Volume Three—Chapter Nine.

Volume Three—Chapter Nine.Insuperable Obstacles.But, Edith dead!Too Late.Gerald Thurston did go to Halswood. Whether he did so knowing that there he would again meet Roma Eyrecourt is a secret that has never been divulged; whether in suggesting to her husband that he should invite Sydney’s brother-in-law Eugenia was influenced by malice prepense has never transpired. Be these possibilities as they may the event they would have foreshadowed came to pass; and in this fashion.Once, during the absence of the Chancellors on the Continent, Mr Thurston and Miss Eyrecourt had met again. It was during one of Roma’s flying visits to the Dalrymples. They had seen each other several times, had talked a good deal on a subject interesting to them both—Eugenia—and from that on one or two occasions had drifted into other talk, had found out insensibly a good deal about each other’s thoughts and tastes and opinions, had discovered various remarkable points of coincidence in these directions, various no less impressive points of disagreement which both felt conscious it would have been pleasant and satisfactory to discuss further. All this talking no doubt might even then have led to a definite result, but for the prepossession with which each mind was guarded. Roma, unbeliever though she professed herself in the constancy of any man’s devotion, yet made one exception to her rule. She believed, or told herself, with perhaps suspicious frequency and decision, that she believed in the unalterable nature of Gerald’s feelings towards Eugenia.“It is the only case, out of a book that is to say,” she would repeat to herself, “I have ever even heard of, where a man kept faithful to his first ideal. Not that she even turned out to be his ideal, from what he has told me; but she was and still is herself. I believe he would be content to serve her unthanked all his life, and she will never have the faintest notion of it! Ah, yes, things are queerly arranged. But I am very thankful I was born matter-of-fact and easy-going, not likely to break my heart for even the best of men.”Gerald’s prepossession was of quite another nature. He did not think it impossible that, had he dared to show his growing regard for this heartless young lady, he might not have succeeded in winning that which she was so fond of declaring she was not possessed of. But his head was perfectly full of the notion that, though personally she might in time have learnt to care for him, his position would prove an insuperable objection. “As ifshewould ever consent to live at Wareborough,” he said to himself. “Ah, no, it is utterly out of the question.” And so, with the burnt child’s dread of the fire, he refrained from indulging in tantalising speculations on the possibility of overcoming these taken-for-granted prejudices on Miss Eyrecourt’s part, and from time, to time congratulated himself on the skill with which he had preserved intact his peace of mind and on the strength of self-control which permitted him to enjoy a good and beautiful woman’s friendship where a nearer and dearer tie was impossible.But there came a day when his self-satisfaction received its death-blow, when he was fain to confess that after all he was neither wiser nor stronger than his fellows. He had been more than a week at Halswood. He had come there little intending or expecting to remain so long, but the days had passed very pleasantly; his hosts were so cordial, Miss Eyrecourt so friendly and companionable, that, having no pressing business on hand, he had been persuaded to linger on from day to day. It was not very often that he found himself alone with Roma, but one afternoon, some other visitors having left, it happened that they two were thrown on each other for entertainment.“Shall you mind, Roma, if we leave you and Mr Thurston alone to-day?” Eugenia had asked her friend after luncheon. “Beauchamp is so anxious to drive me out with the new ponies—he has driven them several times, and says they go so beautifully! And the pony carriage only holds two and little Tim, the groom, behind, and I think perhaps Beauchamp would be disappointed if I did not go.”“Of course you must go,” said Roma, brightly. “I don’t mind in the least. I will take Mr Thurston a tremendously long walk, and see if he isn’t much more tired than I when we come home. Men are so conceited about that sort of thing.”Eugenia laughed. She was leaving the room, but a sudden impulse seemed to come over her. She turned back to the table where Roma was sitting writing, and kissed her gently.“What is that for?” asked Roma. “Am I particularly good to-day?”“No, yes. I mean you are always good,” answered Eugenia. “I am very happy to-day, and I always feel as if I should thank you when I feel so.” Roma looked up with a grateful look in her dark eyes. (“It is nice of you to say so, but I don’t deserve it,” she interrupted. “Yes you do,” said Eugenia, and then went on with what she had been speaking about.) “It was something Beauchamp said this morning that made me happy. I needn’t tell you it all, but just a little. He asked me, Roma, if I didn’t think we were getting to be very happy together, and he said, ‘At least, Eugenia, you makemevery happy, and I think I am getting to understand you and your ways of thinking about things better. I am learning to see how selfish I was—a while ago, you know. But I trust all that is over.’ Then he said something else, I don’t know what put it into his head—something about baby and how we should bring him up, and the future. Roma,” she broke off, suddenly, “if Beauchamp were to die now I should miss him terribly. I am sogladto feel so, for there was a time when Icouldn’t, when my life stretched before me like a long slavery. Don’t think me wicked to speak so—you understand me?”“Understand you, dear Eugenia? Yes, thoroughly,” said Roma. “And years and years hence I trust and believe you will feel as you say you do now, yet more strongly. I don’t think the sort of happiness you feel is likely to fade or lessen,” she sighed, half unconsciously as she spoke.Eugenia looked at her affectionately. She seemed on the point of saying something more, but changed her mind and, kissing Roma again, left the room.How it came about they could neither of them in all probability have exactly related. They went the long walk Miss Eyrecourt had determined upon; they talked of every general subject under the skies, avoiding at first, as if by tacit mutual consent, any of closer personal interest. But after a while, somehow, Mr Thurston came to talking of himself, of his life, his hopes, his disappointments and failures. He was not by any means an egotistical man. Roma could not but feel flattered, by his confidence; she listened with undisguised interest. Suddenly, to her surprise, he alluded to the first time they had met.“It is curious to look back now to that evening, is it not?” he said. “You were the first lady I had spoken to for, I may say, years. Out there I was completely cut off from any intercourse of the kind. And what a fool (I beg your pardon, Miss Eyrecourt) you must have thought me! Do you remember how I bored you with my confidences? I assure you I never remember our conversation without feeling inclined to blush, only you were so very kind—thatpart of it,” he added, in a somewhat lower tone, “I don’t want to forget.”“You need not want to forget any of it,” said Roma, blushing, however, herself as she spoke; “I certainly did not think of you as you imagine. It has always been very pleasant to me to think that—that you thought me, even at first sight, trustworthy—fit to talk to as you did. The only unpleasing part of the remembrance to me is the thought of how it all ended for you, how terribly quickly your dreams faded. Forgive me,” she went on, hastily, “I am afraid I have said too much. I have never alluded to it before.”“I like your alluding to it,” said Gerald. “I like the feeling that you understand it all. It doesn’t hurt me in the least now. It is wonderful how one grows out of things, isn’t it?—at least, hardly that; how things grow into one till one is no longer conscious of their existence.“I am a part of all that I have met.“You remember? Of course Eugenia had a great influence upon me. But for her I should probably have been quite a different sort of man. But still I can see the good it did me now without any bitterness. I am inexpressibly thankful that she is so much happier, that she seems to be growing into—herlife, as it were. When she was unhappy I must confess I was bitter—bitter to think I had no right to interfere. But that has all past by. I am rather lonely, that is about all I have any right to complain of. If she had not married it might have been different—there is a sort of doggedness about me—I believe I should have gone on hoping against hope. But as it is, I feel it rather hard sometimes.”“What?” asked Roma, in some bewilderment.“Why, that I should be doomed to stay outside always, as it were. You don’t suppose I have any dislike to the idea of being happy like other people? You don’t suppose it is from choice I remain homeless and lonely, do you, Miss Eyrecourt?”He looked at her half laughingly, yet earnestly too.Roma’s face fell. Then after all, she thought, her one hero was no hero; already his love for Eugenia was replaced by some other apparently equally hopeless attachment. It was disappointing.“Why do you look so grave?” he inquired. “Have I offended you?”“Offendedme! What have I to do with it?” she replied. “Of course not. To tell you the truth I felt just a little disappointed—a nice confession for an unromantic person to make—that—that youhad‘got over it,’ as it is called, so completely. You were my model of constancy. I shall think life more prosaic than ever now. And, to turn to prose, what a pity you a second time made an unlucky venture! Could you not have been more prudent? That is to say, if the obstacles whose existence you inferareinsuperable. As to that, of course I can’t judge.”She quickened her steps a little as she spoke. It seemed to Gerald she was eager to make an end of the conversation. Amused, yet much annoyed at her misapprehension, his wish to right himself in her eyes drove him further than he had intended.“Miss Eyrecourt,” he began, not without a slight irritation in his tone, “I wish you would do me justice. Is it possible you don’t understand me? Do not you see that one of the things whichmostattracted me, which drew forth my admiration and gratitude, arose from the very strength of my care for Eugenia? It was that which first drew us together—your goodness to her, I mean—it was that which showed me how generous and noble you are. And yet, unfortunately, your knowledge of my feelings to her is one of the very things that make me hopeless, even if there were no insuperable practical objections. Not that I would have concealed the old state of things from you in any case had you not happened to know them, if I had ventured to try my chance with you. But they were forced upon you so unfortunately. It would be impossible for you ever to think of me in a different light. How could I ever convince you that the heart I offered was worth having? It must seem to you a poor wretched battered-about thing—not that, of course, it was ever worthyourhaving.”Roma stopped short. Hitherto she had kept up her rapid pace. She stopped short and turned round so as to face Mr Thurston. He saw that she was very pale.“Are you in earnest?” she said, very gravely. “Do you mean what you are saying? I do not altogether understand you to-day, Mr Thurston. It would have been more in accordance with my notion of you if, allowing that youarein earnest, you had simply and manfully put the question to the test, instead of first imagining ‘insuperable obstacles’ and then putting them into my mouth. You place me very awkwardly. At this moment I solemnly assure you I do not know if you would like me to say, ‘Mr Thurston, I will marry you if you will ask me,’ or not.”Notwithstanding her seriousness, with the few last words she had difficulty in repressing a laugh. Gerald’s face flushed deeply, angrily almost, as she spoke, and a quick light came into his eyes—a light, however, not altogether of indignation.“Iwouldhave asked you months, years ago,” he said, “had I not believed that my doing so would have been looked upon as presumption—would have put an end to the friendship I have learnt to value more than anything in my life, and which I could ill afford to lose. So hopeless, till this instant, have I been of ever obtaining more.”“Why?” asked Roma.“Why?” he repeated. “For the reason I have already told you, and for another. Think of my position! A struggling engineer—an artisan, some of your people would call me, I daresay; for I am not yet at the top of my tree by any means, nor likely to be so for many a long day to come. The only home I can offer my wife is an unattractive one enough—you know what sort of a place Wareborough is—is that the homeyouare suited to? You, beautiful, courted, admired; spoilt by every sort of rule you should be, but I don’t think you are. I am not exactly poor, certainly, but I am not rich, and there is hard work before me for years to come. There now, Miss Eyrecourt, you know the whole. I have great reason to be sanguine of success, have I not?”“And this is all?” she said. “You have told me every one of the ‘insuperable obstacles?’”“Every one,” he replied. “Don’t torture me, Roma.”She held out both her hands; she lifted up her beautiful face and looked at him with tears in her large soft dark eyes. “Oh, Gerald,” she said at last, when the two hands were pressed closely in his, when she felt his gaze of almost incredulous joy fixed upon her with eager questioning; “Oh, Gerald, how could you mistake me so? ‘Spoilt,’ am I? Ah no, or if so, not by the excess of love that has been lavished on me. I have been very lonely; it is years and years since I have known what it was to have a home—a real home. Even had I not loved you, I confess to you the temptation ofyourlove, your strength and protection, would have been great to me. You don’t know what to me would have been the mere thought of having some one I could perfectly trust. But as it is, I needn’t think of temptation. I love you, Gerald. I would rather have your ‘poor battered old heart’ than anything in the universe. And if this makes amends for the dilapidated state of yours, I can assure you that mine, such as it is, is quite whole. I give it to you entirely, without the slightest little chip or crack.”She had begun to speak with the tears in her eyes; as she went on, notwithstanding her half-joking tone, they dropped—one, two, three big tears. She pulled away one hand to dash them aside, but Gerald caught it, kissed it tenderly and gratefully, and held it fast again.“Roma,” he said, “you and your heart are far too good for me. My darling, how shall I ever repay the sacrifices you will make for me? Are you sure, quite sure, you will never repent it? Have you considered it all? Think of having to live at Wareborough.”“Gerald, you are too bad! Do you know you have all but driven me into proposing to you? I shall thinkyourepent your bargain if you say much more. Living at Wareborough! Nonsense. I should be quite pleased and content to live in a coal mine withyou. There now, I am not going to spoil you by any more pretty speeches, which, by rights, sir, please to remember, should come from the other side.”With such encouragement, Mr Thurston, considering it was the first time he had actually tried his hand at anything of the kind, acquitted himself very fairly, and the remaining two miles of their walk seemed to them but a small fraction of the real distance. They had time, however, to discuss a good many aspects of their plans. “What would Frank and Sydney think? how astonished they would be!”“How pleased Eugenia would feel!” etc, etc, before they re-entered the park and came within sight of the house.They approached it from one side, intending, however, to enter by the front door. What was it, as they drew near, that gave Roma an indescribable feeling that something had happened since they went out? She could not have told. The hall door was half-open for one thing, but it was not that. It was a so-called “instinct”—one of those subtile revelations which science has not yet learnt to define or explain by any thoroughly apprehended law.There was hardly time for even the realisation of a fear. The wave of vague apprehension had hardly ruffled the girl’s happy spirit when it was confirmed. The hall door opened a little wider, a little figure, evidently on the watch, rushed out.“Aunty Woma,” cried Floss, flinging herself into Miss Eyrecourt’s arms, forgetful of the certain amount of awe with which Roma still inspired her, regardless of the awful presence of Mr Thurston; “Aunty Woma, something dweadful has happened. The ponies has wunned away, and little Tim has wunned home to tell. Uncle Beachey is killed quite dead on the dot, Tim says, and I don’t know where Aunty ’Genia is.”“What does she say?” asked Gerald, hoarsely.“Tell him; say it again, Floss,” said Roma, forcing her pale lips to move; and as well as she could, for her sobs, the child repeated her ghastly tale.Without another word, Mr Thurston rushed off, and in an instant was lost to Roma’s sight among the thick growing shrubs that lay in the direction of the stables. What became of Floss her aunt never knew; probably in her intense anxiety to know more, the child followed the person whom she imagined most likely to obtain further information. However that may have been, Roma found herself alone—alone with this strange dreamlike feeling of horror and grief for Beauchamp’s untimely fate, which it never occurred to her to doubt—alone with a yet more terrible companion. What was the meaning of this sudden misery which overwhelmed her? Whence had come this poisonous suggestion which, so marvellously speedy is the growth of thought, had, even while the child was speaking, sprung to life in her brain? Beauchamp dead, Eugenia free, and the words which her newly made lover had spoken not an hour before ringing in her ears:“If she had not married it would have been different. I believe I should have gone on hoping—”How would it be now? What should she do? Oh, if only she had not encouraged him to say more, for without encouragement, now whispered the serpent in her heart, he would certainly not have said so much.“Good God,” thought poor Roma, in her anguish and self-horror, “what a selfish wretch I am! What shall I do? How shall I bear it?”The words uttered aloud recalled her somewhat to herself. She was hastening to the house, intent on burying self at least for the present—on seeing in what way she could be of use to others, when Mr Thurston suddenly re-appeared. He came out by the hall door, hastened up to her quickly but without speaking. He was deadly pale, and when close beside her he seemed to move his lips once or twice before any sound was audible. Then at last he spoke.“Roma,” he said, “wait a moment. There is no hurry. Everything has been done. They have sent for doctors and all. It,” he stopped, and seemed to gasp for breath, “it happened near the Chilworth lodge. I am just going there. I only came out to tell you. Floss’s version was not quite correct. Roma,” he stopped again, “it is even worse—forgive me, I cannot help saying so—it is not Beauchamp. It—it is Eugenia?”The last words were hardly audible, they came with a sort of a sob. For once in his life Gerald was utterly unmanned. But Roma heard them only too plainly.“Eugenia!” she cried, her voice rising almost into a scream; “oh no, Mr Thurston, not Eugenia. You do not mean she isdead? Say, oh, do say it is a mistake,” she clasped her hands together in wild entreaty; “youmustsay it is a mistake.”He looked at her with unutterable pity, but shook his head.“I cannot say so,” he replied; “from what I was told it seems only too certain. But I am going there at once. Will you come? no, perhaps you had better not. I will let you know immediately what I find. Itmaynot be so bad. Roma, dearest Roma, do not lose heart so.”He would have put his arm round her, but she eluded his grasp.“Don’t touch me,” she said, wildly, “you don’t know how wicked I am. It is true—I feel it is true. Oh, Eugenia! God forgive me. I think my punishment is greater than I can bear,” and before her lover could stop her she had rushed into the house.For a moment Gerald gazed after her in distress and bewilderment, half doubting if he had heard aright.“She does not know what she is saying,” he decided. “My poor Roma, the shock has been too much for her; but I cannot stay,” and at a rapid pace he set off across the park in the direction of the scene of the frightful disaster.Upstairs, meanwhile, Roma, locked into her own room, “matter-of-fact, easy-going” Roma—Roma, “into whose composition entered no tragic elements,” Gerald Thurston’s light-hearted betrothed of one short hour ago, was passing through an agony of remorse, a very fiery furnace of misery, such as falls to the lot of few women of her healthy, happy nature.

But, Edith dead!Too Late.

Gerald Thurston did go to Halswood. Whether he did so knowing that there he would again meet Roma Eyrecourt is a secret that has never been divulged; whether in suggesting to her husband that he should invite Sydney’s brother-in-law Eugenia was influenced by malice prepense has never transpired. Be these possibilities as they may the event they would have foreshadowed came to pass; and in this fashion.

Once, during the absence of the Chancellors on the Continent, Mr Thurston and Miss Eyrecourt had met again. It was during one of Roma’s flying visits to the Dalrymples. They had seen each other several times, had talked a good deal on a subject interesting to them both—Eugenia—and from that on one or two occasions had drifted into other talk, had found out insensibly a good deal about each other’s thoughts and tastes and opinions, had discovered various remarkable points of coincidence in these directions, various no less impressive points of disagreement which both felt conscious it would have been pleasant and satisfactory to discuss further. All this talking no doubt might even then have led to a definite result, but for the prepossession with which each mind was guarded. Roma, unbeliever though she professed herself in the constancy of any man’s devotion, yet made one exception to her rule. She believed, or told herself, with perhaps suspicious frequency and decision, that she believed in the unalterable nature of Gerald’s feelings towards Eugenia.

“It is the only case, out of a book that is to say,” she would repeat to herself, “I have ever even heard of, where a man kept faithful to his first ideal. Not that she even turned out to be his ideal, from what he has told me; but she was and still is herself. I believe he would be content to serve her unthanked all his life, and she will never have the faintest notion of it! Ah, yes, things are queerly arranged. But I am very thankful I was born matter-of-fact and easy-going, not likely to break my heart for even the best of men.”

Gerald’s prepossession was of quite another nature. He did not think it impossible that, had he dared to show his growing regard for this heartless young lady, he might not have succeeded in winning that which she was so fond of declaring she was not possessed of. But his head was perfectly full of the notion that, though personally she might in time have learnt to care for him, his position would prove an insuperable objection. “As ifshewould ever consent to live at Wareborough,” he said to himself. “Ah, no, it is utterly out of the question.” And so, with the burnt child’s dread of the fire, he refrained from indulging in tantalising speculations on the possibility of overcoming these taken-for-granted prejudices on Miss Eyrecourt’s part, and from time, to time congratulated himself on the skill with which he had preserved intact his peace of mind and on the strength of self-control which permitted him to enjoy a good and beautiful woman’s friendship where a nearer and dearer tie was impossible.

But there came a day when his self-satisfaction received its death-blow, when he was fain to confess that after all he was neither wiser nor stronger than his fellows. He had been more than a week at Halswood. He had come there little intending or expecting to remain so long, but the days had passed very pleasantly; his hosts were so cordial, Miss Eyrecourt so friendly and companionable, that, having no pressing business on hand, he had been persuaded to linger on from day to day. It was not very often that he found himself alone with Roma, but one afternoon, some other visitors having left, it happened that they two were thrown on each other for entertainment.

“Shall you mind, Roma, if we leave you and Mr Thurston alone to-day?” Eugenia had asked her friend after luncheon. “Beauchamp is so anxious to drive me out with the new ponies—he has driven them several times, and says they go so beautifully! And the pony carriage only holds two and little Tim, the groom, behind, and I think perhaps Beauchamp would be disappointed if I did not go.”

“Of course you must go,” said Roma, brightly. “I don’t mind in the least. I will take Mr Thurston a tremendously long walk, and see if he isn’t much more tired than I when we come home. Men are so conceited about that sort of thing.”

Eugenia laughed. She was leaving the room, but a sudden impulse seemed to come over her. She turned back to the table where Roma was sitting writing, and kissed her gently.

“What is that for?” asked Roma. “Am I particularly good to-day?”

“No, yes. I mean you are always good,” answered Eugenia. “I am very happy to-day, and I always feel as if I should thank you when I feel so.” Roma looked up with a grateful look in her dark eyes. (“It is nice of you to say so, but I don’t deserve it,” she interrupted. “Yes you do,” said Eugenia, and then went on with what she had been speaking about.) “It was something Beauchamp said this morning that made me happy. I needn’t tell you it all, but just a little. He asked me, Roma, if I didn’t think we were getting to be very happy together, and he said, ‘At least, Eugenia, you makemevery happy, and I think I am getting to understand you and your ways of thinking about things better. I am learning to see how selfish I was—a while ago, you know. But I trust all that is over.’ Then he said something else, I don’t know what put it into his head—something about baby and how we should bring him up, and the future. Roma,” she broke off, suddenly, “if Beauchamp were to die now I should miss him terribly. I am sogladto feel so, for there was a time when Icouldn’t, when my life stretched before me like a long slavery. Don’t think me wicked to speak so—you understand me?”

“Understand you, dear Eugenia? Yes, thoroughly,” said Roma. “And years and years hence I trust and believe you will feel as you say you do now, yet more strongly. I don’t think the sort of happiness you feel is likely to fade or lessen,” she sighed, half unconsciously as she spoke.

Eugenia looked at her affectionately. She seemed on the point of saying something more, but changed her mind and, kissing Roma again, left the room.

How it came about they could neither of them in all probability have exactly related. They went the long walk Miss Eyrecourt had determined upon; they talked of every general subject under the skies, avoiding at first, as if by tacit mutual consent, any of closer personal interest. But after a while, somehow, Mr Thurston came to talking of himself, of his life, his hopes, his disappointments and failures. He was not by any means an egotistical man. Roma could not but feel flattered, by his confidence; she listened with undisguised interest. Suddenly, to her surprise, he alluded to the first time they had met.

“It is curious to look back now to that evening, is it not?” he said. “You were the first lady I had spoken to for, I may say, years. Out there I was completely cut off from any intercourse of the kind. And what a fool (I beg your pardon, Miss Eyrecourt) you must have thought me! Do you remember how I bored you with my confidences? I assure you I never remember our conversation without feeling inclined to blush, only you were so very kind—thatpart of it,” he added, in a somewhat lower tone, “I don’t want to forget.”

“You need not want to forget any of it,” said Roma, blushing, however, herself as she spoke; “I certainly did not think of you as you imagine. It has always been very pleasant to me to think that—that you thought me, even at first sight, trustworthy—fit to talk to as you did. The only unpleasing part of the remembrance to me is the thought of how it all ended for you, how terribly quickly your dreams faded. Forgive me,” she went on, hastily, “I am afraid I have said too much. I have never alluded to it before.”

“I like your alluding to it,” said Gerald. “I like the feeling that you understand it all. It doesn’t hurt me in the least now. It is wonderful how one grows out of things, isn’t it?—at least, hardly that; how things grow into one till one is no longer conscious of their existence.

“I am a part of all that I have met.

“You remember? Of course Eugenia had a great influence upon me. But for her I should probably have been quite a different sort of man. But still I can see the good it did me now without any bitterness. I am inexpressibly thankful that she is so much happier, that she seems to be growing into—herlife, as it were. When she was unhappy I must confess I was bitter—bitter to think I had no right to interfere. But that has all past by. I am rather lonely, that is about all I have any right to complain of. If she had not married it might have been different—there is a sort of doggedness about me—I believe I should have gone on hoping against hope. But as it is, I feel it rather hard sometimes.”

“What?” asked Roma, in some bewilderment.

“Why, that I should be doomed to stay outside always, as it were. You don’t suppose I have any dislike to the idea of being happy like other people? You don’t suppose it is from choice I remain homeless and lonely, do you, Miss Eyrecourt?”

He looked at her half laughingly, yet earnestly too.

Roma’s face fell. Then after all, she thought, her one hero was no hero; already his love for Eugenia was replaced by some other apparently equally hopeless attachment. It was disappointing.

“Why do you look so grave?” he inquired. “Have I offended you?”

“Offendedme! What have I to do with it?” she replied. “Of course not. To tell you the truth I felt just a little disappointed—a nice confession for an unromantic person to make—that—that youhad‘got over it,’ as it is called, so completely. You were my model of constancy. I shall think life more prosaic than ever now. And, to turn to prose, what a pity you a second time made an unlucky venture! Could you not have been more prudent? That is to say, if the obstacles whose existence you inferareinsuperable. As to that, of course I can’t judge.”

She quickened her steps a little as she spoke. It seemed to Gerald she was eager to make an end of the conversation. Amused, yet much annoyed at her misapprehension, his wish to right himself in her eyes drove him further than he had intended.

“Miss Eyrecourt,” he began, not without a slight irritation in his tone, “I wish you would do me justice. Is it possible you don’t understand me? Do not you see that one of the things whichmostattracted me, which drew forth my admiration and gratitude, arose from the very strength of my care for Eugenia? It was that which first drew us together—your goodness to her, I mean—it was that which showed me how generous and noble you are. And yet, unfortunately, your knowledge of my feelings to her is one of the very things that make me hopeless, even if there were no insuperable practical objections. Not that I would have concealed the old state of things from you in any case had you not happened to know them, if I had ventured to try my chance with you. But they were forced upon you so unfortunately. It would be impossible for you ever to think of me in a different light. How could I ever convince you that the heart I offered was worth having? It must seem to you a poor wretched battered-about thing—not that, of course, it was ever worthyourhaving.”

Roma stopped short. Hitherto she had kept up her rapid pace. She stopped short and turned round so as to face Mr Thurston. He saw that she was very pale.

“Are you in earnest?” she said, very gravely. “Do you mean what you are saying? I do not altogether understand you to-day, Mr Thurston. It would have been more in accordance with my notion of you if, allowing that youarein earnest, you had simply and manfully put the question to the test, instead of first imagining ‘insuperable obstacles’ and then putting them into my mouth. You place me very awkwardly. At this moment I solemnly assure you I do not know if you would like me to say, ‘Mr Thurston, I will marry you if you will ask me,’ or not.”

Notwithstanding her seriousness, with the few last words she had difficulty in repressing a laugh. Gerald’s face flushed deeply, angrily almost, as she spoke, and a quick light came into his eyes—a light, however, not altogether of indignation.

“Iwouldhave asked you months, years ago,” he said, “had I not believed that my doing so would have been looked upon as presumption—would have put an end to the friendship I have learnt to value more than anything in my life, and which I could ill afford to lose. So hopeless, till this instant, have I been of ever obtaining more.”

“Why?” asked Roma.

“Why?” he repeated. “For the reason I have already told you, and for another. Think of my position! A struggling engineer—an artisan, some of your people would call me, I daresay; for I am not yet at the top of my tree by any means, nor likely to be so for many a long day to come. The only home I can offer my wife is an unattractive one enough—you know what sort of a place Wareborough is—is that the homeyouare suited to? You, beautiful, courted, admired; spoilt by every sort of rule you should be, but I don’t think you are. I am not exactly poor, certainly, but I am not rich, and there is hard work before me for years to come. There now, Miss Eyrecourt, you know the whole. I have great reason to be sanguine of success, have I not?”

“And this is all?” she said. “You have told me every one of the ‘insuperable obstacles?’”

“Every one,” he replied. “Don’t torture me, Roma.”

She held out both her hands; she lifted up her beautiful face and looked at him with tears in her large soft dark eyes. “Oh, Gerald,” she said at last, when the two hands were pressed closely in his, when she felt his gaze of almost incredulous joy fixed upon her with eager questioning; “Oh, Gerald, how could you mistake me so? ‘Spoilt,’ am I? Ah no, or if so, not by the excess of love that has been lavished on me. I have been very lonely; it is years and years since I have known what it was to have a home—a real home. Even had I not loved you, I confess to you the temptation ofyourlove, your strength and protection, would have been great to me. You don’t know what to me would have been the mere thought of having some one I could perfectly trust. But as it is, I needn’t think of temptation. I love you, Gerald. I would rather have your ‘poor battered old heart’ than anything in the universe. And if this makes amends for the dilapidated state of yours, I can assure you that mine, such as it is, is quite whole. I give it to you entirely, without the slightest little chip or crack.”

She had begun to speak with the tears in her eyes; as she went on, notwithstanding her half-joking tone, they dropped—one, two, three big tears. She pulled away one hand to dash them aside, but Gerald caught it, kissed it tenderly and gratefully, and held it fast again.

“Roma,” he said, “you and your heart are far too good for me. My darling, how shall I ever repay the sacrifices you will make for me? Are you sure, quite sure, you will never repent it? Have you considered it all? Think of having to live at Wareborough.”

“Gerald, you are too bad! Do you know you have all but driven me into proposing to you? I shall thinkyourepent your bargain if you say much more. Living at Wareborough! Nonsense. I should be quite pleased and content to live in a coal mine withyou. There now, I am not going to spoil you by any more pretty speeches, which, by rights, sir, please to remember, should come from the other side.”

With such encouragement, Mr Thurston, considering it was the first time he had actually tried his hand at anything of the kind, acquitted himself very fairly, and the remaining two miles of their walk seemed to them but a small fraction of the real distance. They had time, however, to discuss a good many aspects of their plans. “What would Frank and Sydney think? how astonished they would be!”

“How pleased Eugenia would feel!” etc, etc, before they re-entered the park and came within sight of the house.

They approached it from one side, intending, however, to enter by the front door. What was it, as they drew near, that gave Roma an indescribable feeling that something had happened since they went out? She could not have told. The hall door was half-open for one thing, but it was not that. It was a so-called “instinct”—one of those subtile revelations which science has not yet learnt to define or explain by any thoroughly apprehended law.

There was hardly time for even the realisation of a fear. The wave of vague apprehension had hardly ruffled the girl’s happy spirit when it was confirmed. The hall door opened a little wider, a little figure, evidently on the watch, rushed out.

“Aunty Woma,” cried Floss, flinging herself into Miss Eyrecourt’s arms, forgetful of the certain amount of awe with which Roma still inspired her, regardless of the awful presence of Mr Thurston; “Aunty Woma, something dweadful has happened. The ponies has wunned away, and little Tim has wunned home to tell. Uncle Beachey is killed quite dead on the dot, Tim says, and I don’t know where Aunty ’Genia is.”

“What does she say?” asked Gerald, hoarsely.

“Tell him; say it again, Floss,” said Roma, forcing her pale lips to move; and as well as she could, for her sobs, the child repeated her ghastly tale.

Without another word, Mr Thurston rushed off, and in an instant was lost to Roma’s sight among the thick growing shrubs that lay in the direction of the stables. What became of Floss her aunt never knew; probably in her intense anxiety to know more, the child followed the person whom she imagined most likely to obtain further information. However that may have been, Roma found herself alone—alone with this strange dreamlike feeling of horror and grief for Beauchamp’s untimely fate, which it never occurred to her to doubt—alone with a yet more terrible companion. What was the meaning of this sudden misery which overwhelmed her? Whence had come this poisonous suggestion which, so marvellously speedy is the growth of thought, had, even while the child was speaking, sprung to life in her brain? Beauchamp dead, Eugenia free, and the words which her newly made lover had spoken not an hour before ringing in her ears:

“If she had not married it would have been different. I believe I should have gone on hoping—”

How would it be now? What should she do? Oh, if only she had not encouraged him to say more, for without encouragement, now whispered the serpent in her heart, he would certainly not have said so much.

“Good God,” thought poor Roma, in her anguish and self-horror, “what a selfish wretch I am! What shall I do? How shall I bear it?”

The words uttered aloud recalled her somewhat to herself. She was hastening to the house, intent on burying self at least for the present—on seeing in what way she could be of use to others, when Mr Thurston suddenly re-appeared. He came out by the hall door, hastened up to her quickly but without speaking. He was deadly pale, and when close beside her he seemed to move his lips once or twice before any sound was audible. Then at last he spoke.

“Roma,” he said, “wait a moment. There is no hurry. Everything has been done. They have sent for doctors and all. It,” he stopped, and seemed to gasp for breath, “it happened near the Chilworth lodge. I am just going there. I only came out to tell you. Floss’s version was not quite correct. Roma,” he stopped again, “it is even worse—forgive me, I cannot help saying so—it is not Beauchamp. It—it is Eugenia?”

The last words were hardly audible, they came with a sort of a sob. For once in his life Gerald was utterly unmanned. But Roma heard them only too plainly.

“Eugenia!” she cried, her voice rising almost into a scream; “oh no, Mr Thurston, not Eugenia. You do not mean she isdead? Say, oh, do say it is a mistake,” she clasped her hands together in wild entreaty; “youmustsay it is a mistake.”

He looked at her with unutterable pity, but shook his head.

“I cannot say so,” he replied; “from what I was told it seems only too certain. But I am going there at once. Will you come? no, perhaps you had better not. I will let you know immediately what I find. Itmaynot be so bad. Roma, dearest Roma, do not lose heart so.”

He would have put his arm round her, but she eluded his grasp.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, wildly, “you don’t know how wicked I am. It is true—I feel it is true. Oh, Eugenia! God forgive me. I think my punishment is greater than I can bear,” and before her lover could stop her she had rushed into the house.

For a moment Gerald gazed after her in distress and bewilderment, half doubting if he had heard aright.

“She does not know what she is saying,” he decided. “My poor Roma, the shock has been too much for her; but I cannot stay,” and at a rapid pace he set off across the park in the direction of the scene of the frightful disaster.

Upstairs, meanwhile, Roma, locked into her own room, “matter-of-fact, easy-going” Roma—Roma, “into whose composition entered no tragic elements,” Gerald Thurston’s light-hearted betrothed of one short hour ago, was passing through an agony of remorse, a very fiery furnace of misery, such as falls to the lot of few women of her healthy, happy nature.

Volume Three—Chapter Ten.From the Gates of the Grave.“The best is yet to be,The last of life, for which the first was made:Our times are in His hand,Who saith ‘A whole I planed,Youth shows but half: see all, nor be afraid!’”Rabbi Ben Ezra.She was not dead. “Still alive, but perfectly unconscious,” was the report that met Gerald as he reached the lodge. “They have not told Captain Chancellor how bad it is,” added Mr Thurston’s informant, “for he was severely stunned himself, and the hearing it might do him harm. He thinks Mrs Chancellor escaped unhurt.”A little later Gerald caught a glimpse of the Chilworth surgeon. This gentleman seemed glad to get hold of some responsible person.“Mrs Chancellor’s brother-in-law, Mr Thurston, I presume,” he began, and Gerald did not think the slight mistake worth correcting. “I have sent to Chilworth to telegraph for Dr Frobisher, of Marley. I suppose I did right?”“Most certainly,” answered Gerald.“You see I had no one to consult—we must keep it from Captain Chancellor as long as possible, he has had a narrow escape himself—and I feel the responsibility very great. There is no wonder they thought Mrs Chancellor was killed, at first—I almost thought so myself when I first came.”“Then what is your opinion now?” Gerald ventured to ask, fancying a shadow of hope was inferred by the surgeon’s manner.“I think there is a slight hope, a very slight one. It will hang on a thread for some days at the best, but she is young and very healthy, though not strong. If she escapes, however, it will be little short of a miracle. Can you tell me how it happened? It seems an extraordinary thing altogether; the ponies were not wild, the coachman tells me, and had been driven several times.”Gerald told what he knew. The ponies, it appeared, from the boy Timothy’s account, had gone beautifully, “as quiet as quiet,” all the way, till on their return home Beauchamp had stopped for a moment at the lodge to get a light for his cigar. There was no man in the house; only the lodge-keeper’s wife was at home, and she unfortunately, encumbered with a screaming baby who would scarcely allow her to open the gate. Captain Chancellor, to save her trouble, jumped out of the carriage, giving the reins to his wife, and calling to Tim to stand by the ponies’ heads. The boy was on the point of obeying, when his mistress told him to stay where he was; “She could hold them quite well, she said,” was the child’s account, “and she thought they should learn to stand still of their-selves.” It was an unfortunate experiment; the ponies, eager to reach their stable, were irritated by the delay almost within sight of their home. They began to fret and fidget, and Eugenia, by way of soothing them, walked them on slowly a few paces. Then something, what, no one ever knew (possibly only the animals’ own unrestrainable impatience), startled them, and with a desperate plunge they dashed forward just as their master came out of the lodge. There was a rush and a scramble, which Tim could not clearly describe. He remembered seeing Captain Chancellor dart forward, catch hold of the reins on the side nearest to him, and for a moment the boy thought they were saved. Only for a moment, however; it seemed to him his master was dragged a few yards, then kicked violently aside, “all of a heap, he lay without moving,” said the boy. “I thought he was killed, and so did my mistress. She stood up in the carriage and screamed out ‘he is killed, it is my fault,’ and then in another minute she were out too. I don’t know if she throwed herself out or not; the carriage shook so, going so fast and she standing up, she could hardly have kep’ in.” Apparently Tim thought it his duty to throw himself after her. He confessed to the idea having crossed his mind, but remembered no more till he woke up to find himself shaken and confused, though otherwise unhurt, some twenty yards or so from the spot where the first part of the catastrophe had occurred. The ponies, satisfied, seemingly, with their day’s work, pursued their way home, their pace gradually subsiding as they became conscious of being their own masters. They rattled into the courtyard, no one at the first sound of their approach suspecting anything amiss, till the first glance of the empty carriage, and the torn and dragging reins told their own dreadful tale.Such was the explanation of the accident. Mr Benyon listened in silence, shook his head when Gerald finished speaking, and then went back to his patient again to await the arrival of the greater man from Marley.Gerald lost no time in sharing with Roma the crumb of comfort he had found.“It is not quite so bad as I was told at first. She is still alive, but there is very little hope. Will you not come? There is nothing to do. She is perfectly unconscious, but I think it would be less wretched for you than staying up there alone. Tell poor little Floss we hope her aunt will soon be better.”This was the pencilled note—Roma’s first letter from her lover, a sad enough one truly—which Mr Thurston sent to the poor girl, waiting in all the anguish of well-nigh hopeless anxiety for his report. Within half-an-hour she had joined him, pale, haggard, careworn, aged even it almost seemed, from the bright Roma of an hour or two ago, but calm, self-possessed now, ready for any service that might be required of her. And the sweet summer afternoon deepened into sweeter evening; the moon shone out in cold indifferent loveliness; here and there through the latticed windows of the cottage a star peeped in with its cheery twinkle, and still the dreary vigil went on; still lay on the pallet bed where they had first carried her, the so lately beautiful form of Eugenia Chancellor, beautiful still, but with a death-like beauty that seemed already to separate her from the living breathing beings about her. Only from time to time she moaned faintly, and moved her head from side to side uneasily on the pillow with the sad restlessness so pitiful to see; telling too surely to the experienced eye of invisible injury to the delicate brain.It was unspeakably painful to witness, knowing that so little could be done to relieve or mitigate the suffering. And not the least painful part of what Roma and her lover had to go through, was the sight of Beauchamp Chancellor’s suffering when the truth as to Eugenia was broken to him. His distress was indescribable; so evidently genuine in its depth that more than once in the course of the next few days Roma found herself asking herself if, after all her many years’ knowledge of him, she had done full justice to his capacity for true and earnest feeling, to the latent possibilities for good in his character below the crust of worldliness and selfishness. Or was it that he had altered and improved, that contact with a nature so fresh and genuine and single-minded as Eugenia’s, had done its work; that notwithstanding her many faults and mistakes, the essential beauty of her sweetness and simplicity had unconsciously asserted itself, had found a little-suspected vein of sympathy in the lower nature of her husband? It almost seemed as if it were so, and if so, oh how sad, how doubly to be regretted, the premature ending of the fair young life so full of promise, so prized and precious.“She has been so much happier lately, Roma,” poor Beauchamp would say, in his yearning for consolation and sympathy. “She was saying so herself just the other day. I am a coarse selfish creature compared with her. No one but I knows thoroughly how innocent, and true, and unselfish she is, and I took a long time to find it out—I can’t forgive myself when I think of that time—but lately I do think I have got to understand her better, and to make her happier. Don’t you think so, Roma?Shesaid so herself, you know.”And Roma would agree with him, and say whatever she could think of in the way of comfort—a dozen times, a day, for Beauchamp followed her about in a touchingly helpless, dependent sort of manner, as if in her presence alone he found his anxiety endurable. A dozen times a day, too, he would appeal to whichever doctor was on the spot, almost entreating for a word of hope or comfort. “I fancy she is lying more quietly just now,” he would say; or, “Don’t you think the expression of her face is calmer, more like itself?”It was very hard to be unable to agree with him, but weary days, and still wearier nights, went by before either doctors or friends thought it would be any but cruel kindness to allow him to hope. At last, however—a long of coming “at last” it was—there crept into sight the first faint flutter of improvement; slowly, very slowly, life and consciousness returned to the all but dying wife, and after a new phase of anxiety, scarcely less trying than the first, the verdict was pronounced, “There is hope—the greatest danger to be apprehended in the way of recovery has been safely past—there is every reasonable ground for hope.” And then, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, Eugenia crept back to her place in the world, to the place which it had seemed all but certain would be vacant for evermore. Her extreme patience, her tranquil gentleness, had much to do with her recovery, said the authorities. And those who knew her best—Gerald and Roma, and Sydney when she came—knew her excitable impetuosity, her impatience of inaction, marvelled somewhat at this new revelation of her character.“You are so good, Eugenia,” said Roma, one day when she was alone with the patient, still forced to lie motionless and unemployed, forbidden even to use her eyes or to talk much. “I cannot think how you have learnt to bear these long weeks of suffering, or at least tedium, so cheerfully.”Eugenia drew her friend’s head down close beside her on her pillow. “Don’t you see, dear Roma,” she whispered, “how easy it is for me to be patient now that I amsohappy? There has not been any suffering too much for me; I am so selfish that I cannot even regret the anxiety you all went through about me, for think what it has brought me—as nothing else could have done—the full knowledge of Beauchamp’s love. Never, since the dreadful day when first I doubted it, have I felt so assured of it as since this accident; never, since the passing away of my unreal, unreasonable dreams, has life looked so sweet to me as now, for though I know now that troubles, and disappointment, and failuremustcome; though I dare say I shall often feel them bitterly and exaggeratedly, still I can never again feel hopeless or heartless—I can never feel that my life has no value or object.”Roma kissed her silently, but did not speak. In a minute or two Eugenia spoke again—“And if anything was wanting to make me still happier, to make me more grateful for this new return to life, it is what you have told me about yourself and Gerald,” she said affectionately. “You are both so wise and good, you have both been so wise and good in what you have done for me, that I cannot tell you how happy I am in your happiness. Happiness actually in your grasp, with real root and foundation. You will not have to travel to it through vanished illusions as I did;” she sighed a little. “But I was hot-headed, and wilful, and selfish, and so I blinded myself.Youhave always thought of others more than of yourself, Roma. You have been reasonable and patient all your life. You deserve to step straight into happiness.”“No I don’t, Eugenia. No one but I myself knows how little I deserve it,” whispered Roma. But she said no more, and Eugenia accepted her words simply as the expression of her womanly humility.“Her engagement to Gerald has improved her in the only respect improvement in her—in my eyes at least—was possible,” thought Eugenia. “It has softened her so wonderfully. No one could call her too self-confident or decided in manner now.” But Roma in her own heart felt herself more changed than others suspected.“I prided myself on my high principle and superiority to low influences, jealousy and selfishness, and all such unworthy feelings. And I fancied, too, I had so much self-command, even in thought,” she said to her lover, sadly, when, after Eugenia was fairly out of danger, she confessed to him the cruel storm of feeling, the anguish of self-reproach through which she had passed the day of the accident; “and see what I am in reality! Imagine the horrible, the repulsive selfishness of my feeling as I did at such a time, even for an instant.”“But it was partly my fault,” said Gerald. “I had expressed myself badly. Don’t you see how it was? I was so afraid of deceiving you in any way, of in the least concealing from you what Ihadfelt for another woman (though indeed you knew it already) that I misrepresented it. I mixed up past and present. Thinking it over since, indeed, I wonder you didn’t refuse to have anything to say to me. I don’t feel proud of my way of expressing myself that afternoon, I assure you.”“I told you at the time you very nearly made me propose to you,” said Roma, half laughing in spite of her seriousness.“But you misunderstood me, you did indeed,” he persisted. “I hardly like to talk about it, but to speak plainly, my love for Eugenia died, completely and for ever, the day I first learnt to think of her as the wife, the promised or actual wife—it all seemed one to me—of another. Had there been no other in the question, had it been a simple question of winning her by long devotion to care for me, I don’t say what limits there would have been to my perseverance. But as it was—”“Don’t explain,” interrupted Roma. “I don’t want you to explain. It can’t make me feel myself the least bit less despicable. I that have always despised other women so for being run away with by their feelings, even good ones. Oh, Gerald, are you sure you wouldn’t rather give me up now you know how bad I am?”He smiled.“Do you remember how I offended you long, long ago,” he said, “by persisting that you were no judge of your own character? Even then, at first sight, I doubted your belonging to the easy-going, prosaic order of beings you declared yourself to be one of. There are doubtless in all of us,” he went on more gravely, after a little pause, “possibilitiesof evil, of selfishness—the root of it all, I suppose, but I am no metaphysician—which we may well tremble to recognise. And in the lurid light of tempests of feeling, these are apt to show themselves in exaggerated blackness and enormity. But you cannot think, Roma, that I would love you less for seeing more of the depth of your character, the depth, and the strength, and the truth of it?” he added, tenderly.So Roma was comforted. And Eugenia’s prediction that her two friends would “step straight into happiness,” was fulfilled as thoroughly as any prophecy of the kind can be fulfilled in a world where so very many things are crooked, more crooked than needs be, because so very few people have faith and patience sufficient to await the slow-coming, far-off, eventual “making straight”—faith and patience enough to work cheerily meanwhile in their own corner of the great vineyard. For though the tools be poor and imperfect, the soil hard, the light dim and fitful, oftentimes indeed delusive, the results of the labour all but invisible, what then?“Is not our failure here but a triumph’s evidenceFor the fulness of the days?”The End.

“The best is yet to be,The last of life, for which the first was made:Our times are in His hand,Who saith ‘A whole I planed,Youth shows but half: see all, nor be afraid!’”Rabbi Ben Ezra.

She was not dead. “Still alive, but perfectly unconscious,” was the report that met Gerald as he reached the lodge. “They have not told Captain Chancellor how bad it is,” added Mr Thurston’s informant, “for he was severely stunned himself, and the hearing it might do him harm. He thinks Mrs Chancellor escaped unhurt.”

A little later Gerald caught a glimpse of the Chilworth surgeon. This gentleman seemed glad to get hold of some responsible person.

“Mrs Chancellor’s brother-in-law, Mr Thurston, I presume,” he began, and Gerald did not think the slight mistake worth correcting. “I have sent to Chilworth to telegraph for Dr Frobisher, of Marley. I suppose I did right?”

“Most certainly,” answered Gerald.

“You see I had no one to consult—we must keep it from Captain Chancellor as long as possible, he has had a narrow escape himself—and I feel the responsibility very great. There is no wonder they thought Mrs Chancellor was killed, at first—I almost thought so myself when I first came.”

“Then what is your opinion now?” Gerald ventured to ask, fancying a shadow of hope was inferred by the surgeon’s manner.

“I think there is a slight hope, a very slight one. It will hang on a thread for some days at the best, but she is young and very healthy, though not strong. If she escapes, however, it will be little short of a miracle. Can you tell me how it happened? It seems an extraordinary thing altogether; the ponies were not wild, the coachman tells me, and had been driven several times.”

Gerald told what he knew. The ponies, it appeared, from the boy Timothy’s account, had gone beautifully, “as quiet as quiet,” all the way, till on their return home Beauchamp had stopped for a moment at the lodge to get a light for his cigar. There was no man in the house; only the lodge-keeper’s wife was at home, and she unfortunately, encumbered with a screaming baby who would scarcely allow her to open the gate. Captain Chancellor, to save her trouble, jumped out of the carriage, giving the reins to his wife, and calling to Tim to stand by the ponies’ heads. The boy was on the point of obeying, when his mistress told him to stay where he was; “She could hold them quite well, she said,” was the child’s account, “and she thought they should learn to stand still of their-selves.” It was an unfortunate experiment; the ponies, eager to reach their stable, were irritated by the delay almost within sight of their home. They began to fret and fidget, and Eugenia, by way of soothing them, walked them on slowly a few paces. Then something, what, no one ever knew (possibly only the animals’ own unrestrainable impatience), startled them, and with a desperate plunge they dashed forward just as their master came out of the lodge. There was a rush and a scramble, which Tim could not clearly describe. He remembered seeing Captain Chancellor dart forward, catch hold of the reins on the side nearest to him, and for a moment the boy thought they were saved. Only for a moment, however; it seemed to him his master was dragged a few yards, then kicked violently aside, “all of a heap, he lay without moving,” said the boy. “I thought he was killed, and so did my mistress. She stood up in the carriage and screamed out ‘he is killed, it is my fault,’ and then in another minute she were out too. I don’t know if she throwed herself out or not; the carriage shook so, going so fast and she standing up, she could hardly have kep’ in.” Apparently Tim thought it his duty to throw himself after her. He confessed to the idea having crossed his mind, but remembered no more till he woke up to find himself shaken and confused, though otherwise unhurt, some twenty yards or so from the spot where the first part of the catastrophe had occurred. The ponies, satisfied, seemingly, with their day’s work, pursued their way home, their pace gradually subsiding as they became conscious of being their own masters. They rattled into the courtyard, no one at the first sound of their approach suspecting anything amiss, till the first glance of the empty carriage, and the torn and dragging reins told their own dreadful tale.

Such was the explanation of the accident. Mr Benyon listened in silence, shook his head when Gerald finished speaking, and then went back to his patient again to await the arrival of the greater man from Marley.

Gerald lost no time in sharing with Roma the crumb of comfort he had found.

“It is not quite so bad as I was told at first. She is still alive, but there is very little hope. Will you not come? There is nothing to do. She is perfectly unconscious, but I think it would be less wretched for you than staying up there alone. Tell poor little Floss we hope her aunt will soon be better.”

This was the pencilled note—Roma’s first letter from her lover, a sad enough one truly—which Mr Thurston sent to the poor girl, waiting in all the anguish of well-nigh hopeless anxiety for his report. Within half-an-hour she had joined him, pale, haggard, careworn, aged even it almost seemed, from the bright Roma of an hour or two ago, but calm, self-possessed now, ready for any service that might be required of her. And the sweet summer afternoon deepened into sweeter evening; the moon shone out in cold indifferent loveliness; here and there through the latticed windows of the cottage a star peeped in with its cheery twinkle, and still the dreary vigil went on; still lay on the pallet bed where they had first carried her, the so lately beautiful form of Eugenia Chancellor, beautiful still, but with a death-like beauty that seemed already to separate her from the living breathing beings about her. Only from time to time she moaned faintly, and moved her head from side to side uneasily on the pillow with the sad restlessness so pitiful to see; telling too surely to the experienced eye of invisible injury to the delicate brain.

It was unspeakably painful to witness, knowing that so little could be done to relieve or mitigate the suffering. And not the least painful part of what Roma and her lover had to go through, was the sight of Beauchamp Chancellor’s suffering when the truth as to Eugenia was broken to him. His distress was indescribable; so evidently genuine in its depth that more than once in the course of the next few days Roma found herself asking herself if, after all her many years’ knowledge of him, she had done full justice to his capacity for true and earnest feeling, to the latent possibilities for good in his character below the crust of worldliness and selfishness. Or was it that he had altered and improved, that contact with a nature so fresh and genuine and single-minded as Eugenia’s, had done its work; that notwithstanding her many faults and mistakes, the essential beauty of her sweetness and simplicity had unconsciously asserted itself, had found a little-suspected vein of sympathy in the lower nature of her husband? It almost seemed as if it were so, and if so, oh how sad, how doubly to be regretted, the premature ending of the fair young life so full of promise, so prized and precious.

“She has been so much happier lately, Roma,” poor Beauchamp would say, in his yearning for consolation and sympathy. “She was saying so herself just the other day. I am a coarse selfish creature compared with her. No one but I knows thoroughly how innocent, and true, and unselfish she is, and I took a long time to find it out—I can’t forgive myself when I think of that time—but lately I do think I have got to understand her better, and to make her happier. Don’t you think so, Roma?Shesaid so herself, you know.”

And Roma would agree with him, and say whatever she could think of in the way of comfort—a dozen times, a day, for Beauchamp followed her about in a touchingly helpless, dependent sort of manner, as if in her presence alone he found his anxiety endurable. A dozen times a day, too, he would appeal to whichever doctor was on the spot, almost entreating for a word of hope or comfort. “I fancy she is lying more quietly just now,” he would say; or, “Don’t you think the expression of her face is calmer, more like itself?”

It was very hard to be unable to agree with him, but weary days, and still wearier nights, went by before either doctors or friends thought it would be any but cruel kindness to allow him to hope. At last, however—a long of coming “at last” it was—there crept into sight the first faint flutter of improvement; slowly, very slowly, life and consciousness returned to the all but dying wife, and after a new phase of anxiety, scarcely less trying than the first, the verdict was pronounced, “There is hope—the greatest danger to be apprehended in the way of recovery has been safely past—there is every reasonable ground for hope.” And then, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, Eugenia crept back to her place in the world, to the place which it had seemed all but certain would be vacant for evermore. Her extreme patience, her tranquil gentleness, had much to do with her recovery, said the authorities. And those who knew her best—Gerald and Roma, and Sydney when she came—knew her excitable impetuosity, her impatience of inaction, marvelled somewhat at this new revelation of her character.

“You are so good, Eugenia,” said Roma, one day when she was alone with the patient, still forced to lie motionless and unemployed, forbidden even to use her eyes or to talk much. “I cannot think how you have learnt to bear these long weeks of suffering, or at least tedium, so cheerfully.”

Eugenia drew her friend’s head down close beside her on her pillow. “Don’t you see, dear Roma,” she whispered, “how easy it is for me to be patient now that I amsohappy? There has not been any suffering too much for me; I am so selfish that I cannot even regret the anxiety you all went through about me, for think what it has brought me—as nothing else could have done—the full knowledge of Beauchamp’s love. Never, since the dreadful day when first I doubted it, have I felt so assured of it as since this accident; never, since the passing away of my unreal, unreasonable dreams, has life looked so sweet to me as now, for though I know now that troubles, and disappointment, and failuremustcome; though I dare say I shall often feel them bitterly and exaggeratedly, still I can never again feel hopeless or heartless—I can never feel that my life has no value or object.”

Roma kissed her silently, but did not speak. In a minute or two Eugenia spoke again—

“And if anything was wanting to make me still happier, to make me more grateful for this new return to life, it is what you have told me about yourself and Gerald,” she said affectionately. “You are both so wise and good, you have both been so wise and good in what you have done for me, that I cannot tell you how happy I am in your happiness. Happiness actually in your grasp, with real root and foundation. You will not have to travel to it through vanished illusions as I did;” she sighed a little. “But I was hot-headed, and wilful, and selfish, and so I blinded myself.Youhave always thought of others more than of yourself, Roma. You have been reasonable and patient all your life. You deserve to step straight into happiness.”

“No I don’t, Eugenia. No one but I myself knows how little I deserve it,” whispered Roma. But she said no more, and Eugenia accepted her words simply as the expression of her womanly humility.

“Her engagement to Gerald has improved her in the only respect improvement in her—in my eyes at least—was possible,” thought Eugenia. “It has softened her so wonderfully. No one could call her too self-confident or decided in manner now.” But Roma in her own heart felt herself more changed than others suspected.

“I prided myself on my high principle and superiority to low influences, jealousy and selfishness, and all such unworthy feelings. And I fancied, too, I had so much self-command, even in thought,” she said to her lover, sadly, when, after Eugenia was fairly out of danger, she confessed to him the cruel storm of feeling, the anguish of self-reproach through which she had passed the day of the accident; “and see what I am in reality! Imagine the horrible, the repulsive selfishness of my feeling as I did at such a time, even for an instant.”

“But it was partly my fault,” said Gerald. “I had expressed myself badly. Don’t you see how it was? I was so afraid of deceiving you in any way, of in the least concealing from you what Ihadfelt for another woman (though indeed you knew it already) that I misrepresented it. I mixed up past and present. Thinking it over since, indeed, I wonder you didn’t refuse to have anything to say to me. I don’t feel proud of my way of expressing myself that afternoon, I assure you.”

“I told you at the time you very nearly made me propose to you,” said Roma, half laughing in spite of her seriousness.

“But you misunderstood me, you did indeed,” he persisted. “I hardly like to talk about it, but to speak plainly, my love for Eugenia died, completely and for ever, the day I first learnt to think of her as the wife, the promised or actual wife—it all seemed one to me—of another. Had there been no other in the question, had it been a simple question of winning her by long devotion to care for me, I don’t say what limits there would have been to my perseverance. But as it was—”

“Don’t explain,” interrupted Roma. “I don’t want you to explain. It can’t make me feel myself the least bit less despicable. I that have always despised other women so for being run away with by their feelings, even good ones. Oh, Gerald, are you sure you wouldn’t rather give me up now you know how bad I am?”

He smiled.

“Do you remember how I offended you long, long ago,” he said, “by persisting that you were no judge of your own character? Even then, at first sight, I doubted your belonging to the easy-going, prosaic order of beings you declared yourself to be one of. There are doubtless in all of us,” he went on more gravely, after a little pause, “possibilitiesof evil, of selfishness—the root of it all, I suppose, but I am no metaphysician—which we may well tremble to recognise. And in the lurid light of tempests of feeling, these are apt to show themselves in exaggerated blackness and enormity. But you cannot think, Roma, that I would love you less for seeing more of the depth of your character, the depth, and the strength, and the truth of it?” he added, tenderly.

So Roma was comforted. And Eugenia’s prediction that her two friends would “step straight into happiness,” was fulfilled as thoroughly as any prophecy of the kind can be fulfilled in a world where so very many things are crooked, more crooked than needs be, because so very few people have faith and patience sufficient to await the slow-coming, far-off, eventual “making straight”—faith and patience enough to work cheerily meanwhile in their own corner of the great vineyard. For though the tools be poor and imperfect, the soil hard, the light dim and fitful, oftentimes indeed delusive, the results of the labour all but invisible, what then?

“Is not our failure here but a triumph’s evidenceFor the fulness of the days?”

The End.

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