HARRY JOSCELYN.

——

VOL. III.

HARRY JOSCELYN.

BY

MRS. OLIPHANT

AUTHOR OF

“The Chronicles of Carlingford,”

&c., &c.


IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.


LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1881.
All rights reserved.




HARRY JOSCELYN.

CHAPTER I.

AFTER TEN YEARS.

TEN years is a large slice out of a life; but it slips by, not leaving much trace in a rural country where everything goes quietly, and where Christmas follows after Christmas with scarcely any sign by which one can be identified from another on looking back. We will not say that nothing had happened in the White House to mark the ten years from the time when young Harry Joscelyn disappeared from the Fell country, and it became evident that no one there was likely to hear anything of him more. Various things had happened: one, for instance, was that Joan had married Philip Selby, and was now the mistress of Heatonshaw, and could not easily remember, so strange is the effect of such a change, how she had contented herself in her previous life, or what had been the habits and customs of Joan Joscelyn. More had happened to her in this than in any other ten years of her life; but yet they had glided over very calmly, day following day with such a gentle monotony that it was hard for her to decide how many of them there were, or which was which. She had no child to measure the years by, which was a misfortune, but one which she bore with submission: reflecting to herself that if children are a comfort they are often also a great handful, and that when they are troublesome there is nothing else so troublesome in all the world. Philip Selby himself was less philosophical, and would have ventured gladly upon the risk for the sake of the blessing; but it was not so to be. And thus they had little evidence before them of how the years stole away. But all that he had augured, and Joan had agreed to, about the house, had come true. There were the best of beasts in the byres, and heavy crops on the arable land, and a phaeton in the coach-house, and horses in the stables such as no man needed to be ashamed of. And with all this, there was a very comfortable couple inside. Joan, on her marriage, had been half ashamed of the fine room, which was called—not according to her old-fashioned formula, the parlour, but—the drawing-room, to which her husband had brought her home, and which had been furnished by one of the best shops in Carlisle, with furniture such as was approved by the taste of the time. There was a white paper on the walls, and a great deal of gilding, and sofas and tables with legs that were crooked and curly. But by the end of ten years much that was somewhat showy once had toned down. The furniture had got more shapely and a little human; the place had worn into the fashion of the people that inhabited it. In summer it was a perfect bower of lilies and roses, the great white shafts of the one rising above the broad branches, heavy with flowers, of the other (for in those days there were no standards), and the whole air sweet with the mingled perfume. Liddy Joscelyn, Mrs. Selby’s little sister, thought there was no flower-garden in the world like it; but then she had not been away from home since she was twelve, and had not seen much, and there was nothing like it about the White House.

That, place, too, had changed in these years. Ralph Joscelyn was the one upon whom the change had told most. It was not that he was much altered in personal appearance, nor yet that he had entirely mended and corrected his ways. Perhaps indeed the alteration visible in him was more due to the fact that there was nobody about the place who crossed him, no one who opposed any strenuous opposition to his will, or dissented from his opinions, than any real alteration. But it was a quieter life which the homestead led, subject to much fewer storms than of old; and Mrs. Joscelyn lived a far less anxious life. The loss of her youngest boy so long ago—though it might not be really the loss of him, since who could tell what day he might re-appear again?—was not a thing, as everyone said, that she could be expected to get over. But the ten years had calmed her, and, what was more, Liddy had calmed her. Lydia had been sent for to her school when her mother was in the depths of this trouble, and she had never been suffered to go back again, her presence being the only consolation which the gentle and unhappy woman was the better for. And after ten years of Liddy’s constant company, Mrs. Joscelyn was a very different woman. Joan, who had been so sympathetic with her mother through that last family trouble, without understanding her in the others, understood still less the effect produced by her little sister, who smoothed down everything without any apparent trouble, more by understanding it, so far as appeared, than from anything she did. When Joan’s reign terminated, Lydia became the dominant spirit in the house. She was so at fourteen; how much more at twenty! It was not a good thing for the butter and the cheese. The dairy produce of the White House fell off wonderfully. It was no longer half the quantity, and still less was it equal in quality, to the butter of Joan’s time. Old Simon never ceased shaking his head over it till his dying day, and went out of human consciousness moaning to himself that “A’ things was altered, and no t’ half o’ t’ money coming in.” It was he that had always been the salesman, and he felt it deeply. For half of the time or so Joan had done her utmost, driving over in the morning and spending hours endeavouring to indoctrinate her sister with the mysteries of that art; but Liddy only laughed, and kept her pretty white hands by her side, and declared herself incapable. “I don’t know what to do with these things,” she would say, gazing at the bowls of milk, without the least sense of shame, with even a smile on her face; and to Joan’s consternation her father, coming in when this was said, and himself standing in the doorway, swaying his big figure to and fro, said, “Let her alone, let her alone, Joan. You did it, but she is another kind from you.”

“That she is,” said Joan. “She’s not the profitable kind either, if she let’s the dairy take care of itself.”

But to this Joscelyn paid no attention; and Mrs. Selby was led to her chaise stupefied, not knowing whether she was asleep or awake, so bewildered was she. The dairy went off, it was no longer celebrated as of yore. The cows decreased in number, for what was the use of keeping them when they brought in so little profit? And by degrees the house changed altogether. Lydia, slim and straight, with her white hands, and feet that scarcely sounded upon the old passage, gradually modified everything. When she was seen in a new riding-habit, and a hat with a feather, going out to ride with her father, the old servants could scarcely contain themselves; and the timid mother, coming out to see her, smoothed the horse’s sleek coat with a frightened hand, and did not know how to look at the girl, or her father, who was as proud of Lydia as Mrs. Joscelyn herself could be.

And then the old piano, which nobody had touched for years—for Joan, who had ended her education at fifteen, had never learned any more music than was contained in a first book of exercises—was sent off to an attic, and a new piano was bought for Lydia. Where it came from no one could quite understand, for it was impossible to believe that Joscelyn had drawn his purse-strings to such an extent; but all the same it arrived, and Lydia, sometimes going into Wyburgh, sometimes having her professor out to the White House, had lessons, and practised diligently, and by-and-bye became in her way a musician, astonishing all the neighbourhood with her powers. A young lady who rode about the country on a handsome horse, and who played the piano, was something altogether new in the place. She might have been much more profoundly instructed without producing half so great an impression. The house altogether rose in the social scale. People came to call who had never been seen near the White House before; and they found the mistress of the house, who had always been genteel, a gentle woman, ladylike and subdued, and her daughter one of the prettiest girls in the county, with a sort of elegance about her which was the inheritance she had received from her mother, strengthened and consolidated by the superior strength which she got from the other side of the house. When Joscelyn himself appeared, which was rarely, his fine form and strength, and the refinement imparted by a crown of white hair, raised him, too, to a sort of pinnacle. People began to say that they found they had done him injustice, and that after all the present representative of the Joscelyns was not unworthy his race. The process was slow, but it was very complete. When Will and Tom appeared with their wives, it was unaccountable how “put out” and “set down” they felt, as if they were going to their landlord’s, where everything was finer than the surroundings they were accustomed to, and not to their father’s, upon whose shabby furniture Mrs. Will and Mrs. Tom had looked with contempt. Even Joan looked round her with a curiosity which was mingled with grievance, scarcely able to restrain the thought that what was good enough for her, might certainly have been good enough for Liddy. Liddy it was clear did not think so. And how that little thing knew, or where she had got her instinctive acquaintance with polite ways, Mrs. Selby, who was on the whole proud of Liddy, could not tell; but so it was. The house brightened up generally; here a new carpet, and there a new curtain, made a change in its dingy aspect. The old furniture was made the most of, and old china, and all the stores of a long established house brought out to embellish the parlours; the very hall and passages were brushed up, the table, and the service at the table, so improved, that Joan too thought she must be dining with some of the great county people, whom the Joscelyns had always thought themselves equal to, but who had not acknowledged the Joscelyns.

“The thing that surprises me is where she learned it all,” Mrs. Selby said; “a bit of a thing that has seen no more than the rest of us; but she has a deal of you in her, mother, far more than any of the rest.”

“Ah, my dear,” said Mrs. Joscelyn, shaking her head, “I never had the courage to settle things my own way. It was not that I didn’t know: I knew very well how things ought to be done.” This little gentle assertion of her gentility Mrs. Joscelyn felt was her due in the new development of affairs. It was not all the discovery of Liddy. She had known well enough all the time. Circumstances had been too much for her; but the refinements of society were her natural atmosphere. Joan looked at her mother with mingled respect and amusement, proud that she was such a lady, yet feeling the joke of her superiority.

“Yes, mother,” she said, “I mind how you and Phil talked the first time he came to the White House. It was as good as a play to hear you. He never let on it was me he wanted, but to have a talk with you, such a superior woman. I did not understand a word you were saying, and I took pains to let him see that the dairy and the stables were what I was most acquainted with; but that didn’t make any difference, you see.”

“You were never one to make the most of yourself, Joan,” said the mother, mildly. “I always knew there was a great deal more in you than you would ever show,” at which Joan laughed; but she was not displeased. And she was proud of her young sister when Liddy came riding over on the last perfection from her father’s stable, looking like a young princess. She was the nearest thing to a child of her own that Joan was ever likely to have, and she forgave her possession of a great many indulgences which no one had thought of conceding to Joan. When it appeared, however, that Lydia had a groom behind her, Mrs. Selby’s soul was stirred within her.

“Now, Liddy,” she said, “I can stand a deal, but you’ll ruin father if you go on like this. A groom behind you! what will you want next? Father’s just infatuated, that is all I can say.”

“It’s only a livery coat,” said Liddy, “that’s all. It doesn’t cost very much. I’ll pay it off my own allowance, and father will never be the worse——”

Here she was interrupted by a shriek from her elder sister. “Your allowance? What next?” she said. “I never had a penny to myself when I was at home, and hard ado to get a bill paid. If it had not been for the butter money, I should never have had a gown to my back.”

“But that would not do for me,” said Lydia, with a toss of her head; and, indeed, to see her here with her airy figure, and her close-fitting habit, and the beautiful bay arching his fine neck in the background, and to suggest any connection with the butter money was a thing which only an elder sister without sentiment or sense of appropriateness could have done. The Duke’s daughter did not look more unlike any such homely particulars; indeed, the Duke’s daughter was not fit, as Joan said, proudly, to herself, to “hold the candle” to little Liddy Joscelyn.

“I don’t know what’s coming of it,” Mrs. Selby said to her husband; “but, Phil, you and me will stand by that child, and see her out of it—will you, goodman?”

“That I will, my dear,” Philip Selby said; “but Joscelyn has been doing not badly, and I dare say he can afford to let the little one have her fling. He has none to think of now but Liddy—and there’s Uncle Henry’s money.”

This allusion always made Joan ready to cry, though she was not given to tears. “I would rather burn off my fingers than touch Uncle Henry’s money,” she said. “It will never be me that will put my hand to it, and give my consent that yon poor lad is not coming home——”

“We must be reasonable, my dear,” Philip Selby said, mildly, “and the others will not be so patient. There is one thing you shall do if you like, Joan, and that is give your share to Liddy. It would never be any pleasure to you.”

Joan looked at her husband with a startled air. She was more matter of fact than he was, and the idea of giving over actual money to which she had a right, to anyone, was a thing which gave her somewhat of a shock. In their ordinary affairs she had to keep rather a tight hand upon her Phil, who was too easy about his money generally; but this was a complicated case, and puzzled her much.

“Give Liddy my share? You say true it would be little, little pleasure to me; but money is money, and there are some to come after us. It’s fine to be generous, but we must think upon justice. What’s Liddy’s is Liddy’s, and what’s mine is mine.”

It was from no want of kindness that Joan spoke: but she could not help it. It was as natural to close her hand over money, even when she hated it, as it was for others to throw it away.

“You will think better of it,” her husband said.

“Oh! it’s very likely I will think better of it. A woman cannot live with a prodigal like you without getting into ill ways. But I was always brought up to stick to my money; and I’ve you to look after as well. If you had not me to watch over you, you would give away the coat off your back.”

“For all that I’ve always had plenty,” said Selby, “and now more than plenty—with a good wife to take care of it and me.”

“You may say a wife to take care of you,” said Joan, “and how you ever kept a penny in your purse before you got her, is what I cannot tell; though, after all, when a man spends nothing upon himself, it’s easy keeping him going. But I’m one that sticks to my money. Give what you please else, but keep a grip upon your money, that’s always been my way.” Then she added, after a pause: “There will never be any question about that; when he knows it’s all left to him, it stands to reason that he will come back. Joscelyns have more regard to their own interest. They are not easy-going like you.”

“I wish I could think so,” Mr. Selby said.

And so the conversation ended. Uncle Henry had died not very long before, leaving behind him only an old will in which everything was left to Harry. The executors, who were both influential persons in Wyburgh, had advertised for him, or for news of him, but none had come; and the family generally had accepted this as a proof that Harry was dead—the family, all but the mother and Joan, who were both strenuous that nothing should be done, and no division made. Mrs. Joscelyn would have been overruled before now, but Joan was a stronger opponent, and she had the backing of her husband, of whom her brothers stood in a little awe; so that the division and distribution of Uncle Henry’s funds had been postponed. But this delay could not last: the elder brothers, who were men with families and in want of money, were certain to push for a settlement. They had no doubt, and not very much feeling, about the younger one who was lost. It had been entirely his own doing. He was a fool to have gone away like that, and compromised himself, and thrown away all his chances; but whatever happened to him in consequence was his own fault. If he had died, or if he was living in some obscure corner far away, were not they equally innocent? They had tried all they could to find him—the trustees were trying now. Old Pilgrim was advertising far and wide. If Harry were dead, or if he were so far away as to be out of reach of this call, it was not their fault; and they wanted no more than their share—but that share, there was no doubt, would be very convenient. Will’s sons were growing up, and Tom was taking in more land to his farm. To each of these, as to most people, a little money would have been of the greatest use. And it was all very well for Joan to talk who had neither chick nor child, and was in such easy circumstances; it was well for her to talk whose husband supplied her with everything, and who had no need of money; but they were men and knew better. They knew that men are not such fools as to stay away from their home as Harry had done. Nobody did such a thing, especially when advertisements were in the papers about them, and “something to their advantage” promised.

“Something to your advantage means money,” said Will. “’Twouldn’t be long I’d skulk away at the end of the world if you were to give me the chance.”

“He’s never skulking away at the end of the world,” said Tom. “If he went off at all, he went to California or thereabouts; and he’d have come home at the first scent of money. Bless you, we know our own breed;” and in this the other brother concurred. But the trustees held fast. They would not consent to any distribution of the money till Harry, if Harry still existed, had every chance of hearing of it. Privately Mr. Pilgrim had no objection to advance to Tom the money he wanted for that addition to his farm. There was solid security, and a feasible reason for borrowing. “There’s but too much reason to think that your poor brother will never turn up again,” the executor allowed; “but we must not go too fast.” Alas! such is the weakness of human nature that the other Joscelyns ere long were not sure that they wished their poor brother to turn up again. The money would be so convenient! When is there a time that money is not convenient? And it could do him no good, poor fellow, if he was in his grave—which at the same time would be his own fault.

Very different, however, from the conclusions of Will and Joan were those which were held at the White House on this subject. Mrs. Joscelyn had never consented to that view. “He may have been led away,” she said; “but do you think my boy would die and me not know? Oh, Liddy, my darling, many a time when you see me in low spirits, and ask me why, and I say it’s nothing, that is what it is. It is borne in upon me that something is the matter with one of the boys. I’ve different feelings for each of them. People may laugh that don’t understand, but you’ll not laugh, my Liddy dear. I never said it to one of the others, but I may say it to you. If it’s Ben, or if it’s Huntley, I have a kind of a feeling—and as sure as letters come it’s found to be true. There is always a something. Now it stands to reason that Harry should be the same, but as he never writes we never can tell. Sometimes I’ve been quite light-hearted for nothing at all, and I’ve said to myself, ‘That’s Harry: something good’s happening to him.’ Do you think it is natural that if he had died—oh, the Lord preserve him!—his mother would not know?”

“It would not be natural at all,” said Lydia, confidently; “he would come and stand by your bedside; I don’t feel the least doubt of that. But there is one thing I should like, mamma; I should like to go abroad. I feel sure that I should find him. I think that I should find him somewhere not very far away—or else in America: I have quite made up my mind to that.”

“You would scarcely know your brother if you saw him,” said Mrs. Joscelyn, shaking her head; “You were so little, my pet; and poor Harry must be changed in ten years.”

“Oh, I should know him,” cried Lydia. She held her pretty head high. She was very sure of most things. “After you are grown up you don’t change so much. He might not know me, but I should know him wherever I saw him. Ah, how delightful it would be to bring him back to you!” said Lydia, throwing her arms round her mother. The words and the arms were alike sweet. Nobody had given Mrs. Joscelyn this food for her heart in the old days.

“My darling!” she said; “but I see no chance for you to go abroad, far less—far less——”

“There is no telling what may happen,” said Liddy, “everybody, you know, goes abroad now.”

But Mrs. Joscelyn shook her head. She saw the practical difficulties here.

CHAPTER II.

A NEW COUSIN.

LYDIA had indeed as little prospect of going abroad as any girl could have. Her own kindred dreamt of no such indulgences, and she had no friends likely to suggest them. In these days people stayed still where their home was, and did not think of the continued changes and absences which make up our modern life—though the spirit of travel was beginning to be in the air, and younger spirits, even in the Fell-country, began to form dreams on the subject. Perhaps there never was a time when the idea of travelling was not attractive to the young, and when Italy was not a name to conjure withal. Lydia Joscelyn had read everything that fell into her hands all her life, even the Book of Beauty, which her brother-in-law, Philip Selby, presented to her with an inscription on the flyleaf, at Christmas. Half the stories, and half, almost all, the poetry there, bore reference to “the sunny South.” She was resolute to go “abroad” some time or other; to live among the dark-eyed Antonios and lovely Rosalbas of romance. And there, she had made up her mind, she would find Harry, and bring him back to her mother. It was her dream. Whenever she had nothing else to do she thought of it, and represented to herself how she should find him, how he would try to conceal himself from her, and by what wonderful ruses and clever expedients she would discover his secret and prove him to be her brother. It is not to be supposed that there did not mingle in Lydia’s dreams, visions of some other figure still more attractive than that of her brother, who having been five-and-twenty when he disappeared, ten years ago, was according to her calculation “quite old” by this time. It is not quite certain that she did not expect him to be grey-haired, and a little decrepit; but there would be some friend, some protector, some handsome young count, or even prince, who would have afforded the stranger hospitality, and in whom Liddy felt the possible hero of her life to be embodied. He was quite vague, except a pair of beautiful eyes; there was nothing at all about him else that she was certain of; but those eyes looked out of the mists upon her, with every kind of tender and delightful look. He would help her, could any one doubt, to bring Harry home? and afterwards—perhaps—would ask for his reward. Such was the natural sequence of events. To do Lydia justice, however, this visionary prince was a secondary personage, only indulged in as a dream by way of recreation, after she had, in her thoughts, tracked Harry down, and got him at her mercy.

She had not much society or recreation at the White House. There were times, indeed, when, if it had been possible for a girl to have done so, Lydia would have had no objection to try, as Harry had done, what the society of the “Red Lion” could do for her; but to do her justice one trial would have been enough. She did what was quite as good, and more innocent; she ran off sometimes into the kitchen of the White House, and talked with the servants, and heard a hundred stories both of the past and present, and learned the countryside, so that she knew who everybody was, and their mothers, and their wives, and all that had happened to them. It was there, rather than from her mother and her sister, that she heard about Harry. The old cook remembered everything about him, from the time when he had cut his teeth. She had a recollection of that night when he had gone away, and still excused herself for not having gone to the rescue. “T’ master was all about t’ house, travelling up and down in his stocking-feet—was it my part to oop and open the door?” Thus her apologies accused her according to the proverb. The other women were younger, but they too had something to tell. And then Liddy would go back to the quietude of the parlour, where her mother was sitting in the same attitude, reading the same book. The parlour looked cheerful enough, but there was never any change in it, not half so much as in the kitchen, where some one was always moving about, and there was a perpetual flow of talk. Liddy never spent an evening away from home, except two or three times a year to her sister’s, when there was “a party” prepared weeks in advance, and talked of for months after; or at Dr. Selby’s in the village, where now and then there were entertainments of a homelier kind.

Young Selby, who had been Harry’s friend and a frequenter of the “Red Lion,” though he had not yet sown all his wild oats, was a person of some importance in the village society. He was his father’s assistant, and although it was said that he was far more interested in the fees than in the Doctor’s patients, yet the fact that he was almost the only unmarried man in the neighbourhood gave him a certain importance. He was continually meeting Liddy when she went out to ride, and he looked very well on horseback, and gave her a great deal of good advice about the management of her horse. Perhaps but for that young Count in her dream, she would have got to understand what young Selby meant, though she scoffed at the adjective, and declared that he was not young, but as old as his father. He was the most entertaining person in the neighbourhood all the same, and the hero of Joan’s parties when they came round, one in summer, one about Christmas. These entertainments were pretty much alike, whatever was the time of year. Garden parties were not known in those days. In summer the windows were open, in winter the shutters shut over them and the curtains drawn. In other ways they were very much alike. There was a great round game carried on at the round table in the centre of the room. The tea had been served in the dining-room, so it did not interfere with the evening’s arrangements. Mr. Pilgrim’s family from Wyburgh were among the guests, and all the clergymen round, and any other notability who was not too great for the occasion. Few of the guests indeed could be called county people; but there were a good many who visited with the county people, and is not that very nearly the same? Joan, though she was homely enough, held her head somewhat high at her own table. The Selbys were but of moderate pretensions, but she never forgot that she was a Joscelyn. And she kept Liddy by her, not allowing any indiscriminate flirtations, and distinctly discouraging young Selby, who was her cousin by marriage, but had never won her heart. Mrs. Joscelyn never came to her daughter’s parties, though she was pleased to hear all about them; and it was only on condition that Liddy was to keep by her sister’s side that she was permitted to go, “You needn’t fear, mother, that she’ll meet with anyone she oughtn’t to meet with at my house,” Joan said, and she took care of her accordingly. It troubled her mind on the occasion to which we are about to refer, that a young man had come with Mrs. Pilgrim’s party, about whom she knew nothing. He was nice-looking, but she had not even caught his name. She could not help thinking it a little wrong of Mrs. Pilgrim to bring a stranger to such an assembly. If he had been in love with one of her girls, Joan allowed that would have made a difference; but there was not the least appearance that he was in love with one of the Pilgrim girls. They were very assiduous in their attention to him, pointing out everybody and making conversation for the young man, who, without being rude or disagreeable, held himself just a little aloof from the company in general, as if he had come there solely because he was brought, and had no special interest in the proceedings. His head, for he was tall, appearing steadily over Mrs. Pilgrim’s, at last began to irritate Mrs. Selby, who felt herself to be in every way a greater personage. She called her husband to her again and again to point out to him this wholly ineffective member of the party.

“What is he wanting here?” she said.

“My dear, what they all want—to enjoy himself,” Philip Selby replied.

“Enjoy himself—do you call that enjoyment? He looks as if he had swallowed a poker; and is never trusted for a moment out of the charge of two or three Pilgrims. I don’t think I’ll ask these people again.”

“They are very good sort of people, Joan; and considering the position in which they stood to your uncle Henry——”

“I’m very tired of Uncle Henry, Phil; besides, the girls didn’t stand in any position—and I never authorised them to bring a strange young man.”

“He will be after Amy or Tiny—or——”

“He’s after none of them. Can’t you see that with half an eye? It’s my belief he’s spying out for our Liddy. And what will mother say to me if I let her make acquaintance with a stranger? I said, ‘You needn’t fear, mother; she’ll meet nobody you don’t want her to meet at my house.’”

“Well, well,” said Philip Selby, soothingly; “there’s half the room between them; and nobody can say, my dear, that it’s your fault.”

“But that’s just what mother will do,” said Joan, with a puckered brow, as if her mother had been the most alarming critic in existence. She laughed at herself afterwards, and went to the table to superintend the round game, in which Liddy was deeply involved, seated by young Selby’s side. There was a strong sense of responsibility on Joan’s mind, or rather, she was a little cross. Her cakes had not come quite so well out of the oven as she intended, and Mrs. Doctor Selby had suggested a fault in the flavour of the tea. She went up to the players in a stormy state of mind. “Come, come,” she said, “you’re not sitting right. Liddy, you come over here and help little Ellen; all you strong ones are together. Raaf,” this was to young Selby, “stay where you are. I’ll put Miss Armstrong, she’s not playing at all, next to you.”

At this young Selby made a grimace, but Liddy tripped out of her place with all the alacrity possible, leaving her seat and devoting herself to little Ellen. She even gave her sister a smiling look of gratitude. “Thank you,” she said, in an under-tone, “but it was rude, Joan.”

“Now you are a deal better arranged, and the game will go faster; there will be no cheating,” Joan said. She did not care a bit for being called rude. Raaf Selby should know that he was not good enough for a Joscelyn whatever his cousin might be. “One’s enough,” she said to herself. Besides, she wanted for Liddy something that should be out of the common altogether. She herself had done very well in marriage. She had got an excellent man, with enough to be comfortable upon. But she did not feel that she would be satisfied with only so much for her little sister. Not that Raaf Selby at his best could hold a candle to Phil. He was not much except when he was on a horse; then she was obliged to allow he looked pretty well. But a man can’t always be on a horse’s back, and anywhere else he was not worth looking twice at; very different from Phil. Even Phil, however, much as she respected her husband, was not the kind of person she wanted for Liddy. A fairy prince, if any such fantastic being had ever existed in Joan’s steady imagination, was the sort of person who ought to be Lydia’s fate; a fine young fellow (young to start with), and handsome, and well off, and with an air above the rest of the world. Unawares, as her eyes went round her guests, they fell once more upon the tall young stranger behind Mrs. Pilgrim’s chair. Was that the kind of man? Well, if he had not been an intruder, a stranger, a hanger-on of the Pilgrims’ (though certainly not in love with either of the girls), that was the kind of person. She drew near Mrs. Pilgrim as this unsolicited thought arose in her mind. She was annoyed with herself to think that a person whom she did not know, and who had no right to be here, should thus have taken her eye.

“You are doing nothing, Amy,” she said to the eldest Miss Pilgrim; “I’m sure they want you in the game yonder—or you might give us some music. You and your sister might play a duet. I like to see everybody employed.”

“That is what I always say. You don’t let the grass grow beneath your feet, Mrs. Selby, neither in work nor in pleasure. I was just saying to——” here she made signs with her thumb, pointing to the stranger, who was inspecting the party from his eminence, and talking languidly to one of the girls. “He was introduced to you,” she added, in a whisper, “when he came in?”

“I should think,” said Joan, “that nobody would bring a strange man into my house without introducing him to me. But your friend is doing nothing either,” she said, with compunction, and a relenting of hospitality. “He has just got into a corner; and the evening’s lost when you once do that.”

“Oh, Mrs. Selby, he doesn’t know anybody. We promised we would take care of him if he came with us,” Amy Pilgrim said; and the object of Joan’s mingled interest and indignation laughed a little, and said that he hoped Mrs. Selby would not trouble herself, that he was very well there.

Then Joan sought her husband again. “Look at them,” she said, “all sitting in a corner with this strange man, as if they were above the rest of us: as if it was my lady Countess and her party from the Castle looking at the poor people’s amusements. I will never ask these Pilgrims again.”

“My dear, my dear,” said Philip Selby, “they are very good sort of people; and if they have a strange man with them that knows nobody, in civility what can they do?”

“Then in civility it’s your part to make him know somebody. Are you not the master of the house? Phil, you are lazy; you are not doing your duty,” Joan said, giving him a little push towards the corner in which the Pilgrims were enthroned. “If there is one thing I cannot put up with it is a knot of people in a company making their observations.” She was quite excited by the Pilgrims and their guest—“for he is their guest, and not mine, though it’s in my house,” Joan said to herself. But alas for her consistency! Next time that she disengaged herself from the lesser crowd round the card-table, Joan saw a sight which displeased and satisfied her at the same time. The group of the Pilgrims had broken up; that is to say, “the strange man” had been led or had strayed away, and Amy and Tiny, having no longer anyone to take care of, and describe the company to, had sought refuge at the card-table, and were much merrier, if not so fine, as in their former position. That was all very well; but, on the other hand, there was Lydia, seated demurely in a chair apart, with Raaf Selby standing on one side of her like a thunder-cloud, and on the other, talking and making himself very agreeable, the Pilgrims’ “strange young man.”

“Raaf,” said Joan, promptly, “you’re as bad as Phil; you’re taking no trouble. How is the game to go on without you to look after it, when it’s well known that you are far the best player here?”

“I have been playing all the evening. I think I may be permitted a little rest,” Raaf said, with a gloomy countenance. He was older and shorter than the strange young man, and not so tall, and there was a something about this personage which was above the level of young Selby. He could not tell what it was. He himself had more ornaments, he had a finer head of hair, and more shirt-front, but yet there was something. Lydia was replying very gravely to what the stranger said to her, but she gave him her whole attention, and the other girls had given evidence that they saw something in this new comer which was not in their familiar hero. He felt crestfallen, and he felt angry. He was not in a humour to be ordered about by Joan.

“Then sing us one of your songs,” Mrs. Selby said. “Things are going a bit slow; I don’t know what is the matter: or perhaps it’s only me that’s the matter. But I think things are going a bit slow.”

“That’s my opinion, too,” Raaf said; “but I don’t think it’s my fault.”

Upon which Lydia suddenly struck in, “Never mind how they are going, Joan, Joan! Let the people alone; they will amuse themselves. Mr. Brotherton has never been among the Fells before, and he wants to learn about us and all our ways. We are the natives—a kind of savages, but friendly; and talking a kind of dialect that can be understood with a little trouble. Come, Joan, and listen. It is nice to hear so much good of ourselves.”

This she said a little vindictively, with a glance at her new companion which brought the colour to his face. He had opened the conversation unguardedly, as fine people are often in the habit of doing with each other, by talking about the natives and the barbarous people. It was a compliment, if Lydia had known, to the superior air of her dress, and her appearance generally; how it is that one individual looks comme il faut, and another does not, is the most difficult of questions. Lydia in fact was no way superior to the rest: but the stranger thought she was a young person of the world, somebody who was in society, storm-stayed like himself.

“Do not take me at such a disadvantage,” he said; “if I spoke nonsense, it was because I did not know any better. I have got a relation somewhere among these good natives. You cannot think I do anything but respect them when that is the case.”

“Do you always respect your relations?” Lydia asked. She was perfectly disposed to flirt, and had an instinctive knowledge how to do it, though she had so little practice—no practice, it may be said; for young Selby was not light enough in hand to give her any experience, and he was almost the only individual with whom it would have been possible to flirt.

“If you are looking for friends,” said Joan, with immediate interest, “we have been here in this country since before the memory of man, and, if anybody can help you, we should be able to do it. Who is it you want?” She took a vacant chair and sat down by her sister—partly to guard Lydia, partly because she was full of curiosity about the strange young man—and partly, also, because Joan was a great genealogist, and knew everybody’s descent and how their grandfathers had married—when they had any grandfathers, it must be said.

“They are people of my own name,” said the stranger, “or, I should rather say—it is a distant cousin of my own name, who married somewhere hereabouts heaven knows how many years ago. My father recollects her well enough. She was a pretty girl in his day, and he told me to look her up; but as he had forgotten her present name (if she is still living), and she was married some forty years ago or more, I doubt if I am very likely to succeed.”

“Your—own name?” said Joan, with a little confusion. In her own house, and in the capacity of hostess to the stranger, she felt that it was rude not to know his name. She gave a glance of appeal at Liddy, who was mischievous, and in no humour to throw any light on the subject.

“Joan will tell you,” the girl said. “She knows everyone, and whom they married, and all their aunts and uncles. You have only to ask my sister.”

More and mere confused grew Joan. She looked at Liddy with reproachful eyes; she even addressed a plaintive glance to Raaf, who did not understand her embarrassment, and for the moment was too angry to have helped if he had. “Of your—own name?” she said, faltering.

“Yes; forty years ago, or so, she was Lydia Brotherton.”

“Why, it’s mother!” said Joan, her countenance beaming. There was a victory over everybody, Pilgrims and all; while the young man, starting, turned round with amazed pleasure, and looked, not at Joan, who spoke, however, but at Lydia, who listened, looking up at him, as much astonished as he.

“Mother!” Lydia said, and her fair countenance brightened into smiles from which all the mischievous meaning had gone.

“Well, that’s as easy a find as I ever heard of,” cried Joan, “and how lucky you should have come here! Mother will be pleased! She has not seen any of her relations for years. She was an only child, so she had never any near friends. How pleased she will be, to be sure! The best thing you can do is to stay here all night, and ride over with Liddy to-morrow: she is going home to-morrow. Bless me, I think I’ll go too, just to see mother so pleased!”

“It is a delightful discovery,” said young Brotherton. “How fortunate that I mentioned it now; my father charged me to find out—but I confess I had forgotten till this moment. How lucky I thought of it! I am afraid I must go home to-night with these good people who have been so kind to me; but I will come back in the morning. It is delightful to fall among kindred,” the young man said, looking at Lydia, whose face reflected all manner of pleasant sensations, surprises, a delightful sense of novelty and exhilaration. She had but few relatives, and a new cousin was delightful—especially a cousin so completely creditable, a gentleman, one about whom there could not be two opinions. The Pilgrims, who had been so proud of this “strange young man,” had altogether disappeared now, and Raaf was left entirely out of the little group of three, all so pleased with themselves and each other. Joan forgot even those duties which usually she performed with such devotion, leaving the round game and its players to themselves, and no longer thinking either of the duet of the Pilgrim girls, or Raaf’s song.

“I took the greatest notice of you from the moment you came in,” she said. “I cannot tell you how it was. It’s not that there is any family likeness, for I can’t see any. Liddy favours mother, and there’s not a feature alike in her and you; but all the same I took notice of you from the first. I didn’t catch your name, or it might have made me think—but there was something. I was more vexed than pleased with those Pilgrims; but all the same, when I caught sight of you——”

“It was kindred at first sight,” said the young man.

“That’s a new way of putting it,” said Joan, laughing; and it glanced through her mind that she had already thought, if he had not been with the Pilgrims, that this might be the right sort of man; and now it was clear that he did not belong to the Pilgrims. She gave a rapid glance from him to Lydia, and back again. As yet she had not the least idea who he was. She had never seen any of the Brotherton connections, and knew nothing about them. Mrs. Joscelyn had often told her children that she had no relations nearer than cousins, and with them even she had kept up no acquaintance. Her children were entirely in the dark about the family. They knew that there was a Sir John who gave dignity to it; but that was all. Joan was very straightforward, but she did not like to plunge at once into details, and ask him who he was. But when she had talked a great deal to the new relative, and arranged the expedition to the White House to-morrow, she went back to Mrs. Pilgrim, who sat somewhat deserted in her corner, a little humiliated by the desertion of her “gentleman,” with the most cheerful cordiality. “I did not catch the gentleman’s name,” she said, “when you brought him in; but what a good thing you brought him! He’s a cousin of ours, and came here looking for mother; for her own friends live far away, and we’ve long lost sight of them. Of course,” said Joan, with a little artifice, “he had no notion whose house he was coming to. There’s always a great confusion in a family about your married name.”

“Came here—looking for——? I thought he came looking for a place for the shooting,” Mrs. Pilgrim said, confounded. She could scarcely allow herself to believe it. It had been a distinction to bring a new “gentleman,” a person of such distinguished appearance, in her train; and to have him taken from her bodily, nay, carried off soul and body, so to speak, not indeed to her enemy’s side, but at all events into another family, was hard to bear.

CHAPTER III.

CONFIDENCES.

THEY were still at breakfast at Heatonshaw next morning when the new cousin came to the door. He was on a good horse, which was a thing they all remarked at once, being learned in such matters—and looked handsomer in daylight than he had done at night. The household had been late on the previous evening—a party being a matter of such rare occurrence that it was considered only right to make the best of it, both in kitchen and parlour, and to bustle half the night “putting away.” The whole company had dispersed at a little after eleven; but next morning there was as much license as if it had been the morning after a ball. And the household felt equally dissipated; everything is comparative; eleven o’clock at night was in Heatonshaw as bad as three or four in the morning at another place. So they were still around the breakfast table when young Brotherton rode up.

“That’s not Pilgrim’s horse,” Mr. Selby said. “It must be out of his own stables; and he did not get that for nothing.” Even Liddy got up from where she was sitting, a little out of the way, to peep at the new arrival. He came in a few minutes after whip in hand.

“You are not so early, Mrs. Selby, as I feared. I made a very early start lest you should be gone before I could get here.”

“We are not so early as all that,” said Joan, “and we’re not used to have our home disturbed, and the house turned upside-down, as it was last night. I’m one that thinks it a duty, where people have a nice house and plenty to do with, to have your friends from time to time. But it’s a great trouble both before and after. Not a servant in this house was in their bed till long past twelve o’clock at night; and, poor things, we could not be exacting this morning,” Joan added, apologetically. “Liddy, if Mr. Brotherton will not take anything, we will, maybe, better get ready to go.”

“Do not hurry for me,” the young man said. He was quite at his ease talking to Philip Selby, whom it pleased his wife to see putting on mildly the air of a man of the world when any invasion came from that big place into the Fell-country. When they had gone to “put on their things,” young Brotherton made himself very agreeable to the master of the house. He spoke of my “cousins” as if he had known them all his life: though all the time there was a look of semi-amusement on his face. He had stumbled into a new life without knowing anything about it. The servants up till after twelve, which was spoken of with bated breath as a wonderful interruption of rule; the master and mistress, who “were not exacting” after that tremendous vigil; the freshness and sweetness of the rural place, all produced a great effect upon him. He thought it a kind of Arcadia, an Arcadia dashed with reminiscences of hot supper, and some vagaries of homely fashion which struck Brotherton as more amusing than all the similar vagaries which he had come across before. When the ladies came down again, Joan attired in a bonnet which was more striking in its colours and composition than was common, ready to drive her phaeton to the White House, and Lydia in her riding habit, his pleasure in the sunshiny expedition he was about to make was as great as his amusement in finding himself a member of the primitive society, almost of the family, which was so simple and so kind. He watched the packing of the phaeton with laughing eyes. Lydia’s box, containing her evening dress no doubt, was carefully fastened on behind, and in front, in the vacant seat, was a basket, in which there were a number of delicacies from the feast, which Mrs. Selby thought “Mother might like: or if she doesn’t care for them herself, it will always be a pleasure to give them away,” said Joan; “though you must not think, Mr. Brotherton, that I am forgetting our own poor folk. A little bit that is out of the way, that comes from the party—everybody likes that.” He helped to lift the basket into the phaeton almost with reverence. The feast of last night became beautiful to him in this light. How many had he seen, much more delicate and costly, of which the fragments went to the dogs, nobody dreaming of the “poor folk!” Mr. Selby put Liddy upon her horse while the young stranger was helping with the basket, and this he felt to be a sacrifice on his part, in consonance with the kind and homely charity that breathed about the place. Then Philip Selby promised to walk over to join his wife in the afternoon, and the party went off, Mrs. Selby in advance, talking cheerily to her horse, bidding him to get on, and not bother her with a whip. Liddy and the young man set out soberly together. They did not say much for the first mile or two. Now that they were alone together they were a little abashed by each other. He thought her the prettiest girl he had ever seen—which was by no means the case, for Liddy, though very pretty, was not a wonder of loveliness; and she thought him, with more reason, the finest gentleman that had ever came across her path. She asked herself how it was that he was so different from Raaf Selby? but could not make any reply. He was like nobody she had ever seen. “This is what a gentleman is, a real gentleman, the kind that goes to Court and sees the Queen; the kind that is in Parliament and rules the country; the kind that everybody tries to be like, and that Raaf Selby would fain be taken for—he!” Liddy said to herself; and she was abashed, and did not talk much to her companion. Indeed it was not till they were near the White House that she ventured to ask a question which had been long on her lips.

“Are you a member of Parliament, Mr. Brotherton?”

“Oh, no,” he said, laughing; “it is my father you are thinking of. I have never attained that dignity. I ought to have told you more about myself before I asked admittance; but Mrs. Selby was so kind. I am a briefless barrister, if you know what that is.”

“A lawyer with nothing to do,” said Liddy; “one reads about them in books.”

Young Brotherton laughed. “It is as good a definition as another,” he said; “but sometimes it means only some one who has pretended to study for a profession which is all a pretence together, and never comes to anything. That is my case: and I have been wandering over all the world.”

“In Italy?” asked Lydia, with eager eyes.

“Oh, yes. You are fond of Italy? I daresay we shall find we have sympathies on that point. My mother is a great devotee; she would live there all the year round if we would let her. I wonder which is your favourite spot.”

“Oh!” cried Lydia, with all her heart in her voice, “I have no favourite spot; I only know it by name. Italy is where everything happens—all the stories are there: and besides,” she added, “I have a private reason too.”

He looked at her with some curiosity, and a great deal of interest. What could the private reason of a young girl be? “You have, perhaps,” he said, “friends there?”

Lydia shook her head. “If you are our cousin, Mr. Brotherton, and going to know all about us—”

“If I am your cousin! Do you think I am making a false claim, Miss Joscelyn?” he said.

“—then you will soon know about Harry,” said Lydia, going on in the same breath. “I have a brother who went away a great many years ago. We don’t know where he is, or anything about him; but I am sure if I could go abroad I should find him—that is why I am always so anxious to talk to anyone who has been there.”

“Where?” he said.

“Abroad.” Lydia said the word with all simplicity. “Abroad” meant everything to her. It meant the place in which Harry was, and where she should certainly find him if she got there. When she said “Italy” she meant much the same thing. Not Italy, of which she knew little, except by the stories in the “Book of Beauty;” but a vague and beautiful place in which everything that was wonderful happened, and in which it would be natural that this should happen too.

But Brotherton, whose knowledge was more precise, was puzzled. He did not know whether to follow out this line of conversation, which promised to become intimate, or to go back to subjects personal to himself. He had no right to inquire into the story of the family prodigal, he thought; but still, as the door had been opened to him, how was he to turn from it? “I have gone abroad since ever I can remember,” he said; “my mother, as I tell you, is never so happy in England as out of it. She is rather an invalid, and she cannot bear the cold. When I was a boy I scarcely knew where my home was.”

“Are there many of you?” asked Liddy, full of interest. She did not understand a small family, and a vision came on her of sisters, girls like herself, companions such as she had never had; but this new idea was alarming as well as delightful, and she could not help fearing that young ladies who were equal to her new friend would think themselves above her; therefore it was almost a relief, though at the same time a disappointment, when he laughed and said, “I am all the daughters of my father’s house, and all the brothers too,”—words which she thought she had heard somewhere else, but was not clear about. And then they went on again quite silently for a time, the wide valley all about them, the air breathing in their faces, the great world all to themselves. Joan, driving in her steady way, was round the next corner, well ahead, and there was nothing but these two figures stalking on in the sunshine, with their shadows behind them. Liddy felt that she did not care to talk. The sensation was sweet, and tranquil, and friendly, and furnished all that was required, without any talking at all. It is impossible to describe what an interruption it was, a kind of outrage upon the quiet, when, as they went round that next corner, skirting the hedgerows, they were suddenly met face to face by young Selby, on his big brown horse. Even Lydia, not too favourably disposed towards him, had been obliged to admit on former occasions that Raaf Selby looked well on his big horse. But to-day he positively offended her by his appearance. There is no class of men in the world so delightful, so helpful, so kind, so modest about their own merits, and of so much service to all the rest of the world, as doctors; but yet there is a compound of rudeness, jauntiness, pretension, and vulgarity to be found now and then in a country practitioner, which can nowhere else be paralleled. Raaf Selby was not always like this, nor was it at all the impression which he made upon the general mind, or even upon Liddy’s, who, in other times, had considered him, as all the country did, “quite a gentleman.” But when he met them now he had a red face (which was not his fault) and the air of having been up all night (which, if it had been true, would have been a virtue in him), and looked altogether like a rural dandy trying to be something which he was not.

“Hullo, Miss Liddy,” he said, “I suppose you kept it up to all the hours last night after the rest of us were gone?”

“I don’t know what there was to keep up,” Liddy said, with an indignant blush; upon which young Selby laughed loudly.

“Ah, I daresay; but I know,” he said, with an open look at Brotherton, a look full of insolence and jealousy—and he gave a great laugh. “I was out of it last night; but I haven’t always been out of it,” he said.

Lydia was a girl not at all disposed in her own person to submit to any impertinence, but she got alarmed when she saw the gathering clouds on her companion’s face. “I think you are alluding to something I don’t understand,” she said, firmly, “but I need not ask what it is, to detain you. We have got to keep up with Joan. Did you see Joan? She has got the lead of us, and we are bound to make up to her now.”

“Yes, I saw she had got judiciously out of hearing,” said young Selby, with another laugh. “That’s the first duty of a chaperon.”

In this he meant no particular offence, but spoke with the rough bantering which was not disliked by ordinary country girls, just sharpened with jealousy and envy, and the sting of seeing how thoroughly harmonious and sympathetic Liddy and her new companion looked. As for Brotherton he kept apart as far as he could. Good manners in another generation would have suggested a use of his whip. Good manners now restrained him from taking any notice, though his blood boiled.

“I don’t know about a chaperon’s duties,” Liddy said; “I think we must go on. Good morning, Mr. Selby,” and they went on, leaving him in the middle of the road, staring. He could not help looking after them, though he did not like the sight. Two handsome young people, in complete accord and harmony, moving along together as if to music, with no noise nor boisterous gaiety, as would have been the case had Selby himself ridden home with Liddy after the party, but in perfect friendliness and union, as he thought.

“Good morning,” he called after them, “and my congratulations to Joan upon her success last night.”

He was so bitter that he could not forbear from sending this last shaft after them. Who was this fellow, that he should come in and spoil other people’s chances? Selby recalled furiously to his recollection, incidents of a similar kind that he had known. A swell comes down, he pokes himself between a foolish lass and some honest man that likes her; and when he has turned her head he rides away! The country gallant was aware that he had acted this fine part himself in a lower class, when he had merely laughed at the lass’s credulity and the fury of the clown who was her true lover, but whom she could not endure after being courted by a gentleman; but he did not laugh when the case was his own. This swell, of course, would go away; but Liddy’s head would be turned; and she was a girl who would have a good bit of money, besides being the prettiest girl in the county. Joscelyn had been making money of late, everybody said, and there was her Uncle Henry’s money, which must be divided sooner or later; and all this to be put out of an honest suitor’s reach by a young fellow who would not even take it himself, but only spoil the lass for a better man. This was what was rankling in Selby’s heart as he rode away.

“Is Mr. Selby a relation of yours?” Brotherton asked.

“Only of Joan’s—my sister’s—husband. It is not bragging,” said Lydia, with a little blush, yet a slight elevation of her head as well, “but we are very different from the Selbys, Mr. Brotherton. Many people thought Joan made a very poor marriage. I don’t think so, for she is fond of Philip, and he is so good; but the Joscelyns are the oldest family—I don’t speak out of vanity—the oldest family in the county. We used to be great people,” said Liddy, laughing, but very serious all the same, “in the old days.”

“I always knew,” said Brotherton, “that it was an old name.”

“Oh, there are all sorts of people who have old names; but we are the real people; if you stay long we will show you the old tower. There have been Joscelyns in it ever since there was any history at all.”

She gave her head a slight fling backwards, and laughed again, half at herself—but yet Lydia meant every word she said. Young Brotherton, for his part, had been brought up in more enlightened circles, and would have thought of himself that he failed in that “sense of humour” which is the modern preservation from all absurdities, had he spoken of his family in this way. He held his tongue on the subject, and thought that he esteemed one name as much as another, and was no respector of persons; and he laughed in his heart at Lydia’s brag, and admired, with an indulgent sense of superiority, to see how this sentiment of family pride kindled her eyes and elevated her head. But all the same he was impressed by it. It produced its effect upon him, as it does upon every Englishman. He liked the boast, of which he did not fail to see the ludicrous side, and which his more cultivated taste would have entirely prevented him from putting forth in his own person—but in Liddy he liked it, and laughed, yet was more pleased with her and his connection with her. She carried it in her face, he thought, and in every movement of her untutored, yet graceful, carriage. It did not occur to him to think that homely Joan, soberly speeding along the road in her phaeton, had all the same advantages of blood.

Mrs. Joscelyn came out to meet them at the door. She liked to see her Liddy get down beaming, from her horse—the horse as handsome as herself, which Mrs. Joscelyn began for the first time to see the beauty of, now that her child was the rider. She did not know who the young man was, and she did not much care. Her mind had not been awakened to the matrimonial question, though, to tell the truth, no wild beast, no lion with a devouring maw, would have wakened so much alarm in Mrs. Joscelyn as the appearance of a lover for Liddy. That would have inferred the saddest fate for herself, the destruction of her present sweet life, and all the late happiness which had come to her in compensation for her troubles; but fortunately such an idea did not enter into her mind. It was a pleasant arrival. Joan, always active and bright, lifting down with her own hands her big basket, stood in the hall watching too the arrival of the young people, yet calling out to the groom some prudent suggestions about her own horse, which was being led away to the stables. She was as well informed about all the necessities of the stable as any of them, and took the deepest interest in the welfare of the animals, and she stepped forward to pat the fine neck of Liddy’s steed as her mother got the young rider in her arms.

“Did you ever see a prettier creature?” she said to Brotherton, “and I would not say but there were two of them. But mother’s just a fool about Liddy. She thinks there’s nothing like her on the face of the earth. Mother, here’s a relation come to see you,” she added, turning round.

Mrs. Joscelyn gave a little cry. Brotherton was standing against the light, so that his features were not at first decipherable. She made a quick step forward, throwing out her hands, then grew suddenly pale.

“I don’t know what I was thinking of,” she said, faintly. “I am sure I beg your friend’s pardon, Joan, and yours too.”

“I see what you’re thinking of, mother—but there’s nothing in it,” Joan said. “This is young Mr. Brotherton, who’s come to the Fells asking for a cousin of his name that married here long ago. If it’s not you, I don’t know who it can be—and I’ve brought him to see you. It would be his father you knew, for he’s but a young lad himself, as you can see.”

“He’s kindly welcome,” Mrs. Joscelyn said, and he was brought into the parlour, and a great deal of family explanation was gone through. Mrs. Joscelyn had her pride of birth, as well as her daughter, and it had always been a secret pleasure to her to think that there was a Sir John in her family, who might turn up some time or other and balance the faded Joscelyn pretensions with a far more tangible living dignity. For her own part, she did not know anything about Sir John; but it gratified her mightily to think that he had remembered he had a cousin married in the Fell-country. “There could not be any—stranger that it would give me more pleasure to see,” she said.