She made this long speech with the air of a queen giving up her throne, and with a smile through her tears turned away, taking her sister’s arm, who stood crying silently, not saying a word. The doctor hastened forward from behind to offer his support, but Mary put him away. “No, thank you, doctor,” she said; “I am quite well. I want no help.” She turned to the audience who were silent, struck dumb, not venturing even to look at each other in the awe of the strange communication she had made them. “I need not stay longer?” she said. “No, I could not help to settle anything; but whatever you arrange I will do.” It was John Parke who hurried forward to open the door for her. He took her hand as she passed him and gave it a close grasp. He was strangely disturbed, and moved, in a way Mary was very far from understanding. “Lady Frogmore,” he said, “whether you know it or not, and however hard it may be, I’ll do my duty all the same.” “I never doubted it,” she said; “you were always kind; and God bless you, Lord Frogmore.” John fell back as if he had received a blow. He went back slowly to the rest, who were all silent, not even Letitia finding courage enough to make any remark. John looked at the vicar again as if he would have liked to oust him from his place; but finally, finding that too much to undertake, flung himself down into a low but very comfortable chair by the fire. “Well,” he said, looking round, “here is just as strange a business as ever I met with. Blotting, what do you think?”

His voice broke the spell which had lain upon them all.

“I don’t see what there is to think,” said Letitia. “What did you expect? Sense from a woman who is as mad as a March hare.”

“It ill becomes you, Tisch,” said Mrs. Hill, who had been gasping for an opportunity, “it ill becomes you, who drove her to it, to speak of my Mary in that way.”

Mrs. John Parke gave a stare in the direction of the vicar’s wife, and then, turning to the two gentlemen, shrugged her shoulders a little and elevated her eyebrows.

“It is in the family,” she said.

Mr. Blotting, like most other men, feared a passage of arms between the two ladies, so he hastened to put himself in the breach.

“In ordinary circumstances,” he said, “a statement of this kind from a mother would be considered conclusive. If she said, ‘This child is not mine,’ there would not be another word to say.”

“But, I beg—I beg,” said the vicar, wagging his white beard, and see-sawing with his large hand. “Nothing of the sort—nothing of the sort! Lady Frogmore entertains a hallucination. Such a thing has happened to many at a delicate time of life. Where is Dr. Brown? he will tell you. Why, the boy, sir, the boy—is undoubted—Why, my wife was there!”

“I am ready,” said Mrs. Hill, “to be examined before any court in England. I was present from the moment things began. Her mother! Of course, I was with her—I never left her. Why, it was I who received the child—I saw him born. I——”

“Spare us, please, the details. These gentlemen are not old women,” said Letitia. “We, who are most concerned, don’t question the fact. We may have our own opinion; we may think that of all the base, foul designs, to marry an old doting fool of a——”

“Letitia!” said John, springing up (which was no small effort) from his low chair.

“And if she went wrong in her head,” cried Mrs. Hill, with gleaming eyes, “Who drove her to it? Oh, how dare you speak, you bad woman! You tried it first at home at Grocombe to drive her off the marriage—and then the day, the very day before the child was born. Oh, perhaps, you don’t think I remember—but I remember everything, everything! The very day, Mrs. Parke—the afternoon, and little Mar was born in the middle of the night, the same day, so to speak. She came pretending to see how Mary was—and, oh, what she did or what she said I can’t tell, but my Mary never held up her head again. It is all her doing, all! I am ready to swear—before any court——”

“Ladies, ladies!” said Mr. Blotting. “When you begin to quarrel there’s nothing can be done. Of course, you blame each other. It’s always so—but what good does it do. Lady Frogmore is quite well now, my dear madam, you must be thankful for it, except this hallucination.”

“Which is a hallucineth—whatever you call it,” cried the angry mother. “Though in one way it’s the truth, poor lamb—for she never saw him, never looked at him, never knew she had a child. She was driven frantic before ever he was born, and that woman did it, and meant to do it, and came on purpose. She hoped to have killed the child—that is what she wanted—before he was born.”

“Letitia!” cried John Parke again, looking at her with a white threatening face which cowed her spirit, though she despised him.

“Oh, if you choose to believe what they say.” It was good for Mrs. John that she was cowed and sitting motionless in the chair, which seemed to give her a sort of support and shelter, and an air of composure and self-command in which in reality for the moment she had failed. She was afraid of John, her docile husband, for the first time in her life; and she was afraid of this accusation which she knew to be true.

“We did not wish to say anything about it,” said the vicar, wagging his head. “I would not have it mentioned, being a member of the family, but that is the truth about Lady Frogmore.”

“Come, come,” said Mr. Blotting, “in families there are always these mutual recriminations. I say it’s your fault and you say it’s mine. Come, come! don’t you think this has gone too far. Madness is a visitation of God. I don’t ask if it’s in the family, but a person must be much off their balance, my dear lady, that can be upset altogether by an angry visitor. We can’t entertain that, you know! Come! what we have got to decide is what’s to be done about this poor little boy.”

Poor little Mar! If the Lord would take him. That would be so much the best solution of the question.

CHAPTER XXX.

Agnes Hill had given herself entirely up to her sister in these latter days. There had been nothing at all remarkable about Miss Hill in the former portion of her life. She had never been so attractive as Mary, or so sweet: a good clergyman’s daughter—very thoroughly acquainted with the needs of the parish, and ready at any moment to respond to the call of those who were in need—but no more. However, in her later development many new faculties had appeared in Agnes. She had become a mother to little Mar; a mother with all the devotion of maternity, but with something of the reason of the unmarried woman, whose instinct it is to keep in the background and not to show her feelings. She was, indeed, all the mother little Mar had ever known, but she made no claim upon the first of his affections, always directing them, indeed, towards his adoring father, suppressing herself entirely in favor of Lord Frogmore as the most self-denying of mothers could not have done. And since Mary arrived, and the horror of the discovery that Mary, though sane, was unconscious of the great event of her life—the birth of her child—had burst upon the family, Agnes had devoted herself entirely to her sister. She had, perhaps, as most people have, a secret conviction that her own exertions might bring about that in which no one else had succeeded—that she would surely be able to seize the right moment to bring forgotten circumstances to Mary’s mind, to convince her of that in which it was so strange to think she could require conviction—in the reality of her child’s existence. Agnes had been accordingly her sister’s anxious companion during these days; but she had as yet made no attempt to move her. She had quieted as much as she could Mrs. Hill’s indiscreet remonstrances. She had watched over Mary’s tranquillity and peace, saving her from every disturbance. But when she led Lady Frogmore away from that assemblage of the family, it appeared to Agnes that her time had now come. An hour or two passed during which Mary was soothed and comforted in a natural paroxysm of grief by her anxious sister. But in the evening she was better composed and ready to talk. The nurse of whom Agnes felt no need was sent away. Mrs. Hill had been persuaded that she was over-fatigued and had much better go to bed early after the great strain of the day. The vicar, on the other hand, had been recalled to the necessity of looking over his sermon, as he had to return to his parish before the next Sunday. Thus the two sisters were left alone. “You will make Mary go to bed,” was Mrs. Hill’s last charge. “Oh, yes, I will make her go to bed,” said Agnes—but in reality her mind was full of other things.

“There is one thing,” said Lady Frogmore, “that we must settle soon, and that is where we are to live. It is wonderful how little familiar it feels to me here. Now that my dear lord is gone I don’t seem as if I know this place. He was all that made it feel like home.”

“It is not wonderful you should think so,” said Agnes, “you have been so little here.”

“Only all the time I have been married,” said Mary, with a faint, uneasy smile.

“No, my dear, only a year and a half at first. It is five years and more since you were taken away.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Mary; “but I am not able to argue, and you are all in a story, as if you wanted to make me believe—— You think I will feel it so much—I know that is your motive. You think that to give up my house and be only the Dowager, while Letitia is here——”

“Mary, you must try to open your eyes to the real state of affairs: why shouldn’t you stay here—with your boy? He ought to be brought up in his own house.”

“Agnes, will you torment me too? Did Frogmore say that? Did he want me to pretend—oh, no! no! My dear old lord would never have done so—for he was true, as true as steel.”

“My poor dear, it is you who are not true—you have been so ill, Mary—you have been away for a long, long time. You were driven into it at the time you were so weak, just before the baby was born. Try and throw back your mind, oh, Mary, dear. Don’t you recollect when the baby was coming. When you were all so happy, dear Frogmore the most of all. Mary, think! when the baby was coming——”

Mary’s pale face flushed. She shook her head. “I never wished it,” she said. “Oh no, I never wished it—to ruin little Duke and do Letitia all that harm——”

“Letitia! who did her best to kill you—who came when you were weak, and reproached you, and said—horrible things. Mary, Mary, rouse yourself! Do not let her succeed in her bad, bad intent. She hoped the baby would die. And almost as well if he had, poor child,” cried Agnes, in the petulance of her misery, “when his mother disowns him. His father is dead, and his mother has forgotten him. Oh, poor child, poor child.”

This did not move Mary as she had hoped. She said sadly, “Yes, I know, Letitia was not very kind. But it was not wonderful. If I had been the means of keeping her husband and her children out of the title—out of their inheritance. Would you have taken it better, Agnes? I should not—if I had had children——”

Her voice shook a little. “I do remember a time when I suppose there were hopes—and I felt very happy for a moment—and dear Frogmore——”

“Yes,” said Agnes, anxiously.

“But it all went off. I have been thinking of that all the time, while you have been saying such strange things. I fainted or something, and there was an end of it. I think I was sorry after, but I’m glad now not to have done any harm to Letitia and her boy.”

“Oh, Mary! if you were to see your own boy, your own boy! and hear him call you mother, don’t you think that would bring things back to your mind.”

“If I had a boy, Agnes,” said Lady Frogmore with a faint, half-reproachful smile, “I should not want that; but you know I never had a child.”

“O, my dear, my dear!” cried Agnes, wringing her hands.

“You may be sorry, but that doesn’t make any difference. If we could change things by being sorry——! not that I am sorry,” said Lady Frogmore, “my only comfort is that my marriage and all that which she disliked so, has done Letitia no harm.”

“She disliked it very much. Oh that is far too gentle a way of putting it, she said dreadful things to you, Mary.”

“Did she! don’t make me think of them. I am quite in charity with her now. Poor Letitia, she needn’t look reproachful any longer. She has got all she wanted now.”

“Mary,” said Agnes, “you are mistaken. It is your little boy that is Lord Frogmore.”

“Tut, tut,” said Mary, with an impatient movement of her hands, “you go on like that only to worry me. Of course, I should always be kind to him if my dear lord adopted him. But adoption won’t go so far as that. No, no. I am tired of hearing of this child. Let’s speak of him no more.”

“Mary, if it were to be proved to you—by eye-witness—that he was your child?”

“Proved to me!” cried Lady Frogmore. “Should not I myself be the chief witness?”

Her smile was so perfectly satisfied in its faint indulgent compassion for her sister’s folly, and the look of uneasiness with which she turned from this perpetual repetition of a disagreeable subject was so natural that Agnes’ heart sank. “I think I must go to bed,” she added. “It has been a hard day, and even though one does not sleep, lying down is always a rest.”

“Shall I read to you, Mary, till you go to sleep?”

“No, my dear. Go to sleep yourself, Agnes. We shall both be better quiet. It will be another life to-morrow,” said Mary, dismissing her sister with a kiss. Poor Agnes went away with a heart almost too sick and sad for thought. She had failed more miserably than the rest. And she did not know now what to say or do; or whether it was best to make no further attempt, to leave everything to the action of time and the guidance of events. It is more easy to adopt the most laborious or heroic measures than to take up this passive plan of operation, and it cost Agnes a great deal to relinquish the effort to set her sister right. Would she ever learn what was right? Would she ever come to a true knowledge of what had passed? or if she did, would the discovery be accompanied by a convulsion which would again rend their life in pieces. That possibility must always be taken into consideration. At present Mary was perfectly sane, and as composed in her gentle thoughts as anyone could be. But if she were urged beyond measure; if this great fact which she ignored were to be rudely pressed upon her, what might happen? Her recovery was still new, her mind fresh fledged, so to speak; too feeble to take many flights. But how to be patient and bear with this Agnes did not know. Those who have to deal with a persistent delusion have need for double patience. It is so difficult not to think that there is perversity in it, or that the deceived person could not understand if they would. Agnes went up to the nursery and bent over Mar’s little crib, and dropped a kiss upon his forehead as soft as the touch of any mother. The child opened his eyes without anything of the startled effect of sudden waking, as if he had only shut his eyes in play. “Why do you say poor child?” he asked in his little soft voice. “Oh, my little Mar, my little Mar!” cried Agnes, and then she scolded him a little for being awake, and bade him shut those big eyes directly and go to sleep. This visit did not dry her tears, or make it more easy to think what she was to do. Indeed Agnes was less and less reconciled to the idea of submitting to Mary’s delusion as she thought it over. It would all have been so very easy otherwise! They might have lived the two together, mother and aunt, in the familiar house of which she had grown so fond during these five years, taking care of the little heir until he was old enough to go to school. His mother was his natural guardian, and so she would have been had it not been for this. It would almost have been better, Agnes thought with bitterness, if she had not recovered at all—if she had still remained with Dr. Brown. For who could tell what the Parkes might do? They would have the power in their hands. They might insist on having her removed again. They might say that still she was not sane, and to prove that a woman was sane who had forgotten the very existence of her child, how difficult would that be. Agnes was the only one in the great house who could not sleep that night. She was sorry, very sorry, too, for the loss of old Frogmore. He had been to her a kind companion, a confiding and respectful brother, and she missed him—more than anyone else who mourned for him. The thought that he was gone and taken away, and that now there would be a clearing out of all his drawers, a searching into all his secrets, his papers examined, his very wardrobe turned inside out, brought tears of sorrow, mingled with a sort of angry dismay, to her eyes. That too, if Mary had but been well, would have been spared. She would have kept the old man’s house sacred. Sorrow and contrariety and care, all the exasperating and irritating elements which make a position intolerable, mingled in the mind of Agnes; and she knew that she could not throw it off as intolerable, but must somehow support everything for the sake of Mary and of the poor little boy. Poor little boy! To think that he was Lord Frogmore, and that after his long minority was over he would be one of the wealthiest peers in England, the poor, little, forlorn child for whom nobody cared, was enough to make any kind woman’s heart overflow with the piteousness of the contrast: and he was dear and precious to Agnes as the apple of her eye.

That day she had him carefully dressed, and led him with her to Mary to make one last attempt. She had taught him with the tenderest exactitude what he was to say. It was not very much, only “Mamma, speak to Mar; dear mamma, speak to father’s little boy.” Mar said it very prettily after Agnes. His great eyes, which were so large and so sad; looked wistfully into the very heart of the woman who loved him. “Speak to father’s little boy.” She cried herself when she heard him, and did not think that any heart could resist it. She led him into Mary’s room, holding his little hand very fast to give him courage, and brought him to the side of the bed where Lady Frogmore was lying very patient and quiet, with tears in her eyes, but a faint smile upon her patient mouth. “Mary,” said Agnes, “I have brought your little Mar to see you. Your own little boy. You have never given him a kiss, not since he was a baby in the cradle.” She led him to his mother’s side, and pulled his arm to remind him of what he had to say. But Mar had forgot, or else he was too much overawed by the sight of this strange lady who was his mother. He gazed at her with his big melancholy eyes, but he could not find a word to say. Mary did not turn her head away. She looked at him not without a little emotion. “Is this the little boy,” she said, “that my dear old lord was fond of? That should always give him a claim upon me.”

“Oh, he has a claim. He has a first claim,” cried Agnes, “on his own account.”

Mary did not risk any reply, but she put her hand upon his head and smoothed his hair, and said, “Poor little boy.”

And Mar did not say a word. Not though Agnes pulled his sleeve, and touched his elbow, and did everything that was possible to jog his memory. “Mar!” she said in an emphatic and significant whisper. But not a syllable did Mar say, not even “mamma,” which would have been so natural. He only stood and gazed with those large eyes that looked doubly large in his small pale face—till there remained nothing for Agnes to do but to take him away again, and to acknowledge to herself that she had failed. “Oh Mar, Mar!” she cried, when she had taken him back to his nursery; “why didn’t you speak? Why didn’t you say what I told you?” But even then Mar had not found his tongue, and he made her no reply.

After this there ensued a strange confused interval, during which the two executors were continually meeting to consult on what was to be done. They had no right to consult without including the third most important of all in their deliberations. But how were they to consult with Lady Frogmore, who ignored the very first particular of their trust. Nothing could be more strange than the position altogether. The vicar and his wife, who would not be shut out, and whose importance as her parents was so very much greater than any claimed by Mary, fought stoutly for what they considered their daughter’s “rights.” But Mary put in no claim of right, and was only anxious that John Parke and his wife should, as she thought, succeed to everything and take their right place. She did not ask either the custody or guardianship of the child. He had a disturbing influence upon her, confident though she was that he was none of hers, and after a while she showed a restlessness to get away, to which the doctor, who was still always in attendance, would not allow any opposition. He would not answer for the consequence, he said, if she were opposed. And thus it happened that to the extreme discomfiture and dismay of the vicar and his wife, and the despair of Agnes, the matter was settled at last. Mary left the Park, leaving behind almost with relief the forlorn little Lord Frogmore, who was her only child. She left him in the keeping of the woman who tried her best to extinguish his little life before it began, carrying away from him in her train the only creature in the world that had been to him as a mother. Alas for little Mar! But so it had to be.

CHAPTER XXXI.

For one thing, Mrs. John Parke intimated to all her friends with great regret that the little lord was exceedingly delicate, which was a thing not to be wondered at considering the age of his parents, the unfortunate tendency to nervous and mental disease in his mother’s family, and the extremely injudicious way in which he had been brought up until the time when he came under her care. He was so delicate that when Mar reached the age at which other boys go to school, his aunt did not feel that she could take the responsibility of permitting him to go. She said it was his uncle who was afraid to take this step, but most people knew that Mrs. John Parke had the reigning will in the house. The situation altogether was one which the outer world did not very well understand. Lady Frogmore lived at the Dower-house, which was quite on the other side of the county, and very difficult to get at from the Park, being out of the way of railways, and requiring a very long and roundabout journey by various junctions. She was well enough to see her friends, to take a little mild share in what was going on, but her son was never with her. It was vaguely rumored that she had taken an aversion to him during the time of the insanity, from which, as a matter of fact, most people were doubtful if she had ever recovered, while many continued to regard her with a little alarm, her sister-in-law being the chief of these. Mrs. John Parke never hesitated to express this feeling with lamentations over her own weakness. “Poor Mary,” she said, “is quite well now: I know she is quite well—just as clear in her head as any of us, except that unfortunate delusion about the boy. I know it is very bad of me, but one can’t help one’s nature; and I cannot get over it. She always frightens me. I keep thinking perhaps something may be said that will set her off—or something happen. I know I am very wrong, but I have such a horror of mad people. Oh yes, I know she is quite well now, but when that is in your nature how can one ever be sure?” Most people sympathized with Mrs. John, who betrayed to her intimates with bated breath the state of affairs between Mary and her child. “Greenpark was in many ways more convenient to us,” she said, “but what could we do? We could not abandon the poor child. John was his natural guardian, and of course we all felt that wholesome quiet family life, when he would simply be one of many, was the best thing for him—the only thing to neutralize all those other dreadful influences. He is always called by his Christian name, not Frogmore, as would naturally be the case for the same reason. It is so much better, with such an excitable feeble child, not to surround him with any sort of special distinction—time enough for that when he is a man.”

“If he ever lives to be a man,” Mrs. Parke’s confidants would say, shaking their heads.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake don’t say such a dreadful thing. What should I do if he did not live to be a man? I think I should kill myself! We his next heirs, and acting as father and mother to him—Oh, no, no. If I did not believe that under all his delicacy he had a tough wiry constitution, I should never have consented to take such a charge.”

But notwithstanding the tough, wiry constitution in which she believed, Mrs. Parke was too anxious about her nephew to allow him to go to school. It was too exciting for him, it was too exhausting for him. With the germs, perhaps, who could tell, of madness in him, it was altogether too dangerous. And Mar accordingly grew up at home under the charge of successive tutors who rarely managed to please Mrs. Parke, or to please themselves under her roof, for long together. Either they had theories as to what was good for their pupil which did not agree with hers, or they found the life so deadly dull which they were expected to spend with Mar in seclusion, shut out from everything that might be going on, that it soon became insufferable to them. They formed quite a procession coming and going, one following the other, and as each man had, more or less, a different system, it may be supposed that poor little Mar’s education did not advance in any remarkable way. What they all agreed in was a desire to get the boy into the open air, to give him the advantage of a country life, to make him hardy and active. But to this Mrs. Parke maintained a constant opposition. He was not strong enough, she said; his lungs were delicate; he would not bear the exposure and exercise which were good for the others. In summer she was obliged to relax her rules, but in winter she was obdurate, with the natural consequence that Mar caught cold more readily than anyone else in the house.

This was the position of affairs when Duke, John Parke’s eldest son, came of age. Duke’s majority was celebrated as if indeed it was he who was the heir. The family had by this time been so long established in the chief house of the race that they were scarcely conscious that it was not theirs by full right of possession. Letty, the eldest girl, was nineteen; she was not quite three years older than Mar, and his champion and supporter in the family. There were two boys younger than she, and a little girl who brought up the rear—all of whom were stronger, noisier, more assuredly at home, masters and mistresses of the position, than the quiet, slim, pale boy, too long, too slight, too grave for his years, who had the habit of being pushed into the background, and never asserted himself, or took any distinctive place in the family party. The younger ones, indeed, were all contemptuous of Mar. His delicacy, of which so much was made, his perpetual staying at home, his supposed incapacity for their sports, and indifference to their pleasures, had been part of their code all their life. There were so many things that Mar could not do. “Oh, he can’t come. He’ll catch cold,” Reginald, who was sixteen, said scornfully when there was any question of Mar sharing their pleasures. The members of the family who stood by Mar were the two eldest, and little Mary, the youngest girl, whom her mother called Tiny, in order not to use poor Lady Frogmore’s name, which John had insisted upon giving her—who made a slave of the quiet boy and found him very serviceable. The girls made Mar’s life a little brighter than it would otherwise have been, and Duke when he was at home, which was not very often, was always good to his old playfellow, who looked up to him as a youth of sixteen does to one of twenty-one, with admiration and devotion. And thus the time drew on to Duke’s majority. The preparations for it caused a little scandal in the neighborhood. The good people about protested to each other that it was for all the world as if John Parke’s son was the heir, but they accepted with alacrity all the same the invitations which Letitia sent forth in so liberal a way. There was to be a dinner of the farmers, who had known Master Duke all his life. There was to be a great ball to which all the county was invited, and there was a fête in the Park for the village folk and all the poor neighbors, and also for the “smart” people whose revels were of a less noisy kind. It is so much the fashion nowadays to put the poor neighbors in the foreground that this fête was Letitia’s chef d’œuvre. The programme altogether was one by which she felt she was to distinguish herself in the county, and which would mark Duke’s birthday as nothing else could do. Mrs. Parke, indeed, spoke of her son exactly as if he were the heir. She spoke of her humble guests as having seen him grow up, as taking such an interest in him. All the connections of the family were collected to celebrate this great event, and what was the most extraordinary of all, Lady Frogmore, who went out so little, and to whom this was in some sort a hostile demonstration, was one of the guests. There was nothing in the whole programme about which the county neighbors, the spectators who watched and criticized Letitia, were so much interested as the demeanor of Lady Frogmore. She had not appeared among them for years, her story was full of mystery, she was said to be indifferent to, if not possessed by an aversion for her own son, her only child, who lived neglected in his uncle’s family. All these things gave excitement to the reappearance of the poor lady, whose pleasant ways so many remembered with kindness, and whose life had been so strangely and so terribly overcast.

By this time the vicar of Grocombe and his wife were both dead. That Mary had been a dreadful disappointment to them, and that they had not at all approved of her conduct at the time of Lord Frogmore’s death, they had not hesitated to say, and Mrs. Hill has indeed been heard to declare that it gave her husband his death-blow. He had been so much disappointed in Mary! He had felt it such a dereliction of duty on her part to leave her son in the hands of the Parkes, people about whose religious principles there was no certainty, and it had helped him to his grave to think of little Mar being brought up perhaps in the most careless way, while his grandfather was a clergyman. Whether it was this mental trouble or bronchitis that removed the vicar at the ripe age of seventy-five, it is at all events certain that he did succumb, and that his wife did not long survive him. When the new vicar was appointed, Mrs. Hill came to her daughters at the Dower-house, but she never was happy there. She kept asking daily why was Mary there and not at the Park? Why had she abandoned her child?—it was nonsense to say that she had forgotten her child! Why, why had she left Mar? which indeed were very reasonable questions, but did not promote the happiness of the house. After her death the two sisters continued as before each other’s closest companions, and now with no divided duty, save that Mary was very tranquil in her secluded life, and that Agnes’ heart was racked with anxiety. She kept up a little correspondence with Mar, exchanging letters full of love and longing for his schoolboy epistles, in which there was not even the animation of a schoolboy, which poor Agnes looked for with the wildest anxiety, and cried over with the deepest disappointment when they came. How should he be able to respond—that undeveloped, heart-stunned boy—to her tenderness, the tenderness of an old mother, not even young to gain his sympathy? Agnes was the one who suffered amid all these differing interests and feelings. Now and then, at long intervals, she had a glimpse at her boy, a privilege which generally left her sadder than ever. “He looks so delicate,” she was even forced to allow to Letitia, who surprised her in tears after she had taken farewell of the boy. “Yes, he is very delicate,” said Letitia with a grave face. “I take a hundred precautions with him which I should laugh at for my own children. But if anything were to happen to Mar in my house I should die.” “Oh, God forbid that anything should happen!” cried poor Agnes. “I am sure I hope so sincerely,” cried Letitia, but still shaking her head. And the same impression was universal. The old women in the village whom Agnes went to see on her visit, old pensioners, shook their heads, too, and said, “Ma’am, you’ll never rare him.” And the tutor who was leaving seized upon the owner of the sympathetic face and discoursed to her largely of the false system on which Mar was being trained. “He’s like a flower growing in a prison—that flower, you know, that some man wrote a book about, all running to seed, and not a bit of color for want of air and sun.”

“Oh, if it was only air and sun that were wanted,” cried Agnes.

“It is, it is!” said the young man. “I hear his mother’s living; why don’t she send and take him away? To be with you now, who would pet him and study him, would make all the difference in the world.”

“Oh, don’t say so,” said Agnes with tears, “for it cannot be, I fear it cannot be.”

“Well,” said the young man, “I would not leave the boy here if I had anything to do with him: but then perhaps I’m prejudiced, for I hate—Mrs. Parke.” He was going to say “the woman here,” but paused in time.

“You must not speak so,” said Agnes.

“No, I suppose I ought to keep it to myself,” said the tutor. She said to herself afterwards that no doubt it was because he was going to leave, because he had been dismissed. People said you must never trust discharged servants. To be sure he was not a servant, he was a gentleman; but still—Agnes tried a little to comfort herself in this way; but Mrs. Parke’s pious hope that nothing might happen, and the tutor’s bold criticisms rankled in her mind. It was she that decided Lady Frogmore to accept the invitation to all the rejoicings over Duke’s majority, though it was not Agnes but Mary that was fond of Duke. “It is right that you should show yourself,” she said to her sister. Mary did not perceive what good showing herself would do, and feared the great dinner, and the return to a place which had so many sad associations (she said). But Agnes pressed so much that her sister, always gentle and so seldom asserting her own will against anyone else’s, at last consented. A visit to the Park was a great step. It was always on the cards that something might awaken smouldering recollections, or throw a new light upon that mystery of the past. At all events, it was with the stirrings of a new hope that Agnes, who managed everything, got her sister afloat on the day before Duke’s birthday, and steered her by the many junctions through half a dozen different trains across country to the Park. It was a troublesome journey, and took the greater part of the day, what with the difficulty of connecting trains, and long waiting at various stations. These delays and waitings were, however, rather good for Mary, who began to be roused out of her usual quiescence, and to ask questions about when they would arrive, and what company they would be likely to find there. “Duke was always my boy,” poor Mary said. A little cloud passed over her face as she spoke, as though a consciousness of something that had interfered between Duke and her had floated across her thoughts. Agnes did not burst out as she would have liked to do into a blast of sentiment in respect to Duke, which was perfectly uncalled for. But she looked disappointed though she did not say it.

CHAPTER XXXII.

It was June, the brightest weather, and everything at the Park was bright. A family of five children, of whom the eldest had just attained his majority, while the others were old enough to throw themselves into the festivities with devotion, is perhaps the best background that could be supposed for any rejoicing. They all enjoyed it, and the preparations for it, and the general commotion as much, nay more, than the boy himself, who was much troubled in his mind about the speech he was told he would have to make, and still more with a vague uneasiness about the position he was made to occupy. He was, it was true, the eldest son of the family which occupied the Park, the heir and representative of his own branch, but Duke had an uncomfortable feeling about all the “fuss,” as he called it, which was evidently too much. “It seems as if I were taking Mar’s place,” he said to his father. “Your mother thinks not,” said John; but John was a little cloudy too. For one thing, however, Duke had a certain right to the commotion made about his majority. He was not in the same position as the other young Parkes. Lord Frogmore had made special provision for him when it was known that he was no longer to be the heir. Greenpark and the little estate surrounding it had been settled upon Duke. He was a squire in his way, not merely the son of a younger son. Lord Frogmore had been exceedingly liberal to the boy who had irritated the old lord in spite of himself by his little childish brag about being the heir. These favors had been entirely for Mary’s sake, whose conscience had suffered so acutely in the prospect of displacing Duke. But no one knew of that in the strange imbroglio that followed. He went now to meet the ladies at the station, a fine young fellow, with a soldierly air, for he had got his commission a couple years before and now was quite a young man of the world, conversant with all the experiences which are so profound and varied, of military youth. Duke was not fond of Miss Hill, nor she, he was aware, of him; but he was really attached to Mary, who had been so tender to him in his childhood. He took charge of her in the most affectionate way, leaving the less important matters of the boxes, etc., to Agnes and the maid, while he took Lady Frogmore to the carriage which was waiting. “They are going to make a dreadful fuss about me,” he said. “I think a great deal too much.”

“How can that be, Duke, when you are the eldest son, the future head of the family?”

“Of the younger branch if you like, Aunt Mary—which doesn’t mean much. What I dislike is that it’s like putting me in Mar’s place.”

At this Mary said nothing, but the smile died off her face, and a cloud came over her eyes which was generally the effect of anything said on this subject.

“He’s pretty well,” said Duke, hastily, “and as much interested as anyone. You can’t think what a generous dear little fellow he is.”

“Ah!” said Lady Frogmore. She brightened up, however, and added immediately, “I hear there is to be a tenants’ dinner and a ball. It will be a strange thing to me to find myself at a ball.”

“No one there will look nicer,” said Duke, with filial flattery. “I don’t mind the ball,” he added. “That’s natural. Now that Letty’s out and me at home, and the others all old enough to like the fuss, a ball’s the best thing to have. It’s the tenants’ dinner that bothers me, Aunt Mary. Why should the tenants mind me? I’m nothing to them, only their landlord’s cousin. And I’m sure my father thinks so too, only he will not say.”

“It is quite right,” said Lady Frogmore.

“Oh, no, it is not quite right. I’m twenty-one and qualified to have an opinion. Oh, here’s Miss Hill. I hope you hadn’t any bother with the luggage, Miss Hill. I thought I’d better take care of Aunt Mary, and that you would rather the maid did it.”

“You are quite right,” said Agnes a little stiffly. “We have managed everything, and Mary always likes to have you to herself.”

“Dear Aunt Mary,” said Duke, squeezing her hand. “She has always been too good to me all my life.”

Agnes Hill had by this time got something of the grim aspect which procures for a woman even in these enlightened days the title of old maid. She was taller and thinner than her sister, less soft of aspect and of tone than Mary, as indeed she always had been: and the sense of wrong that had over-clouded her mind for so many years, the separation from the child to whom she had given all the love of her heart, and who needed her, she felt, as much as she longed for him, had given her a look of protest and almost defiance, as of a woman injured by the world, which is the aspect associated by a world full of levity with that title. “A sour old maid,” Duke thought her, and he liked to get what he called “a rise” out of old Agnes. What a rise is, is imperfectly known to the present writer, or the etymology of the phrase, but at least it was not anything respectful. So that in this trio who now drove off to the Park there were two who loved each other dearly, and two who loved each other so little that it might be said by a little strain that they hated each other—notwithstanding that they had between them one bond of sympathy, which was certainly wanting between Duke and the relation whom he loved.

The Park was looking its best, the fresh foliage heavy as midsummer, yet still retaining some tints of spring green in the brilliant afternoon sunshine which swept in low lines under the trees. And Duke, though he objected to the fuss, could not refrain from stopping the carriage to show the ladies the great marquee prepared for the dinner next day. The workmen were busy with it, but it was sufficiently advanced to be exhibited, and Duke could not but be a little proud of the great erection, and the way everything was being done. He dragged Lady Frogmore all over it, while Miss Hill stood with an unconcealed look of indifference, if not hostility, taking no notice of anything outside. “Old Agnes’” opposition almost reconciled Duke to the “fuss” he disliked, and cleared all his objections away.

They were received by Letitia at the door which was a great mark of honor to her sister-in-law: but she too gave Agnes the slightest of welcomes, letting her hand drop as soon as she had touched it, and turning away to conduct Lady Frogmore upstairs, as if she had no other guest. The whole family, indeed, clustered about Mary, conveying her in triumph to the room where tea awaited her, and leaving Miss Hill as if she had been the maid, in the hall, to follow at her leisure. Perhaps Duke, though he supposed himself to hate Agnes, was moved by a sense at least of the rudeness of his family, for he separated himself from the little crowd and hung about as if waiting for the unwelcome visitor who was left out.

“You don’t need,” he said, with an uneasy laugh, “to be shown the way?”

“No,” said Agnes. “I once knew it well enough: but a visitor whom nobody wants always requires to be shown the way. Oh never mind. I don’t care. Tell me where I shall find Mar?”

“He was not with the rest?” said Duke, uneasy still.

“No, he was not with the rest. Do you know,” said Agnes Hill, “it would be better taste in your position not to count him up with the rest, and to call him by his proper name—Frogmore.”

“He is one of the family,” said Duke, reddening. “We never think of him as anything else.”

“All the same,” said Miss Hill, “though he may be one of the family, he’s not the last or the youngest, but the chief person in the house: and his proper name is Frogmore.”

“I knew,” cried Duke, “as soon as I heard you were coming, that you’d try to sow discord between Mar and the rest! Not with me,” the young man added proudly. “Nobody could make Mar think that I didn’t give him his due. Thank heaven he knows me!”

Agnes’ grey eyes, which were full of fire, softened in spite of her. “I couldn’t do you wrong, Duke,” she said, “though you’re too much in my boy’s place to please me. I believe you’ve always been good to him. Yes, I do: though it was a bad day for him when he was left here.”

“You’ve no right to say so,” said Duke, who had been half softened too, and now flashed up again in wrath with the moisture still in his eyes.

“We needn’t quarrel,” said Miss Hill. “Can you tell me where I shall find him? Your mother’s tea would choke me. I want to see my boy.”

“I don’t know why he didn’t come,” said Duke, confused. “He will be in the old school-room as he wasn’t here.”

“Oh, I know very well why he didn’t come! It needs no wizard to tell that. Poor child, poor child! He will scarcely know even me,” said Agnes, as if that were the climax of all misery. She gave Duke a little nod, in which there was some anxiety, notwithstanding the opposition, and went hurriedly upstairs. The children’s apartments were on the second floor, and Agnes, who was spare and slight as a girl, ran up the long staircase as if she had been sixteen. The old schoolroom was at the end of the corridor, a long bright room which overlooked the park. Agnes knocked at the door, her heart beating with many emotions. “Come in,” said the broken voice, a little hoarse and uncertain, of a boy who had lost the angelical timbre of childhood. He was sitting, a long, slim figure, slight as could be, a mere sheath for the spirit, as some boys who grow very fast appear, huddled up in an easy chair, and bent over a table. A long window behind him made his form at first invisible to his anxious visitor; he was nothing but a dark silhouette against the light, and when he sprang up surprised to see a lady enter, the slightness and angularity of the long, straight, yet stooping figure without shape save that most undesirable one given by the contraction of the shoulders and the stoop of the head, made the heart of Agnes sink in her breast. He stood swaying from one foot to another, shy and doubtful. He did not know her at first, which she had anticipated, but which chilled her no less. “Mar!” she said, rushing forward. He stammered and hesitated, she did not know with what feeling—and looked behind as if expecting some one beside. It was not till long after that Agnes realized what the boy had thought. “Aunt Agnes!” he said with an almost shrill tone in his broken voice.

“Oh, Mar, you know me still, God be thanked for that. I thought you must have forgotten me altogether. But, dear, why are you up here, when everybody but you goes to welcome the guests? You are the head of the house, Mar. Nobody can be welcome here that is not welcome to you.”

“Do you think so?” he said with a laugh. “No, no, that would be foolish at my age. I have no visitors—they are all for the others; who should come to visit me?” he said again.

“Your mother, Mar,” said Miss Hill—“and an old aunt that perhaps you don’t make much account of, but who thinks constantly of you.”

“Oh, for you, Aunt Agnes!” cried the boy—“but my mother—what do I know of my mother?—will she look at me when she sees me?—I suppose she must see me while she is here?”

“Mar,” cried Agnes, “there is a change coming in your mother. I am sure of it. She is beginning to think of things. She knows now that there is something wrong. We must be patient, my dear, and keep on the watch. It has been a long, long time coming; but I am sure she begins to feel that something is wrong.”

“It is a long time coming, as you say; and it does not seem very much when it comes,” said the boy. “One only gets to understand the strangeness of it as one grows older; but never mind, I have got on very well without her hitherto, and I need not trouble myself about it, need I, now?”

“I don’t like you to say so, Mar.”

“I am sorry myself, but it can’t be helped,” said the boy. “I form very different ideas in myself now and then. But the philosophical thing is never to mind. It’s a little peculiar to be as I am, no one to care particularly about me, isn’t it? Generally a fellow at my age has rather too much caring for, to judge by Duke. But he’s exceptional. Oh, don’t think I’m not cared for; I am too much cared for—Uncle John is the kindest man in the world, and as for my aunt—she kills me with kindness. Yes, that’s what she does. She’s far more careful about me than about the rest. I wish sometimes that my health was of no importance, like Reggie’s. Well, that’s what she says—‘Oh, Reggie! He’s of no consequence; he has the health of a pig. But Mar!’ And then I have gruel, and my feet in hot water, and must not go out. It’s rather tiresome,” the boy said with a yawn. “I did want to go out to-day, to see all the things, how they are getting on. Did you think there was an east wind to-day?”

“East wind! and what would it matter if there were—in June?” said Agnes Hill.

“What a revolutionary you are!” said Mar. “But it’s a great refreshment to hear of someone who despises the east wind. I have to watch it; I can’t help myself. Do you see that weathercock, Aunt Agnes? I look at it the first thing in the morning, for I know if it turns to the east I mustn’t go out, even if the Queen were coming. It’s veering round, don’t you see? I’ve done nothing but watch it all day.”

“And what does she mean by that?” cried Agnes; “what does that matter in summer, the east wind!”

“Oh, my aunt means—only care and kindness—perhaps a little more; but this you must never repeat, for it sounds hard, and I don’t know whether I am right. She is dreadfully frightened lest something should happen to me in her house and she should be blamed——”

“In her house—it is your house!” said Agnes, vehemently.

“Oh, no; not while I am so young. Uncle John is my guardian, and lives here for me, and it is a great sacrifice to him. But, of course, while he is here, and I am under age, it is his house. I wish they would let me take my chance, though,” said Mar, “like the rest. Do you think it matters? If a fellow is going to die, he’ll die whatever you do, and in the meantime he might as well have some good of his life.”

“Do you mean yourself, Mar? Why should it be thought of, that a young creature is going to die? We must all die sometime. What you have to do is to live, and to grow up a very important man, with a great deal to do in the world.”

“Aunt Letitia does not think I shall ever do that. But she does not want anything to happen to me in her house. Don’t you know what that means? But don’t think I care,” said the boy with a pale smile. “I’ve thought it all over, and I believe in Christianity and I don’t mind dying a bit. I hate being ill, and I hate being kept in like this and made different from the rest; but why should one mind dying? One will get into a better place; one will be saved from all possibility of going to the bad. I don’t see why there should be any fuss about it, especially as there is nobody in particular to care—— Yes, I know there’s you; but you see so little of me. And the girls would be very sorry. Letty, I shouldn’t wonder if Letty—— But that’s a poor sort of talk to amuse you with.”

“Dear Mar, you break my heart.”

“Why,” said the boy, “I should think you would be glad to know that whatever happens I don’t mind. But Aunt Letitia,” he said with a laugh, “would be in a dreadful state of mind if anything should happen—in her house.”

CHAPTER XXXIII.

The next morning rose in a blaze of sunshine as though everything in heaven and earth conjoined to make Duke’s day of rejoicing brilliant and happy. It was the day of all others for a fête out of doors, and the hero of the occasion greatly regretted the marquee in which the dinner was to take place, and where, no doubt, the heat would be suffocating. That, and the still more terrible fact that he would have to make a speech, were the only clouds upon Duke’s firmament. They kept him in a subdued state of felicity during the morning, in the course of which he retired often into private corners both indoors and out of doors to study a small manuscript which had been concocted in the schoolroom with the help of Letty and Mar, and therefore was the result of the joint youthful genius of the house. Letitia had on several occasions indicated to her son what he ought to say, and would have written his speech for him with more or less success, as she was in the habit of doing for John. But Duke had not relished his mother’s aid. He had told her with great dignity that there was some things which a man ought to do for himself, and that his speech at his birthday dinner was certainly one of them—a general proposition which could not be opposed in the abstract, and to which the fear of raising a still stronger opposition prevented Letitia from replying that in her son’s special circumstances a birthday speech was a very difficult business, and required most wary walking. Nothing could be more true, or more impossible to say to a hot-headed boy, who was utterly unconscious of the schemes and hopes for his aggrandisement which filled his mother’s brain. And had she suggested to him the management of that difficult subject which would have satisfied herself, Duke she knew was capable of rushing wildly to the other side and contradicting everything she wished. The young trio in the schoolroom were quite unconscious of these wishes—even Mar, though he would betray occasionally, as he had done to Agnes, the instinct which revealed to him the precariousness of his own position, and the foregone conclusion in respect to him which existed in so many minds, was not always under the weight of that thought—and the boy did not think of himself at all when he helped in the concoction of Duke’s speech. All the most eloquent sentences were Mar’s—that one in particular about the attractions of the world, and the spirit of adventure, and how, though there was so much that drove him to more exciting pursuits, the needle in his heart (which was an uncomfortable metaphor but did not trouble these young critics) always pointed to home. Mar’s pale face flushed with pleasure when he read out this paragraph, the last words of which were drowned in the applauses of his companions. “Why, that’s poetry,” said Letty with a tear in her eye. “It’s much too grand for me,” said Duke, “it’s splendid, old fellow!” and the mingled pleasure of the author applauded and of the excitement of composition brought a flush all over the delicate boy, and forced the water to his eyes too. Mar was very manly, and would rather have died than cry like a girl—but it was too easy to bring the water to his eyes.

And who can describe the excitement which was in all their minds when the moment of fate arrived? There were some parts of Duke’s speech which had been added in secret conclave between him and his sister, and of which even Mar knew nothing. The full brightness of the afternoon was still shining outside when the ladies of the family and their guests came into the marquee to hear the speeches, and the climax of the festivities was reached. When Mary came in, wearing as she always did in a modified form the dress of her widowhood, there was a breath of something like applause—a cheer subdued into a sort of sigh of sympathy and regard; for Mary was one of those women who are always popular, however little or much they may do to deserve it. It was perhaps only natural that Mrs. John, who had reigned at the Park for eleven years, whereas Mary’s interrupted sovereignty, during most part of which she was absent, scarcely exceeded half that period, should not like this expression of preference. But she did the wisest thing she could do in the circumstances, and appropriated as much as she could of it by drawing Mary’s arm through her own, and leading her up to the chief place. Lady Frogmore nodded and smiled to all her old acquaintances, the tenants whom she knew, as she walked up through the subdued light of the tent to the head of the table; and she touched Duke on the shoulder as she passed him with a caressing and encouraging gesture. Agnes, who came after, with a poignant sense of the boy’s trouble, and of the wrong he suffered, and of the strange position altogether, laid her hand on Mar’s shoulder as she passed with a consolatory touch. To Agnes it seemed all one gigantic wrong—the event and the occasion, the presence of these men, as ready to cheer one as another, to applaud whoever came before them. What right had Duke to come of age? What right had he to have a dinner given for him, to receive congratulations, as if he were a prince? Nothing satisfied Agnes, not even the natural fact of his twenty-first birthday! He seemed to take something from Mar even in reaching the age of twenty-one.

And to see him on his feet returning thanks with a flush which was half panic and half excitement, the first immense internal commotion of a boy joining the world of men, which so far as he knew was all sympathy, and taking his place as a man among the rest for the first time! Every eye was turned towards Duke, every ear intent on what was really the event of the evening, the manner in which the young master should acquit himself. Duke was undeniably the young master to all there. They knew little or nothing of the young Frogmore. He was never seen either at meet or coverside—a delicate boy fond of his book, it was said, half with respect, half with contempt, when he was spoken of at all. John and his sturdy boys filled a large place in the county, and nobody thought of the young heir. So that Duke held by a sort of prescriptive right the place and title of the young master. And he was a favorite. The farmers’ faces responded. They turned to him with the pleasure which men have in seeing a young fellow appear and take up the lines which, had they been consulted, they would have marked out for him. He was altogether of their own kind, and known to every one. It had even been murmured among the better informed what a pity it was that Master Duke was not in fact the heir! But a number more did even not think of this, and took him for granted easily. And how he did talk to be sure! About the world being all open to a young man, and full of attractions; how he himself would like to go to Africa after big game, and to India like the young princes, and in a general way everywhere to see the world, but how the needle in his heart (it was thought a wonderful metaphor among the country people) always turned trembling to home. Duke gave Mar, who sat by him, a little slap on the shoulder, when he brought out this fine sentiment, which was received with deafening applause.

He wandered a little (it was thought by Letty, who was especially watchful, as this was the part where her own composition came in) after this, forgetting the connection of the sentences, which Letty longed to be near enough to suggest to him. But suddenly there came a change in Duke’s voice. He had become aware that he had lost the thread, and that as he stumbled about among the half-forgotten words he was losing the attention of his auditors also. And with a wisdom worthy of a more experienced orator, Duke sacrificed a part of his discourse bravely to the success of the rest. There was something that must be said. With a thrill of alarm lest he should not recollect exactly how Letty had put it, yet with an exhilarating consciousness that he knew at heart the sense of what he had to say, Duke flung back his head and plunged into that most important subject of all.

“There is one thing, however, gentlemen, that I must say (‘before I conclude,’ murmured Letty, under her breath). You have all given me the most glorious reception (received me with an enthusiasm I can never forget), and I must thank you for it with all my heart. But at the same time I must remind all my friends that after all I am not the true Simon Pure. (‘Hear, hear,’ said Letty, he had remembered the word.) You congratulate me, and you cheer what I say to you, and you look all so friendly and so kind that I—I could almost cry if I were not ashamed,” said Duke, with an outburst which was certainly his own, and which brought a storm of applause, “but at the same time, gentlemen, I must remind you,” he resumed, “that all the honor you do me is mine at second hand (Letty clapped her hands noiselessly to encourage and reward her brother), and that the real person who is the principal among us is my cousin, Marmaduke, Lord Frogmore. He mustn’t think, and nobody must think, that I am thrusting myself into his place. He is a great deal younger than I am, and he doesn’t show so much as he ought. But I can tell you,” cried Duke, once more abandoning Letty, and bursting into original compositions, “that if ever there was a little brick in the world, it’s Mar—I mean Frogmore. And, gentlemen, now you’ve done me all the honors, I want you to drink his health and a happy coming of age to him. I give you Lord Frogmore.”

The rest of his speech was almost lost in the roar of the cheers which so many robust pairs of lungs sent forth that the marquee trembled as in a gale of wind. The farmers got up on their feet, they held up their glasses. They shouted, “Bravo, Mr. Duke,” along with the unaccustomed name that he had put into their lips. Someone burst out into “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” which rung out like a storm, with renewed cries of “Master Duke.” Duke himself was still more near crying than he had represented himself as being—far more near crying than was at all becoming to a man of one and twenty. He laughed instead to save himself, and almost roughly turning to his cousin, forced Mar upon his feet to reply. The faces of the three ladies at the head of the table were at this moment the strangest study. Letitia was almost green with passion and vexation, affecting to smile, but producing only the most galvanized and affected contortion which ever moved human lips. Mary leant back in her chair, white as alabaster, her breath coming with difficulty. Agnes was crimson with excitement, happiness and unexpected pride, mingled with shame. She had grudged that boy his coming of age—that boy, God bless him! so generous, so genuine, so true in his impulse of justice and right dealing. It has been whispered that she took up that foolish chorus, and sang with the men, “He’s a jolly good fellow,” she the primmest and gravest of old maids. She forgot even Mar and the position into which the boy was thus placed in her gratitude and enthusiasm for Duke. Duke, to whom she, for her part, had not done justice, whom she had not esteemed as she ought.

Mar, however, was forced on his feet, and stood up supporting himself on the table, his weakly length, notwithstanding the stoop in his shoulders, giving him a sort of ascendancy over all around him. Mar’s pale countenance was flushed, he was so moved by the strange commotion in his veins and the unlooked for position into which he was thrust, and this first demand ever made on his boyish courage and powers, that for a moment he could not open his mouth, but looked dumbly round upon the great circle of encouraging faces like an affrighted animal, a large-eyed deer or dog, not knowing what was going to be done to him. His large eyes were full of tears, through which he saw the people round him as through a mist, yet took in everything, his uncle’s look of sympathy, Letty’s anxious face, who sat with her hands clasped together and her lips moving, as if she would breathe into him what to say. It passed through his mind that this was so like Letty, always wanting to tell you what to say: and in the dizzy height of his excitement he half laughed at this within himself. And then he felt Duke hurting his hand, crushing it as he leant upon the table. The boy woke up and began, with a voice so seldom accustomed to hear itself speak:—

“You are very, very good to drink my health. I haven’t very much health of my own, perhaps wishing for it will make it better. Thank you very much for that. I never knew that Duke meant to mention me. I am nobody beside him. He is a man, and as strong as a horse, and can do anything. I wish with all my heart I was only his little brother, and that he was Lord Frogmore. You may laugh,” cried the boy, warming at the sound, “but it is true. I have often thought, when they said I would not live, that I wished it, for then Duke would have all——”

“One moment, my lord,” said one of the listeners, “if someone laughed it was to hear you call yourself his little brother—and you so tall; but there’s nobody here but hopes you will live and be like your father before you. The best landlord that ever was.”

“I will, if I live,” cried Mar, swinging out his long thin arm with the eloquence of nature, in the midst of the quick loud chorus of assent that burst from everybody near. “I will! If there is one thing I care for in the world it’s that. If I live I will; and if I don’t live Duke will, so that, anyhow, this family will do its best, and God will help us. I thank you all very much,” he said, after a pause. “I don’t know how to say it. I thank you for being kind to me for my father’s sake—” He made another pause. “And for Duke’s sake, who has spoken up for me more than himself. And if he turns out your landlord after all, I shan’t grudge it him for one——” Mar stood still a moment, wavering upon his long feeble limbs—and then, with a smile, burst out into the foolish chorus, that imbecility of shy enthusiasm which is all that an English crowd can find to say. There was an effort made to take it up, hindered by something in the throats of the performers at first, then bursting out in a hoarse roar, mingled with broken laughter and blowing of noses and some unconcealed tears.

When in the general excitement it was possible to think of anything else than the speeches and the very unusual entertainment provided for the Frogmore tenantry by the Frogmore boys, there was a little stir at the head of the table, and it became apparent that Lady Frogmore had fainted. She was scarcely paler than she had been before, scarcely more motionless, but her sister, who had forgotten Mary for the moment, when she turned to her had found her unconscious. Indeed, for the first moment, Agnes had believed that she had lain back and died in the extraordinary sensation of this first revelation of her son. But this was not so.