Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) by Charlotte M Yonge (page 4)

last day before the funeral, when the three cousins were sitting together in the morning-room; James writing letters.

‘I am asking Lady Conway to give you a bed to-morrow night, Clara,’ he said. ‘We shall be at home by three o’clock.’

‘Oh, Jem!’ said Clara, clasping her hands to keep them from trembling; ‘I never thought of that.’

‘You are not ready! That is unlucky, for I cannot come to fetch you; but I suppose you can travel down with Jane. Only I should have thought it easier to do the thing at once.’

‘But, Jem! has my uncle said anything? Does he wish me to go?’

James laid down his pen, and stood upright, as if he did not understand her words.

Clara came up to him, saying, ‘I believe I ought to do what he may wish.’

‘I told you,’ said James, as if her words were not worth considering, ‘that you need only remain here on her account, who no longer needs you.’

Louis would have left them to themselves, but Clara’s glance sued for his protection, and, as he settled himself in his chair, she spoke with more decision.–‘Dear James, nothing would make me so happy as to go to dear home; but I do not think grandmamma would like me to leave Uncle Oliver.’

‘Oh, very well,’ said James, sitting down to his writing, as if he had done with her; ‘I understand.’

‘Dear James! O tell me you are not angry with me! Tell me you think I am right!’ cried Clara, alarmed by his manner.

‘Quite right in one point of view,’ he said, with acrimony.

‘James,’ said Louis, very low, but so as to make them both start, ‘that is not the way to treat your sister!’

‘We will renew the discussion another time, if you wish it, Clara,’ said James.

‘No,’ said Clara, ‘I wish Louis to be here. He will judge for me,’ and she spoke clearly, her face colouring. ‘It was grandmamma’s great wish that I should love my uncle. She used to beg me to be patient with him, and rejoiced to see us together. She often said he must not be left with no one to make a home for him, and to go out to Lima again.’

‘Did she ever desire you to remain here?’

‘No,’ said Clara, ‘she never did; but I am convinced that if she had known how soon she was to leave us, she would have done so. I feel as much bound as if she had. I have heard her call him my charge. And not only so, but my uncle has never varied in his kindness to me, and when he worked all his life for grandmamma, and my father, it would be wicked and cruel in me–if he does care for me–to forsake him, now he has lost them all, and is growing old.’

‘You need not scruple on that score,’ said James. ‘He has attained his object, and made the most of it. He is free now, and he will soon find a Rosita, if his mines are not sufficient for him.’

‘James, you should not say wrong things,’ said Clara.

‘I am not likely to think it wrong, whatever you may. I have no expectations. Do not rise up in arms against me, Fitzjocelyn, I do not accuse her. I might have foreseen it. She meant well at first, but the Terrace cannot bear competition with a place like this. Where two so-called duties clash, she is at perfect liberty to make her choice. It would not be easy to come down to what I have to offer. I understand. The world will call it a wise choice. Say no more, Clara, I feel no anger.’

She attempted no words; she clasped her hands over her face, and ran out of the room.

‘James,’ said Louis, rising, indignation rendering his voice more low and clearly distinct than ever, ‘I little thought to hear you insult that orphan sister of yours in her grief. No! I shall not defend her, I shall go to give her what comfort I can. Heaven help her, poor lonely child!’

He was gone. James paced about in desperation, raving against Louis for maintaining what he thought Clara’s self-deception; and, in the blindness of anger, imagining that their ultra-generosity would conduct them to the repair of Ormersfield with the revenues of Cheveleigh; and, disdainful as he was, it seemed another cruel outrage that his rightful inheritance should be in the hands of another, and his children portionless. He was far too wrathful to have any consistency or discrimination in his anger, and he was cruelly wounded at finding that his sister deserted him, as he thought, for her uncle’s riches, and that his own closest friend was ready to share the spoil.

In the stillness of the house, the sound of a door had revealed to Louis where to seek his cousin. It was in the grand saloon, where the closed shutters availed not to exclude the solid beams of slanting sunlight falling through the crevices, and glancing on the gilding, velvet, and blazonry upon the costly coffin, that shut her out from the dear tender hands and lips that had never failed to caress away her childish griefs. At first, the strange broad lines of shadowy light in the gloom were all he could see, but one ray tinged with paly light a plaited tress, which could only be Clara’s flaxen hair.

She had flung herself, crouching in a heap, on the floor, never stirring, so that he almost feared she had fainted; and, kneeling on one knee beside her, spoke soothingly: ‘My poor little dear Clary, this is the worst of all, but you know it was not Jem who spoke. It was only prejudice and temper. He is not himself.’

The dim light seemed to encourage Clara to lift her head to listen to the kind words. ‘Was I so very wrong?’ she murmured; ‘you know I never thought of that! Will he forgive me, and let me come home? But, oh, granny! and what is to become of my uncle?’ she ended, with a sound of misery.

‘Not here, not now, Clara–‘ said Louis; ‘She is in perfect peace; unhurt by our unhappy dissensions; she is with Him who looks at hearts, who can take away all variance.’

There was a short space of silence, as the two cousins knelt in the darkened room, in the sunbeams, which seemed as if they could not yet forsake her who had lived in the light of love.

Presently Louis gave Clara his hand to raise her, and led her into the adjoining room, also dim, but full of sweet fragrant breezes from the garden. He seated her on a low couch, and stood by, anxiously watching her.

‘If he had only told me I was wrong!’ she sighed.

‘He could not tell you so, Clara, for it is not wrong, and he knows it is not. He will thank you by-and-by for not attending to him, now that he does not know what he says. He is fairly distracted with this grief coming upon his home cares.’

‘Cares at dear, dear happy home!’ cried Clara. ‘Never!’

‘Ah, Clara! I fear that much comfort went away with dear granny. I think he is overtasking himself at the school; and three children within a year may well make a man anxious and oppressed.’

‘And I have vexed and disappointed him more!’ exclaimed she. ‘No wonder he was angry, and ready to impute anything! But he will believe me, he will forgive me, he will take me home.’

‘It is my belief,’ said Fitzjocelyn, in his peculiar way, ‘that the worst injury you could do to James would be to give way to the spirit that has possessed him.’

‘But, Louis,’ cried Clara, wildly astonished, ‘I must go; I can’t have Jem saying these things of me.’

‘His saying them does not make them true.’

‘He is my brother. He has the only right to me. If I must choose between him and my uncle, he must be mine–mine.’

‘You have not to choose between him and your uncle. You have to choose between right and wrong, between his frenzy and his true good.’

‘My brother! my brother! I go with my brother!’ was still her vehement cry. Without listening to her cousin’s last words, she made a gesture to put him aside, and rose to hurry to her brother.

But Louis stood before her, and spoke gravely. ‘Very well. Yield yourself to his management. Go back to be another burden upon a household, poor enough already to sour him with cares. Let him tell your uncle that both his brother’s children loathe the fruit of the self-sacrifice of a lifetime. Transgress your grandmother’s wishes; condemn that poor man to a desolate, objectless, covetous old age; make the breach irreconcilable for ever; and will James be the better or the happier for your allowing his evil temper the full swing?’

Clara wrung her hands. ‘My uncle! Yes, what shall I do with my uncle? If I could only have them both?’

‘This way you would have neither. Keep the straight path, and you may end in having both.’

‘Straight–I don’t know what straight is! It must be right to cling to my own brother in his noble poverty. Oh! that he should imagine me caring for this horrid, horrid state and grandeur!’

Louis recurred to the old argument, that James did not know what he was saying, and recalled her to the remembrance of what she had felt to be the right course before James’s ebullition. She owned it most reluctantly; but oh! she said, would James still forgive her, and not believe such dreadful things, but trust and be patient with her, and perhaps Uncle Oliver might after all be set on going to Peru, and beyond remonstrance. Then it would all come right–no, not right, for granny had dreaded his going. Confused and distressed by the conflicting claims, Clara was thankful for the present respite given to her by Louis’s promise that his father should sound her uncle as to his wishes and intentions. Lord Ormersfield’s upright, unimpassioned judgment appeared like a sort of refuge from the conflict of the various claims, and he was besides in a degree, her guardian, being the sole executor of the only will which Mrs. Frost had ever made, soon after the orphans came under her charge, giving the Terrace to James, and dividing the money in the Funds between the two.

Weeping, but not unhopeful–convinced, though not acknowledging it- inly praying for strength and patience, and hungering for one kind word from James–Clara quitted that almost brother, in whose counsel he had constrained her to seek relief, and went to her own chamber, there to throw herself on the guidance of that Friend, who sticketh closer than a brother.

The remaining part of the day passed quietly. James did not consciously make any difference in his manner, meaning to be still affectionate, though disappointed, and pitying her mistake, both as to her present happiness and future good.

Lord Ormersfield and Walter arrived in the evening, and James applied himself to finding occupation for his brother-in-law, whom he kept out of the way in the garden very satisfactorily. The Earl was so softened and sorrowful, that Clara hardly knew him. He deeply felt the loss of the kind, gentle aunt, whose sympathy had been more to him than he had known at the time; the last remnant of the previous generation, the last link with his youth, and he was even more grieved for the blank she left with Louis than for himself. By Louis’s desire, he inquired into Oliver’s intentions. ‘Must stay here,’ was the answer. ‘Can’t leave that child alone with the property. I can look to the Equatorial Company here–must do without me out there. No, no, I can’t leave the girl to her brother; he’d teach her his own nasty, spiteful temper, and waste the property on all those brats. No, I’m fixed here; I must look after Henry’s child, fine girl, good-tempered girl; takes after Henry, don’t you think so?’

That Clara took after her father in anything but being tall and fair, would hardly have been granted by any one who knew her better than the Earl, but he readily allowed it, and Oliver proceeded:–‘As long as she does not marry, here I am; but I trust some one will soon take the care of her off my hands–man who would look after the property well. She’s a good girl too, and the finest figure in the whole county; lucky him who gets her. I shall be sorry to part with the child, too, but I shall be working for her, and there’s nothing left that cares a rush for me now, so I might as well be out of the way of the young things. I know the old place at Lima, and the place knows me; and what do I care for this now my mother is gone? If I could only see Clara safe settled here, then I should care as little what became of me as I suppose she would.’

The Earl was touched by the dreary, desponding tone of the reply, and reported it to Louis and Clara with such terms, that Clara’s decision was made at once, namely, that it would be wrong and cruel to cast away her uncle, and be swayed by James’s prejudice; and Lord Ormersfield told her with grave approval that she was quite right, and that he hoped that James would recover from his unreasonable folly.

‘Make Jem forgive me,’ said Clara, faintly, as her announcement of her purpose, when she finally sought her room, obliged to be thought meanly of, rather than do ill, denying her fondest affections, cutting herself off from all she loved, and, with but this consolation, that she was doing as grandmamma would have bidden her. Oh, how her heart yearned after home!

On the morrow, Clara sorrowed in her solitary chamber alone with faithful Jane, who, amid her bursts of tears, felt the one satisfaction, that her dear mistress had lived to be buried like the stock she came of, and who counted the carriages and numbered the scarfs, like so many additional tributes from the affection of her dear Master Oliver.

Once on that day James was visibly startled from his heavy, stern mood of compressed, indignant sorrow. It was as he advanced to the entrance of the vault, and his eye was struck by a new and very handsome tablet on the wall. It was to the father, mother, and young brother and sisters, whose graves had been hastily made far away in the time of the pestilence, the only Dynevors who did not lie in the tombs of their fathers. For one moment James moved nearer to his uncle. Could he have spoken then, what might not have followed? but it was impossible, and the impulse passed away.

But he was kind when he hurried upstairs for a last embrace to Clara. He still felt fondly, brotherly, and compassionate; and all the more, because she had proved more weak against temptation than he had expected. His farewell was, ‘Good-bye, my poor Clara, God bless you.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ cried Clara, from the bottom of her heart. ‘You forgive me, James?’

‘I forgive; I am sorry for you, my poor child. Mind, Dynevor Terrace is still your home, if you do not find the happiness you expect in your chosen lot.’

‘Happiness!’ but he had no time to hear. He was gone, while she sobbed out her message of love for Isabel, and Louis ran up, pale with repressed suffering, and speaking with difficulty, as he wrung her hand, and murmured, ‘Oh, Clara! may we but abide patiently.’

After his good-bye, he turned back again to say, ‘I’m selfish; but let me put you in mind not to let the Lima correspondence drop.’

‘Oh, no, no; you know I won’t.’

‘Thank you! And let me leave you Mary’s keynote of comfort, ‘Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He will bring it to pass.”

‘Thank you,’ said Clara, in her turn, and she was left alone.

CHAPTER XII.

THE FKOST HOUSEHOLD.

The wind of late breathed gently forth, Now shifted east, and east by north,
Bare trees and shrubs but ill, you know, Could shelter them from rain or snow,
Stepping into their nests they paddled, Themselves were chilled, their eggs were addled, Soon every father bird and mother
Grew quarrelsome, and pecked each other. Pairing Time Anticipated-COWPER.

Three weeks longer did the session drag on, but on the joyful day when release was given, Lord Ormersfield was surprised to find Mr. Dynevor’s card upon his table, with an address at Farrance’s hotel.

Louis alone was at leisure to repair thither. He found Clara alone, looking as if her grief were still very fresh, and, though striving to speak gaily, the tears very near the surface.

‘We are going abroad,’ she said; ‘Uncle Oliver thinks it a part of my education, and declares he will not have me behind the Miss Brittons. We are bound straight for Switzerland.’

‘Lucky girl,’ said Louis.

‘I’m sure I don’t care for it,’ said Clara; ‘mountains and pictures are not a bit in my line, unless I had Isabel and you, Louis, to make me care.’

‘Learn, then,’ said Louis; ‘it shows that your education is defective. Yes, I see,’ he continued, as Clara signed heavily, ‘but you don’t know the good it will do you to have your mind forcibly turned aside.’

‘If I could only sit quiet in a corner,’ said Clara.

‘So you will, in many a corner of a railway carriage.’

She smiled a little. ‘The truth is,’ she said, ‘that poor Uncle Oliver cannot be quiet. I can’t see what pleasure Italy will be to him, but he is too miserable at home. I never saw such restless unhappiness!’ and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, Louis! I am glad you would not let me say anything about leaving him. Sometimes when he bids me good night, he puts his arm round me, and says so pitifully that I do not care for him. Do you know, I think mine is the little spar of love that he tries to cling to in the great ship wreck; and I feel quite sorry and hypocritical that it is such a poor, miserable shred.’

‘It will grow,’ said Louis, smiling.

‘I don’t know; he is terribly provoking sometimes–and without dear granny to hinder the rubs. O, Louis! it is true that there is no bearing to stay at home in those great empty rooms!’

‘And Jane?’

‘Oh, she goes,’ said Clara, recovering a smile; ‘she is firmly persuaded that we shall run into another revolution, and as she could not frighten us by the description of your wounds, she decides to come and dress ours when we get any. Dear old Jenny, I am glad she goes; she is the only creature I can talk to; but, Louis, before my uncle comes in, I have something to give you.’

It was the letters that Mary had written to her aunt since the parting, and the Spanish books which she had left in her charge.

‘It is very kind in you, Clara,’ said Louis, fervently.

They talked of Mary, and a little of James, from whom Clara had once heard; but it had been a stiff letter, as if a barrier were between them, and then Mr. Dynevor came in, and seemed pleased to find Louis there; even asking him whether he could not join them on their tour, and help Clara to speak French.

‘No, thank you, sir,’ said Louis, ‘I am afraid my company brought no good luck last time.’

‘Never mind that–manage better now–ha, Clara.’

‘It would be very nice; but he has a great deal too much to do at home,’ said Clara.

Oliver would not be persuaded that Fitzjocelyn would not meet them abroad, and began magniloquently talking of his courier, and his route, and while he was looking for the map, the two cousins smiled, and Clara said,–‘Lucky you to have work at home, and to stay with it.’

‘Only I say, Clara, when you break down anywhere, send me a telegraph.’

‘No such good luck,’ sighed Clara.

‘So he won’t come,’ said her uncle, when he was gone; ‘but we shall have him following us yet–Ha! ha! Never mind, Clara.’

Clara laughed. She knew what her uncle meant, but the notion was to her too impossible and ridiculous even to need a blush. She did not think the world contained Louis’s equal; but she had always known that his love was disposed of, and she no more thought of wishing for it than for any other impossible thing. His affection for Mary gave her no more pain than did that of James for Isabel; and she would have treated with scorn and anger anything that impeached his constancy. The pleasure with which he received Mary’s letters was the single satisfaction that she carried away with her.

And so she was borne away, and her sad heart could not choose but be somewhat enlivened by change and novelty, while her uncle made it his business to show her everything as rapidly as it could be seen, apparently with no relish himself for aught but perpetual movement.

So passed the autumn with Clara. It was not much brighter at Dynevor Terrace. Clara, being still under age, had it not in her power to resign her half of her grandmother’s income, even if her brother would have accepted it; and 70 pounds made a difference in such an income as James’s, more especially as his innovations did not tend to fill the school.

Murmurs were going about that Mr. Frost was severe, or that he was partial. Some censured his old opinions, others his new studies; one had been affronted by being almost told his boy was a dunce, another hated all this new-fangled nonsense. The ladies were all, to a woman, up against his wife, her airs, her poverty, her twins, and her housekeeping; and seldom spoke of her save to contrast her with good old Mrs. Frost. And then it was plain that something was wrong between him and his uncle, and no one could believe but that his temper had been the cause. The good Miss Faithfulls struggled in vain to silence scandal, and keep it from ‘coming round;’ and luckily Isabel was the last person likely either to hear or resent.

The boys met with decreased numbers after the holidays; and James received them with undiminished energy, but with failing patience, and a temper not improved by the late transactions at Cheveleigh, and fretted, as Louis had divined, by home cares.

Of all living women, Isabel was one of the least formed by habits or education to be an economical housewife and the mother of twins. Maternal love did not develop into unwearied delight in infant companionship, nor exclusive interest in baby smiles; and while she had great visions for the future education of her little maidens, she was not desirous to prolong the time spent in their society, but in general preferred peace and Sir Hubert. On the other hand, James was an unusually caressing father. After hours among rough inattentive boys, nothing rested him so much as to fondle those tender creatures; his eldest girl knew him, and was in ecstasy whenever he approached; and the little pair of babies, by their mere soft helplessness, gave him an indescribable sense of fondness and refreshment. His little ones were all the world to him, and he could not see how a pattern mother should ever be so happy as with them around her. He forgot the difference between the pastime of an hour and the employment of a day. The need of such care on her part was the greater since the nursery establishment was deficient. The grand nurse had almost abdicated on the double addition to her charge, and had only been bribed to stay by an ill-spared increase in wages, and a share in an underling, who was also to help Charlotte in her housemaid’s department. Nevertheless, the nurse was always complaining; the children, though healthy, always crying, and their father always certain it was somebody’s fault. Nor did the family expenses diminish, retrench his own indulgences as he might. It was the mistress’s eye that was wanting, and Isabel did not know how to use it. The few domestic cares that she perceived to be her duty were gone through as weary tasks, and her mind continued involved in her own romantic world, where she was oblivious of all that was troublesome or vexatious. Now and then she was aware of a sluggish dulness that seemed to be creeping over her higher aspirations–a want of glow and feeling on religious subjects, even in the most sacred moments; and she wondered and grieved at a condition, such as she had never experienced in what she had thought far more untoward circumstances. She did not see the difference between doing her best when her will was thwarted, and her present life of neglect and indulgence. Nothing roused her; she did not perceive omissions that would have fretted women of housewifely instincts, and her soft dignity and smooth temper felt few annoyances; and though James could sometimes be petulant, he was always withheld from reproving her both by his enthusiastic fondness, and his sense that for him she had quitted her natural station of ease and prosperity.

On a dark hazy November afternoon, when the boys had been unusually obtuse and mischievous, and James, worn-out, wearied, and uncertain whether his cuts had alighted on the most guilty heads, strode home with his arm full of Latin exercises, launched them into the study, and was running up to the drawing-room, when he almost fell over Charlotte, who was scouring the stairs.

She gave a little start and scream, and stood up to let him pass. He was about to rebuke her for doing such work at such an hour; but he saw her flushed, panting, and evidently very tired, and his wrath was averted. Hurrying on to the drawing-room, he found Isabel eagerly writing. She looked up with a pretty smile of greeting; but he only ran his hand through his already disordered hair, and exclaimed–

‘Our stairs are like the Captain of Knockdunder’s. You never know they are cleaned, except by tumbling over the bucket and the maid.’

‘Are they being done?’ said Isabel, quietly. ‘I suppose the maids were busy this morning.’

‘And Charlotte, too! She looks half dead. I thought Ellen was to do such work, and ought to have done it in proper time.’

‘Little Catharine is so fretful, that Ellen cannot be spared from the nursery.’

‘I suppose she might be, if you were not absorbed in that writing.’

‘I had the children with me, while the servants were at dinner; but Kitty was so troublesome, that I could not keep her. I am particularly anxious to finish this.’

‘Some people would think a sick child more engrossing than that–‘ He had very nearly said trash, but he broke off short.

‘There is nothing really the matter with her,’ began Isabel, composedly; but James did not wait to listen, and muttering, ‘That girl will be killed if she goes on,’ he ran up to the nursery, whence he already heard a sound of low fretting.

The child was sitting on the nurse’s lap, with a hot red spot on one cheek, teased and disturbed by the noises that the lesser ones were constantly making, as one lay in her cot, and the other was carried about by the girl. As he entered, she shrieked joyously, and stretched out her arms, and Kitty was at once clinging, hugging round his neck. Sending Ellen down to finish the stairs, he carried off the little girl, fondling and talking to her, and happy in her perfect content. But he did not go to the drawing-room. ‘No, no, mamma must not be interrupted,’ he bitterly thought, as he carried her down to the fireless study, hung his plaid round himself and her, and walked up and down the room with her, amusing her till she fell into a slumber on his shoulder.

Isabel could not at once resume her pen. Her even temper was for once ruffled, and her bosom swelled at the thought that his reproach was unjust; she was willing to do what was fitting, and he ought not to expect her to be an absolute nursery-maid. Women must keep up the tone of their own minds, and she might be being useful to the world as well as to her own family. If he wanted a mere household drudge, why had he not looked elsewhere? Up went her queenly head, as she believed her powers were meant for other things; but her heart gave a painful throb at the recollection that poverty had been her voluntary choice, and had seemed perfect felicity with James. Alas! she loved, honoured, and admired him, as her upright, unselfish, uncompromising husband, but worries, and rebukes, and tart answers, had made many a rent in the veil in which her fancy had enfolded him. Sir Roland had disappeared, and James and Sir Hubert were falling farther and farther asunder.

And Isabel sighed, partly at the memory of the imaginary being for whom she had taken James, and partly at the future prospect, the narrow sphere, the choice between solitude and dull society, the homely toils that must increase, worn-out garments, perpetual alphabets, children always whining, and James always irritated, thinking her remiss, and coming in with that furrow on his forehead, and his hair standing up wildly. She shrank from the contemplation, took her letter-case on her knee, moved close to the fire to profit by the light, stirred up a clear flame, and proceeded with the benevolent hermit, who came to the rescue when Sir Hubert was at the last gasp, and Adeline had received his beautiful resigned words. The hermit had transported him into his hut, and comforted Adeline, and was beginning a consolatory harangue, making revelations that were to set everything right, when just as he had gone as far as ‘My son, know that I did not always wear this amice,’ there was a tap at the door, and she saw Fitzjocelyn, who had been at Oakstead for the last few weeks, attending to some matters connected with his constituency.

‘Ah! is it you?’ she said, her lap too full of papers for her to rise. ‘I did not know you were come home.’

‘I came yesterday; and what company do you think I had in the train as far as Estminster?’

‘Ah, I can guess! How does Louisa look?’

‘Rather languid; but Estminster is to work wonders. She declares that Northwold is her best cure, and I am speculating whether she will prevail. I think Lady Conway dreads your example.’

‘Mamma does not allow for the force of imagination,’ said Isabel, not exactly knowing what prompted either the words or the sigh.

‘I am come to ask if you will kindly give me a dinner. My father is gone to the book-club meeting, so I thought we would try to revive old times,’ he said, smiling, but sadly, for the present scene was little like the No. 5 of old times.

‘We shall be delighted,’ said Isabel, with alacrity, relieved at avoiding a tete-it-tete with her husband at present, and refreshed by the sight of one belonging to her former life, and external to her present round of monotonous detail. ‘Fortunately, it is not a lecture night and James will be very glad.’

I suppose he ia not come in from school?’

‘Yea, he is. I think he is in the study. I will let him know,’ she said, with her hand on the bell.

‘I will go to him,’ said Louis, departing out of consideration that she might wish for space to attend to dinner, room, and dress. The two last were scarcely in such a state as he had been used to see at No. 5: books were on the sofa, the table-cover hung awry; the Dresden Shepherd’s hat was grimed, and his damsel’s sprigged gown hemmed with dust; there were no flowers in the vases, which his aunt had never left unsupplied; and Isabel, though she could not be otherwise than handsome and refined, had her crape rumpled, and the heavy folds of her dark hair looking quite ready for the evening toilette; and, as she sat on her low seat by the fire, the whole had an indescribable air of comfort passing into listless indulgence.

Fitzjocelyn politely apologized to Ellen for a second time stepping over her soapy deluge, and, as he opened the study door with a preliminary knock, a voice, as sharp and petulant as it was low, called out, ‘Hollo! Be quiet there, can’t you! You’ve no business here yet, and I have no time to waste on your idleness.’

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said Louis, advancing into the dim light of the single bed-room candle, which only served to make visible the dusky, unshuttered windows, and the black gulf of empty grate. James was sitting by the table, with his child wrapped in the plaid, asleep on his breast, and his disengaged hand employed in correcting exercises. Without moving, he held it out, purple and chilled, exclaiming, ‘Ha! Fitzjocelyn, I took you for that lout of a Garett.’

‘Is this an average specimen of your reception of your scholars?’

‘I was afraid of his waking the child. She has been unwell all day, and I have scarcely persuaded her to go to sleep.’

‘Emulating Hooker.’

‘As little in patience as in judgment,’ sighed James.

‘And which of them is it who is lulled by the strains of ‘As in proesenti?”

‘Which?’ said James, somewhat affronted. ‘Can’t you tell sixteen months from five?’

‘I beg her pardon; but I can’t construct a whole child from an inch of mottled leg–as Professor Owen would a megalosaurus from a tooth. Does she walk?’

‘Poor child, she _must_!’ said James. ‘She thinks it very hard to have two sisters so little younger than herself,’ and he peeped under the plaid at the little brown head, and drew it closer round, with a look of almost melancholy tenderness, guarding carefully against touching her with his cold hands.

‘She will think it all the better by-and-by,’ said Louis.

‘You had better not stay here in the cold. I’ll come when I have heard that boy’s imposition and looked over these exercises.’ And he ran his hand through his hair again.

‘Don’t! You look like enough to a lion looking out of a bush to frighten ten boys already,’ said Louis. ‘I’ll do the exercises,’ pulling the copy-books away.

‘What, you don’t trust me?’ as James detained them.

‘No, I don’t,’ said James, his cousin’s brightness awakening his livelier manner. ‘It needs an apprenticeship to be up to their blunders.’

‘Let me read them to you. I gave notice to Isabel that I am come to dinner, and no doubt she had rather I were disposed of.’

James objected no farther, and the dry labour was illuminated by the discursive remarks and moralizings which Louis allowed to flow in their natural idle course, both to divert his dispirited cousin, and to conceal from himself how much cause there was for depression. When the victim of the imposition approached, Louis prevented the dreaded clumsy entrance, seized on a Virgil, and himself heard the fifty lines, scarcely making them serve their purpose as a punishment, but sending the culprit away in an unusually amiable temper.

Services from Louis were too natural to James to be requited with thanks; but he was not uncivil in his notice of a wrong tense that had been allowed to pass, and the question was argued with an eagerness which showed that he was much enlivened. On the principle that Louis must care for all that was his, as he rose to take the still-sleeping child upstairs, he insisted that his cousin should come with him, if only for the curiosity of looking at the other two little animals, and learning the difference between them and Kitty, at whom he still looked as if her godfather had insulted her.

It was pretty to see his tenderness, as he detached the little girl from her hold, and laid her in the cot, making a little murmuring sound; and boasted how she would have shown off if awake, and laughed over her droll little jealousies of his even touching the twins. As she was asleep, he might venture; and it was comical to hear him declaring that no one need mistake them for each other, and to see him trying to lay them side by side on his knees to be compared, when they would roll over, and interlace their little scratching fingers; and Louis stood by teasing him, and making him defend their beauty in terms that became extravagant. He was really happy here; the careworn look smoothed away, the sharpness left his tones, and there was nothing but joyous exultation and fondness in his whole manner.

The smile did not last long, for Louis was well-nigh thrown downstairs by a dustpan in a dark corner, and James was heard muttering that nothing in that house was ever in its right place; and while Louis was suggesting that it was only himself who was not in the right place, they entered the drawing-room, which, like the lady, was in the same condition as that in which he had left it. Since Isabel had lost Marianne and other appliances, she had thought it not worth while to dress for dinner; so nothing had happened, except that the hermit had proved to be Adeline’s great uncle, and had begun to clear up the affair of the sacrilege.

He was reluctant to leave off when the gentlemen appeared; but Isabel shut him up, and quietly held out the portfolio to James, who put it on the side-table, and began to clear the books away and restore some sort of order; but it was a task beyond his efforts.

Dinner was announced by Charlotte, as usual, all neat grace and simplicity, in her black dress and white apron, but flushed and heated by exertions beyond her strength. All that depended on her had been well done; but it would not seem to have occurred to her mistress that three people ate more than two; and to Louis, who had been too busy to take any luncheon, the two dishes seemed alarmingly small. One was of haricot mutton, the other of potatoes; and Charlotte might be seen to blush as she carried Lord Fitzjocelyn the plate containing a chop resembling Indian rubber, decorated with grease and with two balls of nearly raw carrot, and followed it up with potatoes apparently all bruises.

Louis talked vigorously of Virginia and Louisa–secretly marvelling how his hosts had brought themselves down to such fare. Isabel was dining without apparently seeing anything amiss, and James attempted nothing but a despairing toss of his chin, as he pronounced the carrots underdone. After the first course there was a long interval, during which Isabel and Louis composedly talked about the public meeting which he had been attending, and James fidgetted in the nervousness of hardly-restrained displeasure; but suddenly a frightful shrieking arose, and he indignantly cried, ‘That girl!’

‘Poor Charlotte in her hysterics again,’ said Isabel, moving off, quickly for her, with the purple scent-bottle at her chatelaine.

‘Isabel makes her twice as bad,’ exclaimed James; ‘to pet her with eau-de-Cologne is mere nonsense. Some day I shall throw a bucket of cold water over her.’

Isabel had left the door open, and they heard her softly comforting Charlotte with ‘Never mind,’ and ‘Lord Fitzjocelyn would not care,’ till the storm lulled. Charlotte crept off to her room, and Isabel returned to the dinner-table.

‘Well, what’s the matter now?’ said James.

‘Poor Charlotte!’ said Isabel, smiling; ‘it seems that she trusted to making a grand appearance with the remains of yesterday’s pudding, and that she was quite overset by the discovery that Ellen and Miss Catharine had been marauding on them.’

‘You don’t mean that Kitty has been eating that heavy pudding at this time of night?’ cried James.

‘Kitty eats everything,’ was the placid answer, ‘and I do not think we can blame Ellen, for she often comes down after our dinner to find something for the nursery supper.’

‘Things go on in the most extraordinary manner,’ muttered James.

‘I suppose Charlotte misses Jane,’ said Louis. ‘She looks ill.’

‘No wonder,’ said James, ‘she is not strong enough for such work. She has no method, and yet she is the only person who ever thinks of doing a thing properly. I wish your friend Madison would come home and take her off our hands, for she is always alternating between fits of novel-reading and of remorse, in which she nearly works herself to death with running after lost time.’

‘I should be sorry to part with her,’ said Isabel; ‘she is so quiet, and so fond of the children.’

‘She will break down some day,’ said James; ‘if not before, certainly when she hears that Madison has a Peruvian wife.’

‘There is no more to come,’ said Isabel, rising; ‘shall we come upstairs?’

James took up the candles, and Louis followed, considerably hungry, and for once provoked by Isabel’s serene certainty that nobody cared whether there were anything to eat. However, he had forgotten all by the time he came upstairs, and began to deliver a message from Lady Conway, that she was going to write in a day or two to beg for a visit from Isabel during her sojourn at Estminster, a watering-place about thirty miles distant. Isabel’s face lighted with pleasure. ‘I could go?’ she said, eagerly turning towards James.

‘Oh, yes, if you wish it,’ he answered, gruffly, as if vexed at her gratification.

‘I mean, of course, if you can spare me,’ she said, with an air of more reserve.

‘If you wish it, go by all means. I hope you will.’

‘The Christmas holidays are so near, that we may both go,’ said Isabel; but James still had not recovered his equanimity, and Louis thought it best to begin talking of other things; and, turning to James, launched into the results of his Inglewood crops, and the grand draining plan which was to afford Marksedge work for the winter, and in which his father had become much interested. But he did not find that ready heed to all that occupied him of which he used to be certain at the Terrace. Isabel cared not at all for farming, and took no part in ‘mere country squire’s talk;’ and James was too much overburthened with troubles and anxieties to enter warmly into those of others. Of those to whom Louis’s concerns had been as their own, one had been taken from him, the other two were far away; and the cold ‘yes,’ ‘very good,’ fell coldly on his ear.

The conversation reverted to the school; and here it appeared that two years’ experience had taken away the freshness of novelty, and the cycle of disappointment had begun. More boys were quitting the school than the new-comers could balance; and James spoke with acute vexation of the impracticability of the boys, and the folly of the parents. The attendance at his evening lectures had fallen off; and he declared that there was a spirit of opposition to whatever he did. The boys disobeyed, knowing that they should be favoured at home, and if they were punished, the parents talked of complaints to the trustees. The Sunday teaching was treated as especially obnoxious: the genteel mothers talked ridiculously about its resembling a charity-school, the fathers did not care whether their sons went or not, and he had scarcely five boys who appeared there regularly, and of them one was the butcher’s son, who came rather in spite of his parents than with their consent. Attendance at church was more slack than ever; and when he lectured the defaulters, and gave them additional tasks in the week, it was resented as an injustice. To crown all, Mr. Ramsbotham had called, and had been extremely insolent about a boy whose ears had been boxed for reading Pickwick in school, under cover of his Latin grammar, and Isabel was almost indignant with Miss Faithfull for having ventured to hint to her that she wished Mr. Frost would be a little more gentle with the boys.

Isabel was fully alive now, and almost as vehement as her husband, in her complaints against his many foes. There was no lack of sympathy here, indeed, there might be rather too much, for she did not afford the softening influence that James had hitherto found at home.

‘Well, Jem,’ said Louis, at last, ‘I think you should keep your hands off the boys.’

‘You are not bitten with the nonsense about personal dignity and corporal punishment?’ said James.

‘By no means. I have an infinite respect for the great institution of flogging; but a solemn execution is one thing, a random stroke another.’

‘Theories are very good things till you come to manage two score dunces without sense or honour. There is only one sort of appeal to their feelings that tells.’

‘Maybe so, but I have my doubts whether you are the man to make it.’

Louis was sorry he had so spoken, for a flush of pain came up in James’s face at the remembrance of what Fitzjocelyn had long ago forgotten–a passionate blow given to deter him from a piece of wilful mischief, in which he was persisting for the mere amusement of provoking. It stood out among all other varieties of cuff, stroke, and knock, by the traces it had left, by Mrs. Frost’s grief at it, and the forgiveness from the Earl, and it had been the most humiliating distress of James’s childhood. It humbled him even now, and he answered–

‘You may be right, Louis; I may be not sufficiently altered since I was a boy. I have struck harder than I intended more than once, and I have told the boys so.’

‘I am sure, if they had any generosity, they would have been touched with your amends,’ cried Isabel.

‘After all, a schoolmaster’s life does not tend to mend the temper,’ concluded James, sighing, and passing his hand over his forehead.

‘No,’ thought Louis, ‘nor does Isabel’s mutton!’

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CONWAY HOUSEHOLD.

And ye shall walk in silk attire,
And siller hae to spare,
Gin ye’ll consent to be his bride, Nor think of Donald mair.
Miss BLAMIRE.

What makes you so lame to-day?’ asked Lord Ormersfield, as Louis crossed the library, on returning from an interview to which he had been summoned in another room.

‘I only stumbled over an obstruction on the Frost staircase yesterday,’ aaid Louis. ‘Poor Jem chose to have me up to the nursery; and to see him in the paternal character is the funniest as well as the pleasantest spectacle the house affords.’

‘Ah! it is not what it was,’ said the Earl. ‘I suppose I must call there before the holidays, though,’ he added, reluctantly. ‘But what did that man, Ramsbotham, want with you?’

‘To ask our interest for that appointment for his friend Grant.’

‘Indeed! what could bring him here?’

‘Why, unluckily, he fancied he had some claim on me, on the score of Jem Frost’s election. I was too innocent then to know what those things go for.’

‘You may say so!’ ejaculated the Earl. ‘So he was insolent enough to bring that up, was he?’

‘Worse,’ said Fitzjocelyn; ‘he wanted to threaten that, unless I would oblige him now, there were matters which it was his duty to lay before the trustees. I told him he would do, of course, whatever was his duty; whereupon he thought my Lordship was interested in Mr. Frost.’

‘Intolerably impertinent! I hope you set him down!’

‘I told him that neither Mr. Frost nor I should wish him to pretermit his duty on any consideration whatever. Then he harked back to what he did for us at the election; and I was forced to tell him that if he considered that he had thereby established a claim on me, I must own myself in his debt; but as to reciprocating it, by putting in a person like Grant, that was against my conscience. He flew into a passion, informed me that Mr. Frost would take the consequences, mounted the British Lion, and I bowed him out upon that majestic quadruped, talking grandly of illiberal prejudices and the rising generation.’

‘You acknowledged that he had a claim on you?’

‘As things go in this world, I suppose it is true.’

‘Louis! you will never know how to deal with those people.’

‘I am afraid not. I could not, either boldly or diplomatically, get rid of the charge; so there was nothing for it but to confess. That’s not the worst of it. I am afraid he really will be able to take revenge on poor Jem, and I’m sure he can’t afford to lose any more scholars.’

‘Such a fellow as that will not have much in his power against James,’ said Lord Ormersfield. ‘What I am afraid of is, that you have cut the ground from under your feet. I cannot see how you are ever to stand for Northwold.’

‘Nor I,’ said Louis. ‘In fact, father, I have always thought it most wonderfully kind forbearance that you never reproached me more for my doings on that occasion. I believe we were all too happy,’ he presently added, with a sigh, which was re-echoed by his father, at the same time trying to say something about youthfulness, to which Louis, who had been leaning thoughtfully on the mantelpiece, presently answered–‘How much wiser old people are than young! An original axiom, is not it? but it is the last which one learns!’

‘You would hardly act in the same way now?’ said his father.

‘I wonder when it ever answers to interfere with the natural course of events!’ responded Louis, musingly. ‘There were two things that Mr. Calcott told me once upon a time.’ Those two things he left unuttered. They were–that the gentleman would be wasted on the school, and that the lady was not made for a poor man’s wife. No wonder they made him sigh, but he concluded by exclaiming aloud– ‘Well, I hope they will both go to Estminster, and come back with fresh life!’

The Estminster invitation was already on the road; but, unfortunately, Lady Conway had been unable to secure lodgings large enough to receive the children. She was urgent, however, that Isabel should come as soon as possible, since Louisa had been more unwell than usual, and was pining for her eldest sister; and she hoped that James would join her there as soon as the holidays should set him free.

James was hurt to find Isabel so much delighted to go, but resolved that she should not be deprived of the pleasure, and petulantly denied the offers, which became even entreaties, that she might wait till he could accompany her. He arranged, therefore, that he should follow her in a fortnight’s time, the Miss Faithfulls undertaking the charge of their small namesakes; and Lady Conway wrote to fix a day when Delaford should come to take care of Isabel on her journey.

James and Isabel laughed at this measure. Mrs. James Frost was certainly not in circumstances to carry such a hero of the buttery in her suite; and Lady Conway herself had more sense than to have proposed it, but for Delaford’s own representations. In fact, there was a pretty face at Dynevor Terrace, and he had been piqued enough by the return of his letters to be resolved on re-establixhing his influence. Therefore did he demonstrate to my Lady that the only appropriate trains would bring him to Northwold at seven in the evening, and take him and Mrs. James Frost Dynevor away at eleven next morning; and therefore did Isabel look up in a sudden fit of recollection, as the breakfast was being removed, and say, ‘Charlotte, Delaford is coming on Tuesday to fetch me to Estminster, and will sleep here that night.’

Isabel little guessed that in the days when she viewed the fantastic Viscount as her greatest enemy, the announcement of his approach would have been far less appalling to her.

‘The wretch! the traitor! the vile deceiver!’ thought Charlotte, not chary of her epithets, and almost ready to wreak her vengeance on the silver spoons. ‘He has gone and broken poor Marianne’s heart, and now he wants to treat me the same, and make me faithless to poor Tom, that is up in the mountain-tops and trusts to me! O me, what shall I do? Mrs. Beckett is gone, and there’s no one to give me an advice! If I speak to him or scorn him, he’ll take his advantage all alike– and his words are so fine and so soft, that do what I will to hate him when I’m away, he is sure to wind round me when he’s there; and I can’t get away, and I’m a poor, lonely, fatherless and motherless orphan, and a vain girl, that has listened already to his treacherous suit more than poor Tom would think for.’

Charlotte worked on in much grief and perplexity for some minutes, revolving the vanity that had led to her follies, and humbling herself in her own eyes. Suddenly, a flash of thought crossed her, and woke a smile upon her face, almost a look of mischief. She tied on a clean apron, and running upstairs, opened the drawing-room door, and said, ‘If you please, ma’am, might I ask Miss Faithfull’s Martha to tea on Tuesday night?’

‘Oh yes, if you like,’ said Isabel, never raising her eyes from the rebuilding of the ruined chapel in the valley.

Away skipped Charlotte, and in two minutes was at the back door of the House Beautiful. Mrs. Martha had been grimly kind to her ever since she had been afflicted with the cook for a fellow-servant, and received her only with a reproof for coming gadding out, when she ought to be hard at work; but when she heard the invitation, she became wrathful–she had rather go ten miles out of her way than even look at ‘that there Ford.’

But Charlotte explained her purpose, and implored, and put her in mind that Mrs. Beckett was gone, and she had no protector; and Martha relented, told her that if she had minded her she would never have been in the scrape at all, but agreed, not without satisfaction, to afford Mr. Delaford the society of his old acquaintance.

And so when Mr. Delaford, with his whiskers freshly curled and his boots in a state of fascinating polish, walked up Dynevor Terrace, the door was opened by Ellen, and the red-faced cook and the upright Mrs. Martha sat on either side the fire. Daintily did he greet them, and stand warming himself before the fire, adapting his conversation to them for the next ten minutes, before he ventured to ask whether Miss Arnold were still an inmate. ‘Taking out dinner–taking in tea,’ gruffly replied Martha.

Mr. Delaford waited, but Ellen only ran in for one moment to fetch the kettle, and Martha discoursed as usual on the gold mines in Peru. By-and-by, when the parlour tea could by no possibility be supposed to be farther prolonged, there swept into the kitchen the stately nurse. Charlotte had run up to the nursery, and begged as a favour that she might be left to watch the children, while Mrs. Nurse entertained Mr. Delaford below-stairs; and in pity to so grand a gentleman, constrained to mix with such ‘low servants,’ the nurse had yielded, and Charlotte sat safe and sound by the nursery fire, smiling at his discomfiture, and reading over Tom’s letters with an easier conscience than for many a day.

Mr. Delaford was too much of a gentleman to be uncivil to the three dames by the kitchen fire, but he watched every step and every creaking door. He even went the length of coming up to family prayers, in hopes of there meeting Charlotte; but she only joined the procession at the parlour door, and had flown upstairs, like a little bird, before he was out again.

The gentleman was affronted, and resolved to make her feel it. They could not but meet at the kitchen breakfast, and he barely acknowledged her. This was the most trying stroke of all, for it set her, in the eyes of the cook and nurse, on a level with the inferior servants, to whom he would not have deigned a look, and it was not easy to resist showing that she was on more familiar terms with him than all. But the instinct of self-protection and the wisdom of sincerity came to her aid. She abstained from raising her eyes to his face, from one conscious word or glance; she locked herself into her pantry when she took down the breakfast-things, and avoided every encounter, even when she had begun to feel that it would have been more flattering had he made more efforts. At last, dire necessity obliged her to accept his aid in carrying her mistress’s box down the stairs. He walked backwards, she forwards. She would not meet his eye, and he was too well-bred for one word on the stairs; but in the garden he exclaimed, ‘Miss Arnold, what have I done?’

‘I never ought to have listened to you,’ said Charlotte. ‘It was not right by neither of us; so please say no more.’

‘If you could understand–‘

‘I don’t want to understand nothing.’

Charlotte drove him on with the box till they were close to the fly, and then, leaving him and the man to adjust the packing, flew back to announce that all was ready for her mistress. The last kisses were given to the children, and a message left with Charlotte for her master, who was in school; then she stood with Miss Catharine in her arms, and saw the fly drive off.

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Cook, ‘that butler thinks himself a great beau, no doubt! I asked him whether he thought you pretty, Charlotte, and he said you hadn’t no air nor no complexion. It’s as I tells you– nobody will never take no notice of you while you goes about so dowdy.’

Charlotte did not know whether she was glad that the cook could not tease her about Delaford, or mortified to be supposed beneath his notice. No air, forsooth! She who had often heard it said that she looked like any lady!

‘But oh,’ said Charlotte to herself, as she spent her daily five minutes at noonday in quiet thought, ‘am I not a poor silly thing not to be thankful that care has been round me this time, and that I have not been let to do nothing giddy nor false by Tom, whatever I may have thought!’

Meanwhile, Isabel had found it much harder to part with her babies for three weeks than it had seemed at the first proposal; and there were tears in her eyes as she gazed at the peaked, red-tiled roof of the old grammar-school, and reckoned the days and hours before her husband would join her.

Other associations revived when she found herself at Estminster, and was received with shrieks of joy, caresses, and exclamations too fond and foolish to bear repetition; and then the pale Louisa rested against her, stroking her hand, and Lady Conway fondled her, and Virginia, looking formed and handsome, retreated a little way to study her and declare that she was the same Isabel, neither altered nor grown older–it was all a dream that she had ever left them.

She almost felt it so herself, so entirely did she fit into the old habits, the little quiet dinner (only it seemed unusually good), the subsequent closing round the fire with the addition of Miss King and Louisa, the easy desultory chat, the books with Mudie’s stamp lying about, the music which must be practised. It was very like being Miss Conway still; and when she awoke the next morning to find it late, and to the impulse of hurrying up, or _not_ hurrying, expecting to find James making breakfast himself, and cross at being made late for school, she turned on her pillow, half doubting whether she had dreamt these two years in one long night, and remembering that captive mermaid, who had but to resume her maritime headgear and return to her native element, to forget the very existence of her fisherman husband and children. No! Isabel was not come to that! but she was almost ashamed to enjoy her extra hour’s repose; and then the leisurely breakfast–nay, even the hot rolls and clear coffee were appreciated; and she sighed as she called up the image of the breakfast over an hour ago, the grim kettle, the bad butter, the worse fire, and James, cold and hurried, with Kitty on his knee gnawing a lump of crust. It was a contrast to Lady Conway reading her letters and discussing engagements with comfortable complacency, and Virginia making suggestions, and Louisa’s grave bright eyes consulting hers, and Miss King quietly putting in a remark, and the anticipation of Walter’s return, as if he were the only person wanting.

The sisters always resented their mother’s habit of talking of ‘poor Isabel,’ regarding her as the happiest of women; and they were confirmed in their belief by seeing her looking exceedingly well and handsome, with perhaps a little more dignity and a sweeter smile. Virginia loved to snatch private interviews with Miss King, to express her confidence in dear Isabel’s felicity, in the infallibility and other perfections of James, and in the surpassing cleverness of little Catharine; and Louisa was always sighing to behold the twins. But, to the delight of the school-room, the chapel in the valley was produced in a complete form, and a very pretty romance it was; but the hermit and the brilliant denouement were quite a shock to the young ladies, just when their tears were prepared, and Virginia was almost angry.

‘Oh, my dear, there is trouble enough in the world!’ said Isabel; ‘Hubert and Adeline have been my companions so long, that at least I must leave them happy.’

‘Indeed,’ said Miss King, ‘I am almost surprised that you have been able to finish them at all, with so much re-writing.’

To her surprise, Isabel blushed, and her answer partook of self- defence. ‘James is so busy, and the children so young, that this has been my great resource. When my little girls are older, I must begin educating in earnest. I want to talk over Madame Neckar’s book with you, Miss King.’

‘All systems begin alike from infant obedience, I believe,’ said the governess.

‘Yes,’ said Isabel, ‘little Catharine is obedience itself with us. It is curious to see how well she knows the difference between us and the nurses. There are great tempests upstairs, and her papa takes them very much to heart. He always has her downstairs when he is at home; and he has accustomed her to so much attention, that there is no doing anything while she is by, or I would have her more with me.’

The self-justifying tone rather puzzled Miss King. She noted likewise that Isabel was backward in entering into details of her home life, and that she never said a word to encourage her sister’s wishes to visit her at Northwold. Knowing Isabel as the governess did, she was sure that she would not merely talk of things on the surface, if her spirit were fully content. Only once did she go any deeper, and that was as she took up a little book of religious poetry of which she had been very fond. ‘Ah!’ she said, ‘I don’t feel these things as I used. I think practical life dulls one.’

‘I should have said, practical life made things real,’ gaid Miss King.

Isabel had not found out that having duties and not doing them was less practical than having no particular task.

Another cloud of mystery was over the relations with Mr. Dynevor and Clara. Isabel baffled all Lady Conway’s inquiries and advice by entering into no particulars, but adhering to her own version of the matter, ‘that Mr. Dynevor had required of James conditions incompatible with his duty,’ and not deigning to explain either duty or conditions, as beyond the capacity of her hearer.

Of Clara no account was vouchsafed, except that Isabel believed she was abroad; ‘they had been very much disappointed in her,’ and Isabel was afraid that she was a good deal altered; and the snbject seemed so painful, that Virginia did not venture to push her inquiries any farther.

The great subject of interest in the Conway family was that Virginia and Louisa were going to lose their maid; and the suggestion somehow arose that Charlotte should be her successor. It was agreed on all hands that nature had formed her for a lady’s-maid, and a few lessons from a hairdresser would make her perfection; and she would be invaluable in reading to Louisa when restless and unable to sleep.

Isabel gave herself credit for the most notable arrangement she had ever made–promoting the little maiden, whom she really liked, and relieving herself from the constant annoyance about sparing Ellen from the nursery by obtaining a stronger housemaid. She had only a few scruples, or rather she knew that James would have some, as to exposing Charlotte to Delaford’s attentions after what she had heard in Clara’s letter; but the least hint on this score led to a panegyric upon Delaford’s perfections–his steadiness, his prudence, his cleverness on journeys, his usefulness in taking care of Walter. ‘I know that Walter is safe when he is with Delaford,’ said Lady Conway. And even the sensible Miss King observed, smiling, ‘that there always _would_ be nonsense between men and maidservants; and there were many more dangerous places than the present. She would watch over Charlotte, and Fanshawe was quite to be trusted.’

The Conway family knew rather less about their own servants’ hall than they did of feudal establishments five hundred years ago.

Still, Isabel, in her superior prudence, resolved to consult Fanshawe on the true state of affairs. Fanshawe was a comfortable portly personage, chiefly absorbed in her caps and her good cheer, and faring smoothly through life, on the principle of always saying what was expected of her, and never seeing anything to anybody’s disadvantage.

She assured Mrs. James Frost that she did not think Delaford to blame; many girls would be foolish about a man with personal advantages, but she could not see it was his fault. Poor Marianne had been always weakly, and, ‘After all, ma’am, some young women will put constructions upon anything,’ said Mrs. Fanshawe, deciding that at least she should make no mischief by sacrificing poor Marianne.

Isabel did not like to come to more individual inquiries, lest she should prepare discomfort for Charlotte; but she easily satisfied herself that all was as right as convenient, and having occasion to write some orders to Charlotte, communicated the proposal, saying that all should be settled on her return.

There was wild work in the brain of the poor little Lady of Eschalott. No more stairs to scrub! No more mats to shake! No more hurrying after lost time, and an uneasy remembrance of undone duties! No more hardening of fingers, no more short-sleeved lilac, no more vulgarities from the cook! Ladylike dress, high wages, work among flowers and gauzes, reading to Miss Louisa, housekeeper’s-room society, rank as ‘Arnold’ or ‘Miss Arnold!’ How much more suitable to the betrothed of the Superintendent at San Benito! To be sure, she was aware that a serpent lurked among the flowers; but she had shown him a bit of her mind once, and she found she could take care of herself, and keep him at a distance.

With her eyes shut, she already beheld Jane Beckett meeting her, when seated at the back of a carriage, with a veil and a parasol, addressing her as a grand lady, and kissing and praising her when she found her little Charlotte after all.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE TRUSTEES’ MEETING.

Know you not, master, to some kind of men Their graces serve them but as enemies? As You Like It.

‘My Lord,’ said Frampton, entering the library late one evening, in visible perturbation, and addressing himself to Fitzjocelyn, ‘there is a person wishing to see you.’

‘What person at this time of night?’ said Louis.

‘In fact, my Lord,’ said the butler, hesitating, ‘it is the young person at Mr. Frost’s.’

‘Something must be the matter!’ cried Louis, starting up.

‘She would explain nothing to me, she insisted on seeing your lordship; and–in fact–she was in such a state of agitation that I left her with Mrs. Bowles.’

Louis lost no time in hurrying into the hall. Charlotte must have followed Frampton without his knowledge, for she was already there; and, springing with clasped hands towards Fitzjocelyn, she cried, sobbing, ‘My Lord, my Lord, come to master!’

‘Is he ill? or the children?’

‘No, no! but he’ll be off, he’ll be off like poor Tom!’ exclaimed Charlotte, between her gasps; ‘but I’ve locked it!’ and she waved a door-key, and seemed about to laugh hysterically.

‘Sit down, Charlotte,’ said Louis, authoritatively, bringing a chair. ‘If you do not explain yourself reasonably at once, I shall call Mrs. Bowles, and desire her to put you to bed.’

She made an imploring gesture, sank trembling into the chair, and, after a few incoherent efforts, managed to speak–‘If you would but come to master, my Lord–I know it is something bad.’

Louis thought it wisest to despatch Frampton at once to order the carriage to be brought out immediately; and this so far pacified Charlotte, that she could speak comprehensibly on the cause of her alarm. ‘He is in such a way!’ she began. ‘He went out to the school-examination, I believe, in his cap and gown, this morning; he was gone all day, but just at dusk I heard him slam-to the front door, fit to shake the house down, like he does when he is put out. I’d a thought nothing of that; but by-and-by I heard him stamping up nnd down the study, like one in a frenzy, and I found his cap and gown lying all of a heap in a corner of the hall. Then, Mr. Calcott came to call; and when I went into the study, master had his head down on the table, and wouldn’t see no one; he fairly stamped to me to be gone, and bring him no more messages. Mr. Calcott, he looked so sorry and concerned, and sent in again. I was to say that he hoped some arrangement might be made, if Mr. Frost would only see him; but master had locked the door, and hallooed out that I was to say he was obliged, but couldn’t see nobody. So Mr. Calcott was forced to go; and there was poor master. Not one morsel of dinner has he had. I knocked, but he would not open, only said he did not want for nothing. No, not even when ’twas time for Miss Catharine to come down. She thumped at the door, and called ‘Papa’ so pretty; but he never heeded, except to call out, ‘Take her away!’ Charlotte was crying so much that she could hardly proceed. ‘Then I knew it must be something very melancholy indeed. But by-and-by he opens the door with a great jerk, and runs right up to the lumber-room. I saw his face, and ’twas like a corpse, my Lord; and he brings down his portmanteau into his dressing-room, and I hears him pulling out all his drawers. ‘He’ll be gone!’ I thinks, ‘he’ll be off to America, too! And my poor mistress!’ So I went up quietly, and in secret, unbeknown to them all, and got my bonnet; and I’ve run every step of the way–for you are the only one, my Lord, as can soothe his wounded spirit; and I’ve locked both the doors, and here’s the key, so he can’t be gone till you come.’

‘Locked the doors!’ cried Louis. ‘What have you done? Suppose your mistress or Miss Clara were ill?’

‘Oh, no–no, it is not that,’ said Charlotte; ‘or why should he flee from the face of his children? Why, I took Miss Salome up to the top of the stairs, when she was screaming and crying with all her might, and you would not have thought he was within a mile of her. No, my Lord, no one can’t do nothing but you.’

‘I’ll come at once,’ said Louis. ‘You did quite right to fetch me; but it was a frightful thing to lock the door.’

Sending Charlotte to the housekeeper, he went to communicate her strange intelligence to his father, who shared his dismay so much as almost to wish to come with him to Northwold; but Louis felt he could deal better alone with James. His fears took the direction of the Italian travellers, knowing that any misfortune to them must recoil on James with double agony after such a parting.

In very brief space the carriage was at Northwold, and desiring that it should wait at the corner of the Terrace, Louis followed Charlotte, who had jumped down from the box, and hastened forward to unlock the door; and he was in time to hear the angry, though suppressed, greeting that received her. ‘Pretty doings, ma’am! So I have caught you out at last, though you did think to lock me in! He shan’t come in! I wonder at your impudence! The very front door!’

‘Oh, cook, don’t!’ The poor breathless voice managed at last to be heard. ‘This is Lord Fitzjocelyn.’

Cook had vanished out of sight or hearing before Louis’s foot was within the threshold. The study-door was open, the fire expiring, the books and papers pushed back; and James’s fierce, restless tread was heard pacing vehemently about his own room. Louis ran hastily up, and entered at once. His cousin stood staring with wild eyes, his hair was tossed and tangled, his face lividly pale, and the table was strewn with fragments of letters, begun and torn up again; his clothes lay tumbled in disorder on the floor, where his portmanteau lay open and partly packed. All Louis’s worst alarm seemed fulfilled at once. ‘What has happened?’ he cried, catching hold of both James’s hands, as if to help him to speak. ‘Who is ill?–not Clara?’

‘No–no one is ill,’ said James, withdrawing his hands, and kneeling down by his box, with an air of feigned indifference; ‘I am only going to London.’

‘To London?’

‘Aye, to see what is to be done,–ship–chaplaincy, curacy, literature, selling sermons at five shillings each,–what not. I am no longer master of Northwold school!’ He strove to speak carelessly, but bending over his packing, thrust down the clothes with desperate blows.

Louis sat down, too much dismayed to utter a word.

‘One morning’s work in the conclave,’ said James, with the same assumed ease. ‘Here’s their polite reprimand, which they expected me to put up with,–censuring all my labour, forbidding Sunday-classes, accusing me of partiality and cruelty, with a lot of nonsense about corporal punishment and dignity. I made answer, that if I were master at all, I must be at liberty to follow my own views, otherwise I would resign; and, would you believe it, they snapped at the offer- -they thought it highly desirable! There’s an end of it.’

‘Impossible!’ cried Louis, casting his eye over the reprimand, and finding that the expressions scarcely warranted James’s abstract of them. ‘You must have mistaken!’

‘Do you doubt _that_?’ and James threw to him a sheet where, in Richardson’s clerkly handwriting, the trustees of King Edward’s Northwold Grammar School formally accepted the resignation of the Reverend James Roland Frost Dynevor.

‘They cannot be so hasty! Did not Mr. Calcott call to gee you?’

‘An old humbug!’

‘I’ll go and see him this instant. Something may be done.’

‘No,’ said James, holding him down by the shoulder, ‘I will not be degraded by vain solicitations.’

‘This must be that wretched Ramsbotham!’ exclaimed Louis. ‘Oh, Jem! I little thought he had so much power to injure you.’

‘It is as well you did not,’ said James. ‘It would have made no difference, except in the pain it would have cost you; and the only gratification in this business is, that I suffer because neither you nor I would deny our principles. I thank you, Fitzjocelyn!’ and he straightened himself in the satisfaction of persecuted rectitude.

‘You have very little to thank me for,’ said Louis, wringing his hand, and turning aside, as if unable yet to face the full extent of the evil.

‘Never fear for us,’ continued James, boldly; ‘we shall struggle on. Mens conscia,–you see I can’t forget to be a schoolmaster.’

‘But what are you about? Where are you going?’

‘To London. You spoke to a publisher about my lectures on history; they will serve for introduction. He may make me his hack–a willing one, while I advertise–apply for anything. I must be gone!’

‘You do not look fit for a night journey. You would be too early at Estminster to see Isabel.’

‘Don’t name her!’ cried James, starting round as if the word were a dart. ‘Thank Heaven that she is away! I must write to her. Maybe, Lady Conway will keep her till I am settled–till I have found some lodging in London where no one will know us.’

‘And where you may run up a comfortable doctor’s bill.’

With a gesture–half passion, half despair–James reiterated, ‘There’s no staying here. I must be gone. I must be among strangers.’

‘Your mens conscia would better prove that it has no cause for shame by staying here, instead of rushing out of sight into the human wilderness, and sacrificing those poor little–‘

James struck his foot on the floor, as though to intercept the word; but Louis continued, apparently unmoved by his anger–‘Those poor little children. If misfortune and injury be no disgrace to the injured, I call it cowardly pride to fly off by night to hide oneself, instead of living in your own house, like an honest man.’

‘Live!–pray what am I to live on?’ cried James, laughing hoarsely.

‘You will not find out by whirling to London in your present state.’

In fact, Louis’s most immediate care was to detain him for that one night. There was a look of coming illness about him, and his desperate, maddened state of mind might obscure his judgment, and urge him into some precipitate measure, such as he might afterwards rue bitterly for the sake of the wife and children, the bare thought of whom seemed at present to sting him so intolerably. Moreover, Louis had a vague hope that so harsh a proceeding would be abandoned by the trustees; his father would remonstrate, and James might be able to think and to apologize. He was hardly a rational being to- night, and probably would have driven away any other companion; but long habit, and external coolness, enabled Louis to stand his ground, and to protract matters till the clock, striking eleven, relieved him, as much as it exasperated James, by proving it so late that the last train would have already past.

He persisted in declaring that he should go by the first in the morning, and Louis persuaded him to go to bed, after Charlotte had brought them some tea, which, he said, choked him. Deciding on sleeping at No. 5, Louis sent home the carriage, with a note to his father; and Charlotte pressed her hands together in a transport of gratitude when she found that he was not going to abandon her master. She did her best to make the forlorn house comfortable; but it was but cold comfort, with all the fires gone out, and he was too sad and anxious to heed it.

She was at his door early the next morning, with a summons more alarming than surprising. She was sure that master was very ill.

There was James lying across his bed, half-dressed, turned away from the dim morning light, and more frightfully pale than ever. He started angrily at Louis’s entrance, and sprang up, but fell back, insisting with all his might that nothing ailed him but a common headache, which needed only to be left quiet for an hour or two. He said it venomously.

‘A very uncommon headache,’ thought Louis. ‘My belief is, that it is little short of brain fever! If I could only feel his pulse! But it would be very like taking a mad dog’s hand. There’s nothing for it but to fetch old Walby. He may have some experience of refractory patients.’

‘Go home, Louis,’ reiterated James, savagely, on opening his eyes and finding him not gone. ‘I tell you I want nobody. I shall be in London before night.’

And starting up, he tried to draw the curtain at his feet, to shut out the tardy dawn; but too giddy to persevere, he sank back after one noisy pull.

Louis drew it completely, shaded the window, and would have settled the pillows, but was not allowed; and obtaining an impatient grunt by way of dismissal, he ran down stairs, caught up hat and stick, and set off to summon Mr. Walby from his comfortable family breakfast- table. The good old doctor was more concerned than amazed. He could hardly surmount the shock to his trustee conscience, on hearing of the consequence of yesterday’s proceedings.

‘I was much grieved at the time,’ he said, as they walked to the Terrace together. ‘You will believe me that I was no willing party, my Lord.’

‘I could never believe that you would do anything hard towards any one, Mr. Walby,’ said Louis, kindly; and a few more like assurances led the old man to volunteer the history of the case in confidence.

Ramsbotham had brought before the meeting of the trustees a serious mass of charges, on which he founded a motion that Mr. Frost should be requested to resign. Every one rejected such a measure, and the complaints were sifted. Some were palpably false, others exaggerated, others related to matters of principle; but deducting these, it still was proved that the Sunday attendance and evening lectures were too visibly the test of his favour, and that the boys were sometimes treated with undue severity, savouring of violent temper. ‘I must confess, my Lord,’ said Mr. Walby, sinking his voice, ‘I am afraid Mr. Frost is too prompt with his hand. A man does not know how hard he hits, when he knocks a boy over the ears with a book. Mrs. Barker’s little boy really had a gathering under the ear in consequence;–I saw it myself.’

Louis was confounded; he had nothing to say to this; he knew the force that irritation gave to James’s hand too well to refuse his credence, and he could only feel shame and dismay, as if himself guilty by his misjudged patronage.

Mr. Walby proceeded to say that, under the circumstances, the trustees had decided on remonstrating by letter, after the examination; and it was easy to perceive that the reprimand, which might have been wise and moderate from the Squire, had gained a colour from every one concerned, so as to censure what was right and aggravate what was wrong. Mr. Frost’s reply had been utterly unexpected; Ramsbotham and the bookseller had caught at the resignation, and so did the butcher, who hated the schoolmaster for having instilled inconveniently high principles into his son. Richardson abstained from voting; Mr. Calcott fought hard for Mr. Frost, but the grocer was ill, and only poor old Mr. Walby supported him, and even they felt that their letter had not deserved such treatment. Alas! had not Fitzjocelyn himself taught Northwold that the Squire was not a dictator? Even then, Mr. Calcott, still hoping that an apology might retrieve the day, had set forth to argue the matter with James Frost, whom he could not suppose serious in his intentions, but thought he meant to threaten the trustees into acquiescence. The doors had been closed against him, and Mr. Walby feared that now the step was known, it was too late to retract it. ‘The ladies would never allow it,’ he declared; ‘there was no saying how virulent they were against Mr. Frost; and as to consideration for his family, that rather inflamed their dislike. They had rich relations enough! It would be only too good for so fine a lady to be brought down.’ Every one had some story of her pride, neglect, or bad housewifery. ‘And I can tell you,’ said Mr. Walby, ‘that I am not in their good books for declaring that I never saw anything from her but very pretty, affable manners.’

With these words they reached the house; and with sighs and murmurs of ‘Ah! poor young man!’ Mr. Walby followed Louis to the landing- place, where they both paused, looking at each other in doubt how to effect an entrance, Louis suddenly remembering that no presence would be more intolerable to the patient than that of a trustee. However, there was nothing for it but to walk in, and announce, as a matter of course, that he had thought it right to call in Mr. Walby.

The extremity of displeasure brought James to his feet, and out into the passage, saying, with grave formality, that he was much obliged, and glad to see Mr. Walby as a friend, but Lord Fitzjocelyn was mistaken in thinking him in need of his advice. Many thanks, he would trouble him no further; and affecting a laugh, he said that Fitzjocelyn seemed never to have heard of a bad headache.

‘Acting does not mend matters, Jem,’ said Louis. ‘You had much better confess how really ill you are.’

Excessive giddiness made James stagger against his cousin, and Louis, throwing his arms round him, looked in great alarm to the doctor for help, but was answered by something very like a smile. ‘Aye, aye, sir, there’s nothing for it but to go to bed. If his lordship there had seen as many cases of jaundice as I have, he would not look so frightened. Very wholesome disorder! Yes, lie down, and I’ll send you a thing or two to take.’

So saying, Mr. Walby helped Louis to lay their unwilling invalid on the bed without much resistance or reply, and presently departed, so infinitely relieved that he could not help indulging in a little chuckle at the young Viscount’s mistake. As soon as he was gone, James revived enough to protest that it was all nonsense, doctors must needs give a name to everything; if they would only let him alone, he should be himself and off to London in two hours; and that it was Fitzjocelyn himself who was looking excessively ill, and as yellow as a guinea. He would not hear of undressing and going absolutely to bed, and fairly scolded every one out of sight. Good Miss Mercy, who had trotted in at the tidings of illness, stood at the nursery-door, telegraphing signs of commiseration in answer to Louis’s looks of perplexity.

‘At least,’ she said, ‘you had better come to breakfast with us, and hear what my sister says–Salome always knows what is best.’

He soon found himself in the snug parlour, where the small round breakfast-table, drawn close to Miss Faithfull’s fireside chair, had a sort of doll’s-house air of cheerful comfort, with the tiny plates, tea-cups, and the miniature loaf, and the complicated spider-legs, among which it was not easy to dispose of his own length of limb.

The meal passed in anxious consultation. There might be no danger, but the disorder was severe and increasing. James’s health had long been suffering from harass of mind, want of exercise, and unwholesome diet; and the blow of the previous day had brought things to a crisis. There he lay, perfectly unmanageable, permitting neither aid nor consolation, unable to endure the sight of any one, and too much stupefied by illness to perceive the impracticability of his wild scheme of seeking employment in London.

Miss Faithfull pronounced that either Mercy or Lord Fitzjocelyn must go and fetch Mrs. James Frost home.

‘I was only thinking how long we could keep her away,’ said Louis. ‘Pray don’t be shocked, dear Miss Mercy, but I thought I could nurse poor Jem much better alone than with another dead weight on our hands.’

‘They would neither of them thank you,’ said Miss Faithfull, laughing. ‘Depend upon it, she will know best how to deal with him.’

‘Well, you see more of their household than I do, but I have never dared to think of her! Do you remember the words, ‘if thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee–”

‘There are some people who can run with the horsemen better than with the footmen,’ said Miss Salome. ‘You know we are very fond of young Mrs. Frost. We cannot forget her sweetness when she lived in this house, and she has always been most kind and friendly. I do believe that to display the most admirable qualities, she only needs to be roused.’

‘To live in the house with Jem, and Jem’s three babies, and yet want rousing!’

‘I have thought,’ said Salome, diffidently, ‘that he was only too gentle with her.’

‘Do you know how very severe you are growing, Miss Faithfull?’ said Louis, looking her in the face, in the gravity of amusement.

‘I mean,’ said Miss Faithfull, blushing, ‘though of course I do not know, that I have fancied it might be better for both if he could have gone to the root of the matter, and set fairly before her the prime duties requisite in the mistress of such a family. He may have done so.’

‘I think not,’ said Louis; ‘it would be awkward when a woman fancied she embraced poverty voluntarily for his sake. Poverty! It was riches compared with their present condition. Isabel on 150 pounds a- year! It may well make poor Jem ill to think about it! I only wonder it is not a brain-fever!’

‘Lord Fitzjocelyn regrets that brain-fever,’ said Miss Faithfull.

‘Probably my ideas on the subject are derived from the prevalence of the complaint in light literature,’ said Louis, smiling. ‘It would be more dignified, and suit Isabel better. Poor Isabel! I hope I have done her injustice. She behaved gloriously at the barricades, and has a great soul after all; but I had begun to think heroines not calculated for moderate circumstances. May they do better in no circumstances at all! Heighho! how a heavy heart makes one talk nonsense! So I am to fetch the poor thing home, Miss Faithfull.’

This was determined on, whether with or without James’s consent; Miss Mercy undertaking that she and Martha would help Charlotte, and dispose of the children in the House Beautiful; and she went back with Louis to fetch them, when little Catharine was found peeping through the bars of her prison-gate at the top of the nursery-stairs, shouting lustily for papa. She graciously accepted her godfather as a substitute, and was carried by him to her kind neighbour’s house, already a supplementary home. As to her father, Louis found him more refractory than ever. His only greeting was, ‘Why are not you gone home?’ He scorned Mr. Walby’s prescriptions, and made such confident assertions that he should be off to London in the evening, that Fitzjocelyn almost reverted to the brain-fever theory, and did not venture to hint his intention to any one but Charlotte, telling her that he should now almost think her justified in locking the doors.

Sending information to his father, he started for Estminster, very disconsolate, and full of self-reproach for the hasty proceedings which had borne such bitter fruits. The man and the situation had been an injustice to each other; a sensitive irritable person was the very last to be fit for a position requiring unusual judgment and temper, where his energy had preyed upon itself. His being placed there had been the work of Louis’s own impetuous scorn of the wisdom of elder and graver heads. Such regrets derived additional poignancy from the impossibility of conferring direct assistance upon James, and from the degree of justice in the hard measure which had been dealt to him, would make it for ever difficult to recommend him, and yet the devising future schemes for his welfare was the refuge which Louis’s mind most willingly sought from the present perplexity of the communication in store for poor Isabel.

As he put out his head at the Estminster station, a familiar voice shouted, ‘Hollo! Fitzjocelyn, how jolly! Have you got James there? I told Isabel it would be no use; but when she did not get a letter this morning, she would have it that he was coming, and got me to walk up with her.’

‘Where is she?’ asked Louis, as he jumped out and shook hands with Walter.

‘Walking up and down the esplanade. She would not come into the station, so I said I would run up to satisfy her. I don’t know what she will say to you for not being Frost.’

‘Do you mean that she is anxious!’

‘It is the correct thing, isn’t it, when wives get away from their husbands, and have not the fragment of a letter for twenty-four whole hours? But what do you mean, Fitzjocelyn?’ asked the boy, suddenly sobering. ‘Is anything really the matter?’

‘Yes, Walter,’ said Louis; ‘we must tell your sister as best we can. James is ill, and I am come for her.’

Walter was silent for a few minutes, then drew a sigh, saying, ‘Poor Isabel, I wish it had not been! These were the only comfortable holidays I have had since she chose to marry.’

Isabel here came in sight, quickening her pace as she first saw that her brother had a companion, but slackening in disappointment when she perceived that it was not her husband; then, the next moment hurrying on, and as she met them, exclaiming, ‘Tell me at once! What is it?’

‘Nothing serious,’ said Louis. ‘The children are all well, but I left James very uncomfortable, though with nothing worse than a fit of jaundice.’

The inexperienced Isabel hardly knew whether this were not as formidable as even the cherished brain-fever, and becoming very pale, she said, ‘I am ready at once–Walter will let mamma know.’

‘There will be no train for two hours,’ said Louis. ‘You will have plenty of time to prepare.’

‘You should have telegraphed,’ said Isabel, ‘I could have come by the first train.’

Trembling, she grasped Walter’s arm, and began hastening home, impatient to be doing something. ‘I knew something was wrong,’ she exclaimed; ‘I ought to have gone home yesterday, when there was no letter.’

‘Indeed, there–was nothing the matter yesterday, at least, with his health,’ said Louis. ‘You are alarming yourself far too much–‘

‘To be sure, Isabel,’ chimed in Walter. ‘A fellow at my tutor’s had it, and did nothing but wind silkworm’s silk all the time. We shall have James yet to spend Christmas with us. Everybody laughs at the jaundice, though Fitzjocelyn does look so lugubrious that he had almost frightened _me_.’

‘Is this true?’ said Isabel, looking from one to the other, as if she had been frightened in vain.

‘Quite true, Isabel,’ said Walter. ‘Never mind Fitzjocelyn’s long face; I wouldn’t go if I were you! Don’t spoil the holidays.’

‘I must go, Walter dear,’ said Isabel, ‘but I do not think Lord Fitzjocelyn would play with my fears. Either he is very ill, or something else is wrong.’

‘You have guessed it, Isabel,’ said Louis. ‘This illness is partly the effect of distress of mind.’

‘That horrid meeting of trustees!’ cried Isabel. ‘I am sure they have been impertinent.’

‘They objected to some of his doings; he answered by threatening to resign, and I am sorry to say that the opposition set prevailed to have his resignation accepted.’

‘A very good thing too,’ cried Sir Walter. ‘I always thought that school a shabby concern. To be under a lot of butchers and bakers, and nothing but cads among the boys! He ought to be heartily glad to be rid of the crew.’

Isabel’s indignation was checked by a sort of melancholy amusement at her brother’s view, but Louis doubted whether she realized the weight of her own words as she answered–‘Unfortunately, Walter, it is nearly all we have to live upon.’

‘So much the better,’ continued Walter. ‘I’ll tell you–you shall all go to Thornton Conway, and I’ll come and spend my holidays there, instead of kicking my heels at these stupid places. I shan’t mind your babies a bit, and Frost may call himself my tutor if he likes. I don’t care if you take me away from Eton.’

‘A kind scheme, Walter,’ said Isabel, ‘but wanting in two important points, mamma’s consent and James’s.’

‘Oh, I’ll take care of mamma!’

‘I’m afraid I can’t promise the same as to James.’

‘Ah! I see. Delaford was quite right when he said Mr. Frost was a gentleman who never knew what was for his own advantage.’

As they arrived at the house, Isabel desired to know how soon she must be ready, and went upstairs. Walter detained his cousin–‘I say, Fitzjocelyn, have they really got nothing to live on?’

‘No more than will keep them from absolute want.’

‘I shall take them home,’ said Walter, with much satisfaction. ‘I shall write to tell James that there is nothing else to be done. I cannot do without Isabel, and I’ll make my mother consent.’

Fitzjocelyn was glad to be freed from the boy on any terms, and to see him go off to write his letter.

Walter was at least sincere and warm-hearted in his selfishness, and so more agreeable than his mother, whom Louis found much distressed, under the secret conviction that something might be expected of her. ‘Poor Isabel! I wish she could come to me; but so many of them–and we without a settled home. If there were no children–but London houses are so small; and, indeed, it would be no true kindness to let them live in our style for a little while. They must run to expenses in dress; it would be much more economical at home, and I could send Walter to them if he is very troublesome.’

‘Thank you,’ said Louis. ‘I think James will be able to ride out the storm independently.’

‘I know that would be his wish. And I think I heard that Mr. Dynevor objected to the school. That might be one obstacle removed.’

Lady Conway comforted herself by flourishing on into predictions that all would now be right, and that poor dear Isabel would soon be a much richer woman than herself; while Louis listened to the castle- building, not thinking it worth while to make useless counter- prophecies.

The sisters were upstairs, assisting Isabel, and they all came down together. The girls were crying; but Isabel’s dark, soft eyes, and noble head, had an air of calm, resolute elevation, which drove all Louis’s misgivings away, and which seemed quite beyond and above the region of Lady Conway’s caresses and affectionate speeches. Walter and Virginia came up to the station, and parted with their sister with fondness that was much mure refreshing, Walter reiterating that his was the only plan.

‘Now, Fitzjocelyn,’ said Isabel, when they were shut into a coupe, ‘tell me what you said about distress of mind. It has haunted me whether you used those words.’

‘Could you doubt his distress at such a state of affairs?’

‘I thought there could be no distress of mind where the suffering is for the truth.’

‘Ah! if he could quite feel it so!’

‘What do you mean? There has been a cabal against James from the first to make him lay aside his principles, and I cannot regret his refusal to submit to improper dictation, at whatever cost to myself.’

‘I am afraid he better knows than you do what that cost is likely to be.’

‘Does he think I cannot bear poverty?’ exclaimed Isabel.

‘He had not said so–‘ began Louis; ‘but–‘

‘You both think me a poor, helpless creature,’ said Isabel, her eyes kindling as they had done in the midst of danger. ‘I can do better than you think. I may be able myself to do something towards our maintenance.’

He could not help answering, in the tone that gave courtesy to almost any words, ‘I am afraid it does not answer for the wife to be the bread-winner.’

‘Then you doubt my writing being worth anything?’ she asked, in a hurt tone of humility. ‘Tell me candidly, for it would be the greatest kindness;’ and her eye unconsciously sought the bag where lay Sir Hubert, whom all this time her imagination was exalting, as the hero who would free them from their distresses.

‘Worth much pleasure to me, to the world at large,’ said Louis; ‘but- -you told me to speak plainly–to your home, would any remuneration be worth your own personal care?’

Isabel coloured, but did not speak.

Louis ventured another sentence–‘It is a delicate subject, but you must know better than I how far James would be likely to bear that another, even you, should work for his livelihood.’

When Isabel spoke again, it was to ask further particulars; and when he had told all, she found solace in exclaiming at the folly and injustice of James’s enemies, until the sense of fairness obliged him to say, ‘I wish the right and the wrong ever were fairly divided in this world; and yet perhaps it is best as it is: the grain of right on either side may save the sin from being a presumptuous one.’

‘It would be hard to find the one grain of right on the part of the Ramsbotham cabal.’

‘Perhaps you would not think so, if you were a boy’s mother.’

‘Oh!’ cried Isabel, with tears in her eyes, ‘if he thought he had been too hasty, he always made such reparation that only cowards could help being touched. I’m sure they deserved it, and much more.’