You know, my father left me some prescriptionsOf rare and prov’d effects, such as his reading,And manifest experience, had collectedFor general sovereignty; and that he will’d meIn heedfullest reservation to bestow them,As notes, whose faculties inclusive were,More than they were in note.All’s Well that Ends Well.
Another year had come and gone, with its various changes, and the mother of the Collingwood Street household felt each day that the short life of Marmaduke Viscount Fordham had not been an unimportant one to her children.
It had of course told the most on Barbara. Her first great grief seemed to have smoothed out the harsher lines of her character, and made her gentle and tolerant as she had never been; or more truly, she had learnt charity at a deeper source. That last summer had lifted her into a different atmosphere. What she had shared with Fordham she loved. She had felt the reality of the invisible world to him, and knew he trusted to her meeting his spirit there even in this life, and the strong faith of his mother had strengthened the impression.
Heavenly things had seemed more true,And came down closer to her view,
now that his presence was among them. She had by no means lost her vivacity. There would always be a certain crispness, drollery, and keenness about her, and she had too much of her mother’s elasticity to be long depressed; but instead of looking on with impatient criticism at good works, she had learnt to be ardent in the cause, and she was a most effective helper. To Armine, it was as if Fordham had given him back the sister of his childhood to be as thoroughly one in aims and sympathies as ever, but with a certain clearness of eye, brisk alacrity of execution, and quickness of judgment that made her a valuable assistant, the complement, as it were, of his more contemplative nature.
He had just finished his course at King’s College, and taken a fair degree, and he was examining advertisements, with a view to obtaining some employment in teaching that would put a sufficient sum in his hands to enable him to spend a year at one of the theological colleges, in preparation for Ordination. His mother was not happy about it, she never would be quite easy as to Armine’s roughing it at any chance school, and she had much rather he had spent the intervening year in working as a lay assistant to Mr. Ogilvie, who had promised to give him a title for Orders, and would direct his reading.
Armine, however, said he could neither make himself Mr. Ogilvie’s guest for a year, nor let his mother pay his expenses; also that he wished to do something for himself, and that he felt the need of definite training. All he would do, was to promise that if he should find himself likely to break down in his intended employment of tuition, he would give up in time and submit to her plan of boarding him at St. Cradocke’s.
“But,” as he said to Babie, “I don’t think it is self-will to feel bound to try to exert myself for the one great purpose of my life. I am too old to live upon mother any longer.”
“How I do wish I could do anything to help you to the year at C——. Mother has always said that she will let me try to publish ‘Hart’s-tongue Well’ when I am twenty-one!”
“Living on you instead of mother?”
“Oh no, Armie, you know we are one. Though perhaps a mere story like that is not worthy to do such work. Yet I think there must be something in it, as Duke cared for it.”
“That would be proof positive but for the author,” said Armine, smiling; “but poor Allen’s attempts have rather daunted my literary hopes.”
“I really believe Allen would write better sense now, if he tried,” said Babie. “I believe Lady Grose is making something of him!”
“Without intending it,” said Armine, laughing.
“No; but you see snubbing is wholesome diet, if it is taken with a few grains of resolution, and he has come to that now!”
For Allen had continued not only to profess to be, but to be willing to do anything to relieve his mother, and Dr. Medlicott had, with much hesitation and doubt, recommended him for what was called a secretaryship to a paralytic old gentleman, who had been, in his own estimation, eminent both in the scientific and charitable worlds, and still carried on his old habits, though quite incapable. It really was, as the Doctor honestly told Allen, very little better than being a male humble companion, for though old Sir Samuel Grose was fussy and exacting from infirmity, he was a gentleman; but he had married late in life a vulgar, overbearing woman, who was sure to show insolent want of consideration to anyone she considered her inferior. To his surprise, Allen accepted the situation, and to his still greater surprise, endured it, walking to Kensington every day by eleven o’clock, and coming home whenever he was released, at an hour varying from three to eleven, according to my Lady’s will. He became attached to the old man, pitied him, and did his best to satisfy his many caprices and to deal with his infirmities of brain and memory; but my Lady certainly was his bete noire, though she behaved a good deal better to him after she had seen him picked up in the park by Lady Fordham’s carriage. However, he made light of all he underwent from her, and did not break down even when it was known that though poor George Gould had died at New York, his widow showed no intention of coming home, and wrote confidently to her step-daughters of Elvira marrying her brother Gilbert. She was of age now, there was nothing to prevent her, and they seemed to be only waiting for a decent interval after her uncle’s death. Allen, a couple of years ago, would have made his mother and all the family as wretched as he could, and would have dropped all semblance of occupation but smoking. Now Lady Grose would not let him smoke, and Sir Samuel required him to be entertaining; but the continual worry he was bearing was making him look so ill that his mother was very anxious about him. She had other troubles. It was eighteen months since Janet Hermann had drawn her allowance. Her husband once had written in her name, saying that she was ill, but Mr. Wakefield had sent an order payable only on her signature, and it had never been acknowledged or presented! Could Janet be living? Or could she be in some such fitful state of prosperity as to be able to disregard £25?
Her mother spent many anxious thoughts and prayers on her, though the younger ones seemed to have almost forgotten her, so long it was since she had been a part of their family life. Nor did Bobus answer his mother’s letters, though he continued to write fully and warmly to Jock. As to the MS., he said he had improved upon it, and had sent a fresh one to a friend who would have none of the scruples of which physical science ought to have cured Jock. It came out in a review, but without his name, and though it was painful enough to all who cared for him, it had been shorn of several of the worst and most virulent passages; so that Jock’s remonstrance had done some good.
Jock himself had come into possession of £200, and the like sum had been left to his mother by their good old friends the Lucases, who had died, as it is given to some happy old couples to leave this world, within three days of one another.
The other John, in the last autumn, had taken both his degrees at Oxford and in London with high credit, and had immediately after obtained one of those annual appointments in his hospital which are bestowed upon the most distinguished of the students, to enable them to gain more experience; but as it did not involve residence, he continued to be one of the family in Collingwood Street. However, in the early spring, a slight hurt to his hand festered so as to make the doctors uneasy, and his sister set her heart on taking him to Fordham for Easter, for a more thorough rest than could be had at Kencroft, while the younger ones were having measles.
John, however, had by this time learnt enough of his own feelings to delay consent till he had written to ask Mrs. Evelyn whether she absolutely objected to his entertaining any future hopes of Sydney, when he should have worked his way upward, as his recent success gave him hopes of doing in time.
Sydney’s fortune was not overpowering. £10,000 was settled on each of the younger children, and it had only been Fordham’s liberality in treating Cecil as his eldest son, that had brought about his early marriage. Thus she was no such heiress that her husband would be obliged to feel as if he were living on her means, or that exertion could be dispensed with, and thus, though he must make his way before he could marry, there was no utter inequality for one who brought a high amount of trained ability and industry.
Mrs. Evelyn could only answer as she would once have answered Jock, and on these terms he went. In the meantime Sydney had rejected the honourable young rector of the next parish, and was in the course of administering rebuffs to the county member, who was so persuaded that he and Miss Evelyn were the only fit match for one another, that no implied negative was accepted by him. Her brother, whom he was coaching in his county duties, was far too much inclined to bring him home to luncheon; and in the clash and crisis, without any one’s quite knowing how it happened, it turned out that Mrs. Evelyn had been so imprudent as to sanction an attachment between her daughter and that great lout of a young doctor, Lady Fordham’s brother! Not only the M.P., but all the family shook the head and bemoaned the connection, for though it was to be a long engagement and a great secret, everybody found it out. Lucas had long made up his mind that so it would end, and told his mother that it was a relief the crisis had come. He put a good face on it, wrung his cousin’s hand with the grasp of a Hercules, observed “Well done, old Monk,” and then made the work for his final examination a plea for being so incessantly occupied as to avoid all private outpourings. And if he had very little flesh on his bones, it was hard work and anxiety about his examination.
That final ordeal was gone through at last; John Lucas Brownlow was, like his cousin, possessor of a certificate of honour and a medal, and had won both his degrees most brilliantly. He had worked the hardest and had the most talent, and his achievement was perhaps the most esteemed because of his lack of the previous training that Friar had brought from Oxford. Professors and physicians wrote his mother notes to express their satisfaction at the career of their old friend’s son, and Dr. Medlicott came to bring her a whole bouquet of gratifying praise and admiration from all concerned with him, ranging from the ability of his prize essay to the firm delicacy of his hand; and backed up by the doctor’s own opinion of the blameless conduct and excellent influence of both the cousins. And now Dr. Medlicott declared he must have a good rest and holiday, after the long strain of hard toil and study.
It came like a dream to Caroline that the conditions imposed by her husband fifteen years before, when Lucas was a mischievous imp of a Skipjack, had been thus completely worked out, not only the intellectual, but the moral and religious terms being thus fulfilled.
The two cousins had come home to dinner in high spirits at the various kind things that had been said to, and of, Jock, and discussing the various suggestions for the future that had been made to them. They thought Mother Carey strangely silent, but when they rose she called her son into the consulting room, as she still termed it.
“My dear,” she said, “this slate will tell you why this is the moment I have looked forward to from the time your dear father was taken from us with his work half done. He had been working out a discovery. He was sure of it himself, but none of the faculty would believe in it or take it up. Even Dr. Lucas thought it was a craze, and I believe it can only be tested by risky experiments. All that he had made out is in this book. You know he could not speak for that dreadful throat. This is what he wrote. I copied it again, putting in my answers lest it should fade, but these are his very words, and that is my pledge. Magnum Bonum was our playful pet name for it between ourselves.
“‘I promise to keep the Magnum Bonum a secret, till the boys are grown up, and then only to confide it to the one that seems fittest, when he has taken his degree, and is a good, religious, wise, able man, with brains and balance, fit to be trusted to work out and apply such an invention, and not make it serve his own advancement, but be a real good and blessing to all.’ And oh, Jock,” she added, “am I not thankful that after all it should have come about that you should fulfil those conditions.”
“Did you not once mean it for John?” said Jock, hastily looking up.
“Yes, when I thought that hateful money had turned you all aside.”
“Then I think he ought to share this knowledge.”
“I thought you would say so, but it is your first right.”
“Perhaps,” said Jock. “But he is superior in his own line to me. He gave himself up to this line of his own free will, not like me, as a resource. And moreover, if it should bring any personal benefit, as an accident, it would be more important to him than to me. And these other conditions he fulfils to the letter. Mother, let me fetch him.”
She kissed his brow by way of answer, and a call brought John into the room. The explanation was made, and John said, “If you think it right, Aunt Caroline. No one can quite fulfil the conditions, but two may be better than one.”
“Then I will leave you to read it together,” she said, after pointing them to the solemn words in the first page. “Oh, you cannot think how glad I am to give up my trust.”
She went upstairs to the drawing-room, and about half an hour had passed in this way, when Jock came to the door, and said, “Mother, would you please to come down.”
It was a strange, grave voice in which he spoke, and when she reached the room, they set Allen’s most luxurious chair for her, but she stood trembling, reading in their faces that there was something they hesitated to tell her. They looked at one another as if to ask which should do it, and a certain indignation and alarm seized on her. “You believe in it!” she cried, as if she suspected them of disloyalty.
“Most entirely!” they both exclaimed.
“It is a great discovery,” added Jock, “but—”
“But,” said John, as he hesitated, “it has been worked out within the last two years.”
“Not Dr. Hermann!” she cried.
“No, indeed!” said Jock. “Why?”
“Because poor Janet overheard our conversation, and obtained a sight of the book. It was her ambition. I believe it was fatal to her. She may have caught up enough of the outline to betray it. Jock, you remember that scene at Belforest?”
“I do,” said Jock; “but this is not that scoundrel. It is Ruthven, who has worked it out in a full and regular way. It is making a considerable sensation though it has scarcely yet come into use as a mode of treatment. Mother, do not be disappointed. It will be the blessing that my father intended, all the sooner for not being in the hands of two lads like us, whom all the bigwigs would scout!”
“And what I never thought of before,” said John. “You know we are so often asked whether we belong to Joseph Brownlow, that one forgets to mention it every time; but that day, when Dr. Medlicott took me to the Westminster hospital, we fell in with Dr. Ruthven, and after the usual disappointment on finding I was only the nephew and not the son, he said, ‘Joseph Brownlow would have been a great man if he had lived. I owe a great deal to a hint he once gave me?’”
“He ought to see these notes,” said Jock. “It strikes me that there is a clue here to that difficulty he mentions in that published paper of his.”
“You ought to show it to him,” said John.
“You ought,” said Jock.
“Do you know much about him?” asked Mother Carey. “I don’t think I ever saw him, though I know his name. A fashionable physician, is he not?”
“A very good man,” said John. “A great West-end swell just come to be the acknowledged head in his own line. I suppose it is just what my uncle would have been ten years ago, if he had been spared.”
“May we show it to him, mother?” said Jock. “I should think he was quite to be trusted with it. I see! I was reading an account of this method of his to Dr. Lucas one day, and he was much interested and tried to tell me something about my father; but it was after his speech grew so imperfect, and he was so much excited and distressed that I had to lead him away from the subject.”
“Yes, Dr. Lucas’s incredulity made all the difference. How old is Dr. Ruthven, John?”
“A little over forty, I should say. He may have been a pupil of my uncle’s.”
After a little more consultation, it was decided that John should write to Dr. Ruthven that his cousin had some papers of his father’s which he thought the Doctor might like to see, and that they would bring them if he would make an appointment.
And so the Magnum Bonum was no longer a secret, a burden, and a charge!
It was not easy to tell whether she who had so long been its depositary felt the more lightened or disappointed. She had reckoned more than she knew upon the honour of the discovery being connected with the name of Brownlow, and she could not quite surmount the feeling that Dr. Ruthven had somehow robbed her husband, though her better sense accepted and admired the young men’s argument that such discoveries were common property, and that the benefit to the world was the same.
Allen was a good deal struck when he understood the matter. He said it explained a good deal to him which the others had been too young to observe or remember both in the old home and afterwards.
“One wonderful part of it is how you kept the secret, and Janet too!” he said. “And you must often have been sorely tempted. I remember being amused at your disappointment and her indignation when I said I didn’t see why a man was bound to be a doctor because his father was before him; and I suppose if Bobus or I had taken to it, this Ruthven need not have been beforehand with us!”
“It would have been transgressing the conditions to hold it out to you.”
“I don’t imagine I could have done it any way,” said Allen, sighing. “I never can enter into the taste the others have for that style of thing; but Bobus might have succeeded. You must have expected it of him, at the time when he and I used to laugh at what we thought was a monomania on your part for our taking up medical science as a tribute to our father, when we did not need it as a provision.”
“You see, if any of you had taken up the study from pure philanthropy, as some people do—well, at any rate in George Macdonald’s novels—it would have been the very qualification. But I had little hope from the time that the fortune came. I dreamt the first night that Midas had turned the whole of you to gold statues, and that I was wandering about like the Princess Paribanou to find the Magnum Bonum to disenchant you.”
“It has come pretty true,” said Allen thoughtfully, “that inheritance did us all a great deal of mischief.”
“And it took a greater magnum bonum, a maximum bonum, to disenchant us,” said Armine.
“Which I fear did not come from me,” said his mother, “and I am most grateful to the dear people who applied it to you. I wish I saw my way to the disenchantment of the other two!”
“I suppose you quite despaired till John took his turn in that direction,” said Allen. “Bobus could really have done better than any of us, I fancy, but he would not have fulfilled the religious condition, as sine qua non.”
“Bobus is not really cleverer than Jock,” said Armine.
“Yet the Skipjack seemed the most improbable one of all,” said his mother. “I wish he were not deprived of it, after all!”
“Perhaps he is not,” said Armine. “He told me he had been comparing the MS. notes with Dr. Ruthven’s published paper, and he thought my father saw farther into the capabilities.”
“Well, he will do right with it. I am thankful to leave it in such hands as his and the Monk’s.”
“Then it was this,” continued Allen, “that was the key to poor Janet’s history. I suppose she hoped to qualify herself when she was madly set on going to Zurich.”
“Though I told her I could never commit it to her; but she knew just enough to make that wretched man fancy it a sort of quack secret, and he managed to persuade her that he had real ability to pursue the discovery for her. Poor Janet! it has been no magnum bonum to her, I fear. If I could only know where she is.”
A civil, but not a very eager note came in reply to John from Dr. Ruthven, making the appointment, but so dispassionately that he might fairly be supposed to expect little from the interview.
However, they came home more than satisfied. Perhaps in the interim Dr. Ruthven had learnt what manner of young men they were, and the honours they had won, for he had received them very kindly, and had told them how a conversation with Joseph Brownlow had put him on the scent of what he had since gradually and experimentally worked out, and so fully proved to himself, that he had begun treatment on that basis, and with success, though he had only as yet brought a portion of his fellow physicians to accept his system.
Lucas had then explained as much as was needful, and shown him the notes. He read with increasing eagerness, and presently they saw his face light up, and with his finger on the passage they had expected, he said, “This is just what I wanted. Why did I not think of it before?” and asked permission to copy the passage.
Then he urged the publication of the notes in some medical journal, showing true and generous anxiety that honour should be given where honour was due, and that his system should have the support of a name not yet forgotten. Further, he told his visitors that they would hear from him soon, and altogether they came home so much gratified that the mother began to lose her sense of being forestalled. She was hard at work in her own way on a set of models for dinner-table ornaments which had been ordered. “Pot-boilers” had unfortunately much more success than the imaginary groups she enjoyed.
Therefore she stayed at home and only sent her young people on a commission to bring her as many varieties of foliage and seed-vessels as they could, when Jock and Armine spent this first holiday of waiting in setting forth with Babie to get a regular good country walk, grumbling horribly that she would not accompany them.
She was deep in the moulding of a branch of chestnut, which carried her back to the first time she saw those prickly clusters, on that day of opening Paradise at Richmond, with Joe by her side, then still Mr. Brownlow to her, Joe, who had seemed so much closer to her side in these last few days. The Colonel might call Armine the most like Joe, and say that Jock almost absurdly recalled her own soldier-father, Captain Allen, but to her, Jock always the most brought back her husband’s words and ways, in a hundred little gestures and predilections, and she had still to struggle with her sense of injury that he should not be the foremost.
The maid came up with two cards: Dr. and Mrs. Ruthven. This was speedy, and Caroline had to take off her brown holland apron, and wash her hands, while Emma composed her cap, in haste and not very good will, for she could not but think them her natural enemies, though she was ready to beat herself for being so small and nasty “when they could not help it, poor things.”
However, Mrs. Ruthven turned out to be a pleasant lively table d’hote acquaintance of six or seven years ago in her maiden days, and her doctor an agreeable Scotsman, who told Mrs. Brownlow that he had been here on several evenings in former days, and did not seem at all hurt that she did not remember him. He seemed disappointed that neither of the young men was at home, and inquired whether they had anything in view. “Not definitely,” she said, and she spoke of some of the various counsels Dr. Medlicott and others had given them.
In the midst she heard that peculiar dash with which the Fordham carriage always announced itself. Little Esther might be ever so much a Viscountess, but could she ever cease to be shy? In spite of her increasing beauty and grace, she was not a success in society, for the ladies said she was slow; she had no conversation, and no dash or rattle to make up for it, and nothing would ever teach her to like strangers. They were only so many disturbances in the way of her enjoyment of her husband and her baby; and when she could not have the former to go out driving with her, she always came and besought for the company of Aunt Caroline and Babie; above all, when she had any shopping to do. She knew it was very foolish, but she could never be happy in encountering shop people, and she wanted strong support and protection to prevent herself from being made a lay figure by urgent dressmakers. Her home only gave her help and company on great occasions, for Eleanor persisted in objecting to fine people, was determined against attracting another guardsman, and privately desired her sister to abstain from inviting her. Essie was aware that this was all for the sake of a certain curate at St. Kenelm’s, and left Ellie to carry out her plan of passive resistance, becoming thus the more dependent on her aunt’s family.
In she came, too graceful and courteous for strangers to detect the shock their presence gave her, but much relieved to see them depart. Her husband was on guard, and she had a whole list of commissions for mamma, which would be much better executed without him. Moreover, baby must have a new pelisse and hat for the country, and might not she have little stockings and shoes, in case she should want to walk before the return to London?
As little Alice was but four months old, and her father’s leave was only for three months, this did not seem a very probable contingency, but Mother Carey was always ready for shopping. She had never quite outgrown the delight of the change from being a penniless school girl, casting wistful fleeting glances at the windows where happier maidens might enter and purchase.
Then there was to be a great review in two days’ time, Cecil would be with his regiment, and Esther wanted the whole family to go with her, lunch with the officers, and have a thorough holiday. Cecil had sent a message that Jock must come to have the cobwebs swept out of his brain, and see his old friends before he got into harness again. It was a well-earned holiday, as Mother Carey felt, accepting it with eager pleasure, for all who could come, though John’s power of so doing must be doubtful, and there was little chance of a day being granted to Allen.
In going out with her niece, Caroline’s eye had fallen on an envelope among the cards on the hall table, ambiguously addressed to “J. Brownlow, Esq., M.B.,” and on her return home she was met at the door by Jock with a letter in his hand.
“So Dr. Ruthven has been here,” he said, drawing her into the consulting-room.
“Yes. I like him rather. He seems to wish to make any amends in his power.”
“Amends! you dear old ridiculous mother! Do you call this amends?” holding up the letter. “He says now this discovery is getting known and he has a name for the sort of case, his practice is outgrowing him, and he wants some one to work with him who may be up to this particular matter, and all he has heard of us convinces him that he cannot do better than propose it to whichever of us has no other designs.”
“Very right and proper of him. It is the only thing he can do. I suppose it would be the making of one of you. Ah!” as she glanced over the letter. “He gives the preference to you.”
“He was bound to do that, but I think he would prefer the Monk. I wonder whether you care very much about my accepting the offer.”
“Would this house be too far off?”
“I don’t know his plans enough to tell. That was not what I was thinking of, but of what it would save her. Essie said she was not looking well; and no doubt waiting is telling on her, just as her mother always feared it would.”
“John has just not had the forbearance you have shown!”
“That is all circumstance. There was the saving her life, and afterwards the being on the spot when she was tormented about the other affair. He has no notion of having cut me out, and I trust he never will.”
“No, I do him that justice.”
“Then he has the advantage of me every way, out and out in looks and University training; and it was to him that Ruthven first took a fancy.”
“You surpassed him in your essay, and in—.
“Oh, yes, yes,” interrupted Jock hastily, “but you see work was my refuge. I had nothing to call me off. Besides, I have my share of your brains, instead of her Serenity’s; but that’s all the more reason, if you would listen to me. Depend upon it, Ruthven, if he knew all, would much prefer the connection John would have, and she would bring means to set up directly.”
“I suppose you will have it so,” replied she, looking up to him affectionately.
“I should like it,” he said. “It is the one thing for them, and waiting might do her infinite harm; the dear old Monk deserves it every way. Remember how it all turned on his desperate race. If your comfort depended on my taking it, that would come first.”
“Oh, no.”
“But there is sure to turn up plenty of other work without leaving you,” he continued. “I don’t fancy getting involved in West-end practice among swells, and not being independent. I had rather see whether I can’t work out this principle further, devoting myself to reading up for it, and getting more hospital experience to go upon.”
“I dare say that is quite right. I know it is like your father, and indeed I shall be quite content however you decide. Only might it not be well to see how it strikes John, before you absolutely make it over to him?”
“You are trying to be prudent against the grain, Mother Carey.”
“Trying to see it like your uncle. Yes, exactly as if I were trying to forestall his calling me his good little sister.”
“I don’t know what he would call me,” said Jock, “for at the bottom is a feeling that, after reading my father’s words, I had rather not, if I can help it, begin immediately to make all that material advantage out of ‘Magnum Bonum’ as you call it.”
“Well, my dear, do as you think right; I trust it all to you. It is sure to turn out the right sort of ‘Magnum Bonum’ to you—”
The Monk’s characteristic ring at the bell was heard, and the letter was, without loss of time, committed to him, while both mother and son watched him as he gathered up the sense.
“Well, this is jolly!” was his first observation. “Downright handsome of Ruthven!” and then as the colour rose a little in his face, “Just the thing for you, Jock, home work, which is exactly what you, want.”
“I’m not sure about that,” said Jock; “I don’t want to get into that kind of practice just yet. It is fitter for a family man.”
“And who is a family man if you are not?” said John. “Wasn’t it the very cause of your taking this line?”
“There’s a popular prejudice in favour of wives, rather than mothers,” said Jock. “I should have said you were more likely to fulfil the conditions.”
“Oh!” and there was a sound in that exclamation that belied the sequel, “that’s just nonsense! The offer is to you primarily, and it is your duty to take it.”
“I had much rather you did, and so had Dr. Ruthven. I want more time for study and experience, and have set my heart on some scientific appointment—”
“Come now, my good fellow—why, what are you laughing at?”
“Because you are such a good imitation of your father, my dear Johnny,” said his aunt.
“It is just what my father would say,” returned John, taking this as a high compliment; “it would be very foolish of Lucas to give up a certainty for this just because of his Skipjack element, which doesn’t want to get into routine harness. Now, don’t you think so, Mother Carey?”
“IfI thought itwasthe Skipjack element,” she said, smiling.
“If it is not,” he said, the colour now spreading all over his face, “I am all the more bound not to let him give up all his prospects in life.”
“Allmy prospects! My dear Monk, do you think they don’t go beyond a brougham, and unlimited staircases?”
“I only know,” cried John, nettled into being a little off his guard, “that what you despise would be all the world to me!”
The admission was hailed triumphantly, but the Kencroft nature was too resolute, and the individual conscience too generous, to be brought round to accept the sacrifice, which John estimated at the value of the importance it was to himself, viewing what was real in Lucas’s distaste, as mere erratic folly, which ought to be argued down. Finally, when the argument had gone round into at least its fiftieth circle, Mother Carey declared that she would have no more of it. Lucas should write a note to Dr. Ruthven, accepting his proposal for one or other of them, and promising that he should know which, in the course of a few days; so that John, if he chose, could write to his father oranyoneelse. Meantime there was to be no allusion to “the raid of Ruthven” till the day of the review was over. It was to be put entirely off the tongue, if not out of the head!
And the two young doctors were weary enough of the subject to rejoice in obedience to her.
The day was perfect except that poor Allen was pinned fast by his tyrant, all the others gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the moment. They understood the sham fight, and recognised all the corps, with Jock as their cicerone, they had a good place at the marching past, and Esther had the crowning delight of an excellent view of Captain Viscount Fordham with his company, and at the luncheon. Jock received an absolutely affectionate welcome from his old friends, who made as much of his mother and sister for his sake, as they did of the lovely Lady Fordham for her husband’s, finding them, moreover, much more easy to get on with.
The bird was sitting in his cageAnd heard what he did say;He jumped upon the window sill,“‘Tis time I was away.”Ballad.
“There is a young lady in the drawing-room, ma’am,” said the maid, looking rather puzzled and uncertain, on the return of the party from the review.
“A stranger? How could you let her in?” said John.
At that moment a face appeared at the top of the stairs, a face set in the rich golden auburn that all knew so well, and half way up, Mrs. Brownlow was clasped by a pair of arms, and there was a cry, “Mother Carey, Mother Carey, I’m come home!”
“Elvira! my dear child! When—how did you come?”
“From the station, in a cab. I made her let me in, but I thought you were never coming back. Where’s Allen?”
“Allen will come in by-and-by,” said the astonished Mother Carey, who had been dragged into the drawing-room, where Elvira embraced Babie, and grasped the hands of the others.
“Oh, it is so nice,” she cried, then nestling back to Mother Carey.
“But where did you come from? Are you alone?”
“Yes, quite alone, Janet would not come with me after all.”
“Janet, my dear! Where is she?”
“Oh, not here—at Saratoga, or at New York. I thought she was coming with me, but when the steamer sailed she was not there, only there was a note pinned to my berth. I meant to have brought it, but it got lost somehow.”
“Where did you see her?”
“At the photographer’s at Saratoga. I should never have come if she had not helped me, but she said she knew you would take me home, and she wrote and took my passage and all. She said if I did not find you, Mr. Wakefield would know where you were, but I did so want to get home to you! Please, may I take off my things; I don’t want to be such a fright when Allen comes in.”
It was all very mysterious, but Elvira must be much altered indeed if her narrative did not come out in an utterly complicated and detached manner. She was altered certainly, for she clung most affectionately to Mother Carey and Barbara, when they took her upstairs. She had a little travelling-bag with her; the rest of her luggage would be sent from the station, she supposed, for she had taken no heed to it. She did so want to get home.
“I did feel so hungry for you, Mother Carey. Mother, Janet said you would forgive me, and I thought if you were ever so angry, it would be true, and that would be nicer than Lisette, and, indeed, it was not so much my doing as Lisette’s.”
Whatever “it” was, Mother Carey had no hesitation in replying that she had no doubt it was Lisette’s fault.
“You see,” continued Elvira, “I never meant anything but to plague Allen a little at first. You know he had always been so tiresome and jealous, and always teased me when I wanted any fun—at least I thought so, and I did want to have my swing before he called me engaged to him again. I told Jock so, but then Lisette and Lady Flora, and old Lady Clanmacnalty went on telling me that you knew the money was mine all the time, and that it was only an accident that it came out before I was married.”
“Oh, Elvira, you could not have thought anything so wicked,” cried Babie.
“They all went on so, and made so sure,” said Elvira, hanging her head, “and I never did know the real way the will was found till Janet told me. Babie, if you had heard Lady Clanmacnalty clear her throat when people talked about the will being found, you would have believed she knew better than anyone.”
So it was. The girl, weak in character, and far from sensible, full of self-importance, and puffed up with her inheritance, had been easily blinded and involved in the web that the artful Lisette had managed to draw round her. She had been totally alienated from her old friends, and by force of reiteration had been brought to think them guilty of defrauding her. In truth, she was kept in a whirl of gaiety and amusement, with little power of realizing her situation, till the breach had grown too wide for the feeble will of a helpless being like her to cross it. Though she had flirted extensively, she had never felt capable of accepting any one of her suitors, and in these refusals she had been assisted by Lisette, who wanted to secure her for her brother, but thanks to warnings from Mr. Wakefield, and her husband’s sense of duty, durst not do so before she was of age.
Elvira’s one wish had been to visit San Ildefonso again. She had a strong yearning towards the lovely island home which she gilded in recollection with all the trails of glory that shine round the objects of our childish affections. Lisette always promised to take her, but found excuses for delay in the refitting of the yacht, while she kept the party wandering over Europe in the resorts of second-rate English residents. No doubt she wished to make the most of the enjoyments she could obtain, as Elvira’s chaperon and guardian, before resigning her even to her brother. At last the gambling habits into which her husband fell, for lack, poor man, of any other employment, had alarmed her, and she permitted her party to embark in the yacht where Gilbert Gould acted as captain.
They reached the island. It had become a coaling station. The bay where she remembered exquisite groves coming down to the white beach, was a wharf, ringing with the discordant shouts of negroes and cries of sailors. The old nurse was dead, and fictitious foster brothers and sisters were constantly turning up with extravagant claims.
“Oh, I longed never to have come,” said Elvira; “and then I began to get homesick, but they would not let me come!”
No doubt Lisette had feared the revival of the Brownlow influence if her charge were once in England, for she had raised every obstacle to a return. Poor Gould and his niece had both looked forward to Elvira’s coming of age as necessarily bringing them to England, but her uncle’s health had suffered from the dissipation he had found his only resource. Liquor had become his consolation in the life to which he was condemned, and in the hotel life of America was only too easily attainable.
His death deprived Elvira of the last barrier to the attempts of an unscrupulous woman, who was determined not to let her escape. Elvira’s longing to return home made her spread her toils closer. She kept her moving from one fashionable resort to another, still attended by Gilbert, who was beginning to grow impatient to secure his prize.
“How I hated it,” said Elvira. “I knew she was false and cruel by that time, but it was just like being in a trap between them. I loathed them more and more, but I couldn’t get away.”
Nurtured as she had been, she was helpless and ignorant about the commonest affairs of life, and the sight of American independence never inspired her with the idea of breaking the bondage in which she was spellbound. Still, she shrank back with instinctive horror from every advance of Gilbert’s, and at last, to pique her, Lisette brought forward the intelligence that Allen Brownlow was married.
The effect must have surprised them, for Elvira turned on her aunt in one of those fits of passion which sometimes seized her, accused her vehemently of having poisoned the happiness of her life, and taken her from the only man she could ever love. She said and threatened all sorts of desperate things; and then the poor child, exhausted by her own violence, collapsed, and let herself be cowed and terrified in her turn by her aunt’s vulgar sneers and cold determination.
Yet still she held out against the marriage. “I told them it would be wicked,” she said. “And when I went to Church, all the Psalms and everything said it would be wicked. Then Lisette said it was wicked to love a married man, and I said I didn’t know, I couldn’t help it, but it would be more wicked to vow I would love a man whom I hated, and should hate more every day of my life. Then they said I might have a civil marriage, and not vow anything at all, and I told them that would seem to me no better than not being married at all. Oh! I was very very miserable!”
“Had you no one to consult or help you, my poor child?”
“They watched me so, and whenever I was making friends with any nice American girl, they always rattled me off somewhere else. I never did understand before what people meant when they talked about God being their only Friend, but I knew it then, for I had none at all, none else. And I did not think He would help me, for now I knew I had been hard, and horrid and nasty, and cruel to you and Allen, the only people who ever cared for me for myself, and not for my horrid, horrid money, though I was the nastiest little wretch. Oh! Mother Carey, I did know it then, and I got quite sick with longing for one honest kiss—or even one honest scolding of yours. I used to cry all Church-time, and they used to try not to let me go—and I felt just like the children of Israel in Egypt, as if I had got into heavy bondage, and the land of captivity. O do speak, and let me hear your voice once more! Your arm is so comfortable.”
Still it seemed that Elvira had resisted till another attempt was made. While she was at a boarding-house on the Hudson a large picnic party was arranged, in which, after American fashion, gentlemen took ladies “to ride” in their traps to and from the place of rendezvous. In returning, of course it had been as easy as possible for her chaperon to contrive that she should be left alone with no cavalier but Gilbert Gould, and he of course pretended to lose his way, drove on till night-fall, and then judgmatically met with an accident, which hurt nobody; but which he declared made the carriage incapable of proceeding.
After walking what Elvira fancied half the night, shelter was found in a hospitable farmhouse, where the people were wakened with difficulty. They took care of the benighted wanderers, and the farmer drove them back to the hotel the next morning in his own waggon. They were received by Mrs. Gould with great demonstrations both of affection, pity and dismay, and she declared that the affair had been so shocking and compromising that it was impossible to stay where they were. She made Elvira take her meals in her room rather than face the boarding-house company, paid the bills (all of course with Elvira’s money) and carried her off to the Saratoga Springs, having taken good care not to allow her a minute’s conversation with anyone who would have told her that the freedom of American manners would make an adventure like hers be thought of no consequence at all.
The poor girl herself was assured by Mrs. Gould that this “unhappy escapade” left her no alternative but a marriage with Gilbert. She would otherwise never be able to show her face again, for even if the affair were hushed up, reports would fly, and Mrs. Lisette took care they should fly, by ominous shakes of the head, and whispered confidences such as made the steadier portion of the Saratoga community avoid her, and brought her insolent attention from fast young men. It was this, and a cold “What can you expect?’” from Lisette that finally broke down her defences, and made her permit the Goulds to make known that she was engaged to Gilbert.
Had they seized their prey at that moment of shame and despair, they would have secured it, but their vanity or their self-esteem made them wish to wash off the mire they had cast, or to conceal it by such magnificence at the wedding as should outdo Fifth Avenue. The English heiress must have a wedding-dress that would figure in the papers, and, even in the States, be fabulously splendid. It must come from Paris, and it must be waited for. All the bridesmaids were to have splendid pearl lockets containing coloured miniature photograph portraits of the beautiful bride, who for her part was utterly broken-hearted. “I thought God had forgotten me, because I deserved it; and I only hoped I might die, for I knew what the sailors said of Gilbert.”
Listless and indifferent, she let her tyrants do what they would with her, and it was in Gilbert’s company that she first saw Janet at the photographer’s. Fortunately he had never seen Miss Brownlow, and Elvira had grown much too cautious to betray recognition; but the vigilance had been relaxed since the avowal of the engagement, and the colouring of the photographs from the life, was a process so wearisome, that no one cared to attend the sitter, and Elvira could go and come, alone and unquestioned.
So it was that she threw herself upon Janet. Whatever had been their relations in their girlhood, each was to the other the remnant of the old home and of better days, and in their stolen interviews they met like sisters. Janet knew as little as Elvira did of her own family, rather less indeed, but she declared Mrs. Gould’s horror about the expedition with Gilbert to have been pure dissimulation, and soon enabled Elvira to prove to herself that it had been a concerted trick. In America it would go for nothing. Even in England, so mere an accident (even if it had really been an accident) would not tell against her. But then, Elvira hopelessly said Allen was married!
Again Janet was incredulous, and when she found that Elvira had never seen the letter in which Kate Gould was supposed to have sent the information, and knew it only upon Lisette’s assertion, she declared it to be probably a fabrication. Why not telegraph? So in Elvira’s name and at her expense, but with the address given to Janet’s abode, the telegram was sent to Mr. Wakefield’s office, and in a few hours the reply had come back: “Allen Brownlow not married, nor likely to be.”
There was no doubt now of the web of falsehood that had entangled the poor girl; but she would probably have been too inert and helpless to break through it, save for her energetic cousin, who nerved her to escape from the life of utter misery that lay before her. What was to hinder her from setting off by the train, and going at once home to England by the steamer? There was no doubt that Mrs. Brownlow would forgive and welcome her, or even if that hope failed her, Mr. Wakefield was bound to take care of her. She had a house of her own standing empty for her, and the owner of £40,000 a year need never be at a loss.
Had she enough money accessible to pay for a first-class passage? Yes, amply even for two. She had always been so passive and incapable of all matters of arrangement, that Mrs. Gould had never thought it worth while to keep watch over her possession of “the nerves and sinews of war,” being indeed unwilling to rouse her attention to the fact that she was paying the by no means moderate expenses of both her tyrants.
Janet found out all about the hours, secured—as Elvira thought—two first-class berths, met her when she crept like a guilty thing out of the hotel at New York, took her to the station, went with her to an outfitter to be supplied with necessaries for the voyage, for she had been obliged to abandon everything but a few valuables in her handbag, and saw her safely on board, introduced her to some kind friendly English people, then on some excuse of seeing the steward, left her, as Elvira found, to make the voyage alone!
It turned out that Janet had spoken to the gentleman of this party, and explained that her young cousin was going home alone, asking him to protect her on landing; and that she had come to London with them and been there put into a cab, giving the old address to Collingwood Street, where with much difficulty she had prevailed on the maid to let her in to await the return of the family.
Nothing so connected as this history came to the ears of Mrs. Brownlow or her children. That evening they only heard fragments, much more that was utterly irrelevant, and much that was inexplicable, all interspersed with inquiries and caresses and intent listening for Allen. Elvira might not have acquired brains, but she had gained in sweetness and affection. The face had lost its soulless, painted-doll expression, and she was evidently happy beyond all measure to be among those she could love and trust, sitting on a footstool by Mrs. Brownlow’s knee, leaning against her, and now and then murmuring: “O Mother Carey, how I have longed for you!”
She was not free from the fear that Lisette and Gilbert could still “do something to her,” but the Johns made large assurances of defence, and Mr. Wakefield was to be called in the next day. It must be confessed that everybody rather enjoyed the notion of the pair left at Saratoga with all their hotel bills to pay, and the wedding-dress on their hands, but Elvira knew they had enough to clear them for the week, and only hoped it was not enough to enable them to follow her.
Fragments of all this came out in the course of the evening. Allen did not come home to dinner, and the other young men left the coast clear for confidences, which were uttered in the intervals of listening, till after all her excitement, her landing and her journey, Elvira was so tired out that she had actually dropped asleep, with her head on Mother Carey’s knee, when his soft weary step came up the stairs, and perceiving, as he entered, that there was a hush over the room, he did not speak. Babie looked up from her work with an amused smile of infinite congratulation. There was a glance from his mother. Then, as Babie put it, the Prince saw the Sleeping Beauty, and, with a strange long half-strangled gasp and clasped hands, went down on one knee. At that very moment Elvira stirred, opened her eyes, put her hand over them, bewildered, as if thinking herself dreaming, then with a sort of shriek of joy, flung herself towards him, as he held out his arms with “My darling.”
“O Allen, can you forgive me? And oh! do marry me before they can come after me!”
So much Mother Carey and Babie heard before they could remove themselves from the scene, which they felt ought to be a tete-a-tete. They shut the lovers in. Babie said, “Undine has found a heart, at least,” and then they began to piece out the story by conjecture, and they then discovered how little they had really learnt about Janet. They supposed that the Hermanns must be living and practising at Saratoga, and in that case it was no wonder she could not come home, the only strange thing was Elvira’s expecting it. Besides, why had not Mrs. Gould taken alarm at the name, and why was her husband never mentioned? Was there no message from her? Most likely there was, in the note that was lost, and moreover, Elvira might be improved, but she was Elvira still, and had room for very little besides herself in her mind’s eye.
They must wait to examine her till these first raptures had subsided, and in the mean time Caroline wrote a telegram to go as early as possible to Mr. Wakefield. It showed a guilty conscience that Mrs. Gould should not have telegraphed to him Elvira’s flight.
When at last Mrs. Brownlow held that the interview must come to an end, and with preliminary warning opened the door, there they were, with clasped hands, such as Elvira had never endured since she was a mere child! Allen looking almost too blissful for this world, and Elvira with eyes glistening with tears as she cried, “O Mother Carey, you never told me how altered he was, I never knew how horrible I had been till I saw how ill he looks! What can we do for him?”
“You are doing everything, my darling,” said Allen.
“He of course thinks her as irresponsible as if she had been hanging up by the hair all this time in a giant’s larder,” whispered Babie to Armine.
But Elvira was really unhappy about the worn, faded air that made Allen look much older than his twenty-nine years warranted. The poor girl’s nerves proved to have been much disturbed; she besought Barbara to sleep with her, and was haunted by fears of pursuit and capture, and Gilbert claiming her after all. She kept on starting, clutching at Babie, and requiring to be soothed till far on into the night, and then she slept so soundly that no one had the heart to wake her. Indeed it was her first real peaceful repose since her flight had been planned, nor did she come down till half-past ten, just when Mr. Wakefield drove up to the door, and Jock had taken pity on Allen, and set forth to undertake Sir Samuel for the day. Mr. Wakefield was the less surprised at the sight of the young lady, having been somewhat prepared by her telegraphic inquiry about Allen, which he had not communicated to the Brownlows for fear of raising false expectations.
There was a great consultation. Elvira was not in the least shy, and only wanted to be safely Mrs. Allen Brownlow before the Goulds should arrive, as she expected, in the next steamer to pursue her vi et armis. If it had depended on her, she would have sent Allen for a special licence, and been married in her travelling dress that very day. Mr. Wakefield, solicitor as he was, was quite ready for speed. He had always viewed the marriage with Allen Brownlow as a simple act of restitution, and the trust made settlements needless. Still he did not apprehend any danger from the Goulds, when he found that Elvira had never written a note to Gilbert in her life. Nay, he thought that if they even threatened any annoyance, they had given cause enough to have a prosecution for conspiracy held over them in wholesome terror.
And considering all the circumstances, Mrs. Brownlow and Allen were alike determined against undignified haste. Miss Menella ought to be married from among her own kindred, and from her own house; but this was not easy to manage; for poor Mary Whiteside and her husband, though very worthy, were not exactly the people to enact parents in such a house as Belforest; and Mrs. Brownlow could see why she herself should not, though Elvira could not think why she objected. At last the idea was started that the fittest persons were Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield. The latter was a thorough lady, pleasant and sensible. The only doubt was whether so very quiet a person could be asked to undertake such an affair, and her husband took leave, that he might consult her and see whether she could bring herself to be mother for the nonce to the wild heiress, of whom his family were wont to talk with horrified compassion.
When he was gone, it was possible to come to the examination upon Janet for which Mother Carey had been so anxious. How was she looking?
“Oh! so old, and worn and thin. I never should have guessed it was Janet, if I had not caught her eye, and then I knew her eyebrows and nose, because they are just like Allen’s,—and her voice sounded so like home that I was ready to cry, only I did not dare, as Gilbert was there.”
“I wonder they did not take alarm at her name.”
“I don’t imagine they ever heard it.”
“Not when she was living there? Was not her husband practising?”
“Her husband! Oh no, I never heard any thing about him. I thought you knew I found her at the photographer’s?”
“Met her as a sitter?”
“Oh dear, no! I thought you understood. It was she that was doing my picture. She finishes up all his miniature photographs.”
“My dear Elvira, do you really mean that my poor Janet is supporting herself in that way?”
“Yes, indeed I do; that was why I made sure she would have come home with me. I was so dreadfully disappointed when I found only her note.”
“And are you sure you have quite lost it?”
“Yes, I turned out every corner of my bag this morning to look for it. I am so sorry, but I was so ill and so wretched, that I could not take care of anything. I just wonder how I lived through the voyage, all alone.”
“Was there no message? Nothing for me.”
“Yes, I have recollected it now, or some of it. She said she durst not go home, or ask anything of you, after the way she had offended. Oh! I wonder how she could send me, for I know I was worse.”
“But what did she say?” said Caroline, too anxious to listen to Elvira’s own confessions. “Was there nothing for me?”
“Yes.” She said, “Tell her that I have learnt by the bitterest of all experience the pain I have given her, and the wrong I have done!” Then there was something about being so utterly past forgiveness that she could not come to ask it. “Oh, don’t cry so, Mother Carey, we can write and get her back, and I will send her the passage money.”
“Ah! yes, write!” cried out the mother, starting up. “‘When he was yet a great way off.’ Ah! why could she not remember that?” But as she sat down to her table, “You know her address?”
“Yes, certainly, I went to her lodgings once or twice; such a little bit of a room up so many stairs.”
“And you did not hear how that man, her husband, died?”
“I don’t know whether he is dead,” said this most unsatisfactory informant. “She does not wear black, nor a cap, and I am almost sure that he has run away from her, and that is the reason she cannot use her own name.”
“Elfie!”
“O, I thought you knew! She calls herself Mrs. Harte. She took my passage in that name, and that must be why my things have never come. Yes, I asked her why she did not set up for a lady doctor, and she said it was impossible that she could venture on showing her certificates or using her name—either his or hers.”
That was in the main all that could be extracted from Elvira, though it was brought out again and again in all sorts of forms. It was plain that Janet had been very reticent in all that regarded herself, and Elvira had only had stolen interviews, very full of her own affairs, and, besides, had supposed Janet to intend to return with her. Both wrote; Elfie, to announce her safety, and Caroline, an incoherent, imploring, forgiving letter, such as only a mother could write, before they went out to supply Elvira’s lack of garments, and to procure the order for the sum needed for her passage. Caroline was glad they had gone independently, for, on their return, Babie reported to her that her little Ladyship was so wroth with Elfie as to wonder at them for receiving her so affectionately. It was very forgiving of them, but she should never forget the way in which poor Allen had been treated.
“I told her,” said Babie, “that was the way she talked about Cecil, and you should have seen her face. She wonders that Allen has not more spirit, and indeed, mother, I do rather wish Elfie could have come back with nothing but her little bag, so that he could have shown it would have been all the same.”
“A comfortable life they would have had, poor things, in that case,” laughed her mother, “though I agree that it would have been prettier. But I don’t trouble myself about that, my dear. You know, in all equity, Allen ought to have a share in that property. It was only the old man’s caprice that made it all or none; and Elvira is only doing what is right and just.”
“And Allen’s love was a real thing, when he was the rich one. So I told Essie; and besides, Allen would never make any hand of poverty, poor fellow.”
“I think and hope he will make a much better hand of riches than he would have done without all he has gone through,” said her mother.
Allen showed the same feeling when he could talk his prospects over quietly with his mother. These four years had altered him at least as much for the better as Elfie. He would not now begin in thoughtless self-indulgence, refined indeed and never vicious, but selfish, extravagant, and heedless of all but ease, pleasure, and culture. Some of the enervation of his youth had really worn off, though it had so long made him morbid, and he had learnt humility by his failures. Above all, however, his intercourse with Fordham had opened his eyes to a sense of the duties of wealth and position, such as he had never before acquired, and the religious habits that had insensibly grown upon him were tincturing his views of life and responsibility.
It was painful to him to realise that he was returning to wealth and luxury, indeed, monopolising it,—he the helpless, undeserving, indolent son, while all the others, and especially his mother, were left to poverty.
Elfie wanted Mother Carey and all to make their home at Belforest, and still be one family as of old. Indeed, she hung on Mother Carey even more than upon Allen, after her long famine from the motherly tenderness that she had once so little appreciated.
Of such an amalgamation, however, Mrs. Brownlow would not hear, nor would she listen to a proposal of settling on her a yearly income, such as would dispense with economy, and with the manufacture of “pot-boilers.”
No, she said, she was a perverse woman, and she had never been so happy as when living on her husband’s earnings. The period of education being over, she had a full sufficiency, and should only meddle with clay again for her own pleasure. She was beginning already a set of dining-table ornaments for a wedding-present, representing the early part of the story of Undine. Babie knew why, if nobody else did. Perhaps she should one of these days mould a similar set for Sydney of the crusaders of Jotapata! Then Allen bethought him of putting into Elvira’s head to beg, at least, to undertake Armine’s expenses at the theological college for a year, and to this she consented thankfully. Armine had been thinking of offering himself as Allen’s successor for a year with Sir Samuel; but two days’ experience as substitute convinced him that Allen was right in declaring that my Lady would be the death of him. Lucas could manage her, and kept her well-behaved and even polite, but Armine was so young and so deferential that she treated him even worse than she did her first victim! She had begun by insisting on a quarter’s notice or the forfeiture of the salary, as long as she thought £25 was of vital importance to Allen, but as soon as she discovered that the young lady was a great heiress, she became most unedifyingly civil, called in great state in Collingwood Street, and went about boasting of having patronised a sort of prince in disguise.