The Wyvern mystery

“Who does he mean by the old soldier?” asked Alice, very much frightened, after a silence.

“One of those d——d people who are plaguing me,” said Charles, who had returned to the window, and answered, still looking out.

“And what is his real name, darling?”

“I’m ashamed to say that Harry knows ten times as well as I all about my affairs. I pay interest through his hands, and he watches those people’s movements; he’s a rough diamond, but he has been very kind, and you see his note—where is it? Oh, thanks. I must be off in half an hour, to meet the coach at the ‘Pied Horse.’”

“Let me go up, darling, and help you to pack, I know where all your things are,” said poor little Alice, who looked as if she was going to faint.

“Thank you, darling, you are such a good little creature, and never think of yourself—never, never—half enough.”

His hands were on her shoulders, and he was looking in her face, with sad strange eyes, as he said this, slowly, like a man spelling out an inscription.

“I wish—I wish a thousand things. God knows how heavy my heart is. If you cared for yourself, Alice, like other women, or that I weren’t a fool—but—but you, poor little thing, it was such a venture, such a sea, such a crazy boat to sail in.”

“I would not give up my Ry, my darling, my husband, my handsome, clever, noble Ry—I’d lose a thousand lives if I had them, one by one, for you, Charlie; and oh, if you left me, I should die.”

“Poor little thing,” he said, drawing her to him with a trembling strain, and in his eyes, unseen by her, tears were standing.

“If you leave this, won’t you take me, Charlie? won’t you let me go wherever you go? and oh, if they take my man—I’m to go with you, Charlie, promise that, and oh, my darling, you’re not sorry you married your poor little Alley.”

“Come, darling, come up; you shall hear from me in a day or two, or see me. This will blow over, as so many other troubles have done,” he said, kissing her fondly.

And now began the short fuss and confusion of a packing on brief notice, while Tom harnessed the horse, and put him to the dogcart.

And the moment having arrived, down came Charles Fairfield, and Tom swung his portmanteau into its place, and poor little Alice was there with, as Old Dulcibella said, “her poor little face all cried,” to have a last look, and a last word, her tiny feet on the big unequal paving stones, and her eyes following Charlie’s face, as he stepped up and arranged his rug and coat on the seat, and then jumped down for the last hug; and the wild, close, hurried whisperings, last words of love and cheer from laden hearts, and pale smiles, and the last, really the last look, and the dog-cart and Tom, and the portmanteau and Charlie, and the sun’s blessed light, disappear together through the old gateway under the wide stone arch, with tufted ivy and careless sparrows, and little Alice stands alone on the pavement for a moment, and runs out to have one last wild look at the disappearing “trap,” under the old trees, as it rattled swiftly down to the narrow road of Carwell Valley.

It vanished—it was gone—the tinkling of the wheels was heard no more. The parting, for the present, was quite over, and poor little Alice turned at last, and threw her arms about the neck of kind old Dulcibella, who had held her when a baby in her arms in the little room at Wyvern Vicarage, and saw her now a young wife, “wooed and married, and a’,” in the beauty and the sorrows of life; and the light air of autumn rustled in the foliage above her, and a withered leaf or two fell from the sunlit summits to the shadow at her feet; and the old woman’s kind eyes filled with tears, and she whispered homely comfort, and told her she would have him back again in a day or two, and not to take on so; and with her gentle hand, as she embraced her, patted her on the shoulder, as she used in other years—that seemed like yesterday—to comfort her in nursery troubles. But our sorrows outgrow their simple consolations, and turn us in their gigantic maturity to the sympathy and wisdom that is sublime and eternal.

Days passed away, and a precious note from Charlie came. It told her where to write to him in London, and very little more.

The hasty scrawl added, indeed emphatically, that she was to tell his address to no one. So she shut it up in the drawer of the old-fashioned dressing-table, the key of which she always kept with her.

Other days passed. The hour was dull at Carwell Grange for Alice. But things moved on in their dull routine without event or alarm.

Old Mildred Tarnley was sour and hard as of old, and up to a certain time neither darker nor brighter than customary. Upon a day, however, there came a shadow and a fear upon her.

Two or three times on that day and the next, was Mrs. Tarnley gliding, when old Dulcibella with her mistress was in the garden, about Alice’s bedroom, noiselessly as a shadow. The little girl downstairs did not know where she was. It was known but to herself—and what she was about. Coming down those dark stairs, and going up, she went on tiptoe, and looked black and stern as if she was “laying out” a corpse upstairs.

Accidentally old Dulcibella, coming into the room on a message from the garden, surprised lean, straight Mrs. Tarnley, feloniously trying to turn a key, from a bunch in her hand, in the lock of the dressing-table drawer.

“Oh, la! Mrs. Tarnley,” cried old Dulcibella, very much startled.

The two women stood perfectly still, staring at one another. Each looked scared. Stiff Mildred Tarnley, without, I think, being the least aware of it, dropped a stiff short courtesy, and for some seconds more the silence continued.

“What be you a-doing here, Mrs. Tarnley?” at length demanded Dulcibella Crane.

“No occasion to tell you,” replied Mildred, intrepidly. “Another one, that owed her as little as I’m like ever to do, would tell your young mistress. But I don’t want to break her heart—what for should I? There’s dark stories enough about the Grange without no one hangin’ theirself in their garters. What I want is where to direct a letter to Master Charles—that’s all.”

“I can’t say, I’m sure,” said old Dulcibella.

“She got a letter from him o’ Thursday last; ’twill be in it no doubt, and that I take it, ma’am, is in this drawer, for she used not to lock it; and I expect you, if ye love your young mistress, to help me to get at it,” said Mrs. Tarnley, firmly.

“Lor, Mrs. Tarnley, ma’am! me to pick a lock, ma’am! I’d die first. Ye can’t mean it?”

“I knowd ye was a fool. I shouldn’t ’a said nothing to ye about it,” said Mildred, with sharp disdain.

“Lawk! I never was so frightened in my life!” responded Dulcibella.

“Ye’ll be more so, mayhap. I wash my hands o’ ye,” said Mrs. Tarnley, with a furious look, and a sharp little stamp on the floor. “I thought o’ nothing but your mistress’s good, and if ye tell her I was here, I’ll explain all, for I won’t lie under no surmises, and I think ’twill be the death of her.”

“Oh, this place, this hawful place! I never was so frightened in my days,” said Dulcibella, looking very white.

“She’s in the garden now, I do suppose,” said Mildred, “and if ye mean to tell her what I was about, ’taint a pin’s head to me, but I’ll go out and tell her myself, and even if she lives through it, she’ll never hold up her head more, and that’s all you’ll hear from Mildred Tarnley.”

“Oh, dear! dear! dear! my heart, how it goes!”

“Come, come, woman, you’re nothin’ so squeamish, I dare say.”

“Well,” said Dulcibella; “it may be all as you say, ma’am, and I’ll say ye this justice, I ha’n’t missed to the value of a pennypiece since we come here, but if ye promise me, only ye won’t come up here no more while we’re out, Mrs. Tarnley, I won’t say nothing about it.”

“That settles it, keep your word, Mrs. Crane, and I’ll keep mine; I’ll burn my fingers no more in other people’s messes;” and she shook the key with a considerable gingle of the whole bunch from the keyhole, and popped it grimly into her pocket.

“Your sarvant, Mrs. Crane.”

“Yours, Mrs. Tarnley, ma’am,” replied Dulcibella.

And the interview which had commenced so brusquely, ended with ceremony, as Mildred Tarnley withdrew.

That old woman was in a sort of fever that afternoon and the next day, and her temper, Lilly Dogger thought, grew more and more savage as night approached. She had in her pocket a friendly fulsome little letter, which had reached her through the post, announcing an arrival for the night that was now approaching. The coach that changed horses at the “Pied Horse,” was due there at half-past eleven, P.M., but might not be there till twelve, and then there was a long drive to Carwell Grange.

“I’m wore out wi’ them, I’m tired to death; I’m wore off my feet wi’ them; I’m worked like a hoss. ’Twould be well for Mildred Tarnley, I’m thinkin’, she was under the mould wi’ a stone at her head, and shut o’ them all.”

CHAPTER XXV.
LILLY DOGGER IS SENT TO BED.

That night the broad-shouldered child, Lilly Dogger, was up later than usual. An arrear of pots and saucepans to scour, along with customary knives and forks to clean, detained her.

“Bustle, you huzzy, will ye?” cried the harsh voice of old Mildred, who was adjusting the kettle on the kitchen fire, while in the scullery the brown-eyed little girl worked away at the knife-board. A mutton-fat, fixed in a tin sconce on the wall, so as to command both the kitchen and the scullery, economically lighted each, the old woman and her drudge, at her work.

“Yes’m, please,” she said interrogatively, for the noise of her task prevented her hearing distinctly.

“Be alive, I say. It’s gone eleven, you slut; ye should a bin in your bed an hour,” screeched Mildred, and then relapsed into her customary grumble.

“Yes, Mrs. Tarnley, please’m,” answered the little girl, resuming with improved energy.

Drowsy enough was the girl. If there had been a minute’s respite from her task, I think she would have nodded.

“Be them things rubbed up or no, or do you mean to ’a done to-night, huzzy?” cried Mrs. Tarnley, this time so near as to startle her, for she had unawares put her wrinkled head into the scullery. “Stop that for to-night, I say. Leave ’em lay, ye’ll finish in the morning.”

“Shall I take down the fire, Mrs. Tarnley, ma’am, please?” asked Lilly Dogger, after a little pause.

“No, ye sha’n’t. What’s that ye see on the fire; have ye eyes in your head? Don’t you see the kettle there? How do I know but your master’ll be home to-night, and want a cup o’ tea, or—law knows what?”

Mrs. Tarnley looked put about, as she phrased it, and in one of those special tempers which accompanied that state. So Lilly Dogger, eyeing her with wide open eyes, made her a frightened little courtesy.

“Why don’t ye get up betimes in the morning, huzzy, and then ye needn’t be mopin’ about half the night? All the colour’s washed out o’ your big, ugly, platter face, wi’ your laziness—as white as a turnip. When I was a girl, if I left my work over so, I’d ’a the broomstick across my back, I promise ye, and bread and water next day too good for my victuals; but now ye thinks ye can do as ye like, and all’s changed! An’ every upstart brat is as good as her betters. But don’t ye think ye’ll come it over me, lass, don’t ye. Look up there at the clock, will ye, or do ye want me to pull ye up by the ear—ten minutes past eleven—wi’ your dawdling, ye limb!”

The old woman whisked about, and putting her hand on a cupboard door, she turned round again before opening it, and said—

“Come on, will ye, and take your bread if you want it, and don’t ye stand gaping there, ye slut, as if I had nothing to do but attend upon you, with your impittence. I shouldn’t give ye that.”

She thumped a great lump of bread down on the kitchen table by which the girl was now standing.

“Not a bit, if I did right, and ye’ll not be sittin’ up to eat that, mind ye; ye’ll take it wi’ ye to yer bed, young lady, and tumble in without delay, d’ye mind? For if I find ye out o’ bed when I go in to see all’s right, I’ll just gi’e ye that bowl o’ cold water over yer head. In wi’ ye, an’ get ye twixt the blankets before two minutes—get along.”

The girl knew that Mrs. Tarnley could strike as well as “jaw,” and seldom threatened in vain, so with eyes still fixed upon her, she took up her fragment of loaf, with a hasty courtesy, of which the old woman took no notice, and vanished frightened through a door that opened off the kitchen.

The old woman holding the candle over her head, soon peeped in as she had threatened.

Lilly Dogger lay close affecting to be asleep, though that feat in the time was impossible, and was afraid that the thump, thump of her heart, for she greatly feared Mrs. Tarnley, might be audible to that severe listener.

Out she went, however, without anything more, to the great relief of the girl.

Lilly Dogger lay awake, for fear is vigilant, and Mrs. Tarnley’s temper she knew was capricious as well as violent.

Through the door she heard the incessant croak of the old woman’s voice, as she grumbled and scolded in soliloquy, poking here and there about the kitchen. The girl lay awake, listening vaguely in the dark, and watching the one bright spot on the whitewashed wall at the foot of her bed, which Mrs. Tarnley’s candle in the kitchen transmitted through the keyhole. It flitted and glided, now hither, now thither, now up, now down, like a white butterfly in a garden, silently indicating the movements of the old woman, and illustrating the clatter of her clumsy old shoes.

In a little while the door opened again, and the old woman entered, having left her candle on the dresser outside.

Mrs. Tarnley listened for a while, and you may be sure Lilly Dogger lay still. Then the old woman, in a hard whisper, asked, “Are you awake?” and listened.

“Are ye awake, lass?” she repeated, and receiving no answer, she came close to the bed, by way of tucking in the coverlet, in reality to listen.

So she stood in silence by the bed for a minute, and then very quickly withdrew and closed the door.

Then Lilly Dogger heard her make some arrangements in the kitchen, and move, as she rightly concluded, a table which she placed against her door.

Then the white butterfly, having made a sudden sweep round the side wall, hovered no longer on Lilly Dogger’s darkened walls, and old Mildred Tarnley and her candle glided out of the kitchen.

The girl had grown curious, and she got up and peeped, and found that a clumsy little kitchen table had been placed against her door, which opened outward.

Through the keyhole she also saw that Mildred had not taken down the fire. On the contrary, she had trimmed and poked it, and a kettle was simmering on the bar.

She did not believe that Mrs. Tarnley expected the arrival of her master, for she had said early in the day that she thought he would come next evening. Lilly Dogger was persuaded that Mrs. Tarnley was on the look out for some one else, and guarding that fact with a very jealous secrecy.

She went again to her bed; wondering she listened for the sounds of her return, and looked for the little patch of light on the whitewashed wall; but that fluttering evidence of Mrs. Tarnley’s candle did not reappear before the tired little girl fell asleep.

She was wakened in a little time by Mrs. Tarnley’s somewhat noisy return. She was grumbling bitterly to herself, poking the fire, and pitching the fire-irons and other hardware about with angry recklessness.

The girl turned over, and notwithstanding all Mildred’s noisy soliloquy was soon asleep again.

Again she awoke—I suppose recalled to consciousness by some noise in the kitchen. The little white light was in full play on the wall at the foot of her bed, and Mrs. Tarnley was talking fluently in an undertone. Then came a silence, during which the old Dutch clock struck one.

Lilly Dogger’s eyes were wide open now, and her ears erect. She heard no one answer the old woman, who resumed her talk in a minute; and now she seemed careful to make no avoidable noise—speaking low, and when she moved about the kitchen treading softly, and moving anything she had to stir gently. Altogether she was now taking as much care not to disturb as she had shown carelessness upon the subject before.

Lilly Dogger again slipped out of bed, and peeped through the keyhole. But she could not see Mrs. Tarnley nor her companion, if she had one.

Old Mildred was talking on, not in her grumbling interrupted soliloquy, but in the equable style of one spinning a long narrative. This hum was relieved now and then by the gentle click of a teacup, or the jingle of a spoon.

If Mrs. Tarnley was drinking her tea alone at this hour of night and talking so to herself, she was doing that she had never done before, thought the curious little girl; and she must be a-going mad. From this latter apprehension, however, she was relieved by hearing some one cough. It was not Mrs. Tarnley, who suspended her story, however. But there was an unmistakable difference of tone in this cough, and old Mildred said more distinctly something about a cure for a cough which she recommended.

Then came an answer in an odd drawling voice. The words she could not hear, but there could no longer be any doubt as to the presence of a stranger in the kitchen.

Lilly Dogger was rather frightened, she did not quite know why, and listened without power to form a conjecture. It was plain that the person who enjoyed old Mildred’s hospitality was not her master, nor her mistress, nor old Dulcibella Crane.

As she listened, and wondered, and speculated, sleep overtook her once more, and she quite forgot the dialogue, and the kitchen, and Mildred Tarnley’s tea, and went off upon her own adventures in the wild land of dreams.

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE LADY HAS HER TEA.

“You suffers dreadful, ma’am,” said Mildred Tarnley. “Do you have them toothaches still?”

“’Twas not toothache—a worse thing,” said the stranger, demurely, who, with closed eyes, and her hand propping her head, seemed to have composed herself for a doze in the great chair.

“Wuss than toothache! That’s bad. Earache, mayhap?” inquired Mrs. Tarnley, with pathetic concern, though I don’t think it would have troubled her much if her guest had tumbled over the precipice of Carwell Valley and broken her neck among the stones in the brook.

“Pain in my face—it is called tic,” said the lady, with closed eyes, in a languid drawl.

“Tic? lawk! Well, I never heard o’ the like, unless it be the field-bug as sticks in the cattle—that’s a bad ailment, I do suppose,” conjectured Mrs. Tarnley.

“You may have it yourself some day,” said this lady, who spoke quietly and deliberately, but with fluency, although her accent was foreign. “When we are growing a little old our bones and nerves they will not be young still. You have your rheumatism, I have my tic—the pain in my cheek and mouth—a great deal worse, as you will find, whenever you taste of it, as it may happen. Your tea is good—after a journey tea is so refreshing. I cannot live without my cup of tea, though it is not good for my tic. So, ha, ha, he-ha! There is the tea already in my cheek—oh! Well, you will be so good to give me my bag.”

Mildred looked about, and found a small baize bag with an umbrella and a bandbox.

“There’s a green bag I have here, ma’am.”

“A baize bag?”

“Yes, ’m.”

“Give it to me. Ha, yes, my bibe—my bibe—and my box.”

So this lady rummaged and extricated a pipe very like a meerschaum, and a small square box.

“Tibbacca!” exclaimed Mrs. Tarnley. The stranger interpreted the exclamation, without interrupting her preparations.

“Dobacco? no, better thing—some opium. You are afraid Mrs. Harry Fairfield, she would smell id. No—I did not wish to disturb her sleeb. I am quite private here, and do not wish to discover myself. Ya, ya, ya, hoo!”

It was another twinge.

“Sad thing, ma’am,” said Mildred. “Better now, perhaps?”

“Put a stool under my feed. Zere, zere, sat will do. Now you light that match and hold to the end of ze bibe, and I will zen be bedder.”

Accordingly Mildred Tarnley, strongly tempted to mutter a criticism, but possibly secretly in awe of the tall and “big-made” woman who issued these orders, proceeded to obey them.

“No great odds of a smell arter all,” said Mrs. Tarnley, approvingly, after a little pause.

“And how long since Harry married?” inquired the smoker after another silence.

“I can’t know that nohow; but ’tis since Master Charles gave ’em the lend o’ the house.”

“Deeb people these Vairvields are,” laughed the big woman, drowsily.

“When will he come here?”

“To-morrow or next day, I wouldn’t wonder; but he never stays long, and he comes and goes as secret-like as a man about a murder a’most.”

“Ha, I dare say. Old Vairvield would cut him over the big shoulders with his horsewhip, I think. And when will your master come?”

“Master comes very seldom. Oh! ve-ry. Just when he thinks to find Master Henry here, maybe once in a season.”

“And where does he live—at home or where?” asked the tall visitor.

“Well, I can’t say, I’m sure, if it baint at Wyvern. At Wyvern, I do suppose, mostly. But I daresay he travels a bit now and again. I don’t know, I’m sure.”

“Because I wrote to him to Wyvern to meet me here. Is he at Wyvern?”

“Well, faith, I can’t tell. I know no more than you, ma’am, where Master Charles is,” said Mildred, with energy, relieved in the midst of her rosary of lies to find herself free to utter one undoubted truth.

“You have been a long time in the family, Mrs. Tarnley?” drawled the visitor, listlessly.

“Since I was the height o’ that—before I can remember. I was born in Carwell gate-house here. My mother was here in old Squire’s time, meanin’ the father o’ the present Harry Fairfield o’ Wyvern that is, and grandfather o’ the two young gentlemen, Master Charles and Master Harry. Why, bless you, my grandfather, that is my mother’s father, was in charge o’ the house and farm, and the woods, and the tenants, and all; there wasn’t a tree felled, nor a cow sold, nor an acre o’ ground took up, but jest as he said. They called him honest Tom Pennecuick; he was thought a great deal of, my grandfather was, and Carwell never turned in as good a penny to the Fairfields as in his time; not since, and not before—never, and never will, that’s sure.”

“And which do you like best, Squire Charles or Squire Harry?” inquired the languid lady.

“I likes Charles,” said Mrs. Tarnley, with decision.

“And why so?”

“Well, Harry’s a screw; ye see he’d as lief gie a joint o’ his thumb as a sixpence. He’ll take his turn out of every one good-humoured enough, and pay for trouble wi’ a joke and a laugh; a very pleasant gentleman for such as has nothing to do but exchange work for his banter and live without wages; all very fine. I never seed a shillin’ of hisn since he had one to spend.”

“Mr. Charles can be close-fisted too, when he likes it?” suggested the old lady.

“No, no, no, he’s not that sort if he had it. Open-handed enough, and more the gentleman every way than Master Harry—more the gentleman,” answered Mildred.

“Yes, Harry Fairfield is a shrewd, hard man, I believe; he ought to have helped his brother a bit; he has saved a nice bit o’ money, I dare say,” said the visitor.

“If he hasn’t a good handful in his kist corner, ’t’aint that he wastes what he gets.”

“I do suppose he’ll pay his brother a fair rent for the house?” said the visitor.

“Master Harry’ll pay for no more than he can help,” observed Mildred.

“It’s a comfortable house,” pursued the stranger; “’twas so when I was here.”

“Warm and roomy,” acquiesced Mrs. Tarnley—“chimbley, roof, and wall—staunch and stout; ’twill stand a hundred year to come, wi’ a new shingle and a daub o’ mortar now and again. There’s a few jackdaws up in the chimbleys that ought to be drew out o’ that wi’ their sticks and dirt,” she reflected, respectfully.

“And do you mean to tell me he pays no rent for the Grange, and keeps his wife here?” demanded the lady, peremptorily.

“I know nothing about their dealings,” answered Mrs. Tarnley, as tartly.

“And ’t’aint clear to me I should care much neither; they’ll settle that, like other matters, without stoppin’ to ask Mildred what she thinks o’t; and I dare say Master Harry will be glad enough to take it for nothing, if Master Charles will be fool enough to let him.”

“Well, he sha’n’t do that, I’ll take care,” said the lady, maintaining her immovable pose, which, with a certain peculiarity in the tone of her voice, gave to her an indescribable and unpleasant languor.

“I never have two pounds to lay on top o’ one another. Jarity begins at home. I’ll not starve for Master Harry,” and she laughed softly and unpleasantly.

“His wife, you say, is a starved gurate’s daughter!”

“Parson Maybell—poor he was, down at Wyvern Vicarage—meat only twice or thrice a week, as I have heard say, and treated old Squire Harry bad, I hear, about his rent; and old Squire Fairfield was kind—to her anyhow, and took her up to the hall, and so when she grew up she took her opportunity and married Master Harry.”

“She was clever to catch such a shrewd chap—clever. Light again; I shall have three four other puff before I go to my bed—very clever. How did she take so well, and hold so fast, that wise fellow, Harry Fairfield?”

“Hoo! fancy, I do suppose, and liken’. She’s a pretty lass. All them Fairfields married for beauty mostly. Some o’ them got land and money, and the like, but a pretty face allays along with the fortune.”

The blind stranger, for blind she was, smiled downward, faintly and slily, while she was again preparing the pipe.

“When will Harry come again?” she asked.

“I never knows, he’s so wary; do you want to talk to him, ma’am?” said Mildred.

“Yes, I do,” said she; “hold the match now, Mrs. Tarnley, please.”

So she did, and—puff, puff, puff—about a dozen times, went the smoke, and the smoker was satisfied.

“Well, I never knows the minute, but it mightn’t be for a fortnight,” said Mrs. Tarnley.

“And when Mr. Charles Fairfield come?” asked the visitor.

“If he’s got your letter he’ll be here quick enough. If it’s missed him he mayn’t set foot in it for three months’ time. That’s how it is wi’ him,” answered Mildred.

“What news of old Harry at Wyvern?” asked the stranger.

“No news in partic’lar,” answered Mildred, “only he’s well and hearty—but that’s no news; the Fairfields is a long-lived stock, as every one knows; he’ll not lie in oak and wool for many a day yet, I’m thinkin’.”

Perhaps she had rightly guessed the object of the lady’s solicitude, for a silence followed.

“There’s a saying in my country—‘God’s children die young,’” said the tall lady.

“And here about they do say, the Devil takes care of his own,” said Mildred Tarnley. “But see how my score o’ years be runnin’ up; I take it sinners’ lives be lengthened out a bit by the Judge of all, to gi’e us time to stay our thoughts a little, and repent our misdeeds, while yet we may.”

“You have made a little fire in my room, Mrs. Tarnley?” inquired the stranger, who had probably no liking for theology.

“Yes ’m; everything snug.”

“Would you mind running up and looking? I detest a chill,” said this selfish person.

At that hour no doubt Mrs. Tarnley resented this tax on her rheumatics; but though she was not a woman to curb her resentments, she made shift on this occasion; that did not prevent her, however, from giving the stranger a furious look, while she muttered inaudibly a few words.

“I’ll go with pleasure, ma’am; but I’m sure it’s all right,” she said aloud, very civilly, and paused, thinking perhaps that the lady would let her off the long walk upstairs to the front of the house.

“Very good; I’ll wait here,” said the guest, unfeelingly.

“As you please ’m,” said Mildred, and, with a parting look round the kitchen, she took the candle, and left the lady to the light of the fire.

The lady was almost reclining in her chair, as if she were dozing; but in a few moments up she stood, and placing her hand by her ear, listened; then, with her hands advanced, she crept slowly, and as noiselessly as a cat, across the floor. She jostled a little against the table at Lilly Dogger’s door; then she stopped perfectly still, withdrew the table without a sound; the door swung a little open, and the gaunt figure in grey stood at it, listening. A very faint flicker from the fire lighted this dim woman, who seemed for the moment to have no more life in her than the tall, gray stone of the Druid’s hoe on Cressley Common.

Lilly Dogger was fast asleep; but broken were her slumbers destined to be that night. She felt a hand on her neck, and, looking up, could not for a while see anything, so dark was the room.

She jumped up in a sitting posture, with a short cry of fear, thinking that she was in the hands of a robber.

“Be quiet, fool,” said the tall woman, slipping her hand over the girl’s mouth. “I’m a lady, a friend of Mrs. Mildred Tarnley, and I’m come to stay in the house. Who is the lady that sleeps upstairs in the room that used to be Mr. Harry’s? You must answer true, or I’ll pull your ear very hard.”

“It is the mistress, please ’m,” answered the frightened girl.

“Married lady?”

“Yes ’m.”

“Who is her husband?”

With this question the big fingers of her visitor closed upon Lilly Dogger’s ear with a monitory pinch.

“The master, ma’am.”

“And what’s the master’s name, you dirdy liddle brevarigator?”

And with these words her ear was wrung sharply.

She would have cried, very likely, if she had been less frightened, but she only winced, with her shoulders up to her ears, and answered in tremulous haste—

“Mr. Fairfield, sure.”

“There’s three Mr. Vairvields: there’s old Mr. Vairvield, there’s Mr. Charles Vairvield, and there’s Mr. Harry Vairvield—you shall speak plain.”

And at each name in her catalogue she twisted the child’s ear with a sharp separate wring.

“Oh, law, ma’am. Please ’m, I mean Mr. Charles Fairfield. I didn’t mean to tell you no story, indeed, my lady.”

“Ho, ho—yes—Charles, Charles—very goot. Now, you tell me how you know Mr. Harry from Mr. Charles?”

“Oh, law, ma’am! oh, law! oh, ma’am, dear! sure, you won’t pull it no more, good lady, please—my ear’s most broke,” gasped the girl, who felt the torture beginning again.

“You tell truth. How do you know Mr. Charles from Mr. Harry?”

“Mr. Charles has bigger eyes, ma’am, and Mr. Harry has lighter hair, and a red face, please ’m, and Mr. Charles’s face is brown, and he talks very quiet-like, and Mr. Harry talks very loud, and he’s always travellin’ about a-horseback, and Mr. Charles is the eldest son, and the little child they’re lookin’ for is to be the Squire o’ Wyvern.”

The interrogator here gave her a hard pinch by the ear, perhaps without thinking of it, for she said nothing for a minute nearly, and the girl remained with her head buried between her shoulders, and her eyes wide open, staring straight up where she conjectured her examiner’s face might be.

“Is the man that talks loud—Mr. Harry—here often?” asked the voice at her bedside.

“But seldom, ma’am—too busy at fairs and races, I hear them say.”

“And Mr. Charles—is he often here?”

“Yes ’m; master be always here, exceptin’ this time only; he’s gone about a week.”

“About a week, Mr. Charles?”

“Oh, la, ma’am—yes, indeed, ma’am, dear, it’s just a week to-day since master went.”

Here was a silence.

“That will do. If I find you’ve been telling me lies I’ll take ye by the back of the neck and squeeze your face against the kitchen bars till it’s burnt through and through—do you see; and I give you this one chance, if you have been telling lies to say so, and I’ll forgive you.”

“Nothing but truth, indeed and indeed, ma’am.”

“Old Tarnley will beat you if she hears you have told me anything. So keep your own secret, and I’ll not tell of you.”

She saw the brawny outline of the woman faintly like a black shadow as she made her way through the door into the kitchen, and she heard the door close, and the table shoved cautiously back into its place, and then, with a beating heart, she lay still and awfully wide awake in the dark.

CHAPTER XXVII.
THROUGH THE HOUSE.

This stalwart lady stumbled and groped her way back to her chair, and sat down again in the kitchen. The chair in which she sat was an old-fashioned arm-chair of plain wood, uncoloured and clumsy.

When Mildred Tarnley returned, the changed appearance of her guest struck her.

“Be ye sick, ma’am?” she asked, standing, candle in hand, by the chair.

The visitor was sitting bolt upright, with a large hand clutched on each arm of the chair, with a face deadly pale and distorted by a frown or a spasm that frightened old Mildred, who fancied, as she made no sign, not the slightest stir, that she was in a fit, or possibly dead.

“For God’s sake, ma’am,” conjured old Mildred, fiercely, “will ye speak?”

The lady in the chair started, shrugged, and gasped. It was like shaking off a fit.

“Ho! oh, Mildred Tarnley, I was thinking—I was thinking—did you speak?”

Mildred looked at her, not knowing what to make of it. Too much laudanum—was it? or that nervous pain in her head.

“I only asked you how you were, ma’am—you looked so bad. I thought you was just going to work in a fit.”

“What an old fool! I never was better in my life—fit! I never had a fit—not I.”

“You used to have ’em sometimes, long ago, ma’am, and they came in the snap of a finger, like,” said Mildred, sturdily.

“Clear your head of those fits, for they have left me long ago. I’m well, I tell you—never was better. You’re old—you’re old, woman, and that which has made you so pious is also making you blind.”

“Well, you look a deal better now—you do,” said Mildred, who did not want to have a corpse or an epileptic suddenly on her hands, and was much relieved by the signs of returning vivacity and colour.

“Tarnley, you’ve been a faithful creature and true to me; I hope I may live to reward you,” said the lady, extending her hand vaguely towards the old servant.

“I’m true to them as gives me bread, and ever was, and that’s old Mildred Tarnley’s truth. If she eats their bread, she’ll maintain their right, and that’s only honest—that’s reason, ma’am.”

“I have no right to cry no; I cry excellent, good, good, very good, for as you are my husband’s servant, I have all the benefit of your admirable fidelity. Boo! I am so grateful, and one day or other, old girl, I’ll reward you—and very good tea, and every care of me. I will tell Mr. Vairvield when he comes how good you have been—and, tell me, how is the fire, and the bed, and the bedroom—all quite comfortable?”

“Comfortable, quite, I hope, ma’am.”

“Do I look quite well now?”

“Yes ’m, pure and hearty. It was only just a turn.”

“Yes, just so, perhaps, although I never felt it, and I could dance now only for—fifty things, so I won’t mind.” She laughed. “I’m sleepy, and I’m not sleepy; and I love you, old Mildred Tarnley, and you’ll tell me some more about Master Harry and his wife when we get upstairs. Who’d have thought that wild fellow would ever tie himself to a wife? Who’d have fancied that clever young man that loves making money so well, would have chosen out a wife without a florin to her fortune? Everything is so surprising. Come, let’s have a laugh, you and me together.”

“My laughing days is over, ma’am—not that I see much to laugh at for any one, and many a thing I thought a laughing matter when I was young seems o’erlike a crying matter now I’m grown old,” said old Mildred, and snuffed the kitchen candle with her fingers.

“Well, give me your arm, Mildred; there’s a good old thing—yes.”

And up she got her long length. Mildred took the candle, and took the tall lady gently by the wrist. The guest, however, placed her great hand upon Mildred’s shoulder, and thus they proceeded through the passages. Leaving the back stair that led to Alice’s room, at the right, they mounted the great staircase and reached a comfortably warm room with a fire flickering on the hearth, for the air was sharp. In other respects the apartment had not very much to boast.

“There’s fire here, I feel it; place my chair near it. The bed in the old place?” said the tall woman, coming to a halt.

“Yes ’m. Little change here, ever, I warrant ye, only the room’s bin new papered,” answered Mildred.

“New papered, has it? Well, I’ll sit down—thanks—and I’ll get to my bed, just now.”

“Shall I assist ye, ma’am?”

“By-and-by, thanks; but not till I have eaten a bit. I have grown hungry, what your master calls peckish. What do you advise?”

“I would advise your eating something,” replied Mildred.

“But what?”

“There’s very little; there’s eggs quite new, there’s a bit o’ bacon, and there’s about half a cold chicken—roast, and there’s a corner o’ Cheddar cheese, and there’s butter, and there’s bread—’taint much,” answered Mrs. Tarnley, glibly.

“The chicken will do very nicely, and don’t forget bread and salt, Mrs. Tarnley, and a glass of beer.”

“Yes ’m.”

Mrs. Tarnley poked the fire and looked about her, and then took the only candle, marched boldly off with it, shutting the door.

Toward the door the lady turned her face and listened. She heard old Mildred’s step receding.

This tall woman was not pleasant to look at. Her large features were pitted with the small-pox and deadly pale with the pallor of anger, and an unpleasant smile lighted up the whiteness of her face.

“Patience, patience,” she repeated, “what a d——d trick! no matter, wait a little.”

She did wait a little in silence, screwing her lips and knitting her brows, and then a new resource struck her, and she groped in her bag and drew forth a bottle, which she applied to her lips more than once, and seemed better. It was no febrifuge nor opiate; but though the flicker of the fire showed no flush on her pallid features, the odour declared it brandy.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BELL RINGS.

“Will that beast never go to bed—even there, I mind, she used to sleep with an eye open and an ear cocked—and nowhere safe from her never—here and there, up and down, without a stir or a breath, like a ghost or a devil?”—thought Mrs. Tarnley. “Thank God, she’s blind now, that will quiet her.”

Mildred was afraid of that woman. It was not only that she was cold and hard, but she was so awfully violent and wicked.

“Satan’s her name. Lord help us, in what hell did he pick her up?” Mildred would say to herself, in old times, as with the important fury of fear, she used to knock about the kitchen utensils, and deal violently with every chair, table, spoon, or “cannikin” that came in her way.

The woman had fits, and bad fits too, in old times, when she knew her well.

“And she drank like a fish cognac neat—and she was alive still, and millions of people, younger and better, that never had a fit, and kept their bodies in soberness and temperance, was gone dead and buried since; and that drunken, shattered, battered creature, wi’ her fallin’ sickness and her sins and her years, was here alive and strong to plague and frighten better folk. Well, she’s ’ad small-pox, thank God, and well mauled she is, and them spyin’, glarin’ eyes o’ hers, the wild beast.”

By this time Mrs. Tarnley was again in the kitchen. She did not take down the fire yet. She did not know, for certain, whether Charles Fairfield might not arrive. The London mail that passed by the town of Darwynd, beyond Cressley Common, came later than that divergent stage coach, that changed on the line of road that passes the Pied Horse.

What a situation it would have been if Charles Fairfield and the Vrau had found themselves vis-à-vis as inside passengers in the coach that night. Would the matter have been much mended if the Dutch woman had loitered long enough in the kitchen for Charles to step in and surprise her? It was a thought that occurred more than once to Mildred with a qualm of panic. But she was afraid to hasten the stranger’s departure to her room, for that lady’s mind swarmed with suspicion which a stir would set in motion.

“The Lord gave us dominion over the beast o’ the field, Parson Winyard said in his sermon last Sunday; but we ain’t allowed to kill nor hurt, but for food or for defence; and good old Parson Buckles, that was as good as two of he, said, I mind, the very same words. I often thought o’ them of late—merciful to them brutes, for they was made by the one Creator as made ourselves. So the merciful man is merciful to his beast—will ye?”

Mrs. Tarnley interrupted herself sharply, dealing on the lean ribs of the cat, who had got its head into a saucepan, a thump with a wooden spoon, which emitted a hollow sound and doubled the thief into a curve.

“Merciful, of course, except when they’re arter mischief; but them that’s noxious, and hurtful, and dangerous, we’re free to kill; and where’s the beast so dangerous as a real bad man or woman? God forbid I should do wrong. I’m an old woman, nigh-hand the grave, and murder’s murder!—I do suppose and allow that’s it. Thou shalt do no murder. No more I would—no, not if an angel said do it; no, I wouldn’t for untold goold. But I often wondered why if ye may, wi’ a good conscience, knock a snake on the head wi’ a stone, and chop a shovel down smack on a toad, ye should stay your hand, and let a devil incarnate go her murdering way through the world, blastin’ that one wi’ lies, robbin’ this one wi’ craft, and murderin’ t’other, if it make for her interest, wi’ poison or perjury. Lord help my poor head, and forgive me if it be sin, but I can find neither right nor reason in that, nor see, nohow, why she shouldn’t be killed off-hand like a rat or a sarpent.”

At this point the bell rang loud and sudden, and Mrs. Tarnley bounced and blessed herself. There was no great difficulty in settling from what quarter the summons came, for, except the hall door bell, which was a deep-toned sonorous one, there was but one in the house in ringing order, and that was of the bedroom where her young mistress lay.

“Well, here’s a go! Who’d a’ thought o’ her awake at these hours, and out o’ her bed, and a pluckin’ at her bell. I doubt it is her. The like was never before. ’Tis enough to frighten a body. The Lord help us.”

Mrs. Tarnley stood straight as a grenadier on drill with her back to the fire, the poker with which, during her homily, she had been raking the bars, still in her hand.

“This night ’ll be the death o’ me. Everything’s gone cross and contrary. Here’s that young silly lass awake and out o’ her bed, that never had an eye open at these hours, since she came to the Grange, before; and there’s that other one in the state-room, not that far from her, as wide awake as she; and here’s Master Charles a comin’, mayhap, this minute wi’ his drummin’ and bellin’ at the hall door. ’Tis enough to make a body swear; ’t has given me the narves and the tremblins, and I don’t know how it’s to end.”

And Mrs. Tarnley unconsciously shouldered her poker as if awaiting the assault of burglars, and vaguely thought if Charles arrived as she had described, what power on earth could keep the peace?

Again the bell rang.

“Well, there’s patience for ye!”

She halted at the kitchen door, with the candle in her hand, listening, with a stern, frightened face. She was thinking whether Alice might not have been frightened by some fantastic terror in her room.

“She has that old fat fool, Dulcibella Crane, only a room off—why don’t she call up her?”

But Mrs. Tarnley at length did go on, and up the stairs, and heard Alice’s voice call along the passage, in a loud tone—

“Mrs. Tarnley! is that you, Mrs. Tarnley?”

“Me, ma’am? Yes ’m. I thought I heard your bell ring, and I had scant time to hustle my clothes on. Is there anything uncommon a-happenin’, ma’am, or what’s expected just now from an old woman like me?”

“Oh, Mrs. Tarnley, I beg your pardon, I’m so sorry, and I would not disturb you, only that I heard a noise, and I thought Mr. Charles might have arrived.”

“No, ma’am, he’s not come, nor no sign o’ him. You told me, ma’am, his letter said there was but small chance o’t.”

“So I did, Mildred—so it did. Still a chance—just a chance—and I thought, perhaps——”

“There’s no perhaps in it, ma’am; he baint come.”

“Dulcibella tells me she thought some time ago she heard some one arrive.”

“So she did, mayhap, for there did come a message for Master Harry from the farmer beyond Gryce’s mill; but he went his way again.”

Mildred was fibbing with a fluency that almost surprised herself.

“I dessay you’ve done wi’ me now, ma’am?” said Mildred. “Lugged out o’ my bed, ma’am, at these hours—my achin’ old bones—’taint what I’m used to, asking your pardon for making so free.”

“I’m really very sorry—you won’t be vexed with me. Good night, Mildred.”

“Your servant, ma’am.”

And Mrs. Tarnley withdrew from the door where Alice stood before her with her dressing-gown about her shoulders, looking so pale and deprecatory and anxious, that I wonder even Mildred Tarnley did not pity her.

“I’m tellin’ lies enough to break a bridge, and me that’s vowed against lying so stiff and strong over again only Monday last.”

She shook her head slowly, and with a sudden qualm of conscience.

“Well, in for a penny in for a pound. It’s only for to-night; mayhap, and I can’t help it, and if that old witch was once over the door-stone I’d speak truth the rest o’ my days, as I ha’ done, by the grace o’ God, for more than a month, and here’s a nice merry-go-round for my poor old head. Who’s to keep all straight and smooth wi’ them that’s in the house, and, mayhap comin’? And that ghost upstairs—she’ll be gropin’ and screechin’ through the house, and then there’ll be the devil to pay wi’ her and the poor lass up there—if I don’t gi’e her her supper quick. Come, bustle, bustle, be alive,” she muttered, as this thought struck her with new force; and so to the little “safe” which served that miniature household for larder she repaired. Plates clattered, and knives and forks, and the dishes in the safe slid forth, and how near she was forgetting the salt! and “the bread, all right,” so here was a tray very comfortably furnished, and setting the candlestick upon it also, she contemplated the supper, with a fierce sneer, and a wag of her head.

“How sick and weak we be! Tea and toast and eggs down here, and this little bit in her bed-room—heaven bless her—la’ love it, poor little darling, don’t I hope it may do her good?—I wish the first mouthful may choke her—keeping me on the trot to these hours, old beast.”

Passing the stairs, Mrs. Tarnley crept softly, and took pains to prevent her burden from rattling on the tray, while there rose in her brain the furious reflection—

“Pretty rubbish that I should be this way among ’em!”

And she would have liked to dash the tray on the floor at the foot of the stairs, and to leave the startled inhabitants to their own courses.

This, of course, was but an emotion. The old woman completed her long march cautiously, and knocked at the Vrau’s door.

“Come in, dear,” said the inmate, and Mildred Tarnley, with her tray in her hands, marched into the room, and looked round peevishly for a table to set it down on.

“You’ll find all you said, ’m,” said old Tarnley. “Shall I set it before you, or will you move this way, please ’m?”

“Before me, dear.”

So Mildred carried the table and supper over, and placed it before the lady, who sat up and said—

“Good Mildred, how good you are; give me now the knife and fork, in my fingers, and put some salt just there. Very good. How good of you to take so much trouble for poor me, you kind old Mildred?”

How wondrous sweet she had grown in a minute. The old servant, who knew her, was not conciliated, but disgusted, and looked hard at the benevolent lady, wondering what could be in her mind.

“If everything’s right, I’ll wish you good night, ’m, and I’ll go down to my bed, ma’am, please.”

“Wait a while with me. Do, there’s a good soul. I’ll not detain you long, you dear old lass.”

“Well, ma’am, I must go down and take down the fire, and shut-to the door, or the rats will be in from the scullery; and I’ll come up again, ma’am, in a few minutes.”

And not waiting for permission, Mildred Tarnley, who had an anxiety of another sort in her head, took the candle in her hand and left the guest at her supper by the light of the fire.

She shut the door quickly lest her departure should be countermanded, and trotted away and downstairs, but not to the kitchen.

CHAPTER XXIX.
TOM IS ORDERED UP.

When she reached the foot of the stairs that leads to the gallery on which the room occupied by Alice opens, instead of pursuing her way to the kitchen she turned into a narrow and dark passage that is hemmed in on the side opposite to the wall by the ascending staircase.

The shadows of the banisters on the panelled oak flew after one another in sudden chase as the old woman glided by, and looking up and back she stopped at the door of a small room, constructed as we see in similar old houses, under the stairs. On the panel of this she struck a muffled summons with her fist and on the third or fourth the startled voice of Tom demanded roughly from within—

“What’s that?”

“Hish!” said the old woman, through a bit of the open door.

“’Tis Mrs. Tarnley—only me.”

“Lauk, woman, ye did take a rise out o’ me. I thought ye was—I don’t know what—I was a-dreaming, I think.”

“Never mind, you must be awake for an hour or so,” said Mrs. Tarnley, entering the den without more ceremony.

Tom didn’t mind Mrs. Tarnley, nor Mrs. Tarnley Tom, a rush. She set the candle on the tiled floor. Tom was sitting in his shirt on the side of his “settlebed,” with his hands on his knees.

“Ye must get on your things, Tom, and if ever you stirred yourself, be alive now. The master’s a-comin’, and may be here, across Cressley Common in half an hour, or might be in five minutes, and ye must go out a bit and meet him, and—are ye awake?”

“Starin’. Go on.”

“Ye’ll tell him just this, the big woman as lives at Hoxton——”

“Hoxton! Well?”

“That Master Harry has all the trouble wi’, has come here, angry, in search of Master Harry, mind, and is in the bedroom over the hall-door. Will ye mind all that now?”

“Ay,” said Tom, and repeated it.

“Well, he’ll know better whether it’s best for him to come on or turn back. But if come on he will, let him come in at the kitchen door, mind, and you go that way, too, and he’ll find neither bolt nor bar, but open doors, and nothing but the latch between him and the kitchen, and me sitting by the fire; but don’t you clap a door, nor tread heavy, but remember there’s a sharp pair of ears that ’d hear a cricket through the three walls of Carwell Grange.”

She took up the candle, and herself listened for a moment at the door, and again turned her earnest and sinister face on Tom.

“And again, I say, Tom, if ever ye was quick, be quick now,” and she clapped her lean hand down on his shoulder with a sort of fierce shake; “and if ever ye trod soft, go softly now, mind.”

Tom, who was scratching his head, and staring in her face, nodded.

“And mind you, the kitchen way, and afraid o’ slips, say ye the message over again to me?”

This he did, glibly enough.

“Here, light your candle from this, and if ye fail your master now, never call yourself man again.”

Having thus charged him, she went softly from this nook with its slanting roof, and thinking of the thankless world, and all the trouble her old bones and brain were put to, she lost her temper, at the foot of the great staircase, and was near turning back again to the kitchen, or perhaps whisking out of the door herself, and marching off to Cressley Common to meet her master, and shock and scare him all she could, and place her resignation, as more distinguished functionaries sometimes do theirs, in the hands of her employer, to prove his helplessness and her own importance, and so assert herself for time past and to come.

Her interview with Tom had not occupied much time. She knocked at the Vrau’s door, and entering, found that person at the close of a greedy repast.

Emotions of fear, I suppose, disturb the appetite, much more than others. Not caring one farthing about Charles, she did not grieve at his infidelity; taking profligacy for granted as the rule of life, it did not even shock her. But she was stung with a furious pang of jealousy, for that needs no love, being in its essence the sense of property invaded, supremacy insulted, and self despised. In this sort of jealousy there is neither the sublimity of despair nor the pathos of sorrow, but simply the malice, fury, and revenge of outraged egotism.

There she sat, unconscious of the glimmer of the firelight, feeding as a beast will bleeding after a blow. Beast she was, with the bestial faculty of cherishing a long revenge, with bestial treachery and seeming unconcern.

“Ho oh! you’ve come back,” she cried, with playful reproach, “cruel old girl! you leave your poor vrau alone, alone among the ghosts—now, sit down, are you sitting? and tell me everything, and all the news—did you bring a little brandy or what?”

Her open hand was extended, and gently moving over the tray at about the level of the top of a bottle.

“No, ma’am, I haven’t none in my charge, but there’s a smell o’ brandy about,” said Mildred, who liked saying a disagreeable thing.

“So there ought,” said the gaunt woman placidly, and lifted a big black bottle that lay in her lap, like a baby, folded in a grey shawl. “But I’ll want this, don’t you see, when I’m on my rambles again—get a little, there’s a good girl, or if you can’t get that, there’s rum or gin, there never was a country-house without something in it; you know very well where Harry Vairvield is there will be liquor—I know him well.”

“But he baint here now, as is well known to you, ma’am,” said Mildred, dryly.

“I’m not going to waste my drink, while I think there’s drink in the house. Who has a right before me, old girl?” said the stranger, grimly.

“Tut, ma’am, ’tis childish talkin’ so, there’s none in my charge, never a drop. Master Harry, I dare say, has summat under lock and key, but not me, and why should I tell you a lie about the like?”

“You never tell lies, old Mildred, I forgot that—but young as she is, I lay my life the woman, Mrs. Harry Vairvield, upstairs, likes a nip now and then, hey? and she has a boddle, I’ll be bound, in her wardrobe, or if she’s shy, ’twixt her bed and her mattress, ole rogue! you know very well, I think, does she? and if she likes it she sleeps sound, and go you, and while she snores, borrow you the bottle.”

“She’s nothing of the sort, she drinks nothing nowhere, much less in her bed-room, she’s a perfect lady,” said Mrs. Tarnley, in no mood to flatter her companion.

“Oh, ho! that’s so like old Mildred Tarnley! Dear old cat, I’m so amused, I could stroke her thin ribs, and pet her for making me laugh so by her frisks and capers instead of throwing you by the neck out of the window for scratching and spitting—I’m so good-natured. Do you tell lies, Mildred?”

“I ’a told a shameful lot in my day, ma’am, but not more mayhap than many a one that hasn’t grace to say so.”

“You read your Bible, Mildred,” said the lady, who with a knife and fork was securing on her plate the morsels to which old Mildred helped her.

“Ay, ma’am, a bit now, and a bit again, never too late to repent, ma’am.”

“Repentance and grace, you’ll do, Mrs. Tarnley. It’s a pleasure to hear you,” said the lady, with her mouth rather full; “and you never see my husband?”

“Now and again, now and again, once and away he looks in.”

“Never stays a week or a month at a time?”

“Week or a month!” echoed Mrs. Tarnley, looking quickly in the serene face of the lady, and then laughing off the suggestion scornfully. “You’re thinking of old times, ma’am.”

“Thinking, thinking, I don’t think I was thinking at all,” said the lady, answering Mildred’s laugh with one more careless; “old times when he had a wife here, eh? old times! How old are they? Eh—that’s eighteen years ago—you hardly knew me when I called here?”

“There was a change surely. I’d like to know who wouldn’t in eighteen years, there’s a change in me since then.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said the lady, quietly. “Did he ever tell you how we quarrelled?”

“Not he,” answered Mildred.

“He’s very close,” said the stranger.

“A deal closer than Mr. Harry,” acquiesced Mildred.

“Not like you and me, Mrs. Tarnley, that can’t keep a secret—never. That tell truth, and shame the devil. I, because I don’t care a snap of my fingers for you, or him, or the Archbishop of Canterbury; and you, because you’re all for grace and repentance. How am I looking to-night—tired?”

“Tired, to be sure; you ought to be in your bed, ma’am, an hour ago; you’re as white as that plate, ma’am.”

“White are they?—so they used to be long ago,” said the visitor.

“The same set, ma’am. ’Twas a long set in my mother’s time, though ’tis little better than a short set now; but I don’t think there’s more than three plates, and the cracked butter-boat, that had a stitch in it. You’ll mind, although ye may ’a forgot, for I usen’t to send it up to table—only them three, and the butter-boat broke since; and that butter-boat, ’twouldn’t a brought three ha’pence by auction, and ’twas that little slut downstairs, that doesn’t never do nothing right, that knocked it off the shelf, with her smashing.”

“And I’m not looking well to-night?” said this pallid woman.

“You’d be the better of a little blood to your cheeks; you’re as white as paper, ma’am,” answered Mildred.

“I never have any colour now, they tell me—always pale, pale, pale; but it isn’t muddy; ’taint what you call putty?”

“Well, no.”

“Ha! no; I knew that—no, and I’d rather be a little pale. I don’t like your great, coarse peony-faced women; it’s seven years in May last since I lost my sight. Some people are persecuted; one curse after another—rank injustice! Why should I lose my sight, that never did anything to signify—not half what others have, who enjoy health, wealth, rank—everything. Things are topsy-turvey a bit just now, but we’ll see them righted yet.”