The Wellfields: A novel. Vol. 1 of 3

CHAPTER V.

WITH THE STREAM.

Morning again—a hazy, glorious August morning. When Wellfield threw open his window, a draught of air scented with everything that is sweetest and most exquisite was borne into the room. The heavy trees outside stood motionless; the dazzling spikes of gladiolus, and the parterres of geraniums looked dim in the morning mist which still hung white and palpable over the course of the river. Each day that Jerome passed here was fairer than the last; each morning and each evening made more palpable to him what a goodly heritage had departed from him, and fallen to the lot of others. This may have influenced his course: who shall say what and where is the first upspringing of that current which, slight at first, presently grows so strong as to sway our actions and decide our ‘will’ to some particular course?

On going downstairs, he found the breakfast-table spread, and Mr. Bolton seated at it. Nita was standing in the window, the newspaper in one hand, while the other caressed the head of her great dun-coloured mastiff, Speedwell—another dear friend who, like nature, ‘never would betray the heart that loved’ him. Mr. Bolton made a measured apology for beginning his breakfast, adding that he had to go to Burnham by the nine o’clock train, but would be in to dinner in the middle of the day, and he hoped Mr. Wellfield would do just what was agreeable to him, and Nita would do her best to entertain him.

With which Nita also advanced, looking rather pale, but also almost pretty. She laid down the paper, remarking:

‘There’s nothing in it, papa. The market is up, and there is a leading article absolutely annihilating the Opposition, so let that content you until this evening.’

‘I suppose it must,’ said he, rising; and wishing them good-morning, he departed.

Nita, when breakfast was over, proposed a tour round the garden, she had some orders to give the gardener, and must go to the farm, or perhaps he would prefer to stay indoors.

‘I should prefer to go with you if I may,’ he said; and they strolled out together.

Nita appeared quite at home outside the house. During their progress round the garden Jerome grew more interested in her, and with him, to be interested in a woman was to do his utmost to make himself interesting to her. Nita was not aware of this idiosyncrasy; and a man cannot say to a woman, ‘Do not make yourself interesting to me, or I shall try in turn to captivate you.’ The rules of etiquette do not allow such a statement, but when a man’s heart is given in one direction, he may intimate that fact, and make it quite palpable to another woman, without absolutely saying in so many words, ‘I am engaged; do not fall in love with me,’ and he may do this without hurting her feelings or her self-respect. Jerome Wellfield did not do this.

‘There is a farm belonging to the Abbey,’ observed Nita, ‘and papa leaves all the management of it to me: he only cares for his books when he leaves business, so I have the farm and the gardens and the house—indeed, everything connected with our life here—to look after.’

‘Quite alone?’ asked Jerome.

‘Yes; because I have no brothers or sisters, and very few friends. I am the only one, and I am glad of it.’

‘Are you? Is it not rather lonely?’

‘I never feel lonely. I don’t know what it is to feel lonely. And sometimes I think it is only the heroines of novels who ever do feel so; but when I once said so to Aunt Margaret, she said who was I to talk? and desired me to wait until I had had a little more experience of life.’

‘Let us hope you may never have any experience in that line,’ said Jerome, smiling.

‘Why, do you know what it is to be lonely?’

‘No; I have never felt particularly oppressed by that sensation. But, talking about brothers and sisters, I should have thought you would have been—we won’t say less lonely, since you take exception to the term—but would have enjoyed life more if you had had some of them.’

‘I don’t see it,’ persisted Nita. ‘I am very happy as I am. I like my own way. I don’t care to be interfered with. A brother would take the first place in papa’s heart, and have the first say in everything; and a sister—no, I would rather not.’

‘You are exclusive, and contented. Some day you will have power more undivided than now, even,’ said Jerome, dwelling with a morbid persistency on the idea which at present haunted him. ‘I suppose you like thinking of that too?’

‘Yes,’ said Nita, frankly and unthinkingly, ‘I do; I love to think that I am not going to leave this dear old place, ever. And I love to think that some day, though I hope not for a very long time, it will be my very own.’

She looked up at him with a smile, as she finished; met his eyes, read the expression in them, stopped abruptly, and said, in a voice of consternation:

‘Oh dear, oh dear!’

Her face was covered with a flood of colour. For a moment she put her hand before it, as if to cover it, then dropped it again.

‘What must you think of me?’ she exclaimed, in a voice full of tears. ‘Pray forgive me, if you can!’

‘Pray do not distress yourself,’ he rejoined, a curious flavour, half bitterness, half amusement, in his voice—‘I led up to it; I wanted to hear you confess it. I felt sure you were too natural not to feel so. You are quite right; you and yours have not stolen the place. You came by it honestly, and have a right to rejoice in it if you like.’

He made a step onwards, inwardly wondering a little why he had led up to this topic. Nita’s face was downcast, as she said, in a deep tone of annoyance and vexation:

‘It does not matter. I am a little fool, I believe. After all my resolutions that I would not drop a syllable that could wound you while you were here—idiot that I am!’

‘Did you make such resolutions?’ asked Wellfield, suddenly stopping again, and bending his eyes beneath their frowning brows upon her.

‘Yes. Oh, don’t look so severe, Mr. Wellfield, or I shall have to go in. Indeed it was an oversight, my saying such a thing.’

‘I wish you would not take it so to heart,’ he said, with a short laugh. ‘It is well that I should learn to grow accustomed to my position. You have given me the first lesson, that is all. Shall we go on?’

Nita answered nothing, but paced on beside him. Jerome was fully aware in his secret heart that his last speech was claptrap; but if it had the same effect upon Nita as if it had been fresh from the real well of pathos, what did it matter? There was a vague feeling present in his mind, that Nita seemed to take a good deal of interest in him—a feeling which gave him suddenly great interest in her.

‘You are very fond of the Abbey, then?’ he asked.

‘Yes—very.’

‘Why so? What makes you like it so much? Stop! I am sure you need not give orders to the gardener this very moment. Take one other turn with me on the river walk. Why are you so devoted to the Abbey?’

‘I can hardly tell,’ she answered, a little shyly. (Evidently she was dreadfully afraid of hurting him by any second remark like that one which had already, as it were, exploded like a conversational bombshell. To her he was still the lord of the soil, despite her love for the place, and her keen sense of joy in the possession of it. He saw the feeling in a moment, and it gratified him.) ‘I hardly know,’ repeated Nita; ‘it seems to have grown part of my life—it is so different from other places. It suits me. I was so glad when we came here.’

‘And you knew when you came that you were the only child of your father, and you liked the idea of sometime reigning at the old place?’ pursued Jerome, tranquilly.

‘Yes. Oh, do please excuse me. I did like it very much. But if I had known about you, I should not have liked it; and I shall not like it now.’

‘Known about me!—you mean that you were unaware of the existence of such a person?’

‘No; I had heard of you. But Aunt Margaret—is a little prejudiced, I think. She knows all the traditions of the place, and all the histories of all the old families in it, and she used to say that—that your father——’

‘What about my father, Miss Bolton?’

‘It was not your father in particular. It was the Wellfield family. She had a dislike to—no, not a dislike. Aunt Margaret never has such strong feelings as likes and dislikes. She said your family were proud and unscrupulous, that they had never worked for others, or cared for any but themselves; that they were—but I have no business to say such things,’ said Nita, who had by this time become so nervous and so confused as not really to know what she was saying, and who rambled on, fascinated by the calm, pale face and intent dark eyes of her companion. She spoke of the old Wellfields as if they had been a dream, and did not realise that this man beside her was actually one of the race.

‘Go on, please,’ he said; and Nita continued, as if it had been a lesson she was repeating by heart.

‘That they were selfish and luxurious——’

‘The last fault will not be laid to their charge in this generation, at least,’ observed Jerome. ‘Well, what else?’

‘I am only saying all this because you make me!’ said Nita, with almost passionate protest in her voice, ‘not because I wish to. She says—but I will tell you no more. I will not be so odious. If you really desire to hear such things, ask Aunt Margaret. She will tell you, and will not spare anything on account of your name and your race.’

‘Thank you. I shall have a little conversation with her some day. I can quite imagine that she thought it was an unmitigated benefit when the Abbey passed from the hands of our dissolute race into the honest and untainted ones of your father.’

‘I knew you would never forgive me, and yet you would make me go on,’ said Nita, in a tone of despairing resignation. ‘I can’t help it. I wash my hands of it.’

‘You at least may “wash your hands in innocency,”’ he replied. ‘Since my old home is never to be mine, I would as soon you had it as anyone; and since you wish for it more than for anything in the world——’

‘There is one thing now which I feel that I wish for more,’ said Nita, in a vibrating voice.

‘Is there? What is that?’

‘That you—that those whose home it really is, should own it once again. I would gladly leave it now to let you come into it.’

‘That is generously said, and I thank you for it,’ said Jerome, in a voice not altogether unmoved. His eyes looked gratefully into hers. He took her hand, and carried it to his lips. Nita thrilled from head to foot. Was this the same world as the world of twenty-four hours ago?

‘To know that goes as near as anything can to reconciling me to my inevitable loss,’ he said, still in a low tone, as they resumed their way.

They left the solitary, silent river walk, dangerous in its beauty and its associations, for the more prosaic regions of the kitchen-garden. While they waited for the gardener to come, Nita said:

‘Don’t let me keep you here. I shall be ever so long; and then I have to go to the farm. You will want to go down to Monk’s Gate, I daresay.’

‘I do; but I am emboldened to ask a favour of you, first.’

‘What is that?’

‘When you have quite finished your business here, will it be too much to ask you to come down to Monk’s Gate, and give me a little advice? There is some furniture in it, but I don’t know whether it can be used. I am a man, you see, and naturally helpless in such a case. If you did not mind very much——’

‘I shall be delighted. I will come down as soon as ever I have finished. Shall I find you there?’

‘You will find me there. If not in the house, in the garden; and if not in the garden, in the house. Thank you, very much.’

Lifting his hat he left her, and went down the river walk.

Adamson, the gardener, found his young mistress strangely distraite and forgetful—a phenomenon which puzzled him, for he was wont to bear admiring testimony to her clearness of head, and readiness of comprehension, saying: ‘Eh, but hoo’s a rare sharp un, is Miss Bolton. Hoo’s a chip of the ’owd block in more ways nor one, hoo is.’

---

Wellfield, meanwhile, had taken his way down the river walk, the entrance to which was in the village street, close beside the ancient stone bridge. On the other side of this bridge, a stony, steep, wood-shaded walk led invitingly up a hill, then bent round to the left, leaving the rest of that enticing way to conjecture. This path, as Jerome remembered, took one to the top of a hill called Wellfield Nab or Neb, or simply ‘the Nab.’ He remembered climbing it sixteen years ago, with his tutor and John Leyburn; and the glorious view of the surrounding country which it commanded, he remembered too.

At the foot of the Nab, almost out of sight from the bridge, he could just catch a glimpse of a couple of gables, belonging to the Abbot’s Knoll house—Leyburn’s dwelling. John rode every morning to his mill, which was some two miles distant, on the road to Burnham.

Down the quaint paved street Jerome walked towards the church, that ancient ‘white church under the hill,’ which had weathered so many storms and troubles. A sleepy place, Wellfield—a place which seemed forgotten of all men save the few who lived in it.

Monk’s Gate was only a very few minutes’ walk from the church, the clock of which struck eleven as Jerome opened the gate of the garden.

He unlocked the door, and went into the house again, but did not remain there long. He felt that he really did require Nita’s assistance, and must wait until she arrived.

The quiet and sunshine of the old-fashioned, untidy garden were congenial to him. He wandered about it, inhaling the scent of roses and carnations, and the rich, spicy odours of picotees and the old-fashioned white pink. The sun shone pleasantly upon everything, doing his best towards ripening the young pears and apples on the trees, and bringing the flowers into more ample bloom. Where is the charm that can compete with that which pervades an old-fashioned English garden?—the flavour of grace and quaintness, and the suggestions of a ‘gentle life’ which hang about such a garden are to be found nowhere else.

Wellfield had turned his back to the gate, and was looking at the great, blunt, boulder-shaped head of Penhull, and observing the purple mist of heather which clothed its mighty sides, when a voice behind him said:

‘Mr. Wellfield!’

He turned, a curious thrill shooting through him. The speaker must, he thought, have almost stolen up to him, so noiseless had been his approach. He confronted a tall, spare man, in the dress of an ecclesiastic. The voice in which he had spoken was soft and musical; he took off his hat with a smile, as Jerome’s eyes met his, and the smile was a singularly fascinating one, giving an expression of exceeding graciousness and sweetness to a pale, finely cut, ascetic-looking countenance. There was a courtly grace in the man’s appearance, in his bow and manner.

For a moment Wellfield paused, then, bowing in his turn, said:

‘Surely I cannot be mistaken—you are the Father Pablo Somerville whom I met years ago?’

‘The same,’ he replied. ‘I am glad to find you remember me. For me, I saw you as I passed the garden, and concluded it was you; but had I met you anywhere else, I should have known you instantly.’

‘Am I so little changed, then?’

‘Not much. And,’ with a slight smile, ‘even had you changed a good deal, yours is not a face one soon forgets.’

Wellfield held out his hand, saying cordially, ‘I am glad to see you.’ He felt glad. In Somerville’s presence he felt at ease—felt as though he were with one of his own kind; a sensation he had never experienced since before his father’s death, and which was pleasant to him, as it is pleasant to return to European civilisation, with its beloved and elaborate shams, after wandering amidst the primitive and repulsive honesty of savages; as it is pleasant to return to stove-heated rooms and a perfumed atmosphere, to rich meats and dainty wines, after a forced sojourn amongst bare boards, hard pallets, and a diet of bread and water. Such exactly was the sensation experienced now by Wellfield, as he clasped hands with this high-bred, polished-looking priest and man of the world.

‘I would ask you into my house, but I doubt whether there is a chair in it fit to sit upon. I only arrived here yesterday, and am surveying now all the home that I have.’

‘The Abbey has passed away from you, as I heard,’ observed Somerville. ‘That is a pity, for many reasons. We at Brentwood at least regret it. In the old days, when your forefathers belonged to us, Wellfield Abbey was noted far and wide for the munificence of its gifts, and the splendour of its hospitality. Even in the days when your people were Protestants, they have always been gentlemen—Wellfields, despite the Protestantism, and they have never treated us churlishly. Down to the last visit of your late father to the Abbey, we were always received with hospitality and kindness—then, especially, for Mrs. Wellfield was there——’

‘My mother!’ exclaimed Jerome, eagerly, ‘Did you ever see her? Were you at the Abbey then?’

‘It is a long time ago. Twenty-four years ago. I was a lad of thirteen; and I was even then destined for the priesthood. I have been at Brentwood all my life. I was taken by one of the professors, to call at Wellfield Abbey, and I remember it well to this day. It was winter weather, and there were roaring fires all over the old house. Mr. Wellfield complained of everything being heated to furnace-heat. Your beautiful young mother—and she was beautiful—sat crouching over a huge fire, with you—a little infant—swathed in warm shawls, in her arms. I think all the beauty of her beautiful land was concentrated in her. What wonder that I sat and gazed at her, and thought her like the Madonna, and wondered how Father Leigh presumed to talk, and even laugh with her?’

‘You remember all this!’ exclaimed Jerome, earnestly. ‘Since I came here, almost every hour has brought back some incident, some recollection, some remembered face, which have made the reverse more cruel, and more terrible to bear, than I had imagined anything could be.’

‘I can well believe it. Autres temps, autres mœurs. Things are changed now, from that time of gracious hospitality and high-bred courtesy. The present owner of Wellfield Abbey’ (a slight sneer played about the finely-cut lips) ‘detests “Papists” with a truly Protestant candour and liberality. I must say, even if it appear like boasting, that his bigotry is his misfortune, since the “Papists” he objects to are the only society worthy of the name in the neighbourhood.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Jerome, whose face had grown dark during this discourse. He was pacing with Somerville up and down the gravel walk.

‘Yes. The Lathebys of Latheby—do you remember them?’

‘The name I know well enough. What of them?’

‘They were formerly on the best of terms with the Abbey. You must come and see the exquisite chapel which Mrs. Latheby has offered to Brentwood. And the Ormes of Brownhill, and some others—these are the only gentry, and the only cultivated people for miles around. But Mr. Bolton does not care to associate with such popish canaille.’

He smiled again, more sneeringly than before, and Jerome felt his heart warm towards him. This classification of Mr. Bolton with one world, and of himself with quite another, was not unpleasant to him.

‘Many things have happened which go sorely against the grain with me,’ he rejoined. ‘The mischief of it is, my hands are tied. I am powerless, because I am moneyless.’

‘I have heard of your losses,’ said Father Somerville, ‘and regret them. You will believe me, Mr. Wellfield, when I say that we at Brentwood would have welcomed you back in any case, rich or poor, with the Abbey or without it, as a gentleman and a civilised being. We shall welcome you as it is, if you decide to settle amongst us—welcome you heartily. And you will think no wrong when I say that had you been coming amongst us to take that position which in the sight of heaven you ought to have, we should have welcomed you, not more sincerely, but perhaps more openly and ceremoniously.’

‘You flatter me,’ said Jerome, a flush of something like pleasure on his cheek. ‘Such a welcome can by no means be indifferent to me. As to settling here myself, it seems the only thing for me to do at present. At any rate, even if I should have to leave, I shall bring my sister here, and she will live here.’

‘Your sister! How old is Miss Wellfield, if I may ask?’

‘Sixteen. She is at present in Germany with—a friend.’

‘I see. When you have settled things, you will bring her here. And yourself—pardon these inquiries, and do not answer them if you think them not allowable, but——’

‘They are more than allowable. They are very kind; and I feel it a privilege to be able to speak to you of my affairs,’ returned Wellfield, with some animation. ‘Myself, I consider destitute until I have found some employment. What little remains of my fortune, I shall devote entirely to my sister’s use. With strict economy, and in this quiet place, I may make it suffice for her wants. They say trade is good. I may succeed in finding a clerk’s place in some office, in which a “thorough knowledge of several foreign languages” is a desideratum, though, to tell the truth, I should first have to learn the entire technique of any business I entered. I should be a bad bargain at first for any employer, whatever glories I might attain to later in the matter of book-keeping or correspondence. Still, I may earn enough to keep me—what do I know?’

He threw up his head, and laughed a little, plunging his hands into his pockets. Father Somerville watched him narrowly and unobserved. The study pleased him, interested him, made him curious to pursue it further.

There was a pause till the priest said:

‘If I remember aright, you are a good musician, Mr. Wellfield.’

‘Yes. It is the only thing I have—the only talent my God has given me. Of much use it appears it will be to me!’

‘Hush, hush, sir! As you say, your God has given it to you, and He doubtless had some purpose in so endowing you.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ muttered Jerome. ‘It is not my habit to speak in that manner; but I have been harassed almost to madness by the embarrassments and difficulties of my position. Sometimes I have wondered whether the last Wellfield was sent into the world to make a name and a fortune on the stage.’

‘I can well understand your feelings. Where are you staying?’ he added, suddenly. ‘At an inn? Will you not come and take shelter with us at Brentwood. They would be——’

‘I thank you. I am staying at the Abbey.’

‘Ah, at the Abbey? Then you simply came down here for a stroll. Will they turn you out of the Abbey as a polluted thing if you enter Brentwood to take a meal there?’

‘I don’t suppose they would; but at this moment I am waiting, and must continue to wait until she comes, for Miss Bolton, who has been kind enough to promise me her assistance in deciding what part of the lumber inside here is fit to keep and which is good only to be cast into the fire.’

‘You know Miss Bolton, then?’

‘I made her acquaintance, and that of her father, yesterday; and they asked me to stay with them until my business here was done.’

‘Her father is enormously rich.’

‘Is he? I knew he must be rich from the sum he paid my father for the Abbey. I did not know his wealth was “enormous.”’

‘But it is, without any exaggeration. He has been one of the most successful manufacturers in Burnham, and does an immense foreign trade: perhaps your knowledge of foreign languages might be useful to him. Knowledge is power, you know, let fools say what they may against it,’ observed Father Somerville, who had a way of throwing out hints which suggested the largest possibilities, in a casual careless way which was quite peculiar to him.

‘It is no small thing to be one of the wealthiest manufacturers of Burnham,’ he went on. ‘In plain English, it means an income like that of a nobleman—an income which in this case is not one quarter spent, but which goes on accumulating in excellent investments.... And Miss Bolton is sole heiress?’

‘Yes—so I understand,’ said Jerome, absently, his mind occupied with the priest’s suggestion that perhaps his knowledge of languages might prove useful to Mr. Bolton. Why not? It would be well for him if it should turn out to be so. The natural indolence of his half-southern temperament made the idea of strenuous exertion in search of employment, which hardly could in the nature of things be remunerative, utterly abhorrent to him; and he grasped with the more eagerness at the idea suggested by Somerville’s words.

The latter was tempted to smile at what at first appeared the obtuseness of the young man. But he was a man of the world. Wellfield’s absence of mind, and his unconsciousness of the hint which lay behind that remark about the sole heiress, might be an innocence which would certainly be refreshing in one who must have been the object of so much matrimonial angling as Jerome Wellfield, in the days when he had been the supposed heir to the Abbey and a fortune; but it also might not be innocence at all. It might be that some deeper reason caused that obtuseness. Probably young Wellfield was in love already. With his disposition, and with the life he had led, it was most unlikely that he should have travelled so far in life without ever having had his heart touched.

Pablo Somerville knew when to be reserved and when to be open, even cynically open and candid. He judged this a fitting occasion on which to display the latter qualities.

‘She knows it, I should imagine?’ he said.

‘Yes—of course, yes. She told me this morning how pleased she often felt at the idea of one day owning the Abbey,’ said Jerome, still not awake to the palpable bearings of the case.

(‘Quelle bêtise! —how like a roturier!’ flashed rapidly through Somerville’s mind; ‘if she likes the Abbey, no doubt she would like the owner—the once owner!’)

Aloud, he said, striking at once me, and sharply:

‘Has a mariage de convenance never occurred to you as a way out of your difficulties?’ he inquired, in a thoroughly matter-of-fact, composed tone.

Jerome abruptly came to a dead stop. His eyes leaped to the other’s face. The priest looked at him with a slight cool smile, half rallying, half surprised.

‘Never,’ at last replied Wellfield, almost frigidly. But his heart was beating fast and suddenly.

‘I am surprised at that. I should fancy it would be very easily arranged. And then, if you really wish for employment, nothing would be easier than to find it. It is always to be bought, if you will pay dear enough for it. Were you but a Catholic, I know of one—two marriages of that kind, which might soon be negotiated through our influence. As it is, I am not Jesuit enough to pretend that I would connive at marrying a Catholic heiress to a heretic, even where the heretic is Jerome Wellfield.’

Jerome laughed a little. ‘It would certainly be a good deal to expect,’ said he.

‘It would, since you would probably not only marry the heiress, but convert her, if you wished to. But why should you not think of Miss Bolton? You would soon win her, and, with her, regain your patrimony and your home.’

He did not expatiate upon the subject. Jerome, engrossed by his real love, had absolutely not once thought of Miss Bolton in the light in which she was now held up to him. She was very rich. Some time she would be the mistress of Wellfield Abbey. He rather liked her, in a superior, patronising kind of way, but otherwise she was utterly indifferent to him; whereas every fibre of his heart was powerfully drawn in another direction.

‘Impossible, Father! The circumstances make it out of the question,’ said he, coldly and decisively.

‘The course is clear,’ said the priest, calmly. ‘Miss Bolton is not engaged. She is anything but disagreeable or stupid. Considering her training, she is a marvel of refinement; and if you married her you could make her into what you pleased. You have no rivals, and if you had, none here who could for a moment compete with yourself.’

‘Pardon me; I know nothing of Miss Bolton’s feelings, of course, but unless I am much mistaken I have—should have, I mean—a rival in her cousin, John Leyburn, as good a fellow as ever breathed.’

Father Somerville laughed—laughed as a man laughs who has heard a jest full of a quaint conceit which delights him. He had a musical laugh, and there was nothing offensive in his manner.

‘A good fellow enough, and liberal minded. I have encountered him once or twice on local business. But a girl like Miss Bolton wants something more than a good fellow for a husband—something different, at least. She lives alone, reads novels and poetry, has known Mr. Leyburn all her life, while you—bah! my dear sir, the idea of a rivalry is absurd.’

‘Your imagination is vivid. I say again, it is out of the question. No. Wellfield is gone from me, and I must abide without it as best I may.’

(‘A woman in the case, assuredly,’ thought the priest, ‘or he would never hesitate. No Wellfield ever did hesitate at so easy a means of making himself at ease again. It was honest work that always made that race kick and plunge.’)

Before he could speak aloud the gate had been opened, and Nita, accompanied by Speedwell, her mastiff, entered the garden.

‘We must drop that topic,’ murmured Somerville with a slight smile, as he bowed low to the girl, who returned the salutation very slightly, saying with marked coolness of manner to Jerome:

‘You are engaged, Mr. Wellfield. I am intruding, and will come another time.’

‘By no means,’ said Somerville, quickly. ‘I must go—I was on the point of taking leave.’

‘But I shall see you again,’ said Jerome.

‘Certainly, and often, if I consult my own inclination,’ said Somerville, with his strange, sweet smile. ‘Call at Brentwood, and ask for me at any hour after vespers, and I shall receive you with pleasure.’

Nita, followed by her dog, had walked into the house while these farewell amenities were taking place.

‘Will you not come to-morrow?’ added Father Somerville.

‘Thank you. I shall be glad to do so.’

‘That is well. Then, auf Wiedersehen!’

He lifted his hat, and was gone. Jerome entered the house, and found Nita standing at the window of the larger parlour, motionless, her eyes fixed upon the retreating figure of the priest in his long black soutane. Speedwell, his forepaws upon the window-ledge, looked too. Nita did not hear Jerome. She was too absorbed in her watch, but as he entered, he saw her pat her dog’s head and heard a low ‘Ss -s!’ from her lips.

‘Miss Bolton!’ he exclaimed, in astonishment, while Speedwell’s low, thunderous growl was exchanged for two deep, angry barks.

Nita started, turned, and laughed.

‘Are you shocked?’ she said. ‘I do so hate that man. I call him the “Polished Panther.” I should not wish to be rude to him if he is a friend of yours, but for myself, I cannot stand him, and that is all about it.’

‘I can hardly call him a friend, though he is an old acquaintance. Do you know what post he has at Brentwood?’

‘Oh, you know they go through a course. They don’t keep on teaching the same thing. I heard the other day that he was teaching history—Jesuit history, of course, which proves beyond dispute that the Jesuits always have been right, ever since the first one first founded the order, and that everyone else always has been and will be wrong. That is what Father Somerville is teaching at present, I believe.’

‘You speak with heat, and surely with a little prejudice,’ said he, smiling, but—insensibly it seemed—his manner towards her had changed, had taken a shade more of interest, of familiarity; there was a subtle difference both in his feelings towards her, and the behaviour which expressed those feelings. ‘Father Somerville is an accomplished——’

‘Deceiver! Oh yes; I know he is. He would deceive anyone less clever than himself. I dislike him exceedingly, and so does Speedwell. Well, shall we look at your furniture, Mr. Wellfield?’

‘Thank you,’ said Jerome, accepting the hint, if hint it were—‘if you don’t mind.’

They began with the room in which they were standing, and Nita soon displayed capacities for arranging and settling and turning things to the best advantage, which perfectly astonished Jerome. Numbers of things which he was about to cast aside as being utterly useless, she quickly reclaimed, remarking that they only wanted such and such repairs to make them serviceable and even good.

‘And it would be sinful to throw away a scrap of this old furniture,’ she added. ‘You can’t buy any like it except for fabulous prices, and then you are never sure that you are not being cheated. I am convinced that for fifty pounds or so, you may make the house very nice—at least if you will let me dispose of the fifty pounds for you,’ she added, colouring a little; ‘for I am sure you would be like a child—so helpless—if you went alone to a furniture shop.’

‘I do not doubt it, and would accept your offer gratefully if I did not think it was imposing on your kindness.’

‘Not at all. We will drive into Burnham to-morrow, and see about it,’ replied Nita. ‘Meantime, it is nearly dinner-time, and papa will be waiting. Shall we go back to the Abbey?’

Jerome accompanied her to her home, with new agitation in his breast, and a vague wonder whether, for the future, Monk’s Gate were to be his home.