt somewhat relieved, and was enabled to return once more to the sick room, and take her station there as usual.
Fortunately he spoke but little, and she was spared any fresh ebullitions of tenderness on his part. In the evening she repaired to the nursery, where Milly was rapturous in her congratulations upon his lordship’s wonderful improvement.
“Well, my lady, your good nursing has its reward at last! La! when first he called you by your name, and spoke so kind and tender like, Mrs. Gauzelee told me she never saw such a moving sight. And to see you, my lady, take his hand and kiss it, and my lord calling you ‘his own Lucy.’ Well! it does my old heart good to think you have known such a blessed moment; for I remember, as I pushed open the bed-room door of our log-hut, when my poor John said, ‘Why, Milly, t’an’t you,’ I thought the joy of hearing my husband’s voice speak my name again would have quite got the better of me.”
Few people like to be told they felt this or that, on such or such an occasion; still more disagreeable is it when, although they cannot disclaim the emotions attributed to them, they are conscious of experiencing those the most diametrically opposite.
Lucy held her child in her arms. She contrived to bury her face in its little bosom, and to remain bending over it, till her voice and her countenance were sufficiently under control to venture an answer: “The doctor seems to think that, with perfect quiet, Lord Montreville may soon be quite himself again.”
Milly was surprised at the cool and measured reply. Lucy’s devotion had been such, that she could not doubt the love she bore to her husband. Her lady looked ill. She thought, perhaps, she had harassed herself too much, and she entreated her to go to bed early. But no! she was resolved to watch as before.
“My actions,” she said to herself, “shall be under command, though my feelings may not be so. I will do the same I did before,” and she took her station in his darkened room, where, by the glimmer of one shaded candle, she usually passed a great part of the night in reading.
That night her eyes in vain glanced over the words, they conveyed no corresponding ideas to her mind. She imagined long conversations and explanations; she fancied reproaches, excuses, she pictured penitence and sorrow. She convinced herself that, when Lord Montreville examined his letters, and found this one opened, he would be overwhelmed with shame and self-reproach, and that he would throw himself on her mercy. She considered how it would then be her duty to act; she consulted her own heart whether she should then be able to restore him to the same place in her affections. She tried to lower her standard of manly excellence; she tried to frame to herself a less exalted scale of morals. Alas! is not this but too likely an error to fall into, as the frailties and follies of human nature open upon the young and gentle, to whom it is painful to condemn and despise their fellow-creatures?
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
VOLUME THE SECOND.