CHAPTER XI.

Waiting for a Situation.

Edgar’s calculations, which he began next morning, and carried on for a great many days after, were of a kind which many men have made before him, that it would be foolish to call them original. He made elaborate calculations upon various pieces of paper, by which he made out that with economy, he could perfectly well live upon his twenty pounds for two months. To be sure his rent in these rooms in Piccadilly was preposterously high, and could not by any means be brought within that calculation. But then he reflected to himself that moving is always expensive—(he possessed two portmanteaus, a box of books, and a dressing-case, all of which could have gone in a cab)—and that very probably he might fall among thieves, and get into the hands of one of those proverbial landladies who steal the tea, and drink the brandy, in which case it would be no economy at all to save a few shillings on rent. In short, Edgar said to himself, loftily, these petty little savings never tell. You are much less comfortable, and it is just as expensive. For the same reason, he felt it was much the best way to continue dining at the club. “It may be sixpence dearer, but it is so infinitely more comfortable,” he said to himself; and, after all, comfort was worth an additional sixpence. By striking off the rent of his rooms altogether from the calculation, it seemed to him that he could afford his dinners at the club; and if he got his appointment by Christmas, as he certainly must, it would be so easy to pay the lodgings in a lump. He jotted down these calculations so often, and upon so many bits of paper, that he grew to believe in them as if they had been a revelation. By this it will appear that his doubts about hanging on, and waiting for the possible Queen’s Messengership which he had at first set down as out of the question, did not continue to appear so impracticable as time went on. He said to himself every morning that it was absurd, but still he did nothing else, and gradually the Queen’s Messengership grew to be a certain thing to him, upon which he was to enter at Christmas, or a little later. After all, what did it matter how he spent a week or two of his time? At eight-and-twenty, life does not appear so short as some people have found it. A week or two, a month or two, were neither here nor there.

I can scarcely tell how Edgar occupied himself during these wintry days. For one thing, he had not been accustomed to regular occupation, and the desultory life was familiar to him. The days glided past he scarcely knew how. He did a great many perfectly virtuous and laudable actions. He went to the British Museum, and to all the collections of pictures; he even, in sheer absence of anything else to do, went to the Charity House, which was a little way out of London, and was taken over it by Sister Susan, his travelling companion, and for an hour or so was seized upon by the charity fever, which is very contagious, and for some days kept thinking, as he went about the streets, of all the miserable souls—not to say bodies—consuming there, in dirt, and disease, and ignorance. I do not mean to give any account of the Charity-House—at least, not here and at this moment. But Sister Susan undeniably exercised a powerful attraction over the young man, as she discoursed in her cheery voice of her orphans, and her patients, and her penitents, all of which classes were collected round and in “the House.” She was not “the Mother,” who was rather a great personage, but she was one of the elders in the Sisterhood, and her conventual talk was very amusing to Edgar, who was not used to it. He did all he could to make her talk of the journey in which they had been fellow-travellers, and of her young companion; and Sister Susan was cunningly open in certain particulars:

Yes, she had been in Scotland, in the North, where it was thought things were ripening for a great work, and where it had been suggested a Sisterhood might be of use in helping to restore a benighted people to Christian unity in the bosom of the afflicted Church of Scotland, the only real representative of Apostolic Christianity among the Presbyterians, who usurp even that faithful remnant’s name. But it did not carry out their expectations, Sister Susan allowed. The Presbyterians were very obstinate and bigoted. Poor creatures, they preferred their own way, though it could lead to nothing but darkness; and the idea had to be resigned.

“Was your companion with you on your mission? Miss —— I forget what you said was her name,” said deceitful Edgar.

Sister Susan shook her head.

“She has not sufficient experience for that,” she said, decidedly. “No, no, no. We must not employ new beginners in such delicate work. She was on a visit, and was anxious to get home. I took charge of her at Lady—I mean at the request of a relation of hers; and I made her do a little bit of self-denial, as you saw,” said Sister Susan, laughing, “which is an excellent thing always—not very comfortable for the body, perhaps, but excellent for the soul.”

“Do you think so?” said Edgar, whose present experience was not much in that way, whose givings up had hitherto cost him little, and who had begun to suspect that, notwithstanding all that had happened to him, and all that he had bestowed upon others, he had not even begun yet to find out what self-denial meant.

“Not a doubt of it,” said Sister Susan. She was so sure of everything that it was a pleasure to see her nod her confident little head, and cross her hands. “She laughs about it now, and makes a great joke; though, after all, she says it was a cheat, and the third class was quite as good as the first—no originals in it, nor genuine poor people—only you.”

“Did she know me?”

The question burst from him in spite of himself, and it had a somewhat uncomfortable effect on Sister Susan.

“Know you?” she said. “What—what—a curious question, Mr. Earnshaw! Now, how could she know you? You never saw her before.”

“I suppose not,” said Edgar, doubtfully.

“Why, you know you never did,” said Sister Susan, with her usual confident tone, and indeed Edgar felt that she must be right. “You took her for a Sister,” she added, with a merry laugh.

“How should I know the difference?” asked piteously the young man.

“Why, she had not this, nor this, nor this,” said the Sister, triumphantly touching one part of her dress after another. “She had on a simple black dress, and cloak, and veil—that was all. A good little girl,” she continued, “our orphans are all fond of her, and she is very nice to those young sisters of hers, who are much more taken out now-a-days than she is, and carry everything before them—especially since she went off so much, poor dear.”

“Has she gone off?” Edgar asked, more and more interested, he could scarcely tell why.

“Oh, dreadfully; lost her pretty colour, and her hair used to come out in handfuls; she has been obliged to have it cut off to save it. She is not like what she was, poor thing; but I hope,” added Sister Susan devoutly, “that thinking so much more seriously than she used to do, the change will be of great benefit to her soul.”

“Poor Miss—! You have not told me her name,” said Edgar.

“Haven’t I?” said Sister Susan. “Dear, dear, there is the bell for chapel, and I can’t stay with you any longer. There are a few benches near the door where strangers are allowed to go, if you wish to stay for evensong.”

Edgar stayed, chiefly, I fear, out of mere listlessness, and took his place in the corner by the door allotted to Philistines of the male gender, with much submission and docility. The little chapel was very richly decorated, the light intercepted by small painted windows, the walls one mass of mural ornament. He compared it in his imagination, with a smile, to the bare little convent chapels he had seen and heard of in countries where the institution appeared more natural. Here there was a profusion of ecclesiastical luxury, an absolute parade of decoration. It struck him with a double sense of incongruity, but there was no one to whom he could express this evil sentiment: Sister Susan did not appear again as he had hoped, and he wended his way back to town with some additional information, which he had not possessed when he left. Why should he be so curious about Miss ——, the nameless one? He had thought her another Sister, and entertained no profuse curiosity in respect to her at first; but now it seemed to him that only a little more light might make her visible to him. There was no reason why he should find her out, or why he should wish to do so; but great is the perversity of human nature—perhaps this was the special reason why the thought occupied him so much.

It was very strange to so friendly a soul to have no friends whom he could go to, whom he could talk to, no friendly house where the door would open to him, and faces smile at his sight. It is true that for three years he had been severed, to a great degree, from domestic pleasures, which do not thrive at foreign centres of cosmopolitan resort—but yet he had never been without a large circle of acquaintances, and had occasionally seen the old friends of his boyhood here and there; but in London, in October and November, whom could he expect to see? The stray man who dropped in now and then at the club, was on the wing between two country houses, or was going to join a party somewhere, or home to his people. Some men, of course, must live in London, but these men, I presume, did not go much to their club, or else they were so little among the number of Edgar’s friends that they did not count. Now and then one would join him at dinner, or in one of the long walks he took, and he made a friend or two at the Museum, among the books and prints. But he was like an Australian emigrant, or other exile in savage places. These were all men, and he never saw the face of a woman except in the streets or shops, unless it was his landlady, who did not interest him.

How strangely different from the old days, in which so many fair women would smile and listen to the young man who was at once so rich and so original, a great landed proprietor, with the opinions of a revolutionary. It was not his downfall, however, which had made all the difference, which was a comfort to him; for, indeed, the families whom he had once visited were out of London. Sometimes it occurred to him that if the Thornleighs had been in town, he would have gone to them and asked leave to be admitted just once or twice, for pure charity, and he had walked several times past their house in Berkeley Square, and gazed at its closed shutters with half a notion of calling on the housekeeper, at least, and asking to see the place in which he had spent so many pleasant hours. He used to live all over again his first visit to London, with an amused pleasure in recalling all his own puzzles and difficulties. He seemed to himself to have been a boy then, almost a child, playing with fate and his life, and understanding nothing of all that was around him. To have ten thousand a year one time, and no income at all the next, but only a hundred pounds in the bank “to fall back upon,” and the vague promise of a post as Queen’s Messenger at Christmas—what a change it was! Though to be sure, even now, Edgar said to himself, there were more people in London worse off than he, than there were people who were better off. A hundred pounds in the bank is, in reality, a fortune—as long as you can keep it there; and a man who has the post of Queen’s Messenger is independent, which is as much as any prince can be.

All these philosophisings were wonderfully true, but they did not take away the uncomfortable, desolate, profitless sensation of living alone in London without friends, doing nothing except live, which, when you live for the mere sake of living, and because you can’t help it, is, perhaps, the dreariest occupation on earth. And in November—when London is at its worst, and the year at its worst, when the gloomy daylight is short, and the weary nights are long, and when everything that bears the guise of amusement palls upon the man who has nothing to do but amuse himself.

Sometimes Edgar, in momentary desperation, thought of rushing off to his former haunts abroad, sometimes of turning back to Loch Arroch, helping in whatever might be doing, getting some share in human life, and some place among his fellows; but then the remembrance would strike him that, now-a-days, he could not do what he pleased, that he had no money but that hundred pounds in the bank, and no way of getting any now till the appointment came.

By-and-by, however, his opinion began to change about the hundred pounds in the bank. It changed by slow degrees after he had changed his second ten-pound note, and saw those last precious sovereigns slipping out of his grasp, which they did with a strange noiseless celerity inconceivable to him. How did they go? When he counted up all he had spent, every sixpence seemed so modest, so natural! and yet they were gone, he knew not how; vanished even, he thought, while he was looking at them. Then the thought arose in his mind, why keep a hundred pounds in the bank? It was a waste of capital, money which brought in no return; and for that matter, if it was merely to secure something to “fall back upon,” fifty pounds were just as good as a hundred. The income of a Queen’s Messenger was good, he said to himself (he had not, in reality, the least idea what it was!), and when he got his appointment it would be very easy to put back the other fifty pounds if he found it expedient. But the more he thought of it the less he saw any need for keeping so much money lying useless. He never could get any income from so small a sum, and the fifty pounds was quite enough for any sudden emergency. Or supposing, he said, seventy-five? Seventy-five pounds was magnificent as a fund to fall back upon; and it was with a feeling that twenty-five pounds had been somehow added, not taken from his capital, that he went to the bank one day in December and drew out the quarter, not the half, of his little stock of money. With twenty-five pounds in his pocket and seventy-five in the bank, he felt much richer than with the poor little undivided hundred. And somehow every day as he grew poorer, he became more convinced that it would be the most short-sighted economy to remove from his Piccadilly lodgings, or to relinquish his dinners at the club. Why, they were cheap, absolutely cheap, both the one and the other, in comparison with the nasty meals and wretched lodgings for which, no doubt, he might pay a little less money. He even became slightly extravagant and disposed to buy little knick-knacks, and to consume little delicacies as his means grew smaller and smaller.

I cannot tell what produced this curious state of feeling in Edgar’s mind. There is a kind of giddiness and desperation of poverty which seizes a man when he is in the act of spending his last parcel of coin. It must all go so soon that it seems worse than useless to ménager the little remnant, and a kind of vertige, a rage to get it all over, comes upon the mind. Perhaps it is the same feeling which makes men in a sinking ship leap wildly into the water to meet their fate instead of waiting for it; and as time went on the impulse grew stronger and stronger. The seventy-five pounds of capital seemed magnificent in December; but after Christmas it seemed to Edgar that even his fifty pounds was too much to be lying useless; and he had a little bottle of champagne with his dinner, and resolved that, as soon as the bank was open, he would draw, say ten pounds. After all, what was the use of being so particular about “something to fall back upon?” Probably he would never want it. If he fell ill, being a Queen’s Messenger, it was much more likely that he should fall ill in Berlin or Vienna, or Rome or Naples, than at home—and then it would be some one’s duty to mind him and take care of him. And if it should be his fate to die, there would be an end of the matter. Why should he save even forty pounds?—he had no heir.

Poor Edgar! it was a kind of intoxication that had seized him, an intoxication caused by idleness, loneliness, and the separation of his life from that of every one else around him. Somehow, though Christmas came and passed and he heard nothing, he could not pluck up courage to go to Downing Street again. Of course the appointment would come some day, most likely to-morrow. He was not going to worry Newmarch to death by going to him every day. He could wait till to-morrow. And so things went on till it ran very hard with the solitary young man. It occurred to him one day that his clothes were getting shabby. To be sure he had unlimited credit with his tailor, having just paid a large bill without inquiry or question; but the fact of feeling yourself shabby when you have very little money is painful and startling, and gives the imagination a shock. After this his mind lost the strange ease which it had possessed up to this moment, and he grew troubled and restless. “I must go to Newmarch again,” he acknowledged at last to himself, and all at once wondered with a sudden pang whether his Messengership was as certain as he had hoped. “I must go to Newmarch to-morrow,” he said over and over again as, somewhat dazed and giddy with this sudden thought, he went along the pavement thoughtfully towards the club, which had become a second home to him. It was the end of January by this time, and a few more people were beginning to appear again in these regions. He went in to his dinner, saying the words to himself mechanically and half aloud.

CHAPTER XII.

Disappointment.

It is very curious how often the unintentional movements of other men concur in making a crisis in an individual life. When Edgar went to his club that evening he knew no reason why anything unusual should happen to him. His mind had been roused by sudden anxiety, that anxiety which, seizing a man all at once upon one particular point, throws a veil over everything by so doing, and showed yellowness or blackness into the common light; but he had no reason to suspect that any new light would come to him, or any new interest into his life, when he went dully and with a headache to his habitual seat at his habitual table and ate his dinner, which was not of a very elaborate character. There were more men than usual in the club that evening, and when Edgar had finished his dinner he went into the library, not feeling disposed for the long walk through the lighted streets with which he so often ended his evening. He took a book, but he was not in the mood to read. Several men nodded to him as they came and went; one, newly arrived, who had not seen him since his downfall, came up eagerly and talked for ten minutes before he went out. The man was nobody in particular, yet his friendliness was consolatory, and restored to Edgar some confidence in his own identity, which had seemed to be dropping from him. He put up his book before him when he was left again alone, and behind this shield looked at his companions, of whom he knew nothing or next to nothing.

One of the people whom he thus unconsciously watched was a man whom he had already noted on several evenings lately, and as to whose condition he was in some perplexity. The first evening Edgar had half stumbled over him with the idea that he was one of the servants, and in the glance of identification with which he begged pardon, decided that, though not one of the servants, he must be a shopkeeper, perhaps well off and retired, whom somebody had introduced, or who had been admitted by one of those chances which permit the rich to enter everywhere. Next evening when he saw the same man again, he rubbed out as it were with his finger the word shopkeeper, which he had, so to speak, written across him, and wrote “city-man” instead. A city-man may be anything; he may be what penny-a-liners call a merchant prince, without losing the characteristic features of his class. This man was about forty-five, he had a long face, with good but commonplace features, hair getting scanty on the top, and brown whiskers growing long into two points, after the fashion of the day. The first time he was in evening dress, having come in after dinner, which was the reason why Edgar took him for one of the attendants. The next time he was in less elaborate costume, and looked better; for evening dress is trying to a man who has not the air noble which christianizes those hideous garments. The third night again, Edgar, in imagination, drew a pen through the word “city-man,” and wondered whether the stranger could be a successful artist, a great portrait-painter, something of that description, a prosperous man to whom art had become the most facile and most lucrative of trades. On this particular night he again changed his opinion, crossed the word artist and put man about town, indefinitest of designations, yet infinitely separated from all the others. Thus blurred and overwritten by so many attempts at definition, the new-comer attracted his attention, he could scarcely tell why. There was nothing remarkable about the man; he had grey eyes, a nose without much character, loose lips disposed to talk, an amiable sort of commonness, eagerness, universal curiosity in his aspect. He knew most people in the room, and went and talked to them, to each a little; he looked at all the papers without choice of politics; he took down a great many books, looked at them and put them back again. Edgar grew a little interested in him on this special evening. He had a long conversation with one of the servants, and talked to him sympathetically, almost anxiously, ending by giving him an address, which the man received with great appearance of gratitude. Might he be a physician perhaps? But his bearing and his looks were alike against this hypothesis. “Benevolent,” Edgar said to himself.

His attention, however, was quite drawn away from this stranger by the sudden entrance of Lord Newmarch, who like himself was a member of the club, and who came in hurriedly, accompanied by some one less dignified but more eager than himself, with whom he was discussing some subject which required frequent reference to books. Edgar felt his heart stir as he perceived the great man enter. Was it possible that his fate depended, absolutely depended, upon the pleasure of this man—that two words from him might make his fortune secure, or plunge him into a deeper and sickening uncertainty which could mean only ruin? Good heaven, was it possible? A kind of inertness, moral cowardice, he did not know what to call it—perhaps the shrinking a doomed man feels from actual hearing of his fate—had kept him from going to the office to put the arbiter of his destinies in mind of his promise. Now he could not let this opportunity slip; he must go to him, he must ask him what was to be the result. Up to this morning he had felt himself sure of his post, now he felt just as sure of rejection. Both impressions no doubt were equally unreasonable; but who can defend himself against such impressions? Gradually Edgar grew breathless as he watched that discussion which looked as if it would never end. What could it be about? Some vague philanthropico-political question, some bit of doctrinarianism of importance to nobody—while his was a matter of death and life. To be sure this was his own fault, for he might, as you will perceive, dear reader, have gone to Lord Newmarch any day, and found him at his office, where probably, amid all the sublime business there, Edgar’s affairs had gone entirely out of his head. But if you think the suggestion that it was his own fault made the suspense now a straw-weight more easy to him, this is a point on which I do not agree with you. The consequences of our own faults are in all circumstances the most difficult to bear.

Oddly enough, the stranger whom Edgar had been watching, seemed anxious to speak to Lord Newmarch too. Edgar’s eyes met his in their mutual watch upon the Minister, who went on disputing with his companion, referring to book after book. It was some military question of which I suppose Lord Newmarch knew as much as his grandmother did, and the other was a hapless soldier endeavouring in vain to convey a lucid description and understanding of some important technical matter to the head of the Secretary of State. In vain; Lord Newmarch did not try to understand—he explained; to many people this method of treating information is so much the most natural. And the stranger watched him on one side, and Edgar on the other. Their eyes met more than once, and after a while the humour of the situation struck Edgar, even in his trouble, and he smiled; upon which a great revolution made itself apparent in the other’s countenance. He smiled too; not with the sense of humour which moved Edgar, but with a gleam of kindness in his face, which threw a certain beauty over it. Edgar was struck with a strange surprise: he was taken aback at the same time, he felt as if somehow he must have appealed to the kindness, the almost pity in the other’s face. What had he done to call forth such an expression? His newborn pride jumped up in arms; and yet there was no possibility of offence meant, and nothing to warrant offence being taken. Edgar, however, averted his eyes hastily, and watched Lord Newmarch no more. And then he took himself to task, and asked himself, Was it an offence to look at him kindly? Was he offended by a friendly glance? Good heavens! what was he coming to, if it was so.

Presently Edgar’s heart beat still higher, for Lord Newmarch’s companion rose to go, and he, having caught sight of the stranger, remained, and went up to him holding out his hand. Edgar could but wait on, and bide his time; his book was still before him, at which he had never looked. A sickening sense of humiliation crept over him. He felt all the misery of dependence; here was he, so lately this man’s equal, waiting, sickening for a word from him, for a look, wondering what he would say, questioning with himself, while his heart beat higher and higher, and the breath came quickly on his lips. Good heavens, wondering what Newmarch would say! a man whom he had so laughed at, made fun of, but who was now to be the very arbiter of his fate, whose word would make all the difference between a secure and useful and worthy future, and that impoverishment of hope, and means, and capability altogether, which some call ruin—and justly call.

While Edgar sat thus waiting, excitement gradually gaming upon him, he saw with some surprise that the man to whom he had given so many different descriptions, was drawing back and pushing Lord Newmarch towards him; and seeing this, he got up, with a half-shrinking from his fate, half-eagerness to hear it.

“All right,” said the unknown, “your turn first. The great man must give us all audience in turn;” and with a little nod he went to the other end of the room and took up a newspaper, of which he probably made as little use as Edgar had been doing of his book.

“Droll fellow!” said Newmarch, “how d’ye do, eh, Earnshaw? I have been in town this month past, but you have never looked me up.”

“I feared to bore you,” said Edgar, hastily.

“It is my business never to be bored,” said Lord Newmarch, with a certain solemnity, which was natural to him. “Where have you been—in the country? what here all this time! I wish I had known; I seldom come here, except for the library, which is wonderfully good, as perhaps you know. That was Cheeseman that was arguing with me—Cheeseman, you know, one of those practical people—and insists upon his own way.”

“I wonder,” said Edgar, uneasily, “whether you have ever thought again of a small matter I went to you about?”

“What, the messengership?” said Lord Newmarch, “what do you take me for—eh, Earnshaw? Of course I have thought of it; there is never a week that I do not hope something may happen to old Runtherout; I don’t mean anything fatal of course; but there he sticks from month to month, and probably so he will from year to year.”

Edgar felt his countenance falling, falling. He felt, or thought he felt, his jaw drop. He felt his heart go down, down, like a stone. He put a miserable smile upon his miserable face. “Then I suppose there is no chance for me,” he said.

“Oh yes, my dear fellow, certainly there is a chance—as much chance as there ever was,” said Lord Newmarch, cheerfully, “these things, of course, cannot be altered all at once, but as soon as old Runtherout gives up, which cannot be long—I do not mind for my part what anyone says, I shall put you in. If you only knew what it would have been to me to have you in Berlin now! You speak German quite fluently, don’t you? Good heavens, what a loss to me!”

And, good heavens what a loss to me! Edgar felt disposed to say. As much chance as there ever was! then what had the chance been at first, for which he had wasted so much time and all his little stock of money. God help him! he had to receive the news with a smile, the best he could muster, and to listen to Lord Newmarch’s assurance that a few months could make very little difference. “Oh, very little difference!” echoed poor Edgar, with that curious fictitious brassy (why he thought it was brassy I cannot tell, but that was the adjective he used to himself) brassy imitation of a smile; and Lord Newmarch went on talking somehow up in the air beside him, about a number of things, to which he said yes and no mechanically with some certain kind of appropriateness, I suppose, for nobody seemed to find out the semi-consciousness in which he was—until the great man suddenly recollected that he must speak a few words to Tottenham, and fell back upon the man with worn grey eyes and loose lips, who sprang up from behind his newspaper like a jack in a box. Edgar, for his part, dropped down in his chair something like the same toy when shut up in its hiding-place. There was a buzzing in his ears again as there had been when he had his first interview with the Minister—but this time the giddiness was more overpowering; a hundred thoughts passed through his mind in a moment, each crowding upon each, a noiseless, breathless crowd. What was he to do? Everything seemed to be shown to him in the space of a moment, as fable says, a whole lifetime is shown in a moment to those who die suddenly. Good God! a few months! what was he to do?

Some people can face the prospect of living for a few months on nothing quite pleasantly, and some people do it habitually (without being at all bad people), and get through somehow, and come to no tragical end. But Edgar was young and unaccustomed to poverty. He was even unaccustomed to live from hand to mouth, as so many of us do, light-hearted wretches, without taking thought for the morrow. It was some time, it was true, before he was roused to think of the morrow at all, but, when he did, it seized upon him like a vulture. He sank back into his chair, and sat there like a log, with vacant eyes, but mind preternaturally busy and occupied. What was he to do?

He was roused from this outward stupor, but inner ferment, by seeing Newmarch again come up accompanied by the stranger, whose very existence he had forgotten. “Mr. Tottenham, Mr. Edgar Earnshaw,” said the Under-Secretary, “one of my best friends. Come and see me, won’t you, in Eaton Place. I must go now; and come to the office soon, and let us talk your affair over. The moment old Runtherout will consent to take himself out of the way—As for you, Tottenham, I envy you. All your schemes in your own hands, no chief to thwart you, no office to keep on recommending this man and that, when they know you have a man of your own. You may thank heaven that you have only your own theories to serve, and not Her Majesty. Good night, good night.”

“Good night,” said Edgar, absently.

Mr. Tottenham said nothing, but he gave Lord Newmarch a finger to shake, and turned to his new companion, who sat with his head down, and paid little attention to his presence. He fixed his eyes very closely on Edgar, which is a thing that can scarcely be done without attracting finally the notice of the person looked at. When he had caught Edgar’s wondering but dazed and dreamy look, he smiled—the same smile by which Edgar had already been half pleased, half angered.

“Mr. Earnshaw,” he said, “you have a story, and I know it. I hope I should have tried to behave as well myself; but I don’t know. And I have a story too. Will you come into the smoking-room if you have nothing better to do, and I’ll tell it you? I call it the history of a very hard case. Newmarch left you to me as his substitute, for he knew I wanted to talk. I like the exchange. He’s a profound blockhead, though he’s Secretary of State. Come and smoke a cigar.”

Edgar rose mechanically, he scarcely knew why; he was pale; he felt his legs almost give way under him as he moved across the passage to the smoking-room. He did not want to smoke, nor to know Mr. Tottenham’s story; but he had not strength of mind to resist what was asked of him.

“A few months,” he kept saying to himself. It seemed to him that a sudden indifference to everything else, to all things greater and more distant, had come into his mind. For the first time in his life he was self-engrossed, self-absorbed, able to think of nothing but his own necessities, and what he was to do. So strange was this to Edgar, so miserable did he feel it, that even on the short journey from one room to another he made an effort to shake off the sudden chains with which this sudden necessity had bound him, and was appalled by his own weakness, almost by a sense of guilt, when he found that he could take no interest whatever in Mr. Tottenham, that he could think of nothing but himself. For the first time, there was nobody but himself involved; no justice to be done, no kindness to be shown to others. Wherever other people are concerned, a certain breadth, a certain freedom and largeness, come into the question, even though the other people may be poor and small enough; but how mean the generous man feels, how petty and miserable, when he, and he only, becomes by any twist of fortune the centre of all his thoughts!

CHAPTER XIII.

A new Friend.

What an effort it was to him! But he grew more capable of making the effort as he tried to make it, and actually looked up now with a gleam of intelligence in his eye.

“You begin to realize me,” said his companion. “I am Tottenham’s. I have been Tottenham’s all my life. My father died when I was only a small boy. I hope, though I don’t know, that he might have had sense enough to habituate me to my fate from the beginning, which would have made it much easier. But my mother, unfortunately, was a lady, or thought herself so. She brought me up as if there was not such a thing as a shop in the world. She buys everything at Howell and James’s of set purpose and malice prepense, when she could get all she wants at cost price in our own place; to be sure she can afford it, thanks to the shop. I never knew anything about this said shop till I was at Eton, when I denied the connection stoutly, and fought for it, and came off triumphant, though the other fellow was the biggest. When I went home for the holidays, I told the story. ‘You were quite right not to give in to it, my dear,’ said my mother. ‘But is it true?’ said I. Poor dear, how she prevaricated! She would not have told a lie for the world, but a tiny little bit of a fib did not seem so bad. Accordingly I found it out, and had to go back to Eton, and beg the fellow’s pardon, and tell him it wasn’t a lie he told, but the truth, only I had not known it. I don’t think any of them thought the worse of me for that.”

“I should think not,” cried Edgar, beginning to rouse up.

“No, I don’t suppose they did; but from that day I became thin-skinned, as people call it, and scented the shop afar off in everything people said. My mother’s contempt for it, and shame of it, got deep into my mind. I grew sensitive. I did not like to give my name when I went anywhere. I felt sure some one would say, ‘Oh, Tottenham’s!’ when my card was taken in. I can’t tell you the misery this gave me all through school and college. I hated the shop, and was afraid of it. I was morbidly ashamed of my name. I went and wandered about in vacation, wearing other men’s names as I might have borrowed their coats. Not without their consent, mind you,” he added, sharply. “I did nothing dishonourable; but I had a horror of being Tottenham, a horror which I cannot describe.”

“That was strange!”

“You think so? Well, so do I now; and it was very unfortunate for me. It got me into many scrapes; it almost cost me my wife. You don’t know my wife? I must take you out to see her. I was introduced to her under somebody else’s name—not a very distinguished name, it is true, Smith, or Brown, or something, and under that name she accepted me; but when I told her how things really were, her countenance flamed like that of the angel, do you remember? in Milton, when Adam says something caddish—I forget what exactly. How she did look at me! ‘Ashamed of your name!’ she said, ‘and yet ask me to share it!’ There is pride and pride,” said Mr. Tottenham to himself with musing admiration. “The poor dear mother thought she was proud; Mary is so; that makes all the difference. I got into such trouble as I never was in all my life. She sent me right away; she would have nothing to say to me; she cast me off as you might cast away that cinder with that pair of tongs. For a time I was the most miserable fellow on the face of the earth. I wandered about the place where she lived night and day; but even then, if you will believe me, it cost me a very hard struggle indeed to get to the shop. When I was desperate, I did.”

“Why is he telling me all this, I wonder?” said Edgar to himself; but he was interested, he could not tell how, and had raised his head, and for the moment shaken off something of the burden from his own back.

“I made up my mind to it, and went at last,” said this odd man, puffing at his cigar with a vehemence that made it evident he felt it still. “I found that nobody wanted me there; that everybody preferred not to be interfered with; that the managers had fallen each into his own way, and had no desire for me to meddle. But I am not the sort of man that can stand and look on with his hands in his pockets. You will wonder, and perhaps you will despise me, when I tell you that I found Tottenham’s on the whole a very interesting place.”

“I neither wonder nor despise,” said Edgar. “What did you do?”

“What didn’t I do?” said Mr. Tottenham, with rueful humour. “I did all the mischief possible. I turned the whole place upside down. I diminished the profits for that year by a third part. I changed the well-known good order of Tottenham’s into confusion worse confounded. The old managers resigned in a body. By-the-way, they stayed on all but one afterwards, when I asked them. As for the assistants, there was civil war in the place, and more than one free fight between the different sides; for some sided with me, perhaps because they approved of me, perhaps because I was the master, and could do what I liked; but the end was that I stayed there three months, worked there, and then wrote to Mary; and she took me back.”

“I am very glad to hear it,” said Edgar; and he smiled and sighed with natural sympathy.

He had become quite interested in the story by this time, and totally forgotten all about his own miseries. He came out of his cloud finally just at this point, and took, at last, the cigar which his new friend had from time to time offered him.

“Ah! come now, this is comfortable,” said Tottenham. “Up to that moment mine had been a very hard case, don’t you think so? I don’t pretend to have anything more to grumble about. But, having had a hard case myself, I sympathize with other people. Yours was a horribly hard case. Tell me now, that other fellow, that Arden scamp! I know him—as proud as Lucifer, and as wicked as all the rest of the evil spirits put together—do you mean to say he allowed you to go away, and give him up all that fine property, and save him thousands of pounds in a lawsuit, without making some provision for you? Such a thing was never heard of.”

“No,” said Edgar; “don’t be unjust to him. It was a bitter pill for me to take a penny from him; but I did, because they made me.”

“And you’ve spent it all!”

Edgar laughed; he could not help it. His elastic nature had mounted up again; he began to feel sure that he could not be ruined so completely after all; he must be able to do something. He looked up at his questioner with eyes full of humour. Mr. Tottenham, who was standing in front as grave as a judge, looked at him, and did not laugh.

“I don’t see the fun,” he said. “You shouldn’t have done it. You have let yourself drop half out of recollection before you asked for anything, whereas you should have got provided for at once. Hang it all! I suppose there are some places yet where a man in office may place a friend—and some opportunities left to put a good man in by means of a job, instead of putting in a bad man by competition, or seniority, or some other humbug. You should have done that at first.”

“Possibly,” said Edgar, who had been amused, not by the idea of having spent all his money, but by that of making a clean breast to this man, whom he had never spoken to before, of the most private particulars of his life.

Mr. Tottenham made a few turns about the room, where there was for the moment nobody but themselves. He said then suddenly,

“I take an interest in you. I should like to help you if I could. Tottenham’s is no end of a good property, and I can do what I like——”

“I am sure I am very much obliged,” said Edgar, laughing. “I should thank you still more warmly if it were not so funny. Why should you take an interest in me?”

“It is odd, perhaps,” said the other; but he did not laugh. A smile ran over his face, that was all, and passed again like a momentary light. Then he added, “It is not so odd as you think. If I could conceal from you who my wife was, I might be tempted to do so; but I can’t, for though I’m only Tottenham’s, she’s in the peerage. My Mary is sister to Augusta Thornleigh, who—well, who knew you, my dear fellow. Look here! She’s fashionable and all that; she would not let you see her daughters, at present, if she could help it; but she’s a good woman, mind. I have heard her tell your story. If ever there was a hard case, that was one; and when I heard of it, I resolved, if I ever had the chance, to stand by you. You behaved like a gentleman. Since we have been made acquainted, Earnshaw, we have not shaken hands yet!”

They did it now very heartily; and in those restless grey eyes, which were worn by sheer use and perpetual motion, there glimmered some moisture. Edgar’s eyes were dry, but his whole heart was melted. There was a pause for a minute or more, and the ashes fell softly on the hearth, and the clock ticked on the mantel-piece. Then Edgar asked, “How are they all?” with that sound in his utterance which the French in their delicate discrimination call tears in the voice.

“Quite well, quite well!” said Tottenham hurriedly; and then he added, “We didn’t come here to speak of them. Earnshaw, I want you to come to my house.”

“It is very kind of you,” said Edgar. “I think I have seen Lady Mary. She is very sweet and lively, like—some one else; with fair hair——”

“Isn’t she?” cried Lady Mary’s admiring husband; and his eyes glowed again. “I want you to come and stay with us while this business with Newmarch gets settled.”

“Why?” said Edgar, with genuine surprise; and then he added, “You are a great deal too good. I should like to go for a day or two. I haven’t spoken to a lady for months.”

“Poor fellow!” said Mr. Tottenham, taking no notice of the “Why?” “We live only a little way out of town, on account of the shop. I have never neglected the shop since the time I told you about. She would not let me for that matter. Nobody, you see, can snub her, in consequence of her rank; and partly for her sake, partly because I’m rich, I suppose, nobody tries to snub me. There are many of my plans in which you could help me very much—for a time, you know, till Newmarch comes off.”

“You are very kind,” said Edgar; but his attention wandered after this, and other thoughts came into his mind, thoughts of himself and his forlorn condition, and of the profound uncertainty into which he and all his ways had been plunged. He scarcely paid any attention to the arrangements Mr. Tottenham immediately made, though he remembered that he promised to go out with him next day to Tottenham’s, as his house was called. “The same as the shop,” he said, with a twinkle in the corner of his grey eye. Edgar consented to these arrangements passively; but his patience was worn out, and he was very anxious to get away.

And so this strange evening came to an end, and the morning after it. The new day arose, a smoky, foggy, wintry morning, through which so many people went to work; but not Edgar. He looked out upon the world from his window with a failing heart. Even from Kensington and Brompton, though these are not mercantile suburbs, crowds of men were jolting along on all the omnibuses, crowds pouring down on either side of the street—to work. The shop people went along the road getting and delivering orders; the maid-servants bustled about the doors in the foggy, uncertain light; the omnibuses rushed on, on, in a continuous stream; and everybody was busy. Those who had no work to do, pretended at least to be busy too; the idlers had not come out yet, had not stirred, and the active portion of the world were having everything their own way. Edgar had revived from his depression, but he had not regained his insouciance and trust in the future. On the contrary, he was full of the heaviest uncertainty and care. He could not wait longer for this appointment, which might keep him hanging on half his life, which was just as near now as when he began to calculate on having it “about Christmas;” probably the next Christmas would see it just as uncertain still. He must, he felt, attempt something else, and change his tactics altogether. He must leave his expensive lodgings at once; but alas! he had a big bill for them, which he had meant to pay off his first quarter’s salary. He had meant to pay it the moment that blessed money for which he should have worked came; and now there was no appearance, no hope of it ever coming—at least, only as much hope as there had always been, no more.

Poor Edgar! he might have rushed out of doors and taken to the first manual work he could find as his heart bade him; but to go and solicit somebody once more, and hang on and wait, dependent upon the recollection or the caprice of some one or other who could give employment, but might, out of mere wantonness, withhold it—this was harder than any kind of work. He could dig, he felt, and would dig willingly, or do any other thing that was hard and simple and straightforward; but to beg for means of working he was ashamed; and there seemed something so miserable, so full of the spirit of dependence in having to wait on day by day doing nothing, waiting till something might fall into his hands. How infinitely better off working men were, he said to himself; not thinking that even the blessed working man, who is free from the restraints and punctilios which bind gentlemen, has yet to stand and wait, and ask for work too, with the best.

He went back to Mr. Parchemin that morning.

“I have been waiting for Lord Newmarch,” he said; “he promised me a post about Christmas, and now he tells me there is just as much hope as ever, but no more. I must do something else. Could you not take me in as clerk in your own office? I should not mind a small salary to start with; anything would do.”

Mr. Parchemin laughed, a dry and echoing “Ha, ha!” which was as dusty and dry as his office.

“A strange clerk you would make,” he said, looking over his shoulder to conceal his amusement. “Can you engross?”

“Of course not. How should I? But if a man were to try—”

“Do you know anything about the law? Of what possible use could you be to us? No; you are a fancy article, entirely a fancy article. Government,” said the old lawyer, “Government is the thing for you.”

“Government does not seem to see it in that light,” said Edgar. “I have waited since October.”

“My dear Sir! October is but three months off. You can’t expect, like a child, to have your wants supplied the moment you ask for anything. A slice of cake may be given in that way, but not an appointment. You must have patience, Mr. Earnshaw, you must have patience,” said the old man.

“But I have spent the half of my hundred pounds,” Edgar was about to say; but something withheld him; he could not do it. Should he not furnish the old lawyer by so doing with an unquestionable argument against himself? Should he not expose his own foolishness, the foolishness of the man who thought himself able to give up everything for others, and then could do nothing but run into debt and ruin on his own account? Edgar could not do it; he resolved rather to struggle on upon nothing, rather to starve, though that was a figure of speech, than to put himself so much in anyone’s power; which was pride, no doubt, but a useful kind of pride, which sometimes keeps an erring man out of further trouble. He went back at once, and paid his landlord a portion of what he owed him, and removed his goods to a small upstairs room which he found he could have cheap, and might have had all the time had he been wise enough to ask. It was the room in which his own servant had slept when he travelled with such an appendage; but the new-born pride which had struggled into existence in Edgar’s mind had no such ignoble part in it as to afflict him on this account. He was quite happy to go up to his man’s room, where everything was clean and homely, and felt no derogation of his personal dignity. Thank Heaven, this was one thing done at least—a step taken, though nothing could be gained by it, only something spared.

In the afternoon Mr. Tottenham met him at his club, driving a pair of handsome horses in a smart phaeton, such a turnout as only a rich man’s can be, everything about it perfect. Edgar had not indulged in any luxurious tastes during his own brief reign; it had been perhaps too short to develop them; but he recognised the perfect appointments of the vehicle with a half sigh of satisfaction and reminiscence. He did not say, why should this man be lucky enough to have all this when I have nothing? as so many people do. He was not given to such comparisons, to that ceaseless contrast of self with the rest of the world, which is so common. He half smiled at himself for half sighing over the day when he too might have had everything that heart could desire, and smiled more than half at the whimsical thought that he had not taken the good of his wealth half so much then as he would have done now, had he the chance. He seemed to himself—knowing how short Edgar Arden’s tenure was—to be aware of a hundred things which Edgar might have done to amuse and delight him, which indeed Edgar Arden, knowing nothing of his own short tenure, and believing life to be very long and much delight awaiting him, never dreamt of making any haste to procure. A curious sense of well-being seemed to take hold of him as he bowled along the suburban roads by Mr. Tottenham’s side, wrapped in one of the fur coats which the chill and foggy evening made comfortable, watching the long lines of lamps that twinkled and stretched out like a golden thread, and then were left behind as in the twinkling of an eye. To hear of Lady Mary Tottenham, who was Lady Augusta’s sister, and aunt to all the young Thornleighs, seemed somehow like being wafted back to the old atmosphere, to the state of affairs which lasted so short a time and ended so suddenly; but which was, notwithstanding its brevity, the most important and influential moment of his life.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Enchanted Palace.

“It’s a nice place,” Mr. Tottenham said, “though I, of course, only bought it from the old people, who fortunately were not very venerable nor very desirable. It had a fine name before, and it was Mary’s idea to call it Tottenham’s. As we cannot ignore the shop, it is as well to take the full advantage of it. The worst thing is,” he added lowering his voice, “it hurts the servants’ feelings dreadfully. We have at last managed to get a butler who sees the humour of it, and acknowledges the shop with a condescending sense that the fact of his serving a shopkeeper is the best joke in the world. You will notice a consciousness of this highly humorous position at once in his face; but it is a bitter pill to the rest of the household. The housemaids and our friend behind us, cannot bear any reference to the degradation. You will respect their feelings, Earnshaw? I am sure you will take care to show a seemly respect for their feelings.”

Edgar laughed, and Mr. Tottenham went on. He was a very easy man to talk with; indeed he did most of the conversation himself, and was so pleasantly full of his home and his wife and his evident happiness, that no one, or at least no one so sympathetic as Edgar, could have stigmatized with unkind names the lengthened monologue. There was this excuse for it on the other hand, that he was thus making himself and his belongings known to a stranger whom he had determined to make a friend of. Few people dislike to talk about themselves when they can throw off all fear of ridicule, and have a tolerable excuse for their fluency. We all like it, dear reader; we know it sounds egotistical, and the wiser we are the more we avoid exposing our weakness; but yet when we can feel it is safe and believe that it is justified, how pleasant it is to tell some fresh and sympathetic listener all about ourselves! Perhaps this is one of the reasons why youth is so pleasant a companion to age, because the revelations on each side can be full and lengthened without unsuitability or fear of misconstruction. Edgar, too, possessed many of the qualities which make a good listener. He was in a subdued state of mind, and had no particular desire to talk in his own person; he had no history for the moment that would bear telling; he was glad enough to be carried lightly along upon the stream of this other man’s story, which amused him, if nothing else. Edgar’s life had come to a pause; he lay quiescent between two periods, not knowing where the next tide might lift him, or what might be the following chapter. He was like a traveller in the night, looking in through a hospitable open window at some interior all bright with firelight and happiness, getting to recognise which was which in the household party round the fire, and listening with a gratitude more warm and effusive than had the service been a greater one, to the hospitable invitation to enter. As well might such a traveller have censured the openness which drew no curtains and closed no shutters, and warmed his breast with the sight of comfort and friendliness, as Edgar could have called Mr. Tottenham’s talk egotistical. For had not he too been called in for rest and shelter out of the night?

He felt as in a dream when he entered the house, and was led through the great hall and staircase, and into the bright rooms to be presented to Lady Mary, who came forward to meet her husband’s new friend with the kindest welcome. She was a little light woman with quantities of fair hair, lively, and gay, and kind, with nothing of the worn look which distinguished her husband, but a fresh air, almost of girlhood, in her slight figure and light movements. She was so like some one else, that Edgar’s heart beat at sight of her, as it had not beat for years before. Gussy Thornleigh had gone out of his life, for ever, as he thought. He had given her up completely, hopelessly—and he had not felt at the time of this renunciation that his love for her had ever reached the length of passion, or that this was one of the partings which crush all thoughts of possible happiness out of the heart. But, notwithstanding, her idea had somehow lingered about him, as ideas passionately cherished do not always do. When he had been still and musing, the light little figure, the pretty head with its curls, the half laughing, half wise look with which this little girl would discourse to him upon everything in earth and heaven, had got into a way of coming up before him with the most astonishing reality and vividness. “I was not so very much in love with Gussy,” he had said to himself very often at such moments, with a whimsical mixture of surprise and complaint. No, he had not been so very much in love with her; yet she had haunted him all these three years. Lady Mary was only her aunt, which is not always an attractive relationship; generally, indeed, the likeness between a pretty girl and a middle-aged woman is rather discouraging to a lover, as showing to what plump and prosaic good condition his ethereal darling may come, than delightful; but Edgar had no sham sentiment about him, and was not apt to be assailed by any such unreal disgusts, even had there been anything to call them forth. Lady Mary, however, was still as lightfooted and light-hearted as Gussy herself. She had the same abundant fair hair, the same lively sweet eyes, never without the possibility of a laugh in them, and never anything but kind. She came up to Edgar holding out both her hands.

“You are not a stranger to me,” she said, “don’t introduce him, Tom. The only difficulty I have about you, is how to address you as Mr. Earnshaw—but that is only for the first moment. Sit down and thaw, both of you, and I will give you some tea—that is if you want tea. We have nobody with us for a day or two fortunately, and you will just have time to get acquainted with us, Mr. Earnshaw, and know all our ways before any one else comes.”

“But a day or two ought to be the limit—” Edgar began, hesitating.

“What! you have said nothing?” said Lady Mary, hastily turning to her husband. He put his finger on his lip.

“You are a most impetuous little person, Mary,” he said, “you don’t know the kind of bird we have got into the net. You think he will let you openly and without any illusion put salt upon his tail. No greater mistake could be. Earnshaw,” he added calmly, “come and let me show you your room. We dine directly, as we are alone and above ceremony. You can talk to my wife as much as you like after dinner—I shall go to sleep. What a blessing it is to be allowed to go to sleep after dinner,” he went on as he led the way upstairs, “especially on Saturday night—when one is tired and has Sunday to look forward to.”

“Why should it be especially blessed on Saturday night?”

“My dear fellow,” said the host solemnly, ushering his guest into a large and pleasant room, brilliant with firelight, “it is very clear that you have never kept a shop.”

And with these words he disappeared, leaving Edgar, it must be allowed, somewhat disturbed in his mind as to what it could all mean, why he had been thus selected as a visitor and conducted to this fairy palace; what it was that the wife wondered her husband had not said—and indeed what the whole incident meant? As he looked round upon his luxurious quarters, and felt himself restored as it were to the life he had so long abandoned, curious dreams and fancies came fluttering about Edgar without any will of his own. It was like the adventure (often enough repeated) in the Arabian nights, in which the hero is met by some mysterious mute and blindfolded, and led into a mysterious hall, all cool with plashing fountains and sweet with flowers. These images were not exactly suited to the wintry drive he had just taken, though that was pleasant enough in its way, and no bed of roses could have been so agreeable as the delightful glimpse of the fire, and all the warm and soft comfort about him. But had he been blindfolded—had he been brought unawares into some beneficent snare? Edgar’s heart began to beat a little quicker than usual. He did not know and dared not have whispered to himself what the fancies were that beset him. He tried to frown them down, to represent to himself that he was mad, that the curious freak of his new friend, and his own long fasting from all social intercourse had made this first taste of it too much for his brain. But all that he could do was not enough to free him from the wild fancies which buzzed about him like gnats in Summer, each with its own particular hum and sting. He dressed hurriedly and took a book by way of escaping from them, a dry book which he compelled himself to read, rather than go crazy altogether. Good heavens, was he mad already? In that mysterious palace where the hero is brought blindfold, where he is waited on by unseen hands, and finds glorious garments and wonderful feasts magically prepared for him, is there not always in reserve a princess more wonderful still, who takes possession of the wayfarer? “Retro, Satanas!” cried poor Edgar, throwing the book from him, feeling his cheeks flush and burn like a girl’s, and his heart leap into his throat. No greater madness, no greater folly could be. It was no doing of his, he protested to himself with indignation and dismay. Some evil spirit had got hold of him; he refused to think, and yet these dreamy mocking fancies would get into his head. It was a relief beyond description to him when the dinner bell rang and he could hurry downstairs. When he went into the drawing-room, however, all the buzzing brood of thoughts which fluttered within him, grew still and departed in a moment; his heart ceased to thump, and an utter quiet and stillness took the place of the former commotion. Why? Simply because he found Lady Mary and Mr. Tottenham awaiting him calmly, without a vestige of any other convive, except a boy of twelve and a girl two years younger, who came up to him with a pretty demure frankness and put out their hands in welcome.

“My boy and my girl,” said Mr. Tottenham; “and Molly, as your mother is going in with Mr. Earnshaw, you must try to look very grown up for the nonce, and take my arm and walk with me.”

“And poor Phil must come alone!” said the little girl with mingled regret and triumph. No, it was very clear to Edgar that he himself was not only a fool of the first water, but a presumptuous ass, a coxcomb fool, everything that was worst and vainest. And yet it had not been his doing; it was not he who had originated these foolish thoughts, which had assailed, and swarmed, and buzzed about him like a crowd of gnats or wasps—wasps was the better word; for there was spitefulness in the way they had persisted and held their own; but now, thank heaven, they were done with! He came to himself with a little shudder, and gave Lady Mary his arm, and walked through the ordinary passage of an ordinary house, into a room which was a handsome dining-room, but not a mystic hall; and then they all sat down at table, the two children opposite to him, in the most prosaic and ordinary way.

“You think it wrong to have the children, Mr. Earnshaw?” said Lady Mary, “and so do I—though I like it. It is only when we are alone, and it is all their father’s doing. I tell him it will spoil their digestion and their manners—”

“If it spoils Molly’s manners to associate with her mother the more’s the pity,” said Mr. Tottenham, “we shall try the experiment anyhow. What we call the lower classes don’t treat their children as we do; they accept the responsibility and go in for the disagreeables; therefore, though we hate having those brats here, we go in for them on principle. Earnshaw, have you considered the matter of education? Have you any ideas on the subject? Not like your friend Lord Newmarch, who has the correct ideas on everything, cut and dry, delivered by the last post. I don’t want that. Have you any notions of your own?”

“About education?” said Edgar, “I don’t think it. I fear I have few ideas on any abstract subject. The chances are that I will easily agree with you whatever may be your opinions; heaven has preserved me from having any of my own.”

“Then you will just suit each other,” said Lady Mary, “which he and I—forgive me for letting you into our domestic miseries, Mr. Earnshaw—don’t do at all, on this point; for we have both ideas, and flourish them about us unmercifully. How happy he will be as long as he can have you to listen to him! not that I believe you will be half as good as your word.”

“Ideas are the salt of life,” said Mr. Tottenham; “that of course is what has made you look so languid for some time past.”

Edgar looked up in surprise. “Have I been looking languid? Have you been observing me?” he cried. “This is after all a fairy palace where I have been brought blindfolded, and where every action of my life is known.”

Upon this, Mr. Philip Tottenham, aged twelve, pricked up his ears. “Were you brought here blindfolded?” he said. “What fun! like the Arabian Nights. I wish somebody would take me like that into a fairy palace, where there would be a beautiful lady—”

“Phil, you are talking nonsense,” said his mother.

“Where the dinner would come when you clapped your hands, and sherbets and ices and black servants, who would cross their arms on their breasts and nod their heads like images—It was he began it,” cried Philip, breathless, getting it all out in a burst before anyone could interpose.

“You see how these poor children are spoilt,” said Lady Mary; “yes, he has been observing you, Mr. Earnshaw. I sent him into town three days in succession, on purpose.”

“You have looked as languid as a young lady after the season,” said Mr. Tottenham calmly, “till I saw there was nothing for you but the country, and a sharp diet of talks and schemes, and the ideas you scorn. When a man is happy and prosperous, it is all very well for him to do nothing; but if you happen to be on the wrong side of the hill, my dear fellow, you can’t afford to keep quiet. You must move on, as Policeman X would say; or your friends must keep you moving on. To-morrow is Sunday, unfortunately, when we shall be obliged to keep moderately quiet—”

“Is it wrong to talk on Sunday?” said the little girl, appealing gravely to Edgar, whom for some time she had been gazing at.

“Not that I know of,” Edgar replied with a smile; but as he looked from one to the other of the parent pair, he said to himself that there was no telling what theory upon this subject these excellent people might have. They might be desperate Sabbatarians for anything he could tell.

“Why do you ask Mr. Earnshaw, Molly?” said Lady Mary.

“Because,” said Molly, “I saw his picture once. I knew him whenever I saw him, and when I asked who it was, they said it was a very good man. So I knew it must be quite right to ask him. Papa talks more on Sunday than on other days, though he always talks a great deal; and yet just now he said because it is Sunday we must be quiet. Then I said to myself, why must we be quiet on Sunday? is it wrong?”

“This child is too logical for our peace of mind,” said Mr. Tottenham; “if it were Phil it would not matter so much, for school would soon drive that out of him.”

“But he is not going to school,” said Lady Mary quickly.

“Not yet, perhaps—but some time or other, I hope; a boy has not half lived who has not been to school. I suppose politics are your strong point, Earnshaw? Foreign politics, to judge from what I heard Newmarch saying. That fellow wants to pick your brains. I should not think it a subject that would pay, unless you made it your cheval de bataille, like Gordon Grant, who knows everything that happens abroad better than the people themselves do—who never, he tells us, see half what is going on.”