Chapter Twenty Five.

Chapter Twenty Five.Tempted of the Devil.Una lay awake through the early part of the hot summer night, with her mind full of the crisis in Amethyst’s fate.She was sad and anxious; all the sweetness of her life was owing to Amethyst’s tenderness, and how long would the loving sister be left beside her?She could not guess at all what choice Amethyst would be impelled to make, what effect the sight of Lucian would have upon her. She had hardly seemed to heed the discovery that Sylvester Riddell was her lover too. Had she made up her mind to marry Sir Richard Grattan at all costs? Was not Oliver Carisbrooke more to her than she knew? Una believed that her own life had been shipwrecked for ever. She longed with all her heart to see Amethyst steer clear of the treacherous rocks in her way.She lay awake in the sultry air, listening till the sound of the expected step on the stairs made her heart throb till she was faint.The step was slow and lingering—would it pass by? No, the door was softly opened, and Amethyst came in. She stood at the foot of the bed, in the flood of summer moonlight, so that her face looked as white as her gown, and her amethysts glittered with a colourless gleam. She looked at Una with cold heavy eyes, and her voice was dull and lifeless.“Are you having a bad night, dear?” she said.“Yes—never mind. What has happened to you?”“Nothing,” said Amethyst.“Didn’t he come after all?”“Oh yes! But I can’t tell why I used to think him so interesting. He’s a very handsome boy, but I can’t fall in love now with a straight nose and good intentions. If I lived fifty years with him, he would never know what I was thinking of.”She laughed as she spoke, a short bitter little laugh. “He has done his best—done his duty by me. But he can’t put the clock back.”“I said that you were never really in love with him!” said Una, after a moment’s startled silence.“I was, with every thought and feeling and part of me! But I’ve forgotten him. I’m not made of the stuff to be constant and faithful—as he has been. He was a fool not to know I was a good girl then! I believe I’m a very bad one now!”“You looked so happy, when you thought he was coming.”“Yes, I thought if the sight of him brought it all back, I could even forgive him—and his mother—and mine! I was as much a fool then as he was, not to force him to believe in me. But if I had, and had found out by this time that he was stupid?”“He must have loved you very much.”“He loved his duty or his honour, or whatever it was, better than he loved me,” said Amethyst. “He has done his duty by me now, and satisfied his sense of honour. But what am I talking about? What is the use of feelings? And what is the use of keeping you awake and making you ill? Lie down, my sweet, I shall be in my senses to-morrow, and then you shall hear some news.”“Oh, Amethyst, don’t do it!” cried Una. “Whether you have forgotten Lucian or not, if you can’t care for any one again—”“Oh, but I guess I could,” said Amethyst, recklessly. “There’s the very thing—there’s the rub.”“But not Sir Richard?”“As to that,” said Amethyst, “in all honour I am bound to him. I have been meaning it. Icando it. And we are all bound to him. I should as good as jilt him if I threw him over now. But—if Lucian had brought my heart back to me—I would have broken through it all! Though I would have begged Sir Richard’s pardon on my knees. But there’s nothing strong enough in me to do it now.”“Oh, my darling,” cried Una, starting up and clinging to her, “there can be! I told you how it was with me—me—that am so weak and so bad. It is quite true. I don’t understand it—at other times—I’m just my foolish self. But just now and then—as that poem you used to be fond of says—‘My strength is as the strength of ten.’ But it’s not because my heart is pure—for it’s not, it’s not—but because He is stronger than I am! The ‘Spirit of the Lord came upon me.’ I know what that means, Amethyst, though He does go quite away, quite—quite!”Amethyst was somewhat awe-struck.“But He doesn’t come to me, Una,” she said in a subdued voice, “and I can’t even ask Him. Because whatever I do can’t be really right, I’ve tied the knots too tight.”“But I suppose God thinks that one way would be more right than another,” said Una.Childish as was the form of speech, it struck an answering chord in Amethyst’s soul; but Una’s tone was so faint with weariness that she refused to go on talking, made her lie back on the pillows, and left her as soon as possible, to think the problem out for herself.”‘My dismal scene I needs must act alone,’” she thought, as she slowly undressed herself, and lay down in bed.She lay on her back, with her hands clasped over the top of her head, and watched the moonlight on the opposite wall. She had her fate in life to decide. At twenty years old, “half-grown as yet, a child and vain,” she had so strong a principle of growth within her, that her true self had hardly yet begun to be. Shehaddecided. She had made up her mind, long ago, that she would marry Sir Richard Grattan. As his wife she would belong to good and honourable people; all her tastes and faculties would have full scope; a great career would be before herself, and she could always be a stand-by to her sisters. She was desirous of doing right, though she could not realise Una’s experience otherwise than as an impression on the girl’s mind. But it had not ceased to be the best thing for herself to marry Sir Richard, because she had discovered that a great impulse—a great passion, would induce her to break free from him. For no great impulse was there.She did pray for help, though with a cold and wavering spirit, and she made up her mind to her course of action. She went down-stairs in the morning, in the full conviction that she would accept Sir Richard before the day was out Breakfast was an irregular meal, and no one was there but Tory, who attended an early French class, and was sitting with her hat on.“Amethyst,” she said, “I believe there’s something up. Father came in last night after you went up-stairs, and he and my lady talked for hours in the dressing-room. She actually cried.”“Did she?” said Amethyst, startled.“Yes. Whichever of them you mean to say ‘yes’ to, you had better get it done with a clear conscience before you know of anything to stop you.”“But what do you think?”“I think we’ve come to smash. But if it’s Sir Richard, he must have known we soon should.” Before Amethyst could reply, a message came to say that her ladyship wanted to speak to Miss Haredale. She went up-stairs with a beating heart, and found her mother, to her surprise, up and dressed, with the marks of tears on her face.“Amethyst,” she said, “I believe the game is up. Your engagement must be announced to-day, and we must leave town at once. Is Sir Richard coming this morning? Don’t let there be another hour’s delay.”“What has happened?” stammered Amethyst. “Now don’t be frightened,” said Lady Haredale, “and to be shocked is no use. You know that your father raised money on the Haredale farms, with Charles’s consent Sir Richard bought them. Some of it we were to spend in coming to London—on your account, Amethyst. With the rest he was to pay off a mortgage which, through various changes, had come into the hands of Blanche’s husband, Sir Edward Clyste. Well, he didn’t do it, but risked the money on a horse at Epsom, and lost it. Now that’s not all, it’s a very ugly story, and I’m sorry to have to tell you. It seems my lord’s affairs at Epsom were mixed up withthe other man’s,—you know.”“What other man, mother?”“Why, Captain Vincent—the man Blanche was so imprudent about. He behaved scandalously, and of course we were supposed to cut him. But it’s always forgive and forget with my lord, and—if any one would give him any advantage in a racing matter, his character wouldn’t count for much. Well, the connection was kept a secret, but it’s come out apparently in that set, and Sir Edward—who is on the turf too—when he finds that the money, which really was pledged to him, has been lost in connection with Vincent, isn’t likely to have much mercy. Moreover, Vincent, it seems, has done something which steps over the line which racing men think fair and square. Myself, I don’t see much difference between what they will do and what they won’t, but men feel differently. So he’s to be sent to Coventry, and though my lord knew nothing about that, mixing up his money matters with Vincent’s, under the circumstances, isn’t thought the thing. And things will be made very uncomfortable for us. Now, we must get Sir Richard to advance the money to pay off the mortgage, and no doubt he will, it’s only 6,000 pounds, but even that won’t set everything straight again.”Lady Haredale spoke with a certain hard, practical cynicism which was the skeleton on which her sweet, shallow gaiety was grown, and Amethyst answered in the same tone.“No. Nothing can alter the fact that my father has done a dishonourable thing.”“Well—it’s come to be dishonourable—doubtful, certainly; but I don’t suppose it looked so, step by step. He is very miserable, my poor old lord, I assure you. You know he has hardly ever come near us, or gone about with us. But what with this, and what with the drawback of Charles, and that odious Mrs Saint George, who hates me, and contrives to make every one think there was something queer about the debts which were paid when I took your amethysts, poor child! (not that there was anything but a few harmless fibs)—what with all this, though I’ve as much pluck as most women, and though people will swallow a great deal to have you at their parties, I really don’t think I can fight it out any longer.”“But when Sir Richard Grattan knows all this, will he still choose to connect himself with my father—and Charles—and—the rest of us?”“Why, Amethyst,” said Lady Haredale, “that’s what you have got to secure. You know we can’t tell him any lies, because other men will tell him the truth. But he’s very much infatuated with you, stiff as you have always been. Encourage him, be kind and loving to him, and he won’t break your heart or give you up.”Amethyst leant back in her chair with her hands lying on her lap. She was pale and very still, and when she spoke, her voice had a clear, satirical ring, as if she had been saying something clever in society. But, in truth, she was at the white heat of passion, so that she defied every instinct of natural reverence and shame. There is a sort of truth-speaking, of calling things by their right names, that means the entire rebellion of the soul.“I don’t see much difference between any of us,” she said. “My father condones his daughter’s disgrace for the sake of a money advantage, and continues under an obligation to his son-in-law who has been wronged; you tell harmless fibs, and, among other things, you think it a trifle that a man like Major Fowler should have destroyed all Una’s peace and freshness; Charles does things which I am never supposed to hear of, and besides, gets drunk in society. My half-sister married one man when she loved another, and I suppose never troubled to avoid him afterwards. I am going to marry a man for whom I don’t care a straw, because he has money and can help my family, and I am to take advantage of having the sort of beauty which makes fools of men, to get him to take a burden on his shoulders of which he’s sure to repent in future. Which is the worst of us? Even Aunt Anna will let that poor girl marry Charles ‘for the honour of the family.’”“Amethyst,” exclaimed Lady Haredale, really shocked, “you never heard me say anything of that sort.”“No—youdoit.”“That is quite a different thing. Pray never let your sisters hear you talk in such a manner. And as for Blanche, she never saw Captain Vincent before she was married. I don’t know who her old love was, she would never tell us. But she was a girl who couldn’t do without something of the kind going on. If you knew how hard it has been to get on at all, you would not make matters worse by speaking to me in that way.”Amethyst was silent. She had burnt her ships, and outraged all her natural instincts, and she felt impenitent and strong.“A gentleman, asking for Miss Haredale,” said a servant at the door.“Sir Richard, I suppose,” said Amethyst, standing up. “Well, mother, I’m going down-stairs to accept him—if he asks me. But I’ll take care he knows the worst of my family, and I shall tell him that I don’t yet know the worst of myself.”She went down-stairs, with the evil power still in her heart. The inward force had come to her, not in love, but in hate. There are inspirations from the land of darkness, and these too can make strong. They find their opportunity in self-despair.“Nothing and no one will interfere to saveme,” she thought.She opened the drawing-room door, and found herself face to face, not with Sir Richard Grattan, but with Sylvester Riddell.

Una lay awake through the early part of the hot summer night, with her mind full of the crisis in Amethyst’s fate.

She was sad and anxious; all the sweetness of her life was owing to Amethyst’s tenderness, and how long would the loving sister be left beside her?

She could not guess at all what choice Amethyst would be impelled to make, what effect the sight of Lucian would have upon her. She had hardly seemed to heed the discovery that Sylvester Riddell was her lover too. Had she made up her mind to marry Sir Richard Grattan at all costs? Was not Oliver Carisbrooke more to her than she knew? Una believed that her own life had been shipwrecked for ever. She longed with all her heart to see Amethyst steer clear of the treacherous rocks in her way.

She lay awake in the sultry air, listening till the sound of the expected step on the stairs made her heart throb till she was faint.

The step was slow and lingering—would it pass by? No, the door was softly opened, and Amethyst came in. She stood at the foot of the bed, in the flood of summer moonlight, so that her face looked as white as her gown, and her amethysts glittered with a colourless gleam. She looked at Una with cold heavy eyes, and her voice was dull and lifeless.

“Are you having a bad night, dear?” she said.

“Yes—never mind. What has happened to you?”

“Nothing,” said Amethyst.

“Didn’t he come after all?”

“Oh yes! But I can’t tell why I used to think him so interesting. He’s a very handsome boy, but I can’t fall in love now with a straight nose and good intentions. If I lived fifty years with him, he would never know what I was thinking of.”

She laughed as she spoke, a short bitter little laugh. “He has done his best—done his duty by me. But he can’t put the clock back.”

“I said that you were never really in love with him!” said Una, after a moment’s startled silence.

“I was, with every thought and feeling and part of me! But I’ve forgotten him. I’m not made of the stuff to be constant and faithful—as he has been. He was a fool not to know I was a good girl then! I believe I’m a very bad one now!”

“You looked so happy, when you thought he was coming.”

“Yes, I thought if the sight of him brought it all back, I could even forgive him—and his mother—and mine! I was as much a fool then as he was, not to force him to believe in me. But if I had, and had found out by this time that he was stupid?”

“He must have loved you very much.”

“He loved his duty or his honour, or whatever it was, better than he loved me,” said Amethyst. “He has done his duty by me now, and satisfied his sense of honour. But what am I talking about? What is the use of feelings? And what is the use of keeping you awake and making you ill? Lie down, my sweet, I shall be in my senses to-morrow, and then you shall hear some news.”

“Oh, Amethyst, don’t do it!” cried Una. “Whether you have forgotten Lucian or not, if you can’t care for any one again—”

“Oh, but I guess I could,” said Amethyst, recklessly. “There’s the very thing—there’s the rub.”

“But not Sir Richard?”

“As to that,” said Amethyst, “in all honour I am bound to him. I have been meaning it. Icando it. And we are all bound to him. I should as good as jilt him if I threw him over now. But—if Lucian had brought my heart back to me—I would have broken through it all! Though I would have begged Sir Richard’s pardon on my knees. But there’s nothing strong enough in me to do it now.”

“Oh, my darling,” cried Una, starting up and clinging to her, “there can be! I told you how it was with me—me—that am so weak and so bad. It is quite true. I don’t understand it—at other times—I’m just my foolish self. But just now and then—as that poem you used to be fond of says—‘My strength is as the strength of ten.’ But it’s not because my heart is pure—for it’s not, it’s not—but because He is stronger than I am! The ‘Spirit of the Lord came upon me.’ I know what that means, Amethyst, though He does go quite away, quite—quite!”

Amethyst was somewhat awe-struck.

“But He doesn’t come to me, Una,” she said in a subdued voice, “and I can’t even ask Him. Because whatever I do can’t be really right, I’ve tied the knots too tight.”

“But I suppose God thinks that one way would be more right than another,” said Una.

Childish as was the form of speech, it struck an answering chord in Amethyst’s soul; but Una’s tone was so faint with weariness that she refused to go on talking, made her lie back on the pillows, and left her as soon as possible, to think the problem out for herself.

”‘My dismal scene I needs must act alone,’” she thought, as she slowly undressed herself, and lay down in bed.

She lay on her back, with her hands clasped over the top of her head, and watched the moonlight on the opposite wall. She had her fate in life to decide. At twenty years old, “half-grown as yet, a child and vain,” she had so strong a principle of growth within her, that her true self had hardly yet begun to be. Shehaddecided. She had made up her mind, long ago, that she would marry Sir Richard Grattan. As his wife she would belong to good and honourable people; all her tastes and faculties would have full scope; a great career would be before herself, and she could always be a stand-by to her sisters. She was desirous of doing right, though she could not realise Una’s experience otherwise than as an impression on the girl’s mind. But it had not ceased to be the best thing for herself to marry Sir Richard, because she had discovered that a great impulse—a great passion, would induce her to break free from him. For no great impulse was there.

She did pray for help, though with a cold and wavering spirit, and she made up her mind to her course of action. She went down-stairs in the morning, in the full conviction that she would accept Sir Richard before the day was out Breakfast was an irregular meal, and no one was there but Tory, who attended an early French class, and was sitting with her hat on.

“Amethyst,” she said, “I believe there’s something up. Father came in last night after you went up-stairs, and he and my lady talked for hours in the dressing-room. She actually cried.”

“Did she?” said Amethyst, startled.

“Yes. Whichever of them you mean to say ‘yes’ to, you had better get it done with a clear conscience before you know of anything to stop you.”

“But what do you think?”

“I think we’ve come to smash. But if it’s Sir Richard, he must have known we soon should.” Before Amethyst could reply, a message came to say that her ladyship wanted to speak to Miss Haredale. She went up-stairs with a beating heart, and found her mother, to her surprise, up and dressed, with the marks of tears on her face.

“Amethyst,” she said, “I believe the game is up. Your engagement must be announced to-day, and we must leave town at once. Is Sir Richard coming this morning? Don’t let there be another hour’s delay.”

“What has happened?” stammered Amethyst. “Now don’t be frightened,” said Lady Haredale, “and to be shocked is no use. You know that your father raised money on the Haredale farms, with Charles’s consent Sir Richard bought them. Some of it we were to spend in coming to London—on your account, Amethyst. With the rest he was to pay off a mortgage which, through various changes, had come into the hands of Blanche’s husband, Sir Edward Clyste. Well, he didn’t do it, but risked the money on a horse at Epsom, and lost it. Now that’s not all, it’s a very ugly story, and I’m sorry to have to tell you. It seems my lord’s affairs at Epsom were mixed up withthe other man’s,—you know.”

“What other man, mother?”

“Why, Captain Vincent—the man Blanche was so imprudent about. He behaved scandalously, and of course we were supposed to cut him. But it’s always forgive and forget with my lord, and—if any one would give him any advantage in a racing matter, his character wouldn’t count for much. Well, the connection was kept a secret, but it’s come out apparently in that set, and Sir Edward—who is on the turf too—when he finds that the money, which really was pledged to him, has been lost in connection with Vincent, isn’t likely to have much mercy. Moreover, Vincent, it seems, has done something which steps over the line which racing men think fair and square. Myself, I don’t see much difference between what they will do and what they won’t, but men feel differently. So he’s to be sent to Coventry, and though my lord knew nothing about that, mixing up his money matters with Vincent’s, under the circumstances, isn’t thought the thing. And things will be made very uncomfortable for us. Now, we must get Sir Richard to advance the money to pay off the mortgage, and no doubt he will, it’s only 6,000 pounds, but even that won’t set everything straight again.”

Lady Haredale spoke with a certain hard, practical cynicism which was the skeleton on which her sweet, shallow gaiety was grown, and Amethyst answered in the same tone.

“No. Nothing can alter the fact that my father has done a dishonourable thing.”

“Well—it’s come to be dishonourable—doubtful, certainly; but I don’t suppose it looked so, step by step. He is very miserable, my poor old lord, I assure you. You know he has hardly ever come near us, or gone about with us. But what with this, and what with the drawback of Charles, and that odious Mrs Saint George, who hates me, and contrives to make every one think there was something queer about the debts which were paid when I took your amethysts, poor child! (not that there was anything but a few harmless fibs)—what with all this, though I’ve as much pluck as most women, and though people will swallow a great deal to have you at their parties, I really don’t think I can fight it out any longer.”

“But when Sir Richard Grattan knows all this, will he still choose to connect himself with my father—and Charles—and—the rest of us?”

“Why, Amethyst,” said Lady Haredale, “that’s what you have got to secure. You know we can’t tell him any lies, because other men will tell him the truth. But he’s very much infatuated with you, stiff as you have always been. Encourage him, be kind and loving to him, and he won’t break your heart or give you up.”

Amethyst leant back in her chair with her hands lying on her lap. She was pale and very still, and when she spoke, her voice had a clear, satirical ring, as if she had been saying something clever in society. But, in truth, she was at the white heat of passion, so that she defied every instinct of natural reverence and shame. There is a sort of truth-speaking, of calling things by their right names, that means the entire rebellion of the soul.

“I don’t see much difference between any of us,” she said. “My father condones his daughter’s disgrace for the sake of a money advantage, and continues under an obligation to his son-in-law who has been wronged; you tell harmless fibs, and, among other things, you think it a trifle that a man like Major Fowler should have destroyed all Una’s peace and freshness; Charles does things which I am never supposed to hear of, and besides, gets drunk in society. My half-sister married one man when she loved another, and I suppose never troubled to avoid him afterwards. I am going to marry a man for whom I don’t care a straw, because he has money and can help my family, and I am to take advantage of having the sort of beauty which makes fools of men, to get him to take a burden on his shoulders of which he’s sure to repent in future. Which is the worst of us? Even Aunt Anna will let that poor girl marry Charles ‘for the honour of the family.’”

“Amethyst,” exclaimed Lady Haredale, really shocked, “you never heard me say anything of that sort.”

“No—youdoit.”

“That is quite a different thing. Pray never let your sisters hear you talk in such a manner. And as for Blanche, she never saw Captain Vincent before she was married. I don’t know who her old love was, she would never tell us. But she was a girl who couldn’t do without something of the kind going on. If you knew how hard it has been to get on at all, you would not make matters worse by speaking to me in that way.”

Amethyst was silent. She had burnt her ships, and outraged all her natural instincts, and she felt impenitent and strong.

“A gentleman, asking for Miss Haredale,” said a servant at the door.

“Sir Richard, I suppose,” said Amethyst, standing up. “Well, mother, I’m going down-stairs to accept him—if he asks me. But I’ll take care he knows the worst of my family, and I shall tell him that I don’t yet know the worst of myself.”

She went down-stairs, with the evil power still in her heart. The inward force had come to her, not in love, but in hate. There are inspirations from the land of darkness, and these too can make strong. They find their opportunity in self-despair.

“Nothing and no one will interfere to saveme,” she thought.

She opened the drawing-room door, and found herself face to face, not with Sir Richard Grattan, but with Sylvester Riddell.

Chapter Twenty Six.According to his Light.Amethyst’s two lovers went out from her presence into the gaslight and the moonlight, and walked through the still busy streets of the West End, hardly exchanging a word with each other.Neither of them had eaten much that day, and Sylvester took Lucian to his club and ordered supper, but he looked white and wretched, and shook his head when his friend pressed him to eat and drink. He hated the public place, the sense of homelessness, he wanted to hide himself like an unhappy dog. At last he said,—“I can do nothing to make up for the past.”“Well, two years is a long time,” said Sylvester, whose own feelings were too exacting just then to leave space for much sympathy with Lucian.“Is it? I’ve done a great many things since we parted; but I’ve never felt anything but—wanting her. She seems a thousand times more glorious than ever to me, and I am nothing to her—now.”“But you didn’t think, before you saw her again, that, after all that passed, she had continued to care for you?” said Syl, curiously.“I did not knowthen, if she ever had truly cared for me,” said Lucian. “I supposed that she had not, that it had all been a delusion. What else could I think? Even then, I did not forget her. But when I found, when she herself says now, that in that old time, she was real and true—I don’t see how any one can change a true love once given. It’s a thing I can’t conceive possible. It would have seemed a fresh wrong to her to fear it.”“Did it never occur to you,” said Sylvester impatiently, “that she was not half-grown-up, two years ago, and that now she may see that you are not the kind of person to suit her?”“I never could have outgrown her,” said Lucian. “And did you never think that she has never forgiven us—you—for misjudging her?”“That is a different thing. That is not how it is,” said Lucian, positively; then, standing up, “I want to get back to your rooms, Syl. I can’t stand anything more. I’ll go to bed, I feel done for.” There was something pathetic in the faithfulness that could not imagine the possibility of change in the love that had once been proved worthy; but naturally Lucian’s self-confidence struck Sylvester forcibly, and as they walked away together once more, he suddenly lost the remains of his patience, and broke out—“Can’t you see that a creature like that has a thousand needs and possibilities that have developed in her since she belonged to you? It may be for good, or it may be for evil, but she cannot go back. Did it never strike youthenthat you had got hold of a being all force and fire, a splendid goddess, altogether out of your ken?”“No,” said Lucian, “I meant to take care of her, and I hoped we should go on, and lead the right sort of lives together.”“Well, we are each shut up in the bounds of our own nature,” said Sylvester, shortly.“I think,” said Lucian, after a pause, “that you are trying to make me see that I never was good enough for her.”“Who could be?”“If it has been all my fault,” said Lucian, in a shaken voice, “it is a hard thing to know. For—it is not all right with her now. Good-night, Syl,”—for by this time they had reached the lodgings—“I’m going to bed. You think I’m not enough of a fellow for her, but she has all there is of me, and it’s no good to her.”He hurried away, and shut himself into his room. His words hardly did him justice; for his thoughts were crude and one-sided; but the entire trust in the word once given, the love that had survived even the loss of faith, were feelings of heroic size.Lucian really had few faults, and such as he had, he guarded against with dutiful, if somewhat formal, technical conscientiousness. Defects of nature, as distinct from acts of sin, he did not recognise.When he found that he had been led to misjudge Amethyst, his conscience, as well as his heart, was shocked, he felt that he ought not to have been deceived, and, whether he could understand it or no, he knew that she was lost to him for ever. She was not for him. He saw too that shewaschanged. She was not what he had expected to find her. He was bewildered by her, and he had to live without her.Lucian’s religion, was as simple as his view of life. Under its dictates, he had abstained from the ordinary sins of school and college life, and had framed his view of what was becoming to a young man of property. Like the young ruler, he kept the Commandments. He distinctly believed that his life was ordered for him, and, in this fresh agony, which had brought a certainty, which, while the separation from Amethyst had been hisowndoing, he had never really felt, he recognised that he must not throw it away.The right thing to do, soon, was to go and live at Toppings by himself, or with his mother and sisters. There would never be any one else now. He would go for his three months’ cruise in theAlbatross, and get over the worst of his trouble. He thought that he would rather be alone, at first, than with Sylvester. Somehow, his old companion jarred upon him. Perhaps friend, as well as love, had outgrown him.Meanwhile, Sylvester had been haunted by the echo of one of Lucian’s sentences, “All is not right with her now.” No, indeed, and the lover of her girlhood was powerless to help. Could his own love, so much more full, as it seemed to him, of comprehending in sight, do nothing? He would have been wretched if she had turned back to Lucian’s love. That could not have sufficed her; but it was far worse that she should choose the lower part, defy and ignore all the imperious demands of her fine spirit. And he must stand by and see it—He who had watched her course, and read her needs and her dangers, from the very first day that, behind the beauty that had captivated his senses, he had seen the aspiring soul look out from her eyes.Through the short hours of darkness Sylvester lay in helpless rage and despair; but suddenly, when the light of the summer dawn came through his open window, and the London sparrows began to twitter, and the life of London to wake up with the roll of the market waggons and the tread of the earliest passing feet, he started up, inspired with a sudden purpose.“I will not stand by, and see it. What matter what she may think of me or of my doings? I have no hope of her. She is not for me. But my soul shall tell her soul the truth. She, her true self, shall not fight the battle alone, with every one around her on the side of the world, the flesh, and the devil.”Sylvester Riddell was not a person who led an ardent or strenuous life. His professional duties at the University were not very arduous, his literary work was of a somewhat dilettante nature, his mind was full of conflicting theories.But though he wrote verse that was not quite poetry, though he was inconsistent, and harmlessly self-indulgent, he had moments of inspiration, when the “demon” that speaks to prophet and poet would speak to him. Such a moment came now. A purpose, impossible conventionally, but which, nevertheless, he would carry out, had come to him, and he called down all power in earth and heaven, every force which he believed to make for righteousness, to fight on his side and to help him. Never had such real prayer gone forth from his soul, as now when he determined to reinforce with every particle of spiritual strength within him, the wavering spirit of the woman he loved. He felt ashamed of his irritation against Lucian, who, after all, had served Amethyst as well as he knew how, though he did not wish him to guess either his feelings or his purpose, thinking, rather unjustly, that Lucian would not be able to understand him, and would suppose that he meant to make Amethyst an offer.Lucian was very quiet, and seemed to find breakfast a difficulty. After a silence he said—“There’s one thing, Syl, I think should be done, and it would be best for you to do it. Will you write to my mother, and undeceive her? She will believe you. It is all gone by, but I cannot have one shadow left upon her which can be removed.”“Yes, I will,” said Sylvester. “What shall you do now yourself?”“I think I shall close with the man who owns theAlbatross—for three months only. Will you come?”“I hardly know. I ought to go to Cleverley first. Perhaps I might join you later.”“I’ve got a note from Jackson,” said Lucian; “he wants me to run down and see him first. He misses me—I got to know his ways.”He did not get very steadily to the end of the sentence, he was touched at finding himself satisfactory to some one.“Could he go with you?” said Sylvester. “Oh no. He ought to be perfectly quiet. But I shall ask him to come to Toppings in the autumn. I must make a beginning there some time. I’ll do it then.”“Well, Lucy, I dare say that’s quite right.”“I shall go off this morning,” said Lucian. “Jackson’s father lives near Chester. Then on to Liverpool. I’ll leave word there about letters. Tell me if—when—when anything happens. I’m very much obliged to you for having given me the chance of contradicting my former conduct. I think, perhaps, in time to come, she may like to remember that I did it. And tell your father, please, that I renewed my offer, and that she refused me. I can’t think of anything else that I can do or say.”“It has been hard lines on you, my dear old boy.”“Yes. But that’s no matter, if I have in any way repaired the injustice. I’ve seen her; I suppose I never shall again. She did say a hard thing. But—well, Syl, good-bye, I’ll go and look after a train to suit me. Thank you. I’m glad it’s all happened. Good-bye. When your time comes, I hope you’ll have better luck.”He smiled ruefully enough, and held out his hand. Sylvester took it.“Say one thing more, Lucy,” he said; “wish me as single a purpose as your own.”Lucian looked puzzled. Sylvester’s lips were set and pale, and his eyes very bright.“I’ll wish you anything I can,” he said, and went off to collect his belongings.He was longer about it than Sylvester had expected; the hansom he had ordered waited, before he came in again ready to start.He put something down on the table.“I don’t think you brought that photograph to Liverpool for me, Syl,” he said, and was gone before a word could be spoken.

Amethyst’s two lovers went out from her presence into the gaslight and the moonlight, and walked through the still busy streets of the West End, hardly exchanging a word with each other.

Neither of them had eaten much that day, and Sylvester took Lucian to his club and ordered supper, but he looked white and wretched, and shook his head when his friend pressed him to eat and drink. He hated the public place, the sense of homelessness, he wanted to hide himself like an unhappy dog. At last he said,—

“I can do nothing to make up for the past.”

“Well, two years is a long time,” said Sylvester, whose own feelings were too exacting just then to leave space for much sympathy with Lucian.

“Is it? I’ve done a great many things since we parted; but I’ve never felt anything but—wanting her. She seems a thousand times more glorious than ever to me, and I am nothing to her—now.”

“But you didn’t think, before you saw her again, that, after all that passed, she had continued to care for you?” said Syl, curiously.

“I did not knowthen, if she ever had truly cared for me,” said Lucian. “I supposed that she had not, that it had all been a delusion. What else could I think? Even then, I did not forget her. But when I found, when she herself says now, that in that old time, she was real and true—I don’t see how any one can change a true love once given. It’s a thing I can’t conceive possible. It would have seemed a fresh wrong to her to fear it.”

“Did it never occur to you,” said Sylvester impatiently, “that she was not half-grown-up, two years ago, and that now she may see that you are not the kind of person to suit her?”

“I never could have outgrown her,” said Lucian. “And did you never think that she has never forgiven us—you—for misjudging her?”

“That is a different thing. That is not how it is,” said Lucian, positively; then, standing up, “I want to get back to your rooms, Syl. I can’t stand anything more. I’ll go to bed, I feel done for.” There was something pathetic in the faithfulness that could not imagine the possibility of change in the love that had once been proved worthy; but naturally Lucian’s self-confidence struck Sylvester forcibly, and as they walked away together once more, he suddenly lost the remains of his patience, and broke out—

“Can’t you see that a creature like that has a thousand needs and possibilities that have developed in her since she belonged to you? It may be for good, or it may be for evil, but she cannot go back. Did it never strike youthenthat you had got hold of a being all force and fire, a splendid goddess, altogether out of your ken?”

“No,” said Lucian, “I meant to take care of her, and I hoped we should go on, and lead the right sort of lives together.”

“Well, we are each shut up in the bounds of our own nature,” said Sylvester, shortly.

“I think,” said Lucian, after a pause, “that you are trying to make me see that I never was good enough for her.”

“Who could be?”

“If it has been all my fault,” said Lucian, in a shaken voice, “it is a hard thing to know. For—it is not all right with her now. Good-night, Syl,”—for by this time they had reached the lodgings—“I’m going to bed. You think I’m not enough of a fellow for her, but she has all there is of me, and it’s no good to her.”

He hurried away, and shut himself into his room. His words hardly did him justice; for his thoughts were crude and one-sided; but the entire trust in the word once given, the love that had survived even the loss of faith, were feelings of heroic size.

Lucian really had few faults, and such as he had, he guarded against with dutiful, if somewhat formal, technical conscientiousness. Defects of nature, as distinct from acts of sin, he did not recognise.

When he found that he had been led to misjudge Amethyst, his conscience, as well as his heart, was shocked, he felt that he ought not to have been deceived, and, whether he could understand it or no, he knew that she was lost to him for ever. She was not for him. He saw too that shewaschanged. She was not what he had expected to find her. He was bewildered by her, and he had to live without her.

Lucian’s religion, was as simple as his view of life. Under its dictates, he had abstained from the ordinary sins of school and college life, and had framed his view of what was becoming to a young man of property. Like the young ruler, he kept the Commandments. He distinctly believed that his life was ordered for him, and, in this fresh agony, which had brought a certainty, which, while the separation from Amethyst had been hisowndoing, he had never really felt, he recognised that he must not throw it away.

The right thing to do, soon, was to go and live at Toppings by himself, or with his mother and sisters. There would never be any one else now. He would go for his three months’ cruise in theAlbatross, and get over the worst of his trouble. He thought that he would rather be alone, at first, than with Sylvester. Somehow, his old companion jarred upon him. Perhaps friend, as well as love, had outgrown him.

Meanwhile, Sylvester had been haunted by the echo of one of Lucian’s sentences, “All is not right with her now.” No, indeed, and the lover of her girlhood was powerless to help. Could his own love, so much more full, as it seemed to him, of comprehending in sight, do nothing? He would have been wretched if she had turned back to Lucian’s love. That could not have sufficed her; but it was far worse that she should choose the lower part, defy and ignore all the imperious demands of her fine spirit. And he must stand by and see it—He who had watched her course, and read her needs and her dangers, from the very first day that, behind the beauty that had captivated his senses, he had seen the aspiring soul look out from her eyes.

Through the short hours of darkness Sylvester lay in helpless rage and despair; but suddenly, when the light of the summer dawn came through his open window, and the London sparrows began to twitter, and the life of London to wake up with the roll of the market waggons and the tread of the earliest passing feet, he started up, inspired with a sudden purpose.

“I will not stand by, and see it. What matter what she may think of me or of my doings? I have no hope of her. She is not for me. But my soul shall tell her soul the truth. She, her true self, shall not fight the battle alone, with every one around her on the side of the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

Sylvester Riddell was not a person who led an ardent or strenuous life. His professional duties at the University were not very arduous, his literary work was of a somewhat dilettante nature, his mind was full of conflicting theories.

But though he wrote verse that was not quite poetry, though he was inconsistent, and harmlessly self-indulgent, he had moments of inspiration, when the “demon” that speaks to prophet and poet would speak to him. Such a moment came now. A purpose, impossible conventionally, but which, nevertheless, he would carry out, had come to him, and he called down all power in earth and heaven, every force which he believed to make for righteousness, to fight on his side and to help him. Never had such real prayer gone forth from his soul, as now when he determined to reinforce with every particle of spiritual strength within him, the wavering spirit of the woman he loved. He felt ashamed of his irritation against Lucian, who, after all, had served Amethyst as well as he knew how, though he did not wish him to guess either his feelings or his purpose, thinking, rather unjustly, that Lucian would not be able to understand him, and would suppose that he meant to make Amethyst an offer.

Lucian was very quiet, and seemed to find breakfast a difficulty. After a silence he said—

“There’s one thing, Syl, I think should be done, and it would be best for you to do it. Will you write to my mother, and undeceive her? She will believe you. It is all gone by, but I cannot have one shadow left upon her which can be removed.”

“Yes, I will,” said Sylvester. “What shall you do now yourself?”

“I think I shall close with the man who owns theAlbatross—for three months only. Will you come?”

“I hardly know. I ought to go to Cleverley first. Perhaps I might join you later.”

“I’ve got a note from Jackson,” said Lucian; “he wants me to run down and see him first. He misses me—I got to know his ways.”

He did not get very steadily to the end of the sentence, he was touched at finding himself satisfactory to some one.

“Could he go with you?” said Sylvester. “Oh no. He ought to be perfectly quiet. But I shall ask him to come to Toppings in the autumn. I must make a beginning there some time. I’ll do it then.”

“Well, Lucy, I dare say that’s quite right.”

“I shall go off this morning,” said Lucian. “Jackson’s father lives near Chester. Then on to Liverpool. I’ll leave word there about letters. Tell me if—when—when anything happens. I’m very much obliged to you for having given me the chance of contradicting my former conduct. I think, perhaps, in time to come, she may like to remember that I did it. And tell your father, please, that I renewed my offer, and that she refused me. I can’t think of anything else that I can do or say.”

“It has been hard lines on you, my dear old boy.”

“Yes. But that’s no matter, if I have in any way repaired the injustice. I’ve seen her; I suppose I never shall again. She did say a hard thing. But—well, Syl, good-bye, I’ll go and look after a train to suit me. Thank you. I’m glad it’s all happened. Good-bye. When your time comes, I hope you’ll have better luck.”

He smiled ruefully enough, and held out his hand. Sylvester took it.

“Say one thing more, Lucy,” he said; “wish me as single a purpose as your own.”

Lucian looked puzzled. Sylvester’s lips were set and pale, and his eyes very bright.

“I’ll wish you anything I can,” he said, and went off to collect his belongings.

He was longer about it than Sylvester had expected; the hansom he had ordered waited, before he came in again ready to start.

He put something down on the table.

“I don’t think you brought that photograph to Liverpool for me, Syl,” he said, and was gone before a word could be spoken.

Chapter Twenty Seven.A Faithful Servant.When Amethyst found herself, with a shock of surprise, in Sylvester’s presence, her first thought was that he had come to plead the cause of Lucian Leigh, and there was a certain distance in her tone as she said—“Mr Riddell!”“Miss Haredale,” said Sylvester, standing up before her, “I have come to beg you not to marry Sir Richard Grattan. Forgive me—forgive me. I am so beyond defence on any ground but one, that no beating about the bush will soften my actions. I love you, therefore I understand you. Your heart is not in this marriage. If you give away your freedom, all the best part of you will die. I am pleading for no one, not for myself nor for Lucian. Oh, don’t deny your heart—your soul—don’t do this thing.”His voice was full of such strong vibration, though he spoke low, his eyes so full of passionate purpose, the astonishment at his words was so great, that Amethyst stood looking at him for a moment, with wide-open eyes and parted lips. He took courage and went on—“I know it would be all well enough for some women. I know how often it is done. But it is not right for you—not for you. That which you defy—you don’t think it is your conscience—but it is—it is—it is the Voice of God within you. It is the highest claim that He can make on you.” Sylvester came close to her and grasped her hands. In her wide startled eyes, he seemed to read what he must say. Not one thought of himself marred the intensity of his appeal, and she made no attempt to fence with him, forgot how easily, with one conventional word, she could have put him aside. He seized upon her and dominated her, as no one else had ever done.“I did not think God ever spoke to me,” she said.“Oh yes, He does,” answered Sylvester. “I have seen your eyes listen.”“But,” said Amethyst, “I don’t think you can know. My romance is over. I—till a few days back—I was quite content to marry him. He is quite good. And I am almost bound. It would do such dreadful harm to draw back. It would be wrong just to follow a feeling—a fear—”“No, no!” cried Sylvester. “Ten thousand times—no! If so, every martyr, every patriot, who followed his highest instincts, regardless of old ties, every soul that had to save itself at any price, every one who has cut off the right hand, put out the right eye, has been wrong. Oh, the right hand, the right eye, are always so good. There is so much to be said for them! You can make out so good a case! Oh, you are so young, you seem but a child, you don’t know really what you are doing. You think of your duty to others. No one has taught you your duty to yourself.”“Oh,” said Amethyst, with a sort of sad dignity, “I know much more about it all than you think.” She moved a little away from him, and sat down, then presently went on speaking out her thoughts. Sylvester seemed to her almost like an incarnation of the opposing force within her.“I don’t think it was wrong as I was—at least for some people there does not seem anything very right. Your father said I was to try for the least wrong—the rather better.”“Yes,” said Sylvester, “the least wrong—the most rightfor you!”“Then—something came over me. It all went flat. Then, you came and told me Lucian was coming back—and—and—I found out in another way, that if—if he brought back my feelings—I could and I would fight it all through—andnothingwould stand against me. But oh—the feelings are all gone. I’ve forgotten him! So my feelings can’t be worth much, and—and there doesn’t seem enough to fight about—to give it all up and condemn myself and my sisters to a bad, miserable life—oh, so many degradations!”“Lucian knows now how deeply he offended you,” said Sylvester, swerving a little from his point, so much did he care what her feelings were.“It’s not that. It is that I have changed. But I—I couldn’t wronghim. I couldn’t marryhimfor—for anestablishment!”The last word burst out as if in quotation marks, with a passionate accent of self-contempt and scorn.“What I want to say is,” said Sylvester, “don’t wrong yourself. Listen!—I believe in counsels of perfection. I don’t judge all the women who have married as you say, and been good and saint-like and self-denying, for other people’s sake. But you—you hear another Voice. Even for your sisters’ sake—listen to it.”Amethyst turned away, and hid her face against the back of her chair. She was not crying,—but a sense of being overwhelmed was coming upon her. The situation was beginning to make itself felt.“When one has no feelings,” she said, after a minute—“neither religious nor any others—there is nothing left but doing right.”“Thereisthat left,” he answered, coming nearer. Another silence, then she faltered out—“Of course—I haven’t got my eyes shut. I do know all you mean—what marrying would be.—You think I couldn’t expect to be helped to be good afterwards—doing it against my instincts. You think it would be so wrong, that it’s worth turning life upside down to stop it—worthwhat it will be like, not to do it?”“So wrong,” said Sylvester, kneeling beside her chair, “that I would rather see you die than do it.”Another pause, then suddenly she stood up, and looked down into his face.“I will not do it,” she said. “I said no one helped me. That’s not true. You have done a tremendous thing for me. Thank you!”She held out her hands, and he put them to his lips; then, as he rose up, the inspiration that had brought him there seemed to die out, and left only trembling human passion in its stead. Nothing more was given him to say. He had really spoken in utter singleness of heart, altogether for her sake. Now, he felt that every word would be for his own.He murmured an echo of her thanks—looked at her for a moment with white face and shining eyes, and went, without one conventional word of apology, or of parting.When he got out into the street, he found that he could hardly stand. With an instinct of avoiding notice, he crossed over towards the railing of the square garden, and, finding the gate open, went in and managed to reach a bench close by, and sat there, till his head ceased to swim, and he could see and think clearly once more.He almost felt as if he were waking from a dream. How could he have faced her with such daring words, and how had she come to listen with so much patience?If he had saved her, he had done it at a cruel cost. He had not looked into her eyes, and touched her soul, without such growth of the passion within him as made his yearning a living pain, instead of a tender dream, or at least an endurable desire. His love had grown a thousandfold in that short quarter of an hour. And she had listened to him as if he had been a voice in the air! And to what a struggle had he persuaded her!—he who took his own life so easily.As Sylvester sat musing, he knew that his own words, or the love that had prompted them, had changed himself. He had no need to make any outward change in his life, but he knew, as he got up and walked slowly out of the garden and up the square, that his appeal to Amethyst had bound him to live it in a much more strenuous way.Amethyst, when he left her, stood still, while a crimson blush spread over face, neck, and arms—a deep glow of shame, the reaction from the utter absence of self-consciousness with which she had listened. She had never thought of Sylvester Riddell, while his eyes were shining into hers, and his voice thrilling into her ears; now she felt as if the eyes and the voice would never leave her. Three times he had been concerned in her fate.Now, he had told her nothing that she did not know before, but he had given her the impulse to act upon her own inner convictions.Amethyst was a strong and resolute person, but she shuddered as she thought of the battle that lay before her. She had allowed the brilliant and delightful present to distract her mind from its issues, and to blind her eyes to the vanishing point of all her success. She had been so taken up with interests and amusements, and with the triumph of her beauty, that she had suffered herself to forget the nature of the act to which all was tending, had talked, and thought, and prepared for a worldly marriage, without allowing herself to realise what a marriage without love meant. The pomps and vanities of this wicked world had caught her in their toils.So she had tied her own hands, and put herself in a false position, entangled herself in all sorts of counter obligations, which must be broken through at the cost of honour and faith.When she turned round, not five minutes after Sylvester had left her, and saw Sir Richard Grattan coming into the room, she felt that in another five minutes all her power of resistance would be gone. She clasped her hands together behind her back, and stood straight up and waited. Sir Richard’s face was disturbed, and not quite that of an eager lover.“Miss Haredale,” he said, in his harsh, full, resolute voice, “I have heard a good deal this morning to surprise me. But I am a man of honour, and in the face of these distressing circumstances, I come to renew the offer I have more than once made you, and I hope for a favourable answer.”“You have laid us under great obligations,” said Amethyst, a little more proudly than she would have dared to speak, if he had not referred to his own honour.“I have acted pretty much with my eyes open, though I did not know of this last—misfortune. I consider it all quite worth my while. It won’t be the last time, I dare say, that difficulties may arise, but I considered all that, or most of it, before I began to address you. I don’t consider that my credit is in any way affected by other people’s conduct. I have acted all through in the hope, the determination to win you, and, as my wife, no annoyances shall be suffered to approach you.”“Sir Richard,” said Amethyst, “I wish to tell you the truth. I have been meaning to—to accept your proposals for a long time. Certainly I have given you reason to think I should. I have to tell you that I find, now, that it is utterly impossible. I beg your pardon. I have behaved very ill. But I cannot fulfil my intention.”Sir Richard gave a great start.“I know what this means,” he said abruptly; “some one has come between us. It is your old lover.”“No,” said Amethyst, “the truth is your due. I refused Mr Leigh’s proposals. I solemnly assure you that you have no rival. There is no one else. I don’t prefer any one. But—it is myself. I have found out that I cannot return your feelings—I never told you that I could. And I know now that I could not make you a good wife. If I married only for the sake of outside things, all the good part of me would die out I never—never ought to have entertained the idea.”“I am quite aware,” said Sir Richard, somewhat hotly, “that I am not the first in the field, nor the only one. But I was given to understand that your early attachment was entirely at an end.”“It is so. There is no one that I wish to marry.” When Amethyst had made this assertion to Lucian Leigh, he had implicitly believed her, but as she raised her eyes to Sir Richard, she saw that he did not think that she was telling the truth. Probably he did not expect truth on such a subject from a young lady. She saw that it would be absolutely hopeless to make him understand the real state of her mind, and a sudden sense of violent recoil came to the aid of her courage.He was very angry, but he made a strong effort to control himself and to behave well.“I don’t think I have deserved this caprice,” he said.“No, I don’t think you have,” said Amethyst, “you have offered me much more than I deserve. I have been very wrong; I will not pretend to you that I did not once mean to accept you. But I never shall do so now—never.”“It would be very unbecoming in me,” said Sir Richard, “if I recalled any of the means by which I have endeavoured to recommend myself. Amethyst, don’t drive me crazy. Don’t you know that I worship you? I will not give you up. I’ve swallowed everything about your family. I am prepared to make a queen of you. There’s nothing my money and your beauty won’t command. You shall be the greatest lady, short of royalty, in England in five years’ time. You’ll take the lead in the county, and with it all, you’ll never have reason to be ashamed of your husband. I’ve a fair square past behind me. My money’s honestly come by, and, by heaven, there’s a great future before me—and my wife. And I love you.”It was not badly done. It was all true. It was what she had meant her beauty to win for her.“I can’t,” she said, turning white, and trembling; “you don’t understand what I’m made of. If I loved you, I could be the splendid wife you want, but as I don’t—I should hate all that—and very soon I should hate you?”She spoke low, but in a voice full of passion. His colour rose, and he came close to her side.“Whois it? Who has come between us?” he said, when there was the sound of a soft sweep and rustle, and Lady Haredale’s light sweet voice was heard saying—“Well, I think you have had time enough to settle it, Sir Richard. Am I to give up my little girl?”

When Amethyst found herself, with a shock of surprise, in Sylvester’s presence, her first thought was that he had come to plead the cause of Lucian Leigh, and there was a certain distance in her tone as she said—

“Mr Riddell!”

“Miss Haredale,” said Sylvester, standing up before her, “I have come to beg you not to marry Sir Richard Grattan. Forgive me—forgive me. I am so beyond defence on any ground but one, that no beating about the bush will soften my actions. I love you, therefore I understand you. Your heart is not in this marriage. If you give away your freedom, all the best part of you will die. I am pleading for no one, not for myself nor for Lucian. Oh, don’t deny your heart—your soul—don’t do this thing.”

His voice was full of such strong vibration, though he spoke low, his eyes so full of passionate purpose, the astonishment at his words was so great, that Amethyst stood looking at him for a moment, with wide-open eyes and parted lips. He took courage and went on—

“I know it would be all well enough for some women. I know how often it is done. But it is not right for you—not for you. That which you defy—you don’t think it is your conscience—but it is—it is—it is the Voice of God within you. It is the highest claim that He can make on you.” Sylvester came close to her and grasped her hands. In her wide startled eyes, he seemed to read what he must say. Not one thought of himself marred the intensity of his appeal, and she made no attempt to fence with him, forgot how easily, with one conventional word, she could have put him aside. He seized upon her and dominated her, as no one else had ever done.

“I did not think God ever spoke to me,” she said.

“Oh yes, He does,” answered Sylvester. “I have seen your eyes listen.”

“But,” said Amethyst, “I don’t think you can know. My romance is over. I—till a few days back—I was quite content to marry him. He is quite good. And I am almost bound. It would do such dreadful harm to draw back. It would be wrong just to follow a feeling—a fear—”

“No, no!” cried Sylvester. “Ten thousand times—no! If so, every martyr, every patriot, who followed his highest instincts, regardless of old ties, every soul that had to save itself at any price, every one who has cut off the right hand, put out the right eye, has been wrong. Oh, the right hand, the right eye, are always so good. There is so much to be said for them! You can make out so good a case! Oh, you are so young, you seem but a child, you don’t know really what you are doing. You think of your duty to others. No one has taught you your duty to yourself.”

“Oh,” said Amethyst, with a sort of sad dignity, “I know much more about it all than you think.” She moved a little away from him, and sat down, then presently went on speaking out her thoughts. Sylvester seemed to her almost like an incarnation of the opposing force within her.

“I don’t think it was wrong as I was—at least for some people there does not seem anything very right. Your father said I was to try for the least wrong—the rather better.”

“Yes,” said Sylvester, “the least wrong—the most rightfor you!”

“Then—something came over me. It all went flat. Then, you came and told me Lucian was coming back—and—and—I found out in another way, that if—if he brought back my feelings—I could and I would fight it all through—andnothingwould stand against me. But oh—the feelings are all gone. I’ve forgotten him! So my feelings can’t be worth much, and—and there doesn’t seem enough to fight about—to give it all up and condemn myself and my sisters to a bad, miserable life—oh, so many degradations!”

“Lucian knows now how deeply he offended you,” said Sylvester, swerving a little from his point, so much did he care what her feelings were.

“It’s not that. It is that I have changed. But I—I couldn’t wronghim. I couldn’t marryhimfor—for anestablishment!”

The last word burst out as if in quotation marks, with a passionate accent of self-contempt and scorn.

“What I want to say is,” said Sylvester, “don’t wrong yourself. Listen!—I believe in counsels of perfection. I don’t judge all the women who have married as you say, and been good and saint-like and self-denying, for other people’s sake. But you—you hear another Voice. Even for your sisters’ sake—listen to it.”

Amethyst turned away, and hid her face against the back of her chair. She was not crying,—but a sense of being overwhelmed was coming upon her. The situation was beginning to make itself felt.

“When one has no feelings,” she said, after a minute—“neither religious nor any others—there is nothing left but doing right.”

“Thereisthat left,” he answered, coming nearer. Another silence, then she faltered out—

“Of course—I haven’t got my eyes shut. I do know all you mean—what marrying would be.—You think I couldn’t expect to be helped to be good afterwards—doing it against my instincts. You think it would be so wrong, that it’s worth turning life upside down to stop it—worthwhat it will be like, not to do it?”

“So wrong,” said Sylvester, kneeling beside her chair, “that I would rather see you die than do it.”

Another pause, then suddenly she stood up, and looked down into his face.

“I will not do it,” she said. “I said no one helped me. That’s not true. You have done a tremendous thing for me. Thank you!”

She held out her hands, and he put them to his lips; then, as he rose up, the inspiration that had brought him there seemed to die out, and left only trembling human passion in its stead. Nothing more was given him to say. He had really spoken in utter singleness of heart, altogether for her sake. Now, he felt that every word would be for his own.

He murmured an echo of her thanks—looked at her for a moment with white face and shining eyes, and went, without one conventional word of apology, or of parting.

When he got out into the street, he found that he could hardly stand. With an instinct of avoiding notice, he crossed over towards the railing of the square garden, and, finding the gate open, went in and managed to reach a bench close by, and sat there, till his head ceased to swim, and he could see and think clearly once more.

He almost felt as if he were waking from a dream. How could he have faced her with such daring words, and how had she come to listen with so much patience?

If he had saved her, he had done it at a cruel cost. He had not looked into her eyes, and touched her soul, without such growth of the passion within him as made his yearning a living pain, instead of a tender dream, or at least an endurable desire. His love had grown a thousandfold in that short quarter of an hour. And she had listened to him as if he had been a voice in the air! And to what a struggle had he persuaded her!—he who took his own life so easily.

As Sylvester sat musing, he knew that his own words, or the love that had prompted them, had changed himself. He had no need to make any outward change in his life, but he knew, as he got up and walked slowly out of the garden and up the square, that his appeal to Amethyst had bound him to live it in a much more strenuous way.

Amethyst, when he left her, stood still, while a crimson blush spread over face, neck, and arms—a deep glow of shame, the reaction from the utter absence of self-consciousness with which she had listened. She had never thought of Sylvester Riddell, while his eyes were shining into hers, and his voice thrilling into her ears; now she felt as if the eyes and the voice would never leave her. Three times he had been concerned in her fate.

Now, he had told her nothing that she did not know before, but he had given her the impulse to act upon her own inner convictions.

Amethyst was a strong and resolute person, but she shuddered as she thought of the battle that lay before her. She had allowed the brilliant and delightful present to distract her mind from its issues, and to blind her eyes to the vanishing point of all her success. She had been so taken up with interests and amusements, and with the triumph of her beauty, that she had suffered herself to forget the nature of the act to which all was tending, had talked, and thought, and prepared for a worldly marriage, without allowing herself to realise what a marriage without love meant. The pomps and vanities of this wicked world had caught her in their toils.

So she had tied her own hands, and put herself in a false position, entangled herself in all sorts of counter obligations, which must be broken through at the cost of honour and faith.

When she turned round, not five minutes after Sylvester had left her, and saw Sir Richard Grattan coming into the room, she felt that in another five minutes all her power of resistance would be gone. She clasped her hands together behind her back, and stood straight up and waited. Sir Richard’s face was disturbed, and not quite that of an eager lover.

“Miss Haredale,” he said, in his harsh, full, resolute voice, “I have heard a good deal this morning to surprise me. But I am a man of honour, and in the face of these distressing circumstances, I come to renew the offer I have more than once made you, and I hope for a favourable answer.”

“You have laid us under great obligations,” said Amethyst, a little more proudly than she would have dared to speak, if he had not referred to his own honour.

“I have acted pretty much with my eyes open, though I did not know of this last—misfortune. I consider it all quite worth my while. It won’t be the last time, I dare say, that difficulties may arise, but I considered all that, or most of it, before I began to address you. I don’t consider that my credit is in any way affected by other people’s conduct. I have acted all through in the hope, the determination to win you, and, as my wife, no annoyances shall be suffered to approach you.”

“Sir Richard,” said Amethyst, “I wish to tell you the truth. I have been meaning to—to accept your proposals for a long time. Certainly I have given you reason to think I should. I have to tell you that I find, now, that it is utterly impossible. I beg your pardon. I have behaved very ill. But I cannot fulfil my intention.”

Sir Richard gave a great start.

“I know what this means,” he said abruptly; “some one has come between us. It is your old lover.”

“No,” said Amethyst, “the truth is your due. I refused Mr Leigh’s proposals. I solemnly assure you that you have no rival. There is no one else. I don’t prefer any one. But—it is myself. I have found out that I cannot return your feelings—I never told you that I could. And I know now that I could not make you a good wife. If I married only for the sake of outside things, all the good part of me would die out I never—never ought to have entertained the idea.”

“I am quite aware,” said Sir Richard, somewhat hotly, “that I am not the first in the field, nor the only one. But I was given to understand that your early attachment was entirely at an end.”

“It is so. There is no one that I wish to marry.” When Amethyst had made this assertion to Lucian Leigh, he had implicitly believed her, but as she raised her eyes to Sir Richard, she saw that he did not think that she was telling the truth. Probably he did not expect truth on such a subject from a young lady. She saw that it would be absolutely hopeless to make him understand the real state of her mind, and a sudden sense of violent recoil came to the aid of her courage.

He was very angry, but he made a strong effort to control himself and to behave well.

“I don’t think I have deserved this caprice,” he said.

“No, I don’t think you have,” said Amethyst, “you have offered me much more than I deserve. I have been very wrong; I will not pretend to you that I did not once mean to accept you. But I never shall do so now—never.”

“It would be very unbecoming in me,” said Sir Richard, “if I recalled any of the means by which I have endeavoured to recommend myself. Amethyst, don’t drive me crazy. Don’t you know that I worship you? I will not give you up. I’ve swallowed everything about your family. I am prepared to make a queen of you. There’s nothing my money and your beauty won’t command. You shall be the greatest lady, short of royalty, in England in five years’ time. You’ll take the lead in the county, and with it all, you’ll never have reason to be ashamed of your husband. I’ve a fair square past behind me. My money’s honestly come by, and, by heaven, there’s a great future before me—and my wife. And I love you.”

It was not badly done. It was all true. It was what she had meant her beauty to win for her.

“I can’t,” she said, turning white, and trembling; “you don’t understand what I’m made of. If I loved you, I could be the splendid wife you want, but as I don’t—I should hate all that—and very soon I should hate you?”

She spoke low, but in a voice full of passion. His colour rose, and he came close to her side.

“Whois it? Who has come between us?” he said, when there was the sound of a soft sweep and rustle, and Lady Haredale’s light sweet voice was heard saying—

“Well, I think you have had time enough to settle it, Sir Richard. Am I to give up my little girl?”

Chapter Twenty Eight.Escaped.There ensued for Amethyst some hours which were terrible to endure, and more terrible still to remember. Sir Richard Grattan, not without some dignity, withdrew to lay his case before Lord Haredale, and left the mother to plead his cause with her child. They had already told each other cynical truths, and now mother and daughter stood face to face, and Lady Haredale told Amethyst the truth without a softening word, without an ambiguous phrase. She told the facts of Lord Haredale’s life, and the causes of his money troubles, and also of those of his son. She told her how he was likely to seek consolation for his disgraceful misfortunes, and made her understand the kind of company to which, if their heads once sank below water, they would be condemned. And then, did Amethyst suppose that she herself had been in love with Lord Haredale when she married him at eighteen, for his title, and because she knew her own fortune was all a myth? Amethyst was more lucky, she had got over her romance, Lady Haredale had had to manage hers after marriage, and Sir Richard was a much better man than Lord Haredale had ever pretended to be.And then the daughter replied that she was not likely to be better than father or mother; she was quite capable of another “romance,” and what then?“Then,” said Lady Haredale, “you must do as others have done. Get out of it without a scandal, and stop in time.”“I should not stop in time in such a case.”“Oh yes, you would, my dear; you’re not a fool. Leave all that to take care of itself, and do what’s right now. I have never gone too far. I will tell you for your good—”And Amethyst stood and listened to her mother’s experiences, told in her mother’s familiar voice—to her mother’s view of where a woman could always stop, and yet how much might be ventured and no harm come. She listened with a dreadful comprehension of these principles of action, and with a still more dreadful certainty that she never could be certain of following them.Before she could reply, her father came in upon her, pleading and entreating with her, and throwing himself on her mercy; then, when she stood like a stone, hardened by her mother’s story, he turned upon her with a rage such as she had never imagined, broke out into violent, coarse language such as she had never heard, till she shrank and trembled with sheer physical terror. Then a sound of sobs broke on the scene, and there stood Miss Haredale, and Amethyst flung herself upon her, the real mother of her youth.“They will kill me!” she cried; but Miss Haredale only wept afresh, and bemoaned all the misery, and gave Amethyst no real support at all. She was holding by another end of the tangle, and began to speak of Carrie and Charles—and what was she to do? while Lord Haredale turned and swore at her, and the flood of wrath and argument surged away from Amethyst for a moment, and then turned back to include her once more. Strained as her nerves already were, she was so frightened at Lord Haredale’s violent tones and gesture, that with a sobbing cry of “Oh, father—oh, father! don’t strike me!” she turned and fled, every other feeling lost in a personal terror that had never crossed her imagination before.“What a fool the girl is!” cried Lord Haredale; “as if I should hurt her. You’ve managed her confoundedly ill, my lady, to bring all this about.”“Well, I have,” said Lady Haredale. “When one is so upset and so dreadfully anxious, one is really stupid. And Amethyst has your temper, my lord. I never saw a girl in such a passion, but I’ll set it right presently. As for you, Annabel, if Carrie Carisbrooke is determined to stick to Charles, why not? It’s a straw to cling to.”“I was a wicked woman to bring her near him,” said Miss Haredale, sobbing; “her heart will be broken, and Amethyst’s too.”“Not a bit of it,” said Lady Haredale. “Amethyst has a sharp tongue, and, like Una, she’s emotional. Dear me, so we all are! I was just now, myself, and very incautious. But I won’t have the poor child frightened to death, my lord, and I think you’ll have to beg her pardon.” She left the room, leaving the brother and sister alone, the latter still in tears, and Lord Haredale cooling down under his wife’s shower of common sense.“Well, Anna,” he said presently, “it isn’t the first time that you have heard a man swear, at any rate. You know there’s no disrespect intended.”“It is a long time, Haredale, since I lived with my relations,” said Miss Haredale, dryly.“Grattan doesn’t swear,” said Lord Haredale, with a slight accent of contempt, caused, perhaps, by the keen edge of intolerable and ill-requited obligation. “She’ll be a thousand times better off if she marries him.”“Oh, she will,” said Miss Haredale. “If only she can so feel it!”“Well,” said Lord Haredale, “her mother’s clever enough; perhaps she’ll bring her round.” His wrath had evaporated in its own violence, and he began to think how he could pass the morning least intolerably, since the haunts of his fellows were not likely to be made pleasant to him for the present. Miss Haredale was full of remorse and misery, but Sir Richard Grattan’s offer represented to her the last straw to hold by, and she had not courage enough to back up Amethyst’s resistance to it.Amethyst meanwhile got up-stairs, and locked herself into her own room. Then she dropped down on the floor, not fainting, but in a sudden collapse of all her powers. The sudden news, on the day before, of Lucian’s return, the intense excitement at the theatre, the expectation of Lucian’s coming, the change of feeling when she saw him, the night of struggle with herself, the family disgrace, the high exaltation of Sylvester’s appeal, the strain of resolution in her encounter with Sir Richard, the shame of what her mother had said to her, and still more, of what she had answered, the shock and terror of her father’s unseemly violence, had worn out all her strength.She lay perfectly still, without conscious thought or feeling, till gradually her strong nerves began to recover themselves, and a flicker of light came into her heart. She had broken free.For many weeks she had been holding herself in, keeping herself in a prison of necessity, expediency, and pleasure, refusing to think long-stretching thoughts, to feel high-reaching feelings, to pray genuine prayers. She had been afraid to break through the soft, tempting satisfactions of the world’s good things, afraid to shake the foundations of the philosophy by which she justified her choice to herself.Now she was free, out in the rain and the storm, with the wide world around her, and the wide sky above her head—free to be lonely, dissatisfied, miserable, to long and to dread, to love and to hate, to be all of herself once more.“The snare is broken, and I am delivered!” she said; and great vigorous throbs of painful life came back to her soul.Una’s voice broke in upon her.“Amethyst, darling—won’t you let me in? Dearest, do open the door.”Amethyst rose, still trembling and unsteady, and unlocked the door, then dropped back into a low chair, as Una ran in, and started at the sight of her face.“Oh, my dear, you are half-killed,” she said. “Wait one moment.”She went away again, and came back with a glass of wine in her hand.“You must drink this. It’s my turn to be nurse now.”“I’m not ill,” said Amethyst, taking the wine; but she laid her head on Una’s shoulder, and submitted passively to her caresses.“Now,” she said, after a few minutes, “tell me all you know about things.”“I know it all,” said Una. “We heard a great deal, and then mother came and told us. She was crying, and she said that she had been so much upset, that she’d actually made a scene, which was quite against her principles, and frightened you. But she says she hasn’t ‘said die’ yet, so she is going to take Kat and Tory to the duchess’s garden-party, and ‘see how she can represent things.’ They had better see a great party once, she said, if they never could again. And Sir Richard is to come again, then she thinks you won’t refuse him.”“Oh yes, I shall, Una—I have,” said Amethyst, with a fresh ring in her voice for a moment.“Then it seems that now,” continued Una, “it is quite impossible for Charles to marry, and Aunt Anna does nothing but cry, and repent bitterly of having thrown Carrie in his way. But Carrie turned round like a little fury, and said that she had told Charles that she liked him, and so she did, and that she meant to keep her word, and she has appealed to her uncle. Hemusthave known all along how wrong it was. Isn’t it hard upon her?”“Yes,” said Amethyst, “but I must get through my own business first. I am going to write Sir Richard a note which will stop him from coming, and you must take care that he gets it in time.” There was a vigour in her manner which astonished Una, as she rose and bathed her face, and wrote a few lines in a fairly steady hand.“Dear Sir Richard,—“I will not let you deceive yourself nor be deceived by others about me. I did intend to accept your offer, for I wished to be content with all the good things you would give me. But I cannot, and I shall never change my mind again. I cannot ask you to forgive me, but I acknowledge that I have behaved very ill to you. You have been most generous. All I can do now, is to spare you doubt and delay. I beg you to take this as a final refusal from—“Amethyst Haredale.”Amethyst knew that her letter was abrupt and outspoken, but in the effort to leave no doubt behind, she could do the ungracious and cruel thing in no softer fashion.She gave the letter to Una, with strict injunctions to say nothing about it, but to take care that it was sent at once. Then she threw herself down on the bed, and, when Una came back again, she found her dead asleep, her face white and still, her limbs relaxed, in the reaction from the intense strain which she had been enduring. While she slept, Lady Haredale got herself up in a marvellously charming toilette, and drove off to her great garden-party with Kattern, full of the unexpected pleasure, and Tory, looking unwontedly serious. Miss Haredale and Carrie were shut up in their own rooms.Una had been called down-stairs by her mother before she started, to receive orders to take care that Amethyst saw Sir Richard—orders which Una may be forgiven for receiving in silence.She sat down in the drawing-room to collect her senses a little, and to wonder what would happen next, when there was a step behind her, and she turned and saw her brother. He came slowly down the long room towards her, looking pale and ill, and with that look of being down on his luck, which, though he was perfectly well-dressed, gave him the air of being out at elbows.“The fellows said you were alone, Una, so, as you’re a kind little girl, I came to speak to you. It’s all up now, and I want you to tell Carrie so.”“But, Charles—had you—is it because of what happened at Epsom?”“Well, no, my dear, not exactly. But there are plenty of other things for Clyste to rout up, you see. I never was so clear from—difficulties—as I gave Grattan and his lordship to understand. No fellow ever can go to the bottom of his affairs, you see. I always knew that whitewashing me couldn’t be done. There’s not money enough, and I haven’t impudence enough, Una, to carry it out. So I’m going to make myself scarce again.”“But, Charles—what shall you do?”“Oh, well, there are ways and means of which you don’t know anything, and I know myself down among them; I was a fool to try this business. But I liked Carrie’s little round face, and if I’d been a better fellow, or if being a bad fellow was the sort of thing she thinks it is, I might have tried. Butyouought to know a little more about it than she does, Una.”“Yes, I never did see how you could marry her.”“I never had a chance, Una. Blanche and I were left to the worst lot of servants ever known. Our nursemaid was a bad one to begin with. Then your mother first flattered and made much of me when I was a rough lout, and then turned upon me, and set me all across with his lordship. And then you know how things go with a fellow.”Una did know, much better than it was well that she should, the hopeless history of her brother’s career.“Does Grattan stick to Amethyst?” he said.“Yes, but she has refused him. She does not like him.”“Well,” said Charles, “it doesn’t matter what she does, men will always run after her. But I say, Una, tell her to keep clear of Carisbrooke. He has made ducks and drakes with some of Carrie’s money, and that was why he was so ready to consent to marry her to me. But he’s regularly gone upon Amethyst in the process. Don’t you know he was Blanche’s first love, when she was staying away with those hunting friends of hers, the Carshaltons? He carried on with her, and spoiled her chances when she was sixteen. He always had the sort of talk to take a girl’s fancy. He’s a very poor lot, so tell Carrie—”“I’m here, Mr Haredale,” said a resolute little voice, as Carrie Carisbrooke, pale and tear-stained, came into the room. “I’ve not been deceived, I always knew that you had been—a dissipated man. But Miss Haredale said you had repented, and I mean to keep my word, and to help you through your troubles; I shouldn’t think of going back because of family misfortunes.”“But I can’t do it, Carrie,” said Charles, in his odd, half-shame-faced, half-rough voice. “I can’t marry you, my dear, as you’d see, if I could tell you anything about it, or if you could understand, which you couldn’t—please God you never will. Good-bye.”“Then didn’t you ever really care for me?” interposed Carrie, with a sudden flash.Charles looked at her and then at Una, and shook his head.“I’ll never forget you, Carrie,” he said, “nor your having liked me. I’d have married you if I could. Good-bye, Una. Will you give me a kiss?”Una put her arms round his neck.“Oh, Charles,” she whispered, “don’t give up altogether. Indeed—indeed—He does save sinners. He always went after the bad ones.”Charles looked into her eager, tear-filled eyes.“Why, you’re the sort that can persuade people to turn religious,” he said. “Good-bye, little Una.”He kissed her very affectionately, then took hold of Carrie’s hands.“Good-bye,” he said. “Between you, you’ve made me wish I’d had a chance of being a decenter fellow.”He stooped down, and kissed her forehead quickly and shyly, then went hurriedly away. Poor Carrie made no further protest. She cried bitterly, as well she might; for her first fresh fancy, and her girlish peace, had been sacrificed to the unjustifiable effort to escape from the inevitable consequences that follow on sinful lives.Una stood still for a moment. Ideas always came to her in sudden flashes, and, with her erring, hopeless brother’s last words, there came before her the momentary vision of a possible future for herself.

There ensued for Amethyst some hours which were terrible to endure, and more terrible still to remember. Sir Richard Grattan, not without some dignity, withdrew to lay his case before Lord Haredale, and left the mother to plead his cause with her child. They had already told each other cynical truths, and now mother and daughter stood face to face, and Lady Haredale told Amethyst the truth without a softening word, without an ambiguous phrase. She told the facts of Lord Haredale’s life, and the causes of his money troubles, and also of those of his son. She told her how he was likely to seek consolation for his disgraceful misfortunes, and made her understand the kind of company to which, if their heads once sank below water, they would be condemned. And then, did Amethyst suppose that she herself had been in love with Lord Haredale when she married him at eighteen, for his title, and because she knew her own fortune was all a myth? Amethyst was more lucky, she had got over her romance, Lady Haredale had had to manage hers after marriage, and Sir Richard was a much better man than Lord Haredale had ever pretended to be.

And then the daughter replied that she was not likely to be better than father or mother; she was quite capable of another “romance,” and what then?

“Then,” said Lady Haredale, “you must do as others have done. Get out of it without a scandal, and stop in time.”

“I should not stop in time in such a case.”

“Oh yes, you would, my dear; you’re not a fool. Leave all that to take care of itself, and do what’s right now. I have never gone too far. I will tell you for your good—”

And Amethyst stood and listened to her mother’s experiences, told in her mother’s familiar voice—to her mother’s view of where a woman could always stop, and yet how much might be ventured and no harm come. She listened with a dreadful comprehension of these principles of action, and with a still more dreadful certainty that she never could be certain of following them.

Before she could reply, her father came in upon her, pleading and entreating with her, and throwing himself on her mercy; then, when she stood like a stone, hardened by her mother’s story, he turned upon her with a rage such as she had never imagined, broke out into violent, coarse language such as she had never heard, till she shrank and trembled with sheer physical terror. Then a sound of sobs broke on the scene, and there stood Miss Haredale, and Amethyst flung herself upon her, the real mother of her youth.

“They will kill me!” she cried; but Miss Haredale only wept afresh, and bemoaned all the misery, and gave Amethyst no real support at all. She was holding by another end of the tangle, and began to speak of Carrie and Charles—and what was she to do? while Lord Haredale turned and swore at her, and the flood of wrath and argument surged away from Amethyst for a moment, and then turned back to include her once more. Strained as her nerves already were, she was so frightened at Lord Haredale’s violent tones and gesture, that with a sobbing cry of “Oh, father—oh, father! don’t strike me!” she turned and fled, every other feeling lost in a personal terror that had never crossed her imagination before.

“What a fool the girl is!” cried Lord Haredale; “as if I should hurt her. You’ve managed her confoundedly ill, my lady, to bring all this about.”

“Well, I have,” said Lady Haredale. “When one is so upset and so dreadfully anxious, one is really stupid. And Amethyst has your temper, my lord. I never saw a girl in such a passion, but I’ll set it right presently. As for you, Annabel, if Carrie Carisbrooke is determined to stick to Charles, why not? It’s a straw to cling to.”

“I was a wicked woman to bring her near him,” said Miss Haredale, sobbing; “her heart will be broken, and Amethyst’s too.”

“Not a bit of it,” said Lady Haredale. “Amethyst has a sharp tongue, and, like Una, she’s emotional. Dear me, so we all are! I was just now, myself, and very incautious. But I won’t have the poor child frightened to death, my lord, and I think you’ll have to beg her pardon.” She left the room, leaving the brother and sister alone, the latter still in tears, and Lord Haredale cooling down under his wife’s shower of common sense.

“Well, Anna,” he said presently, “it isn’t the first time that you have heard a man swear, at any rate. You know there’s no disrespect intended.”

“It is a long time, Haredale, since I lived with my relations,” said Miss Haredale, dryly.

“Grattan doesn’t swear,” said Lord Haredale, with a slight accent of contempt, caused, perhaps, by the keen edge of intolerable and ill-requited obligation. “She’ll be a thousand times better off if she marries him.”

“Oh, she will,” said Miss Haredale. “If only she can so feel it!”

“Well,” said Lord Haredale, “her mother’s clever enough; perhaps she’ll bring her round.” His wrath had evaporated in its own violence, and he began to think how he could pass the morning least intolerably, since the haunts of his fellows were not likely to be made pleasant to him for the present. Miss Haredale was full of remorse and misery, but Sir Richard Grattan’s offer represented to her the last straw to hold by, and she had not courage enough to back up Amethyst’s resistance to it.

Amethyst meanwhile got up-stairs, and locked herself into her own room. Then she dropped down on the floor, not fainting, but in a sudden collapse of all her powers. The sudden news, on the day before, of Lucian’s return, the intense excitement at the theatre, the expectation of Lucian’s coming, the change of feeling when she saw him, the night of struggle with herself, the family disgrace, the high exaltation of Sylvester’s appeal, the strain of resolution in her encounter with Sir Richard, the shame of what her mother had said to her, and still more, of what she had answered, the shock and terror of her father’s unseemly violence, had worn out all her strength.

She lay perfectly still, without conscious thought or feeling, till gradually her strong nerves began to recover themselves, and a flicker of light came into her heart. She had broken free.

For many weeks she had been holding herself in, keeping herself in a prison of necessity, expediency, and pleasure, refusing to think long-stretching thoughts, to feel high-reaching feelings, to pray genuine prayers. She had been afraid to break through the soft, tempting satisfactions of the world’s good things, afraid to shake the foundations of the philosophy by which she justified her choice to herself.

Now she was free, out in the rain and the storm, with the wide world around her, and the wide sky above her head—free to be lonely, dissatisfied, miserable, to long and to dread, to love and to hate, to be all of herself once more.

“The snare is broken, and I am delivered!” she said; and great vigorous throbs of painful life came back to her soul.

Una’s voice broke in upon her.

“Amethyst, darling—won’t you let me in? Dearest, do open the door.”

Amethyst rose, still trembling and unsteady, and unlocked the door, then dropped back into a low chair, as Una ran in, and started at the sight of her face.

“Oh, my dear, you are half-killed,” she said. “Wait one moment.”

She went away again, and came back with a glass of wine in her hand.

“You must drink this. It’s my turn to be nurse now.”

“I’m not ill,” said Amethyst, taking the wine; but she laid her head on Una’s shoulder, and submitted passively to her caresses.

“Now,” she said, after a few minutes, “tell me all you know about things.”

“I know it all,” said Una. “We heard a great deal, and then mother came and told us. She was crying, and she said that she had been so much upset, that she’d actually made a scene, which was quite against her principles, and frightened you. But she says she hasn’t ‘said die’ yet, so she is going to take Kat and Tory to the duchess’s garden-party, and ‘see how she can represent things.’ They had better see a great party once, she said, if they never could again. And Sir Richard is to come again, then she thinks you won’t refuse him.”

“Oh yes, I shall, Una—I have,” said Amethyst, with a fresh ring in her voice for a moment.

“Then it seems that now,” continued Una, “it is quite impossible for Charles to marry, and Aunt Anna does nothing but cry, and repent bitterly of having thrown Carrie in his way. But Carrie turned round like a little fury, and said that she had told Charles that she liked him, and so she did, and that she meant to keep her word, and she has appealed to her uncle. Hemusthave known all along how wrong it was. Isn’t it hard upon her?”

“Yes,” said Amethyst, “but I must get through my own business first. I am going to write Sir Richard a note which will stop him from coming, and you must take care that he gets it in time.” There was a vigour in her manner which astonished Una, as she rose and bathed her face, and wrote a few lines in a fairly steady hand.

“Dear Sir Richard,—“I will not let you deceive yourself nor be deceived by others about me. I did intend to accept your offer, for I wished to be content with all the good things you would give me. But I cannot, and I shall never change my mind again. I cannot ask you to forgive me, but I acknowledge that I have behaved very ill to you. You have been most generous. All I can do now, is to spare you doubt and delay. I beg you to take this as a final refusal from—“Amethyst Haredale.”

“Dear Sir Richard,—“I will not let you deceive yourself nor be deceived by others about me. I did intend to accept your offer, for I wished to be content with all the good things you would give me. But I cannot, and I shall never change my mind again. I cannot ask you to forgive me, but I acknowledge that I have behaved very ill to you. You have been most generous. All I can do now, is to spare you doubt and delay. I beg you to take this as a final refusal from—“Amethyst Haredale.”

Amethyst knew that her letter was abrupt and outspoken, but in the effort to leave no doubt behind, she could do the ungracious and cruel thing in no softer fashion.

She gave the letter to Una, with strict injunctions to say nothing about it, but to take care that it was sent at once. Then she threw herself down on the bed, and, when Una came back again, she found her dead asleep, her face white and still, her limbs relaxed, in the reaction from the intense strain which she had been enduring. While she slept, Lady Haredale got herself up in a marvellously charming toilette, and drove off to her great garden-party with Kattern, full of the unexpected pleasure, and Tory, looking unwontedly serious. Miss Haredale and Carrie were shut up in their own rooms.

Una had been called down-stairs by her mother before she started, to receive orders to take care that Amethyst saw Sir Richard—orders which Una may be forgiven for receiving in silence.

She sat down in the drawing-room to collect her senses a little, and to wonder what would happen next, when there was a step behind her, and she turned and saw her brother. He came slowly down the long room towards her, looking pale and ill, and with that look of being down on his luck, which, though he was perfectly well-dressed, gave him the air of being out at elbows.

“The fellows said you were alone, Una, so, as you’re a kind little girl, I came to speak to you. It’s all up now, and I want you to tell Carrie so.”

“But, Charles—had you—is it because of what happened at Epsom?”

“Well, no, my dear, not exactly. But there are plenty of other things for Clyste to rout up, you see. I never was so clear from—difficulties—as I gave Grattan and his lordship to understand. No fellow ever can go to the bottom of his affairs, you see. I always knew that whitewashing me couldn’t be done. There’s not money enough, and I haven’t impudence enough, Una, to carry it out. So I’m going to make myself scarce again.”

“But, Charles—what shall you do?”

“Oh, well, there are ways and means of which you don’t know anything, and I know myself down among them; I was a fool to try this business. But I liked Carrie’s little round face, and if I’d been a better fellow, or if being a bad fellow was the sort of thing she thinks it is, I might have tried. Butyouought to know a little more about it than she does, Una.”

“Yes, I never did see how you could marry her.”

“I never had a chance, Una. Blanche and I were left to the worst lot of servants ever known. Our nursemaid was a bad one to begin with. Then your mother first flattered and made much of me when I was a rough lout, and then turned upon me, and set me all across with his lordship. And then you know how things go with a fellow.”

Una did know, much better than it was well that she should, the hopeless history of her brother’s career.

“Does Grattan stick to Amethyst?” he said.

“Yes, but she has refused him. She does not like him.”

“Well,” said Charles, “it doesn’t matter what she does, men will always run after her. But I say, Una, tell her to keep clear of Carisbrooke. He has made ducks and drakes with some of Carrie’s money, and that was why he was so ready to consent to marry her to me. But he’s regularly gone upon Amethyst in the process. Don’t you know he was Blanche’s first love, when she was staying away with those hunting friends of hers, the Carshaltons? He carried on with her, and spoiled her chances when she was sixteen. He always had the sort of talk to take a girl’s fancy. He’s a very poor lot, so tell Carrie—”

“I’m here, Mr Haredale,” said a resolute little voice, as Carrie Carisbrooke, pale and tear-stained, came into the room. “I’ve not been deceived, I always knew that you had been—a dissipated man. But Miss Haredale said you had repented, and I mean to keep my word, and to help you through your troubles; I shouldn’t think of going back because of family misfortunes.”

“But I can’t do it, Carrie,” said Charles, in his odd, half-shame-faced, half-rough voice. “I can’t marry you, my dear, as you’d see, if I could tell you anything about it, or if you could understand, which you couldn’t—please God you never will. Good-bye.”

“Then didn’t you ever really care for me?” interposed Carrie, with a sudden flash.

Charles looked at her and then at Una, and shook his head.

“I’ll never forget you, Carrie,” he said, “nor your having liked me. I’d have married you if I could. Good-bye, Una. Will you give me a kiss?”

Una put her arms round his neck.

“Oh, Charles,” she whispered, “don’t give up altogether. Indeed—indeed—He does save sinners. He always went after the bad ones.”

Charles looked into her eager, tear-filled eyes.

“Why, you’re the sort that can persuade people to turn religious,” he said. “Good-bye, little Una.”

He kissed her very affectionately, then took hold of Carrie’s hands.

“Good-bye,” he said. “Between you, you’ve made me wish I’d had a chance of being a decenter fellow.”

He stooped down, and kissed her forehead quickly and shyly, then went hurriedly away. Poor Carrie made no further protest. She cried bitterly, as well she might; for her first fresh fancy, and her girlish peace, had been sacrificed to the unjustifiable effort to escape from the inevitable consequences that follow on sinful lives.

Una stood still for a moment. Ideas always came to her in sudden flashes, and, with her erring, hopeless brother’s last words, there came before her the momentary vision of a possible future for herself.

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