The Red Court Farm: A Novel (Vol. 1 of 2)

She had time to sing the three stanzas through, repeating the last line of the first and third verses as a refrain.

Mr. Lake came back swinging the shawl on his arm--a warm grey woollen one. "All right at last, Angeline. I could not find it, and had to strike a fusee for a light. It had slipped behind the seat. I began to think you must have carried it away today."

"I did not know it was there," she answered.

"Don't you remember throwing it off last evening when we were sitting there, saying you felt hot? Now be quiet: I'll wrap you up myself. Have you any pins?"

She had risen, and he put the shawl on her head and shoulders; then turned her round and pinned it under her chin, so that only her face was visible. With such care!--oh, with such care!

"You are taking as much trouble as though I were going to stay out for an hour!"

"I wish we were."

"Do you? What would your wife say?"

"Nothing. And if she did--what then? There, you can't feel the cold now."

"No; I don't think I can."

"But what am I to have for my pains?"

She made no answer. In truth, he did not wait for it. Bending his own face on the one he held up, he left a kiss and a loving word upon it: "My dearest!" A long and passionate kiss, as it sounded in his wife's ear.

Lady Ellis, perhaps not prepared for so demonstrative a proceeding, spoke a rebuke. He only laughed. They moved away; he retaining his arm around her for a lingering moment, as though to keep the shawl in its place; and their voices were dropped again to a soft sweet whisper, that scarcely disturbed the stillness of the murky autumn night.

Very different from the tone of that wail--had any been near to note it--when Clara Lake left her hiding-place; a low wail, as of a breaking heart, that came forth and mingled with the inclement evening air.

Some writer has remarked--and I believe it was Bulwer Lytton, in his "Student"--that to the vulgar there is but one infidelity in love. It is perfectly true; but I think the word "vulgar" is there misplaced, unless we may apply it to all, whether inmates of the palace or the cottage, whose temperament is not of the ultra-refined. Ultra-refined, mind! they of the sensitive, proud, impassioned nature, whose inward life, its thoughts, its workings, can never be betrayed to the world, any more than they themselves can be understood by it. Alas for them! They are hardly fit to dwell on this earth, to do battle with its sins and its cares; for their spirit is more exalted than is well: it may be said, more etherealized. The gold too highly refined, remember, is not adapted for general use. That the broad, vulgar idea conveyed by the word infidelity, is not their infidelity, is very certain. It is the unfaithfulness of the spirit, the wandering of the heart's truth to another, that constitutes infidelity for them; and where such comes, it shatters the heart's life as effectually as a blast of lightning shatters the tree it falls on. This was the infidelity that wrought the misery of Clara Lake: that other infidelity, whether it was or was not to have place in the future, she barely glanced at. Her husband's love had left her: it was given to another; and what mattered aught else? The world had closed to her; never again could she have, as it seemed, any place in it. Henceforth life would be a mockery.

She returned shivering to the house--not apparently with the cold from without, but from the chill within--entering by the glass doors. The fire was nearly out; it wanted stirring and replenishing. She never saw it, never noticed it; but crept upstairs to her own room to hide herself. We cannot follow her; for you may not doubt that the quarter of an hour she stopped in it she had need to be alone, away from the wondering eyes of men.

Only a quarter of an hour. Clara Lake was not one of your loud women, who like their wrongs to be proclaimed to the world, and punished accordingly. In her sensitive reticence, she dreaded their betrayal more than any earthly thing. So she rose from her knees, and lifted her head from the chair, where it had lain in utter abandonment of spirit, and smoothed her hair, and went out of her room again to disarm suspicion, and was her calm self once more. At that same moment, though she knew it not, Mr. Lake and Lady Ellis were slowly strolling across the grass to enter by the same glass doors, their promenade, which they had been taking up and down the broad walk since quitting the shrubbery, having come to a decorous end.

CHAPTER VIII.

Catching a Chill.

The warm light from the open nursery door flashed across Clara Lake's path in the corridor, and she went in. Mrs. Chester was running some slate-coloured breadths together, the lining for a black frock for Fanny. Miss Cooper sat at the table equally busy. She was a steady, industrious young woman, as well-conducted as her brother, the unfortunate engine-driver; and many ladies employed her at their houses by day.

"Is it you, Clara?" cried Mrs. Chester, looking up. "I'm coming down. I suppose you are all wondering what has become of me? Is tea on the table?"

"I--I don't know; I have been in my room," replied Mrs. Lake, taking a low chair near the fire.

Anna, with her quick ear of discernment--at work apart from the rest, with very little benefit of the candles' light--turned round and looked at Clara, as if something in the tone were unnatural; disguised. But she said nothing. Clara seemed absorbed in the fire.

Light, quick steps were heard on the stairs, and Robert Lake dashed in, a gay smile on his face. "Pretty housekeepers you are! The drawing-room fire's gone out."

"The fire gone out!" repeated Mrs. Chester, in consternation. "What will Lady Ellis say? Clara, dear, what could you have been thinking of? You should have rung for coals."

"It was a good fire when I left it," murmured Clara, believing she spoke in accordance with the truth.

"And the fire was all red coals, and the room as hot as could be when I went in for that newspaper," put in Fanny Chester.

"Run, Fanny, and tell them to make up the fire again, and to put in plenty of sticks," said Mrs. Chester. "Has Lady Ellis not been sitting with you this afternoon, Clara?"

"In her own room, no doubt, writing letters. I hope she is there still. So you have got back, Robert," Mrs. Chester added, turning to her brother.

"Safe and sound," was Mr. Lake's response, as he stood surveying the table and the work going on. "What are you so busy over, all of you?"

Mrs. Chester, bending her eyes and fingers on a complicated join, inserted from consideration of economy, did not take the trouble to answer. Mr. Lake went round to his wife.

"How are you by this time, Clary?" he lightly said; as, standing between her and the table, he bent down to the low chair where she sat, and kissed her forehead.

It was a cold kiss; a careless matter-of-fact sort of kiss à la matrimony. She made no response in words, or else; but the hot crimson dyed her cheeks, as she contrasted it with a certain other kiss bestowed by him on somebody else not long before; that was passionate enough; rather too much so. Had he noticed, he might have seen his wife press her hand sharply upon her bosom; as if she might be trying to hide its tumultuous throbbing.

"And how does the house get on, Robert?" asked Mrs. Chester, lifting her head to speak.

"Slower than ever. You'll have us here until Christmas, Penelope, according to the present lookout."

"I hope I shall; although Clara"--turning towards her--"does seem in a fidget to get back."

Clara seemed in a fidget about nothing, just then; she was sitting perfectly still, her face and her eyes cast down. Robert Lake ran on, in his own fashion, turning his attention upon the dressmaker now.

"Working for your life as usual, Miss Cooper! What is that you are cutting out? A pair of pantaloons for me?"

"It's a pair of sleeves, sir."

"Oh, sleeves; I feared they'd hardly be large enough. By the way, when is that inquest to be brought to an end?"

"I wish I knew, sir," she answered.

"And nothing has been decided in regard to your brother yet!"

"No, sir. It is very hard."

"It is very strange," returned Mr. Lake--"strange there should be this contradiction about the lights. Each side is so positive."

"I am quite certain, sir, that Matthew would not say what was untrue, even to save himself; therefore, when he says it was the green light up, I know it was the green."

"Precisely the same thing that I tell everybody. I have unlimited faith in Cooper."

"And there's Colonel West to bear out what he says, you know, sir. The colonel would not say the green light was up, if it was not."

"No. But then, again, Oliver Jupp and the station people maintain it was the red," said Mr. Lake, remarking upon the fact that had puzzled him all along. "For my part, I think there was a little sleight of hand going on. Some conjurors must have been there in disguise. Now gentlemen and ladies, walk up; the performance is just going to begin. The celebrated Signor Confusiani has taken his place, and is entering on his mysteries. He transforms colours by the help of his magic wand In looking at the green, you perceive it change to red; in looking at the red, it at once passes into blue."

They all laughed, except Clara. She sat still as before, her eyes fixed on the fire.

"You see, sir, the worst of it is that Matthew is kept out of employment all this time," said Miss Cooper. "They have suspended him. He and his poor young wife are at their wits' end nearly, over it. Two months now, and not a shilling coming in."

"Yes, it is very bad," returned Mr. Lake, speaking seriously for once. "There's a baby too, is there not?"

"Yes, sir. Three weeks old."

"I suppose you give them your earnings."

"I give them what I can, sir; but I have my mother to keep."

"Ah," concluded Mr. Lake, abandoning the subject. "Have you been for a walk today, Clara?"

"No."

"You ought to take her, Robert; she scarcely ever goes out now. You might have come back earlier and done it. Lady Ellis did not have a walk today, failing you. Why did you not come sooner?"

"Couldn't manage it, Mrs. Chester."

"But--when did you come?" suddenly resumed Mrs. Chester, after a pause of thought. "You must have come back in the afternoon. There's no train at this hour."

"Oh, they put on a special one for me."

"Don't be stupid," retorted Mrs. Chester. "You must have been back some time."

"Have it your own way, Penelope, and perhaps you'll live the longer."

"Uncle Robert, you know you were back ever so long ago," interposed Fanny Chester, who had just come into the room. "You have been staying in the garden with Lady Ellis."

"What's that?" cried Mr. Lake.

"I saw you. You were both of you going towards the shrubbery."

He caught hold of the little speaker by the waist, and swung her round. "That's the way you see ghosts, is it, Miss Fanny! Take care they don't run away with you! How could you see me in the shrubbery, pray, if I was not there."

"Be quiet, Uncle Robert; put me down. Mamma there's a good fire in the parlour now, and the tea-tray is carried in. And Miss Cooper, I was to tell you they are waiting tea for you in the kitchen."

Mrs. Chester, shaking the threads from her black gown, left the room, Fanny went with her, and Miss Cooper followed. Tea was a thankful boon to the weary, hard-worked dressmaker. Anna never quitted her work until the last minute, and sat on, drawing one of the candles a little nearer to her. Robert Lake began speaking to his wife of the progress of their house; or rather, the non-progress. Clara--the one dreadful certainty giving rise to other suspicions--wondered whether he had bribed the men to retard it. He had not done that, however; he was not one to commit wrong deliberately.

"Seriously speaking, Clara, I do think we shall not get back before Christmas."

She had determined upon saying something; what, she hardly knew. But when she tried to speak, the violent agitation that the effort brought, impeded all utterance. And perhaps the presence of Anna Chester acted as a restraint. She glanced up at him and opened her lips; but no words came; her throat was beating, her breath troubled.

"Clara! you have turned quite white. Are you ill?"

"I--I feel cold," was all she could say.

"It is a cold, nasty night," remarked Mr. Lake, giving no further thought to the matter, or supposing that there was cause to give it. "The tea is ready, I think; that will warm you."

He took one of the candles off the table and went to his room to wash his hands. Anna Chester laid down her work and approached Clara.

"Dear Mrs. Lake, something is troubling you," she said in her gentle manner, as her sweet eyes glanced deprecatingly at that care-betraying face. "Can I do anything for you--or get you anything? Shall I bring you some tea up here?"

"Hush, Anna! No, it is nothing--only that I am cold. Thank you all the same."

"You are looking so pale. Pale and sad."

"I don't think I have been very well lately, Anna. Let me be quiet, my dear, for a few minutes, will you? my head aches."

Anna Chester, with the delicacy innate in her, quitted the room, setting things a little straight on the work-table in passing it. When Mr. Lake came back, Clara was sitting just as he had left her. Putting down the candle, he came close up, making some trifling remark.

She would have given the world to be able to say a word to him; to ask whether she was to be second in his heart; second to that woman; but she simply dared not. Her agitation would have become unbearable, and ended in an hysterical scene.

"Are you not coming to tea, Clara?"

"Presently."

He looked at her with a keen eye. She was odd, he thought.

"What's the matter, Clara? You seem dull this evening."

There was no answer. Mrs. Lake had her hand pressed upon her throat and chest, striving, though he knew it not, to still the agitation that all but burst its bounds.

"Where is the book?" she presently asked.

"What book?"

"The one you were to bring for me; that you forgot last time."

"Oh, to be sure; here it is," he said, taking it from his coat pocket. "I did not forget it this time, you see."

"You might have brought it to me when you first got back," she reproachfully said.

"Well, I have not been back long. You are shivering; what makes you so cold?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Perhaps you have been asleep; one does shiver sometimes on waking. Come along, Clara; tea will do you good."

She rose and followed him down. Mrs. Chester was pouring out the tea, and Lady Ellis, in her black silk gown with its low body and short sleeves, and the ruche of white crape, causing her to look girlish, years younger than she was, sat on the sofa. She had several evening dresses, but they were all black, and all made in the same simple style. Sir George had not been dead twelve months yet; but she had never worn a regular widow's cap--it would have spoilt her hair, she told them. The pretty white net things she wore in a morning were but an apology for one. Very fine, very silky and beautiful did her purple-black hair look that night, and Robert Lake playfully touched it as he sat down beside her.

The children's meal-table, at which Anna Chester used to preside in a little room, was done away with, the two boys having gone to school, so that Anna and Fanny were present as usual this evening. There was plenty of talking and laughing, and Clara's silence was not noticed--save perhaps by Anna Chester.

After tea, when Anna and Fanny were gone away again, Mr. Lake and Lady Ellis began chess: in one way or other they generally monopolized each other's evenings. Sometimes it would be with music; sometimes at écarté, which she had taught him; often at chess. The small table was drawn out, and they sat at it apart. Mrs. Chester was doing some embroidery-work this evening; Clara sat alone by the fire reading; or making believe to read.

But when she was unobserved the book dropped on her lap. Nobody was looking at her. Mrs. Chester's profile was towards her, but she was fully engrossed with her work; her husband's back was turned. Only Lady Ellis was in full view, and Clara sat studying her face and the glances of her large and flashing eyes.

How long silence had reigned, except for the remarks exchanged now and again between the chess-players, perhaps none of them could have told, when one of those subtle instincts, alike unaccountable and unexplainable, caused Mrs. Chester to turn suddenly to Clara Lake. What she saw made her start.

"Clara! What is the matter?"

Mr. Lake turned quickly round and regarded his wife. The book lay on her knee, her cheeks were scarlet as with incipient fever, her whole frame was shaking, her eyes were wild. That she was labouring under some extraordinary attack of terror appeared evident to all. He rose and came up.

"You are certainly ill, my dear!"

Ill, agitated, frightened--there could be no question of it. Not at once did she speak; she was battling with herself for calmness. Mrs. Chester took her hand Lady Ellis approached with dark and wondering eyes. Clara put her hands before her own.

"It is a nervous attack," said Mrs. Chester. "Go and get some wine, Robert, or some brandy."

He was going already, before she told him, and brought back both. Clara would take neither. Awfully vexed at having caused a scene, the mortification enabled her to throw off the symptoms of illness, except the shivering. Lady Ellis, with extreme bad taste, slipped her hand within Mr. Lake's arm as they stood watching her. He moved forward to speak, and so dropped it.

"You must have caught cold, I fear, Clara. Had you not better take something warm and go to bed?"

She lifted her eyes to his, and answered sharply--sharply for her.

"I shall not go to bed. I am well now."

"Colds are sooner caught than got rid of, Clara. If you have take one--"

"If I have, it will be gone in the morning," came the sharp interruption. "Pray do not let me disturb your game."

Contriving to repress the shivering by a strong effort of will, she took up her book again. They returned to the chess-table, Mrs. Chester went on with her embroidery, and so the night went on: Clara, outwardly calm, reading sedulously--inwardly shaking as though she had an ague-fit. Even to herself it was evident that she had caught a violent cold.

"I shall send you a glass of white-wine whey," spoke Mrs. Chester, when Clara at length rose to go upstairs, declining to partake of the refreshments brought in. "And mind you lie in bed in the morning. There's no mistake about the cold."

"How could she have caught it?" exclaimed Lady Ellis, with a vast display of sympathy; and Clara bit her tongue to enforce silence, for she could scarcely forbear telling her. My lady, taking her unawares, gave her a kiss on the cheek.

"Drink the whey quite hot, my dear Mrs. Lake."

Clara, her mind full of Judas the false and his kiss, went upstairs alone; she preferred to do so, she told them, and shut-herself in her own chamber. When Elizabeth appeared with the white-wine whey, and left it, she noticed that her mistress had not begun to undress.

Neither had she when Mr. Lake came up, nearly an hour afterwards. They had lingered in the dining-room--he, Mrs. Chester, and Lady Ellis. He was very much surprised. She sat by the fire, wrapped in a shawl, with her feet on the fender.

"Why, Clara, I thought you were in bed and asleep!"

There was no answering remark. Mr. Lake, thinking her manner more and more strange, laid his hand kindly on her shoulder.

"Clary, what ails you to-night?"

She shrank away from his hand, and replied to his question by another.

"Why is it that our house is not ready?"

"That is just what I asked of the workmen today, lazy dogs!"

"We can go back to it as it is. Some of the rooms are habitable. Will you do so?"

"What in the world for?" he demanded. "We are very comfortable here, Clara; and, between ourselves, it is a help to Penelope."

"We must go back. I cannot stay."

"But why? Where's the motive?"

She drew her shawl closely round her as if she shivered again, and spoke the next words with a jerk, for to get them out required an effort of pain. What it had taken to nerve her to this task so far, she alone knew.

"What is there between you and Lady Ellis?"

"Between me and Lady Ellis!" echoed Mr. Lake, with all the carelessness in life. "Nothing at all. What should there be?"

She bent towards him and whispered.

"Which is it--which is it to be, I or she?"

"To be--for what?" rejoined Mr. Lake, really at a loss.

"Which of us is it that you love?" she wailed forth; and indeed the tone of her voice could be called little else than a wail.

"Clara, you are growing foolish."

"Don't put me off in this false way," she vehemently uttered, roused to passion by his indifference. "Why are you always with her, stealing walks and interviews?--why do you give to her your impassioned kisses, and call her by endearing names? Robert, you will kill me!"

He put the heel of his boot on the bars to push down a piece of refractory coal, probably debating with himself what he should answer.

"Considering that you are my wife, Clara, and that Lady Ellis is but a chance acquaintance, I think you might be above this nonsense."

"Have you forgotten my dream?" she resumed, in a low tone. "Have you forgotten that my coming to this house seemed to shadow forth my death?"

"That dream again, of all things!" exclaimed Mr. Lake in open surprise, involuntary sarcasm in his tone. "I thought it was done with and dismissed."

"I have been thinking of it all the evening."

"Then I'd not confess it," he said, dropping either by accident or in temper the hair-brush he had taken in his hand "And the notion of my kissing Lady Ellis! and calling her--what did you phrase it?--endearing names? That's the best joke I have heard lately."

She fixed her gaze steadfastly upon him; there was something in it which seemed to say she could convict him of falsehood, if she chose; and his eyes fell beneath hers.

"What has come over you, Clary? You must be turning jealous! I never knew you so foolish before."

"No," she answered, in a tone of pain, "never before, never before."

"And why now? There's no occasion for it."

"I will not descend to explanation or reproach," she said, after a pause; "you may ask your own conscience how much of the latter you merit. I shall go home tomorrow; I dare not stay in this house with that woman. Do you understand me, I dare not. You can accompany me if--if---- Robert, you must choose between us."

He did not speak for a minute or two; and when he did, it was in a careless tone, as though he wished to make light of the matter altogether.

"Of course if you have made up your mind to return to an uncomfortable home, half pulled down, we must do so. I am sorry for the caprice, for we shall be choked with paint and dust."

"Very well. We go tomorrow. I will send Elizabeth over early in the morning, to get things straight for us."

She rose as she spoke, and began to undress. His eyes fell upon the tumbler. Taking it up he held it to the light.

"I do believe this is your whey! It is quite cold. To drink it like this would do you no good."

"Oh, what does it signify?" she answered; as if that and all things else were utterly indifferent to her.

Mr. Lake quitted the room without speaking. By and by he came back with another glassful, quite hot.

"Now, Clara, drink this."

She refused at first; it would do her no good, she said; but Mr. Lake insisted upon it. He was her husband still, and could exact obedience.

But the morrow brought no journey for Mrs. Lake. It brought illness instead. With early morning Mr. Lake got up and aroused the house, saying that his wife was ill. She had awoke so exceedingly suffering--her breath impeded, her face and eyes hot and wild--as to alarm him. Mrs. Chester hastened to her bedside, and the nearest doctor was summoned in haste and brought to the house. He pronounced the malady to be inflammation of the chest and lungs, and forbade her to attempt to leave her bed. He inquired of Mrs. Lake if she knew how she had taken it, and she told him, after a pause of hesitation, that she had gone out of doors from a warm room the previous evening without putting anything on, and the damp cold must have struck to her.

Yes; it was so. As the sight she had gone out to witness struck a chill to her heart, so did the cold and damp strike a chill to her frame. Once before, five or six years ago, she had caught a similar chill, and inflammation had come on in the same rapid manner. The doctor observed that she must be especially predisposed to it, and privately inquired of Mrs. Chester whether any of her relatives had died of consumption. "Yes," was the answer, "her mother and her brother."

Mr. Lake went to Katterley and brought back the gentleman who had attended her from infancy, Dr. Marlow, an old man now. He was a personal friend of theirs as well as medical attendant. He saw no cause for anxiety, he said to Mr. Lake; that she was very ill there was no doubt, but not, he thought, ill unto danger.

"She has a good constitution, she has a good constitution," urged Mr. Lake, his tone of anxiety proving that he wished to be reassured upon the point.

"For all I have ever seen to the contrary," replied Dr. Marlow. "She must be more prudent for the future, and not subject herself to sudden changes of temperature."

"She found the drawing-room very hot, and went from it into the cold night-air. It opens with glass doors. And if you remember, doctor, last night was raw and foggy. At least, it was so here; I don't know what it may have been at Katterley."

So spoke Mr. Lake. But it never entered into his carelessly-constituted mind to wonder why his wife had gone out; or whether, having gone out, she might by some curious chance have come unsuspected across the path of himself and another.

For three weeks Mrs. Lake never left her bed. The inflammation had taken strong hold upon her. A nice time of it those two must have had downstairs! Robert Lake, genuinely sorry for her illness in itself, for her prolonged seclusion, was quite an exemplary attendant, and would pass half an hour together in the sick-chamber, indemnifying himself by several half-hours with somebody else. Mrs. Chester of course saw nothing; nobody on earth could be more conveniently blind where her interest was concerned, and it would be unprofitable to her to lose or to offend Lady Ellis. Clara lay and imagined all that might be taking place, the sweet words, the pretty endearments, the confidential interchange of feeling and thought: it was not precisely the way to get better.

The maid Elizabeth was her chief attendant; Anna Chester sat with her often. Mrs. Chester, bustling and restless in a sick room as she was elsewhere, was better out of the chamber than in it. To none of these did Clara speak of her husband; but when Fanny ran in, as she did two or three times a day, Clara would ask questions if nobody was within hearing.

"Where's Mr. Lake, Fanny?"

"Oh! he's downstairs in the drawing-room."

"What is he doing?"

"Talking to Lady Ellis."

The answers would vary according to circumstances; and Fanny, too young for any sort of suspicion, was quite ready and willing to give them. "He is reading to Lady Ellis;" or "He is out with Lady Ellis;" or "He and Lady Ellis are sitting together by the fire-light;" just as it might chance to be. Twice Lady Ellis went with him to Katterley, and gave Mrs. Lake on her return a glowing account of how quickly the house was getting on now.

Well, the time wore away somehow, and Mrs. Lake got better and took to sit up in her room. The first time she went downstairs was an evening in November. She did not go down then by orders; quite the contrary. "Not just yet," the doctor had, told her in answer to an inquiry; "in a few days." But she felt very, very dull that afternoon, sitting alone in her chamber. Mrs. Chester and Anna were busy downstairs, making pickles--in the very kitchen that Clara had seen so minutely in her dream; Elizabeth had gone on an errand to Katterley, taking Fanny Chester, and Robert did not come up. She knew he was at home and sat feverishly expecting him, but he never came. Very lonely felt she, very dispirited; tears filled her eyes repeatedly, uncalled for; and so it went on to dusk. Had everybody abandoned her? she thought, sitting there between the lights.

The shadows of the room, only lighted by its fire, threw their sombre darkness across, taking curious shapes. A long narrow box, containing ferns and seaweed, stood on a stool in front of the hearth; as the shadow of it grew deeper on the opposite wall in the rapidly fading daylight, it began to look not unlike a coffin. As this fancy took possession of her, the remembrance of her dream with all its distressing terror suddenly flashed into her mind; she grew nervous and timid; too frightened to remain alone.

Wrapping herself up in a grey chenille shawl, as warmly as her husband had wrapped another that recent bygone night, she prepared to descend. She was fully dressed, in a striped green silk, and her pretty hair was plainly braided from her brow. The lovely face was thin and pale; the dark eyes were larger and sadder than of yore; and she was very weak yet.

Too weak to venture down the staircase alone, as she soon found. But for clinging to the balustrades, she would have fallen. This naturally caused her movements to be slow and quiet. She looked into the dining-room first; it was all in darkness; then she turned to the drawing-room, and pushed open the half-closed door. Little light was there, either; only what came from the fire, and that was low. Standing over it she discerned two forms, which, as she slowly advanced with her tottering steps, revealed themselves as those of her husband and Lady Ellis. She was in her usual evening attire: the black silk gown with the low body and short sleeves, and some black ribbons floated from her hair. Mr. Lake's hand was lightly resting on her neck; ostensibly playing with the jet chain around it, and touching her fair shoulder. Talking together, they did not hear her entrance.

"You know, Angeline," were the first words audible--when at that moment he seemed to become conscious that some one had entered to disturb the interview, and turned his head. Who was it? Some muffled figure. Mr. Lake strained his eyes as it came nearer, and sent them peering through the semidarkness. The next moment he had sprung at least five yards from "Angeline."

"Clara! How could you be so imprudent? My dear child! you know you ought not to have left your room."

Pushing aside Lady Ellis with, it must be confessed, little ceremony, he dragged a couch to the warmest corner of the hearth, and took his wife in his sheltering arms. Placing her upon it, he snatched up a cloth mantle of Mrs. Chester's that happened to be near, and fenced her in with it from the draught, should there be any. Then he sat down on the same sofa, edging himself on it, as if he would also be a fence for her against the cold. That his concern and care were genuine, springing right from his heart, there could be no question. My Lady Ellis, standing on the opposite side to recover her equanimity, after having stirred the fire into a blaze, and looking on with her great black eyes, saw that.

He bent his head slightly as he gazed on his wife, waiting in silence, not saying a word further until her breath was calmer. Very laboured it was just then, perhaps with the exertion of walking down, perhaps with mental emotion.

"Now tell me why you ventured out of your room," said he, making a prisoner of one of her hands, and speaking in a tender tone.

"I was dull: I was alone," she panted.

"Alone! dull! Where's Penelope? where's Anna? I thought they were with you. Elizabeth, what is she about?"

She did not explain or answer. She lay back quietly as he had placed her, her eyes closed, and her white face motionless. For the first time Robert Lake thought he saw a look of DEATH upon it, and a strange thrill of anguish darted through him. "What a fool I am!" quoth he to himself, the next moment; "it's the reflection of that fire."

"My dear Mrs. Lake, I should only be too happy to sit with you when you feel lonely," spoke Lady Ellis, as softly as her naturally harsh voice would allow. "But you never will let me, you know."

Clara murmured some inaudible answer about not giving her trouble, and lay quiet where her husband had placed her. He kept her hand still; and she let him do it. He stole quick glances at her wasted features, as if alarm had struck him. She never lifted her eyes to either of them.

The announcement of dinner and Mrs. Chester came together. When that lady saw who was in the drawing-room lying on the sofa, like a picture of a ghost more than a living woman, she set up a commotion. What did Clara mean by it? Did she come out of her room on purpose to renew her illness? She must go back to it again. Clara simply shook her head by way of dissent, and Mr. Lake interposed, saying she should stay if she wished: she would get no harm in the warm room.

They went in to dinner. Not Clara; what little solid food she could take yet was eaten in the middle of the day. There was a fowl on the table; and Mr. Lake, leaving his own dinner to get cold, prepared to carry a piece of it to his wife.

"It will be of no use," said Mrs. Chester to him, in rather a cross tone, as if she thought the morsel was going to be wasted; but he quitted the room, paying no attention.

He found his wife in a perfect paroxysm of tears, sobbing wildly. Left alone, her long pent-up feelings had given way. Putting the plate on the table, he bent over her--

"My dearest, this will never do. Why do you grieve so? What is the matter?"

"Oh, you know! you know!" she answered.

There was a dead pause. She employed it in smothering and choking down her sobs; he in any reflection that might be agreeable to him.

"I want to go home."

"The very instant that you may go with safety, you shall go," he readily assented. "If the doctor says you may go tomorrow, Clara, why we will. I must not have my dear little wife grieve like this."

No response. She seemed quite exhausted.

"I have brought you a bit of fowl, Clara; try and eat it."

She waved it away, briefly saying she could not touch it: she could not eat. She waved him away, telling him to go to his dinner. Mr. Lake simply put the plate down again, and stood near her.

"I must go home. I shall die if I stay here."

"Clara, I promise that you shall go. What more can I say? The house is sufficiently habitable now; there's nothing to detain us. Settle it yourself with the doctor. If he says you may travel tomorrow, so be it."

She closed her eyes--a sign that the contest was over. Mr. Lake carried the plate of fowl back to the dining-room, not feeling altogether upon the best terms with himself. For the first time he was realizing the fact that his wife's full recovery might be a more precarious affair than he had suspected.

"I knew she'd not touch it," said Mrs. Chester; "though I think she might eat it if she would."

"Surely she is not sulky!" spoke Lady Ellis, in an undertone, to Mr. Lake, turning her brilliant and fascinating eyes upon him, as he sat down in his place beside her.

He was not quite bad. He cared for his wife probably as much as he had ever done, although he had become enthralled by another, according to his light and unsteady nature. A haughty flush darkened his brow, and he pointedly turned from Lady Ellis without answering.

"It is the breast of the fowl wasted," cried thrifty Mrs. Chester, in her vexation.

It was not wasted. Mr. Lake took it upon his own plate, and made his dinner off it, never speaking a word all the while to anybody.

What of that? With her wiles and her sweet glances, my lady won him round again to good-humour; and before the meal was over he was as much her own as ever. But when the dessert was put on the table--consisting of a dish of apples and another of nuts--Mr. Lake left them to it, and went back to his wife.

She lay on the sofa all the evening. Mrs. Chester grumbled at the imprudence; but Clara said it was a change for the better: she was so tired of her bedroom. Her husband waited upon her at tea--a willing slave; and Clara really said a few cheerful words. Lady Ellis challenged him to chess again afterwards. Mrs. Chester and Anna sat by Clara.

"Very shortly," said the doctor, the following morning, in answer to the appeal which Mr. Lake himself made. "Yearning for home, is she? I fancied there was something of the sort. Not today: perhaps not tomorrow; but I think you may venture to take her the following one, provided the wind's fair."

"All right," was the answer. "Tell her so yourself, will you, my good sir?"

Clara was told accordingly. And on the third day, sure enough, the wind being fair and soft for November, Mr. and Mrs. Lake terminated their long sojourn at Guild, and returned to Katterley.

Home at last! In her exhilaration of spirit, it seemed just as though she had taken a renewed lease of happy life.

CHAPTER IX.

Colour Blindness.

The difference of opinion touching the lights at the railway station on the night of the fatal accident, continued to create no small sensation. The jury turned nearly rampant; vowing they'd not attend the everlastingly adjourned inquest, and wanting every time to return no verdict at all, say they could not, and have done with it. The coroner told them that was impossible; though he avowed that he did not see his way clearly out of it. But for being the responsible party, he would have willingly pitched the whole affair into the sea.

Over and over again did the public recount the circumstances one with another. When anybody could get hold of a stranger, hitherto in happy ignorance, he thought himself in luck, and went gushingly into all the details. It was a stock-in-trade for the local newspapers; and two of them entered on a sharp weekly controversy in regard to it. In truth, the matter, that is the conflict in the evidence, was most remarkable. That one party should stand to it the lights were red, and that the other should maintain they were green, was astonishing from the simple fact that both sides were worthy of credit. In the earlier stage of the enquiry the coroner had significantly remarked upon the "hard swearing somewhere:" it seemed more of a mystery than ever on which side that reproach could attach to. The jury could arrive at no decision, and thus the inquest had been adjourned time after time, and now the county was getting tired of it. Cooper, meanwhile suspended from employment, stood a chance of being reduced to straits if it lasted much longer. The colonel and Oliver Jupp, who had become intimate, made rather merry over it when they met, each accusing the other of having "seen double;" but neither would give way an inch. The lawyers were confounded, and knew not which side to believe; neither of the two gentlemen had the slightest personal interest in the matter; they spoke to further the ends of justice alone, and the one and the other were alike worthy of credit.

Affairs were in this unsatisfactory state, when a gentleman arrived in the neighbourhood on a short sojourn, a Dr. Macpherson, LL.D., F.R.S., and so on; about seventeen letters in all he could put after his name if he chose to do it. He was a man great in science, had devoted the most part of his life to it, no branch came amiss to him; he had travelled much and was renowned in the world. Amidst other acquirements he had phrenology at his fingers' ends, being as much at home in it as we poor unlearned mortals are in reading a newspaper; or as Mr. Lake was in making himself agreeable to a pretty woman.

They were staying at the "Rose Inn," at Guild, this learned gentleman and his wife. Professor Macpherson (as he was frequently called) had come down on some mission connected with geology. He was a very wire of a man, tall and thin as a lamp-post, exceedingly near-sighted, even in his silver-rimmed spectacles that he constantly wore; a meek, gentle, simple-minded man, whose coats and hats were threadbare, a very child in the ways of the world; as these excessively abstruse spirits are apt to be.

Mrs. Macpherson was in all respects his opposite: stout in figure, fine in dress, loud in speech; and keen in the affairs of common life. Good-hearted enough at the main, but sadly wanting in refinement, Mrs. Macpherson rarely pleased at first; in short, not to mince the matter, she was undeniably vulgar. Mrs. Macpherson's education had not been equal to her merits; her early associations were not of the silver-fork school. She was a very pretty girl when Caleb Macpherson (not the great man he was now) married her; habit reconciles us to most things, and he had discovered no fault in her yet. That she made him a good wife was certain, and a very capable one.

This was the second visit Professor Macpherson had made to Guild. The first took place about half a dozen years ago, when he had come on a question of "pneumatics." He had then become acquainted with the Reverend Mr. Chester, not himself unlearned in science, and had spent several hours of three separate days at the rectory. James Chester had gone now where science probably avails not; Mrs. Chester had quitted the rectory; and it might have chanced that the acquaintanceship would never have been renewed but for an accidental meeting.

Mrs. Chester was walking quickly into Guild on an errand when she met him. He would have passed her; her style of dress was altered--and for the matter of that he always went (as his wife put it) mooning on, his head in the skies and looking at nobody. But Mrs. Chester stopped him. Except that he looked taller and thinner, and his coat a little more threadbare than of old, and his spectacles staring out straighter up at the clouds or at the far-off horizon, he was not altered.

"Have you forgotten me, Dr. Macpherson?"

It took the doctor some few minutes to bring himself and his thoughts down to the level of passing life. Mrs. Chester had to tell him who she was, and that she was now alone in the world. He took both her hands in his then, and spoke a few words of genuine sympathy, with the sorrowful look in his kind eyes, and the tone of true pity coming from his ever-open heart.

"You will come and call on me, will you not?" she asked, after telling him where she lived.

"I'll come this evening," he said, "and bring my wife. She's with me this time."

So Mrs. Chester went home and told Lady Ellis of the promised visit. That lady, who had been fit to die of weariness since the departure of Mr. Lake, welcomed it eagerly; on the principle that even an old professor with seventeen letters beyond his name was of the man species, and consequently better than nobody.

"I don't know his wife," spoke Mrs. Chester. "She is rather exclusive, most likely. The wife of a man who has made so much noise in the world may look down upon us."

Lady Ellis raised her black eyebrows and had a great mind to tell Mrs. Chester to speak for herself; she was not accustomed to be looked down upon.

"Does the wife wear a threadbare gown?" she asked, having heard the description of the professor's coats.

"Very likely," said Mrs. Chester. "She need not, you know; they are rich."

"Rich, are they?"

"Very rich--now. In early life they had to pinch and screw, and live without a servant. Dr. Macpherson told us about it."

"He is not above confessing it, then?"

"He!" Mrs. Chester laughed. The simple professor, being "above" confessing anything of that sort, was a ludicrous idea. She attempted to describe him as he was.

"My dear Lady Ellis, you can have no notion of his simplicity--his utter unworldliness. In all that relates to learning and that sort of thing he is of the very keenest intellect; sharp; but in social life he is just a child. He would respect a woman who has to wash up her dishes herself just as much as he would if she kept ten servants to do it for her. I don't believe he can distinguish any difference."

"Oh!" concluded Lady Ellis, casting a gesture of contempt on the absent and unconscious professor.

Dr. Macpherson meanwhile, immediately after parting with Mrs. Chester, put his hand in his pocket for his case of gradients--or whatever the name might be--and found he had not got it. To go geologizing or botanizing without it would have been so much waste of time, and he turned back to the "Rose." It was well for the evening visit that he did so; but for telling his wife at once while it was fresh in his head, they had never paid it; for the professor would have forgotten all about it in half an hour.

Mrs. Macpherson sat fanning herself at the window. She was a stout woman, comely, red-faced, and jolly; and the fire was large, throwing out a great heat. Her face and that of her pale thin husband's presented a very contrast. She wore a bright green silk gown, garnished with scarlet, and scarlet bows in her rich lace cap.

"I forgot my case, Betsy," said he, on entering.

"'Twouldn't be you, prefessor, if you didn't forget some'at," returned she, equably. "For a man who has had his head filled with learning, you be the greatest oaf I know."

Accustomed to these compliments from his wife--meekly receiving them as his due--Dr. Macpherson took up his case, a thick pocket-book apparently, the size of a small milestone. He then mentioned his meeting with Mrs. Chester, and the promised evening visit, which was received favourably.

"It'll be a godsend," said Mrs. Macpherson. "With you over them writings of yours, and me a-nodding asleep, the evenings here is fearful dull. Is the invite for tea and supper?"

Rather a puzzling question. Tea and supper were so little thought of by the professor, that but for his wife he might never have partaken of either; and he had to consider for some moments before he could hit upon any answer.

"I don't think it is, Betsy; I only said I'd call."

"Oh!" returned Mrs. Macpherson, ungraciously, for she liked good cheer,--"It'll hardly be worth going for. It's not a party, then?"

The professor supposed not. On these matters of social intercourse his ideas were always misty. He remembered that Mrs. Chester said she had a Lady Ellis visiting her, and mentioned the fact.

Mrs. Macpherson brightened up. "A Lady Ellis! Are you sure?"

"Yes; I think I'm sure."

"Well now, Caleb, you look here. We must go properly," said Mrs. Macpherson. "I never was brought into contract with a real live lady in my life; I haven't never had the chance of saying 'your ladyship,' except in sport. We'll have out a chaise and pair, and, drive up in it."

Had she proposed to drive up in a chaise and eight, it would have been all one to the professor. Conscious of his own deficiency on the score of sociality (not sociability) and fashion, he had been content this many a year to leave these things to her.

They arrived at Mrs. Chester's about seven. The chaise and pair rattled up to the gate; but as it was dark night, the pomp of the arrival could not be seen from within, and the gilt was taken off the gingerbread. It happened that Mr. Lake had come over that afternoon--a rather frequent occurrence--and Mrs. Chester had asked him to stay and see the strangers. He and Lady Ellis were at their usual game, chess, and Mrs. Chester was at work close by, when the visitors were announced by Nanny, the names having been given her by the lady--

"Professor and Mrs. Macpherson."

He came in first--the long, thin, absorbed, self-denying man, in his threadbare frock-coat. Mrs. Macpherson had left off fighting against these coats long ago. She ordered him in new ones in vain. As soon as one came home, he would put it on unconsciously, utterly unable to distinguish between that and his old one, and go to his work in it: "his chemical tests, and his proofs, and all that rubbish," as she was in the habit of saying. Somehow he had a knack of wearing his coats out incredibly quick, or else the poisons and the fires did it for him. In a week the new one would be as bad as the rest--shabby and threadbare. Mrs. Macpherson grew tired at last. "After all, it don't much matter," was her final conclusion, in pardonable pride. "Good coat or bad coat, he's Prefessor Macpherson." His scanty dark hair was brushed smoothly across his head, his brown eyes, shining through his spectacles, went kindly out in search of Mrs. Chester, who advanced to receive him.

"My wife, ma'am; Mrs. Macpherson."

Mrs. Macpherson came in--a ship in full sail. She had dressed herself to go into the presence of a real live lady. She did not travel without her attire, if he did. The forgetful man was apt to start on a journey with nothing but what he stood up in; she took travelling trunks.

An amber satin gown with white brocade flowers on it, white lace shawl, and small bonnet with nodding bird-of-paradise feather, white gloves, flaxen hair. Lady Ellis simply stared while the introductions were gone through and seats were taken. Mrs. Macpherson was free and unreserved in her conversation with strangers, concealing nothing.

"I was as glad as anything when the prefessor said we were coming here for a call this evening," she remarked to Mrs. Chester. "Not knowing a soul in the place, it's naturally dull for me; and we shall have to stop a week at it, I b'lieve."

"You were not with Dr. Macpherson last time, when I and my late husband had the pleasure of making his acquaintance," observed Mrs. Chester, surreptitiously regarding the bird-of-paradise.

"Not I," answered Mrs. Macpherson. "If I went about always with him, I should have a life of it. What with his geographies, and his botanies, and his astronomies, and his chemistries, and his social sciences, and the meetings he has to attend in all parts of the globe, and the country excursions the societies make in a body, he is not much at home."

"This is only the second visit he has paid to Guild, I think?"

"That's all. It's geology this time; last time it was--Prefessor, what's the name of the thing you were down here for last?" broke off Mrs. Macpherson.

"Pneumatics," he answered, looking lovingly at the child, Fanny Chester, and a bit of heath she was showing him.

"Eumatics," repeated Mrs. Macpherson. "Not that I can ever understand what it means. The name's hard enough, let alone the thing itself."

Perhaps the other ladies were in the same blissful ignorance. Mr. Lake checkmated his adversary, left her to put up the men, and went over to the professor.

Before tea came in they were out in the garden peering about by starlight, the remains of an old Roman wall there, that Mr. Lake happened to mention, keenly exciting the interest of the professor. Mrs. Macpherson was invited to take off her things, and she threw the handsome white shawl aside; but having brought no cap, the bird-of-paradise retained its place. This much might be said for her, that though addicted to very gay clothes, they were always rich and good. Mrs. Macpherson would have worn nothing poor or tawdry.

"How fond they are of these miserable bits of things--pieces of an old wall, strata of earth, wild plants, and such rubbish!" exclaimed Lady Ellis, with acrimony, inwardly vexed that Mr. Lake should have gone out a-roving.

"Rubbish it is--your ladyship's right," spoke Mrs. Macpherson. "Leastways, so it seems to us: but when folks have gifted minds, as the prefessor has, why perhaps they can see beauties in 'em that's hid to us others."

Not very complimentary on the whole; but Lady Ellis did not choose to see it.

"Of course," she said, "your husband is wonderfully clever; he has a world-wide fame. I heard of him in India."

"Clever on one side, a gander on t'other," said Mrs. Macpherson.

"A gander?"

"Well, you'd not say a goose, I suppose. In his sciences and his ologies, and his chemicals and his other learnings, why he's uncommon; there's hardly his equal, the public says. But take him in the useful things of life, your ladyship, and see what he's good for. Law bless me!"

"Not for much, I suppose," laughed Mrs. Chester.

"I'd be bound that any child of seven would have more sense. But for me helping him to it, he'd never have a meal; no, I don't believe, as I'm an honest woman, that he'd recollect to sit down to one. When he's away from me, he, as I tell him, goes in for trying to live upon air."

"Do you mean that he really tries to see if he can live upon it?"

"Bless you, no. He must know he couldn't. What I mean is, that he neglects his food--either forgets it out and out, or does not find time to sit down to it. And then his clothes! Look at the coat he has got on now."

Neither of the two ladies having particularly noticed the coat, they could not make much answering comment. Mrs. Macpherson, fond of talking, did not wait for any.

"I wonder sometimes what would become of him, and how long he would wear a coat, but for being looked after. Why, till it dropped off his back. I have to put every earthly thing ready for him--even to a pocket-handkercher--and then he can't see them. I used to let him have a chest of drawers to himself, handkerchers in one, gloves and collars in another, shirts in a third, and so on. He'd want, let's say, a necktie. Every individual thing would be taken out of every drawer, nicked over, thrown on the floor, and he in quite a state of agitation. Up I'd go, and show it to him. There it would be, staring him in the face, right under his very eyes."

"And he not seeing it?"

"Never. I soon left off letting him have the control of his own drawers. I give him one now, and lock up the rest, so that he has to call me when he wants things. He'll have his spectacles on his nose and be looking after them; his hand might be touching the ink, and he'd not see it. Ah! One might wonder why such useless mortals were born."

"But the professor is so kind and good," observed Mrs. Chester.

"I didn't say he wasn't; I'm not complaining of him," returned the professor's lady, giving a nod to the bird-of-paradise. "One tells these things as one would tell stories of a child that's not responsible for its actions. His brains are too clever, you know, for ordinary life. Thank ye, ma'am; I like it pretty sweet. There again, in the small matter of sugar: put the cup half full, or put in none at all, and it's all one to the prefessor; he'd never notice the difference."

"I once knew a very clever but very absent man who went to a wedding in his slippers," said Lady Ellis, leaning back in her armchair and speaking languidly for the benefit of the lady opposite. "He had forgotten to put his boots on."

"That's nothing; your ladyship should live for a month with Prefessor Macpherson. I've quaked in fear before now of seeing him go out without----worse things than boots."

Mrs. Chester laughed; and what further revelations might have been made were put an end to by the entrance of the professor himself and Mr. Lake. They came in talking eagerly, not of the Roman wall, but of the late fatal railway accident. Mr. Lake was giving him the details, and especially those relating to the conflicting nature of the evidence. As soon as Dr. Macpherson had mastered the particulars, he gave it as his opinion that it must be a case of colour-blindness.

"Of colour-blindness?" echoed Mr. Lake.

"Rely upon it, it is a case of colour-blindness on one side or the other," continued the professor, who was now showing himself in his element, the keen man of science, the sensible, sound-judging reasoner. And so well did he proceed to argue the matter, so aptly and clearly did he lay the case before them, that Mr. Lake was half converted; and it was decided that the theory should be followed up.

On the next day the professor was brought into contact with Colonel West and Oliver Jupp, Mr. Lake having arranged a meeting at his own house. One or two friends were also present. The subject was entered upon, and the professor's opinion given. Oliver Jupp believed he might be right; the colonel was simply astonished at the assertion.

"Not know colours!" cried he. "Not able to tell white from black! Why, what have our eyes been about all our lives, Mr. Professor? My sight is keen and clear; I can answer for that; and I've not heard that there's anything amiss with Mr. Oliver Jupp's."

"It has nothing whatever to do with a keen sight--in the way you are thinking of," returned Dr. Macpherson. "Nay, it frequently happens that those who are afflicted with colour-blindness possess a remarkably good and clear sight. The defect is not in the vision: it lies in the absence of the organ of colour."

"That's logic," laughed the colonel, who had never heard of such a theory, and did not believe many others had.

"Look here," said the professor, endeavouring to put the case in an understandable light "You will allow that men are differently endowed. One man will have the gift of calculation in an eminent degree; he will go through a whole ledger swimmingly, while his friend by his side is labouring at a single column of it: another will possess the organ of music so largely that he will probably make you a second Mozart; but his own brother can't tell one tune from another, and could not learn to play if his very life depended on it: this man will draw you, untaught, plans and buildings of wondrous and beautiful design; that one, who has served his stupid apprenticeship to the art, cannot accomplish a pigsty fit for a civilized pig to live in--and so I might go on, illustrating examples all. Am I right or wrong?" he concluded, turning his spectacles full on his attentive listeners.

"Right," they all said, including Colonel West.

"Very well," resumed the professor. "Then I would ask you, gentlemen, why should colour be an exception? I mean the capability of perceiving it; the faculty of distinguishing one shade from another?"

There was no immediate answer. The professor went on.

"This brain is totally deficient in the organ of tune; that one is deficient in some other faculty; a third in something else: why should not the organ of colour sometimes fail?"

"I thought everybody possessed the organ of colour," observed Mr. Lake.

"The greater portion of people do possess it; but there are many who do not."

Colonel West, unconvinced, was rather amused than otherwise. "And you think, sir, that I and Mr. Oliver Jupp do not possess it," he said, laughing.

"Pardon me," replied the professor, laughing also, "I never said you both did not. Had that been the case, you probably would not have been in opposition to each other. But I have been using my own eyes since we stood here, and I see which of you has the defect. One of you possesses the organ of colour (as we call it) in a full degree; the other does not possess it at all. It lies here."

Dr. Macpherson raised his fingers to his eyebrow, and pointed out a spot near its middle. The colonel and Oliver Jupp immediately passed their fingers over their eyebrows, somewhat after the manner of a curious child. Oliver's eyebrows were prominent; the colonel's remarkably flat.

"You can testify by experiment whether I am right or wrong, Colonel West; but I give it as my opinion that you are not able to distinguish colours."

For some moments the colonel could not find his tongue. "I never heard of such a thing in all my life!" cried he. "Do you mean to say that I can see the blue sky" (turning his face upwards), "and not know it's blue?"

"You know it is blue, and call it blue, because you have heard it so called all your life," returned the undaunted professor. "But, if half the sky were blue and half green, you would not be able to say which was the green half and which the blue."

"That caps everything," retorted the colonel, in high good-humour. "It's a pity my wife can't hear this; she'd shake hands with you at once. She has, you must know, a couple of garden parasols: one green, the other blue. If she sends me indoors for the green, she says I bring her the blue; and if for the blue, I bring the green. She sets it down to inattention, and lectures me accordingly."

"You could not have given us a better confirmation that my opinion is correct," said Professor Macpherson, glancing at the group around. "Your wife has set this down to inattention, you say, colonel. May I ask what you have set it down to?"

"I? Not to anything. I never troubled myself to think about it."

The learned gentleman rubbed his hands with satisfaction. "What you acknowledge is so true to nature, colonel! Those who, like you, are affected with colour-blindness, can rarely be brought to believe in their own defect. It is a fact that the greater portion of them are not conscious of it; they really don't know that they cannot distinguish colours. Some few have perhaps a dim idea that they are not so quick in that particular as others, but they never think of questioning the cause. To use your own expression, it does not trouble them. I understand you maintain that on the night of the accident the usual light was up--green?"

"Yes," said the colonel. "They exhibit the green light always at Coombe Dalton station, to enforce caution, on account of the nasty turning just after passing it. I maintain, as you say, that the customary green light was shown that night."

"Now I will tell you how to account for that belief;" said the professor. "It was not so much that you could be sure the green light was up, as that you could not distinguish any difference between the one you saw, and the one you were accustomed to see. You could not discern the difference, I say, and therefore you maintained it to be, as you believed, the same one--the green."

"This seems plausible enough, as you state it," acknowledged Colonel West, at length. "But pray why should it not be my young friend, Jupp, who was mistaken--and not I?"

The professor shook his head. "I am quite sure that this gentleman"--indicating Oliver Jupp--"can never be mistaken in colours or in their shades, so long as he retains his eyesight to see anything: he has the organ very largely developed. I am right, colonel," he added, nodding.

"But what do you say to Cooper, the driver?" returned the colonel. "He says the light was green: and everybody agrees that he would only assert what was true."

"What he thought was true," corrected Dr. Macpherson. "There is little doubt, in my mind, that Cooper's case will turn out to be like your own--a fact of colour-blindness. He could not distinguish the difference in the light from the ordinary light, and therefore believed it to be the same."

"Both of us blind!" exclaimed the colonel, with wide-open eyes. "That would be too good, Mr. Professor."

"I said only colour-blind," corrected the professor. "There is not the least doubt that it will turn out to be so."

And he carried the opinions of nearly all present with him. It seemed, indeed, to be the only feasible solution of the difficulty; and so the gentlemen said to each other as they dispersed.

"I promised to take you in to see my wife," whispered Mr. Lake to the man of science, arresting him as he was departing.

Clara was sitting in an easy-chair, a shawl on her shoulders; but she looked up brightly when the professor entered. If the old feeling of secure happiness had not come back again, a portion of it had; and she said to everybody that she was getting well. Mary Jupp was with her. They had felt half scared at the thought of encountering familiarly so renowned a man. He turned out to be a very shy and simple one--in manners, at least; and Miss Jupp, in the revulsion of relieved feeling, nearly talked him deaf.

"She's a pretty thing, that young man's wife," observed the professor to Mrs. Macpherson, when he had got back to Guild. "But I'd not like to take an insurance on her life."

"I never knew you had turned doctor, prefessor."

"It does not require a doctor's eye to see when a blossom's delicate, Betsy. And those delicate blossoms want a vast deal of care."

The strange opinion avowed by Dr. Macpherson, that the matter which had been puzzling the world so long, would turn out to be a case of colour-blindness, excited the wonder of the simple country people. In these rural districts men are content to live without science, and cannot well understand it when it is brought home to them. This opinion, nevertheless, coming from so great an authority, obtained weight with all, causing some commotion; and it was resolved to test the sight of the unfortunate driver, Cooper. Colonel West proposed, half jokingly, half seriously, that his own eyes should also be tested. It would set the matter at rest in his mind, he said. Mrs. West devoutly wished she could be present, and see the solution of what had been hitherto inexplicable. "I'd used to tell that husband of mine he couldn't see colours," she exclaimed to a select audience, "but I didn't really suppose it was so; I thought he was careless and stupid."

On the evening fixed for the test, those concerned in it assembled at the station of Coombe Dalton. Matthew Cooper came from Katterley in obedience to the summons sent for him. Colonel West, Mr. Lake, Oliver Jupp, the coroner, and some of the jury were present: and others also with whom we have had nothing to do.

The instant that Professor Macpherson cast his eyes on Cooper's face, he found his anticipation verified. The man laboured under the defect of colour-blindness, in even a greater degree than Colonel West.

They proceeded to the trial. Lamps of various colours were in readiness, and the Professor was constituted master of the ceremonies. He commenced his task by running up a light to the signal-post. Colonel West and Cooper stood a little forward; the coroner and other interested people, official and otherwise, behind; the mob behind them; all at a convenient distance from the lights.