Edgar read this letter with a great and sharp pang of disappointment. An hour before, had anyone asked him, he would have said he had no faith whatever in Lord Newmarch; yet now he felt, by the keenness of his mortification, that he had expected a great deal more than he had ever owned even to himself. He flung the letter down on the table beside him, and covered his face with his hands. It seemed to him that he had lost one of the primary supports on which, without knowing, he had been building of late. Now was there nothing before Gussy’s betrothed—he who had ventured to entangle her fate with his, and to ask of parents and friends to bless the bargain—but a tutorship in a great house, and kind Mr. Tottenham’s favour, who was no great man, nor had any power, nor anything but mere money. He could not marry Gussy upon Mr. Tottenham’s money, or take her to another man’s house, to be a cherished and petted dependent, as they had made him. I don’t think it was till next day, when again the wheel had gone momentarily round, and he had set out on Clare’s business, leaving Gussy behind him, that he observed the pregnant and pithy postscript, which threw a certain gleam of light upon Lord Newmarch’s letter. “How should you like a Consulship?” Edgar had no great notion what a Consulship was. What kind of knowledge or duties was required for the humblest representative of Her Majesty, he knew almost as little as if this functionary had been habitually sent to the moon. “Should I like a Consulship?” he said to himself, as the cold, yet cheerful sunshine of early Spring streamed over the bare fields and hedgerows which swept past the windows of the railway carriage in which he sat. A vague exhilaration sprang up in his mind—perhaps from that thought, perhaps from the sunshine only, which always had a certain enlivening effect upon this fanciful young man. Perhaps, after all, though he did not at first know what it was, this was the thing that he could do, and which all his friends were pledged to get for him. And once again he forgot all about his present errand, and amused himself, as he rushed along, by attempts to recollect what the Consul was like at various places he knew where such a functionary existed, and what he did, and how he lived. The only definite recollection in his mind was of an office carefully shut up during the heat of the day, with cool, green persiane all closed, a soft current of air rippling over a marble floor, and no one visible but a dreamy Italian clerk, to tell when H. B. M.’s official representative would be visible. “I could do that much,” Edgar said to himself, with a smile of returning happiness; but what the Consul did when he was visible, was what he did not know. No doubt he would have to sing exceedingly small when there was an ambassador within reach, or even the merest butterfly of an attaché, but apart from such gorgeous personages, the Consul, Edgar knew, had a certain importance.

This inquiry filled his mind with animation during all the long, familiar journey towards Arden, which he had feared would be full of painful recollections. He was almost ashamed of himself, when he stopped at the next station before Arden, to find that not a single recollection had visited him. Hope and imagination had carried the day over everything else, and the problematical Consul behind his green persiane had routed even Clare.

The letter, however, which had brought him here had been of a sufficiently disagreeable kind to make more impression upon him. Arthur Arden had never pretended to any loftiness of feeling, or even civility towards his predecessor, and Edgar’s note had called forth the following response:—

Edgar had been able to forget this letter, and the interview to which it conducted him, thinking of his imaginary Consul! I think the reader will agree with me that his mind must have been in a very peculiar condition. He kept his great-coat buttoned closely up, and his hat down over his eyes, as he got out at the little station. He was not known at Whitmarsh, as he had been known at Arden, but still there was a chance that some one might recognize him. The agreeable thoughts connected with the Consul, fortunately, had left him perfectly cool, and when he got out in Clare’s county, on her very land, the feeling of the past began to regain dominion over him. If he should meet Clare, what would she say to him? Would she know him? would she recognize him as her brother, or hold him at arm’s length as a stranger? And what would she think, he wondered, with the strangest, giddy whirling round of brain and mind, if she knew that the dream of three years ago was, after all, to come true; that, though Arden was not his, Gussy was his; and that, though she no longer acknowledged him as her brother, Gussy had chosen him for her husband. It was the only question there was any doubt about at one time. Now it was the only thing that was true.

With this bewildering consciousness of the revolutions of time, yet the steadfastness of some things which were above time, Edgar walked into the little old-fashioned country inn, scarcely venturing to take off his hat for fear of recognition, and was shown into the best parlour, where Mr. Arden awaited him.

CHAPTER XV.

The Ardens.

Arthur Arden, Esq., of Arden, was a different man from the needy cousin of the Squire, the hanger-on of society, the fine gentleman out at elbows, whose position had bewildered yet touched the supposed legal proprietor of the estates, and head of the family, during Edgar’s brief reign. A poor man knocking about the world, when he has once lost his reputation, has no particular object to stimulate him to the effort necessary for regaining it. But when a man who sins by will, and not by weakness of nature, gains a position in which virtue is necessary and becoming, and where vice involves a certain loss of prestige, nothing is easier than moral reformation. Arthur Arden had been a strictly moral man for all these years; he had given up all vagabond vices, the peccadilloes of the Bohemian. He was rangé in every sense of the word. A more decorous, stately house was not in the county; a man more correct in all his duties never set an example to a parish. I do not know that the essential gain was very great. He took his vices in another way; he was hard as the nether millstone to all who came in his way, grasping and tyrannical. He did nothing that was not exacted from him, either by law, or public opinion, or personal vanity; on every other side he was in panoply of steel against all prayers, all intercessions, all complaints.

Mrs. Arden made him an excellent wife. She was as proud as he was, and held her head very high in the county. The Countess of Marchmont, Lord Newmarch’s mother, was nothing in comparison with Mrs. Arden of Arden. But people said she was too cold in her manners ever to be popular. When her husband stood for the county, and she had to show the ordinary gracious face to all the farmers and farm-men, Clare’s manners lost more votes than her beauty and her family might have gained. She could not be cordial to save her life. But then the Ardens were always cold and proud—it was the characteristic of the family—except the last poor fellow, who was everybody’s friend, and turned out to be no Arden at all, as anyone might have seen with half an eye.

Mr. Arden’s horse and his groom were waiting in the stableyard of the “Arden Arms.” He himself, looking more gloomy than usual, had gone upstairs to the best room, to meet the stranger, of whom all the “Arden Arms” people felt vaguely that they had seen him before. The landlady, passing the door, heard their voices raised high now and then, as if there was some quarrel between them; but she was too busy to listen, even had her curiosity carried her so far. When Mrs. Arden, driving past, stopped in front of the inn, to ask for some poor pensioner in the village, the good woman rushed out, garrulous and eager.

“The Squire is here, ma’am, with a gentleman. I heard him say as his horse was dead beat, and as he’d have to take the train home. What a good thing as you have come this way! Please now, as they’ve done their talk, will your ladyship step upstairs?”

“If Mr. Arden is occupied with some one on business—” said Clare, hesitating; but then it suddenly occurred to her that, as there had been a little domestic jar that morning, it might be well to show herself friendly, and offer to drive her husband home. “You are sure he is not busy?” she said, doubtfully, and went upstairs with somewhat hesitating steps. It was a strange thing for Mrs. Arden to do, but something impelled her unconscious feet, something which the ancients would have called fate, an impulse she could not resist. She knocked softly at the door, but received no reply; and there was no sound of voices within to make her pause. The “business,” whatever it was, must surely be over. Clare opened the door, not without a thrill at her heart, which she could scarcely explain to herself, for she knew of nothing to make this moment or this incident specially important. Her husband sat, with his back to her, at the table, his head buried in his hands; near him, fronting the door, his face very serious, his eyes shining with indignant fire, stood Edgar. Edgar! The sight of him, so unexpected as it was, touched her heart with a quick, unusual movement of warmth and tenderness. She gave a sudden cry, and rushed into the room.

Arthur Arden raised his head from his hands at the sound of her voice—he raised himself up, and glanced at her, half-stupefied.

“What has brought you here?” he cried, hoarsely.

But Clare had no eyes for him, for the moment. She went up to her brother, who stood, scarcely advancing to meet her, with no light of pleasure on his face at the sight of her. They had not met for three years.

“Edgar!” she said, with pleasure so sudden that she had not time to think whether it was right and becoming on the part of Mrs. Arden of Arden to express such a sentiment. But, before she had reached him, his pained and serious look, his want of all response to her warm exclamation, and the curious atmosphere of agitation in the room, impressed her in spite of herself. She stopped short, her tone changed, the revulsion of feeling which follows an overture repulsed, suddenly clouded over her face. “I see I am an intruder,” she said. “I did not mean to interfere with—business.” Then curiosity got the upper hand. She paused and looked at them—Edgar so determined and serious, her husband agitated, sullen—and as pale as if he had been dying. “But what business can there be between you two?” she asked, with a sharp tone of anxiety in her voice. The two men were like criminals before her. “What is it?—what is it?” she cried. “Something has happened. What brings you two together must concern me.”

“Go home, Clare, go home,” said Arthur Arden, hoarsely. “We don’t want you here, to make things worse—go home.”

She looked at Edgar—he shook his head and turned his eyes from her. He had given her no welcome, no look even of the old affection. Clare’s blood was up.

“I have a right to know what has brought you together,” she said, drawing a chair to the table, and suddenly seating herself between them. “I will go home when you are ready to come with me, Arthur. What is it? for, whatever it is, I have a right to know.”

Edgar came to her side and took her hand, which she gave to him almost reluctantly, averting her face.

“Clare,” he said, almost in a whisper, “this is the only moment for all these years that I could not be happy to see you. Go home, for God’s sake, as he says——”

“I will not,” said Clare. “Some new misfortune has occurred to bring you two together. Why should I go home, to be wretched, wondering what has happened? For my children’s sake, I will know what it is.”

Neither of them made her any answer. There were several papers lying on the table between them—one a bulky packet, directed in what Clare knew to be his solicitor’s handwriting, to Arthur Arden. Miss Lockwood had played Edgar false, and, even while she urged him on, had already placed her papers in the lawyer’s hands. Arden had thus known the full dangers of the exposure before him, when, with some vague hopes of a compromise, he had met Edgar, whom he insisted on considering Miss Lockwood’s emissary. He had been bidding high for silence, for concealment, and had been compelled to stomach Edgar’s indignant refusal, which for the moment he dared not resent, when Clare thus burst upon the scene. They were suddenly arrested by her appearance, stopped in mid-career.

“Is it any renewal of the past?—any new discovery? Edgar, you have found something out—you are, after all——”

He shook his head.

“Dear Clare, it is nothing about me. Let me come and see you after, and tell you about myself. This is business-mere business,” said Edgar, anxiously. “Nothing,” his voice faltered, “to interest you.”

“You tell lies badly,” she said; “and he says nothing. What does it mean? What are these papers?—always papers—more papers—everything that is cruel is in them. Must I look for myself?” she continued, her voice breaking, with an agitation which she could not explain. She laid her hand upon some which lay strewed open upon the table. She saw Edgar watch the clutch of her fingers with a shudder, and that her husband kept his eyes upon her with a strange, horrified watchfulness. He seemed paralyzed, unable to interfere till she had secured them, when he suddenly grasped her hand roughly, and cried, “Come, give them up; there is nothing there for you!”

Clare was not dutiful or submissive by nature. At the best of times such an order would have irritated rather than subdued her.

“I will not,” she repeated, freeing her hand from the clutch that made it crimson. Only one of the papers she had picked up remained, a scrap that looked of no importance. She rose and hurried to the window with it, holding it up to the light.

“She must have known it one day or other,” said Edgar, speaking rather to himself than to either of his companions. It was the only sound that broke the silence. After an interval of two minutes or so, Clare came back, subdued, and rather pale.

“This is a marriage certificate, I suppose,” she said. “Yours, Arthur! You were married, then, before? You might have told me. Why didn’t you tell me? I should have had no right to be vexed if I had known before.”

“Clare!” he stammered, looking at her in consternation.

“Yes, I can’t help being vexed,” she said, her lip quivering a little, “to find out all of a sudden that I am not the first. I think you should have told me, Arthur, not left me to find it out. But, after all, it is only a shock and a mortification, not a crime, that you should look so frightened,” she added, forcing a faint smile. “I am not a termagant, to make your life miserable on account of the past.” Here Clare paused, looked from one to the other, and resumed, with a more anxious voice: “What do you mean, both of you, by looking at me? Is there more behind? Ay, I see!” her lip quivered more and more, her face grew paler, she restrained herself with a desperate effort. “Tell me the worst,” she said, hurriedly. “There are other children, older than mine! My boy will not be the heir?”

“Clare! Clare!” cried Edgar, putting his arm round her, forgetting all that lay between them, tears starting to his eyes, “my dear, come away! Don’t ask any more questions. If you ever looked upon me as your brother, or trusted me, come—come home, Clare.”

She shook off his grasp impatiently, and turned to her husband.

“Arthur, I demand the truth from you,” she cried. “Let no one interfere between us. Is there—an older boy than mine? Let me hear the worst! Is not my boy your heir?”

Arthur Arden, though he was not soft-hearted, uttered at this moment a lamentable groan.

“I declare before God I never thought of it!” he cried. “I never meant it for a marriage at all!”

“Marriage!” said Clare, looking at him like one bewildered. “Marriage!—I am not talking of marriage! Is there—a boy—another heir?”

And then again there was a terrible silence. The man to whom Clare looked so confidently as her husband, demanding explanations from him, shrank away from her, cowering, with his face hidden by his hands.

“Will no one answer me?” she said. Her face was ghastly with suspense—every drop of blood seemed to have been drawn out of it. Her eyes went from her husband to Edgar, from Edgar back to her husband. “Tell me, yes or no—yes or no! I do not ask more!”

“Clare, it is not that! God forgive me! The woman is alive!” said Arthur Arden, with a groan that seemed to come from the bottom of his heart.

“The woman is alive!” she cried, impatiently. “I am not asking about any woman. What does he mean? The woman is alive!” She stopped short where she stood, holding fast by the back of her chair, making an effort to understand. “The woman! What woman? What does he mean?”

“His wife,” said Edgar, under his breath.

Clare turned upon him a furious, fiery glance. She did not understand him. She began to see strange glimpses of light through the darkness, but she could not make out what it was.

“Will not you speak?” she cried piteously, putting her hand upon her husband’s shoulder. “Arthur, I forgive you for keeping it from me; but why do you hide your face?—why do you turn away? All you can do for me now is to tell me everything. My boy!—is he disinherited? Stop,” she cried wildly; “let me sit down. There is more—still more! Edgar, come here, close beside me, and tell me in plain words. The woman! What does he mean?”

“Clare,” cried Edgar, taking her cold hands into his, “don’t let it kill you, for your children’s sake. They have no one but you. The woman—whom he married then—is living now.”

“The woman—whom he married then!” she repeated, with lips white and stammering. “The woman!” Then stopped, and cried out suddenly—“My God! my God!”

“Clare, before the Lord I swear to you I never meant it—I never thought of it!” exclaimed Arden, with a hoarse cry.

Clare took no notice; she sat with her hands clasped, staring blankly before her, murmuring, “My God! my God!” under her breath. Edgar held her hands, which were chill and trembled, but she did not see him. He stood watching her anxiously, fearing that she would faint or fall. But Clare was not the kind of woman who faints in a great emergency. She sat still, with the air of one stupefied; but the stupor was only a kind of external atmosphere surrounding her, within the dim circle of which—a feverish circle—thought sprang up, and began to whirl and twine. She thought of everything all in a moment—her children first, who were dishonoured; and Arden, her home, where she had been born; and her life, which would have to be wrenched up—plucked like a flower from the soil in which she had bloomed all her life. They could not get either sound or movement from her, as she sat there motionless. They thought she was dulled in mind by the shock, or in body, and that it was a merciful circumstance to deaden the pain, and enable them to get her home.

While she sat thus, her husband raised himself in terror, and consulted Edgar with his eyes.

“Take her home—take her home,” he whispered behind Clare’s back—“take her home as long as she’s quiet; and till she’s got over the shock, I’ll keep myself out of the way.”

Clare heard him, even through the mist that surrounded her, but she could not make any reply. She seemed to have forgotten all about him—to have lost him in those mists. When Edgar put his hand on her shoulder, and called her gently, she stirred at last, and looked up at him.

“What is it?—what do you want with me?” she asked.

“I want you to come home,” he said softly. “Come home with me; I will take care of you; it is not a long drive.”

Poor Edgar! he was driven almost out of his wits, and did not know what to say. She shuddered with a convulsive trembling in all her limbs.

“Home!—yes, I must go and get my children,” she said. “Yes, you are quite right. I want some one to take care of me. I must go and get my children; they are so young—so very young! If I take them at once, they may never know——”

“Clare,” cried her husband, moaning, “you won’t do anything rash? You won’t expose our misery to all the world?”

She cast a quick glance at him—a glance full of dislike and horror.

“Take me away,” she said to Edgar—“take me away! I must go and fetch the children before it is dark.” This with a pause and a strange little laugh. “I speak as if they had been out at some baby-party,” she said. “Give me your arm. I don’t see quite clear.”

Arden watched them as they went out of the room—she tottering, as she leant on Edgar’s arm, moving as he moved, like one blind. Arthur Arden was left behind with his papers, and with the thought of that other woman, who had claimed him for her husband. How clearly he remembered her—her impertinence, her rude carelessness, her manners, that were of the shop, and knew no better training! Their short life together came back to him like a picture. How soon his foolish passion for her (as he described it to himself) had blown over!—how weary of her he had grown! And now, what was to become of him? If Clare did anything desperate—if she went and blazoned it about, and removed the children, and took the whole matter in a passionate way, it would not be she alone who would be the sufferer. The woman is the sufferer, people say, in such cases; but this man groaned when he thought, if he could not do something to avert it, what ruin must overtake him. If Clare left his house, all honour, character, position would go with her; he could never hold up his head again. He would retain everything he had before, yet he would lose everything—not only her and his children, of whom he was as fond as it was possible to be of any but himself, but every scrap of popular regard, society, the support of his fellows. All would go from him if this devil could not be silenced—if Clare could not be conciliated.

He rose to his feet, feeling sick and giddy, and from a corner, behind the shadow of the window-curtains, saw his wife—that is, the woman who was no longer his wife—drive away from the door. He was so wretched that he could not even relieve his mind by swearing at Edgar. He had not energy enough to think of Edgar, or any one else. Sometimes, indeed, with a sharp pang, there would gleam across him a sudden vision of his little boy, Clare’s son, the beautiful child he had been so proud of, but who—even if Clare should make it up, and brave the shame and wrong—was ruined and disgraced, and no more the heir of Arden than any beggar on the road. Poor wretch! when that thought came across him, I think all the wrongs that Arthur Arden had done in this world were avenged. He writhed under the sudden thought. He burst out in sudden crying and sobbing for one miserable moment. It was intolerable—he could not bear it; yet had to bear it, as we all have, whether our errors are of our own making or not.

And Clare drove back over the peaceful country, beginning to green over faintly under the first impulse of Spring—between lines of ploughed and grateful fields, and soft furrows of soft green corn. She did not even put her veil down, but with her white face set, and her eyes gazing blankly before her, went on with her own thoughts, saying nothing, seeing nothing. All her faculties had suddenly been concentrated within her—her mind was like a shaded lamp for the moment, throwing intense light upon one spot, and leaving all others in darkness. Edgar held her hand, to which she did not object, and watched her with a pity which swelled his heart almost to bursting. He could take care of her tenderly in little things—lift her out of the carriage, give her the support of his arm, throw off the superabundant wraps that covered her. But this was all; into the inner world, where she was fighting her battle, neither he nor any man could enter—there she had to fight it out alone.

CHAPTER XVI.

The Old Home.

Clare went to her own room, and shut herself up there. She permitted Edgar to go with her to the door, and there dismissed him, almost without a word. What Edgar’s feelings were on entering the house where he had once been master, and with which so many early associations both of pleasure and pain were connected, I need not say; he was excited painfully and strangely by everything he saw. It seemed inconceivable to him that he should be there; and every step in the staircase, every turn in the corridor, reminded him of something that had happened in that brief bit of the past in which his history was concentrated, which had lasted so short a time, yet had been of more effect than many years. The one thing, however, that kept him calm, and restrained his excitement, was the utter absorption of Clare in her own troubles, which were more absorbing than anything that had ever happened to him. She showed no consciousness that it was anything to him to enter this house, to lead her through its familiar passages. She ignored it so completely that Edgar, always impressionable, felt half ashamed of himself for recollecting, and tried to make believe, even to himself, that he ignored it too. He took her to the door of her room, his head throbbing with the sense that he was here again, where he had never thought to be; and then went downstairs, to wait in the room which had once been his own library, for Arthur Arden’s return. Fortunately the old servants were all gone, and if any of the present household recognised Edgar at all, their faces were unfamiliar to him. How strange to look round the room, and note with instinctive readiness all the changes which another man’s taste had made! The old cabinet, in which the papers had been found which proved him no Arden, stood still against the wall, as it had always done. The books looked neglected in their shelves, as though no one ever touched them. It was more of a business room than it once was, less of a library, nothing at all of the domestic place, dear to man and woman alike, which it had been when Edgar never was so happy as with his sister beside him. How strange it was to be there—how dismal to be there on such an errand. In this room Clare had given him the papers which were his ruin; here she had entreated him to destroy them; here he had made the discovery public; and now to think the day should have come when he was here as a stranger, caring nothing for Arden, thinking only how to remove her of whom he seemed to have become the sole brother and protector, from the house she had been born in!

He walked about and about the rooms, till the freshness of these associations was over, and he began to grow impatient of the stillness and suspense. He had told Clare that he would wait, and that she should find him there when he was wanted. He had begged her to do nothing that night—to wait and consider what was best; but he did not even know whether she was able to understand him, or if he spoke to deaf ears. Everything had happened so quickly that a sense of confusion was in Edgar’s mind, confusion of the moral as well as the mental functions; for he was not at all sure whether the link of sympathetic horror and wonder between Arden and himself, as to what Clare would do, did not approach him closer, rather than separate him further from this man, who hated him, to begin with, and who was yet not his sister’s husband. Somehow these two, who, since they first met, had been at opposite poles from each other, seemed to be drawn together by one common misfortune, rather than placed in a doubly hostile position, as became the injurer and the defender of the injured.

When Arden came in some time after, this feeling obliterated on both sides the enmity which, under any other circumstances, must have blazed forth. Edgar, as he looked at the dull misery in Arthur’s face, felt a strange pity for him soften his heart. This man, who had done so well for himself, who had got Arden, who had married Clare, who had received all the gifts that heaven could give, what a miserable failure he was after all, cast down from all that made his eminence tenable or good to hold. He was the cause of the most terrible misfortune to Clare and her children, and yet Edgar felt no impulse to take him by the throat, but was sorry for him in his downfall and misery. As for Arthur Arden, his old dislike seemed exorcised by the same spirit. In any other circumstances he would have resented Edgar’s interference deeply—but now a gloomy indifference to everything that could happen, except one thing, had got possession of him.

“What does she mean to do?” he said, throwing himself into a chair. All power of self-assertion had failed in him. It seemed even right and natural to him that Edgar should know this better than he himself did, and give him information what her decision was.

“I think,” said Edgar, instinctively accepting the rôle of adviser, “that the best and most delicate thing you could do would be to leave the house to her for a few days. Let it be supposed you have business somewhere. Go to London, if you think fit, and investigate for yourself; but leave Clare to make up her mind at leisure. It would be the most generous thing to do.”

Arthur stared at him blankly for a moment, with a dull suspicion in his eyes at the strange, audacious calmness of the proposal. But seeing that Edgar met his gaze calmly, and said these words in perfect single-mindedness, and desire to do the best in the painful emergency, he accepted them as they were given; and thus they remained together, though they did not talk to each other, waiting for Clare’s appearance, or some intimation of what she meant to do, till darkness began to fall. When it was nearly night a maid appeared, with a scared look in her face, and that strange consciousness of impending evil which servants often show, like animals, without a word being said to them—and brought to Edgar the following little note from Clare:—

“I am not able to see you to-night; and I cannot decide where to go without consulting you; besides that there are other reasons why I cannot take the children away, as I intended, at once. I have gone up to the nursery beside them, and will remain there until to-morrow. Tell him this, and ask if we may remain so, in his house, without being molested, till to-morrow.”

Edgar handed this note to Arden without a word. He saw the quick flutter of excitement which passed over Arthur’s face. If the letter had been more affectionate, I doubt whether Clare’s husband could have borne it; but as it was he gulped down his agitation, and read it without betraying any angry feeling. When he had glanced it over, he looked almost piteously at his companion.

“You think that is what I ought to do?” he said, almost with an appeal against Edgar’s decision. “Then I’ll go; you can write and tell her so. I’ll stay away if she likes, until—until she wants me,” he broke off abruptly, and got up and left the room, and was audible a moment after, calling loudly for his servant in the hall.

Edgar wrote this information to Clare. He told her that Arden had decided to leave the house to her, that she might feel quite free to make up her mind; and that he too would go to the village, where he would wait her call, whensoever she should want him. He begged her once more to compose herself, not to hasten her final decision, and to believe that she would be perfectly free from intrusion or interference of any kind—and bade God bless her, the only word of tenderness he dared venture to add.

When he had written this, he walked down the avenue alone, in the dusk, to the village. Arden had gone before him. The lodge-gates had been left open, and gave to the house a certain forlorn air of openness to all assault, which, no doubt, existed chiefly in Edgar’s fancy, but impressed him more than I can say. To walk down that avenue at all was for him a strange sensation; but Edgar by this time had got over all the weaknesses of recollection. It was not hard for him at any time to put himself to one side. He did it now completely. He felt like a man walking in a dream; but he no longer consciously recalled to himself the many times he had gone up and down there, and how it had once been to him his habitual way home—the entrance to his kingdom. No doubt in his painful circumstances these thoughts would have been hard upon him. They died quite naturally out of his mind now. What was to become of Clare?—where could he best convey her for shelter or safety?—and how provide for her? His own downfall had made Clare penniless, and now that she was no longer Arthur Arden’s wife, she could and would, he knew, accept nothing from him. How was she to be provided for? This was a far more important question to think of than any maunderings of personal regret over the associations of his past life.

Next morning he went up again to the Hall, after a night passed not very comfortably at the “Arden Arms,” where everyone looked at him curiously, recognising him, but not venturing to say so. As he went up the avenue, Arthur Arden overtook him, arriving, too, from a different direction. A momentary flash of indignation came over Edgar’s face.

“You promised to leave Arden,” he said.

“And so I did,” said the other. “But I did not say I would not come back to hear what she said. My God, I may have been a fool, but may I not see my—my own children before they go? I am not made of wood or stone, do you suppose, though I may have been in the wrong?”

His eyes were red and bloodshot, his appearance neglected and wild. He looked as if he had not slept, nor even undressed, all night.

“Look here,” he said hoarsely, “I have got another letter, saying she would accept money—a compromise. Will you persuade Clare to stay, and make no exposure, and hush it all up, for the sake of the children—if we have her solemnly bound over to keep the secret and get her sent away? Will you? What harm could it do you? And it might be the saving of the boy.”

“Arden, I pity you from my heart!” said Edgar; “but I could not give such advice to Clare.”

“It’s for the boy,” cried Arden. “Look here. We’ve never been friends, you and I, and it’s not natural we should be; but that child shall be brought up to think more of you than of any man on earth—to think of you as his friend, his—well, his uncle, if you will. Grant that I’m done for in this world, and poor Clare too, poor girl; but, Edgar, if you liked, you might save the boy.”

“By falsehood,” said Edgar, his heart wrung with sympathetic emotion—“by falsehood, as I was myself set up, till the time came, and I fell. Better, surely, that he should be trained to bear the worst. You would not choose for him such a fate as mine?”

“It has not done you any harm,” said Arden, looking keenly at the man he had dispossessed—from whom he had taken everything. “You have always had the best of it!” he cried, with sudden fire. “You have come out of it all with honour, while everyone else has had a poor enough part to play. But in this case,” he added, anxiously, in a tone of conciliation, “nothing of the kind can happen. Who like her son and mine could have the right here—every right of nature, if not the legal right? And I declare to you, before God, that I never meant it. I never intended to marry—that woman.”

“You intended only to betray her.” It was on Edgar’s lips to say these words, but he had not the heart to aggravate the misery which the unhappy man was already suffering. They went on together to the house, Arden repeating at intervals his entreaties, to which Edgar could give but little answer. He knew very well Clare would listen to no such proposal; but so strangely did the pity within him mingle with all less gentle sentiments, that Edgar’s friendly lips could not utter a harsh word. He said what he could, rather, to soothe; for, after all, his decision was of little importance, and Clare did not take the matter so lightly as to make a compromise a possible thing to think of.

The house had already acquired something of that look of agitation which steals so readily into the atmosphere wherever domestic peace is threatened. There were two or three servants in the hall, who disappeared in different directions when the gentlemen were seen approaching; and Edgar soon perceived, by the deference with which he himself was treated, that the instinct of the household had jumped to a conclusion very different from the facts, but so pleasing to the imagination as to be readily received. He had been recognised, and it was evident that he was thought to be “righted,” to have got “his own again.” Arthur Arden was anything but beloved at home, and the popular heart as well as imagination sprang up, eager to greet the return of the real master, the true heir.

“Mrs. Arden, sir, has ordered the carriage to meet the twelve o’clock train. She’s in the morning-room, sir,” said the butler, with solemnity.

He spoke to Arthur, but he looked at Edgar. They were all of one way of thinking; further evidence had been found out, or something had occurred to turn the wheel of fortune, and Edgar had been restored to “his own.”

Clare was seated alone, dressed for a journey, in the little room which had always been her favourite room. She was dressed entirely in black, which made her extraordinary paleness more visible. She had always been pale, but this morning her countenance was like marble—not a tinge of colour on it, except the pink, pale also, of her lips. She received them with equal coldness, bending her head only when the two men, both of them almost speechless with emotion, came into her presence. She was perfectly calm; that which had befallen her was too tremendous for any display of feeling; it carried her beyond the regions of feeling into those of the profoundest passion—that primitive, unmingled condition of mind which has to be diluted with many intricate combinations before it drops into ordinary, expressible emotion. Clare had got beyond the pain that could be put into words, or cries or tears; she was stern, and still, and cold, like a woman turned to stone.

“I want to explain what I am about to do,” she said, in a low tone. “We are leaving, of course, at once. Mr. Arden” (her voice faltered for one moment, but then grew more steady than ever), “I have taken with me what money I have; there is fifty pounds—I will send it back to you when I have arranged what I am to do. You will wish to see the children; they are in the nursery waiting. Edgar will go with me to town, and help me to find a place to live in. I do not wish to make any scandal, or cause any anxiety. Of course I cannot change my name, as it is my own name, as well as yours, and my children will be called what their mother is called, as I believe children in their unfortunate position always are.”

“Clare, for God’s sake do not be so pitiless! Hear me speak. I have much—much to say to you. I have to beg your pardon on my knees——”

“Don’t!” she cried suddenly; then went on in her calm tone—“We are past all the limits of the theatre, Mr. Arden,” she said. “Your knees can do me no good, nor anything else. All that is over. I cannot either upbraid or pardon. I will try to forget your existence, and you will forget mine.”

“That is impossible!” he cried, going towards her. His eyes were so wild, and his manner so excited, that Edgar drew near to her in terror; but Clare was not afraid. She looked up at him with the large, calm, dilated eyes, which seemed larger and bluer than ever, out of the extreme whiteness of her face.

“When I swear to you that I never meant it, that I am more wretched—far more wretched—than you can be—that I would hang myself, or drown myself like a dog, if that would do any good——!”

“Nothing can do any good,” said Clare. Something like a moan escaped from her breast. “What are words?” she went on, with a certain quickening of excitement. “I could speak too, if it came to that. There is nothing—nothing to be said or done. Edgar, when one loses name and fame, and home, you know what to do.”

“I know what I did; but I am different from you,” said Edgar—“you, with your babies. Clare, let us speak; we are not stones—we are men.”

“Ah! stones are better than men—less cruel, less terrible!” she cried. “No, no; I cannot bear it. We will go in silence; there is nothing that anyone can say.”

“You see,” said Edgar, turning to Arden—“what is my advice or my suggestions now? To speak of compromise or negotiation——”

“Compromise!” said Clare, her pale cheek flaming; she rose up with a sudden impulse of insupportable passion—“compromise!—to me!” Then, turning to Edgar, she clutched at his arm, and he felt what force she was putting upon herself, and how she trembled. “Come,” she said, “this air kills me; take me away!”

He let her guide him, not daring to oppose her, out to the air—to the door, down the great steps. She faltered more and more at every step she took, then, suddenly stopping, leaned against him.

“Let me sit down somewhere. I am growing giddy,” she said.

She sat down on the steps, on the very threshold of the home she was quitting, as she thought, for ever. The servants, in a group behind, tried to gaze over their master’s shoulders at this extraordinary scene. Where was she going?—what did she mean? There was a moment during which no one spoke, and Clare, to her double horror, felt her senses forsaking her. Her head swam, the light fluttered in her eyes. A moment more, and she would be conscious of nothing round her. I have said she was not the kind of woman who faints at a great crisis, but the body has its revenges, its moments of supremacy, and she had neither slept nor eaten, neither rested nor forgotten, for all these hours.

It was at this moment that the messenger from the “Arden Arms,” a boy, whom no one had noticed coming up the avenue, thrust something into Edgar’s hand.

“Be that for you, sir?” said the boy.

The sound of this new, strange voice roused everybody. Clare came out of her half-faint, and regained her full sense of what was going on, though she was unable to rise. Arthur Arden came close to them down the steps, with wild eagerness in his eyes. Edgar only would have thrust the paper away which was put into his hands. “Tush!” he said, with the momentary impulse of tossing it from him; then, suddenly catching, as it were, a reflection of something new possible in Arden’s wild look, and even a gleam of some awful sublime of tragic curiosity in the opening eyes of Clare, he looked at the paper itself, which came to him at that moment of fate. It was a telegram, in the vulgar livery which now-a-days the merest trifles and the most terrible events wear alike in England. He tore it open; it was from Mr. Tottenham, dated that morning, and contained these words only:—

“Miss Lockwood died here at nine o’clock.”

Edgar thrust it into Arden’s hand. He felt something like a wild sea surging in his ears; he raised up Clare in his arms, and drew her wondering, resisting, up the great steps.

“Come back,” he cried—“come home, Clare.”

CHAPTER XVII.

Harry’s Turn.

“Could I be more interested if I was twice as old as Ada, and engaged to six Lord Grantons!” cried the poor child. And Gussy’s prospects were in that charming state of uncertainty that they would stand discussing for hours together; whereas, by the time Lord Granton had been pronounced a darling, and the dresses all decided upon, even down to the colour of the bridesmaids’ parasols, there remained absolutely nothing new to be gone over with Mary, but just the same thing again and again.

“When do you think you shall be married?” said Beatrice, tremulously.

“I don’t know, and I don’t very much care, so long as it is all right,” said Gussy, half laughing, half crying.

“But what if papa will not consent?” said Mary, with a face of awe.

“Papa is too sensible to fight when he knows he should not win the battle,” said the deliciously, incomprehensibly courageous Gussy.

There was some gratification to be got out of a betrothed sister of this fashion. Beatrice even began to look down upon Mary’s unexciting loves.

“As for your affair, it is so dreadfully tame,” she said, contemptuously lifting her little nose in the air. “Everybody rushing to give their consent, and presents raining down upon you, and you all so self-satisfied and confident.”

Mary was quite taken down from her pedestal of universal observation. She became the commonest of young women about to be married, by Gussy’s romantic side.

Alas! the Thornleighs were by no means done with sensation in this genre. Two days after these events, before Edgar had come back, Harry came early to the house one morning and asked to see his mother alone. Lady Augusta was still immersed in patterns, and she had that morning received a letter from her husband, which had brought several lines upon her forehead. Mr. Thornleigh had the reputation, out of doors, of being a moderate, sensible sort of man, not apt to commit himself, though perhaps not brilliant, nor very much to be relied upon in point of intellect. He deserved, indeed, to a considerable extent this character; but what the world did not know, was that his temper was good and moderate, by reason of the domestic safety-valve which he had always by him. When anything troublesome occurred he had it out with his wife, giving her full credit for originating the whole business.

“You ought to have done this, or you ought to have done that,” he would say, “and then, of course, nothing of the kind could have happened.” After, he would go upstairs, and brush his hair, and appear as the most sensible and good-tempered of men before the world. Mr. Thornleigh had got Mr. Tottenham’s letter informing him of the renewed intercourse between Edgar and Gussy; and the Squire had, on the spot, indited a letter to his wife, breathing fire and flame. This was the preface of a well-conditioned, gentlemanly letter to Mr. Tottenham, in which the father expressed a natural regret that Gussy should show so little consideration of external advantages, but fully acknowledged Edgar’s excellent qualities, and asked what his prospects were, and what he thought of doing.

“I will never be tyrannical to any of my children,” Mr. Thornleigh said; “but, on the other hand, before I can give my sanction, however unwillingly, to any engagement, I must fully understand his position, and what he expects to be able to do.”

But Lady Augusta’s letter was not couched in these calm and friendly terms; and knowing as she did the exertions she had made to keep Edgar at arm’s length, poor Lady Augusta felt that she did not deserve the assault made upon her, and consequently took longer to calm down than she generally did. It was while her brow was still puckered, and her cheek flushed with this unwelcome communication, that Harry came in. When he said, “I want to speak to you, mother,” her anxious mind already jumped at some brewing harm. She took him into the deserted library, feeling that this was the most appropriate place in which to hear any confession her son might have to make to her. The drawing-room, where invasion was always to be feared, and the morning-room, which was strewed with patterns and girls, might do very well for the confession of feminine peccadilloes, but a son’s ill-doing was to be treated with a graver care. She led Harry accordingly into the library, and put herself into his father’s chair, and said, “What is it, my dear boy?” with a deeper gravity than usual. Not that Harry was to be taken in by such pretences at severity. He knew his mother too well for that.

“Mother,” he said, sitting down near her, but turning his head partially away from her gaze, “you have often said that my father wanted me—to marry.”

“To marry!—why, Harry? Yes, dear, and so he does,” said Lady Augusta; “and I too,” she added, less decidedly. “I wish it, too—if it is some one very nice.”

“Well,” said Harry, looking at her with a certain shamefaced ostentation of boldness, “I have seen some one whom I could marry at last.”

“At last! You are not so dreadfully old,” said the mother, with a smile. “You, too! Well, dear, tell me who it is. Some one you have met at your Aunt Mary’s”? Oh! Harry, my dear boy, I trust most earnestly it is some one very nice!”

“It is some one much better than nice—the most lovely creature, mother, you ever saw in your life. I never even dreamt of anything like her,” said Harry, with a sigh.

“I hope she is something more than a lovely creature,” said Lady Augusta. “Oh! Harry, your father is so put out about Gussy’s business; I do hope, dear, that this is something which will put him in good-humour again. I can take her loveliness for granted. Tell me—do tell me who she is?”

“You don’t mean to say that you are going to let that fellow marry Gussy’?” said Harry, coming to a sudden pause.

“Harry, if this is such a connection as I hope, it will smooth everything,” said Lady Augusta. “My dearest boy, tell me who she is.”

“She is the only woman I will ever marry,” said Harry, doggedly.

And then his poor mother divined, without further words, that the match was not an advantageous one, and that she had another disappointment on her hands.

“Harry, you keep me very anxious. Is she one of Mary’s neighbours? Tell me her name.”

“Yes, she is one of Aunt Mary’s neighbours and chief favourites,” said Harry. “Aunt Mary is by way of patronizing her.” And here he laughed; but the laugh was forced, and had not the frank amusement in it which he intended it to convey.

Lady Augusta’s brow cleared for a moment, then clouded again.

“You do not mean Myra Witherington?” she said, faintly. “Oh! not one of that family, I hope!”

“Myra Witherington!” he cried. “Mother, what do you take me for? It is clear you know nothing about my beautiful Margaret. In her presence, you would no more notice Myra Witherington than a farthing candle in the sun!”

Poor Lady Augusta took courage again. The very name gave her a little courage. It is the commonest of all names where Margaret came from; but not in England, where its rarity gives it a certain distinction.

“My dear boy,” she said tremulously, “don’t trifle with me—tell me her name.”

A strange smile came upon Harry’s lips. In his very soul he, too, was ashamed of the name by which some impish trick of fortune had shadowed his Margaret. An impulse came upon him to get it over at once; he felt that he was mocking both himself and his mother, and her, the most of all, who bore that terrible appellation. He burst into a harsh, coarse laugh, a bravado of which next moment he was heartily ashamed.

“Her name,” he said, with another outburst, “is—Mrs. Smith!”

“Good heavens, Harry!” cried Lady Augusta, with a violent start. Then she tried to take a little comfort from his laughter, and said, with a faint smile, though still trembling, “You are laughing at me, you unkind boy!”

“I am not laughing at all!” cried Harry, “except, indeed, at the misfortune which gave her such a name. It is one of Aunt Mary’s favourite jokes.” Then he changed his tone, and took his mother’s hand and put it up caressingly to his cheek to hide the hot flush that covered it. “Mother, you don’t know how I love her. She is the only woman I will ever marry, though I should live a hundred years.”

“Oh! my poor boy—my poor boy!” cried Lady Augusta. “This is all I wanted to make an end of me. I think my heart will break!”

“Why should your heart break?” said Harry, putting down her hand and looking half cynically at her. “What good will that do? Look here, mother. Something much more to the purpose will be to write to my father, and break the news quietly to him—gently, so as not to bother him, as I have done to you; you know how.”

“Break the news to him!” she said. “I have not yet realised it myself. Harry, wait a little. Why, she is not even——. Mrs. Smith! You mean that she is a widow, I suppose?”

“You did not think I could want to marry a wife, did you?” he growled. “What is the use of asking such useless questions? Of course she is a widow—with one little girl. There, now you know the worst!”

“A widow, with one little girl!”

Lady Augusta looked at him aghast. What could make up for these disadvantages? The blood went back upon her heart, then rallied slightly as she remembered her brother-in-law’s shopkeeping origin, and that the widow might be some friend of his.

“Is she—very rich?” she stammered.

To do her justice, she was thinking then of her husband, not herself; she was thinking how she could write to him, saying, “These are terrible drawbacks, but nevertheless——”

But nevertheless—Harry burst into another loud, coarse laugh. Poor fellow! nobody could feel less like laughing; he did it to conceal his confusion a little, and the terrible sense he began to have that, so far as his father and mother were concerned, he had made a dreadful mistake.

“I don’t know how rich she is, nor how poor. That is not what I ever thought of,” he cried, with lofty scorn.

This somehow appeased the gathering terror of Lady Augusta.

“I don’t suppose you did think of it,” she said; “but it is a thing your father will think of. Harry, tell me in confidence—I shall never think you mercenary—what is her family? Are they rich people? Are they friends of your uncle Tottenham? Dear Harry, why should you make a mystery of this with me?”

“Listen, then,” he said, setting his teeth, “and when you know everything you will not be able to ask any more questions. She is a cousin of your Edgar’s that you are so fond of. Her brother is the new doctor at Harbour Green, and she lives with him. There, now you know as much as I know myself.”

Words would fail me to tell the wide-eyed consternation with which Lady Augusta listened. It seemed to her that everything that was obnoxious had been collected into this description. Poor, nobody, the sister of a country doctor; a widow with a child; and finally, to wind up everything, and make the combination still more and more terrible, Edgar’s cousin! Heaven help her! It was hard enough to think of this for herself; but to let his father know!—this was more than any woman could venture to do. She grew sick and faint in a horrible sense of the desperation of the circumstances; the girls might be obstinate, but they would not take the bit in their teeth and go off, determined to have their way, like the boy, who was the heir, and knew his own importance; and what could any exhortation of hers do for Harry, who knew as well as she did the frightful consequences, and had always flattered himself on being a man of the world? She was so stupefied that she scarcely understood all the protestations that he poured into her ear after this. What was it to her that Margaret was the loveliest creature in the world? Faugh! Lady Augusta turned sickening from the words. Lovely creatures who rend peaceful families asunder; who lead young men astray, and ruin all their hopes and prospects; who heighten all existing difficulties, and make everything that was bad before worse a thousand times—is it likely that a middle-aged mother should be moved by their charms?

“It is ruin and destruction!—ruin and destruction!” she repeated to herself.

And soon the whole house had received the same shock, and trembled under it to its foundations. Harry went off in high dudgeon, not finding the sympathy he (strangely enough, being a man of the world) had looked forward to as his natural right. The house, as I have said, quivered with the shock; a sense of sudden depression came over them all. Little Mary cried, thinking what a very poor-looking lot of relations she would carry with her into the noble house she was about to enter. Gussy, with a more real sense of the fatal effect of this last complication, felt, half despairing, that her momentary gleam of hope was dying away in the darkness, and began to think the absence of Edgar at this critical moment almost a wrong to her. He had been absent for years, and she had kept steadily faithful to him, hopeful in him; but his absence of to-day filled her with a hopeless, nervous irritability and pain. As for Lady Augusta, she lost heart altogether.

“Your father will never listen to it,” she said—“never, never; he will think they are in a conspiracy. You will be the sufferer, Gussy, you and poor Edgar, for Harry will not be restrained; he will take his own way.”

What could Gussy reply? She was older than Harry; she was sick of coercion—why should not she, too, have her own way? But she did not say this, being grieved for the unfortunate mother, whom this last shock had utterly discomposed. Ada could do nothing but be the grieved spectator and sympathizer of all; as for the young Beatrice, her mind was divided between great excitement over the situation generally, and sorrow for poor Gussy, and an illegitimate, anxious longing to see the “lovely creature” of whom Harry had spoken in such raptures. Why should not people love and marry, without all these frightful complications? Beatrice was not so melancholy as the rest. She got a certain amount of pleasure out of the imbroglio; she even hoped that for herself there might be preparing something else even more romantic than Gussy’s—more desperate than Harry’s. Fate, which had long forgotten the Thornleigh household, and permitted them to trudge on in perfect quiet, had now roused out of sleep, and seemed to intend to give them their turn of excitement again.

Edgar made his appearance next day, looking so worn and fatigued that Lady Augusta had not the heart to warn him, as she had intended to do, that for the present she could not receive his visits—and that Gussy had not the heart to be cross. He told them he had been to Arden on business concerning Clare, and that Arthur Arden had come to town with him, and that peace and a certain friendship reigned, at least for the moment, between them. He did not confide even to Gussy what the cause of this singular amity was; but after he had been a little while in her company, his forehead began to smoothe, his smile to come back, the colour to appear once more in his face. He took her aside to the window, where the girls had been arranging fresh Spring flowers in a jardinière. He drew her arm into his, bending over the hyacinths and cyclamens. Now, for the first time, he could ask the question which had been thrust out of his mind by all that had happened within the last few days. A soft air of Spring, of happiness, of all the sweetness of life, which had been so long plucked from him, seemed to blow in Edgar’s face from the flowers.

“How should we like a Consulship?” he said, bending down to whisper in her ear.

“A what?” cried Gussy, astonished. She thought for the moment that he was speaking of some new flower.

Then Edgar took Lord Newmarch’s letter from his pocket, and held out the postscript to her, holding her arm fast in his, and his head close to hers.

“How should you like a Consulship?” he said.

Then the light and the life in his face communicated itself to her.

“A Consulship! Oh! Edgar, what does it mean?”

“To me it means you,” he said—“it means life; it means poverty too, perhaps, and humility, which are not what I would choose for my Gussy; but to me it means life, independence, happiness. Gussy, what am I to say?”

“Say!” she cried—“yes, of course—yes. What else? Italy, perhaps, and freedom—freedom once in our lives—and our own way; but, ah! what is the use of speaking of it?” said Gussy, dropping away from his arm, and stamping her foot on the ground, and falling into sudden tears, “when we are always to be prevented by other people’s folly, always stopped by something we have nothing to do with? Ask mamma, Edgar, what has happened since you went away.”

Then Lady Augusta drew near, having been a wondering and somewhat anxious spectator all the time of this whispered conversation, and told him with tears of her interview with Harry.

“What can I do?” she cried. “I do not want to say a word against your cousin. She may be nice, as nice as though she were a duke’s daughter; but Harry is our eldest son, and all my children have done so badly in this way except little Mary. Oh! my dears, I beg your pardon!” cried poor Lady Augusta, drying her eyes, “but what can I say? Edgar, I have always felt that I could ask you to do anything, if things should ever be settled between Gussy and you. Oh! save my boy! She cannot be very fond of him, she has known him so little; and his father will be furious, and will never consent—never! And until Mr. Thornleigh dies, they would have next to nothing, Oh! Edgar, if she is sensible, and would listen to reason, I would go to her myself—or Gussy could go.”

“Not I,” said Gussy, stealing a deprecating look at Edgar, who stood stupefied by this new complication—“how could I? It is terrible. How can I, who am pleasing myself, say anything to Harry because he wants to please himself?—or to her, who has nothing to do with our miserable and mercenary ways? Oh! yes, they are miserable and mercenary!” cried Gussy, crying in her turn; “though I can’t help feeling as you do, though my mind revolts against this poor girl, whom I don’t know, and I want to save Harry, too, as you say. But how dare I make Harry unhappy, in order to be happy myself? Oh! mamma, seek some other messenger—not me!—not me!”

“My darling,” said Lady Augusta, “it is for Harry’s good.”

“And it was for my good a little while ago!” cried Gussy. “You meant it, and so did they all. If you could have persuaded me to marry some one I cared nothing for, with my heart always longing for another, you would have thought it for my good; and now must I try to buy my happiness by ruining Harry’s?” cried the girl; “though I, too, am so dreadful, that I think it would be for Harry’s good. Oh! no, no, let it be some one else!”

“Edgar,” said Lady Augusta, “speak to her, show her the difference. Harry never saw this—this young woman till about a fortnight since. What can he know of her, what can she know of him, to be ready to marry him in a fortnight? Oh! Edgar, try to save my boy! Even if you were to represent to him that it would be kind to let your business be settled first,” she went on, after a pause. “A little time might do everything. I hope it is not wrong to scheme a little for one’s own children and their happiness. You might persuade him to wait, for Gussy’s sake—not to make his father furious with two at a time.”

Thus the consultation went on, if that could be called a consultation where the advice was all on one side. Edgar was fairly stupefied by this new twist in his affairs. He saw the fatal effect as clearly as even Lady Augusta could see it, but he could not see his own way to interfere in it, as she saw. To persuade Harry Thornleigh to give up or postpone his own will, in order that he, Edgar Earnshaw, might get his—an object in which Harry, first of all, had not the slightest sympathy—was about as hopeless an attempt as could well be thought of; and what right had he to influence Margaret, whom he did not know, to give up the brother, in order that he himself might secure the sister? Edgar left the house in as sore a dilemma as ever man was in. To give up Gussy now was a simple impossibility, but to win her by persuading her brother to the sacrifice of his love and happiness, was surely more impossible still.